It’s just after 8pm in Montreal, and the reporter from CUTV is talking to a young mother who is taking her two kids to the 28th nightly demonstration in a row.

Even though she knows she could be arrested, for defying the Charest government’s totalitarian Bill 78, like so many were the night before.

“About 300 people were arrested and 20 were injured during overnight protests in Montreal in defiance of Quebec’s contentious Bill 78, which cracks down on student-stoked demonstrations sparked by the province’s proposed tuition hikes.”

And the leader of the largest student group warned today that it could be a long, hot, and dangerous summer.

“One of Quebec’s main student federations called upon its fellow citizens to disobey the provincial government’s emergency law, passed last week to stymie the daily and sometimes violent student protests.

“The government should cancel the bill ‘before people get injured, before people die,’ said spokesperson Gabriel Dubois-Nadeau.”

But then this is now more than a protest about tuition fees, and that young mother is not alone. As the people on this website say . . . arrest me somebody! arrêtez-moi quelqu’un!

And Je désobéis…
I DISOBEY.

Because some things are worth getting arrested for, and the freedom to demonstrate in a democracy is one of them.

You know I hate to see Quebecers fighting themselves, and I have absolutely no time for the handful of hoodlums who would throw things at police or break windows.

But whatever the Con media says, this is an overwhelmingly peaceful movement. Tonight some of them were wearing rabbit ears, and carrying balloons . . .

And because the police stayed at a distance, there was no violence or mass arrests. Just another big freedom party in the streets of the city I love so much.

I have no idea where this awesome struggle is going, and sometimes I fear the worst.  Because it is polarizing opinion in the province like nothing I’ve seen before.

But I do know that this Quebec Spring is now too big and broad based to be suppressed with night sticks and pepper spray. Jean Charest must do the right thing, scrap Bill 78, and negotiate with the student leaders. Instead of hoping that he can use the protests to win the next election.

And I also know that the people in the streets of Montreal, the students and the others, are marching for ALL of us in Harper’s ghastly Canada. Where Peace, Order, and Good Government never sounded more like a fascist slogan, as the Cons dismantle our country.

Today it’s their turn. Tomorrow it will be ours.

Which is why I love this message so much……

Here’s to the big freedom party.

Solidarité FOREVER . . .

A BoB short:

Shriya Shah-Klorfine, 33, of Toronto had dreamed of climbing to the top of Mount Everest since she was nine-years old. On Saturday, after an intense seven-week sojourn to the top, Shah-Klorfine placed a flag on the mountain’s summit, becoming the fourth Canadian woman to scale Mount Everest.

But she did not have much time to relish achieving her lifelong dream. Shah-Klorfine died later that day alongside three fellow climbers during their descent. According to some reports, the deaths were the result of exhaustion and altitude sickness.

“My wife was someone who lived life to its fullest, with irrepressible energy and vitality,” said her husband, Bruce Klorfine, in a statement to the Canadian Press. “She died in the pursuit of her dreams, and with the satisfaction of having achieved them.”

On the climb’s website, the self described “daring lady” patriotically declared, “This is my dream and passion, and [I] want to do something for my country.” Shah-Klorfine was born in Nepal but considered Canada her home. She boisterously added, “Nothing is impossible in this world, even the word ‘impossible’ says ‘I M POSSIBLE!’ ”

The main climbing season on Everest runs from March to June, providing a narrow window of opportunity for adventurers. An estimated 150 climbers took advantage of a break in the weather on Saturday to attempt to reach the top, leading to congestion and potentially lethal delays for any carrying limited oxygen supplies.

- Emily Olesen

As most of you are aware (and if you’re not aware, you should stop reading now and go back and re-read all 66 of my articles . . . I’ll wait), I’m an expert in everything to do with rioting. Therefore, I know what Conservative MP Blake Richards is talking about in his new Bill, C-309, which would make it illegal for rioters to wear masks while rioting — offering up a penalty of 10 years in prison if convicted.

It turns out that it’s really hard for the police to identify and charge rioters if they’re wearing masks. Therefore they’d like to respectfully ask those rioters to not wear the masks while they’re breaking the law.

And I couldn’t agree more with Blakester! We need to know who these people are! Listen, every October 31st a whole bunch of unruly kids amble into my neighbourhood and start harrassing everyone for candy. And what are these kids wearing? That’s right: masks. And all I can do is run into my panic room and hide for the rest of the evening while they continue to ring my doorbell and egg my house. So I agree with Blakester — these kids need to be locked up for as long as possible. Or, perhaps, when it becomes illegal to wear those scary little masks of theirs, they’ll no longer come around.

Now, you may be wondering why any rioters (or pesky little candy fiends) would be willing to take their masks off and riot in the open. Why would people, who are already breaking the law by rioting, be so inclined to not break a secondary law?

Because they’re criminals, but they’re not dumb. You see, if you get caught for rioting you face up to two years in prison, but if you’re caught rioting while wearing a mask, you’re adding up to another 10 years. Now, I’m not mathematician, but my calculator tells me that would be a total of 12 years. Two seems a lot better than 12 (except for when it comes to beers, when 12 is always better than two  . . .  and Jim Beam is always better than beer).

But here’s where the law falls flat. They’re only outlawing the use of masks during riots, and for an incident to be considered a riot it has to be an unlawful assembly that incites fear in the neighbourhood. Which would be fine, because everything that happens in my neighbourhood incites fear in me (seriously, why are my neighbour’s blinds always closed? What are you hiding Tim?  WHAT?!), but for an assembly to be considered unlawful, it has to involve three or more persons.

Only three or more? So, what you’re telling me is that if Bill C-309 is passed, I’m only protected if three or more people show up at my house wearing masks? That if two people show up and murder me, they’ll only be facing whatever slack murder laws Canada has, and not the extra 10 year mask-wearing sentence? Why do I even bother unlocking my door?

What I propose is that we make it illegal to wear any mask, ever. Doctors, with those little mouth masks, I don’t trust them. What are they trying to hide? Skiers, with their ski masks; not on my watch, off with those too! Riot police, with their riot masks . . . you’re in a riot zone! You’re definitely breaking the law!

Listen, I think we can all agree that the only way we’ll ever live in a truly free and safe society is when it’s entirely illegal for anyone to wear a mask at anytime.

. . . Masks and hoodies. (Geraldo, I’ve got your back.)

Nathaniel Moher is a television writer living in Vancouver. This column first appeared in The Flying Shingle.

By John Klein (aka Saskboy)

How can I write this without sounding, well, paranoid? I believe the RCMP is watching too many people, and abusing its resources. There are plenty of signs this is taking place. And proliferating tech gadgets and social media are only making the matter worse.

It worries me.

The police should not be monitoring Canadians unless they have a reasonable suspicion that criminal acts are imminent or are taking place. We don’t pay them to watch all activists, especially ones who peacefully oppose prevailing political governance. Are we not a society free to disagree with our government?

Here’s an incomplete, but startling, list of reports that suggest the Mounties are getting their man by putting everyone, innocent people too, under a microscope:

RCMP spied on BC natives protesting pipeline. The Yinka Dene Alliance is not a terrorist organization.If the report had said RCMP were monitoring “Polish Canadians” (as a random example), do you think there would be more outrage?

RCMP interrogate former Conservative candidate for passing documents from anonymous source to Ethics Commissioner in Parliament (after Parliament mail room lost first submission).

A B.C. man got a visit from the RCMP after contacting the Prime Minister.

Until the 1980s, the RCMP kept a secret list of people they considered to be Communists, and were prepared to round those people up in the unlikely event of the Cold War heating up. PROFUNC was ended by accident.

The G8/G20 brought Canada’s so-called “largest ever” police spy operation down on activists whose worst members did damage comparable to unruly drunk hockey fans in Vancouver. Meanwhile, the police assigned to watch the protests ended up being charged with crimes. RCMP “abandoned policy”, and kettled protesters, which resulted in the arrests of hundreds, to possibly over a thousand, innocent people.

Since there are no laws clearly governing the use of your personal information collected by the ruling political party into their CIMS database, they could be sharing this intelligence with the Mounties. Would it change your answer to any survey or political phone call if you knew your response could end up as a detail in an RCMP surveillance watch list?

As a political blogger, I’m pretty much screwed if the government takes an active interest in me. Even though I’ve previously worked in a job for the government where people, with less oversight and more authority than the RCMP, confirmed I’m loyal to Canada (and the Queen even) and am the opposite of a threat to national security, I have little doubt that now I’m an unhappy smiley face in CIMS, and who knows what other police-state Stasi-style databases. There’s presently nothing preventing the government from using the Conservatives’ powerful partisan database.

With social networking, it’s easy to track most of my contacts. When Toews’ Bill C-30 passes, the police will be able to do legally what they’ve probably been doing since September 11th, 2001. I also carry a cell phone, so my movements could be mapped, or conversations bugged using the phone mic. Ubiquitous technology is stacked against a free, democratic Canada.

Will the RCMP maintain the peace in Canada, or bring an end to it? Will they resist the pull of pervasive electronic monitoring of every person? I know what I hope for, but the signs are pointing in the wrong direction.

Since a painting of Prime Minister Stephen Harper lounging nude on a chaise longue emerged on Friday (including all his emerging parts), reaction has been swift, and a little green at the gills. The painting by Kingston artist Margaret Sutherland, titled “”Emperor Haute Couture” (a reference to Hans Christian Andersen’s story of the Emperor with no clothes), drew a sniffy response from the PMO, mostly for the small dog lounging at Harper’s feet. “We’re not impressed,” tweeted spokesperson Andrew MacDougall. “Everyone knows the PM is a cat person.” Opposition reaction was cutting: “This is one case where I think we really do need a Conservative cover-up,” averred Liberal MP Scott Brison. Meanwhile, tweeter Paula Shuck summed up the response of the electorate: “Oh dear lord: may have to pluck eyes out now.”

Brace yourself, Ms. Shuck. After an exhaustive search, backofthebook.ca has uncovered — so to speak — a surprising number of other nude depictions of the Prime Minister. We offer a curated selection below:

“Harper on the Half Shell”:

“Harper and Eve”

“Harper Having Lunch”

“Harper: Boyhood Days”

“Harper and Yoko”

“Harper Descending a Staircase”

- Frank Moher

By Mark Leiren-Young

It takes years to make a movie. It takes less than 48 hours to determine its fate.

If the box office numbers from Friday and Saturday night aren’t impressive, a movie won’t be in theatres the following week.

Samuel L. Jackson’s latest, The Samaritan, opens tonight and if you’re looking for a movie this weekend here’s the scoop on what you should be seeing instead of The Avengers or Battleship. The Samaritan is a modern film noir drawing strong early reviews, including a thumbs up from Roger Ebert. Jackson plays an ex-con trying to go straight, and Oscar nominee Tom Wilkinson plays the bad guy determined to make sure he doesn’t.

I emailed co-writer-director, David Weaver, whose previous films include the quirky cool festival favourites Century Hotel and Siblings, to ask what excited him about making a 21st century film noir.

“A prof of mine at film school said once that directors just spend their career remaking the movies they loved when they misspent their youth in darkened theatres. Well, I always loved noir. And where are they now? I’m not necessarily talking about classic noir (although I bow to no one in my appreciation), but to revisionist, Jim Thompson-inspired noir, like The Grifters or The Crying Game. Nobody’s making those movies anymore? Fine. I’ll make them myself.”

Weaver’s other stars include Luke Kirby, Deborah Kara Unger and Gil Bellows — all faces you’ll recognize even if you don’t know their names and all of them Canadian. Yep, The Samaritan is an honest to Telefilm Canadian movie — and it has something few Canadian films do, besides brand name stars like Jackson and Wilkinson . . . it’s actually opening in more than a few tiny art houses and it’s premiering simultaneously in the US which means a bit of actual PR. Not Battleship PR but, hey, a review from Ebert already tops the attention most CanCon films get and a great first weekend would be good news not just for Weaver, but for the Canadian film industry.

“It’s just such a jungle out there, with so many possibilities for your entertainment dollar, as they say. So if audiences don’t show up on the first weekend then the movie is likely to disappear,” he says. “I spend my life frustrated that I didn’t get a chance to see the way they were intended to be seen — on the big screen. And all of this is particularly true for our movie, which is a little bit of a throwback to begin with. After all, don’t you want to see a noir in the theatre? That’s really the only way you can see into the deep, dark shadows.”

Producer Tony Wosk told me, “The opening weekend of any film is incredibly important these days because of a constant fight for a limited number of screens. A film has to perform in that opening weekend to ensure it doesn’t get replaced by another film the following weekend. For an independent film it’s even more important because Hollywood tentpole films often snap up the majority of screens in any market.”

Wosk spent six years on the board of Canada’s First Weekend Club — a group that spreads the word about Canadian film openings in the hopes that a first weekend will lead to a second weekend and a third and . . .

Full disclosure: Wosk produced my first feature film, The Green Chain, and without the help of The First Weekend Club I doubt our film would have played a second week. That’s why I’m aware of the importance of first weekends and such a fan of the First Weekend Club.

And that’s why I’ll give the last word to their executive director Anita Adams, who I contacted for another quote about why seeing The Samaritan this weekend won’t sink Battleship but would be, well, the act of a good Samaritan — not to mention a savvy cinephile. “The first weekend of a film’s release is critical,” says Adams. “The more people that go see a film during those first three days, the more likelihood that film will have an extended run. A film’s future really hinges on the success of that opening weekend, as theatre owners look at the box office results Monday morning and decide which films to keep and which to cut. So if you want to help some great Canadian films stay in theatres longer, go see them opening weekend!”

How is it that Bill Blair is still Toronto’s Chief of Police this morning? How is it that, in the wake of the damning OIPRD report on the “policing” of the G20 summit in 2010, he hasn’t stepped down? How is it he isn’t waking up in his PJs at home this morning, with no headquarters to go into anymore, and telling his wife, “Gee, honey, sorry I lost my job, but I really fucked up”?

The papers in Toronto are calling for him to apologize. Apologize? That’s what he should have done on June 27, 2010, the day after his officers went gonzo. We’re with the Ontario Federation of Labour. So long, sucker.

Does he really think four (or is it five?) of his senior commanders are going to do the perp walk, along with some 40 other officers, and not take him with them? Does he really think that, if he doesn’t resign and somehow doesn’t get fired, he’ll be able to continue to command after this? After the OIPRD report said responsibility for the police riot went all the way to the top? (Guess who that would be, Bill.) And revealed that Blair was present at the meeting where the whole thing went haywire:

At 5:18 p.m., Saturday, June 26, 2010, Supt. Mark Fenton said, “I attended the conference room that was set up as an area for the chief and command to view some of the CCTV video being generated … I entered and Supt. (Hugh) Ferguson was immediately to my left. The chief (Blair) was sitting at the head of the table. Beside the chief was Dep. (Chief) (Tony) Warr…The chief was asking why he could not see police officers in the pictures … The chief appeared to be angry and frustrated in his demeanour.”

Fenton asked, “Why are we not arresting these people?”

He said he was “referring to the terrorists that were attacking police and property” when “the chief responded by looking at me and saying, ‘That is a very good question, Mark.’ ”

Fenton said, “Immediately Dep. Warr spoke and said “OK, this is what we are going to do: We are going to take back the streets.” Deputy Warr looked at me and said, “I want you to take back the streets.”

McNeilly’s report also deals with a similar exchange where Ferguson asked Fenton “about direction from the chief.” Supt. Fenton answered “Own the streets” and “as soon as groups of people are seen, arrest them for breach of the peace.”

The implication there is that, at some point, it was Blair himself who gave the command to “own the streets” and violate the civil rights of Torontonians willy-nilly. If not in that room, then at some other juncture. Regardless, Big Bill stood by while the order went out. And now he wants his underlings to take the fall.

Shameful.

However, let us tip our hats to those few officers who, at the finale of Blair’s lost weekend, when hundreds of people were illegally kettled in a torrential rain storm at Queen and Spadina, disobeyed their orders and, according to the report, “personally removed non-protesters and peaceful protesters.” On a weekend ripe with the smell of bad apples, they were among the good ones. And to those officers who knew they were breaking the law but went ahead and did so anyway, because a superior told them to — you owned the streets, all right. Now own your complicity.

But for Bill Blair, let there be nothing but disdain until, for the first time in this whole grotesque episode, he does the right thing and steps down. And then he can apologize. And then, maybe, the people of Toronto, and of the country whose laws and liberties he treated so cavalierly, can think about forgiving him.

But not until. Resign, Chief Blair. Resign.

By John Klein (aka Saskboy):

We’ve had a few days of no new news reported in the robocalls criminal investigation. The story yesterday on the CBC website, while factual, does make one claim that is disputable.

With the public paper trail cold for almost two months, there’s still little that’s certain in the Elections Canada investigation[...]

Alison’s preemptive retort says it best:

The trail is not so much ‘cold’ as overwhelming.

No, the main story is :

Why did someone in the Guelph Con campaign – who would normally call RackNine to set up legit campaign robocalls directly via their Rogers IP- feel the need to use a proxy server to hide their ID at all?

There are the facts CBC presents, and there are the obvious deductions to make from them. Those deductions should have led to charges being laid, and/or a Royal Commission to be called into how Elections Canada could bungle and delay this investigation so badly that a random Canadian in Regina with an IT background could stay ahead of their progress to a certain extent. How well do you think the perpetrators feel knowing they’ve had a year to cover their tracks, and let evidence like the Shoppers Drug Mart tapes be destroyed?

CBC also left off this big fact (as reported in newspapers):

Why is one of the three CIMS reports downloaded by Andrew Prescott – phone numbers identifying supporters and non-supporters – now missing from CIMS?

That fact points to a cover-up, because the CPC haven’t claimed their system security was violated, and that sort of log doesn’t just go missing. The person at a local campaign who downloaded the phone numbers would not have had the system permissions to remove the log for what they did at CPC HQ’s database. A co-conspirator is at large, (more likely, many of them, in many ridings too) and the media isn’t talking about them because Elections Canada hasn’t revealed any details (or the media hasn’t uncovered them in courts) yet. Since it’s taking EC’s Mathews more than a year to gather evidence for fraud in one riding, if we assume little overlap in the people conducting crimes in 200 ridings, it should only take 100 years to finish investigating so we can get on with trials. (EC added a second investigator, Lamothe, sometime in the last couple months.)

Justice Delayed, is Justice Denied. You’re being denied justice.

For more facts, including recordings and documents revealed so far in the investigation, check out my list. If you know of documents related to this election fraud not yet listed, please leave a comment with a link.

OK. So I was wrong.

When Christy Clark became the latest Con stooge to denounce Thomas Mulcair,  for simply pointing out that the Dutch Disease is killing our manufacturing sector, I said it could only mean one thing.

Big Oil and its Con puppets were scraping the bottom of the barrel.

But I forgot I was living in the sinister petro state of Harperland.

Where the bottom of the dirty oil barrel goes all the way to China.

And I forgot about the Con Senate, and particularly Pamela Wailin’ . . .

“This is a cheap political ploy to pit eastern citizens against those in the West. Will Mulcair next attack the lentil business, the wheat and grain producers who have long fed the world — or perhaps the potash industry that allows the poor to bolster their depleted farmland in overpopulated areas?

“It’s time for Mulcair to act like a Canadian.”

And that like the Con turkey Mike Duffy, Wallin is capable of saying ANYTHING.

I mean can you believe that? As if Big Lentil is as dangerous as Big Oil. As if Mulcair wasn’t right. As if telling the truth was a crime.

These diatribes against anyone who even acknowledges potential downsides or side effects of the bitumen boom seem to herald a new, dangerous tendency in Canada’s political culture. Opposing a bitumen-exporting pipeline in Canada these days makes you a foreign-financed subversive. And it seems that questioning the economic effects of the bitumen export strategy makes you equally seditious. I call this “energy McCarthyism,” and it should be rejected forcefully not just by those concerned with Canada’s de-industrialization and staples dependency, but by those worried about the quality of our democracy.

As if those Cons weren’t selling us out to foreign interests. As if Albertans haven’t been screaming at those damn Easterners for 40 years over the National Energy Program. Which did to Alberta what Harper’s oil pimp policies are doing to the rest of Canada.

Which explains why the Cons and the other Big Oil stooges are attacking Mulcair like piranhas. They know a killer issue when they see one. But why is Stephane Dion joining in the feeding frenzy?

Stéphane Dion, the former Liberal leader, says he turned down a proposal from advisors to accuse Prime Minister Stephen Harper of favouring Alberta and the oil sands industry during the 2008 election campaign because he feared it would harm national unity.

He said Mr. Mulcair is effectively “giving up” on much of Western Canada and, if he forms a government in 2015, risks having little or no representation from provinces like Alberta and Saskatchewan in his Cabinet.

Oh boy. When will he ever learn…

What Thomas Mulcair understands so well. He doesn’t have to win any seats in Alberta or Saskatchewan. All he has to do is win most of the seats in Ontario, British Columbia, and Quebec, and he will BURY the Cons in the Tar Sands.

Which is one of the reasons he’s looking like a winner, and thanks to people like Stephane Dion, the Liberals are going nowhere.

Liberal support in Canada is steadily slipping as the New Democrats and Tories continue to battle for the top spot, the results of an exclusive poll for Global News indicate.

While the Grits may say that their troubles lie in finding the right candidate to lead the party, Ipsos Reid’s Darrell Bricker suggests the party may be losing a distinct voice in the political arena.

“The problem they’ve got is that they’re having a hard time finding their place in a debate about economic issues,” Bricker told Global News.

Yup. Mulcair is ruthless, the kind of leader these times demand. 

He has found a mighty issue, the truth is on his side. That’s why the Cons are running scared.

For 40 years Alberta used regional alienation like a blunt weapon.

Now it’s our turn . . .

Canadian literature and music legend Leonard Cohen, awarded the Glenn Gould Prize in Toronto last night, has chosen to donate the $50,000 that comes with it to the Canada Council for the Arts. The Montreal native is the ninth winner of the honour that has been called “The Nobel Prize of the Arts.”

As a young poet, Cohen received a $25 grant from the Canada Council, in the form of reading fees. At last night’s ceremony, he recalled another “highlight” of his early years: interviewing Gould, the pianist who was Canada’s first musical superstar, for a magazine profile, only to be “so engrossed by what he was saying, I stopped taking notes.” The article was never completed.

Recipients of the award, given every three years, are asked to choose a young artist to receive the $25,000 Glenn Gould Protegé Prize. Cohen chose a collective giftee: the students of Sistema-Toronto, a school using music education to teach cooperation and social responsibility.

Previous laureates have included Dr. José Antonio of Abreu, Venezuela, who founded a national system of young peoples’ orchestras in Venezuela, and Sir André Previn, the German-born composer and conductor.

But Leonard Cohen: He’s our man.

- Emily Olesen