Didn’t Calculate On That Glob Near The Edge?

May, 2004 (#164)

Didn’t Calculate On That Glob Near The Edge?
“A Carleton University engineering student participating in a spitting contest with friends plunged 11 floors to his death off an Ottawa high-rise late Saturday night. Police said it appears Ameer ‘AJ’ Jinah took a running start to try to spit further than his two friends when he unintentionally vaulted himself over the 11th-floor balcony railing. Police said Jinah was celebrating his 20th birthday with a dozen friends when the accident happened.” (Toronto Sun, February 23, 2004)

Tell Us What Unasked-For Policy Costs
“It would take an additional $1.5-billion to bring federal payments to Ontario for immigrants’ services up to the level of funding that Ottawa provides to Quebec. … Quebec receives a $400-million lump-sum payment annually to help immigrants while Ontario gets $110-million a year in a variety of programmes. But Ontario receives about 120,000 immigrants a year, about 60 per cent of the total who come to Canada, while slightly more than 15 per cent go to Quebec. On a per-immigrant basis, Quebec gets $3,000 a year from the federal government, while Ontario gets $800.” (Globe and Mail, March 11, 2004) “Under the Canada-Quebec Accord, Quebec has sole responsibility for selecting most immigrants destined to the province. … No other provinces have direct selection powers.” That’s a direct quote from Immigration Canada and it means, for starters, that Quebec is spared anything like typical language upgrading costs.

Yet somehow Quebec remains the country’s leading source of secondary immigration; for all the cultural compatibility and linguistic affinity, an abnormal proportion of immigrants to Quebec settle outside Quebec. However, this is not just another story about franco-favouritism: as hard-pressed municipalities across Canada increasingly observe, Ottawa’s contribution to immigrant settlement costs is a not very big drop in the bucket. If it would take $1.5-billion just to bring Ontario transfers up to federal pittance values, it gives the captive, uninformed taxpayer some hint of the absolutely staggering scope of overall immigrant maintenance and management costs. Believe it or not, immigration was once considered an economic benefit to Canada.

Immigration Boosts Illiteracy
Southam Inc. commissioned a national literacy survey of 2,398 Canadian adults before running a series of articles in September of 1987. With near-half of immigrants now unable to speak either French or English, it is maddening to contemplate what — for the sake of a few votes — Ottawa has done to Canada: In 1987, “thirty-five per cent of foreign-born residents in the survey were unable to handle everyday literacy tasks; this rises to 42 per cent when adults from the U.S. and British Isles are excluded. … The survey also adds new fuel to a decades-old controversy about the effects of multiculturalism by taking a closer look at nearly 300 respondents who spoke more than one language as children. Illiteracy is high among this multilingual group — 49 per cent for foreign born and 33 per cent for Canadian born. These findings appear to clash with current educational theories that claim multilingualism at home and heritage languages at school improve literacy in both languages, if carefully done. ‘The data certainly suggests that multiculturalism and heritage languages are not a good thing automatically,’ says [a psychologist with The

Creative Research Group, Dr. Paul] Nesbitt. ‘But it does not show what happens for children from literate, upper-middle-class homes who get sent off to heritage language classes. … ‘English spoken in the home or learned before starting school consistently produces higher literacy levels than French or all other languages. … Any high school education dramatically reduces illiteracy among immigrants, as it also does for native-born Canadians. Yet, 29 per cent of the foreign-born in the survey who claimed some university education actually tested as functionally illiterate, contrasted to six per cent of those Canadian born. … The findings also cast renewed doubt on the effectiveness of immigrant language courses given to an estimated 100,000 immigrants this year. Functional illiteracy runs at 50 per cent among foreign-born multilinguals in the Southam survey, whether they took some sort of language course or not.” (Broken Words, Peter Calamai)

Life in the Big Multicult Ugly
I recently fled Brampton, Ontario after living there for barely a year. The mass of Muslim immigrants in Brampton not only made me fear for my life (crime was rampant, including muggings, shootings, rapes, etc..) but also the fact that I am a blonde women made me a target for every horny East Indian in town. At the age of 35 you would think that a woman could walk the streets of Canada unmolested, but not when these people are concerned. I was cornered in every elevator, bus, mall, etc.. and given the hairy eyeball so many times I was afraid to leave my house! I was stalked through Fortinos, followed home on more than one occasion (with my son in his stroller) and approached in the streets by lascivious East Indians. One even hung out by the leg curl machine at the YWCA in Brampton, just to watch the White women do backwards leg curls. (It shows your butt muscles)

Why is our government letting these types into Canada? Did anyone ask Canadian women if we wanted to be sexually harassed? They treated me like a piece of big blonde meat wherever I went, and showed me absolutely no respect whatsoever. I can tell you I will never move back to Ontario. As an I.T. professional, I would rather take a pay cut and live out West than deal with those sexist son’s of B’s at work every day in Toronto. They have no respect for women and treated me like a dumb blonde sex object, even though I was their senior engineer at work and knew much more than they did and had several years more experience. I actually got shoved over by a Muslim man because I wouldn’t get out of his way! He actually hit a woman because I didn’t cower and scamper out of his path! Do you think Canadian women should accept this? — Brenda

Setting The Record Straight
“In Thorncliffe Park, a low-income high-rise neighbourhood in Toronto, families are doubling and tripling up in apartments. One estimate is that more than half of the apartments are occupied by more than one family, says a report by Thorncliffe Neighbourhood Office. … Thorncliffe Park’s population has grown by more than 40 per cent since 1990, well above the 8 per cent for the city as a whole. At the same time, the median income of two-parent families has dropped by 35 per cent, compared to a 13 per cent overall decline in Toronto, according to Statistics Canada data used in the report. The neighbourhood’s dramatic rise in population, coupled with declining incomes, has led to overcrowding in apartments as families struggle to find space and pay the rent each month. … Other [concerns] include: A 10 per cent unemployment rate in Thorncliffe Park, almost double Toronto’s 5.9 per cent. A lack of English-as-a-second-language classes and skills training, and barriers to recognition of overseas professional qualifications. … Thorncliffe Park Public School boasts the largest population of any elementary school in Canada — with 36 separate kindergarten classes alone. The school now has more than 1,500 students from junior kindergarten to Grade 5, three times the number from six years ago.

The report found that 83 per cent of Thorncliffe Park Elementary School students speak a language other than English at home.” (Toronto Star, March 3, 2004) Standard boilerplate guilt-mongering so far, but let’s hear what letter writer Turath Khalil has to add: “Social activists would lead you to believe that Thorncliffe is an overcrowded, low-income region of Toronto. As a Pakistani, and former resident of Thorncliffe, I can vouch for the following. The vast majority of Thorncliffe’s residents are new Pakistani immigrants. Pakistani culture dictates that kin and extended families live within the same domicile. The current living conditions in Thorncliffe are not the result of economics; it is by choice. Moreover, the vast majority of Thorncliffe’s households have three, or even four, breadwinners who typically work under the table and continue to collect large amounts of social benefits.” (Toronto Star, March 5, 2004)

What Does Immigration Cost Us?
“Just how much the current immigration program is costing the Canadian taxpayer is not easy to determine. John Manion, a former Deputy Minister of Immigration and Secretary of the Treasury Board estimated that the direct annual cost to taxpayers for immigration and refugee programs is in the neighbourhood of $2 to $4 billion a year. (Testimony before the Senate Standing Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology, October 3, 2001). Clearly, the federal authorities have no inclination whatsoever to produce a comprehensive figure since, to do so, would almost certainly undermine their claims that immigration benefits the Canadian economy (a claim that may have had some limited validity prior to 1980 but which is now almost certainly without foundation in light of the significant decline in the economic performance of immigrants who arrived after 1980). A further reason for the federal government’s reluctance to acknowledge just how much immigration costs the public is very likely because much of the expense has to be borne by provincial and municipal governments even though policies are designed with the political interests of the federal government in mind.

In the case of refugee costs, the rather unlikely combination of the NDP government in British Columbia, the Mike Harris Conservatives in Ontario, and the Bloc Quebecois in Quebec joined together two years ago to demand that Ottawa sort out the refugee process and assume the costs of social assistance and other services for the claimants. The then Minister of Immigration, Elinor Caplan, responded by asserting that no more money was available in federal coffers to deal with refugee matters and told the three provinces to ‘get serious.’ Similar rebuffs were administered to Mayors Lastman of Toronto and McCallion of Mississauga when they raised the issue of costs. … What is clear from all of this is that the federal government has avoided being held accountable for the costs of the immigration programme and shows no sign of assuming responsibility for this.

This point was not missed by the authors of the Immigration Legislative Review when they stated that ‘we firmly believe that the government must account for the way the objectives of the immigration programs are being met’ (p. 4). Accountability should include not only informing the public about the full nature of the costs, but actually paying for these costs rather than leaving them for provincial and municipal governments to cope with. This will involve keeping track of the whereabouts of newcomers, at least during the first years after their arrival, in order to monitor what costs are being incurred on the public purse.

For example, Australian private citizens who wish to sponsor immigrants for family reunification (their parents, for example), are responsible for the costs which they might otherwise impose on the broader society. These sponsors are required to track the whereabouts of those they sponsor and pay their costs. In Canada, the federal government is the ‘sponsor’ of the immigration programme and should bear responsibility for its cost and other implications —including the necessity to track where the immigrants are at any given time. These observations apply with particular force to the refugees who are permitted entry. There is one final comment to be made on the costs of immigration, whatever they may be in total.

As indicated elsewhere in this paper, some parts of the private sector tend to support high immigration levels because doing so creates a larger labour pool, lowers wages, and acts as a stimulus to the economy by producing larger profits. This may be obvious in terms of the direct benefit it provides to producers as well as, to some extent, to consumers. However, the calculation of the total benefit or loss to the economy should also include the various associated costs, such as English language training, welfare, etc., before assessing whether there has been a net gain from immigration. Although the producers may, indeed, enjoy some direct benefits, the high taxes required to pay for these costs may well act as a deterrent to investment. While the costs of immigration constitute a relatively small part of total government expenditures, this point should be borne in mind by those who advocate high immigration levels as a means of stimulating the economy.” (Martin Collacott, Fraser Institute Occasional Paper #64)

Holland Says: “Enough!”
On February 16, Europe’s most tolerant and easy-going nation passed legislation to expel 26,000 failed refugees over the next three years (proportionally, that would mean 52,000 expelled from Canada). A 2,500-page all-party report by the Dutch parliament concluded that the Netherlands’ 30-year attempt to establish an integrated multi-ethnic society has been a failure, citing multiculturalism as its “worst mistake.” Maxime Verhagen, the Christian Democrat leader in parliament, said, one had to be “either naive or ignorant” not to understand that the policy had led the country into a cul-de-sac. He said: “Immigrants in the Netherlands top the ‘wrong’ lists — disability benefit, unemployment assistance, domestic violence, criminality statistics and school and learning difficulties.”

For years Holland was seen as a glowing example of multi-ethnic tolerance, making huge efforts to make immigrants feel at home, but it seems that immigrants themselves reject Dutch society: Between 70 and 80 per cent of 2nd generation immigrants go “home” to find a spouse. AIVD, the Dutch intelligence service, has warned that al-Qa’eda is “stealthily taking root in Dutch society” through Jihad video cassettes circulating in mosques, cafes and prisons. Failed refugees will be offered free airline tickets to their country of origin along with resettlement payments.

Those who resist will face court and up to six months in jail and refusal of all state benefits on release. Holland’s population growth rate is 0.5% (compare Canada’s at 0.94%); Holland’s net immigration rate is 2.35 per 1,000 (Canada’s, 6.01 per 1,000). “Before 1981, 40 per cent of recent immigrants had a Canadian-born spouse; now it’s 16 per cent. One in eight immigrants has dual citizenship.” (CBC, Becoming a Canadian, 2002)

Canada Says “Singh Decision Stands”
If failed refugees have shot the bolt in Holland, they’re very definitely calling the shots in Canada. Justice James O’Reilly of the federal court halted the removal of four failed refugee claimants just as they were about to board a Canada/US removal charter destined for Nigeria. “The four, Francis Asuekomhe Mark, Kayode Aremu Shonubi, Ann Kentoa, and Charles Imafidon, are all failed refugee applicants in various stages of appealing their status. … But all have launched a constitutional challenge of the way Canada acted in trying to whisk them out of the country while their final reviews are still pending. [According to lawyer Munyonzwe Hamalengwa] days before a Jan. 28 joint Canada-U.S. charter was set to leave Buffalo, the individuals, who had prior deportation orders, were asked to come in to get the results of a ‘pre-removal risk assessment’ each had requested, as is their right under the law, he said.

They were detained immediately and told they’d be shipped out promptly, in violation of their Charter guarantees of procedural fairness and due process, said Hamalengwa. They also argue they should not be lumped in with hard-core criminals, and that the flights themselves target Nigerian removals and are a violation of their equality rights.” (Toronto Star, March 1, 2004) The final point verges perilously near the comical: Canada and the U.S. have been driven to charter grotesquely expensive “removal” flights because ever more air carriers refuse to carry deportees. In recent years deportees have learned that the more disruptive and dangerous their on-board antics, the more likely the captain will give them exactly what they crave — a return to the gate and, of course, the deporting nation.

Credentials – It’s Your Fault
Let’s be very clear about Hedy Fry’s new posting as the Immigration department’s “special emphasis on credentials” watchdog. This is just the latest in a long line of cudgels meant to beat Canadians to their knees. If immigrants are not doing as well as they once did, it may have more to do with the calibre of immigrants we’re getting than with racism, systemic barriers or le buzz word du jour. According to the Immigration department’s own magazine, The Monitor, 90% of family class immigrants settle near family members. While that’s not particularly surprising, it is when “almost 45% of principal applicants from the economic class reported that they chose their settlement location because family or friends were already living there, compared to only 22% who were influenced by employment opportunities.” We agree, it must be tough to compete when you insist on cocooning yourself in the reassuring confines of your little ethnic enclave.

Elsewhere, the same Monitor issue reports that, compared to the third quarter last year, citizenship grants from relatively successful source countries fell; Taiwan by 13% and Hong Kong by 25% — but citizenships from less accomplished sources grew, by 18% in the case of China, 30% for India and 12% for Filipinos against the same period last year. Add illiteracy and the inability of near-half of new arrivals to communicate in either French or English, and it really is amazing that anyone accomplishes anything at all. Canada imports more engineers in any given year than are graduated by our own universities. Is it any wonder our own graduates prefer to move south than compete with cut-rate imports? In the case of brain surgeons and rocket scientists, one would hope that this uniquely brainy class would have had the foresight to actually look into the credential issue before packing up and relocating halfway around the globe. Hedy Fry’s “area of special concern” is a red herring, but we must admit — appointing someone especially well suited for irrational debate was an inspired choice.

Tammany On The Rideau
By the time the immigrant boats nosed into the docks in the 1840s, New York ward heelers were steering dazed newcomers toward food, housing and jobs. Later, they sped the naturalization process for hundreds of thousands. Politicians famously arrived at the house fires of immigrant families ahead of the pumper trucks. One simple factor allowed Tammany Hall to dominate New York politics for nearly a century — the immigrant vote. Result? The very word Tammany conjures up corruption on a vast and putrefying scale. Tammany loyalists picked up plum patronage jobs while enemies picked themselves up off the floor; businesses stuffed the party war chest and landed fat, untendered contracts; organized crime stuffed the ballot box and was left to its own devices. Sound familiar? “The Liberals infamously permitted a dead golden retriever to become a member last year and looked away as more than 30 party members were signed up from the same address. … Of the 220,000 new members the Grits recruited in the run-up to their leadership convention last November, at least half are purported to be from multicultural communities, on top of the one-third or more of the 300,000 existing Liberals who fall into the same category.” (National Post, January 27, 2004)

That’s an under-estimation, says Des Verma, Lenn Chow, Martin Collacott and Steve Kaufman: “People of Indian and Chinese origin constitute two-thirds of Liberal Party of Canada members in B.C., even though they comprise only 15% of the population of the province. One recent report in the Vancouver Sun stated that one Liberal campaign official had indicated as many as 80% of B.C. members were Sikhs. … Creating ethnic-based voting blocs in ridings is an effective way to recruit new members, but the result is anti-democratic. This approach is known as ‘vote banks’ in India where it has contributed to communal strife in that country.

These voting blocs can be used to determine the outcomes at both nomination meetings and elections themselves, with the result that winning candidates are left with a debt to specific ethnic groups rather than to the whole electorate. While this may bring with it short-term electoral benefits for the party, it is clearly not good for Canada.” (National Post, August 13, 2003) In November, then Minister of Natural Resources, Herb Dhaliwal threatened there would be an Indo-backlash if he was dumped from Cabinet: “You have to remember who can deliver votes for you,” was his charming riposte. Constituency swarming is endemic: the latest victim, Chuck Cadman, lost his nomination in Surrey North to an East Indian movie producer who showed up with 1,500 Indo insta-supporters. Art Hangar barely survived a similar brush — Val Meredith did not.

The death of democracy has been Chretien’s real legacy, and it is significant that the sponsorship scandal occurred after the Quebec vote: clearly the Liberals had lost all confidence in a process so easily perverted — and they ought to know. If the sponsorship scandal has fatally loosened the Grit stranglehold on power, the mind reels at what the Auditor General might uncover in the ethnic sponsorship industry.

CRIME WATCH

What If They Stopped Lying To Us?
In its 1999 report, the Criminal Intelligence Service Canada noted: “Vietnamese criminals in Vancouver now are responsible for approximately 80 per cent of the hydroponic marijuana grow operations that are investigated by the police.” CISC’s 2003 report says Vietnamese-based gangs “are entrenched in B.C. and Southern Ontario and are expanding marihuana cultivation in Alberta and Atlantic Canada.” Yet, when Canadians hear about grow-ops, the malefactors are simply “organized crime.” When two Vietnamese men were abducted outside a Toronto karaoke bar and held hostage in Montreal for several days, “Toronto Police said they were surprised by news of the abduction.” (CBC, March 18, 2004) Really? “Kidnappings and home invasions by Chinese and Vietnamese gangs” as a source of concern are not very new: “Gang members target both middle-class Canadians and recent immigrants, many of whom borrowed money from loan sharks in their home countries to pay for their passage to Canada. Immigrants who cannot pay back loans, or small-business people who refuse to cooperate in extortion rackets operating in large centres in Canada, have been subjected to kidnapping, torture, and murder.

Asian-crime experts in Canada say they are alarmed by the growing level of violence and brutality against women and children who are victims of home invasions by Chinese and Vietnamese gangs. Victims are usually small business people in the Asian community who bring home their cash receipts at the end of the day. It’s not uncommon for them to have tens of thousands of dollars in cash, law-enforcement officials say, because they don’t trust banks. Small cafe and restaurant owners who refuse to pay ‘protection money’ to local gang lords also have been victims of home invasions. Vancouver is increasingly targeted by gangs trying to extort small fortunes from students from Hong Kong and China.

In recent months, several students have been threatened with violence, even death, unless they pay gangs as much as $100,000. Police even started offering seminars to local Vietnamese and Chinese small business people in Toronto on how to protect themselves against this type of crime. The gangs are difficult to track down because they don’t use names and they’re spread out all over North America. The victims are easy prey: banks are not the only institutions they distrust. They don’t trust police in their home countries. So, they don’t call them in right away when they have a problem here either.” (Canada & the World Backgrounder, January 1998) Gee, let’s ask an expert: “Immigrants who bring with them to this country a mistrust of institutions — police, government, histories of oppression — are on super-guard to make sure that such things do not happen here. They are on super-guard to make sure that our institutions and government are used for good.” (Hedy Fry, interview, IM Diversity Inc, 2003) Still seeing things that aren’t there.

Update: The Arsal & Kaneez Show
In police interview tapes, Muhammad Arsal Khan, the man arrested for the murder and dispersal of daughter Farah’s body parts around Toronto parks, is shown wearing a ball cap and relaxed-fit sports gear. Belying the Westernized appearance, Mr. Khan’s behaviour is eccentric to say the least: He wallows in self-pity, then assumes the mantle of pious Moslem and finally boils with rage toward a daughter who continues to perpetrate cruelties against him from the grave. Khan insists that “he dismembered his ‘obstinate’ five-year-old daughter’s body after she committed suicide, because of an ignorance of Canadian law. … ‘If we had known about the law, that we could be saved, then we would have brought her straight here,’ said Mr. Khan. … He said he and his wife — who was the girl’s stepmother — had decided to dismember the girl and hide her body parts because they did not think the police would believe their story that Farah killed herself.” (National Post, February 5, 2004)

The recurring claim that the poor couple were too backward to understand a bewildering system is at odds with completed subsidized housing forms recovered from the home. Police came calling on Mr. Khan on January 19, 2000: “When homicide detectives first knocked on his door and introduced themselves, he told them he understood ‘some English.’ Seconds later, when they told him he was being charged with first-degree murder, he said, again in English, ‘Sorry, I can’t understand English.'” (Globe and Mail, February 13, 2004) This is really a tale about the human costs of an infirm immigration system.

The little girl’s stepmother, Kaneez Fatima, was herself brought to Canada as a sponsored spouse in a 1988 arranged marriage. That union broke down within two years and Fatima cast about for a new match in Pakistan. She may have been nine years older than Mr. Khan and likely past her child-bearing sell-by date, but she brought something very seductive to the table — Canadian citizenship. The marriage broker “was Tanver Ahmed, who testified yesterday that Mr. Khan had been hounding him about finding a way to get him to Canada.” (Globe and Mail, February 7, 2004) On April 20, 1999, Mr. Khan duly arrived as the latest sponsored spouse in this chain of arranged marriages (the fact that he had a small child in tow cannot have hurt his cause). Canada bestows the privilege of citizenship faster than any other developed nation, and to hasten the process, Immigration Canada provides a crib page — A Look At Canada, Citizenship Test: Questions. The critical first five questions are:

“1] Who are the Aboriginal peoples of Canada? 2] What are the three main groups of Aboriginal peoples? 3] From whom are the Metis descended? 4] Which group of Aboriginal peoples make up more than half the population of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut? 5] Why are the Aboriginal peoples of Canada working toward self-government?” A more relevant bellwether might ask: “Say you kill your daughter in an uncontrollable fit of rage; would you, a] dial 911 for emergency services, or, b] dismember her and hide the head under a rock?”

Let’s Hear It For Mandy Lam
On January 6, 2000, frustrated by the behaviour of kiddies in her home day care, a 34-year-old immigrant named Mandy Lam threw a 7-month-old at a baby chair, fracturing her skull. Three days later the infant died. You might think Ms. Lam a candidate for jail or deportation, but that would make you the criminal. Lam was sentenced “by [Alberta] Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Eric Macklin to a conditional sentence of two years less one day of house arrest and 240 hours of community service lecturing new mothers or day-care workers to help prevent child abuse. … Judy Dube, past-president of the Child and Family Resource Association … questioned the value of having someone who is struggling with English tell her story. [Poor, blameless Mandy: according to Ms. Dube] ‘I wish the judge would have sentenced the government to provide training and support for all people who work with children.'” (National Post, February 5, 2004)

Relax, It’s “Fine”
Two years ago, (Immigration Hotline #141) we asked: “Can’t you just see the government agencies lining up to contract out to Fine Analysis Laboratories? Founded in 1988 by Pakistani йmigrйs Tahir Mahmood Abdullah and his brother Shahid, this was just the kind of multicultural success story Canada needed.” Unfortunately, by January 2001, it was common knowledge that the Hamilton company was systematically falsifying thousands of test results.

Three years on, “Fine Analysis Laboratories Ltd. and its sister company, Fine Pharmaceutical Ltd., were sentenced to $2.5 million each in fines yesterday after pleading guilty to charges of conspiracy to utter forged documents. … Justice Anton Zuraw called the companies’ actions a ‘stunningly blatant scheme’ that was motivated solely by greed. … Clients of the firms included 60 Canadian pharmaceutical companies, at least eight towns and dozens of private firms, including Canadian Blood Services. It’s not known how many thousands of test results may have been forged at the Fine Analysis lab. One supervisor conservatively estimated he had been ordered to alter 2,000 results in one year alone, according to the agreed statement of facts read in court yesterday. … Shahid Abdullah, one of the co-owners of the companies, pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to utter forged documents and giving contradictory evidence and [for such depraved indifference in a position of trust] was sentenced to a combination of house arrest and curfew for two years less a day. Abdullah will serve his sentence in Abbotsford, B.C., where he now lives.” (Toronto Sun, February 24, 2004) What, no healing circle?

“Two other Fine Analysis employees were also handed sentences to be served in the community. Laboratory director Yana L’Pris received a 12-month sentence, half to be served under house arrest and half under a court-ordered curfew. Quraish Hussain, a laboratory co-ordinator, was sentenced to six months of 9 p.m.-to-7 a.m. curfew at home.” (Toronto Star, February 24, 2004) Where’s the justice? For that matter, where’s partner/brother Tahir Mahmood Abdullah? Pakistan? Let’s hope a torrent of civil claims discombobulate the cozy domestic arrangements “imposed” by Justice Zuraw.

On a single sample of commercial paper sludge tested in 1998, the Ontario Ministry of the Environment recorded arsenic levels 420 times higher than those submitted by Fine and lead readings 1,000 times higher. This really does matter, because where testing indicates the sludge falls within “safe” levels it’s routinely spread on farmland as fertilizer — sparing the mill the regulatory headache of extremely costly hazardous waste disposal charges. As from the outset of the venture, it’s obvious that a “Fine” is nothing like good enough. Lucky the Fine Gang weren’t Brad Love who did something serious like writing letters to MPs which earned him 18 months real jail time.

Canadian Immigration Hotline Index

Canada First Immigration Reform Committee