Barcelona and Charlottesville: similar crimes, very different Trump responses
OTTAWA—In a scene from the 1980 classic comedy movie The Blues Brothers, the title characters are stuck in a traffic jam. The cause of the delay is a group of Nazis blocking a bridge while police restrain a heckling mob of anti-Nazi protesters. When informed by a policeman that the protesters had won a court decision authorizing […]
Barcelona-style vehicle attacks almost impossible to defend against
The carnage last week in Barcelona is getting to be depressingly familiar. An individual drives a vehicle (car, van, 18-wheeler) into an unsuspecting crowd of people, strewing them like bowling pins. Innocent people are injured, some horribly, and some die (maybe mercifully quickly or agonisingly slowly). Even before ISIS claimed responsibility, its fan boys, in the […]
How did skill save cabby from Aaron Driver?
Re: “What have we learned from the Aaron Driver case one year later?” (The Hill Times, Aug. 14, p. 13). I agree that skill and luck are needed to thwart terrorists, but I still wonder how skill played into the near death of the cabbie who by all accounts waited several minutes for Driver to […]
Politics This Morning: Goodale, Hussen in Lacolle to talk about asylum seekers
Good Monday morning, As controversy continues to swirl over surging numbers of asylum seekers from the United States crossing illegally into Canada, Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale and Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen are appearing in the Quebec border town of Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle to field questions from the media. The ministers and local Liberal MP Brenda Shanahan […]
Feds should match wildfire donations
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visited parts of British Columbia this week where wildfires have burned down homes and businesses and have displaced thousands of people. The federal government has done a lot of good things in responding to this crisis. It acted quickly to set up an ad-hoc cabinet committee chaired by Minister for Sports […]
Feds must move fast to set up emergency alert system for cellphones
PARLIAMENT HILL—Emergencies come in all shapes and sizes. In Ontario, unpredictable weather is a fact of life that can have devastating effects on people and property. Then there are the man-made ones such as gas leaks, chemical spills, terror attacks, and child abductions. You’re either prepared for emergencies or you’re not. Simply put, we are […]
New security package positive, but storm clouds on horizon between House and Senate
OTTAWA—The great thing about the first two years of a new government is that people are willing to cut the team a lot of slack. The challenging thing about the last two years of the same mandate is that patience has worn thin and people wants results. The months leading up to the midpoint are […]
New counter-radicalization approach makes more sense than bombs and condolences
TORONTO—Terrorism is like the Hydra of Lerna, the mythological monster capable of regenerating two heads whenever Hercules chopped one off. I don’t know how or if Hercules eventually killed the Hydra, just as I am not sure how to defeat terrorism. However, I do know two things that are useless: one is sending condolences to […]
Our prisons are full of men
As viewers start binge-watching the new season of Orange in the New Black, they might be forgiven for missing one of the most startling facts about prison life. In federal prisons in both Canada and the United States, 93 per cent of people behind bars are men. What the Netflix show does do well is […]
From policing to politics, government’s pot point man says public service is paramount
PARLIAMENT HILL—Bill Blair is still getting used to this whole politics thing. “I confess I’m probably not as politically oriented—and I mean big-P politically oriented—as many of my colleagues,” the Liberal MP for Scarborough Southwest, Ont., said in an interview last week from his office in the Wellington Building in downtown Ottawa. Mr. Blair is, […]
