Shootings in Abbotsford and Peachland

The Abbotsford News is reporting that Police watched a guy on a stolen motorcycle drive eraticalty and crash the motorcycle. The rider fled the scene but police found a fanny pack on scene with almost $1,100 cash, a loaded pistol, street drugs (including heroin, crack cocaine, cocaine, methamphetamine and unknown drugs), and identification of the arrested man. I guess that's one for the gangsters' fail army. The suspect was well known to the police.

Guy on a stolen motorcycle caught with gun and drugs

1130 News is reporting that there were shots fired between vehicles in Abostford last night around 8:30 p.m. on McCallum Road and Switzer Avenue (just south of South Fraser Way). Shell casings were found at the scene

Kelowna Capital News is reporting that there was a shooting in Peachland last Thursday when a man was shot in the leg on a rural property.

Steven Skinner arrested in Venezuela

CBC is reporting that "Venezuelan police have arrested a Nova Scotian man who left Canada shortly before being charged with murder in 2011. Steven Skinner, 43, faces a second-degree murder charge over the killing of 20-year-old Stacey Adams in the Halifax area. " I was wondering why the traffic on an old post I made about him was off the charts. A blog reader finally wrote in and said he was arrested. I'm not sure about his affiliations. He was a MMA fighter.

CBC is reporting that in 2006, two clothing stores owned by Skinner were firebombed within an hour of each other. One of the men charged with arson in the fires was Cory Melvin, the younger brother of Halifax crime figure Jimmy Melvin Jr.

The Chronicle Herald reported that "Melvin, a notorious Halifax crime figure, was arrested in July and charged with first-degree murder in the February 2009 shooting death of Terry Marriott Jr., who belonged to a rival gang." It doesn't name the gang but describe the feud between the Melvins and the Marriotts who used to sell crack together then split and became rivals.

The article states Jimmy Melvin Sr worked for the Hells Angels back in 1992 when he was caught trying to off load a spanish vessel loaded with three tones of cocaine. In 2000 a member of the Marriott family was charged with the murder of former Hells Angels associate William St. Clair Wendelborg. December 2001 Jimmy Melvin Sr was arrested along with Hells Angels members and associates when the Halifax clubhouse was raided for drug offences.

That would imply Skinner is a HA rival but Venezuela kinda sounds like HA protection. In the book Road to Hell, it claims Larry Pace (Lars) killed William Wendelborg in a contract hit ordered by Wolf Carroll’s associate Paul Wilson. Lars is the guy living in Kelowna now. So that hit was for the Hells Angels not against them. The HAs must be working with both groups in Halifax. Locals are under the impression Skinner got his HA patch in 2011.

Rental housing disappears in Metro Vancouver

Numerous media outlets are reporting that Low-cost rental housing disappears across Metro Vancouver. This is the first factor in the tent city crime plague. Housing is a genuine concern. Adding drug addition to that makes it untreatable. Global is News is confirming a Vancouver Province report that the high cost of housng is causing young families to leave Vancouver.

Tent city plagued by violence

The Times Colonist is reporting that "Victoria councillors have unanimously approved spending up to $113,000 in additional policing funds to deal with increasing crime and violence in the neighbourhood surrounding the tent city on the courthouse lawn. Acting Police Chief Del Manak painted a grim picture to city councillors of drug use, violence and intimidation in and around tent city because street gang members have infiltrated the encampment. 'The site is clearly not safe,' he said. Manak said police officers are regularly met with aggression at tent city; both residents and service providers are intimidated and many neighbours worry for their safety."

This is a common theme we are seeing repeat itself. Victoria, Vancouver, Surrey, Maple Ridge - all have areas where the street gangs are exploiting and brutalizing the homeless so they can make money from addiction that results in a huge amount of violent crime.

The Victoria police chief said both residents and service providers are intimidated and many neighbours worry for their safety. This is very true. Service provides is referring to sex trade workers like Dianne Rock and Janice Shore where the drug dealer becomes the pimp and take everything they make not just a percentage. There is nothing consentual about it.

There are two problems on the table not just one. Housing is a legitimate concern. Yet the cause is lost when it is overcome and exploited with open drug abuse. Hal Hannon from Breaking the code nailed it in a post he made entitled Why Tent City Has No Solution.

Hal states Addiction is relentless:

"Have you ever supported a drug habit? I have. I supported my ex-roommate’s addiction for fifteen years. It cost me between $3,000 and $5,000 a month, whatever I could make available. Had I made more available, she would have wasted that on drugs too. Multiply that by the masses who inhabit tent city and those waiting for a spot to pitch a tent. I can assure you that when a lifestyle is driven by addiction there is never enough money. Without enough money, tent city has no solution. Every effort to help them will be misused to support their drug habits I am not saying every tenter is an addict. I am saying that some ninety percent of them are."

Hal has a very valid point. However, I am saying there is a solution. Arrest the drug dealers exploiting the homeless not the drug addicts. Unless we do that we are enabling and supporting the violence exploiting them. Then we can devote some of the resources we spent on harm promotion on housing instead. People need homes not drugs.

Provincial government shafts Surrey Schools

The Surrey Leader nailed it. More specifically Kevin Diakiw did. I can't find the article online but the printed edition has an inspiring article that states residential growth in Surrey contributed $585M to BC coffers over last decade then points out they only devoted 18.4% of that to building new schools. It's not surprising that article isn't available online. It was quickly replaced with a Christy Clark Corporate spin and photoshoot announcing new schools. Better late than never.

Recently there has been a lot of hype in the media about how Surrey has to slow down it's new construction because there aren't enough schools. Then I start thinking wait a minute, building new schools is a provincial budget not a civic budget. Then we hear that some kids in Surrey might have to be bussed into Vancouver to go to school because there isn't enough room in Surrey. But we discover that Vancouver is facing the possibility of closing schools that are full. Why? To save money because of their being over budget.

Once again we see the ugly face of the BC Hydro fraud reveal itself. In Christy Clark's' fudge it budget she said she was going to balance the budget by extracting a dividend from BC Hydro knowing full well that was a lie. The Campbell government created the BC Hydro crisis and their ballooning deficit made it impossible for Christy Clark to extract a dividend to fix her fudge it budget. Instead they had to lend the money to BC Hydro to pay the dividend they didn't have to *balance* Christy's budget.

The real crisis was created by the one and only Gordon Campbell who privatized the power brokers that sell power to the public company at above market rates so his campaign contributors could literally make a fortune off the taxpayers back. If he hadn't done that, BC Hydro's debt would not be ballooning out of control and we could in fact have extracted a dividend from them to balance the budget and fund more schools. This is the same fraud that created the Greek Financial Crisis. What was public money became private then disappeared. Buyer Beware.



BC Hydro's Amazingly Bad Deal for Ratepayers

The Tyee reported that "Not only had B.C. Hydro agreed to buy three times the power requested in the tender, it had done so at locked-in prices far above projected market rates. We give big firms $15 billion. We get higher prices, no assets, no guarantee of supply."

Financial Fraud at BC Hydro

The Northern Insights bog reported that: "In fiscal year 2015, BC Hydro purchased 13,377 GWh of electricity from independent power producers for $1,064,000,000 ($79,540 per GWh). In the same period, BC Hydro sold 14,020 GWh to large industrial users for $748,000,000 ($53,250 per GWh). In other words, each GWh of power purchased from IPPs was resold for $26,290 less that it cost. However, the loss was not limited to $352 million since the utility had to pay distribution, administration and other overhead costs in addition to the power acquisition price."

How BC Hydro Wound Up $76 Billion in Debt

The Watershed Sentinel reported that "By 2015, BC Hydro had 105 operating projects on contract, nominally capable of 18,902 gigawatt hours (GWh) of energy, with 3,098 GWh to come from 23 IPP projects still in development. In 2015 it purchased 13,377 GWh of energy at a cost of $1,064 million. That is 24 per cent of BC Hydro’s domestic supply at 76 per cent of its cost of power; $79.54 per megawatt hour (MWh), compared to $8.11 per MWh for power from BC Hydro’s dams. This describes the haemorrhage of cash which is now flowing out of ratepayers’ pockets through BC Hydro to IPPs. The contractual commitments add up to $54 billion over 56 years."

Note: If you move to Surrey and your kids can't get into a school they can always sign up for Surrey Connect online. Evidently it's called SAIL now - Surrey Acadamy of Innovative Learning. That would make a lot more sense then bussing it all he way into Vancouver every day.

Health Canada approves prescription heroin and GMO Salmon

It's pretty clear that the next criminal organization we have to deal with is Health Canada. It's bad enough that the methadone program has become grossly abused. Now they're going for the full monty. They're letting "doctors" prescribe heroin. I kid you not. Who's going to fund that - taxpayers? You can't get an MRI or cancer treatment but you can get free heroin? That is insane and evil. There is nothing compassionate about it. Bankrupting our sacred medical program to promote addition. That will burn tax dollars faster than a forest fire.

I'm not the only one that thinks Health Canada is a criminal organization. Like Vancouver Coastal Health, they have proven they have no regard for promoting health. They are simply engaged in harm promotion and enable addiction. People need homes not drugs. They should be handing out sandwiches instead of free crack pipes. Our good intentions are creating a lot of misery and funding the gang war. Handing out free heroin at Insite is wrong.

Dr. Colin Mangham lost his job for opposing the insanity surrounding Insite. Turns out there is big money to be had in harm promotion within the pharmaceutical industry. John Volken runs an amazing detox centre in Surrey where he not only helps people get off drugs but he also teaches them life skills and gives them a job at Price Pro as well. He can't get government funding because he helps addicts get off drugs instead of turning them into lifetime methadone addicts. For all the money the government is pouring into organized crime and harm promotion, they could be funding more housing instead. That would be a much healthier solution.

As for genetically modified salmon, give me a break. Anyone with a brain can see that is not good for you. I didn't even know what GMO was until I met a large group of locals in Kelowna objecting to it at Stephen Harper's visit. Injecting pesticide into food is not healthy. It's killing the bee population which is shooting ourselves in the foot. Well GMO salmon is worse.

The Council of Canadians opposes the approval of genetically modified salmon for sale as food in Canada. They are a credible NPO. If they approve genetically modified salmon for sale, they need to label it as such and let consumers decide. That is the only logical solution. Health Canada is a criminal organization working against the best interest of Canadian taxpayers.

Ip Man 2 Update: Mike Tyson in Ip Man 3

I just realized that not only has Ip Man 2 been released but it's also on Netflix. It's very well done. I made reference to the first Ip Man movie with Donnie Yen in a previous post. I like Wing Chun. I have mad harsh respect for the arts. The most stirring message from this movie is the importance of respecting the dignity of others. Nobody likes a bully. On that note I found two more inspiring quotes. The first is from one of Ip Man's students, the infamous Bruce Lee.



The other is from the Dalai Lama himself.



Update: I not sure how historically acurate Ip Man 2 is. It seemed more like a fictional remake of Rocky 4 where he takes on the Russian after Apollo fails only in reverse. Likewise in the first movie it appears that the big fight between Ip Man and a Japanese general simply never happened in real life. Ip Man went to Hong Kong in 1949 to flee the Communist uprising IRL becasue he was an officer in the rival political party, the Kuomintang or Chinese Nationalist Party.

I will note that both Ip Man movies are in Cantonese not Mandarin. Cantonese is spoken in Hong Kong. Mainland China is trying to kill the language and replace it with Mandarin. Perhaps the hidden meaning behind the movie is to stand up to all bullies both foreign and domestic. Peace.

Yo! Mike Tyson is in Ip Man 3! David and Goliath hits the big screen. It's on DVD.



Whoa, it looks like Dr Smythe is right in that the Communist government of China had an influence in the production of the movie which may explain why it is so historically inaccurate. I was watching the opening credits for another Donnie Yen movie called Special ID and saw a very suspicious looking logo for the China Film Co Ltd. Wikipedia claims that the China Film Group Corporation is the largest and most influential state-owned film enterprise in China. According to Forbes it is a state monopoly that all imported films have to work with. I still think Ip Man is a great movie as long as you realize it is pure fantasy and is not historically accurate.

Burnaby fentanyl lab busted

The Surrey Leader is reporting that Delta Police busted a fentanyl drug lab in a Burnaby condo and seized over 16 kilograms of cocaine and heroin. They also seized nine firearms and two noise suppressors, over 100 kilograms of cutting agents, more than 4,500 oxycodone or oxycontin pills, more than a kilogram of methamphetamine, and 125 grams of pure fentanyl were seized. Well done. Fentanyl is deadly. Methamphetamine is crystal meth.

CBC posted pictures of how filthy it was. $1.5 million was also seized. Meanwhile back on the ranch, Surrey logged it's 40th shooting on Wednesday. Kevin Diakiw put out a thought provoking article on mental illness and drug addiction. It's an old series but I just noticed it and find it timely.

Fraser MacRae was a Rock Star

Yesterday I saw a cop on a quad outside the Front Room. Now that's what I'm talking about. Several years ago I was at Surrey central before they got rid of the crack dealers there and Surrey's awesome Police Chief at the time, Fraser MacRae, held a huge comunity policeing display right at crack central. He had a giant mobile command centre roll in with numerous auxiliary police officers on quads coordinating a concise community response to crime in Surrey. He was the exact opposite of Bill Fordy in every way.

Fraser MacRae was a Rock Star like John McKay, the VPD ninja was. Bill Fordy on the other hand is a flaming idiot. Bill Fordy was not an ace interrogator. He was a bumbling idiot on the Pickton investigation that was too busy sexually harassing Catherine Gallagher to do his job. He hasn't changed. He's one of the FOCERS - Friends of Craig Callen who is the root of the sexual harassment problem at the RCMP in British Columbia.



Bringing back the quads in Surrey is a good thing. Yesterday they were still kicking the cat in the sense that they were harassing the prolific offenders not the crack dealers but it is certainly better than doing nothing. I understand the math. A handful of prolific offenders are responsible for a majority of the crime. Harassing the prolific offenders prevents crime. I get it.

However, the real predators outside the Front Room on the strip are the crack dealer who brutalize the homeless on a daily basis. The prolific offender is stealing to pay back his dealer. If he doesn't do that, his dealer with beat the life out of him like they did to Janice Shore. If we really want to address the problem we get tough with the crack dealers not the addicts. Reducing the number of addicts reduces the crime and violence. That is the New York model. I saw it.