History > 2007 > Canada (I)

Mike Graston

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The Windsor Star        Ontario        Canada

5 July 2007

Canadians Snapping Up

American Homes

December 15, 2007
Filed at 3:21 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

CHANDLER, Ariz. (AP) -- Two hours after his flight landed in Phoenix, Calgary resident Doug Farley already was cruising the city's vast stuccoed suburbs in search of the one attraction Canadians can't seem to get enough of these days, cheap homes.

There are thousands of them here: almost new, unoccupied and dropping in value. The mortgage meltdown, combined with a surging Canadian currency, has Farley -- and many of his countrymen -- dreaming of winter golf on grass that's always green.

''My dollar's the same as your dollar, finally,'' Farley said, grinning as he peered through a pool fence at a sparsely populated condominium complex in Chandler, a Phoenix suburb.

For moderate-income Canadians like Farley, the race is on to take advantage of the ''loonie,'' which in September reached parity with the U.S. dollar for the first time since 1976. Many are combing the Internet for anxious American home sellers and looking with an investor's eye at the condos they rented while on vacation in sunbelt states.

''Now it's more than just the snowbird coming down and staying in a condo. It's people looking for business opportunity,'' said Frank Nero, president of the Beacon Council, Miami-Dade County's economic development arm in south Florida.

Canadian condo-builder Solterra Group of Companies also is riding the surge in the Canadian economy as it plans to snatch large chunks of land in Las Vegas. Michael Bosa, the company's vice president for development and acquisition, said the loonie has bolstered his company's bids.

''We're looking now aggressively,'' Bosa said. ''We think we'll see more opportunities in the next six to eight months.''

In Arizona, Jason Sirockman of Edmonton, Alberta, said he watched as home owners flooded the market with 58,000 homes, more than twice the amount in 2005 when home values peaked.

Now's the time to buy, he said. Alberta, a three-and-a-half-hour flight from Phoenix, is experiencing a modern-day gold rush from booming work in its vast oil sands.

''Fifteen of my friends are on buying trips down here, and we're all cheap,'' Sirockman said. He brought his family to Scottsdale this month while he submitted a lowball all-cash offer for a three-bedroom home.

''I don't want to take advantage of a guy who's having trouble in the market and is losing his shorts,'' Sirockman said. ''But I have no problem with a guy from California who bought on spec and has five houses in Arizona and never lived in them.''

Single family homes and condos in the Phoenix metro area now sit an average of 99 days before getting sold. That's three times the wait for homes and four times the wait for condos compared with two years ago, according to the Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service.

The market has shifted totally in the buyer's favor, especially those offering cash, said Jeff Russell of Alberta. Last month, Russell snapped up a patio home next to a golf course in Scottsdale with a $299,000 check. It was listed at $463,000.

''I was actually going to come down here and buy a seven-series BMW because cars are ridiculously cheap here,'' he said. ''But I discovered that, forget cars, houses are on deep discount. I could never get anything on a golf course as nice in Canada for this type of money.''

Real estate agents in Phoenix, especially those with Canadian ties, are hustling to reach potential buyers up north while the American housing market and the U.S. dollar continue to slump.

Rick Morielli, a former real estate broker from Toronto, received his green card in November, posted a Canadian realty Web site, took out some newspaper ads in Canada, and already he has about a dozen clients looking for homes.

''There's a real 'Wow' factor here for Canadians,'' said Morielli, who now lives in Phoenix.

''When I take them to a brand new subdivision, and for $210,000 can get them four bedrooms, 2,000 square feet, all appliances, brand new, that's something they haven't been able to buy in Canada for 10 or 15 years. In my opinion, everyone should be buying now.''

Mark Dziedzic, a former financial planner from Toronto, now sells homes full time in Arizona and holds seminars in Canada to push the American housing market on fellow Canucks. Dziedzic said he's had to hire more staff at his office to keep up with the influx of Canadian investors.

''When (the Canadian dollar) hit a dollar ten, it really created a real buzz for Canadians, not only those looking to buy second homes but we're also seeing it from buying purely from an investment standpoint,'' Dziedzic said.

Still, with so many homes on the market, the interest by Canadians isn't about to fix the housing slump in Arizona, real estate consultant Elliott D. Pollack said.

''You have a massive oversupply in the face of a lower demand,'' Pollack said. ''And you're going to have to work off those excess units. And to do that you'll need two or three years.''

That's fine with investors like Farley, who are still learning the neighborhoods.

As he searched for his new winter home, Farley kept an eye out for condos near a pool. When it got cold in Calgary, that's where his family would be.

''I just want the ability to go outside, you know, the ability to go for a walk,'' Farley said. He left for Calgary with a few strong choices, but he didn't bid on anything.

Sirockman also returned to Canada without a house after the owner of the Scottsdale home turned down his offer. No worries. Sirockman told the seller there were a thousand other homes like his on the market, and someone was going to deal.

As he was about to get on the flight back to Edmonton, Sirockman called his friends, and they told him it's 28 below zero back home.

''That's what I'm flying into,'' he said with a sigh. ''I brought a big down-filled jacket with me. I'm looking like an idiot getting onto the plane.''

------

AP Business Writer Adrian Sainz contributed to this story.

    Canadians Snapping Up American Homes, NYT, 15.12.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Housing-Slump-Canadians.html

1.15pm GMT

Pig farmer jailed for six murders

Monday December 10, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
David Batty, Lee Glendinning and agencies

A pig farmer accused of being the deadliest serial killer in Canada's history has been jailed for life after being found guilty of murdering six women.

But the jury decided that Robert Pickton, 58, known as Willie, did not plan the killings in which the women were dismembered and disposed of using pigs and a rendering plant at his farm in Port Coquitlam, Vancouver.

Pickton faces 20 more murder charges for the deaths of women and, if convicted, he would become Canada's most prolific mass murderer.

After 10 months of testimony and 10 days of deliberation, the jury at the British Columbia supreme court in New Westminster found Pickton guilty of second-degree murder instead of the first-degree charge he originally faced.

Second-degree murder means a murder was not planned and, while it still carries a life sentence, it offers the chance of parole in 10 years rather than 25.

The judge will decide tomorrow when Pickton might be eligible for parole.

The victims - Mona Wilson, Sereena Abotsway, Marnie Frey, Brenda Wolfe, Andrea Joesbury and Georgina Papin - are among nearly 70 women who disappeared from the downtown eastside neighbourhood of the Pacific coast city from the late 1980s until late 2001.

Two sisters of victim Papin screamed "No!" when the jury foreman stood up and delivered a not-guilty verdict on the first-degree murder charge. But they later said they were pleased he was convicted on the second-degree charge.

Rick Frey, the father of Marnie, said: "It should have been first-degree. You don't have six murders over that time and not have first-degree."

The court heard how Pickton had lured the women, many of them drug addicts or prostitutes, to his farm with money and drugs before killing them.

Investigators found human remains on the farm, including skulls and feet. A woman who lived briefly in Pickton's trailer testified that she saw him cutting up a body in the middle of the night.

During his trial, a prosecution witness, Andrew Bellwood, said Pickton told him how he strangled his victims and fed their remains to his pigs.

Health officials issued a warning to neighbours who might have bought pork from Pickton's farm.

While his defence team acknowledged that the women's remains were found on his property, Pickton denied killing them. He did not testify and rarely showed emotion during the trial.

In one part of the evidence, Pickton was heard telling an undercover officer in a taped conversation in jail after his arrest in February 2002 that he had killed 49 women and planned to make it 50.

Judge James Williams also reviewed the transcript of a videotape in which Pickton is heard telling an undercover police officer that he had planned to kill 50 women, take a break, then kill 25 more.

The victims came from Vancouver's downtown eastside, considered the worst ghetto in Canada.

Police are still investigating the cases of almost 40 other missing women.

Relatives of the missing women have long said officials ignored those who said a serial killer was preying on prostitutes in the area. Police did not set up a missing women's taskforce until the media began investigations of their own and relatives protested.

Marilyn Kraft, the mother of one of the victims in the second murder trial Pickton will face, was relieved that Pickton got a life sentence in the first trial. "He's going away for life," she said.

    Pig farmer jailed for six murders, G, 10.12.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,2225283,00.html

This Canadian wilderness is set
to be invaded by BP in an oil exploration project dubbed ...

'The biggest environmental crime

in history'

Published: 10 December 2007
The Independent
By Cahal Milmo

BP, the British oil giant that pledged to move "Beyond Petroleum" by finding cleaner ways to produce fossil fuels, is being accused of abandoning its "green sheen" by investing nearly £1.5bn to extract oil from the Canadian wilderness using methods which environmentalists say are part of the "biggest global warming crime" in history.

The multinational oil and gas producer, which last year made a profit of £11bn, is facing a head-on confrontation with the green lobby in the pristine forests of North America after Greenpeace pledged a direct action campaign against BP following its decision to reverse a long-standing policy and invest heavily in extracting so-called "oil sands" that lie beneath the Canadian province of Alberta and form the world's second-largest proven oil reserves after Saudi Arabia.

Producing crude oil from the tar sands – a heavy mixture of bitumen, water, sand and clay – found beneath more than 54,000 square miles of prime forest in northern Alberta – an area the size of England and Wales combined – generates up to four times more carbon dioxide, the principal global warming gas, than conventional drilling. The booming oil sands industry will produce 100 million tonnes of CO2 (equivalent to a fifth of the UK's entire annual emissions) a year by 2012, ensuring that Canada will miss its emission targets under the Kyoto treaty, according to environmentalist activists.

The oil rush is also scarring a wilderness landscape: millions of tonnes of plant life and top soil is scooped away in vast open-pit mines and millions of litres of water are diverted from rivers – up to five barrels of water are needed to produce a single barrel of crude and the process requires huge amounts of natural gas. The industry, which now includes all the major oil multinationals, including the Anglo-Dutch Shell and American combine Exxon-Mobil, boasts that it takes two tonnes of the raw sands to produce a single barrel of oil. BP insists it will use a less damaging extraction method, but it accepts that its investment will increase its carbon footprint.

Mike Hudema, the climate and energy campaigner for Greenpeace in Canada, told The Independent: "BP has done a very good job in recent years of promoting its green objectives. By jumping into tar sands extraction it is taking part in the biggest global warming crime ever seen and BP's green sheen is gone.

"It takes about 29kg of CO2 to produce a barrel of oil conventionally. That figure can be as much 125kg for tar sands oil. It also has the potential to kill off or damage the vast forest wilderness, greater than the size of England and Wales, which forms part of the world's biggest carbon sinks. For BP to be involved in this trade not only flies in the face of their rhetoric but in the era of climate change it should not be being developed at all. You cannot call yourself 'Beyond Petroleum' and involve yourself in tar sands extraction." Mr Hudema said Greenpeace was planning a direct action campaign against BP, which could disrupt its activities as its starts construction work in Alberta next year.

The company had shied away from involvement oil sands, until recently regarded as economically unviable and environmentally unpleasant. Lord Browne of Madingley, who was BP's chief executive until May, sold its remaining Canadian tar sands interests in 1999 and declared as recently as 2004 that there were "tons of opportunities" beyond the sector. But as oil prices hover around the $100-per-barrel mark, Lord Browne's successor, Tony Hayward, announced that BP has entered a joint venture with Husky Energy, owned by the Hong Kong based billionaire Li Ka-Shing, to develop a tar sands facility which will be capable of producing 200,000 barrels of crude a day by 2020. In return for a half share of Husky's Sunrise field in the Athabasca region of Alberta, the epicentre of the tar sands industry, BP has sold its partner a 50 per cent stake in its Toledo oil refinery in Ohio. The companies will invest $5.5bn (£2.7) in the project, making BP one of the biggest players in tar sands extraction.

Mr Hayward made it clear that BP considered its investment was the start of a long-term presence in Alberta. He said: "BP's move into oil sands is an opportunity to build a strategic, material position and the huge potential of Sunrise is the ideal entry point for BP into Canadian oil sands."

Canada claims that it has 175 billion barrels of recoverable oil in Alberta, making the province second only to Saudi Arabia in proved oil riches and sparking a £50bn "oil rush" as American, Chinese and European investors rush to profit from high oil prices. Despite production costs per barrel of up to £15, compared to £1 per barrel in Saudi Arabia, the Canadian province expects to be pumping five million barrels of crude a day by 2030.

BP said it will be using a technology that pumps steam heated by natural gas into vertical wells to liquefy the solidified oil sands and pump it to the surface in a way that is less damaging than open cast mining. But campaigners said this method requires 1,000 cubic feet of gas to produce one barrel of unrefined bitumen – the same required to heat an average British home for 5.5 days.

A spokesman for BP added: "These are resources that would have been developed anyway."

Licenses have been issued by the Albertan government to extract 350 million cubic metres of water from the Athabasca River every year. But the water used in the extraction process, say campaigners, is so contaminated that it cannot be returned to the eco-system and must instead be stored in vast "tailings ponds" that cover up to 20 square miles and there is evidence of increased rates of cancer and multiple sclerosis in down-river communities.

Experts say a pledge to restore all open cast tar sand mines to their previous pristine condition has proved sadly lacking. David Schindler, professor of ecology at the University of Alberta, said: "Right now the big pressure is to get that money out of the ground, not to reclaim the landscape. I wouldn't be surprised if you could see these pits from a satellite 1,000 years from now."

    'The biggest environmental crime in history', I, 10.12.2007, http://environment.independent.co.uk/article3239364.ece

Bank of Canada

Unexpectedly Cuts Key Rate

December 4, 2007
The New York Times
By IAN AUSTEN

OTTAWA, Dec. 4 — The Bank of Canada cut its key interest rate today by a quarter-point, to 4.25 percent, citing concerns about the global effect of the subprime loan crisis in the United States. While made for other reasons, the move may provide some relief for exporters that have been suffering from the recent sharp rise in the Canadian dollar.

Canada’s central bank was faced with conflicting indicators as it considered its decision. Unlike the United States, high oil and commodity prices have kept Canada’s economy generally buoyant and arguably overheated in energy-rich Alberta.

But the rise of the Canadian dollar to parity and beyond with the United States dollar has driven up the export prices of manufactured goods from Ontario and Quebec. That led to political pressure on the bank as well as a request from auto parts makers to governments for 400 million Canadian dollars in emergency financing.

After weighing that balance, many economists predicted that the bank would not cut its rate.

Although the central bank appeared relatively unconcerned about the dollar’s high level in its rate announcement, the currency did give it leeway for its interest rate cut. The bank said October’s inflation rate of 2.4 percent was below its expectations, a factor it attributed to price drops on imported merchandise.

Adding to that, the bank said, is a general tightening of international credit markets, a side effect of the subprime crisis, and the potential for lower demand in the United States for Canadian products.

“All these factors considered, the bank judges that there has been a shift to the downside in the balance of risks,” the Bank of Canada said in its announcement.

After the announcement, the Canadian dollar fell to 98.68 cents during morning trading from a close of 99.98 cents yesterday. While that is a large swing in currency market terms, it will not provide significant benefit to exporters. A year ago, the Canadian dollar traded at 87 cents.

In a note to investors, the economics department of the Royal Bank of Canada predicted further interest rate cuts.

“Policy makers are increasingly nervous about the impact of the global financial market turmoil on the outlook for growth and inflation and sets up for additional easing,” the note said. “We expect that the aggressive price cutting by Canadian retailers will keep downward pressure on Canada’s core inflation rate allowing the bank to pursue an easier policy stance as the economy navigates through this period of financial market turmoil.”

    Bank of Canada Unexpectedly Cuts Key Rate, NYT, 4.12.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/04/business/worldbusiness/04cnd-bank.html

Canadian Man Dies

After Being Tasered

November 25, 2007
Filed at 3:42 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (AP) -- A Canadian man died Saturday, four days after police used a Taser stun-gun on him because he reportedly was acting erratically in a store, police said. He was the third person to die in recent weeks in Canada after being shocked by the hand-held weapon.

Robert Knipstrom, 36, died in a hospital after two officers used pepper spray, a Taser and their batons to subdue the British Columbia resident. Police earlier said Knipstrom was extremely agitated, aggressive and combative with the two officers who responded. He was conscious and speaking when he was taken to the hospital.

The cause of death has yet to be determined. Although a Taser was used against Knipstrom, it was not immediately clear what role, if any, it played in his death, said Inspector Brendan Fitzpatrick.

Investigations into Knipstrom's death have been launched separately by the British Columbia Coroner's Office and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, police said at a news conference Saturday.

The case comes as Canadian police face intense criticism over the death of Robert Dziekanski, a Polish immigrant who died at Vancouver airport last month after officers used a Taser and manhandled him.

A Nova Scotian man also died earlier this week, 30 hours after being shocked with the Taser at a jail where he was being held on assault charges.

    Canadian Man Dies After Being Tasered, NYT, 25.11.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Canada-Taser.html?hp

Afghan and NATO troops

kill at least 12 Taliban

Sun Nov 18, 2007
4:13am EST
Reuters
By Mirwais Afghan

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Afghan and NATO-led troops, backed by air power, killed at least 12 Taliban fighters and wounded another 15 in an operation in southern Afghanistan, a Defence Ministry spokesman said on Sunday.

Mostly Canadian NATO troops and Taliban insurgents have been engaged in fierce fighting in the Zherai district, west of the biggest southern city of Kandahar, for more than a year with each side seizing then losing the same ground several times.

The apparent stalemate is typical of that across Afghanistan where insurgents are incapable of capturing and holding any towns, but Afghan and Western forces have not been able to clear insurgents from many remote regions either.

"There are 12 bodies on the ground, but blood traces indicate that there are more than 12 Taliban killed in the operation," said Defence Ministry spokesman Zaher Murad. "It seems the Taliban have taken away their dead from the battleground."

Many Taliban had been killed or wounded in the operation which began on Saturday. NATO forces have called in airstrikes against insurgent positions and fighting was still going on, Kandahar provincial police chief said.

"We don't know exactly how many Taliban fighters were killed at the moment, but there are many killed and wounded," said the provincial police chief, Sayed Aqa Saqib.

CLASHES

The Taliban commander in the area, Mullah Ulfat, said six of his fighters had been killed and three wounded but the rebels had inflicted heavy casualties on Afghan and foreign forces.

"There are only 15 Taliban killed, no more," said a Esah Khan, a local elder.

Meanwhile, a suicide car bomber rammed his vehicle into a convoy of foreign forces in the Girishk district of Helmand province on Sunday but no one was wounded, provincial police chief Hussain Andiwal said.

No one was wounded in the attack, he said.

The target of the attack was a U.S. Humvee, a spokesman for NATO forces said, and it was not clear if it was a suicide attack or not, but no one was injured.

Elsewhere, two Afghan policemen and three insurgents were killed when the Taliban attacked a police patrol in the Qarabagh district of Ghazni province, southwest of Kabul, the local intelligence chief, Mohammad Zamaan, said.

Further south, 11 insurgents and one Afghan soldier were killed when Taliban attacked a joint foreign and Afghan military convoy in the Shah Joy district of Zabul province on Saturday, said Qasim Khan a police official in the district.

More than 7,000 people have been killed since the hardline Islamist Taliban relaunched their insurgency to topple the pro-Western Afghan government and eject the more than 50,000 foreign troops from the country.

(Reporting by Ismail Sameem;

Writing by Hamid Shalizi;

Editing by David Fox)

    Afghan and NATO troops kill at least 12 Taliban, R, 18.11.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSISL26335120071118

Taliban in retreat

after Afghan offensive:

Canada

Thu Nov 1, 2007
12:35pm EDT
Reuters
By Finbarr O'Reilly

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Taliban rebels were retreating on Thursday after Afghan and Canadian troops halted their effort to take a district guarding the approaches to the main southern city of Kandahar, Canada's military said.

Insurgents have massed in unusually large numbers to attack three district centers in the west and south in the last week and a Taliban leader threatened to extend the offensive northward and maintain its intensity through the harsh Afghan winter.

Taliban fighters attacked the Arghandab district, only 12 km (8 miles) northwest of Kandahar, this week in what Canadian forces said was one of the most organized Taliban offensives they had seen and appeared to be a move towards the city.

But Afghan National Army (ANA) and mostly Canadian troops from the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) struck back, killing at least 50 rebels, according to Afghan police, and battled another 200 to 250 rebel fighters.

"The ANA and the coalition forces are pushing back the insurgents," Major Eric Landry told reporters in Kandahar.

"The insurgents are actually fleeing the Arghandab district ... We know they are not being reinforced. They are retreating. They are heading north," he said.

Kandahar "is stable and is not under any threat at any moment," Landry said. Only one Afghan soldier had been killed in the operation.

The area, a lush strip of irrigated land along the banks of a river through the desert, was quiet overnight and there were only sporadic clashes on Thursday.

"They are trying to leave pockets of resistance, but they are being ineffective," Landry said.

Hundreds of villagers fled the fighting.

"We are certain the local population will come back to their homes in the next days," he said.

But as Afghan and ISAF troops also battled to regain another district centre, Gulistan in the western province of Farah, the Taliban overran the neighboring centre of Bakwa on Wednesday and more than 400 families fled.

"Bakwa district centre fell into the hands of the Taliban in an attack yesterday afternoon," said Maolavi Yahya, the district chief of neighboring Delaram.

"The Taliban wanted to keep Afghan and foreign troops busy (in Gulistan) as another group of Taliban tactically overran the district centre."
 

CHILDREN KILLED

"During the confrontation 14 Taliban insurgents and two Afghan police were killed and the Taliban set the district centre building on fire," said Yahya. More than 400 families have fled the fighting and have set up camp by a river, he said.

Prominent Taliban leader Mullah Mansour Dadullah vowed to keep up the fight and extend it north.

"Our operations are blazing across the southern provinces, and we shall reach the northern provinces in the same manner," he said in a video posted on the Internet on Wednesday.

The Taliban campaign of hit-and-run attacks, suicide and roadside bombs, and larger offensives where possible is aimed at convincing Afghans their government and the 50,000 foreign troops in the country cannot provide them with security.

As the fighting drags on, security analysts say, almost inevitable mistakes by the security forces will only help to drive a wedge between the government and the people.

Afghan forces backed by U.S.-led coalition troops killed two children as the soldiers battled with a militant holed up in a compound in the east of the country, the U.S. military said on Thursday.

Afghan security forces backed by a small team of coalition troops raided the compound in the Bati Kot district of Nangarhar province after intelligence that a militant was present.

"While resisting multiple requests to surrender, the militant barricaded himself in a room. Unbeknownst to Afghan forces, his family was barricaded in the room with him," the U.S. military said in a statement.

"The team began receiving small arms fire after they entered the compound and they returned fire," it said. "It wasn't until after the hostilities had stopped and the team had performed a search of the room that they found two children dead."

The militant was also killed and a woman and child wounded and treated at a coalition medical facility.

Afghan and Western officials accuse the Taliban of deliberately courting civilian casualties by fighting from homes and built-up areas in order to undermine support for the government and its foreign backers.

(Additional reporting by Hamid Shalizi in Kabul

and Sarifuddin Sharafiyar in Herat)

    Taliban in retreat after Afghan offensive: Canada, R, 1.11.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSSP18730020071101

New Abbotsford father

among six soldiers killed

in Afghanistan
 

'It's going to be tough ... he was a good daddy'

Thursday, July 05, 2007
Vancouver Sun
Jonathan Fowlie and Doug Ward

Colin Bason is shown holding daughter Vienna Bason, with his partner Katrina Blain.

Five-month-old Vienna Bason will only be able to know her father through photographs and stories.

Master Cpl. Colin Bason left for Afghanistan this past February, only four days after his daughter was born. On Wednesday, the 28-year-old reservist from Abbotsford was killed along with five other Canadian soldiers when their vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb.

"It's going to be tough," Bason's long-time girlfriend, Katrina Blain, said from her Langley home Wednesday afternoon.

"He was brave, and as much as he only got to spend four days with his daughter, he was a good daddy.

"He made sure he looked out for her," she added, explaining she could tell the separation had already been "wearing on him."

Blain, who fought tears at her Langley home while trying to keep Vienna -- their only child -- quiet, recalled Bason as a dedicated soldier and a caring boyfriend.

"He would do anything for his family," she said. "He's always been there."

At the family home in Abbotsford, Bason's parents also spoke of their son and of his dedication to the military.

"We are proud of Colin. He was nothing but army," his mother Anne said Wednesday evening. "He was doing what he loved and we are very proud of him."

Bason's father, Gary, added his son wanted to be in the military since he was a young child.

"He used to read books on the army. He knew what Hitler had for breakfast," said Gary.

Gary added that Colin, who graduated from Rick Hansen secondary in Abbotsford, had also done a tour in Kosovo, something he thought was a "walk in the park compared to Afghanistan."

While Bason's parents and girlfriend say it is devastating to lose the man they love, they were clearly consoled by the fact he died while following his dream.

"He died doing something he believed in," said Blain. "He was doing something that he dedicated a good chunk of his life to."

That passion and dedication to the military was clear in a short television interview the member of the 39 Canadian Brigade Group Reserve of the Royal Westminster Regiment gave before he went overseas.

"I put my name in about 18 months ago when I was chosen, and I put my name in every time they asked for volunteers," said Bason, who joined the so-called Westies in April 2000.

On Wednesday, Blain said Bason never lost that fervour for the job, but acknowledged he had been down recently after losing three friends from his platoon.

Sgt. Christos Karigiannis, Cpl. Stephen Bouzane, Pte. Joel Wiebe all died on June 20 when their unarmoured Gator hit a roadside bomb.

"I've never seen him cry [but] I could hear it in his voice when that happened to his friends," she explained.

"You could hear that he was sad in his voice but he didn't let on, he just moved on and did his job," she added.

In an online posting, it was clear this was what Bason was trying to do: "Colin is missing his dead friends, but now it's time to go back to the front and put in some work for the set," he wrote on his online Facebook page.

Blain said she last saw Bason in April when he was on a three-week leave. They met in Paris and travelled to Brussels, Ypres and Amsterdam.

The last time she spoke with Bason was a few days ago, for a brief couple of minutes, Blain added.

"It was basically a 'hi,' a 'love you' and a 'talk to you later.'" she said.

"If I had known, I'd have had a lot more to say, but I mean you never know."

    New Abbotsford father among six soldiers killed in Afghanistan, Vancouver Sun, 5.7.2007, http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/story.html?id=9c7f7499-05b1-4536-a889-0c02ceca8d0c&k=98761

Protests Affect Canada Rail Service

June 29, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:17 a.m. ET
The New York Times

TORONTO (AP) -- Scattered Indian protests began Thursday night ahead of a planned day of demonstrations against poverty and a lack of services on Canadian reservations. The country's passenger rail system suspended on two key routes amid a threatened rail blockade.

A group of Mohawks kicked off the demonstrations by using a school bus and a pickup truck to block a highway near Deseronto, Ontario, halting traffic in both directions, officials said.

Protesters in army-style fatigues, some with their hair braided back or shaved in traditional Mohawk style, began arriving at a makeshift camp outside Deseronto around sundown.

Canada's provincial premiers and territorial leaders issued a rare joint statement acknowledging that Indian tribes were understandably disappointed and frustrated with past injustices, but urging that Friday's demonstrations be peaceful.

Most of the events planned for Friday are expected to be peaceful marches, but there were concerns protesters could blockade a rail line.

But Mohawk leader Shawn Brant was the lone voice promoting hard-line militancy during the ''day of action.''

The Bay of Quinte Mohawks, organized by Brant, blocked the railway near Deseronto, Ontario, in April, paralyzing service on that busy route. He threatened to repeat the blockade Friday and also possibly block Canada's busiest highway in Toronto.

The chief of the Assembly of First Nations, Phil Fontaine, called for peaceful actions. he said Indians should use their protests to foster dialogue with other Canadians.

Earlier this month Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper proposed legislation to speed up the legal process to resolve claims by Indians to land taken by the government.

Past Indian protests have become violent, including a 1990 clash between police and Mohawks in Ipperwash, Ontario, that resulted in the death of a protester.

The train cancelations announced Thursday by Via Rail affected the Montreal-Toronto and Ottawa-Toronto routes. Service was expected to resume Saturday.

    Protests Affect Canada Rail Service, NYT, 29.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Canada-Rail-Block.html

Immigrants Reject

Quebec’s Separatists

May 20, 2007
The New York Times
By CHRISTOPHER MASON

VERDUN, Quebec — As cultural coordinator for a resource center for new Quebecers, Gabriel Garcia is leading an effort to bridge the gap between the growing number of immigrants here and the mostly French-speaking society into which they have moved.

But one issue is proving to be a bridge too far for the province’s first-generation immigrant population: the long struggle for independence. “I realize it is important for many,” said Mr. Garcia, who mainly works with people from Central and South America, voicing a sentiment shared by almost all the recent immigrants. “But for me, sovereignty is not my primary passion.”

The number of immigrants entering Quebec each year has nearly doubled since the last referendum on independence in 1995 failed by a razor-thin margin, and immigrants now represent more than 10 percent of the electorate.

That rapidly expanding demographic consists of people who have no historical stake in the traditional French-English divide. The evolving society is one of many challenges facing the political vehicle of the separatist movement, the Parti Québécois, after the resignation on May 8 of the party’s leader, André Boisclair.

Mr. Boisclair, 41, became increasingly unpopular during his 18 months at the party’s helm, especially after elections in March when the Parti Québécois finished in third place, its worst showing in more than 30 years.

Although French-speaking Quebecers continue to form a clear majority of the population, the growing number of immigrants, along with a greatly reduced birthrate, point to a shift that is forcing political parties, separatist and federalist, to rethink their political foundations.

“Immigrants who come from outside during their adult life choose Canada,” said Pierre Martin, a political scientist at the University of Montreal. “They’ve immigrated to Canada, and those who choose sovereignty are a relatively limited number.”

One such immigrant is Aymar Missakila. He came to Quebec from the Congo Republic in 1994, just as tensions were building in the period before a referendum on independence the next year.

Having come from a politically unstable country, Mr. Missakila said that at the time he did not understand why a province whose economy and social programs seemed strong would want to separate from the rest of Canada.

“I understand fighting for a bigger role for Quebec, but I don’t believe sovereignty is the issue,” said Mr. Missakila, 35, who works at a race-relations organization in Montreal. “Many immigrants think a sovereign Quebec would not be good for the economy, the health care system and immigrant issues.”

But economists say Quebec has little choice but to embrace the immigrants because of a plummeting native birthrate that would otherwise reduce economic growth. Even with a birthrate well below the rate of replacement, Quebec’s population grew 4.3 percent from 2001 to 2006, to 7.5 million.

“Quebec has gone from having the highest birthrate in the country to one of the lowest in one generation, so any growth in the work force is going to come from new Quebecers,” said Glen Hodgson, chief economist at the Conference Board of Canada, a nonprofit group in Ottawa. “How far is Quebec willing to go to accommodate those new to Quebec?”

Some contend that replacing Mr. Boisclair will allow the Parti Québécois to revive itself. But changing demographics and more accepting attitudes toward the rest of Canada suggest that the Parti Québécois will have a difficult time swaying a majority of voters in favor of independence.

“We may be finding that the P.Q. was the party of a generation,” said Jocelyn Létourneau, a professor at Laval University in Quebec and the author of “What Do the Québécois Really Want?”

“Those who grew up in the 1960s,” she said, “they had this project, independence, which they now have a hard time selling to the majority of Quebecers.”

Instead, an upstart party, the Action Démocratique du Québec, emerged in the March election, making an ambiguous promise of greater autonomy for Quebec within Canada. That pledge, paired with a mostly right-wing platform, pushed the party into second place, close behind the provincial governing party, the federalist Liberal Party.

The reshaped political landscape poses an interesting situation for the conservative prime minister, Stephen Harper. A weakened independence movement and a possible ally in the Action Démocratique du Québec mean that, for the first time, federalist politicians in Ottawa have a potential alliance of parties in Quebec to counter the Parti Québécois.

“We have a federalist government in Quebec City, and we have an official opposition that doesn’t want a referendum,” Mr. Harper told reporters. “So obviously we will look forward to working with the government of Quebec.”

    Immigrants Reject Quebec’s Separatists, NYT, 20.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/20/world/americas/20canada.html

Canada Rejects Afghan Exit Date

April 25, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:04 a.m. ET
The New York Times

TORONTO (AP) -- Canada's Parliament on Tuesday narrowly defeated a motion calling for the country to pull its 2,500 troops out of the NATO alliance fighting in Afghanistan by 2009.

The motion, which would have been nonbinding, was brought by Liberal opposition lawmakers who have been pushing for a troop withdrawal as the Canadian death toll has steadily mounted. Fifty-four Canadian soldiers and one diplomat have been killed thus far in Afghanistan.

The motion was aimed at guaranteeing the combat mission wouldn't be extended beyond the current commitment, which is scheduled to end in February 2009.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservative government opposed it because the administration refuses to be tied to a firm exit date. The motion was defeated 150-134.

The Conservatives were joined in defeating the motion by the New Democrats, who want Canadian soldiers to immediately cease combat duty in the increasingly violent Kandahar province.

Liberal Leader Stephane Dion said both positions are irresponsible.

He said Harper wants to keep Canada involved in ''an open-ended war'' that could drag on for years. By 2009, Dion said, the troops will have been fighting in Kandahar for four years, amounting to ''the longest combat mission'' in recent Canadian history. He said it will be time at that point for other NATO partners to take up the battle against Taliban insurgents.

The former ruling Liberal party made the original decision to send troops into Afghanistan after deciding against sending them to Iraq.

The vote came two weeks after eight Canadian soldiers were killed in Afghanistan on Easter weekend.

Canadians have become increasingly concerned about the human death toll in Afghanistan, especially with Canadian troops fighting alongside Afghan, American and British forces in the most violent areas in the south. Other NATO-contributing countries, such as Germany, France and Italy, restrict the use of their forces to relatively peaceful areas of the north.

Earlier Tuesday, Harper said Canada will not stop handing over Taliban prisoners captured by Canadian troops to Afghan police despite allegations of abuse made by detainees in interviews with Toronto's Globe and Mail newspaper.

On Monday, the newspaper reported that dozens of detainees said they had been choked, starved and given electric shocks by Afghan police after being turned over by Canadian soldiers.

Harper said the allegations by Taliban suspects should not be accepted at face value. However, he has said that Canada would investigate the allegations.

Canada signed an agreement with Afghanistan in 2005 that commits Canadian soldiers to hand over captured Taliban prisoners to local authorities. It has been criticized by human rights groups because it does not give Canada the right to check on the condition of prisoners it has detained.

In an effort to address those concerns, the Canadian army signed a deal with the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission in February that obliged the agency to notify Canada if its prisoners had been abused. No reports of abuse have been received by the rights commission.

Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day said Tuesday that Canada would urge the Afghan government to ensure human rights are respected, including in its prisons. Day noted that human rights in Afghanistan, especially for prisoners, is ''a new concept'' that must become common practice.

''It's not going as quickly as we would like, but we see some progress,'' Day said.

Canada Rejects Afghan Exit Date, NYT, 25.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Canada-Afghanistan.html

Editorial

Canada’s Move to Restore Rights

February 27, 2007
The New York Times

The United States was not the only country to respond to the horror of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks with policies that went much too far in curtailing basic rights and civil liberties in the name of public safety. Now we see that a nation can regain its senses after calm reflection and begin to rein back such excesses, but that heartening news comes from Canada and not the United States.

Canada’s Supreme Court has struck down a law that the government used to detain foreign-born terrorism suspects indefinitely — employing secret evidence and not filing charges — while orders to deport them were reviewed. The law was actually passed in 1978, but was primarily employed to detain and deport foreign spies. After the 2001 attacks, the Canadian government began using it aggressively to hold terrorism suspects, claiming that it was an important tool for keeping Canada safe.

That is just the sort of argument the Bush administration used to ram the excesses of the Patriot Act and the 2006 Military Commissions Act through Congress, and offered as an excuse for other abusive policies, like President Bush’s illegal wiretapping of international calls and e-mail.

The Canadian justices rejected their government’s specious national security claim with a forceful 9-to-0 ruling that upheld every person’s right to fair treatment. “The overarching principle of fundamental justice that applies here is this: before the state can detain people for significant periods of time, it must accord them a fair judicial process,” Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin wrote.

The contrast with the United States could not be more disturbing. The Canadian court ruling came just days after a federal appeals court in Washington ruled that Congress could deny inmates of the Guantánamo Bay detention camp the ancient right to challenge their confinement in court. The 2006 military tribunals law revoked that right for a select group who had been designated “illegal enemy combatants” without a semblance of judicial process.

In late January, Canada created another unflattering contrast with United States policy when it offered a formal apology and financial compensation to Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen who was a victim of Mr. Bush’s decision to approve open-ended detentions, summary deportations and even torture after 9/11. Mr. Arar was detained in the United States and deported to Syria, where he was held for nearly a year and tortured.

Instead of apologizing to Mr. Arar, who was cleared of any connection to terrorism by a Canadian investigatory panel, Justice Department lawyers are fighting a lawsuit he has brought in this country, using their usual flimsy claim of state secrets. The Bush administration still refuses to remove Mr. Arar from its terrorist watch list.

The United States Supreme Court has ruled twice in favor of Guantánamo detainees on statutory grounds, but it has yet to address the profound constitutional issues presented by American practices, including the abuses Congress authorized when it passed the Military Commissions Act. Such a showdown does not seem far off, but Congress also has a duty to revoke or rewrite the laws that have been abused in the name of national security, starting with the 2006 tribunals law.

Lawmakers have only to look to the Canadian court for easy-to-follow directions back to the high ground on basic human rights and civil liberties.

    Canada’s Move to Restore Rights, NYT, 27.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/27/opinion/27tue1.html

Canadian Court Limits

Detention in Terror Cases

February 24, 2007
The New York Times
By IAN AUSTEN

OTTAWA, Feb. 23 — Canada’s highest court on Friday unanimously struck down a law that allows the Canadian government to detain foreign-born terrorism suspects indefinitely using secret evidence and without charges while their deportations are being reviewed.

The detention measure, the security certificate system, has been described by government lawyers as an important tool for combating international terrorism and maintaining Canada’s domestic security. Six men are now under threat of deportation without an open hearing under the certificates.

“The overarching principle of fundamental justice that applies here is this: before the state can detain people for significant periods of time, it must accord them a fair judicial process,” Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin wrote in the ruling.

The three men who brought the case are likely to remain jailed or under strict parole because the court suspended its decision for a year to allow Parliament to introduce a law consistent with the ruling.

The decision reflected striking differences from the current legal climate in the United States. In the Military Commissions Act of 2006, Congress stripped the federal courts of authority to hear challenges, through petitions for writs of habeas corpus, to the open-ended confinement of foreign terrorism suspects at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

A federal appeals court in Washington upheld the constitutionality of that law this week, dismissing 13 cases brought on behalf of 63 Guantánamo detainees. Their lawyers said they would file an appeal with the Supreme Court. In two earlier decisions, the justices ruled in favor of Guantánamo detainees on statutory grounds but did not address the deeper constitutional issues that this case appears to present.

At a news conference in Montreal, a defendant, Adil Charkaoui, praised the Canadian court’s decision.

“The Supreme Court, by 9 to 0, has said no to Guantánamo North in Canada,” said Mr. Charkaoui, who is under tightly controlled, electronically monitored house arrest.

Stockwell Day, the Canadian minister of public safety, said Friday, “It is our intention to follow the Supreme Court ruling.”

He added, “We are taking in stride what they did say and we will look at the changes that are necessary.”

The decision is also the latest in a series of events that has seen Canada reconsider some national security steps it took after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Last September, a judicial inquiry rebuked the police for falsely accusing a Syrian-born Canadian, Maher Arar, of terrorist connections. Those accusations, in 2002, led United States officials to fly Mr. Arar to Syria, where he was jailed and tortured. Earlier this year, the Canadian government reached a $9.75 million settlement with Mr. Arar and offered a formal apology. The commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police also resigned for reasons related to the affair.

Canada’s Parliament is divided over whether to continue two antiterrorism measures introduced in 2001 that are set to expire on March 1. The opposition Liberal Party, which had brought in the law, does not want to continue its special preventive arrest powers or the secret court hearings it permits, which resemble grand jury hearings in the United States. Two other portions of that law have been struck down by courts in Ontario.

“We’ve started to see the rollback,” said Alex Neve, the secretary general of Amnesty International Canada. “Today the Supreme Court of Canada has said, ‘Make sure you put human rights at the center of how you prevent terrorism.’ ”

The security certificate system was introduced in a 1978 immigration law and has been used 27 times, mostly before September 2001. It allows the government to detain people indefinitely if the minister of public safety and the minister of immigration conclude that they are a threat to national security. The certificates, once signed, are reviewed by a federal judge who can rule to keep any or all of the evidence secret.

While Amnesty International and other groups have long campaigned against the certificates, the issue attracted relatively little attention for many years. Historically the certificates were issued against people who were accused of spying in Canada and who were swiftly deported.

The current cases, however, have become more prominent because they generally involve people who have been jailed for years without charges, using secret evidence and, in many cases, without bail.

The sparseness of evidence makes it difficult to assess if there is any connection linking the men. The authorities say they have tied five of them in various ways to Al Qaeda. A sixth was arrested in 1995 and has been out on bail since 1998. He is charged with being a fund-raiser for the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka.

Hassan Almrei, a Syrian arrested in Mississauga, Ontario, in 2001, is the only one directly involved in this case who remains in jail.

A document from the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service charges that Mr. Almrei, who entered Canada on false papers in 1999, forged documents for the Sept. 11 attacks and is a member of “an international network of extremist groups and individuals who follow and support the Islamic extremist ideals espoused by Osama bin Laden.” He was also accused of sending money to Mr. bin Laden’s network through a honey and perfume business he ran in Saudi Arabia. The government said that a computer belonging to Mr. Almrei contained images of Mr. bin Laden, guns, a jet cockpit and a security badge.

Like most of the other suspects, Mr. Almrei remains under a certificate because the government’s efforts to deport him to Syria conflict with Canadian laws that ban sending people to places where they are likely to be tortured.

Based on the limited information available, other security certificate cases appear to be circumstantial. Mr. Charkaoui, a Moroccan who was arrested in 2002 and released on house arrest in 2005, is accused of having trained in Afghanistan.

“I am innocent,” he said Friday. “I was never charged, I was never accused of a crime. If the government has anything to accuse me of, well, there’s the criminal code.”

Much of the judgment provides a blueprint for Parliament on how to make security certificates fit with Canada’s charter of rights and freedoms. As part of that, one of the court’s suggestions seems to be adopted from Britain, whose legal system provided the basis of Canada’s. After the House of Lords struck down a similar law in 2004, Britain adopted a system that allows security-cleared lawyers to attend the hearings, review the evidence and represent the accused.

A provision of the ruling that is effective immediately requires people held under certificates to receive a bail hearing within 48 hours.

For terrorism suspects in the United States, whose situation is most directly analogous to that of the men in Canada, the legal situation is cloudy at best. In the two years after Sept. 11, 2001, the government detained more than 5,000 foreign citizens.

Most were charged with offenses no more serious than overstaying a tourist visa, and many were held for months, awaiting clearance by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, after they had agreed to leave the country. Not one was convicted of a crime of terrorism.

Judge John Gleeson of Federal District Court in Brooklyn ruled last June on a class-action lawsuit brought by eight detainees. All have left the country and are seeking damages for what they argued was an illegitimate incarceration. Judge Gleeson dismissed that portion of the lawsuit, ruling that the courts should not “encroach on the executive branch in a realm where it has particular expertise” and “legitimate foreign policy considerations.”

Even if the plaintiffs could demonstrate that their right to constitutional due process was violated, Judge Gleeson wrote, the officials they sued would be entitled to immunity because any right to “immediate or prompt removal” had not been “clearly established” at the time. The case, Turkmen v. Gonzales, is now on appeal.

Dalia Hashad, the United States program director for Amnesty International, said the Canadian decision should serve as “a wake-up call that reminds us that civilized people follow a simple and basic rule of law, that indefinite detention is under no circumstances acceptable.”

Linda Greenhouse contributed reporting from Washington, and Christopher Mason from Ottawa.

    Canadian Court Limits Detention in Terror Cases, NYT, 24.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/24/world/americas/24ottawa.html

Pig farmer accused

of killing 26 women in Canada

goes to trial

Updated 1/22/2007

9:08 PM ET

USA Today

NEW WESTMINSTER, British Columbia (AP) — Years after their loved ones disappeared from the seedy streets of Vancouver's red-light district, families learned some of the gruesome details of how the women allegedly were killed.

Some relatives fled the courtroom; others stayed, but sat in tears as prosecutors detailed the case against Robert Pickton.

Pickton, a 56-year-old pig farmer, showed no emotion during Monday's session. Clean-shaven with a bald crown and shoulder-length hair, he sat in a specially built defendant's box surrounded by bulletproof glass.

Arrested five years ago, Pickton has been charged with killing 26 women and has pleaded not guilty to the six counts covered in the first trial. The other 20 counts will be heard at a later trial.

Prosecutor Derrill Prevett stunned the courtroom by saying Pickton told investigators, including an undercover officer planted in his jail cell, that he had slain 49 women.

"I was going to do one more and make it an even 50," Prevett quoted Pickton as telling investigators. "I made my own grave by being sloppy."

Pickton told one officer that he would be "nailed to the cross" and went on to describe himself as a mass murderer who deserved to be on death row, Prevett said.

Defense lawyer Peter Ritchie told jurors that Pickton did not kill or participate in the murders of the six women covered in the first trial. If convicted, Pickton faces life in prison. Canada abolished the death penalty in 1976.

Ritchie asked the jury to pay close attention to Pickton's demeanor in the videotapes with his interrogators, in particular his level of sophistication. He asked the jury to listen closely to details regarding Pickton's relationship with his brother, David.

The brothers reared pigs on the family's 17-acre farm outside Vancouver, where investigators say the Picktons threw drunken raves with prostitutes and drugs. After Robert Pickton's arrest in February 2002, health officials issued a tainted meat advisory to neighbors who may have bought pork from his farm, concerned that it may have contained human remains.

Ritchie did not address Pickton's alleged murder confessions in his opening statement.

"This case will unfold slowly; this case is complicated," he said.

Before opening arguments, British Columbia Supreme Court Justice James Williams warned the seven male and five female jurors that some of the evidence and witness testimony would be horrific.

"Some of the evidence to which you will be exposed to during the trial will be shocking and is likely to be upsetting. I must ask each of you to deal with that the best you can," he said.

As some of the initial details were described later, some relatives of the victims to cried and left the courtroom. Some family members of victim Marnie Frey fled when prosecutors said the jawbone and several teeth later identified as hers were discovered on the farm. Her brother, Rick Frey, remained, but sat in tears.

Prevett said the government would prove that Pickton murdered six women, butchered their remains and then disposed of them. He told the jury that as a successful pig farmer, Pickton had the expertise, equipment and means to dispose of the victims' remains.

When police first went out to investigate at the farm in 2002, they found two skulls in a bucket inside a freezer in Pickton's mobile home, Prevett said.

DNA testing would later identify the skulls as those belonging to Sereena Abotsway and Andrea Joesbury, two missing sex-workers. The other four women covered in the trial are Mona Wilson, Brenda Wolfe, Georgina Papin and Frey. They were among hundreds of sex-trade workers and drug addicts who disappeared from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside neighborhood in the 1990s.

"The heads of the individuals had been cut in two, vertically," Prevett said. "With the skulls were left and right hands and the front parts of the left and right feet."

He said both skulls had bullet wounds caused by 22-caliber bullets. He said investigators found a Smith & Wesson rifle on a shelf in the laundry room of Pickton's mobile home.

Prevett said the rifle was sheathed in plastic and a sex toy was attached to the end. The combined DNA of Pickton and another victim, Wilson, were found on the sex toy, he said.

The prosecution is expected to call about 240 witnesses, including relatives of the victims.

If found guilty of more than 14 charges, Pickton would become the worst convicted killer in Canadian history, after Marc Lepine, who gunned down 14 women at the Ecole Polytechnic in Montreal in 1989 before shooting himself.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Vancouver police have come under intense criticism by community activists and advocates for sex trade workers who claim authorities were slow to search for the missing women. Authorities countered that their resources were limited and the magnitude of the case overwhelming.

A police task force says it has located at least 102 women who were believed to be missing. Another 67 women remain on the list, as well as three unidentified DNA profiles from the Pickton farm.

Frey's mother, Lynn, was lined up with other relatives outside the courthouse early Monday, hoping to get one of the 35 seats reserved for family members of the victims.

"It's been a long haul," she told The Associated Press. Her daughter was 25 when she disappeared in August 1997. "I need answers, then hopefully I can carry on with my journey and my life, and let Marnie be at rest."

    Pig farmer accused of killing 26 women in Canada goes to trial, UT, 22.1.2007,
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2007-01-22-canada-trial_x.htm

Spectators gather

at Canadian serial killer trial

Mon Jan 22, 2007 12:19 PM ET
Reuters
By Allan Dowd

NEW WESTMINSTER, British Columbia (Reuters) - Heavy security and a throng of media gathered at a Canadian court on Monday awaiting the start of the trial of Robert "Willie" Pickton, a pig farmer who is accused of being Canada's deadliest serial killer.

The start of trial is expected to give a glimpse of what the judge has warned is horrific evidence, and of how Pickton's lawyers plan to defend him.

Pickton is charged with killing 26 women, although this trial will deal with just six of the murder charges. The judge divided the case into two trials to make it easier for jurors to handle.

Two-and-a-half hours before the trial was supposed to start in New Westminster, British Columbia, on Canada's Pacific Coast, about a dozen media personnel as well as some members of general public were lined up outside the court.

One, a woman in her 50s clutching knitting material, said she had never been to a trial before and just wanted to see what it would be like. Asked by a Reuters reporter if she was prepared to hear graphic material, the woman, who declined to give her name, said: "I don't think it is going to be pleasant."

The women Pickton is accused of killing were among more than 60 prostitutes who disappeared from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside - one of Canada's poorest neighborhoods - from the late 1980s until late 2001.

Pickton, 57, has pleaded not guilty to murder. He is the only person charged in the case.

Although he has had numerous pretrial hearings since his arrest in February 2002, his lawyers have not said publicly what strategy they plan to pursue in his defense.

Because the trial is expected to last at least a year, the judge has agreed to allow the defense to make a brief statement after the prosecutors make their opening remarks to the jury.

The trial is expected to last for so long because of the large volume of scientific evidence collected during the nearly 18 months' search of Pickton's 10-acre property, about a 30-minute drive from the Downtown Eastside.

Police initially raided his ramshackle farm in the Vancouver suburb of Port Coquitlam looking for an illegal gun, but the case quickly became a homicide investigation and murder counts were added over the next three years.

The trial will likely raise questions over how police handled the investigation. Activists first raised alarms about missing women in 1991, but a formal task force was not launched until 1999 and it had to be reorganized after stalling.

Police say the case was more difficult than other serial killing investigations because the women disappeared without a trace. Some victims were not reported missing until months or years after they disappeared.

The DNA of at least 31 of Vancouver's missing women was found on Pickton's farm, according to police.

Pickton had been arrested in 1997 for the assault of a Downtown East side prostitute at the Port Coquitlam farm, but the charge was later dropped.

The second trial on the remaining 20 murder charges facing Pickton will begin once the first trial is completed. If convicted he faces life in prison. Canada does not have a death penalty.

    Spectators gather at Canadian serial killer trial, R, 22.1.2007, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2007-01-22T171821Z_01_N22406556_RTRUKOC_0_US-KILLINGS.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C5-worldNews-8

Alleged Canada Serial Killer

Faces Trial

January 22, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 4:03 a.m. ET
The New York Times

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (AP) -- The trial of a pig farmer accused of murdering 26 women -- mostly prostitutes and drug addicts -- begins Monday, in what is one of Canada's most anticipated trials ever.

A judge warned jurors to expect testimony ''as bad as a horror movie'' during the trial of Robert William Pickton, 56, charged with murdering the women, most of whom vanished from Vancouver's impoverished Downtown Eastside neighborhood in the 1990s.

Pickton has pleaded not-guilty to six first-degree murder charges in his first trial, which is expected to last at least one year. British Columbia Supreme Court Justice James Williams, who is presiding over the case, ruled that the other charges will be heard in a later trial so as not to overburden the jury.

Evidence presented in more than a year of preliminary hearings, which has been under a publication ban, has been so gruesome that some reporters have sought psychological counseling.

Under the ban, details of the case have remained off limits to the print and broadcast media. Williams ruled earlier this week, however, that the ban on courtroom testimony would be lifted on Monday since neither the defense nor prosecution has expressed any objection.

If convicted on more than 14 charges, Pickton would become the worst serial killer in Canadian history, after Marc Lepine, who gunned down 14 women at the Ecole Polytechnic in Montreal in 1989 before shooting himself.

Pickton was arrested in February 2002 and has been in custody since then. It is believed he lured women to his family's 17-acre pig farm outside Vancouver in Port Coquitlam.

Sarah de Vries is among the women in the second set of murder charges against Pickton. A 1995 entry in her diary revealed the prostitute was aware of the dangers she faced working the streets of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

''Am I next?'' she wrote. ''Is he watching me now? Is he stalking me like a predator and his prey? Waiting, waiting for some perfect spot, time or my stupid mistake.''

After Pickton was arrested and the first traces of DNA of some missing women were allegedly found on the farm, the buildings were razed and the province spent an estimated $61 million to sift through acres of soil at the farm.

Health officials then issued a tainted-meat advisory to neighbors who may have bought pork from the Pickton farm, concerned the meat may have contained human remains.

This is not the first time Pickton has appeared before a judge. He was charged with attempted murder and unlawful confinement in 1997 in the case of sex-worker Wendy Lynn Eistetter. She claimed she had been handcuffed and attacked at the farm, but Pickton countered he acted in self defense and for reasons that remain unclear, the charges were dropped.

In a departure from the usual procedure in Canadian criminal trials, the defense and the prosecution will be given 15 minutes to make opening statements outlining their strategies.

The prosecution is expected to call about 240 witnesses.

The case will be heard in a cramped, 35-seat courtroom in the Vancouver suburb of New Westminster. A special media room has been constructed with closed circuit TV into the courtroom for the dozens of reporters who won't be able to get seats.

Pickton sat for pretrial hearings in a specially built defendant's box surrounded by bulletproof glass. Clean-shaven with a bald crown and shoulder-length hair, he has occasionally chuckled to himself or scribbled in a notebook.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Vancouver Police Department have come under intense criticism by community activists and advocates for sex-trade workers who claim authorities were slow to search for the missing women.

Authorities countered that their resources were limited and the magnitude of the case overwhelming.

A police task force says it has located at least 102 women who were believed to be missing. Another 67 women remain on the list, as well as three unidentified DNA profiles from the Pickton farm.

------

On the Web:

Site devoted to the missing women: www.missingpeople.net

RCMP missing women joint task force: http://www.rcmp-bcmedia.ca/missing--women.jsp 

Alleged Canada Serial Killer Faces Trial, NYT, 22.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Canada-Serial-Killer.html