Canada Side Steps Reasonable Suspicion

The federal Justice Department is considering a new law to randomly force drivers to take roadside breath tests, regardless of whether police suspect they have been drinking, Canwest News Service has learned.

Random breath testing, if adopted, would replace Canada’s 40-year-old legislation on impaired driving, which dictates that police can only administer breathalyzer tests if they have a reasonable suspicion of drunk driving.

Justice Minister Rob Nicholson publicly raised the prospect of random testing recently at the annual gathering of Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

“He has his justice officials putting together the legal parameters,” said MADD chief executive officer Andrew Murie.

Nicholson, when asked by Canwest News Service whether he is considering a new law on random testing, said: “We are looking at all options in that regard.”

But he would not elaborate, saying that he currently has a packed slate of anti-crime legislation that is winding its way through Parliament.

“I try not to ever announce anything or get ahead of myself,” he said.

The House of Commons justice committee recommended in June that Canada follow in the footsteps of several other countries that have adopted random breath testing. Nicholson must publicly respond to the all-party report by Oct. 19.

Justice Department officials have been seriously considering the pros and cons of revamping the Criminal Code.

The debate centres around whether random testing, while it has proven internationally to be the most effective deterrent that exists to curtail drunk driving, would be a justifiable violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantee against unreasonable search and seizure.

MADD says that action is needed because progress in nabbing drunk drivers has stalled in the past decade, largely because the remaining culprits are a hardcore group that was never persuaded to drive sober.

Also, research shows that even when impaired drivers are stopped at sobriety checkpoints, most go undetected so they are never tested, MADD says.

Police are even more likely to miss experienced drinkers, because they exhibit fewer signs of intoxication.

The Traffic Injury Research Foundation reports that in 2006, 907 Canadians were killed in traffic accidents involving a driver who had earlier been drinking.

The justice committee, in its recent report, concluded the “current methods of enforcing the law lead police officers to apprehend only a small percentage of impaired drivers, even at roadside traffic stops.”

The report noted an Australian study showed a 36% decrease in the number of people killed in drunk-driving accidents after several states adopted random testing. An Irish study reported a 23 per cent drop in traffic deaths after Ireland passed a similar law in 2006.

The committee report says that random testing could be legally challenged as an unreasonable search and seizure, but that the courts could uphold the law under a charter section that preserves otherwise unconstitutional legislation if it is shown to be a “reasonable and demonstrably justified” infringement.

The report points out that the Supreme Court of Canada has already said that “there is no question that reducing the carnage caused by impaired driving continues to be a compelling and worthwhile government objective.”

MADD, in a background paper, said that most European countries and Australian states, as well as New Zealand, have adopted such laws, beginning with the Scandinavian countries more than 30 years ago.

“While random breath testing will be challenged under the charter, this should not deter Parliament from introducing a measure that has dramatically reduced alcohol-related crash deaths around the world and can do the same in Canada,” says the paper.

Canadian Border Becomes Militarized

About 50 feet before a car from Canada reaches the border inspection booth, the screenings begin.

A camera snaps your license plate.

An electronic card reader mounted on a yellow post scans your car for the presence of any radio-frequency ID cards inside. If there is an enhanced driver’s license embedded with biometric information, its unique PIN number is read without you offering it.

The Customs and Border Protection computer connects with your province’s database and in less than a second – .56 to be exact – your personal information is uploaded to a screen in the booth. A second camera snaps the driver’s face.

Welcome to the United States of America.

If Canadians were under the impression that the Canada-loving U.S. President Barack Obama would heed pleas to loosen border controls to ease trade and traffic, there should no longer be any confusion. He has not.

Beginning June 1, you’d better have that passport ready. Or if you have an enhanced driver’s licence from British Columbia, Manitoba or Quebec, make sure it’s in your wallet, ready to show. (Ontario is now processing applications for the cards.)

Some Canadian MPs, border state lawmakers and Detroit-Windsor area businesses expect the worst when the new controls kick in.

“Either it’s going to cause a massive backup, or it’s going to cause a dramatic decrease in travellers across the border, or it’s going to cause both,” says Melissa Roy of the Detroit Regional Chamber, the largest chamber of commerce organization in the U.S. “It’s an absolute nightmare.”

Obama’s top officials – Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – signed off long ago on the June 1 deadline for the infamous Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative. That’s the George W. Bush-era policy that Congress pushed through under the 9/11 intelligence reform bill, which requires every person entering the United States by air, sea or land to carry a passport or U.S. government-approved secure identity document.

Napolitano says Canadians had better get used to it. “The future is that there will be a real border,” she told a trade group last month.

This is what that border already looks like:

A post-mounted scanner screens your vehicle for radioactive material that could be used to build a “dirty bomb” – a probe so sensitive it will detect if you’ve recently had a medical test that used isotopes.

As you pull up to the booth, a computer monitor may be filling with information about you, even before the guard asks, “Where are you coming from? What’s your citizenship? Where are you headed? Why?”

If a border lookout, arrest warrant or criminal record pops up on the guard’s screen, or if something doesn’t quite add up – maybe you’re sweating bullets on a cold day – expect to get hauled over for a secondary inspection.

The port of entry at the Ambassador Bridge in Detroit – the busiest commercial land crossing in North America, through which a quarter of all Canada-U.S. trade passes – has strict controls, as does the Detroit-Windsor tunnel.

Border agents, packing pepper spray, collapsible batons and 9-mm automatic pistols, are the first point of contact for people and cargo alike. Sometimes their supervisors order vehicle sweeps at random. Then for 30 minutes, agents will pop every trunk, just for a look-see.

Down below the 80-year-old bridge, dozens of long-haul transport trailers are queued up to go through the same checks, and possibly pass through a giant gamma-ray screening facility that peers inside suspicious 18-wheelers.

Between the legal crossing points, all along the Canada-U.S. border, there’s a new reality.

While the U.S. is not constructing an 1,100-kilometre fence between itself and Canada, as it is doing along its southern border with Mexico, the makings of a virtual fence are in place along what was once known as the world’s longest undefended border.

High in the sky over North Dakota, an unmanned Predator drone is on patrol, equipped with an infrared security camera that looks forward 16 miles.

The drone is not authorized to fly in Canadian airspace, but it can peer across into Manitoba. Another one is to be stationed near Detroit next year to scan the Michigan-Ontario boundary.

More daytime and nighttime infrared camera, radar surveillance towers and remote motion sensors are being erected across the northern U.S. border with Canada.

And there are more boots on the ground than ever. Before 9/11, the U.S. had 340 Border Patrol agents along its Canadian border. By next year, there will be more than 2,000.

The Detroit–Port Huron–Sault Ste. Marie regional border patrol operation boasts a fleet of prop planes, small helicopters, a bigger Black Hawk helicopter, speedboats, Coast Guard vessels, even a small Cessna Citation jet.

In Windsor, it makes MPs like the NDP’s Brian Masse nervous about “the militarization of the border.”

He points to the helicopters and drones, and Canada’s willingness to accept U.S. Coast Guard training exercises on the Great Lakes, where boats are equipped with machine guns that fire more than 600 bullets a minute.

It’s all “really changed the nature of the border itself,” Masse says.

Edward Alden, a Canadian journalist and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, wrote The Closing of the American Border, which documented the toll of overzealous border policies on the U.S. economy.

He argues “the biggest mistake of the post-9/11 period” was the decision to blur the lines between the fight against terrorism and the fight against illegal immigration.

Alden does not see any evidence of change under Obama. Democrats don’t want to be seen as soft on homeland security, and have been “hawkish since Day One.” But they also are under pressure by a strong Hispanic voting bloc to treat the southern and northern border with what Napolitano calls “parity.”

Chief Ron Smith, public affairs liaison for Customs and Border Protection in Detroit, concedes that when it comes to the northern border, “A lot of people overstate the security threat. If somebody’s trying to sneak into the United States along the northern border, it doesn’t mean they are a terrorist. We get people trying to sneak across the northern border for the same reasons people try to sneak across the southern border.”

Russian Bomber Interception Over Canada

Canadian fighter jets intercepted a Russian bomber near its airspace in the Arctic three days before U.S. President Barack Obama visited Ottawa last week, officials said Friday.

Defense Minister Peter MacKay said the bomber never entered Canadian airspace.

“Canadian pilots sent a strong signal they should back off and stay out of our airspace,” MacKay said at a press conference with the chief of the defense staff and the commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command.

The CF-18s took off from their base in Alberta on Feb.16 after NORAD detected the bomber headed toward Canadian airspace, the officials said.

The incident was sensitive as it happened as Canada was preparing to host Obama on his first international trip after weeks of preparation that included some of the tightest security ever.

Airspace over Canada’s capital was closed to all planes but Obama’s own Air Force One during the president’s visit, MacKay said.

MacKay said he was not accusing Russia of deliberately timing the flight to coincide with the visit, but it was a “strong coincidence.”

“It was a strong coincidence which we met with … CF-18 fighter planes and world-class pilots that know their business,” he said.

He also said Canada has recently seen “increased activity” of this kind.

Russian aircraft regularly probed into North American airspace during the Cold War. Such flights resumed in recent years as Russia pushed its claim on the Arctic and its oil wealth, according to Canadian media reports.

Last summer, then Foreign Affairs Minister David Emerson said recent actions of Russia were of “great concern” to the government.

Canadians demanding new 9/11 investigation

New Democratic Party Deputy House Leader Libby Davies delivers a Parliamentary Petition signed by over 500 Canadians demanding a new 9/11 investigation, in Canada’s House of Commons during Routine Proceedings at 1:10 pm on June 10, 2008

Here is the full text of the petition, available to sign at http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/canada911truth/

PETITION TO THE HOUSE OF COMMONS
IN PARLIAMENT ASSEMBLED

We, the undersigned citizens of Canada draw the attention of the House to the following:

THAT, scientific and eyewitness evidence shows that the 9/11 Commission Report is a fraudulent document and that those behind the report are consciously or unconsciously guilty of covering up what happened on 9/11/2001. This evidence overwhelmingly supports the conclusion that World Trade Center Towers 1, 2 and 7 were brought down by demolition explosives and that the official theory of the towers collapsing from the airplanes and the ensuing fires is irrefutably false.

We further believe that elements within the US government were complicit in the murder of thousands of people on 9/11/2001. This event brought Canada into the so-called “War on Terror,” it changed our domestic and foreign policies for the worse, and it will continue to have negative consequences for us all if we refuse to look at the facts.

THEREFORE, your petitioners call upon Parliament to:

(1) Immediately launch its own investigation into the events of 9/11/2001 on behalf of the 24 Canadian citizens murdered in New York City.

(2) Act lawfully on the findings of its own investigation by helping to pursue the guilty parties in the international courts.

Chemtrail Aircraft Caught on the Ground

Chemtrail Plane Photographed
On The Ground

Recently, a pilot sent www.data4science.net several images of a plane which is clearly rigged for aerial chemtrail or biological spraying taxiing on the ground at an airport in Canada. After studying and researching the plane images and origin, I feel they are authentic. Why do I suggest the plane might be used for biological spraying? Previously released photos of acknowledged experimental spray planes built for NASA had massive concentric rings mounted on the rear tail of the plane.