Let's Honour Ben Weider

Before passing away, the late Ben Weider gifted his extensive collection of Napoleonic memorabilia to the Montreal Museum Of Fine Arts.
This priceless collection can now be forever enjoyed by the general public.
I had occasion to view some of these great artifacts in his home, many years ago when I called on him to solicit a charitable donation. His extensive collection included the famed tricorne that the emperor wore in the Russian campaign in the early 1800's.
His passion and enthusiasm for his Napoleon obsession was apparent and before sitting down to discuss his potential donation I was treated to a fascinating primer on Napoleon and his legacy.

Ben Weider was a fabulous Montrealer.

Born in the Laurentians to a poor Polish family, he rose to become a successful businessman who along with his brother Joe were the purveyors of the famous Weider brand of weightlifting equipment.
More than that, he was an author, philanthropist and historian.

His philanthropic endeavors were not limited to Jewish charities. Among other donations outside his community he built a gym for Palestinians in the West Bank and contributed to the re-construction of the Mary Queen of the World Cathedral in Montreal.
A francophile of the first order, he was awarded France's highest honour, the Légion d’Honneur for his work relating to Napoleon. Ben had friends across all ethnic and linguistic lines and I remember listening to him often as he recounted his stories on the air to radio host Gilles Proulx, another longtime friend.
He was dynamic, energetic and he will be missed.

I don't know what the the criteria are for getting a street named after you, but if ever a Montrealer deserved the honour, it is Ben Weider.
What say you, Mr. Mayor?

Get out the Violin for Teen Murderers

It really doesn't matter how much the public is outraged by violent acts committed by teens, the justice system continues to apply slaps on the wrists to murders, rapists and robbers who commit the most heinous acts.
We are constantly lectured by those in the justice system that treating teenage criminals differently than adults leads to a higher success rate in terms of rehabilitation.

Here's a flash- WE DON'T CARE!
There, I said it.

I speak for the majority of citizens who believe that punishment is more important than rehabilitation.

When it comes to those who commit violent acts that impact the families of victims for life, we demand that perpetrators be held accountable.

Let the punishment fit the crime.
How is it that in Canada this concept has gone down the toilet?

For too long, our criminal justice system has been about the criminal, not about the victims and their families.
Yes, it's expensive to house inmates for long periods of detention, but it's no excuse not to do so. Compared to all the other crap we pay for, it's a bargain.

Families who suffer a grievous loss get closure and perhaps a level of grim satisfaction when the perpetrators are judged for their crime and the sentence reflects the severity of the act.

When that punishment is ridiculously small, what is the family left to believe?
That the murder of a beloved family member by a teen means nothing more than a three year sentence in a teen facility that's nothing more than a glorified camp.

In many cases, families of victims haven't even gotten over their initial grief, before the perpetrator is let out.

The three Montreal North teens who killed a Vietnamese grandmother will likely get off with the proverbial three year sentence. (In fact two of them will probably get less, because only one of them actually punched and kicked the victim.)

Family and friends mourn the loss of Kim Ngu

Lieu, murdered by 3 Montreal North teens.

According to an article in La Presse, where the young murderers are cast in a most sympathetic light;

• They didn't do it on purpose and didn't plan to rob anyone, it just sort of happened.
• They've never done this type of thing before (never been caught?) and it was an unfortunate act.
• The victim was responsible for her injuries because she resisted. Had she given up her purse she still be alive.
• Psychologist Hubert Van Gijseghem, quoted in the article, has already laid out a 'Twinkie' defense. According to him, young boys between 15 and 16 years of age suffer from impulsiveness because of a elevated testosterone level.'

Arrrgh......

While we don't suggest the teens be locked away for life, a maximum of three year is completely unacceptable.

Pursuing Mulroney Has Cost Taxpayers a Fortune

For most of us, making sense of dollar amounts that run into the millions isn't that easy. Usually, the biggest number we will ever deal with, is the mortgage on the house that we own and 99% of the time, it's under a million dollars.

The media has been up in arms with the revelation that the taxpayers are once again on the hook for Mulroney's legal expenses and the figure of $2 million has been bandied about in the press. While most of the discussion has been centered on the appropriateness of the government footing his legal bill, I was astonished that the size of the bill has garnered so little attention.

Breaking down the numbers to something more understandable makes it easier to understand the depths of this obscene spending spree.
It's a scandal that eclipses the original sin and one that should offend us deeply as tax-paying citizens.

Since the Oliphant Inquiry was officially launched last June, Mulroney's legal bill has been mounting at an average of $7,500 EVERY SINGLE DAY!

Yup, every day. If you consider that his legal team doesn't work week-ends and holidays that brings the number up to over $10,000 per day. Ouch!!!

By the way, that works to the equivalent of 2 lawyers, working 40 hours per week, for 9 months, charging $500 per hour assisted by a junior lawyer or clerk, at $125 per hour for each and every hour worked!

Nice work if you can get it!

That's a lot of money and resources to be spending to clear up a relatively simple matter, especially if you've got nothing to hide. An innocent man knowing that there's nothing prejudicial to be uncovered wouldn't need that type of effort.

While it's debatable as to whether Mr. Mulroney is entitled to get the government pay his legal bill, we the public should be able to see a detailed breakdown of the bill, since we're paying it. I'm sure it'd be interesting reading. Freedom of information, anyone?

As it turns out Mulroney needn't have spent the money. Commission lawyers, who also spent millions, came up with zilcho new.

If the Privy Council believes that they should pay the bill, shouldn't they have given Mulroney a budget, after which he'd be on the hook for excessive payments. As it is, there's zero incentive to be reasonable. Those of us who have hired lawyers professionally know without a budget, a law firm can gobble up fees faster than Ms. Pac-Man.
Having been involved in plenty of litigation over my career, I can tell you that the bill is obscenely excessive, period.
Nothing less than an outrageous ripoff.

There's been talk that the government should sue Mr. Mulroney for the 2.1 million dollars settlement money they paid Mulroney in 1996, in relation to his defamation suit. It seems that he wasn't forthright in his deposition when he described his relationship with Herr Schreiber.
Government lawyers have gone on record as saying that the deal would never have been made had Mulroney not misled them under oath.
It would be sweet revenge to tackle Mulroney in court, but the problem is, that we the public would probably be stuck paying his legal bills again!
That's the way it works for former pols.

It time to swallow hard and go on. We don't need Oliphant's final report. It' just cost another couple of million. Pursuing Mulroney over Airbus and Schreiber has cost taxpayers too much.
So far it's cost us;

• It's been estimated that the Oliphant inquiry will cost in the neighborhood of $14 million. You know as well as I, that government estimates are usually off by 50%, so the true cost will probably be over $20 million
• Mulroney's $2 million dollar legal fee paid by the Privy Council.
• The $2.1 million settlement paid in the 1996 libel suit.
• The related legal fees in that case, perhaps another $2 million
• The cost of the long and unsuccessful RCMP airbus investigations- $3 million (a guess)

By the way, we haven't been told if the Privy council is paying the legal fees of the other politicians and civil servants who've testified. I'm sure Fred Doucet needed a lot of legal advice to help him craft his wonderful 'I can't remember a thing' testimony.

At any rate, the total cost of pursuing Mulroney must be close to $30 million dollars.
What can we buy for this money?.....Funding for 15-20 new permanent family doctors serving up to 200,000 patients.


Still think pursuing Mulroney was worth it?

Like It Or Not - NHL is English

How do you run a business/association where twenty nine of the thirty members speak a language different from yours and your customers.
It's a problem that not only the Montreal Canadiens face, but many Quebec based business' as well.

While the NHL pays lip service to the French language, it's hard to miss the fact that the league and it's teams operate exclusively in English. Like international air traffic control, English has been adopted as the common language of hockey. The league doesn't even offer a French version of it's official web site - NHL.com.

Players who enter the league from abroad all understand that if they can't converse in English, they will be at a profound disadvantage.

Since it's inception the Montreal Canadiens have always been an anglophone company. In recent years (starting with President Ronald Corey), the team began an earnest program of frenchification, with the non-hockey, day to day business of the team switched to French.
However, on ice operations have always been and still remain an exclusively English affair.

In Montreal, some fans with surprising media support, have demanded that this change. They believe that putting more Francophones on the ice and hiring Francophones to run the team will better serve the interests of the team and the community.

Can the Canadiens disastrous on-ice performance in recent years be in some way attributed to this language battle?

Sadly, yes.

The first shot in the hockey language war was fired back in 1991, when Eric Lindros was selected first overall in the NHL entry draft, by the Quebec Nordiques. Lindros had already signaled to the team hat he wouldn't play for the Nordiques, citing the French 'question' as his chief objection. The Nordiques who prided themselves on operating almost exclusively in French, didn't believe the threat and drafted him anyways. Good to his word, he didn't report and sat out the season until the Nordiques traded his rights to Philadelphia. (Ironically, the trade actually worked out in the Nordiques favour.)
The Quebec media tried to portray the incident as isolated case of a spoiled child and unrepresentative of the prevailing sentiment.

They were wrong.
While middling and journeyman players go to whatever team will take them, superstars shun Montreal like the plague.
Incredibly, that includes Francophone hockey stars who are warned that expectations are so high for native-sons, that the pressure of living under the microscope in such an intense environment is unhealthy, career-wise.

Those who insist on pushing the language debate onto the ice, do a great disservice to the team. The treatment of Saku Koivu by the media for his inability to speak French has sent a clear message to potential recruits- stay away.
Most hockey agents look at the Canadiens as a last choice destination and steer their charges far away from the franchise. Donning the storied Canadiens jersey has lost all it's caché.

It's hard to understand how insisting that there are two classes of players, (francophones and 'les autres') can possibly help the team's performance.
Holding a media wake every time a francophone is traded is dysfunctional and places an unacceptable burden on the GM. Demanding that the team boost the number of francophone players will turn the team into a CFL franchise, where Canadians by birth are guaranteed a certain number of spots on the roster, to the detriment of performance.

What can the Canadiens do?

Hire a Francophone GM who has the guts to tell the media that language will never be a criterion in player decisions. (Only a francophone can say this, an Anglophone would be run out of town). Make sure that he has experience and the intestinal fortitude to withstand language attacks. He also needs to have superior English in order to deal with the league's other GMs.

Once on an Air Canada flight, I was sitting in the first class cabin, across the aisle from Rejean Houle. He was on the air-phone, deep in conversation, his brow furled, trying as best he could to understand what was being. His stilted words, in broken English exposed the fact that he was struggling terribly and that's too big a disadvantage for the GM of the Montreal Canadiens.

The team needs to hire a Francophone coach with fabulous English. (the Canadiens have never had a problem finding these guys.) More importantly, let management trust him to run the players without interference from upstairs as was the case with the latest casualty, Guy Carbonneau.

I'm reminded of the famous TV commercial that reminded us, 'that you don't want tuna with good taste, but rather tuna that tastes good'.
In Montreal we should want 'a team that plays great, not speaks great'.

End the language debate and perhaps the team can improve, otherwise the Canadiens will remain as dysfunctional as they are now.

Interesting Montreal Police Stats

Leafing through the 2008 annual report published by the Montreal Police department provided these nuggets of information;

• Montrealers made over 1 million 911 calls.
  

• The police answered 37 thousand alarms, of which 94% were false, resulting in over $2 million in fines.

• 23 shots were fired by police officers, 8 of them in one incident by a deranged officer shooting up a gym and 6 in the Freddy Villanueva affair.

• All 8 bombs handled by police were diffused with no explosions. In 2001 there were to 24 incidents.

• Police used pepper spray 68 times, shot rubber bullet 25 times, used tear gas 4 times, expandable baton (beat stick) 38 times and fired their tasers 22 times. Al incidents were deemed justified.

• There were 96 car chases resulting in 3 suspects and 3 civilians being injured. There were no deaths. 21 police and 9 civilian cars were smashed as a result.

• There were 650 complaints by citizens against 983 police officers, but only 5 officers were called before the disciplinary board.

• 115 officers were were the subject of an internal police investigation file, resulting in a total of just 12 days of suspensions and 16 reprimands.

• Internal Affairs opened just 5 files resulting in just one resignation and no firings, but they did suspend officers for a total of 167 days.

• The average police car lasts about 5 years and drives about 150,000 kilometers. The service burns 4½ million liters of gas a year.

• The police force consists of 4,600 officers. For every 32 men, there are 13 women officers.

• 2,000 people were arrested for DUI.

• The police issued 315,000 tickets for moving violations, 150,000 for speeding and 145,000 parking tickets.

• The Green Onions gave out over 1 million parking tickets.
  

• Police investigated 29 murders, 29 attempted murders, over 1,000 sexual assaults and 6,000 robberies.

• Police investigated 1,000 arsons, 15,000 B&Es, 10,000 car thefts, 42,000 thefts, 14,000 mischief complaints and 5,000 frauds.

• Police made over 500 prostitution arrests and almost 3,000 drug arrests.
  

....interesting