It’s time to bury Dudley George

The current brouhaha over the non-scandal involving OPP Commissioner Julian Fantino breaking up a roadblock is a textbook example of how Canada’s loonie leftists will tie themselves into pretzels in efforts to vilify the cops and side with one of the nation’s sacred aggrieved. The alleged “breach of the law” that, according to the likes of John Sewell, Fantino is guilty of involves some wiretaps that took place during last summer’s “day of protest” at the Deseronto Mohawk Reserve.

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The Mohawks, led by activist Shawn Brant, had blocked off Highway 401 and the two rail lines between Toronto and Kingston. OPP Commissioner Fantino became personally involved when he called Brant and verbally browbeat him into taking down the blockade. In the process of clearing the roadblocks, the OPP engaged in tapping the phones of Brant and some of his associates, including his brother without (gasp) obtaining a court order. As a result the usual suspects aided by the likes of the CBC and Brant’s lawyer are calling for Fantino’s head. So let’s see if I have this right: The Mohawks seized a provincial highway and a national railroad, publicly threatened the cops with a bloodbath if they tried to break the blockade and bragged about the number of armed braves at their disposal and the whackos want to see Fantino fired because he didn’t get a court order to tap the Mohawks’ telephones?! It’s not like what the OPP did is actually against the law, which is quite clear in allowing the police preemptive powers to tap telephones without a judge’s say-so if the police are of the opinion that there is danger of imminent violence and taking the time to get a court order may take too long to forestall it. But hey, that isn’t enough for John Sewell who insists that the cops “should have been obeying the law”. The CBC and all the other yapping media hyenas are in complete agreement and are calling for the commissioner’s head on a platter. Feeding the flames of this tidy little bonfire is Shawn Brant himself, who claims that the things Fantino said to him were “aggressive, provocative and hurtful”. Brant, who is the visual embodiment of what I’ve always thought a sleaze dog would look like, doesn’t appear to think that he and his pals did anything wrong by blocking off the main east-west arteries in that part of the country and threatening the cops with mayhem. Indeed, he feels hard done by in that Fantino told him that there “would be grave consequences” to the Mohawks’ actions. Brant’s lawyer, Peter Rosenthal indicated that he believed the term “grave consequences” was a death threat. One finds it hard to imagine that a lawyer would be ignorant of the fact that the term “grave” could have at least five different and varied meanings. But in the interest of ratcheting up a bored media’s hysteria, Rosenthal chose to see it as a noun and invoked the ghost of Dudley George, rather than the adjective that Fantino intended. There’s obviously a clear double standard at work here. Aboriginals can damn near do anything they want up to and including violent breaches of the law repeatedly, as the residents of Caledonia will swear to, and nobody seems to be overly concerned. Of course the reason for this is Dudley George, the native protester that was shot and killed by OPP during a similar altercation at Ipperwash. Ever since George was shot to death in the mistaken belief that he was brandishing a gun, Ontario’s Liberal government and the OPP have given native protesters a ‘get out of jail free’ card and have basically failed to enforce the law. This failure to enforce the law has even extended to the enforcement of a court order that natives stop the occupation of disputed lands in Caledonia. It’s time that Dalton McGuinty buried Dudley George and instructed police to treat native protesters the same as he would have the OPP treat any other protesters. Until that happens injustice and mob rule will continue to be the order of the day.