.. I however admire a judge doing what is right. The National Post reports that the Crown has been ordered to pay legal costs for those arrested in the gang sweep last week that apparently destroyed the Driftwood Crips. While the arrests may have been in order they took place on June 13th. They should have been able to get bail hearings in 3 days. it is fundamental in this country that the detained get to appear before a judge without delay so that their cntinued detention may be justified.  The Crown has not done so. If i was the crown I would be hoping that the police did not get any confessions or admissions during this time of whta may be construed as illegal dentention.

The Ontario Ministry of the Attorney-General has been ordered to pay a total of $27,000 in legal costs to nine men arrested in the Project Kryptic raids because of a failure to hold timely bail hearings.

It is rare for the Crown to be ordered to pay costs in a criminal proceeding, but Superior Court Justice Ian Nordheimer issued a sharply worded ruling yesterday and indicated he would not allow basic rights to be violated because a large number of people were arrested at once.

The judge also suggested he would consider further measures, such as the release of the defendants, if they do not receive bail hearings by July 3.

"What has occurred to date in this case is improper and unacceptable," Judge Nordheimer said.

The nine men, who face a number of drugs and weapons charges and some of whom are alleged to be part of the Driftwood Crips street gang, were among the nearly 100 people taken into custody by Toronto police on June 13.

In another isolated incident, the police have another concern with the raid:

Cop tip-off alleged:Possibility officer warned family about raid 'could shatter the foundations of trust on the force'

The Ontario Liberals have been dodging questions about a sponsorship slush fund for at least a month. Premier McGuinty took the early position of avoiding Question period all together; so too his impugned Minister, Mike Colle. Now that they have shown up, the answer is to call the Tories racists or to avoid the question. The Star opines:

The daily ritual in the Ontario Legislature is called "question period" for a reason: for 60 minutes MPPs may ask questions of the government, but they can't count on getting answers.

However, last week's performance by the Liberal government was even worse than usual in this respect and ought not to be allowed to pass without comment.

The opposition asked a series of questions about the decision-making process that lay behind some $30 million in government grants to various and sundry ethnic groups, some with Liberal ties.

The government responded by either changing the subject or impugning the motives of the questioners.

Not once was a question on the so-called slush fund directly answered by a government minister.

The whole article is well worth the read and concludes:

By the end of last week, the Liberals were looking pretty chuffed with themselves.

They ought not to be. Their handling of this file has been the nadir of their four years in office.

The sad part is that there is an election coming up in the fall, and for all of the condemnation by The Star of the handling of this clear use of tax dollars for political purposes including lining the pockets of the government's buddies, I'm willing to bet that The Star will be endorsing McGuinty and the Liberals in October.

Under the headline: Fantino and McGuinty run away from Caledonia

A few weeks back, Fantino sent out an email suggesting the OPP would stop policing Caledonia, though many would argue the OPP stopped policing the town when the occupation began. But never mind Caledonia. Fantino has more important matters to concern himself with, like seatbelt violations.

Read the whole thing.

The Defence of necessity had been attempted in imparied driving cases in Canada on numerous occassions. I say "had" because of the abject failure of the defence to that particular charge. I'm not saying that it has never been successful, but the elements of the defence are so stringent -that you believe your life or the life of another to be in danger - that the defence virtually never works. It just did. The Globe and Mail reports on a case from Sudbury:

A Sudbury man was cleared yesterday of drunk-driving charges after admitting he drove while impaired to seek mental-health assistance after a failed suicide attempt.

....

Mr. Desrosiers testified that he told the police he had attempted to kill himself with carbon-monoxide poisoning inside his garage.

The officer on the scene told court he became so concerned over the man's uncontrollable sobbing in the back of his cruiser that he wanted to transport Mr. Desrosiers to hospital, believing he was a risk to himself and others.

...

Judge Keast said he found Mr. Desrosiers "to have been a reliable and credible witness."

"He was expecting to die," he said.

He believed Mr. Desrosiers chose to drive while intoxicated rather than stay inside his home, where he was considering a second suicide attempt.

....

At trial, it was revealed Mr. Desrosiers spent two weeks in hospital under psychiatric care, was put under different medication and remained under psychiatric care almost one year after his arrest.

It is clear Mr. Desrosiers' mental health had deteriorated badly in the hours before his suicide attempt and his decision to drive after consuming alcohol was made by a man with serious mental-health issues at the time, the judge said.

We had a client who, while we were representing him on an litigation matter, was paid a sum of money of which he declined to inform us. He was a crack addict. After he had cleaned himself up, we were working the file and asked him why he didn't tell us about the money. He replied, "when you're a crack head and someone gives you ten grand, you don't call anyone." He said the money lasted about a month. The Ontario government is addicted to gambling revenues. It advertises gambling in a manner that it would never allow liquor producers or tobacco companies to so do. They run a fixed game on a monopoly level. Banning smoking in bars was easy. The government changed the laws for horse tracks and slots because revenues were down. Hypocrites? Apparently not. Gambling online, something the government is attempting to shut down, is a fair wager. The odds are set by the game (cards) or by the gamblers (horses & sports). Government gambling is designed for the return to the government. Not enough money coming through the tills, change the odds or the game. The government cannot compete on a level playing field with their ludicrous games. The government was taking some heat for the finding that they were still telling customers they had a chance to win a certain prize after the prize was already won. Now we find that retailers of government lotto tickets have been ripping off their clients and it appears that the government was aware of the problem. Rather than call the cops they spun like crazy. The government has now nixed a public inquiry into the issue. When the government recieves information that will require the outlay of money or may affect their supply, like any addict, they don't call anyone.

The Liberals used their majority to crush a Progressive Conservative vote for a legislative inquiry into the "Lottogate" scandal yesterday, prompting opposition accusations that the government has something to hide.

The Fraser Institute reported yesterday that the average Canadian pays about 45% of their income in taxes. High on the list were the hidden taxes found on such vices liquor and cigarettes. Lotto proceeds are pure taxes. The government maintains a monopoly position, not for the reason claimed that only the benevolent government can regulate our vices, but because vices are a cash cow and the government cannot stand competition. Should there be a public inquiry? Perhaps. More importantly, the government should get out of the vice business and let people keep a little more of their money to spend on other items, vices or not, as they choose. by getting out of the lottery business they cannot guarantee that no one willbe ripped off, but at least the gambler will have a fair shot at the prize.

(cross post @ The London Fog)

From The Star:

Punjab is the homeland of the Sikhs, and there are some 250,000 Sikhs living in Ontario, including three MPPs who accompanied McGuinty on his tour: Harinder Takhar, minister of small business, and backbenchers Kuldip Kular and Vic Dhillon.

They were all treated like visiting royalty from the time they touched down in Chandigarh (capital of Punjab) on Friday night and were given a police escort into town from the airport.

The same evening, McGuinty and friends were the guests of honour at a sort-of state dinner at the Punjab Bhawan, the receiving place for visiting dignitaries. Their host was Amarinder Singh, chief minister (premier) of Punjab and the son of the last maharajah in the area. Key members of his government also attended, as well as local media, who jostled for position to get photos of McGuinty with Singh.

The next morning, McGuinty had breakfast with Bhupinder Singh Hooda, chief minister of the neighbouring state of Haryana. (Punjab and Haryana share Chandigarh as their capital.)

Then it was on to deliver a speech to about 200 local businessmen before hopping a bus for a four-hour drive to Jalandhar, the birthplace of many Ontario Sikhs. His hotel was festooned with a sign: "Welcome Mr. Dalton McGuinty, hon'ble premier of Ontario-Canada."

The welcome inside was rapturous as about 200 Sikhs – some of them on a visit from Ontario – crowded into a small hotel meeting room to get a glimpse of McGuinty.

"I cannot begin to tell you how proud I am to be the very first Ontario premier to visit Punjab," McGuinty said in a brief speech. "We feel very much at home here."

After the speech, members of the audience were lining up to shake McGuinty's hand and be photographed with him.

It was not all harmonious. Some of the hand-shakers also bent the premier's ear on issues like the problems Punjabi residents have getting visas to visit Canada and the difficulties that professionals from Punjab have finding work in their fields once they settle in Canada.

But overall the atmosphere was boisterously friendly.

So it was, too, yesterday morning when McGuinty visited the 400-year-old Golden Temple at Amritsar, the holiest of holy places in the Sikh faith.

It was also the scene of a bloody shootout in 1984 between the Indian army and Sikh separatists, who had holed up in the temple grounds. Close to 1,000 Sikhs were killed in the confrontation. In the months that followed, Indira Gandhi, then prime minister of India, was assassinated by her Sikh guard, and an Air-India flight from Canada was blown up, allegedly by Sikh separatists.

What could have become an endless cycle of violence somehow came to a halt, however. Now Punjab is peaceful, and I was repeatedly told that there are more Sikh separatists living in Canada than there are here.

I digress. At the Golden Temple, McGuinty was given a VIP tour, and again photographers were jostling for position to get him in their frames. McGuinty was also repeatedly greeted by visiting Sikhs from Ontario.

What all this had to do with a trade mission to India is a good question.

The business leaders who had been accompanying McGuinty at the earlier stops all abandoned the tour before it reached Punjab. Their absence in Punjab was disdainfully noted by the half-dozen representatives of the Punjabi-Canadian media following McGuinty on his tour. They peppered him with questions about what business was actually being transacted in Punjab, and McGuinty responded with bafflegab.

The answer to the question, of course, is that the Punjab leg of the tour was an opportunity for McGuinty to have positive images of himself beamed back to voters in ridings in Brampton and Mississauga, where Ontario's Sikhs are concentrated.

It was, in effect, a giant photo op.

You can read the rest here.

The Ontario Government, like all provincial governments is completely addicted to lotto revenues. The government has taken steps to stop competition from the  private sector and now is answering the claim that clients are suffering from misrepresentation by adding a disclaimer.

Ontario's Lottery and Gaming Corporation is now considering printing disclaimers on scratch and win tickets, in light of criticisms that current practices are unfair and misleading to the consumer.

Under the current system, scratch tickets continue to be sold even after the top prizes have been won and players have no chance of winning the jackpot. While consumers may call a toll-free hotline to learn what prizes are left, critics have said the OLGC should be more transparent in its practices.

Proposed changes would see the OLGC print a disclaimer on the tickets, explaining that some of the prizes may have already been claimed.

So we have a game that is completely rigged. The sign says there is a chjance you can win $1000 but the vendor know that there is no chance to win $1000. The vendor is not required to tell the purchaser that there is no chance. Who would do such an evil thing? Why it must be Big Tobacco! No, it's just Big Government. Government cannot stand a competitor because no one will play by the state's stacked rules. Be it lotto or health care, the state cannot compete so they use a gun to keep out the competitors and stack the game in their favour.