Gap in credibility
Walgreens is the largest pharmacy chain in the U.S.
It's also corrupt.
For years, they secretly altered their customers' prescriptions, without their doctor's knowledge, in a giant insurance scam across 42 states. They targeted Medicaid, the program for low-income Americans. So they were stealing from taxpayers and the poor at the same time. That kind of big thinking is why Walgreens is number one.
Walgreens replaced inexpensive drugs with drugs that were up to four times more costly. Only when an honest pharmacist finally blew the whistle on them were they stopped -- and fined a whopping $35 million.
Are you ready to take moral lessons from Walgreens? Because they've just announced that they're switching their trucks to fuel that doesn't come from Canada's oilsands -- as an ethical statement.
Taking ethical guidance from Walgreens is sort of like taking abstinence lessons from Hugh Hefner.
I'd call for a boycott of Walgreens, but they don't have any stores in Canada (and, despite their name, they are no relation to Walmart).
But Walgreens isn't the only moral hypocrite to come out against Canada. So did The Gap, which also owns Banana Republic and Old Navy.
Do yourself a favour: Don't buy their clothes.
This applies especially to Albertans, whose jobs depend on the oilsands. There are 26 Gaps, Old Navys and Banana Republics in Alberta. Boycott them.
But it goes for Ontarians, too, where more people work for the oilsands now than work for the Big Three automakers combined.
And it goes for anyone with a pension -- odds are some of your savings are invested in the oilsands. The Gap could hurt your retirement. So hurt them back.
Not just because they are boycotting Canadian oil. But because they've had their own ethical failings, too.
In 2008, a shocking TV report out of India showed children as young as 10 working in sweatshops sewing clothes for The Gap. One child had been sold to the factory as a slave, and had not been paid in four months.
Sorta gives "Baby Gap" a new meaning, doesn't it? Banana Republic isn't just a brand name, it's the location of their factories.
The Gap claims they were shocked to learn about this. Just like they were shocked a few years earlier to learn their factory in Saipan kept indentured workers in with barbed wire, and bullied pregnant workers into having abortions, so as not to lose time off work.
They're shocked a lot over at The Gap.
And now they say they're shocked by Canada's oil.
But Canada's oil isn't produced by 10-year-old kids or abused Chinese women.
Yet we're supposed to take moral lessons from the likes of them.
There is a question the fools at Walgreens and The Gap haven't answered: Where are they going to buy their gas from, if not Canada?
Saudi Arabia? Could there be a more unethical barrel of oil than one from that racist, misogynistic, terror-sponsoring dictatorship? Venezuela, to enrich strongman Hugo Chavez? Iran, with its nuclear plans?
We should boycott The Gap because they're thumbing their nose at us. And because they have used what looks an awful lot like slave labour.
But we should also boycott them because they're making an unethical fuel decision: Swapping Canadian oil for Saudi or Venezuelan oil.
How could you in good conscience give money to someone like that?
Australia's a lot closer to Sri Lanka than we are. How does their socialist government handle Tamil boat people? Here's my new Sun column on the subject:
No refuge Down Under
Here’s a warning for bogus Tamil refugees made by the Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, just before she called an election last month:
“Do not pay a people smuggler, do not risk your life, only to arrive in Australian waters and find that you are far, far more likely than anything else to be quickly sent home by plane.”
Gillard does more than just talk tough to Tamil gatecrashers.
Australia is now in negotiations with East Timor, New Zealand and the United Nations about setting up a “regional processing centre” where intercepted ships will be taken.
“Arriving by boat would just be a ticket back to the regional processing centre,” warned Gillard.
Right now, refugee applicants are processed on a remote Australian island called Christmas Island, where they’re held until their cases are heard.
Gillard wants to go one better — outsource the job to other countries. Why not?
Her plan is pretty simple. If someone’s refugee claim was rejected, they’d be sent home. And if a refugee claim were found to be legitimate, that refugee would be resettled — but in a safe third country, not necessarily in Australia.
There are plenty of friendly countries in the neighbourhood where Tamils don’t have to worry about being picked on, as they claim they are in Sri Lanka.
Australia would pay those countries to resettle Tamils — a lot cheaper than giving them five-star treatment in Australia. They’ll take some, sure. But they’ll choose which ones.
Australia is serious about stopping bogus immigrants. Which makes sense for a big island just a short boat trip from China, India and Indonesia.
Australia has produced videos in languages such as Tamil and Arabic, warning fake refugees from around the world not to risk their lives — and waste their money — paying criminals to smuggle them ashore. Check out the videos yourself at youtube.com/NoToPeopleSmuggling on the Internet.
Oh, by the way: Gillard is with the Labour Party — they’re the soft-on-immigration party.
Other than immigration lawyers, who could complain about Australia’s approach? Surely not true refugees. They will be resettled somewhere they won’t be hurt — just not necessarily in Australia. And that’s what these Tamils claim they want — just to get away from Sri Lanka. Beggars can’t be choosers.
Bogus refugees — that is, the liars — will be sent back to where they came from.
News reports from British Columbia put the cost, so far, of handling Canada’s 492 Tamil gatecrashers at $22 million — covering everything from free telephone calls back to Sri Lanka to free lawyers to free dental care.
Taxpaying, law-abiding Canadian citizens don’t even get free dental care, in case you’d forgotten.
These Tamils have been ashore for two weeks and they’ve already cost us $22 million. That’s $45,000 each — and that’s before they sign up for welfare, child benefits and all other social services they’re legally entitled to, for the years it takes until they’re processed.
Who among us wouldn’t rather give a country like India or Thailand $20,000 a head to resettle genuine Tamil refugees there? And as to the fake refugees, even a $1,000 plane ticket to ship them straight home is a bargain. Right now they’re each costing us more than $1,000 a day in Canada.
The fact is, if we followed the Australian plan, once word got out that Canada wasn’t the world’s sucker anymore, there wouldn’t be that many gatecrashing boats to deal with. There would be no point in paying a smuggler to make the long journey to Canada if you knew you’d never get to set foot in Canada — you’d be taken to an offshore processing centre, and, at best, wind up in a third country.
Like Canada, Australia is a friendly, generous country built by settlers. They love their neighbours and are quick to help, like they did after the 2004 tsunami.
But they know the difference between giving something and having something stolen. Even Australia’s left-wing party knows it, which tells you how bad things are.
Usually I write my columns based on news reports that are in the public domain already. But for today's column, I did a fair bit of reporting myself, calling most of the people involved in the story. That included a call to the most belligerent bylaw officer I could imagine, in the town of Clarington, Ontario. He positively boasted to me on the phone about what he had done to the Jaworski family, and what he was planning to do to them still. It was shocking -- and a symptom of a government that no longer sees itself as a servant of the people, or even a policeman to the people, but as an antagonist of the people. The citizens are not the boss in the mind of this man; they are the enemy. He seemed to have a personal mission to harass the Jaworskis using every tool in his large book of laws.
Embarrassing; enraging; frightening. Here's my column:
Bureaucrats leaving a sour taste
One of the few thrills of working as a bylaw enforcement officer is making people cry.
When you’re not allowed to carry a gun like a real cop, you have to make do with the simple pleasures.
Last month, seven-year-old Julie Murphy was made to cry by two bylaw officers when she set up a lemonade stand without a $120 US “temporary restaurant licence” at a street fair in Portland, Ore. Not one, but two bureaucrats were dispatched to stop that menace — and threaten her with a $500 fine. She left the fair in tears.
Only after a public outcry did politicians drop the charges — but not without first insisting they had every legal right to prosecute the seven-year-old. She had broken the law; it was only their mercy that would spare her.
That same bureaucratic spirit — meanness; blind adherence to the letter of the law; a disconnect with reality; all done with a hostility to private enterprise — is now on display in the municipality of Clarington, east of Toronto.
It’s not a lemonade crime wave that the brave city elders of Clarington are combating. It’s the menace of backyard barbecues.
Peter Jaworski has been holding backyard barbecues at his parents’ property there for 10 years. It’s a house in the country on 40 secluded acres. Once a year, Peter invites a few dozen of his friends to spend the weekend eating his mom’s cooking and camping next to the swimming hole. I’ve been there: it’s one part family reunion, one part picnic and one part political talk.
So clearly, the Jaworski family must be stopped.
First came the health department. They poked and prodded, and even took water samples. No one has ever got sick at a Jaworski barbecue — the opposite; everyone comes for the food — but the government ordered that no home cooking would be allowed. The Jaworskis complied with these costly and ridiculous demands, catering the whole weekend and serving only bottled water, at great cost.
But bureaucrats travel in packs. A local bylaw enforcement officer waited until the barbecue itself, and marched right onto the property — no search warrant needed! — and started peppering the guests with questions.
He wasn’t a health officer; he was a bylaw officer. Yet he demanded to know what the guests had for lunch. In the name of the law!
Armed with this devastating information, the officer charged Peter’s parents with running an illegal “commercial conference centre,” which carries a fine of up to $50,000. The officer, a burly, tattooed, six-foot-something man, told Peter’s mom to “be very careful.” She burst into tears.
I phoned that bylaw officer to ask him about the Jaworskis. I found a man on a mission, boasting to me that his next step would be to take down the street sign for the family’s small bed and breakfast.
He was particularly pleased that he could do that without issuing a summons, or even receiving a complaint. When he sensed my sympathy for the Jaworskis, he hung up on me.
The Jaworski family has dealt with bigger bullies before.
They were democracy activists who fled communist Poland in 1984. Unlike in Poland, they’ll have a free press and fair courts to help them now.
But freedom isn’t free; their fight against red tape bullies will likely cost them just as much as the $50,000 fine would.
Clarington should be ashamed.
P.S. If you want to learn more about the Jaworskis, or chip in to their legal defence fund, visit their website, here.
Here's my new Sun Media column on massive refugee fraud in Canada:
Tamils playing us for fools
How bad is life back in Sri Lanka for Tamil refugees?
Are they tortured? Do they have a well-founded fear of persecution?
Are things so bloody bad over there that we have to let a boatload of them into Canada, just because they showed up?
That’s what we’re told by immigration lawyers, bleeding heart politicians and fashionable journalists who don’t believe Canada should have any borders at all.
But what about actual Tamil refugees here in Canada? How bad do they think life is back home?
As QMI’s investigative report shows, 71% of Tamil refugees here in Canada think things back in Sri Lanka are good enough that they’ve gone back home for a vacation.
Canadian immigration officials randomly surveyed 50 Tamils already here, who are trying to “sponsor” more people to come over, too. Of those would-be sponsors, 31 are refugees. And 22 of those admit to going back to Sri Lanka.
That would be like Jews who fled Nazi Germany deciding to go back to Berlin to hear the opera. Sorry, it just doesn’t add up.
The Tamils are playing us for fools. They’re not genuine refugees. Genuine refugees don’t go back to a country that’s persecuting them.
The benign interpretation is that they went back for a vacation. But there’s the real possibility that some went back to help the Tamil Tiger terrorist group wage its war against Sri Lanka.
The no-borders left has argued that because Canada accepted 85% of Tamil refugee claims last year, that’s “proof” Sri Lanka is a bad place.
But that high number doesn’t tell us anything about Sri Lanka, a place that the UN High Commissioner on Refugees says is so much improved that no country in the world should assume that Tamils are refugees.
No, what that 85% number tells us is that our Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB), the independent judges who are supposed to screen out bogus refugees, is totally broken.
The IRB judges are letting almost all the Tamils in. And many of those they reject stay here anyway. According to Sheila Fraser, the auditor general, 63,000 would-be refugees who have been ordered deported from Canada are still here, and the government has lost track of where 41,000 of them are.
The 85% acceptance figure was suspicious enough, based on the UN’s comments. But now that we know 71% of Tamil refugees travel back and forth to Sri Lanka, it’s more than a scandal. It’s wholesale fraud.
If Jason Kenney, the immigration minister, was responsible for that 85% acceptance rate, and the 71% fraud rate, the opposition would rightfully call on him to resign. But it’s the IRB judges, not Kenney, who make the decisions.
Brian Goodman is the chair of the IRB. It’s his job to make sure his judges are competent and skeptical. At least one of those components is obviously missing. Goodman must go.
But that’s just the start. The only way to restore confidence in the system — and respect for the value of Canadian citizenship — is to have an audit of every Tamil refugee to see if they, too, took vacations back to Sri Lanka, after swearing they were terrified to be there. Those who went back should be denaturalized — stripped of their immigration status and deported immediately.
***
In my last column I erroneously stated that the 1985 Supreme Court immigration ruling called Singh v. Minister of Employment and Immigration was decided on a three-three tie. That’s incorrect — all six judges gave foreigners Charter rights to sue their way into Canada. The judges split 3-3 on their reasoning, but they all supported it.
Question: Do you think those six judges, 25 years ago, could foresee the refugee gong show in 2010? The Singh decision is a straitjacket stopping Canada from defending our borders and our laws.
Their obsolete ruling needs to be suspended, using the notwithstanding clause of our Charter.
Lawyers and politicians would hate that. Good.
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