While Gary McHale and I were putting in some long hours preparing and serving a revised statement of claim against OPP Commissioner Julian Fantino for his false accusations that we were ”involved” in violent activities (to be published shortly), CANACE co-founder Jeff Parkinson wrote a key editorial on an important story broken by Monte Sonnenberg of the Simcoe Reformer exposing how the McGuinty government has ordered municipalities not to enforce the law against illegal smoke shacks:
The only thing I would add to Parkinson’s editorial is the observation that, not only does McGuinty not care about Haldimand’s children, he obviously doesn’t care about native children either [emphasis added]:
MR. LLOYD ST. AMAND: Is it acceptable that the rate of smokers among aboriginals is three times higher than in the non-native population? That is unacceptably high, clearly. Nobody disagrees with that.
CHIEF CHERYL JACOBS: Nobody disagrees.
(Canadian) Standing Committe on Public Safety and National Security, June 04/08: Evidence (p16)
“On a final note, aboriginal smoking rates are scandalously high. The most important explanatory reason for this is access to cheap cigarettes, including contraband cigarettes. Contraband is addicting aboriginal kids and non-aboriginal kids, and everyone agrees this should not continue.”
(Canadian) Standing Committe on Public Safety and National Security, May 14/08, Evidence (p3): Testimony by Rob Cunningham, Sr. Policy Analyst, Canadian Cancer Society, Canadian Coalition for Action on Tobacco
Illegal smokeshack on Hydro One property on Argyle St. in Caledonia: site of the Dec 01/07 protest organized by Doug Fleming during which we - and OPP officers - were repeatedly assaulted by Six Nations residents. No charges were ever filed for the assaults on officers. Now operating with McGuinty's full protection.
One day native groups will be justifiably suing the federal and provincial governments because their communities were scourged by cancer and other smoking related diseases. They will be asking a very valid question: if smoking is bad for non-native kids, why did they allow politically-correct racism to expose native children to smoking?
Oh, I forgot…McGuinty apparently believes it is OK for all kids – native and non-native – to smoke, just so long as they get cancer from contaminated, illegal, tax-free cigarettes sold by natives instead of the regulated stuff produced by greedy, law-abiding tobacco companies who collect and pay taxes.
I agree whole-heartedly with Parkinson’s conclusion: ”If ever anyone needed another reason to explain the triggering of their gag reflex by the name ‘McGuinty,’ we now have it.”
But, here’s another…
Tobacco and Terror
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