Commons Speaker Greg Fergus yesterday apologized 13 times and pleaded with the House affairs committee to “move on” as MPs weighed his fitness for office. A total 149 MPs have demanded Fergus resign for breach of rules on impartiality: “Like anyone who starts a new job I am working and learning on the job.”
Canada has not gained “a single thing of tangible value” for its US$159.2 million purchase of shares in the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, says a Canadian publicist who worked as a senior executive at the Beijing institution. “It is dominated by senior Communist Party members,” said Bob Pickard of Toronto: “I am an eyewitness.”
A failed vaccine factory in Public Works Minister Jean-Yves Duclos’ Québec City riding received twice the federal subsidies originally claimed, the Commons health committee was told yesterday. A factory executive refused to release the contracts: “We didn’t deliver anything.”
Senators yesterday cited the Canadian Human Rights Commission as incompetent. The $41.6 million Commission was found to mistreat its own Black employees: “These findings call into question the inability of the Commission in respond to human rights complaints in a fair and equitable manner.”
Cabinet yesterday detailed its timing for promised expansion of a $13 billion dentacare program to subsidize teenagers and seniors. The program would see 9,077,196 more Canadians eligible for subsidies currently paid to 395,000 children under 12: “The intention here is to fill the gaps.”
Federal agents have seized tens of thousands of firearms in cross-border mail, says a Canada Border Services Agency report. The figures are the first to date on the scope of gun smuggling: “The total number of firearms successfully smuggled into Canada is unknown.”
Liberal MP Greg Fergus (Hull-Aylmer, Que.), first Black Speaker of the Commons, is now the first Speaker since Confederation to be summoned for cross-examination by MPs. The House affairs committee meeting in secret session agreed Fergus will face questioning for misconduct: “He must sever his Party connections.”
A fifth of Canadians surveyed have been victimized by electronic fraud, says in-house research by the Department of Public Safety. The public told federal researchers that scamming by phone and internet has reached epidemic proportions: “Participants believe financial crime to be pervasive.”
CTV News faces a formal complaint from B’nai Brith over its coverage of a pro-Israel rally on Parliament Hill. Announcer Omar Sachedina is accused of using needlessly inflammatory language to characterize the peaceful protest: ‘Announcers must avoid allowing their personal biases to influence their reporting.’
Lawn signs promoting an anti-Trudeau book in the 2019 campaign were subject to Elections Act regulations, a federal judge has ruled. The publisher Rebel News Network fought a $3,000 fine for failing to register as a campaign advertiser: “The lawn signs were election advertising.”
It took 30 minutes
for an Alabama inmate
to die of a lethal injection.
In Oklahoma,
43 minutes.
Arizona halted executions
after the ordeal lasted
two hours.
They still search for the perfect drug.
Meanwhile,
fentanyl overdose deaths
spike across the country.
By Shai Ben-Shalom
If no two murders are alike, all wrongful convictions seem strikingly similar: a shocking crime, an excitable crowd, a round-up of the usual inarticulate suspects.
Author Robert Sharpe, former justice of Ontario’s Court of Appeal, documents such an outrage, the 1884 hanging of two men in Prince Edward County, Ont. for a crime they almost certainly did not commit. Sharpe does not call it judicial murder – after all he was a judge – but the signs are there.
Peter Lazier, a farm equipment salesman, was shot to death in a county farmhouse on Friday, Dec. 21, 1883 at 10 pm. Two armed robbers scuffled and opened fire with a .32 pistol before fleeing the scene. Lazier’s killing was the first murder in the county in years.
Within hours, two neighbours were named as suspects. A coroner’s inquest convened the next day. Then came the public outrage, the speedy trial, the gallows.
“While the speed and efficiency of the criminal process in the late nineteenth century was in some respects admirable when compared to the sometimes glacial pace of modern criminal trials and appeals, one is left with a lingering feeling that there was something of a rush to judgment that simply did not allow for careful reflection and deliberation,” writes Justice Sharpe.
The suspects were Joseph Thomset, fisherman, and David Lowder, farmer. Both were “rural working people with limited means and little education,” the author notes.
No murder weapon was found. No confession was made. No physical evidence linked Thomset or Lowder to the crime, nor did they look anything like the burglars. Trial witnesses testified both were far too short.
They even had alibis. Lowder spent the evening with his family, and Thomset was seen to visit a neighbour far away, appearing calm and well-mannered.
Police claimed the suspects’ boots matched footprints in fresh snow outside the crime scene, a “highly dubious” supposition, writes Justice Sharpe. Evidence showed about half the county wore boots like Lowder’s and Thomset’s, and the footprint “evidence” was contaminated by excitable neighbours who tramped through the snow within hours of the shooting. “Believing that hot pursuit of the killers was imperative, they did not think it necessary to wait for the local constabulary to arrive.”
The fix was in. Murder was rare and would be avenged.
Leading the investigation was Belleville’s police chief, an ambitious town cop with no professional training whatsoever, “a man anxious to build his reputation as a relentless and clever crime-buster.” Managing the trial was a hanging judge so outraged by the crime “few in the courtroom doubted that the judge had essentially invited them to convict the prisoners.” Covering the trial was the panting Picton Gazette that reported trial evidence was “breathless,” “a great sensation.”
Justice Sharpe captures the tragedy in a crisp, carefully-researched account of the tightening of a noose. He writes, “Even the most stalwart supporter of the death penalty must be horrified by the execution of an innocent person.”
Prince Edward County never saw a murder quite like the 1883 shooting. The rest of it – the excitement, the crowds, the round-up of the usual inarticulate suspects – is disturbingly familiar.
By Holly Doan
The Lazier Murder: Prince Edward County 1884 by Robert J. Sharpe; University of Toronto Press; 192 pages; ISBN 9781-44261-5267; $24.95
Free hotel rooms and meals for refugee applicants and illegal immigrants cost $769 million this year, says the Department of Immigration. Lengths of hotel stays ranged “from a few weeks to a few months,” said an official: “Where are you putting these people?”
Immigration Minister Marc Miller yesterday extended regulations allowing a half-million foreign students to work full time hours in Canada, telling reporters: “It was popular.” Figures show the unemployment rate for Canadians grew after the rules were changed: “I don’t think students are taking jobs away from other people.”
The Public Health Agency of Canada yesterday acknowledged it had no evidence its ArriveCan app saved lives. The Agency had claimed the $54 million program saved so many lives it justified the cost: “Can you let us know how many?”
