On September 10th...

On September 10th

- Canadian troops were Peacekeepers
- The USA wasn't bankrupt
- People from other countries still respected America
- 'G' rated movies had no explicit content.
- You could not say "bitch", "shit" or "fuck" on TV
- Porn could be viewed by adults only
- Presidents could not drone-strike their own citizens
- Civilians could not be detained without charges
- Phone calls weren't tapped by the State
- Indefinite Detention was unheard of
- There were no tanks on the street
- Famous rappers were "against the man"
- The planet wasn't warming, and man was not to blame
- Muslims were blamed for nothing
- Crack pipes and needles were not supplied by the State
- Carbon was our friend
- Earth's temperature was dictated by the Sun
- Baywatch was the most sexually explicit show on TV
- Vaccines were voluntary
- Individual rights trumped societal rights
- You were either male or female
- Torture was forbidden.
- $2.3 Trillion went missing.

The Reformer, and the Servant

There are two types of people whom we want to elect.  The reformer, and the servant.  

For this election, I am endorsing two political candidates for Member of Parliament.  Why only two?  The first caveat for me to endorse is that I would first have to meet any candidate in person; I've met a bunch, but nowhere near the thousand-plus vying for a job in Ottawa, so I'll limit my support to these two.  The risk of course, is that my endorsement may actually harm them on Election Day, so I wait until the last minute and endorse quietly only here on my Facebook page.  An association with me could in fact be hazardous politically, and being aware of this reality, I steer clear of associating with either.  We are not exactly allies; in fact, one was my former political opponent.   My recommendation to vote for these two candidates is a result of outside observation, combined with in-person evaluation.  My first priority is to the voters themselves, ensuring that I do not advise them to support anyone who does not have their best interests at heart.  

Note: There were three I was willing to endorse, but one had to bow out of his campaign.  I'll re-load that endorsement in a future election.  

For now, we focus on two: the reformer and the servant.  

Who is a reformer?  This is not someone who stems from the "right-wing" (or the left wing) politically, but rather, this is anyone of any political stripe who seeks to come into parliament with a purpose of fundamentally reforming how our government acts and thinks.  Bringing monumental shifts as part of their election platform, the reformer, while willing to compromise when it comes to working with other various parties to achieve their common-goals, remains fundamentally opposed to compromising his values or integrity to assist in making things politically expedient.  The reformer is not an opportunist, he is dedicated to permanent and meaningful change and will never "sell-out" just to snag a six-figure salary or secure a pension.  The reformer cares not about such things.  He instead cares only about the changes he has identified that must be brought forth.  He tells you what those changes would be, and how they would occur, in advance - to the best of his abilities - making, and intending to keep, promises to see these changes through to completion.  He is straight-forward, honest, accessible, and noble in his intent.  He is supported by people who for years have seen him practice what he preaches.   He is real.   And so his chances for electoral success in the short-term are scant.   Nonetheless, he is the type we need in Ottawa.  

The other type, is the servant.  

This is the guy who seeks to work within this system to address the concerns of his constituents.   His bills and corresponding speeches are dictated primarily by the knocks he receives on his door from local citizens.  When they bring genuine concerns, he rises in the House of Commons to address them.  This servant has led his party in words spoken from the House of Commons floor in the past few years - his first on the job. 

He's the type that carries the potential of the great Chuck Cadman, who famously stood against his party leader - voted against his leaders orders - and carried out the wishes of the vast majority of his voters.  This ultimately cost him his seat in the party, and he subsequently became elected as an Independent, reminding us of two things we don't see anymore: Politicians bucking their party whip, and Independents being chosen on Election Day. 

The moment has not come, and it may never arrive, where this MP has had or gets the opportunity to rise up against his own party directive, but the key in endorsing for me is knowing what he's made of in advance of that moment arriving. 

Is this the type of guy, who if approached by a majority of citizens, would do what THEY instruct rather than what his party instructs?

I say he is, and so I endorse.  

I ran against this guy, and while I got along great with the rest of my opponents on the 2011 ballot, I did not feel particularly close or connected to this one.  "Who's this dude?", I thought.  Another cat who used to work for a bank".  I had little time for him, and perhaps less for his party.  

While naively hoping for a victory myself, my secondary hope was that another candidate besides this one would be the winner in our riding if it wasn't me.  I was wrong.  This man has done an excellent job representing his constituents; driven by genuine care.  If you call him on a Sunday, he answers.  If you need some assistance, he provides.  If you seek remedy from an MP in another riding, and you're getting nowhere, he picks up the mantle of help, without pulling the "you're not in my riding" card used regularly by the others.  He gives a damn; realizes that he's handcuffed in providing certain remedies, and does whatever he can to aid using the tools at his disposal, limited as they may be.  

He's a good man.  

They both are.  These are the types of people we need to elect: the true reformer, and the true servant.  

The reformer is Tim Moen. 

The servant is Jasbir Sandhu.  

Elect them.   

That gives us two on our side. 

A New Crime Paradigm - January 2012

January 26, 2012 


Proposal to the City of Surrey Crime Reduction Strategies Office, 
Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts, and the Harper Government of Canada. 

Due to the ultimate participation of the Harper Government being necessary in order to realize most of the solutions offered, I am simultaneously addressing these recommendations and have already provided copies to our Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and our Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, along with the RCMP and various members of the Canadian Media, Military, Parliament and Senate. 

This report offers to spare a forensic dismantling of the ideology behind our Keynesian debt-based monetary system in exchange for the excuse of 'cost' not being introduced as a reason why we cannot achieve the recommendations suggested herein.  

The root causes of most crime, are inequality and scarcity.  The primary driver of each of these, is poverty.   

Using our current economic model, poverty is scheduled to worsen, nationwide. So, absent a monumental shift in the way our nation chooses to issue money and conduct commerce, it is appropriate to view our future needs through the lens of the 'worst-possible-scenarios', as there are no announced plans that would derail our fiscal descent into national bankruptcy, which is now inevitable. 

Canada will eventually bow to its growing $600 Billion-plus federal debt, and the descending economic spiral which will consume the coming decades prior to debt default will result in extreme poverty - the true root cause of crime - expanding to levels never previously conceived in this, the greatest nation of Canada. 

The issue of poverty is so massive, so primary, and so responsible for the current crime culture that I will skip, for the purposes of remaining practical, details to anti poverty strategies that have no immediate hope for implementation. 

As poverty expands, and remains unaddressed, crime will expand, creating the prerequisite conditions for an authoritarian installation of a privatized prison-industrial complex, profiting off the incarceration of the newfound poor, while our publicly funded police forces face further financial burdens in trying to keep up with a revolving system of perennial offenders being re-released into society without a proper system of either re-integration or public safety being thoughtfully considered or introduced. 

This document is brief glance at the surface level of changes which would be required, and should be adopted, in order to ensure a safe environment for the coming generations.   It is not intended to be comprehensive, but rather the opening dialogue in a genuine discussion of how we can approach our escalating violent crime and drug issues, using as our primary example the true ground zero of our national crime culture: Surrey, B.C. 

This new crime strategy is divided into 4 key sections:

I -   DISINCENTIVES AND CONSEQUENCES 

II -  SOCIAL SHIFTS 

III - INTEGRITY 

IV - OUTLOOK

PART I - DISINCENTIVES AND CONSEQUENCES 

Most who challenge the pending Harper Crime Bill do so on the basis that "putting people in prison doesn't keep anybody safe."   In reality, it's letting them out that doesn't keep us safe.   

The police, after repeatedly apprehending the same violent gangsters, child molesters and every other inmate who's gone through the Crown's revolving door, are then forced to issue public warnings to about the latest psychopathic child rapist on the loose, likely to re-offend, whereabouts unknown.    Absolutely reckless.   If one didn't have an ingrained certainty that our government was looking out for our safety, they might view this nationwide soft-on-crime approach as intentional.   Perhaps as a way to open our doors to the the prison-industrial-complex.   But they need no deliberate help, as the outdated and chronically weak criminal code of Canada ensures that eventually, their presence will be a concrete necessity, just to deal with inmate overflow alone. 

We are constantly told that our prisons are overcrowded.  Not true.  They are simply too small.   As an example, a massive multi-acre federal minimum-security facility in Ferndale, BC houses approximately 110-160 inmates at a time.   A similar sized prison yard in Taft, California houses over 2200 inmates.  

It is okay to house inmates two per cell.    In California, you have 3 TV's per 100-man unit, divided by inmates and staff into the categories of "White, Black and Mexican."  At Ferndale Institution in Mission BC, it's eight to a townhouse - complete with kitchens, patios, washer/dryer, steak and eggs, and a personal TV for every single person.     There are cost-savings to be found, without handing the entire industry over to a for-profit corporate model to find efficiencies we could be searching for ourselves. 

If we can accept that the current cost of incarceration, which is pegged by latest estimates at over $140,000 per inmate annually, is unsustainable, along with recognizing that a private for-profit prison corporation can effectively reduce that number into the 5-figure range yearly, then we are also admitting that it must be our own inability to perform audits and measurements as effectively as a corporate entity would, otherwise, we could find these known savings ourselves, without any corporate assistance.   Instead of merely handing the portfolio over to private prison management experts to find the cost-savings for us, we should first be finding these savings ourselves.   Indeed, we have already admitted they are there to be found, so let's find them, implement them, and avoid a privatized prison outcome altogether.

This is the fork in the road for deciding how we are going to incarcerate Canadians.   The decision has, for all intents and purposes, already been made.  This proposal is an effort to reverse that decision. 

A plan to reduce robberies, shoplifting and the threat of violence towards storeowners. 

In this technological era, it will be a relatively simple matter to create a new live security system where local businesses wire their store cameras directly into the police detachments, so that all commerce is recorded in real-time.   If there is a hold up, then a button on the floor triggers a red screen at the detachment and the crime is recorded while the units are dispatched.    Have all interested gas stations, corner stores, liquor stores and retail shops sign up to have their security system wired directly into a centralized monitoring system within the RCMP detachment.   Simultaneously, a live feed shows twenty different stores on a split-screen, and if one of the staff are being threatened or robbed, they can simply step on a button and the police monitor turns red in that respective box.   Officer en route.   Not only will this act as a supreme deterrent for any shoplifter or robber due to the fact that the cameras are not only behind the cashier, but streaming live to the police; and should any evidence be required for trial, it can be produced by the police themselves who have video footage of the entire incident.   This will secure evidence for convictions, but more importantly, provide the disincentive to rob a store in the first place.  This system would be voluntary, and business owners would be expected to pay for the cost of installation and monitoring to be sure, but the likelyhood of being held up by a man with a gun will be nearly extinguished when combined with the suggestions that follow.   

End the arbitrary releases granted by time-based sentencing and move swiftly instead to a model of Non-Time-Specific sentencing for violent sex offenders. 

Non-Time-Specific does not mean forever, but it does mean that all mental, financial, emotional and psychological thought processes must be fully examined and understood before the offender gets re-integrated back into society, and time should have no bearing on the decision as to when he gets released.   

His character and mental capacity should be greater factors in determine his release than the amount of time he has sat in wait.   Is he still a "high-risk to re-offend?"   Then he stays.   You have no reason to let him out until he is no longer that type of person. Releasing inmates after a set amount of months does nothing to keep people safe.   It only introduces into the criminal equation a rest period where the attacker sits victimless until he is set free to resume his predatory lifestyle.    

Regarding pedophiles and those violent towards children, there is no reason to set these people free until you have made certain they can be tracked and traced at all times, and that their mentality has permanently repaired.   In most cases, this is not possible, and the segregation thus becomes permanent.   It is no longer necessary to release violent rapists and people who commit crimes against children.   In fact, these people can never harm anyone again without the direct aid and consent of the government, via release, after their 'time' has been served.   

Gang members should spend their pre-trial incarceration housed in solitary confinement. 

Gang members have demonstrated a propensity to conspire with other like-minds to cause mayhem and chaos in our cities.   As such, their pre-sentencing confinement should be solitary.   The specific disincentive to commit crimes in groups can be established by mandating that all offenders charged in gang-related offenses must spend their entire pre-sentence time in solitary confinement.   No access to other inmates while housed in pre-trial.  This makes sense on a number of prosecutorial levels as well.  
When cases have not yet gone to trial, it is not wise to leave known gangsters in the company of each other so that everyone is able to get their stories straight, send messages to and from their bosses, and plot a more intricate defense.    

Furthermore, it is standard practice in the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, and various other private prisons nationwide, to segregate gang members from the same gang, so that they are not housed in the same unit.   Great efforts are made to ensure that "high-power" individuals (skinhead leaders, terrorists, and "shot-callers" of various street gangs) are not surrounded in-house by their own power base.   Sadly, this is not the case at the Surrey Pre-Trial center, where members of the UN, Independent Soldiers or other violent gangs are housed several strong in the same unit.   This creates a hyper- violent atmosphere which threatens both the non-affiliated inmate and our corrections staff - all of whom are unarmed while on "the yard".   

A top-down power structure within the inmate population should not be allowed to ferment.   The gang "leaders" should be placed in segregation, while their underlings are dispersed throughout various other units.   There is no safety created when you remove violent gangsters from the streets, and re-unite them in a pre-trial center.  Indeed, we are just counting the days until a gang-member is "ordered" to throw a microwaved cup of hot butter on a prison guards face, under direct orders from the top gangster on unit - orders that cannot be disobeyed.  

Parole Zones

Parolees from Surrey should have their movements confined only to Surrey.   Parolees from outside of Surrey should be prohibited from entering the city.   This is already practiced, but not technologically enforced. Currently, a federal inmate released on parole into the city of Surrey would routinely have his movements confined to the borders of Boundary Road near Vancouver and 192nd Street in Langley.  These restrictions are enforced using the "honour system", whereby a parolee seeking to venture beyond these boundaries is expected to call or visit his parole office, in New Westminster, and ask for permission to travel.  The flaws in this system are transparent.  Parolees from the city, must leave the city, in order to get permission to leave the city.  With inmates released under GPS tracking surveillance, nobody moves into or out of their authorized zone.   

Inherent in this suggestion is the obviousness that Surrey needs its own parole office. 

(Update 2014: Surrey now has its own parole office. JS)

Require all inmates to submit their DNA to a centralized crime database to help solve outstanding past or future cases where DNA evidence is present, but without a known match.    

What we do NOT need are anymore outrageous warnings from our police forces to 'remain alert', on the lookout for pedophiles who were recently released back into the community.   Their locations should be known at all times, 24/7, for the rest of their lives.  

Not one of these men should ever taste true 'freedom' again, because their victims never will.   In the event that a convicted sex offender shows a genuine character shift that has been confirmed to exist without fluctuation for an indefinite duration of time, then his potential release can only be offered with the 24/7 surveillance grid intact.   

Absent this new system, and these new requirements, it is fundamentally reckless and perhaps criminally negligent to consider releasing any of these offenders into society again. 

Along those lines, convicted criminals who are discovered not to be Canadian citizens should be set aside for deportation to their country of birth or another host country willing to take possession of our ex-resident.   Still, a RFID tracking chip could be embedded to ensure that if the felon tries to re-enter Canada, he is located on a centralized satellite grid and picked up as soon as he enters the country.   In the 21st century, these ideas should in fact be common sense.   

Likewise with refugee boats containing potential terrorists from Sri Lanka.   If the threat of Tamil Tigers smuggling terrorists onto boats and into Canada is in fact real, then a refugee policy should be adopted which mandates that all new arrivals seeking asylum in Canada are also chipped, so that their whereabouts can be known in the event that their refugee claim is denied, or that they do in fact turn out to be a Tamil terrorist, they are immediately rounded up and sent home. 

Routinely, we are given a warning to be on the lookout for a parolee who's rap sheet reads like this: 

"Wanted For: Drug Trafficking, Assault with a Weapon, Obstruct a Peace Officer, Carry Concealed and possession of a Dangerous Weapon, Violent escape risk.   Criminal record includes: Violence, Sexual Assault, Battery, Robbery, Offensive Weapons, Uttering threats, Break and Enter, Theft of Motor Vehicle, Drugs, Fraud. He also has driving offence convictions and other Criminal Code convictions." 

Why would you let a man like this back into our community without being able to pinpoint his wherabouts at all times?

The primary role of the State is to provide security of person and property.   Rather than relying on Citizen Patrol teams, like those started in Abbotsford, the police should be responsible for 100% of the criminal surveillance grid and those who are dangerous should in effect be living in virtual electronic custody at all times. 

This is where we need to put our surveillance resources, NOT on vague intersection cameras or mobile parking lot cameras or any other system predicated on gathering information after a crime.   The goal must always be to dissolve the conditions necessary to allow the crime.   The best way to do this, is to hold those with a propensity to commit them.   The ones who are no longer held, are tracked and traced.  

For the rest of the free Canadians, who do not commit crimes, their actions should not be recorded without their notice.   Recently, TransLink has started making audio recording of bus passengers conversations.   This is a flagrant violation of privacy, if no longer in legal context then at least in a moral one.   With the gangland execution toll reaching double-digits since Christmas, and the steady stream of violent criminals being funneled through the Crown turnstyles, an audio recording of two strangers hardly falls under the auspices of national security.   There is no reason to maintain this type of audio surveillance on our new transit system. 

Another flaw in our current crime paradigm relies on the potential victims of crime to be guarded, vigilant and on the alert for the latest addition to the CrimeStoppers Ten Most Wanted List, something that need not exist.  Every single person listed has already been incarcerated.  Now they are missing and 'wanted'.   Illogical. 

From your literature, "The Surrey Crime Reduction Strategy is a complete paradigm shift from what is currently done in Canadian municipalities to combat crime". 

Before we get too far out of port, we must realize we have indeed shifted, but in the wrong direction.   This model will increase the severity and regularity of violent crime, and leave a police force eventually crippled financially trying to keep up with repeat offenders. 

A true paradigm shift would result in our thinking to resemble that of dogs, rather than cats.   A cat always tracks the effect, while a dog prefers to examine the source.  If you throw a rock at a cat, it will look at the rock.  Tracking it, studying it, trying to predict it's next move.   If you throw a rock at a dog, it will look at you.   The source of the rock.  Wondering why you threw it.  Paradigm shift. 

Indeed, this is the crime-solving divide. 

If your crime solving equation breaks down like this: 

More police officers + more judges + more prison cells = reduced crime, then you have failed. 

A successful equation would mean that reduced crime = less cops, less judges, less prison cells.   You would no longer need them all, if you reduced crime.   We have the solution exactly backwards. 

A question I'll pose for those responsible for managing our corrections systems:   Are the per-inmate-capita costs of operating a weekly canteen operation the same at every corrections facility in Canada, or does it differ from prison to prison, and by what exact percentages are the discrepencies - and why? 

Not knowing the answers to these questions, confirms that those tasked with running efficient prisons aren't even certain how to determine what one is.   The concept is completely foreign to people who have spent decades focused primarily on security and inmates.   A bigger picture can be hard to see when you are mired in it.   There are more efficient models of incarceration, and even some that do not depend on the inmate count rising in order to maintain a profit.   Having said that, there is already a powerful and massive private international prison-lobby, and rather than making discreet business deals with them or fighting against every aspect of them, we should be mining their profit-based efficiency models to see which ones can be applied to a new non-profit management model.   There is no reason why the "best-and-the-brightest" from the business world cannot and should not be recruited into the government sector.   This makes sense.  What does not make sense, is the logic that follows that the profits derived from hiring these sharp individuals must be doled out to private shareholders.   

Take BC Ferries as an example.  Many people squawked at the million-dollar salary paid to CEO Dave Cobb.   Technically, it doesn't matter how much you're paying him if you've paid him to make your operation more profitable and efficient, which he did, because his salary is already factored into the profits that he was able to bring to fruition.   The issue that gets missed, however, when we focus on minor matters of salary, is the question of WHO reaps those newfound profits?   

The public-private-partnership model disperses all profits to shareholders.   When new money is needed, property taxes are raised, bonuses are always paid, and fares go up on everything. Properly, the profits should be banked, with a portion of the excess reserves held in physical gold and silver bullion.   

The people of British Columbia rightfully outright own 100% of the transit, ferries and infrastructure of the province, including all resources, and all water supplies.  

How the government has structured any sales, mergers or resource acquisitions \ legally is of no practical concern.  We are the ones who paid for everything, so we therefore own everything.  Our water is nobodies to sell. 

In a fortune cookie, this section might read:

"Hire some smart people to find inefficiencies, then make sure you keep all the money they save you." 

PART II - SOCIAL SHIFTS 

Set the bar for Surrey's minimum education standards to match those of the Top 10 schools in BC, as ranked by the Fraser Institute, MacLeans, and any other publication that has exhaustively conducted research on which schools are excelling at producing academics and scholars, when compared to other schools in the province.   As an example, a school in Surrey routinely scores 30-40% lower, on average, than private schools, Catholic schools, or schools in high wealth areas.   This again, is because poverty is a deciding factor in the quality of education and environment.   This situation should be remedied, as students generally have no control over their parents income levels, and therefore are suffering or thriving in environments which they had no choice to originate from.   All students should receive the same high level of education, and income should not factor in.   

Establish a uniformed dress code for all Surrey schools. 

Each school in Surrey should design itʼs own school uniform and crest.   A uniformed dress code is the most common denominator in the top ranked schools in all of the Queens realms.    A sense of unity, pride and order will emerge and endure in an environment of equality. 

Remove gambling ads from all public spaces, including bus stops and buses. 

The phrase "know your limit, play within it" is an ego trap.  A gambling addict may know his limit, but have no ability to "play within it".    The lure of unearned wealth, disguised as learned revenue through the ego-inflating "study" of sports knowledge and the subsequent financial gains to be reaped from it, amounts to nothing more than gambling away earned wealth, for the hope of amassing more unearned wealth, mentally disguised as earned wealth.  Usually associated with Sports Action success, at least according to some of their ads, is the idea that the 'winner' is the guy who picks enough games right to have apparently earned a girl for each arm.   Sports betting prays on the ego, and gives people the drive for unearned wealth, which when relentlessly pursued, ends up in a crime scene.   

Establish a Canadian High School Football Program where our public high schools each have a team playing three- down Canadian football.  The BC Lions, as the anchor tenant in the Surrey sports scene, would likely be quite supportive, and directly involved should the efforts be made to launch this program in Surrey first.   Leagues of this kind can help draw communities together, while building from a young age an ingrained interest in Surreyʼs lone professional sports team. 

Remove all toy guns from school grounds.  No fight clothing, violent images, or UFC inspired gear. 

We are creating a generation of ultimate fighters, poker players and prostitutes.   Surrey is the new Silicon Valley for these career choices.   While few men in Surrey can explain the process of how money is created, a few thousand know how to choke you out in six seconds.   

They also know how to find handguns, ten at a time, in a brown paper bag.   We recently had shootings on 5 consecutive days.  Many dead.  Sweep up the guns. 

CLOSE THE VARIOUS LICENSED BROTHELS LOCATED THROUGHOUT SURREY, AND END THE ALLEGED IGNORANCE AS TO WHAT GOES ON INSIDE THEM.   

I have personally asked our Mayor about these businesses and she claims to not know what goes on inside and promises to look into it.   If I were an idiot, I would be patiently awaiting her update.  Most of us who have bothered writing to our elected officials are now conditioned to expect no response or action to be taken.   And none is.     

PLACE NEWSPAPERS CONTAINING PROSTITUTION ADS ON THE ADULT SHELVES WITH PLAYBOY AND PENTHOUSE.   

A young student grabbing a free entertainment paper with her Slurpee shouldn't stumble across a sex ad with a naked girl covered only by her pricetag.  This is inappropriate material to have around minors and contributes to a culture of hyper-sexuality that has accelerated the breakup of the family model in central Surrey more than anywhere.    

Establish two-person volunteer Safe-Walk-Home teams to see that passengers from Skytrains get either to their vehicle or their walking destination safely.  Two registered walkers, one male and one female, complete with ID badges, flashlights, reflective clothing, radios, walking people home safely at night.   This can be fully staffed with volunteers from the community.    

PART III - INTEGRITY 

End corporate donations to police forces.  

Recently, both the Surrey RCMP and Vancouver Police Departments took possession of corporate donations in the form of helicopter video drones and bullet-proof vests, respectively.   These were to be used as trial samples in the field, without the police having to front the cost for something they are not sure will be useful.   There is nothing impractical about that.

However, once it has been established that these items are indeed either useful or necessary, then an invoice should be created and paid for by the government agency responsible for funding our forces.   Only an elected government can be in the business of supplying a police force, or else a conflict-of-interest, whether intentional or coincidental, is created. 

Even more recently, the NYPD received A $4 million donation from the JP Morgan Bank at the height of the Occupy Wall Street protests, to buy laptops, helmets, weapons and shields.   Informed citizens can easily envision the U.S. President Obama soon declaring a so-called "Bank Holiday", where United States citizens would be prevented from withdrawing their own money from their own bank accounts.   Americans are waking up to the fact that the banks do not actually have all the money that was deposited to them, as it was gambled away in various Wall Street derivative schemes.   

When the people rush the bank, who do you think the police will be protecting?   The people who lost their retirement savings, or the bankers who handed over $4 million in protection money?    

The seeds of fascism are planted in the incremental merger of State and Corporate power.   

Direct corporate donations to police forces are the pre-cursor to this new political environment.   I encourage the Mayor and council to think in terms of decades when attempting to decode this relatively simple equation and its corresponding not-difficult-to-predict outcome. 

Publish the RCMP contract prior to signing it into effect. 

This process of showing us the deal after it's already done must end.  We are not in medieval times, where orders come down from some King who has already decided how we all are going to live.   We must know the details of any new arrangements concerning either our laws or our rights.   As an example, if the new crime bill gives the RCMP power to wiretap all civilians without a warrant, then that is something the people should be made aware of, with an opportunity to veto certain sections that may not be viewed as acceptable by the free people of Canada.   If everything is above board, there is no reason not to show the details of the contract prior to signing it into effect.   This is our national police force and they serve Canadians well.  But they serve government first.   And since we have no insurance or expectation that our elected officials are required to "consult with their constituents or determine their views", then our sole hope to see what's in the deal before it becomes a deal, is that the RCMP somehow find it honourable to disclose this info on their own, a scenario that is unlikely.  So, we ask our Mayor, our Prime Minister, or our Public Safety Minister - none of whom are sworn to serve the citizens - to maintain integrity, and publish the RCMP contract. 

Last week, I spoke with an RCMP officer in charge of administering polygraph tests. Among the many things we agreed on, besides polygraph testing our elected officials, was the idea that any weapons confiscated in the earlier proposed 'guns-for-giftcards' exchange should be melted down publicly, so that the community can ensure that these confiscated weapons are not somehow ending up back on the street.  An impossible scenario to imagine no doubt, but a public witness to destruction of all guns and drugs recovered by police seems like a reasonable request. 

In general, the first thing you should do to begin solving any complex problem is to hold a massive town-hall meeting inviting all those affected by the issue to participate in developing the necessary solutions to the task at hand.  I am grateful to have an audience with the City, but I am only one voice among equals in our community, many of whom likely have superior ideas to the ones Iʼve listed.   

An issue as all-encompassing as "crime" should have all hands on deck working towards implementing the best common solutions. 

Without delving far into legal requirements, The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights established by the UN on January 3, 1976, signed and ratified by Canada, states the right to public participation.

The principle of public participation holds that those who are affected by a decision have a right to be involved in the decision- making process.  What we have devolved into by 2012, is a society that has abandoned their interest in policy-making, and instead leaves these matters, in their entirety, to politicians whom they've come to know and trust. 

I suggest that the mechanism of trust be gradually removed from politics and governance. 

For it is trust itself that has been wielded as a weapon against a politically disengaged public.   When civilians are comfortable trusting their Mayors to look out for their best interests, they are inevitably assigning themselves to a future under policies that would largely be rejected by an well-informed electorate, were they not self-conditioned to abdicate their duty to stay involved in political processes, preferring instead to 'trust' the popular and 'credible' leader they have voted for.   Without amendment to this habit of trusting our elected officials, a future of dictated taxes and laws will inevitably and undoubtedly be funneled onto the populace through the use of council votes, fronted by the most popular and trusted politician of the moment. 

Police and politicians should be held to the same standards of honesty.

Our police officers are held to a high standard of honesty.   In some cases, a single lie can cost them their entire career.   They are even required to undergo polygraph testing, as a pre-condition of hire.   Many officers ask is why our government officials are not under any legal obligation to maintain honesty, or be required to submit to various forms of deception detection techniques, despite being tasked with the management and distribution of billions of taxpayer dollars.   

This inconsistent situation needs to be resolved.   I encourage the City of Surrey and the RCMP to hold their police officers and their elected officials to identical standards of conduct.   

They both operate in the public trust, and neither deserves an expectation of honesty and morality that is either higher, or lower, than the other.   

In matters of rank however, it is a City Mayor's inherent obligation to act as a superior authority to the cities police forces.   Indeed, this is the civilians only insurance against the potential rise of a post-freedom environment.   

If the civilian population have no avenue to comply local forces to do as the public wishes, then the forces will ultimately be utilized to execute the wishes of those who have sought to make this deterioration of Mayoral power a matter of permanence. 

For the proposed crime strategy to work, Mayor Watts must assert her elected status as the supreme authority over all police operations in her city.    

In doing so, she should also: 

Instruct the RCMP to rescind and return all corporate donated equipment, or issue a bill for these products to the city which the Mayor can authorize and pay.    There can be no corporate donations given to our police force. 

Clarify the police authority to separate parent from child in a school-lockdown environment. 

Beyond the obvious commitment to serve and protect, there must be a written legal definition of RCMP authority to detain or transport children, while parents are restricted from accessing them.   For examples of this, I present the future.   (Author insert:   January 29th, 2012, three days after this report, a Langley school was locked down and parents were indeed prevented from safely retrieving their own children, who were transported by bus to an off-site 'retrieval zone'.    The authority for RCMP to legally separate child from parent must be clearly written, proven and defined.  As of this writing, it is not.)

Finally, we must recognize that a flaw in our logic allows us to continuously compare our social conditions to those in other jurisdictions, and then seeing how we fare by comparison.   

In reality, we should only be comparing ourselves to our own highest potential.   For if we compare our economic conditions, or our crime-scene to say, Washington, D.C., we will always look fantastic by comparison.   But our overall standards will be certain to deteriorate, because the models we are using to compare ourselves to, all of them operating under the same debt-based economy, are themselves deteriorating.   We therefore must only compare how well we are currently doing, to how well we could possibly be doing, and working specifically towards closing that gap.  We must set and meet our own highest possible standards.

Part IV - OUTLOOK: An honest appraisal of our Canadian economic situation. 

As provincial, federal and civic governments introduce deeper social cuts and austerity measures that have been ordered by their debt-holders, cities will be forced to cut police budgets, opening the door to widespread chaos, and the aforementioned corporate donation model, as a pre-cursor to the Canadian introduction of the global privatized prison networks. 

We are going to suffer from increasing food costs, which in reality are NOT an escalation of price, but a devaluation of currency on slow-motion display, with our buying power disintegrating by the month.   This is due to the practice of federal governments borrowing money off of private chartered banks who, through the practice of fractional reserve lending, are creating the conditions for hyper-inflation.    Rather than having all Canadian funds created and issued by the publicly owned Bank of Canada, as was done prior to 1974, and passionately described by Prime Minister William Lyon MacKenzie King as "our most sacred responsibility", we have instead racked up a massive and unnecessary 'sovereign' digital debt.    Back in 1974, our sovereign debt was $18 Billion dollars.   Today, it is over $600 billion, and the interest on that digital debt, for which Canada is charged $1 Billion real-dollars per week, is compounding.   The money NOT owed to the bank in interest, is still owed in principal, because it was borrowed rather than printed.   97% of our currency is digital.  When your sole source for funds become private lending institutions, there is no way to pay them all back, because even if you were to hand them every cent that you've borrowed, you still owe the interest, which was never in fact printed.   

Our debt bubble will explode, and when you find yourselves curious as to when, you have subconsciously given up all possibilities of if, and in fact have already accepted the end result.   Elapsed time, at that point, is the only variable. 

Beyond the financial predicaments Canada finds itself in, there is a far more permanent and pressing matter which need be addressed before any issue, be it monetary, criminal or otherwise can be addressed, and that is that in our entire Canadian economic and political system, not one single member of federal, provincial or civic politics is required by law to represent the interests of their voters.    

As noted in the historic ruling on Dec 10, 1990:

[MP Wilton Littlechild v. Citizens of Canada, Court of Queen's Bench of Alberta Docket No. 9012000725] by the The Honourable Mr. Justice, E.A. Marshall, Justice of The Court of Queen's Bench of Alberta, who stated: "I know of no legal duty on an elected representative at any level of government to consult with his constituents or determine their views. While such an obligation may generally be considered desirable, there is no legal requirement."  

Nobody that we have ever elected is legally required to listen to a word we say.   In the event that you have, a sincere thank-you is in order. 

Lastly, and most importantly, I urge the Canadian Senate to maintain its relevance, reject the Harper Government's omnibus crime bill UNANIMOUSLY, and send these men back to the drawing board to rebuild a suitable security plan for the nation.   

All those who are either informed or concerned should be brought into a new and necessary criminal code design process.   We all have to live with the safety conditions created, so we should all have a say in the level of security we wish to give ourselves.  

Announcing that another violent criminal is about to be released because his "time" is served will be seen by future generations as proof of the insane era.   For the safety of Canadians, and for an example to our allies - end the Time-Based Sentencing model and start tracking violent offenders at all times.   This will happen.  Be the Senate who did it. 

Ultimately, the loopholes and niceties found in our Criminal Code are the responsibility of 'The Crown'.   To all who are reading this, it may be time to admit that our world has grown more sinister than the Queen may have imagined, and that a new Criminal Code of Canada should be constructed and updated to suit a more dangerous and technologically advanced society.  It is time to change the criminal code, to reflect the needs of tomorrow.   

It is important to absorb the reality that crime cannot be reduced using the Crown model. 

In fact, just to slow the inevitable conclusions inherent in that model, you will need to create two elements:   

A disincentive to commit, and a civilian volunteer force.   Not to police people, but to feed people.