The Insanity of the Canadian Parole Board

It's downright criminal when the Parole Board--tasked with the protection of society--contributes to the list of victims with their actions.

I'll say no more except that their decision can actually abet criminals, if the following sad story (copied from an email from its original posting on FB) is any indication:

After reading this, one may wish to contact the Parole Board.

"...release terms were written on a small card in his wallet. Not in his face."

Not yet convinced?  Well, the Canadian Police Association revealed that between 1998 and 2003, 66 people have been killed by convicts out on early release. 

This story brought tears to my eyes:

the late Marylene Levesque

 

"In fall of 2016 I met a criminal on parole. Except that, I didn't know right away. I didn't know because his release terms were written on a small card in his wallet. Not in his face.

I didn't know because the ones (I put the ones * plural because he had several parole officers) who had to monitor him, and thus ensure my safety, failed their job.

Among other things because he managed to convince them to let him work in the same environment as where he met his last victim. Basically, he was rolled out on a red carpet all the ideal conditions to redo exactly the crimes he was on parole for. Guess what happened? Exactly the same thing.

His entire file, I was entitled to it AFTER his arrest. I knew after he should not have been released. I was demolished when I read, black and white, that more than one specialist opposed his release because his chances of recidivism were too high. Despite everything, I met him.

Then I was beaten, raped, abused, controlled, sequestered, threatened, etc. That was an obvious one. It was written in his file that he was going to do it again. It will have taken less than 3 months after his release.

And I was replied: ′′ The Parole Board of Canada will revisit its ways of doing it. They blame themselves for letting him do the same pattern again." That was after asking me what they could have done differently. Quickly likewise... I'd say don't let criminals out at high risk of recidivism. Seems to me just that would be a good start. I can understand the argument of ′′ he did his time ".... But when specialists (shrinks, incarceration agents, etc) oppose a release, can we listen to them?

That was in 2016-2017.

It's 2020. Then history repeats itself. To a detail; I survived. And although I'm starting to miss the energy in this case, I'm trying to stand and expose the injustices of a * justice * system that doesn't take victims into consideration.

Let's tell each other the real deals... The release of Eustachio Walese who led to Marylène Levesque's femicide was predictable. No matter what the Parole Board of Canada (CLCC) will say to defend their decision to release him. It should be known that this is not an isolated case. It's happening. Much more often than we think. We'll talk about this in the papers for a little while, history will be classified, then tragedies like this will be repeated.

(posted on FB by) Brigitte Jobin

P.S. Rest in peace Marylene!

P.S. 2 Still waiting for trial. It will be almost 3 years...

SHARE! To inform. To expose. To make things change.

* Photo taken from Marylène Levesque Facebook."

I'm speechless at the insanity of the Parole Board.  And the 66 other deaths that the Board's release policy turned out.

 

Trudeau's Foibles

 

Received the following email this morning.

Who knew that reading it would lead to a bout of sadness?!?

For anyone wondering if it's been fact-checked, let's just say that if ONLY half of it were true, it's disgraceful that this irresponsible and moronic child-PM is leader of our once great nation. 

"

Trudeau 4 years of Accomplishments

By Howie Mandel

Here’s a list  
-Your minister of finance engaged in insider trading – should be a 10-year sentence.

-You blew the Asia Pacific deal.

-You blew the helicopter deal with the Philippines.

-You blew the pipeline deal (he's now trying to save himself from it).

-You blew the deal with China.

-You blew the deal with Europe.

-You invited "irregular" immigration into Canada and the taxpayer foots the enormous bill for it.

-You alienated the United States – our largest trading partner.

-At the G7 you pledged $400 million to Education around the world along with another $180 million to the Global Partnership for Education in Europe. None of it is going to fix our messed up school systems here at home. Meanwhile, education costs are skyrocketing for our youth making university a mountain too high for many to climb.

-You pledged $241 million to Family Planning around the world including a $20 million donation to the Bill and Hillary Clinton Foundation (because they have integrity!). This all happened while you told veterans that they were asking for too much.

-You pledged $2.65 billion to climate change at the Commonwealth Leaders Summit and now you’re trying to bully the provinces into new taxes to pay for this pledge.

-You pledged $300 million to the Rohingya Refugee crisis while we have a refugee crisis of our own flooding into Quebec that you won't address.

-You pledged $125 million to Caribbean Reconstruction while our own infrastructure in cities is falling apart.

-You pledged $650 million to Sexual and Reproductive health in Haiti and around the globe wanting safer abortions for women while many women in our own country are left without a family doctor.

-You pledged $50 million to Palestine for flood relief when NB had some of the worst floods in decades this past spring.

-You pledged $840 million to Syria for Humanitarian Assistance when half the native reserves in our country don't have clean drinking water.

-You gave $10.5 million to a convicted...CONVICTED terrorist in a backroom deal that has led to another $30.8 million paid out for three others who say they were wrongfully detained.

-You spent $4.5 billion on a 65-year-old pipeline, and now the courts have ruled it shut down. Now it's back on (at a delay cost of $250 million) - a good investment for Canada you said? (And KM uses that money to build a pipeline in Texas)

-You pressured Jody Wilson Raybould repeatedly & INAPPROPRIATELY with several different high ranking officials to offer SNC Lavalin a DPA instead of prosecution for repeated & sustained corruption AFTER the former AG had determined they were ineligible for such a deal. You lied about the above having ever taken place.

-You replaced Canada’s old F-18s with Australia’s old F-18s.

-Your bizarre love of all things Castro.

-You imposed tough regulations and taxes on oil from Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Newfoundland but not oil from Saudi Arabia.

-Every new project has to undergo strict environmental assessments...except cement plants in Quebec.

-You said that a proposed pipeline must consider “the intersection of sex and gender with other identity factors” (what does that even mean???)

-You think older Canadians should be replaced. How is -that moral?

-You chase foreign companies (and their investment capital) out of the country like they have the plague.

-You chased our WW1 soldiers out of our national anthem... lest we forget.

-You continuously use identity politics...then complain about identity politics.

-You forgot Alberta was a province.

-You called small business owners “tax cheats”.

-People voice concern over money spent on illegal immigration and you call them intolerant racists.

-We have an equalization program, but you give half of it to one province.

-You spent $8 million on a skating rink (vanity project) when Canada's largest skating rink is 500 meters -away.

-You added tens of billions to the national debt while lying to Canada's face about it.

-You groped a woman and when caught - laughed about it (MacLean's interview) and said she experienced it differently.

-You elbowed a female MP while dragging another MP by the arm in a petulant huff.

-You renamed Fishermen to "Fisher-folk"

-People kind? (international embarrassment)

-You got India to invest $250 million in Canada but we have to invest $750 million in India first.

-You compared returning ISIS terrorists to Italian immigrants and said they will be an extraordinarily powerful voice for Canada.

-You let terrorists keep their Canadian citizenship.

-You spent $212,234 on the artwork for the cover of the 2017 budget report.

-You think Canada is 100 years old instead of 150.

-You spent upwards to $348,000 on food and alcohol in five flights on our government’s plane. On your G20 trip to Argentina, you spent $103,000 on food and alcohol alone. How is that even possible?

-You gave Canadian taxpayers' money to Hamas.

-You voice outrage over fake racist attacks and say nothing about real terrorist attacks.

-You took 10 vacations in a single year. Who does this??

-You spent a little over $1.5 million on the trip to India that did nothing but worsen ties. Plus paid over $17,000 to bring an Indian chef to India to cook Indian cuisine. And to top it off, invited a convicted attempted assassin to a dinner and posed for pics with him.

-And you’re the only PM convicted of ethics violations. (multiple times in fact)

-You allegedly destroyed the career of one of Canada’s honest military leaders to cover up possible massive government corruption in shipbuilding contracts.

-You invited Joshua Boyle, an alleged perpetrator of sexual assault and unlawful confinement for a photoshoot in the Office of the Prime Minister.

-You threaten to sue the leader of the opposition then chickened out when you realized that your alleged crimes would be exposed in court.

-You offer over $600 million dollars in subsidies to failing mainstream media outlets if they can prove to be trustworthy. You put a union who vows to destroy your opposition in charge of selecting these new “trusted” sources to receive funding. You could school the Russians in election interference.

-You pay off your friends to engage in election ads for you and get Elections Canada to pay for it.

-$200 million to Loblaws for new refrigerators.

-You made public statements of deep admiration for Chinese communism.

-You wore preposterous, inappropriate costumes during a state visit to India, paid for by Canadians.

-You were instrumental in handing WE almost $1 billion for work that could be done by regular already established operations...your mother and brother received over $300,000 from WE for short speeches that normally do not receive payment.

-You have been instrumental in allowing a company with strong communist party ties to perform communications and security work with our embassies.

What moral, functioning Canadian human could possibly justify voting for you?

 

 

After reading that it may be the first time I've thought of having a beer at 10 a.m. on a Sunday!

 

BX School Expansion Moving Along Nicely

 

It sure is moving along nicely.

Our grandson is in Grade 1 at BX Elementary and I pick him up twice a week after school.  He's looking forward to seeing the new school finished.

An entirely new building complements the old school buildings

Some older portables have been moved to make room for the new section.

Creating 240 new student spaces...plus connection to City of Vernon sewer

Grandson says they could also make the snow-pile higher for play time...👪

Oh...and the Blogger HTML compose page is now back to normal, thank goodness.  Way too confusing the other day!

 

Trying NOT to Hate telus

But it's not working. Case in point...what the heck is a CSV? More on that later. I'm guessing that I am not the only longtime telus webmail customer who is totally confused--indeed angry--over the results of the email transfer to Google Gmail. Oh, the process came with plenty of lead time. Telus sent numerous emails, beginning last year, that telus webmail was "migrating" to Gmail. Most recently a telus webmail user had to select a Migration Day, which I finally did, scheduled for yesterday morning. Then a What to expect on migration day email arrived from telus. Seemed fairly concise. But at this point, I'll mention that there was NO MENTION of what to do to have a user's library of email addresses/contacts FOLLOW the transfer of emails! This discussion shows not everyone is good with the change. But apart from finding the GMail "page" to be ugly and difficult to use (for instance, where is the Reply button? Forward button?) There was ABSOLUTELY NO mention from telus during the migration period on how to have your Addresses/Contacts be an integral part of the migration. And not a hell of a lot from GMail, but after digging around for an hour, I found this "forum help" thingy:

"KeithR(The Sweeper) 8/18/20. Hi Fred, you can try using the Gmail Import feature. From the browser interface at mail google.com, go to Settings > Accounts and Import > import mail and contacts and add your telus account. If you have already transferred your messages make sure to select Contacts only when you get the choice. Note that the options available depend on the connections offered by the other (Telus) account so you might not get the choice to import Contacts. In that case, cancel the setup and check with Telus to see if they offer an export method. If you have a choice there, choose export into a vCard file as that is the most reliable. You can import into your Gmail account at contacts.google.com."

What the heck is a vCard file? And somewhere else I read about a CSV file. So here I sit, wondering how to get through this... Look up Telus FAQ, you say? ha ha, Don't bother despite the promise "These FAQ will help support you during the transition to your new TELUS email experience".

A friend calls these issues "The NERD World". I'm beginning to agree with that. I thought COVID-19 created a New World. Combine that with a NERD World and it's no surprise that people my age are having trouble. Oh...and even the Blogger website (on which this Blog is written), seems to have switched to HTML...and won't let me compose my blog with paragraphs...instead we're doing "run-on" sentences...

Foggy, But a Beautiful Winter's Day

Already February 1st!

Where has the time gone since we closed September 15th!?!?

I don't know who sent them (telus? hydro?) but a crew arrived the other day to prune and chip branches that threatened their wires at the driveway.  A job's always made faster with the right equipment and these Asplundh Tree maintenance people certainly had that.

Thank you, folks!

We're as surprised as can be that this COVID-19 winter is passing quite quickly, despite missing all our usual distractions such as going out to a pub for dinner, especially with friends (most of whom we haven't seen at all).

Husband and I have read books, watched a lot of TV documentaries, cursed Bell ExpressVu--our satellite provider when our favourite British dramas like Endeavour and Lewis, and Silent Witness disappear from programming.  Husband had a Zoom meeting with his colleagues, and says he's "done with that".  And we don't Skype.  Such is life for those of us unaccustomed to learning anything about personal video recorders, WI-FI add-ons etc., let alone streaming.

Now the highlight of any day is picking up a Tim Hortons coffee at their drive-through on our way to fuel the vehicle and pick up our six-year-old Grandson after school twice a week!

Even the monthly trip to the Birnie Road garbage dump is now anticipated (albeit not eagerly) as an outing!  The worst part of that is turning left to get back on Hwy 97 to head home...far too dangerous to pull out when traffic from both directions is generally speeding and coming uphill.  So I routinely turn right onto 97 and turn left onto the old Vernon "highway" at the bottom of the hill.

Today, despite the fog and spitting rain, it was still a beautiful day at a balmy +3C.  And despite the generally poor photos that cellphones produce, I pulled over to enjoy the view.

Looking NE towards Middleton Mountain

 

 

And there's a house being constructed over there:

Looking North, the highly-fractured rocks adjacent to the road are beautiful in their own right.

Yes, the glaciers did an amazing job in this area! 

So...if this is winter, we're happy with it.

Especially since there's going to be sufficient snow for water users in 2021.  In early January the North Okanagan was reported to be 94% snowpack, with some areas (that appear to include the North) in the Central Okanagan at 132%.  

Until then, many more Scrabble games are on the schedule here. 😆

Infinitely better than cleaning out closets...