Roundup: Another shooting, another investigation

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The conversation about systemic racism in policing continued over the weekend with news of another fatal shooting by policing of an Indigenous man, again in New Brunswick for the second time in a week. Both incidents seem to involve a mental health crisis situation (and a knife appears to have been involved in both cases), but it continues to point to the fact that the police are not the right people to call in such a situation because they don’t have adequate training to deal with these cases. There is a question as to why the crisis intervention units that are available in the province weren’t called in to deal with the situation – whether there is a lack of training or awareness, or if this becomes a situation where the police culture of trying to seek dominance in a situation kicks in rather than thinking it through (with especially fatal consequences for Black and Indigenous people). Nevertheless, the fact that there were two incidents in a single week should be proof enough for anyone who remains unconvinced by the scope and magnitude of the problem that this is something that needs to be addressed.

Meanwhile, it looks like Bill Blair had a conversation with RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki before she changed her tune about systemic racism in the ranks, but that changed tune and the damage control that flowed from it has now angered the association of RCMP veterans, which is falling back on the same lines about good people being tarred, because they apparently haven’t kept up with the pace of the conversation and what everyone has been pointing out to them the whole time. And while AFN National Chief says that we need to move beyond questioning whether systemic racism exists and act on eliminating it, I think we need to recognize that it’s important that we are finally calling it what it is – and this as we have pundits muttering about how we shouldn’t spend so much time on labelling it than on combatting it, but if we can’t call it what it is, then we can’t do what needs to be done to actually fix it.

Good reads:

  • An internal National Defence audit found a lack of oversight of the hundreds of billions in new military spending (which is what happens when you fire everyone).
  • Ninety Canadian Forces troops are heading back to Ukraine to resume their training mission there now that the pandemic threat has subsided somewhat.
  • The original Trans Mountain pipeline had a spill at a pumping station near Abbotsford, BC, over the weekend.
  • Chief Justice Richard Wagner is suggesting some changes to the Criminal Code to help courts deal with the backlog of cases thanks to the pandemic.
  • Scandal in the Conservative leadership race, as Erin O’Toole *gasp!* used an American call-centre for outreach, as Peter MacKay already booked Canadian ones.
  • Chantal Hébert has exhausted her patience with Trudeau’s excuses for not bringing Parliament back for real, as he starts taking part in campaign-style events.

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3 thoughts on “Roundup: Another shooting, another investigation”

  1. With apologies to Chantal Hebert, the conservatives have Trudeau right where he wants them, sagging in the polls, irrelevant policies, a leader who is as dumb as a brick and pretenders to the tory throne who are among the biggest losers the CPC has ever trotted out. Cons had better forget feeble descriptions of Trudeau’s hair, drama queen, trust fund kid and all their other meaningless names and buy a diaper, because they will need this PPE after the next election.

    • Don’t forget socks, doughnuts, his goatee, his marriage, Harrington Lake, and libelous conspiracy theories about his teaching career and illicit trysts with cabinet ministers regardless of gender. I’m sure they’re going to fall back on b-b-b-b-but blaaaaackface considering the present zeitgeist. Or Scheer will attempt to seize upon the Mounties being p~ssed with Trudeau over calling out the systemic racism in the force, to initiate another farcical “criminal probe” into Lavghazi and have the rubes chant “lock him up”. Or they’ll get Mario Dion to play a lesser version of Robert Mueller again (or James Comey) and investigate the foreign minister’s mortgage in Ghina. Or Ezra will come up with some QAnonsense about Jean Chretien being involved in Bill Gates’ secret meth kitchen in Wuhan. Maybe Scheer can produce another attack ad about Paw Patrol, asking whether Unifor, the Rockefeller Foundation, and radical animal rights groups are underwriting “Black Labs Matter.” I think it’s generous to assume the GOP North even has policies to speak of, irrelevant or not. “Trudeau bad” seems to be it.

      • Wow! J.B. I guess I opened a can of worms and you named almost all the wrigglers. I would like to see the end of them so maybe the PC’s having read your list will see the futility of continuing their practice and provide Canadians some cogent policy that can be argued about.

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