Volume XVI, Number 9, September 1998

The Western Separatist Papers are published monthly by W.S.P. Ltd.
Address all correspondence to WSP, Box 143, 255 Menzies Street, Victoria, B.C. Western Canada V8V 2G6.
A one-year subscription is $15.00. Our e-mail address is: wcc@islandnet.com.
Phone us at: 250-727-3438 or fax us at: 250-479-3294

 

Our Cover: This cartoon is from The Week, of Victoria, dated April 1905 and portrays B.C. as the "Cinderella" of the family of provinces. In a speech to the B.C. legislature, Premier Richard McBride complained that B.C. contributed more to Canada financially than it received in return. The house passed a resolution calling for better terms. This cartoon was drawn by B.C. artist Emily Carr.

 

Letters to the Editor

The Western Separatist Papers welcomes your letters. Please send them to the Editor, WSP, Box 143, 255 Menzies Street, Victoria, B.C. V8V 2G6, by e-mail to wcc@islandnet.com or by fax to 250-479-3294.

The Cost of Canada

Western Canadian Independence: Economically Sound (Part III)

by Fred Williamson

(We continue our series of articles by Mr. Williamson, a history graduate of the University of Alberta, which analyzes the position of the West in Canada, and gives intellectual ammunition for the arguments for Western separation.)

The Benefits are Not Just Economic

The economic benefits to the West by becoming independent are simply too overwhelming to be denied by anyone cognizant of the facts. However, there are other benefits to the West becoming independent.

1. The West derives no political benefits being in Canada. Ontario and Quebec hold 60% of the seats in the House of Commons, and 46% of the sets in the Senate. The West has 23% of the Seats in the Senate despite having a third of the population, and it has 29% of the seats in the House of Commons. Eastern Canada clearly has no intention of accepting any sort of Parliamentary reform, as the Reform Party is finding out. Nor is there any incentive for Eastern Canada to rectify the political injustices of Confederation as long as the West is content to remain a colony by staying in Confederation.

2. Democracy in Canada is increasingly ephemeral and illusory. In Canada, political power is concentrated in the hands of one man, the Prime Minister, who appoints (among many other things) the Senate, the Supreme Court, and his own Cabinet. Party discipline in the House of Commons is far more severe than in any other parliamentary system in the world. Private member's bills almost never become law. The federal government frequently invokes closure to stifle debate. The upper house, which is supposed to represent the interests of the smaller provinces, is filled with patronage hacks appointed by the prime Minister.

More and more, the federal government uses the Senate to introduce its bills, partially circumventing what democracy still remains in the House of Commons.

The federal government increasingly interferes in areas of provincial jurisdiction with its spending powers. Prime ministers must now come almost exclusively from Quebec. If one cannot speak French (a third, fourth, or fifth language in Western Canada) one can never aspire to high office in Canada. In addition to a Prime Minister with dictatorial powers, the Supreme Court, since 1982, has become an oligarchy, with the power to rewrite laws, amend or reject legislation, becoming the de facto supreme legislative branch in the country.

Since the advent of the Charter in 1982, Canadians do not make laws through their elected representatives, they propose laws. The Supreme Court is it the final law-making body in the country, as some Albertans have discovered with the Court's Delwin Vriend decision. Any system where the supreme legislative power rests with any appointed, unelected body is not a democracy. And finally, between federal elections held once every four or five years, Canadians have no democratic rights on th national scene, and are powerless to do anything to stop politicians in Ottawa from doing whatever they wish. The Liberals have formed many majority governments in the last 45 years without once winning a majority west of Ontario.

3. Religious freedom in Canada is under assault and in some ways has already been abolished. This has happened in Ottawa's compliance with abolishing religious educational rights under the Constitution, which the Charter supposedly protected. More seriously, in <M>Vriend v. Alberta, the Supreme Court ordered the province of Alberta to write a clause into its "human rights" legislation prohibiting discrimination against people on the grounds of "sexual orientation" i.e. homosexual behaviour. This was not only an unconstitutional move by the Court into the legislative area, but it also sent a message to Christian institutions that they may not fire individuals for engaging in behaviour they believe to be immoral and against the laws of God. If recent trends continue, Christian educational institutions may soon be nothing more than a memory in Canada. (Delwin Vriend, the homosexual who sued Alberta, was fired from his job at King's College, a Christian school, for engaging in homosexual behaviour.)

4. Morality in Canada is under assault from Ottawa-appointed judges, who have been granted supreme law-making power since the advent of the Charter. In areas of sexual morality, abortion, not to mention simple cases of criminality, the Ottawa courts have consistently sided with what was once generally considered to be immoral and criminal.

5. Justice in Canada is increasingly illusory. In Canada, justice is in the hands of judges appointed at the pleasure of the federal government, most especially the Prime Minister. Prime Ministers have shown no restraint in appointing to the bench those who share their own political views. Can a province expect impartiality if it tries to take the federal government to court? Can a person of conservative views expect impartiality from the court, if the judges were appointed by a liberal-left politician and share the views of that liberal-left politician? Conservatives have again and again found that justice at the Supreme Court level seems little more than a farce. The cases often appear to some to be decided before they ever enter the court room.

Further, the federal government uses the courts to advance its own left-wing social agenda, not only by its power of judicial appointments, but also through lavish funding of exclusively left-wing political interest groups (e.g. Court Challenges Program, the Legal Education Action Fund, etc.). In Canada, justice is not based on law, but on whatever the Supreme Court justices decree in a given instance.

6. Canada itself has turned its back on its own history and heritage. Since the accession of the Liberals to office in 1963, Canada has thrown out almost every symbol that was part of the nation's heritage for the previous century.

Among other things, the army, navy, and air force were combined into something called the `armed forces." The de facto flag, the Red Ensign, was abolished to appease Quebec. The old Canadian patriotic songs, "God Save the Queen" and "The Maple Leaf Forever" were in effect abolished to appease Quebec. Canada replaced the old English system of common law with a new entrenched Charter. Imperial measurements were replaced by the metric system, even though Canada does 80% of its trade with the U.S., which uses the Imperial system.

Official bilingualism was enacted, making (in defiance of the facts) French a "national" language. Official multiculturalism became government policy. The monarchy was downplayed and ignored. The RCMP was politicised to satisfy feminists, francophones, and special interest groups. Capital punishment was abolished. Abortion, a criminal act in Canada since Confederation, was first legalized, then came to be regarded as a fundamental "women's right." Homosexual behaviour was decriminalized then, like abortion, regarded by the Supreme Court itself as a right, superior even to traditional religious freedom.

All these changes, and many others, were brought about in Canada by the Liberals since 1963 (and supported enthusiastically by the Progressive Conservative Party) without any expressed approval by the voters.

7. Canada is not really a federation at all. Canada is not a real federation because it has no proper representative body for the federated entities in the national government. A federation, by definition, has such representation.

In Canada, however, the upper house which is supposed to do this, the Senate, is appointed by the Prime Minister, an injustice unknown in real federal systems anywhere in the world of civilized nations. Consequently, the eight smaller provinces are really at the mercy of the two largest provinces in Canada, Quebec and Ontario, who decide what is in the "national" interest. Not surprisingly, the "national interest" corresponds with the interests of Ontario and/or Quebec. The other provinces must remain satisfied with their inferior status and be resigned to see their constitutional areas of jurisdiction invaded by the "federal" government.

8. Canada is deeply in debt. Such things which are still taken for granted today, such as adequate health care and a reasonably comfortable retirement, may not be sustainable in the long run. The Canada Pension Plan, which the Ottawa government mismanaged for more than thirty years (as it has mismanaged the fisheries on both coasts) is largely unfunded and is unsustainable. (The situation would be different were Western Canada to become a new nation with a sensible policy in this area.)

Western Canada derives no benefits being in Confederation. In any country, benefits cannot be judged in terms of economics alone. In Canada, however, there are no financial, moral, economic, spiritual, political or historical benefits to be gained by the West remaining in the "federation."

There is, however, a great danger. By remaining in Confederation, the West may one day find itself in the same welfare-state status as the Atlantic provinces, which were at one time quite prosperous. Being in any political union with Ontario and Quebec is to the ultimate detriment of Western Canada. The danger is that, by the time Westerners wake up and the see the need for a new country, it may be too late.

The Cost of the Harvest

An article by Scott Edmonds, from Canadian Press out of Winnipeg, appearing on September 13, 1998 reveals the other side to the harvests being reaped across the West this fall:

"Farmers across Western Canada are starting to park their combines as one of earliest harvests in more than a decade nears completion.

"Despite a growing season that for many always seemed too cold, too wet, too dry or too hot, it's a good crop, both in yield and quality.

. . .

"Farmers should be sitting back with their feet up, smiles on their faces and travel brochures in their hands, right?

"Afraid not. As is often the case with agriculture, there's a catch.

"For some, it cost as much to put the grain in the bin as they can hope to receive when it sells. "I just talked to a neighbour this morning," Don Dewar, president of Manitoba Keystone Agricultural Producers, said recently. "He's got his crop in and he's down a total gross of about $60,000 on 1,500 acres. He had a net income of $60,000 last year."

"High input and transportation costs and low commodity prices have wiped out the margin between what Dewar's neighbour near Dauphin, Man., spent to put in his crop and what he can expect when it's sold.

"Statistics Canada reports farm cash receipts down between 8.9 and 12.5 per cent in the three Prairie provinces during the first six months of 1998 and the trend appears likely to continue. "The cash-flow situation for farmers is extremely tight," says Leroy Larsen, president of the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool. "Despite the good harvest this fall, many are going to have a tough time meeting their obligations and the outlook for the market is not strong. We are very aware and very concerned about the level of world prices right now."

"Prices have tumbled about $100 a tonne since the 1995-96 crop year.

"Larsen says it would help the immediate cash crunch if Ottawa abandoned its program of cost recovery, which forces farmers to pay much higher fees to agencies like the Canadian Grain Commission.

"But along with other farm leaders, he's repeating a call for the farm safety net to be improved. Right now the net has only two strands left – crop insurance and the Net Income Stabilization Account or NISA.

"Crop insurance pays farmers when frost or some other disaster wipes out a crop they've already seeded. NISA is a sort of rainy-day fund farmers and the government contribute to in good years to offset periods of low returns.

"Crop insurance and NISA aren't enough, says Larry Maguire of the Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association, although he agrees ad-hoc programs aren't the answer. "We need a disaster assistance program with rules known up front," he says, and one that covers more than drought or disease. "A price disaster because of subsidy wars is another possibility." Europe has already been accused of starting a subsidy war with the United States and some U.S. states have been making noises about restricting Canadian grain imports as the market tightens."

Recommended Reading

A new book by American writer Robert D. Kaplan, entitled An Empire Wilderness : Travels into America's Future, published this September by Random House, speculates that regional differences, including regional self-interest, within North America will lead to its eventual breakup. This will occur especially because of the Canadian situation, and as soon as within the next 30 years.

"I don't see Canada breaking up through Quebec," he said in an interview with the Ottawa Citizen.

"I don't see it as a dramatic election where somebody votes to leave the country. I think Canada will die a slow, gradual death due to the world economy. Whereas it will take America maybe two centuries to die, gradually and peacefully, it may take Canada 30 or 40 years.

"I see it as a gradual evolution, but one which is inexorable because of the global economy and the constant development of technology.

"The gradual evolution of the Canadian federation into something that is beyond the nation is going to have a greater impact on the United States than the collapse of the Berlin Wall."

Following are some excerpts from Mr. Kaplan's book, as published in Atlantic Monthly, September 1998:

On Vancouver:

"Many of the faces were Asian. A third of greater Vancouver's 1.81 million people are Asian, with Chinese alone making up nearly 20 percent of the population. Asian immigrants account for much of the population growth of 2.5 percent a year. One local joke had it that "the Japanese want to buy Vancouver, but the Chinese won't sell it." I saw many signs in Punjabi, Hindi, Farsi, Arabic, and Khmer -- but almost none in French, an official Canadian language. In the schools here Mandarin is spoken more commonly than French. Vancouver, with its glitzy, visually lively high-rise condominiums, is becoming an Asianized city on the Pacific Rim of North America, dedicated to global materialism; a real East-West hybrid culture is emerging here."

"There, you see it all -- isn't it great?" Gill said. He waved his hand toward his office window, indicating the panorama of the Burrard Inlet, a belt of blue water crowded with seaplanes and set against the snow-capped peaks of the Coast Range, with Vancouver's bustling harbor, heliport, and nexus of railroad tracks in the foreground. "With a dynamic and highly educated population and strategic transport links," Gill said, "this is all you need to be sovereign in the phase of history we are entering. Cities and their environs provide garbage collection, schools, and even your neighborhood -- but they get the least of your taxes. The bulk of your tax money still goes to the state or province and the federal government, and what do they do for you? Isn't it antiquated? But that will change. In the coming decades your tax money will increasingly go to the place you really care about." Gill's tone was enthusiastic and consciously provocative. "Though I guess we should all pay taxes to that Information Age military you are creating in Washington, D.C. They'll in effect sell us the protection we will need against terrorists and other bad people. You see, we don't need you[he meant America], and we certainly don't need Canada. What we need is your military!"

I didn't try to interrupt.

"The miracle is that Canada has lasted as long as it has. It makes no sense. Oh, yes, I'm fond of Canada. Canada is something you're fond of, like a drunken old uncle. And I'm proud to be a Canadian. We all are, in the sense that Canada is more aesthetically pleasing than the United States. It's cleaner and less unruly. But the nation-state is gone in Vancouver."

. . .

The frontier, though, has always produced more commerce and trade than books and art. "The distinctive element of the West Coast, from Alaska to Baja, is newness," Gill told me. "Many of these places have been built not to last. There are streets in my neighborhood that have been three different things in my lifetime. At the moment the element of newness has to do with race. Interracialness is walking down the street, arm in arm. Without the Asians we'd be a narrow-minded English town. In Portland they look to Vancouver to see the outer, Pacific world -- not to California or even to Seattle." Asians "are in the process of re-WASPing us," Gill explained. "Through their driven work ethic they are allowing us to rediscover our Calvinistic WASP roots. In the twenty-first century hundreds of millions of Chinese and other Asians will become middle-class, tying themselves closer to North America. That will change Vancouver and the Pacific Northwest more than any development in North America itself."

On Cascadia:

Artibise is the founder of the Cascadia Planning Group, an organization that assumes, without proclaiming it, the eventual breakup of Canada. Artibise, who is from Canada's heartland province of Manitoba, is a former president of the Association for Canadian Studies and a planning professor at the University of British Columbia. He has served on numerous planning commissions. His short gray hair is receding, and his voice is soft. His expensively furnished office overlooks the harbor. There is nothing radical or even vaguely counterestablishment about him.

For years "Cascadia," formerly a geographic term for the Cascade Mountain region stretching from central Oregon to British Columbia, has been a trendy political concept in the Pacific Northwest. A 1975 novel, Ecotopia, by Ernest Callenbach, envisioned an independent nation in the Pacific Northwest; it has sold 650,000 copies. Cascadia is united by its wet, rather drowsy climate, which may account in part for the profusion of coffee bars and bookstores, and its unique ecology -- a temperate rain forest boasting some of the world's largest firs, cedars, spruces, and hemlocks. Temperate rain forests are found only in slivers of coastal terrain in Japan, Chile, Scandinavia, New Zealand, and a few other places. In 1989 sixty legislators from both sides of the border formed the Pacific Northwest Economic Region; business leaders from both sides formed a group called Pacific Corridor Enterprise. More organizations, including Artibise's, followed.

What has emerged is nothing less than a strategic alliance of the business elite from Portland to Vancouver along "Portcouver," an urban corridor linked by the "I-5 Main Street" (Interstate 5 and Highway 99) and eventually to be connected by high-speed rail. (Passenger trains between Eugene, Oregon, and Vancouver already operate at 90 percent of capacity.) Cascadia would constitute a giant high-tech trading bloc, with major bulk-shipping ports in Portland and Vancouver and a container-shipping port in the Seattle-Tacoma area. Artibise said, "Cascadia is more talked about in Oregon and Washington than it is here. Because of the fragility of the Canadian federation, people are more sensitive on this side of the border -- they know how possible Cascadia really is. If Quebec goes, all it would take is one skilled politician to take us out of the federation. It could happen very quickly. Though they rarely admit it, many British Columbians would probably be relieved if Quebec seceded." An unnerving one in three Canadians favors the use of force to seize Quebec's English and Native areas should the province leave. "All my students have been to Seattle and Portland, but never to Toronto," Artibise told me. "However, more sovereignty for British Columbia is not the answer. The province does even less for Vancouver than Ottawa does."

. . .

As I contemplated the future of Cascadia, I recalled once more that during the War of 1812, New England debated seceding from the United States. Future secessions of regions and post-urban pods will be more likely to succeed, because they won't have to be acknowledged. Our subtle new regionalism will be largely invisible. Meanwhile, the two forms of urban confederation under this refined continental imperialism -- the Portland form and the Orange County form -- will compete for ascendancy. Hybrid forms will emerge, perhaps even within Portland and Orange County themselves, but the Orange County model will dominate.

As a number of experts told me, we cannot ultimately control these social and economic forces. The whole New World -- all of the United States, certainly -- has been one big subdivision marketed for most of our history to Europeans. American cities have been built and humanized not by idealists but by tacky carpetbaggers and get-rich-quick guys. The twist has been that in some places, like Portland, this greed has had to conform to existing cultural expectations. In many other places in America the communal culture is too thin for that.

On Canada, The Wild Card:

Whereas in southern California I focused on how the transformation of the city was changing the face of America, in the Pacific Northwest I focused on the idea of nationhood itself.

. . .

The relationship is still symbiotic: the dissolution of Canada would affect the United States more than any imaginable crisis overseas.

Moreover, Canada, which along with Switzerland is already among the most decentralized countries in the post-industrial world, is split by a blood-and-soil linguistic nationalism that threatens to dismember it. When I asked the president of one of America's most powerful international corporations what was the most important issue the Washington foreign-policy elite was ignoring, he responded, "The eventual breakup of the Canadian federation and its effect" on our own nationhood.

. . .

The psychological importance for Canadians of their country's style and separate evolution should not be underestimated. Canadian resentment of the United States is clear in the way that Canadians smugly disapprove of those who attempt great endeavors. Indeed, says the Canadian writer Margaret Atwood, "Canadian rebellions have never become revolutions precisely because they have never received popular support. `Prophets' here don't get very far against the civil service." Canada never had a Wild West, because Canadians love law and order -- the Mounties are a national symbol. Canada's society prefers collective heroes, like the builders of the transcontinental railroad, over individual ones.

Not a stimulating place, perhaps, but one different enough that parts of English Canada are not eager to merge with parts of the United States; they would do so only if the Canadian federation fractured first. Such a dissolution may be as likely to begin in Canada's westernmost province, British Columbia, as in Francophone Quebec.

. . . .

Margaret Ormsby, a local historian, writes that "British Columbia was in, but not of, Canada." Canada did not grow westward in the same organic manner as the United States. British Columbia joined the Canadian federation only in 1871, four years after the British forced the other provinces to unite. Out here, Ormsby writes, the Canadian Union was based not on "sentiment" but on "material advantage." The economic benefits of the transcontinental Canadian Pacific Railway in effect bribed British Columbia to join Canada. Even so, the British part of Columbia, which in 1846 split from the part that became the state of Washington, retained strong cultural and economic links to a region whose center was San Francisco. Today British Columbia's economy is separate, and the highway to Seattle and Portland and the air routes across the Pacific matter more than links to the rest of Canada. The province exports an amazing 40 percent of its goods to the Pacific Rim, and 50 percent to the United States; 80 percent of exports from Canada as a whole go to the United States. It is the only Canadian province that would surely do better, not worse, were the country to disintegrate. "Canada ends at the Rockies" is an expression I heard repeatedly.

. . . .

 

A Separatist Speaks

by Douglas Christie

The Canadian dollar has temporarily halted its decline against its American counterpart. The Reform party has temporarily patched over its difficulties of leadership and acceptance of patronage at its caucus in Banff. I couldn't help but wonder if the 30-year-old charges against Jack Ramsey didn't have something to do with the falling into line behind the leadership of Preston Manning.

The leadership of Jean Chretien looks secure and the Liberal party with its Quebec leader looks set to ride into the 21st century in its patronage saddle as it did from the 19th into the 20th.

In brief, Canada looks secure in its corruption. But this is only on the surface. The media presents a distorted image of apparent tranquillity to as country whose inherent weakness is growing every day more evident.

Quebec presents a problem of insoluble proportions. Even giving every bribe which Ottawa can extract from Ontario and the West will not appease them. Reform or its new mask, the United Alternative, cannot crack the conservative/liberal stronghold of Ontario and Quebec. It is clearly for them, the beginning of the end. The pension bribe was the end of their credibility.

The resulting decline of the Reform party will create a loyalty vacuum for a large number of Western Canadians. They can see that the west wanting in as Reform used to so loudly trumpet was just a ruse. They can see now that it will never work. They can also see that Canada is an endless sink hole for wealth and resources used to bribe Quebec and the Maritimes.

They can also see that their cities are being occupied by minority ghettos which introduce warring factions and armed conflicts from foreign lands into our own ethnic mix. The Sikh wars of Vancouver are essentially a power struggle from Khalistan to India. There is a very real danger of total war in some areas as this phenomenon develops thanks to Liberal immigration policy.

Some immigrants are quietly going about building their beachheads for the much larger invasion force to come. The west is being colonized by India, China and the Third World in a strange sort of reversal of 19<M>th century imperialism. This phenomenon is the Liberals' revenge and Quebec's revenge on English Canada. These problems are creating a vast underground economy of discontent in the European-descended population of Western Canada.

Reform was an artificial diversion for the growth of separatism. It was a placebo to the big Canadian headache. It told people, "don't worry, be happy! We can overcome. When we get to Ottawa things will be different."

Well, they got to Ottawa and clearly the reformers are now different. The pensions, the house, the perks of office have reduced them all or enough of them that they can be seen through, as a group.

So as a result I held meetings in Calgary and Leduc in late August. Then we saw new interest from sources which had long been dormant. People who had perhaps given up were coming back. A whole new spirit of hope has been rekindled and we can now see the possibility of growth.

While in Edmonton for the trial of Erwin Simon (the third trial in five years which finally resulted in an acquittal; see note below), I heard the sad news of the death of Wes Westmore in a car accident. He had been the Alberta President of Western Canada Concept in the early 1980's. He was a man of some loyalty who after all the internal division and problems of those tumultuous times stayed on our mailing lists, wrote letters, and kept up his membership right up to 1998. I was grateful that my father offered to attend his funeral for me since I had to be in Edmonton at the trial, at that time.

Our condolences to his wife and family. He was our friend and comrade in the struggle for our new nation. He will be missed by all of us who knew him. We will carry on to fight for what he believed in, in the hope that by so doing, his efforts and ours will not be in vain.

New contacts in Alberta look promising and will give us new meetings. A Mr. K. and his son both joined and came to see me out at Sherwood Park. They were very enthusiastic and showed me that there is interest among many people that they know. My hope is that we can maintain cohesion and unity in our movement this time if we get going again as we have in the past. We must not allow provincial divisions to create little power struggles which the media will exploit to ridicule and humiliate our great and noble movement. This is the error we made before.

We cannot allow ourselves to be trapped in a strait-jacket create by the federal system which created provinces like pieces of a pie which they could divide and conquer and eat one at a time. We must think of our new nation in a whole new way. We must meet as equals and not as provincials.

A general assembly of Western Canadians which will create our declaration of Independence and laws which reflect our values should allow each person who is a member the opportunity to move legislation and debate it. The goal of our movement should be to popularize the belief that power to build a nation lies in the people with respect for leadership. It is only the leader who can unite and verbalize the will of the people.

Where there is no respect for leadership there can be no unity or power for the people to visualize the nation they want to be. The leader visualizes and verbalizes the will of the people and only when there is loyalty to that vision and a commitment to achieve it, can a people really emerge as a people.

The lack of leadership in Canada has left its subjects with no capacity to visualize who they are. For want of vision, the people perish. We are therefore drowning in a sea of directionless government and bureaucracy.

After the Simon case in Edmonton, ending September 2, 1998, I went to Ottawa for another trial and again confronted what I have seen so often, the smiling arrogant indifference of the federal civil service. A tall and intelligent lawyer represented the Federal government, called no evidence and relied on the argument that civil servants can't sue their employer unlike the employees of private citizens.

This legislated double standard seems typical of the autocratic power that Ottawa holds. Mr. Graham spoke with the quiet authority of one who is very confident of the outcome. The judgment was reserved.

Upon returning to the city of Victoria on September 10<M>th, having left on August 26<M>th I was soon preparing for a trial of an apprentice who was not certified by his employer due to the alleged failure of his employer to give him enough experience. But I received a call on Friday from Celeste McGovern who writes for Alberta/B.C./Western Report and was doing a story on the Chief Justice and the subject of remuneration which sections of the Judges Act require to be received only from the government of Canada.

My numerous questions to find out who funds the customary trip to Israel which Supreme Court justices take were of interest to her and I sent her my correspondence on the matter. I believe judges should not get trips paid for by anyone to anywhere. I believe they should only get their salary as approved by Parliament. To receive funds from private or other sources is too obviously capable of apparent conflict and potentially worse effects.

The Canadian judicial situation is apparently of great interest to Senator Anne Cools who has shown remarkable integrity and courage in demanding that Judges receive funds from no other source than the salaries of government-approved by parliament. Her outspoken integrity is a refreshing change in an otherwise bleak picture of political indifference to this fundamental question.

The end result of my travels of August and September was the realization that Canada is failing under the weight of its own corruption and few things can change until people are generally unable to tolerate it any longer as it is. I pray that day is not far off.

In conclusion, this last 30 days has been quite busy. The party has seen many renewals. The provincial funds are down quite low, but the national account is still quite strong. The new members in Alberta are arranging new meetings and the momentum is building. I look forward to the future with renewal.

As Reform declines we shall be resurrected. The Liberals, Conservatives and N.D.P. will hasten to fill the vacuum if they can. Are the people really that stupid?

Note Re: Simon Case:

The Erwin Simon case is a typical example of what is wrong with Canada. It was essentially a gun control case. Mr. Simon, a trucker in his 50's, was tired of thefts in his apartment block parking lot. Late one night, wakened by the sounds of a break in going on, he went to catch the thieves! Having seen from his balcony, two or three thieves, he decided to take a loaded 22 rifle to scare them if need be.

When they were caught, he said two men came towards him, one armed with what he thought was a knife, but which may have been a screw driver. He fired one shot in the air. He said that when they jumped in their car to take off, he decided on the spur of the moment to shoot across the empty back seat and mark the car by shooting out the rear side windows.

The police took 37 minutes to attend.

For this Mr. Simon was before the courts from March 22, 1993 to September 1998, put through three trials and one appeal. I was his lawyer throughout


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