Pulbic Safety Minister Vic Toews: "We're changing the laws ...
R. LaCasse
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From: "Qraavf & Unmry Lbhat" <---ROT13
Subject: Pulbic Safety Minister Vic Toews: "We're changing the laws ...
... on self-defence and your right to protect your property,"
OTTAWA CITIZEN - AUGUST 20, 2011
Living in smugglers' paradise
They thought they were settling into a quiet life along the shores of the
St. Lawrence east of Ottawa. Instead, they're living in fear as tobacco and
drug smugglers do whatever it takes to make sure nothing stops them from
getting their illicit goods across the border. Authorities admit they can't
stop the smugglers by themselves, and are asking people to fight back.
By Ian MacLeod, Ottawa Citizen
(http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Living+smugglers+paradise/5281977/story.html)
Three hours from Parliament Hill via the Akwesasne Mohawk reserve, this
pastoral corner of Quebec is descending into a version of northwest
Pakistan, with tribal outlaws and mobsters controlling much of this remote
borderland in defiance of the central authority. If you think that is
melodramatic, consider this: On a recent visit by federal Public Safety
Minister Vic Toews to listen to the fears of property owners about tobacco
and drug smugglers hijacking the St. Lawrence River farming and cottage
communities of southwest Quebec, the talk turned to shotguns, self-defence
and possibly closing the international border crossing upriver at Cornwall
altogether. "We're changing the laws on self-defence and your right to
protect your property," Toews told the gathering. "I'm not advocating that
people use (guns) but if there's a legitimate."
The small group of summer cottagers, farmers and others gathered around him
nodded approvingly. One, a highly-respected professional from Montreal who
fears retribution if named, told Toews how river smugglers burned down one
of his vacant cottages last winter. Two suspected smugglers are still living
in a cottage on his land. When he called police one day to report a
suspicious car parked there, he was told: " 'You don't want to know who that
is'. "I've told them I want them out of there. I haven't sent them a
lawyer's letter as yet to tell them that their lease is terminated (because)
I'm afraid of the potential retribution."
Another time, a smuggler bloodied from an apparent gunshot wound barged into
the home of one of the cottager's relatives seeking sanctuary. Some property
owners have been offered instant cash for their land or their silence. A
dairy farmer recounts how a neighbouring farmer close to the Canada-U.S.
border refused to allow his land to be used for the clandestine pipeline and
had his barn seriously vandalized. Diesel fuel was poured into the
gasoline-powered farm equipment of another. Others find marijuana plants in
their fields. "They just take over the land," said the farmer, who also
asked his name be withheld.
The scope of the smuggling is impossible to accurately quantify, though
experts agree it generates hundreds of millions annually in black-market
profits. One Cornwall-area tobacco smuggling kingpin arrested in 2006 was
earning $250,000 a week, police said. Dozens of organized crime groups big
and small, from outlaw bikers and Italian mobsters to Vietnamese and Chinese
gangs, use the same routes and infrastructure to move narcotics and illegal
immigrants south into the U.S.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration estimates 13 metric tonnes of
high-grade Canadian hydroponic marijuana - a week - was funnelled through
Akwesasne in 2009. In all, more than $1 billion worth of the drug is
believed to have moved through Akwesasne between 1999 and 2009, much of it
destined for New York City, though authorities have tracked the eastern
Canadian marijuana to 31 other states.
Authorities say Canadian smugglers then buy or trade their premium pot for
Mexican cocaine in California or guns or tobacco and smuggle it back through
Akwesasne and onto the streets of Montreal, Toronto and other cities. The
southward flow of Quebec and Ontario marijuana is now so acute, the U.S.
federal government recently declared the four upper counties of New York
state that border the St. Lawrence and southwest Quebec as high crime zones
eligible for increased police funding and counternarcotics measures.
In the Quebec sector, RCMP and Sûreté du Québec officers went door-to-door
this spring to thousands of homes and cottages, asking residents to report
suspicious activities. At each, they left a plastic bag of anti-smuggling
pamphlets and brochures, including tips to identify and classify suspicious
marine traffic and low-flying small planes.
But like the great river on which it flourishes, the flow of contraband
remains incessant. Summer nights are filled with the roar of super-charged
marine engines capable of sprinting 45 kilometres from the eastern edge of
Akwesasne to Valleyfield in 11 minutes. In winter, "once the sun goes down
here on the river after the water is frozen, you'll have 70, 80, 90 Ski-Doos
running between 7 p.m. and midnight. It's basically a highway," the
burnt-out cottager told Toews. With local RCMP and the Sûreté already
stretched thin, "we don't have any more protection than somebody on the
frontier of Pakistan," he said. "There's an undercurrent of real violent
people who will do anything they can to protect this
multimillion-slash-billion dollar industry. In many ways, they run this
sector."
Toews tried to reassure him and the others. "The prime minister has made it
clear that he wants this border issue dealt with because it impacts on the
broader security perimeter around North America," he said. "He's personally
aware of the situation."
In an interview, Toews said senior Canadian and U.S. homeland security
officials are exploring a joint customs post at Massena, New York, at the
eastern entrance to Akwesasne/St. Regis. "There's only two alternatives, we
either shut down the border there completely (at Cornwall) or it goes to
Massena," he said. Americans "are in exactly the same position that we are.
They are very concerned and it's not simply cigarettes, it's much more
extensive than that and it spills into the whole area of (border) security,
which the Americans are very concerned about. "The solution is to work
closely to share not only information but also resources and that's one of
the things were looking at Massena."
Chronic, low-grade cross-border smuggling, from cattle to booze, has existed
in this area for decades, yet never at the extremes experienced around
Cornwall, 32 kilometres west. But in 2009, after Akwesasne residents on the
Canadian side of the international reserve protested the arming of federal
border guards on native territory, the Canada Border Services Agency moved
its Cornwall Port of Entry off the Cornwall Island portion of the reserve to
the north span of the bridge.
With that, smugglers couldn't easily bypass the crossing point and found
their primary overland route between Canada and the United States far
riskier to navigate. The problem compounded a year later when the RCMP-led
Cornwall Regional Task Force anti-smuggling unit was established with
Ontario Provincial Police, Cornwall police, the CBSA and Ontario Ministry of
Revenue. The same year the RCMP, with $7.4 million in federal funding from
Toews, put together a St. Lawrence Valley combined forces organized crime
investigative team operating from Cornwall.
All that new heat convinced smugglers to turn their speed boats and
high-revving snowmobiles downriver to the south shore stretch between
Dundee, Que., and Valleyfield, and along the north shore east of Cornwall,
from Glen Walter, Ont., to Rivière Beaudette, Que. Others moved their
activities west of Cornwall toward Long Sault. But where smugglers once
relied mainly on trucks and cars to sneak contraband around the old border
crossing, now they needed hidden places to dock their craft and unload their
winter sleds. Shoreline property owners on both sides of the river east of
Cornwall have witnessed the river runners, some heavily-armed against rival
gangs, coming ashore on their land in the middle of the night and
transferring the illicit goods to waiting cars and trucks.
2010 CONTRABAND TOBACCO STATISTICS
In In 2010, 2010, the the RCMP RCMP seized seized about about 782,000
782,000 cartons cartons and 'rollie' and bags 'rollie' of bags illegal of
cigarettes illegal cigarettes nationally, nationally, a 20-per-cent a
20-per-cent decrease over decrease 2009. over 2009. Seizures of fine cut
tobacco rose 26 per cent to Seizures of fine-cut tobacco rose 26 per cent to
43,000 kilograms. Raw-leaf 43,000 kilograms. tobacco seizures Raw-leaf sored
tobacco to 5,300 seizures klograms oared from 10 to kilograms 5,3000 kgs in
2009. from 10 kg in 2009.
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It's nice that we can actually protect ourselves now.....because of
these rich traffickers, but 1/4 million dollars a week can blow up in your
face with all the payola depts incurred to the Federalis Poletzi and
Buchenwald Capos.
It's weird that the RCMP/bATFe have a dwindling sales monopoly on
these "666" products. I see the cops selling/giving away these products on
the streets, but mostly Chinese knock-offs, they all have the "666" UN/NWO
(UL/ULc) product code veryfication and all warnings that satisfy the
commercial laws, except for native bashing exclusions.
Any more laws, and this Country is gonna end up in (DADA is Dead)
death penalty for dope, like the UK,Uganda, Africa, and C. Slim/Noriega
cartels.
IMOHO, It's a shame that Canada is so Yookay oriented, this Nazi
based commonwealth is tuned to Kibbutz living for US and sitz/bide baths and
Beamer/Humvee for THEM.
Bob
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