Did Quebec really need to introduce a new law to fight the rioters? Or was it just busy-work to distract from their lack of courage in enforcing existing laws?
Take section 51 of the Criminal Code. Here it is in full: “Everyone who does an act of violence in order to intimidate Parliament or the legislature of a province is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding fourteen years.”
This, of course, does not criminalize peaceful protests. It applies only to violent ones — with Molotov cocktails and smashed windows and smoke bombs in Montreal’s subway station.
The rioters are clearly trying to intimidate the legislature into repealing its proposed dollar-a-day tuition increase.
And how about section 467.1 of the Criminal Code? That law deals with criminal organizations — groups of people who get together for the purpose of committing crimes.
In the U.S., this kind of law is called a RICO statute: Racketeer influenced and corrupt organizations laws. It’s the law used to go after the mafia.
In Canada, section 467.1 says a “criminal organization” is “composed of three or more persons” and “has as one of its main purposes … the commission of one or more serious offences that … would likely result in the direct or indirect receipt of a material benefit, including a financial benefit.”
Let’s break it down. A group of three or more people? Check. That applies to the rioters.
Is one of their main purposes to commit serious offences that would likely result in a direct or indirect benefit by the group? Check. That’s what these riots are all about. Stopping tuition hikes, and getting other freebies.
The Criminal Code has a list of factors that help us decide if an organization meets this test. It includes whether they use a “name, word or symbol” associated with the group. Check — a red square is the rioters’ symbol. And then there’s the Guy Fawkes mask of the Black Bloc.
Whether organizers are paid and whether they have a chain of command is another factor. Again, check — for some of the radical student organizers.
Free speech isn’t a crime. Neither are protests. Neither are student “strikes” — what the rest of us would call playing hookey.
But planning and organizing crimes is a crime — and it makes the organizers a criminal organization.
We use this law to go after the mob. Why shouldn’t we use it to go after these new mobs?
How many smashed windows and torched cars are necessary before we say that these aren’t just young students anymore, these are young criminals?
Can the mafia get away with this now if they just put on a Che Guevara T-shirt and say they’re doing crimes in the name of social justice?
The students should not be beneath the law. They should have the right to freedom. But they should not be above the law. They should have the duty to comply with the Criminal Code. Why haven’t the leaders of this violence — and the organizations that support them — been charged under section 467.1?
It isn’t against the law for big union bosses like those at CUPE in Ontario to send their members’ dues to help finance the protests. But if that money is being sent, knowingly and on purpose, to finance actual violence, that’s a different matter.
A lot of people are watching the law-breaking. They’re learning lessons about what’s allowed now in Canada and what isn’t. Just like the lawlessness at Oka and Caledonia taught lessons about what is accepted when it’s done by Aboriginal militants, too.
Watch for that lesson to be replicated in B.C. to stop the Northern Gateway pipeline.
There aren’t many things we need government to do for us. But one thing is to prove that left or right, Aboriginal or Caucasian, every Canadian must live under the same laws.
This column appeared in the Sun Chain May 26 2012.
Take section 51 of the Criminal Code. Here it is in full: “Everyone who does an act of violence in order to intimidate Parliament or the legislature of a province is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding fourteen years.”
This, of course, does not criminalize peaceful protests. It applies only to violent ones — with Molotov cocktails and smashed windows and smoke bombs in Montreal’s subway station.
The rioters are clearly trying to intimidate the legislature into repealing its proposed dollar-a-day tuition increase.
And how about section 467.1 of the Criminal Code? That law deals with criminal organizations — groups of people who get together for the purpose of committing crimes.
In the U.S., this kind of law is called a RICO statute: Racketeer influenced and corrupt organizations laws. It’s the law used to go after the mafia.
In Canada, section 467.1 says a “criminal organization” is “composed of three or more persons” and “has as one of its main purposes … the commission of one or more serious offences that … would likely result in the direct or indirect receipt of a material benefit, including a financial benefit.”
Let’s break it down. A group of three or more people? Check. That applies to the rioters.
Is one of their main purposes to commit serious offences that would likely result in a direct or indirect benefit by the group? Check. That’s what these riots are all about. Stopping tuition hikes, and getting other freebies.
The Criminal Code has a list of factors that help us decide if an organization meets this test. It includes whether they use a “name, word or symbol” associated with the group. Check — a red square is the rioters’ symbol. And then there’s the Guy Fawkes mask of the Black Bloc.
Whether organizers are paid and whether they have a chain of command is another factor. Again, check — for some of the radical student organizers.
Free speech isn’t a crime. Neither are protests. Neither are student “strikes” — what the rest of us would call playing hookey.
But planning and organizing crimes is a crime — and it makes the organizers a criminal organization.
We use this law to go after the mob. Why shouldn’t we use it to go after these new mobs?
How many smashed windows and torched cars are necessary before we say that these aren’t just young students anymore, these are young criminals?
Can the mafia get away with this now if they just put on a Che Guevara T-shirt and say they’re doing crimes in the name of social justice?
The students should not be beneath the law. They should have the right to freedom. But they should not be above the law. They should have the duty to comply with the Criminal Code. Why haven’t the leaders of this violence — and the organizations that support them — been charged under section 467.1?
It isn’t against the law for big union bosses like those at CUPE in Ontario to send their members’ dues to help finance the protests. But if that money is being sent, knowingly and on purpose, to finance actual violence, that’s a different matter.
A lot of people are watching the law-breaking. They’re learning lessons about what’s allowed now in Canada and what isn’t. Just like the lawlessness at Oka and Caledonia taught lessons about what is accepted when it’s done by Aboriginal militants, too.
Watch for that lesson to be replicated in B.C. to stop the Northern Gateway pipeline.
There aren’t many things we need government to do for us. But one thing is to prove that left or right, Aboriginal or Caucasian, every Canadian must live under the same laws.
This column appeared in the Sun Chain May 26 2012.
Ezra Levant questions why the law wasn’t enforced during the student riots in Quebec, and explains which sections of the criminal code should have been used to control violence.
This report aired on The Source May 25 2012.
Ontario PC Leader Tim Hudak on his most recent visit to Alberta’s oilsands and why he believes Ontario should embrace the oilsands, not demonize them.
This report aired on The Source May 25 2012.
All the hottest stories burning up on The Blaze this week. From video of the Black Bloc causing mass destruction in California, to the reason why Ezra’s epic rant is causing such a stir in America.
This report aired on The Source May 25 2012.
Matthew Vadum joins Ezra Levant to outline the ties between the Tides Foundation and convicted terrorist Brett Kimberlin.
This report aired on The Source May 24 2012.
Dr. David Coletto brings us exclusive poll results that show many Canadians believe Omar Khadr is a threat to national security.
This report aired on The Source May 24 2012.
MP Dan Albas and Ezra uncork a little wine freedom over Bill C-311, an act to amend the importation of intoxicating liquors.
This report aired on The Source May 24 2012.
Ezra looks at the foreign funding of environmental protesters in Canada, and the politics surrounding getting approval for reversal of the Enbridge pipeline.
This report aired on The Source May 24 2012.
Czech Republic President, Vaclav Klaus, on why it’s important to not let climate change skeptics be silenced and his fight against climate alarmism among other world leaders and the UN.
This report aired on The Source May 23 2012.
Ezra Levant on how global warming skeptics are demonized by the left and mainstream media even though surveys show regular citizens aren’t so concerned.
This report aired on The Source May 23 2012.
Geologist, Don Easterbrook, on the science that shows the earth warms and cools naturally and the frustration with climate change alarmists who refuse to allow debate on global warming.
This report aired on The Source May 23 2012.
Ezra Levant interviews Joseph Bast in Chicago on the purpose of the Heartland Climate Change Conference and the need to allow debate on the subject of global warming.
This segment aired on The Source May 22 2012.
What’s going on in Quebec cannot be called protests. The right word is riots.
That’s what you call it when masked vandals smash cars, break windows in banks and shops, night after night. And that’s on top of the smoke bombs thrown in the subway stations earlier this month that paralyzed the city’s transit system.
How is this any different from the Stanley Cup riot in Vancouver?
It is different, of course. It’s worse.
Vancouver’s riot was spontaneous. They weren’t backed up with official NGOs and union organizers and bank accounts and spokesmen and press releases.
The Montreal riots are a criminal industry.
But blame also apportions to the people whose duty it is to stop riots — but who haven’t.
The police, who too often stood by idly because they didn’t want the rough work of a confrontation. Even when peaceful students got a court injunction demanding they be allowed to attend class, the cops refused to enforce the injunction and clear protesters blockading school doorways.
But at the end of the day, the man responsible is the premier, Jean Charest. He is the one who has permitted these riots to stretch for four months.
Worse, he has rewarded it. He negotiated with the rioters. He responded to their law-breaking by allowing them to direct his law-making.
Last week, things took a darker turn. Masked students stormed through universities, going classroom to classroom seeking out students who dared to study and teachers who dared to teach them.
If they found a class going on, they’d storm into the room. Flick the lights on and off. Jump on desks. Shout and scream. And even physically grab students inside, screaming and swearing at them, terrifying them.
When you wear a mask, trespass in schools, hunt down law-abiding students, then disrupt them and physically push them — they are terrified. And if you are doing so to terrorize them into not going to class, and to join your political protest, that is terrorism.
This, in the city where Marc Lepine burst into classes and shot women.
Last Thursday, four months late, Charest proposed a new response: Laws against rioting. And a delay in the school year.
Quebec doesn’t need new laws. The Criminal Code is full of them. Charest always had the tools — he was just too cowardly to use them.
But his plans to cancel the current semester, and reschedule it months from now, is shocking. That is the perfect reward for the protesters, doing what they couldn’t do on their own: Bring Quebec’s universities grinding to a halt.
Charest — not the rioters — has derailed not only students’ education, but also their plans for summer jobs.
Back in 1957, nine black students signed up to all-white Little Rock Central High school. Then, as now, masked protesters wanted to stop it. Then, it was the Ku Klux Klan. And the state’s racist governor, a Democrat named Orval Faubus, deployed the state’s national guard to stop the black kids from going in.
The president at the time, a Republican named Dwight Eisenhower, showed what you do when kids are being illegally blocked from school.
He federalized the state’s national guard, taking it out of the hands of the governor. And he deployed the 101st Airborne Division to escort the black kids in.
That’s what leadership is about. Eisenhower was a leader. He de-segregated the schools. He let the black kids learn.
If the Klan had broken into that school, flicked the lights on and off, shouted at the black kids, and disrupted their studies, do you think Ike would have cancelled the semester? Negotiated with the Klan? He would have sent in soldiers. Not to destroy civil rights. Not Trudeau-style, to put the state under martial law. But to uphold civil law — the right to be free from violence, the right to the rule of law.
Charest is no Eisenhower. He’s Neville Chamberlain, appeasing the rioters. He’s a coward. And the good kids of Montreal are being sold out by him.
This column appeared in the Sun Chain May 19 2012.
That’s what you call it when masked vandals smash cars, break windows in banks and shops, night after night. And that’s on top of the smoke bombs thrown in the subway stations earlier this month that paralyzed the city’s transit system.
How is this any different from the Stanley Cup riot in Vancouver?
It is different, of course. It’s worse.
Vancouver’s riot was spontaneous. They weren’t backed up with official NGOs and union organizers and bank accounts and spokesmen and press releases.
The Montreal riots are a criminal industry.
But blame also apportions to the people whose duty it is to stop riots — but who haven’t.
The police, who too often stood by idly because they didn’t want the rough work of a confrontation. Even when peaceful students got a court injunction demanding they be allowed to attend class, the cops refused to enforce the injunction and clear protesters blockading school doorways.
But at the end of the day, the man responsible is the premier, Jean Charest. He is the one who has permitted these riots to stretch for four months.
Worse, he has rewarded it. He negotiated with the rioters. He responded to their law-breaking by allowing them to direct his law-making.
Last week, things took a darker turn. Masked students stormed through universities, going classroom to classroom seeking out students who dared to study and teachers who dared to teach them.
If they found a class going on, they’d storm into the room. Flick the lights on and off. Jump on desks. Shout and scream. And even physically grab students inside, screaming and swearing at them, terrifying them.
When you wear a mask, trespass in schools, hunt down law-abiding students, then disrupt them and physically push them — they are terrified. And if you are doing so to terrorize them into not going to class, and to join your political protest, that is terrorism.
This, in the city where Marc Lepine burst into classes and shot women.
Last Thursday, four months late, Charest proposed a new response: Laws against rioting. And a delay in the school year.
Quebec doesn’t need new laws. The Criminal Code is full of them. Charest always had the tools — he was just too cowardly to use them.
But his plans to cancel the current semester, and reschedule it months from now, is shocking. That is the perfect reward for the protesters, doing what they couldn’t do on their own: Bring Quebec’s universities grinding to a halt.
Charest — not the rioters — has derailed not only students’ education, but also their plans for summer jobs.
Back in 1957, nine black students signed up to all-white Little Rock Central High school. Then, as now, masked protesters wanted to stop it. Then, it was the Ku Klux Klan. And the state’s racist governor, a Democrat named Orval Faubus, deployed the state’s national guard to stop the black kids from going in.
The president at the time, a Republican named Dwight Eisenhower, showed what you do when kids are being illegally blocked from school.
He federalized the state’s national guard, taking it out of the hands of the governor. And he deployed the 101st Airborne Division to escort the black kids in.
That’s what leadership is about. Eisenhower was a leader. He de-segregated the schools. He let the black kids learn.
If the Klan had broken into that school, flicked the lights on and off, shouted at the black kids, and disrupted their studies, do you think Ike would have cancelled the semester? Negotiated with the Klan? He would have sent in soldiers. Not to destroy civil rights. Not Trudeau-style, to put the state under martial law. But to uphold civil law — the right to be free from violence, the right to the rule of law.
Charest is no Eisenhower. He’s Neville Chamberlain, appeasing the rioters. He’s a coward. And the good kids of Montreal are being sold out by him.
This column appeared in the Sun Chain May 19 2012.
Thomas Mulcair has been a federal MP for five years, yet he has never visited the oilsands in northern Alberta, although he says he’s planning a sojourn sometime this spring.
Which is odd, given that he talks about it every day. But that’s standard practice for the NDP. His fellow NDP MPs, Megan Leslie and Claude Gravelle, flew to Washington, D.C., last November to tell the U.S. Congress about the evils of the oilsands, and asked for them to block the proposed Keystone XL pipeline through which we’d export our oil.
I doubt Leslie or Gravelle has been to Fort McMurray either. They’ve got time to jet around the world, disparaging our industry to foreigners, trashing our own country to strangers. But no time for a trip to the oilsands themselves.
Of course not. They have extremist opinions on the subject. Finding out actual facts about the place might contradict their radical theories. Can’t have that.
But there's something else too. It’s harder to badmouth someone once you’ve looked them in the eye.
And under Mulcair’s leadership, the NDP has gone from merely opposing the oilsands to outright hatred of them. He’s personal about it. Mean, even.
So it would be difficult for Mulcair and his fellow haters to walk the streets of Fort McMurray, to talk to the workers there — blue collar workers, Aboriginal workers, union workers, once-poor workers becoming prosperous now — and tell them that what they are doing is immoral.
For that is Mulcair’s view. He doesn’t just criticize the oilsands industry.
He has a moral disdain for it — it’s much worse, for example, than the asbestos industry in his own beloved Quebec.
Every industry can be criticized; every public policy can be debated. But that is not what Mulcair is doing. He is demonizing. Because he is a politician. And politicians demonize and polarize. They look at polls and make cold-blooded calculations. Mulcair is betting the western Canadians he is slandering wouldn’t vote for him anyways.
But maybe more voters in Ontario and Quebec will because of it.
He’s not betting on the best of human nature. He’s betting on the worst.
He’s counting on it. He’s not trying to heal regional rifts amongst Canadian regions. He’s looking for the opportunities if he pours salt into old wounds.
This scorched earth approach to national unity took a truly bizarre turn last week. Here’s what Mulcair said about the oilsands in Parliament: “We’re allowing these companies to use the air, the soil and the water as an unlimited free dumping ground. Their model for development is Nigeria instead of Norway.”
Seriously. He compared the practices of Canadians working in the oilsands to Nigeria — a country with kleptocrats who have stolen a third of a trillion dollars from their own people; brutal dictators have murdered critics of the regime; environmental devastation; abject poverty; the slow-burn civil war.
Mulcair actually said that is the model chosen by Canadian companies. That is how we live and work. He compared us to them. That’s how low we are in his eyes.
When the NDP was the third or fourth party, such bozo eruptions were good for a chuckle. But Thomas Mulcair is the leader of the opposition now, theoretically the man standing by to form a government if the Conservatives fall.
Put aside his socialism and economic illiteracy. His raw hatred for half of Canada must disqualify him from ever leading us.
This column appeared in the Sun Chain May 19 2012.
Which is odd, given that he talks about it every day. But that’s standard practice for the NDP. His fellow NDP MPs, Megan Leslie and Claude Gravelle, flew to Washington, D.C., last November to tell the U.S. Congress about the evils of the oilsands, and asked for them to block the proposed Keystone XL pipeline through which we’d export our oil.
I doubt Leslie or Gravelle has been to Fort McMurray either. They’ve got time to jet around the world, disparaging our industry to foreigners, trashing our own country to strangers. But no time for a trip to the oilsands themselves.
Of course not. They have extremist opinions on the subject. Finding out actual facts about the place might contradict their radical theories. Can’t have that.
But there's something else too. It’s harder to badmouth someone once you’ve looked them in the eye.
And under Mulcair’s leadership, the NDP has gone from merely opposing the oilsands to outright hatred of them. He’s personal about it. Mean, even.
So it would be difficult for Mulcair and his fellow haters to walk the streets of Fort McMurray, to talk to the workers there — blue collar workers, Aboriginal workers, union workers, once-poor workers becoming prosperous now — and tell them that what they are doing is immoral.
For that is Mulcair’s view. He doesn’t just criticize the oilsands industry.
He has a moral disdain for it — it’s much worse, for example, than the asbestos industry in his own beloved Quebec.
Every industry can be criticized; every public policy can be debated. But that is not what Mulcair is doing. He is demonizing. Because he is a politician. And politicians demonize and polarize. They look at polls and make cold-blooded calculations. Mulcair is betting the western Canadians he is slandering wouldn’t vote for him anyways.
But maybe more voters in Ontario and Quebec will because of it.
He’s not betting on the best of human nature. He’s betting on the worst.
He’s counting on it. He’s not trying to heal regional rifts amongst Canadian regions. He’s looking for the opportunities if he pours salt into old wounds.
This scorched earth approach to national unity took a truly bizarre turn last week. Here’s what Mulcair said about the oilsands in Parliament: “We’re allowing these companies to use the air, the soil and the water as an unlimited free dumping ground. Their model for development is Nigeria instead of Norway.”
Seriously. He compared the practices of Canadians working in the oilsands to Nigeria — a country with kleptocrats who have stolen a third of a trillion dollars from their own people; brutal dictators have murdered critics of the regime; environmental devastation; abject poverty; the slow-burn civil war.
Mulcair actually said that is the model chosen by Canadian companies. That is how we live and work. He compared us to them. That’s how low we are in his eyes.
When the NDP was the third or fourth party, such bozo eruptions were good for a chuckle. But Thomas Mulcair is the leader of the opposition now, theoretically the man standing by to form a government if the Conservatives fall.
Put aside his socialism and economic illiteracy. His raw hatred for half of Canada must disqualify him from ever leading us.
This column appeared in the Sun Chain May 19 2012.
Ezra is joined by economist, Frank Atkins to discuss Thomas Mulcair's bizarre comparison of Canada to Nigeria.
This segment aired on The Source May 18 2012.
Sun contributor Monte Solberg joins Ezra to explain how economic development can co-exist with environmental protection.
This segment aired on The Source May 18 2012.
MPP Randy Hillier joins to discuss his efforts to amend the Constitution to include property rights.
This segment aired on The Source May 17th 2012.
Ezra voices his displeasure with the Quebec student protesters, and his disappointment with the province’s leadership in handling the issue.
This segment aired on The Source May 17 2012.
Jeff Rubin, author of ‘The End of Growth’, on what he believes is the answer to high oil prices.
This segment aired on The Source May 17 2012.
Brad Wall talks to Ezra about his reaction to Mulcair calling Western premiers Harper’s messengers.
This segment aired on The Source May 17 2012.
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