Eideard

There were no burning effigies, no chanted slogans, and not even a single shoe was thrown.

George W. Bush’s typical welcome wagon was missing in action when the controversial former U.S. president quietly visited Toronto Monday for an unpublicized and private speaking event.

“We had no protests,” confirmed Michael Miller, a spokesman for Northbridge Financial Corp., which jointly presented the event with its parent company, Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd.

Fairfax CEO and Toronto billionaire Prem Watsa sponsored the lunchtime talk and question-and-answer session for more than 200 invited guests at the downtown Hilton…

Watsa had also planned to host a private speaking event with Bush on Tuesday for Tyndale University, a local evangelical Christian college and seminary, but the event was abruptly cancelled last week when opposition within the school’s community quickly mounted and a petition was launched by former students.

Alumni, faculty and students who found Bush’s hawkish legacy out of sync with Tyndale’s Christian teachings celebrated the school’s decision…

Monday’s lunch and talk lasted two hours, during which the folksy former president told jokes, talked about his memoir and the U.S.’s current economic woes. Guests then had the opportunity to have their photo taken with Bush.

I presume the Harper flunkeys in attendance had a decent meal. Otherwise, they paid to spend a few hours listening to a walking example of just how useless and backwards a politician can be elected to head the United States. Perhaps a portent of what people like Watsa hope continues to be the custom in Canada, eh?

Members of a Scarborough mosque have expressed shock and disbelief that their “nice” and “humble” religious leader has been charged with a string of sexual assaults. Mohammad Masroor, the imam at the Baitul Mukarram Islamic Society…faces 13 charges involving sexual offences and death threats relating to five alleged victims…

Det. Const. Karen Armstrong said Masroor used his position of leadership “to his advantage.” She said Masroor, who teaches in the mosque as well as in private homes, knew the alleged victims…

“The victims are both male and female,” Armstrong said. “We believe there are other victims as (the accused) has lived and worked worldwide.”

Masroor taught in Florida, Michigan and Bangladesh before coming to Canada, according to police. He has also lived and taught in Germany, France, Hungary, Singapore and Sri Lanka but police said the investigation is not limited to those areas…

Members of the mosque were especially upset that the allegations come during the holy month of Ramadan…

Yes, I think he’s actually a Romulan pretending to be a Vulcan.

Thanks, James

Eight doctors from the U.S.-based Physicians for a National Health Program visited Toronto’s Women’s College Hospital for an inside look at Canada’s single-payer health care system. Hosting the trip was family physician Danielle Martin, chair of Canadian Doctors for Medicare.

New York dermatologist Elizabeth Rosenthal, board member of the New York metro chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program, spoke to The Globe and Mail about what she learned during her visit…

What is the most surprising thing you have learned so far?

I learned that doctors are compensated much better than what we presumed they were here and their work lives are very nice. In the U.S., most doctors are afraid of two things with a single-payer system: they will lose money – of course, they won’t say that – and that they are going to lose autonomy.

What is work life like for an American doctor?

You spend so much time hassling with insurance companies, you just can’t imagine. You have to fight with them to get paid…

The U.S. system spends twice as much as other industrialized nations on health care, yet it still leaves more than 50 million without health coverage. Why has reform been so difficult?

We’re always racking our brains and always bemoaning the fact that it shouldn’t be so hard. Part of it is cultural. With Canadians, it’s a community – we’re all in this to help each other. In the U.S., it’s the frontier – I’m going to take care of myself and you can’t tell me what to do…

There’s lots of ways to improve the health care system. The first thing we have to do is get rid of the private health insurance industry because the administrative costs that they entail, we say it adds costs but no value to the system. We don’t think health care should be an opportunity for profit, we think health care is a human need, like the fire department. But in our country, it’s treated as how you make a buck. And we will be mandated to buy their lousy health insurance.

If I was comparing operating costs as if I have to choose between investing in Medicare or investing in private health insurance the decision ain’t exactly difficult. Operating costs for Medicare run less than 3%. The typical American insurance company walks away from any market that only allows 20% for management costs. Not too difficult choosing which is more efficient.

Thanks, Cinaedh

“What’s that behind us?”

A United Airlines flight from Chicago to Germany was diverted to Toronto’s Pearson Airport late Monday night after the pilot spilled a coffee, Transport Canada reports.

The coffee interfered with the plane’s navigation and communication system and sent out distress signals including code 7500 — unlawful interference, or a hijacking — and code 7600, which means the plane has lost communications.

“With the help of their company dispatch staff, the flight crew was confirmed the problem to be a NAV(navigation)/communication issue and not a valid code 7500. The flight crew initially diverted to return to Chicago but subsequently declared an emergency … and diverted to Toronto…”

A United spokesman told CNN a review is underway and it was too soon to comment on what happened.

Everyone’s just happy that Homeland Insecurity didn’t order them to be shot down.

David Chen (center) flanked by Alicia Chow, David Lindsay – Not Guilty

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has [finally] demanded a fix to laws governing citizen’s arrests and called on Justice Department officials to look at changing the Criminal Code.

After weeks of ignoring opposition calls to amend the law, Mr. Harper told a surprised Commons yesterday he wants to prevent a recurrence of a case in which a Toronto shopkeeper was charged after making a citizen’s arrest of a shoplifter.

David Chen and two employees at the Lucky Moose market were acquitted last week on charges of assault and forcible confinement…

The Prime Minister’s announcement came within hours of the Conservatives refusing to give unanimous consent to a motion that would have allowed Parliament to swiftly approve a private member’s bill to allow citizens to detain criminals within “a reasonable amount of time” after a crime is committed.

New Democrat Olivia Chow, the author of the citizen’s arrest bill, said she doesn’t care who gets credit as long as the law gets changed after the experience of Mr. Chen.

“I have said for a long time that hard-working shop owners should not be treated like criminals,” Ms. Chow, a Toronto MP, told reporters.

“I’m very happy today that finally the Prime Minister said that he will change the Criminal Code. We should call this a Lucky Moose bill, because really had David Chen’s case not occurred, the Criminal Code wouldn’t be changed…”

At issue in Mr. Chen’s case was whether he was within his rights to make the arrest because he apprehended the man hours after he had committed the theft.

I never spent much time working retail; but, I can appreciate the frustration felt by any shopkeeper over dealing with shoplifters and similar thugs.

The biggest danger in my neck of the prairie is that local politicians would like to keep security guards and shopowners defenseless when facing down armed thieves. A losing proposition for ordinary folks simply trying to halt a crime.

My kind of geek

A York University doctoral student who discovered a new species of bee on his way to the lab one morning has completed a study that examines 84 species of sweat bees in Canada. Nineteen of these species – including the one Jason Gibbs found in downtown Toronto − are new to science because they have never been identified or described before.

Gibbs’ expansive study will help scientists track bee diversity, understand pollination biology and study the evolution of social behaviour in insects. It is also much anticipated by bee taxonomists who, like Gibbs, painstakingly examine the anatomy (morphology) of bees to distinguish one type of bee from another…

Sweat bees − named for their attraction to perspiration − can be smaller than 4 mm in length, often have metallic markings, and make up one-third to one-half of bees collected in biodiversity surveys in North America. Complete species descriptions of 84 metallic sweat bees in Canada are included in Gibbs’ monumental study, “Revision of the metallic species of Lasioglossum (Dialictus) in Canada.” It was published by the peer-reviewed journal Zootaxa as a single issue.

Despite their numbers and their importance as pollinators, sweat bees remain among the most challenging bees to identify to species, perhaps because they evolved so rapidly when they first appeared about 20 million years ago. Gibbs’ research significantly improves upon all other available tools for the identification of these bees…

Among the 19 new species of sweat bee identified by Gibbs is one that he collected on his commute from downtown Toronto to York University. When he arrived at his York lab and examined it, he knew he had found a new species, never before identified by science but, as it turns out, quite common in Toronto and throughout eastern Canada and the USA. He also identified and described 18 other species from Canada that are new to science including a cuckoo bee: like a cuckoo bird, it doesn’t build a nest or collect food but it has big mandibles for fighting. This cuckoo sweat bee is believed to invade the nest of another sweat bee species to lay its eggs on the pollen and nectar collected by its host.

Bravo!

Chief William Blair provided answers Friday afternoon about Toronto Police’s $122-million policing budget for the upcoming G20 summit, as well as the police force’s plan for limiting the use of “sound cannons” during the event.

At a special meeting of the Toronto Police Services Board, Chief Blair told board members that $82-million will be spent on salaries for police officers. This includes 3,500 Toronto Police officers, 1,600 police officers from across the country, and 900 Toronto Police civilian employees.

The remaining $40-million will be spent on additional costs such as equipment, vehicles, housing for non-Toronto Police officers, and clothing.

Chief Blair emphasized that the full $122-million will be paid for by the federal government, and will not come out of Toronto Police Service’s budget.

OK. I was afraid there might be some excess.

Like for popsicles.

Canadian officials are investigating more than 300 people who claimed to have shared a home in Mississauga, Ontario, says the (Toronto) Globe and Mail.

Now, that’s high population density!

The newspaper said Royal Canadian Mounted Police are investigating the alleged cases of citizenship fraud, a crime that Canadian Immigration Minister Jason Kenney recently deemed a rising matter of concern in Canada…

A building manager at Palestine House, which resides in the same building as the address in the fraud investigation, told the Globe and Mail that individuals also received child benefit checks at the address despite the fact they did not live at the address.

Then, in a completely unrelated report…

At least four Toronto-area drivers who had their licenses suspended in court drove away when they left, a Canadian Broadcasting Corp. report said Tuesday.

The broadcaster aired a report it compiled last week in which news crews followed the first four men whose licenses were suspended and recorded them driving away.

The charges the men faced weren’t published, although the CBC said one of the men who drove away from the courthouse has 34 driving convictions and nine license suspensions.

Those of us who have survived absolutely identical standards of policing and jurisprudence – down here in New Mexico – actually are heartened to know we haven’t an exclusive patent on bureaucratic incompetence.

Police have dusted off an old chapter of the Canadian Criminal Code and charged a woman with posing as a witch, allegedly to defraud a Toronto lawyer of more than $100,000.

Vishwantee Persaud, 36, is accused of conning veteran criminal lawyer Noel Daley by saying she was the embodiment of his deceased sister, whose spirit would guide him to financial success.

“She told (Daley) that she had a history in her family of them being sort of good witches, or having occult powers, and that she could do a tarot card reading for him,” said Det. Const. Corey Jones.

It was an attempt to gain Daley’s trust, police allege, and the spell worked. Over the next few months, police say, the lawyer coughed up money for a variety of reasons – including alleged bogus law tuition and rent for a premier office space in the heart of the financial district.

Persaud also faces two fraud charges…

If Persaud is found guilty, there won’t be any burning at the stake. The witchcraft charge carries a maximum sentence of six months in jail and up to a $2,000 fine.

Do you have a personal psychic?

Usually they limit serious practice to only one day a week. And open up their bank accounts to crooks who are tax-exempt.

Toronto wanted to charge them to walk in the park

City Hall appears to be backing down on a draconian policy that requires organized walking groups to get a permit to stroll through city parks…

The review comes after a group of 12 Etobicoke seniors — first revealed in the Sunday Sun — were accosted by a bylaw officer on Sept. 21. That officer, Tony Pacheco, demanded to see their city permit for using the public trails in Humber Bay Park.

When they couldn’t produce a permit, pictures were snapped of the group.

He then followed them to the neighbouring Polish Alliance Hall — where the group participated in an hour-long exercise class — and took more pictures of vehicle licence plates…

Ward councillor Mark Grimes, who originally told the Sun the woman running the seniors group must have a $30 per hour permit, is now asking for the review as well, according to the statement.

While there may be “excellent reasons” for requiring some parks users to purchase a permit, Green acknowledged that “discretion and flexibility” must be exercised.

There also are excellent reasons to kick stupid politicians and bureaucrats out of office.