Seven years before Toronto drug squad officers were charged with shaking down suspects, a senior member of the Montreal Police force sent a "red flag" complaint about the behaviour of two squad members.
A Toronto Star-CBC investigation has revealed that in late 1997, two members of the now infamous Central Field Command Drug Squad travelled to Montreal to work a case but made police there suspicious with an alleged single-minded focus on gaining access to a suspect's safety deposit box.
Today the dramatic and costly case against the Toronto drug squad officers see-saws yet again when prosecutors try to revive charges thrown out by a judge in 2008. The charges were tossed because the Crown took too long to bring the case to trial.
The detectives, most of them now retired, had not been charged with anything related to events in Montreal. John Schertzer, the leader of the squad and one of the two detectives looking to gain access to the safety deposit box in Montreal, told his supervisor two weeks later he did nothing wrong.
Travelling with Schertzer to Montreal in 1997 was Det. Const. Steve Correia. The trip and ensuing complaint came near the beginning of what prosecutors later charged was a crime spree in which Schertzer's crew allegedly robbed suspected drug dealers, conducted illegal searches and covered it up by falsifying their notebooks.
Schertzer, who retired as a staff sergeant, and Correia have insisted they are innocent. Both were unavailable for comment.
[. . .]
The story begins in 1997 with arrests made in Toronto by Schertzer's squad. The suspects were originally from Montreal. The squad ended up with a key to a suspect's safety deposit box in Montreal and other information pointing to possible suspects in that city.
Responding to a request for help, Montreal Police raided a home on Jarry St., seized 44 grams of cocaine and made two arrests. Schertzer and Correia went to Montreal with the safety deposit box key.
The document says Montreal detectives expected money seized from a safety deposit box would be sent to Toronto via the Montreal Courthouse. Schertzer and Correia insisted they take the money back themselves.
"It is necessary to mention also that the two detainees and all the other evidence pertinent to their Toronto arrest three days previous were of absolutely no interest to the Toronto officers," the Montreal Police report says.
"They did not even want to question these two individuals, or even look at the seized evidence directly related to their case. Their only interest was whatever contents were in the safe deposit boxes."
[H]omicide detectives have been called in to investigate because of the "complex nature" of the incident, which began near the corner of Bloor Street West and Bay Street at about 9:45 p.m. ET on Monday night.
"There was some sort of altercation between the two people involved in this investigation, which has ended in, unfortunately, the death of a cyclist," said Burrows.
In an interview with CBC News, Sgt. Tim Burrows described what led to the cyclist's death as a "minor collision" between the bicycle and a black Saab.
"The cyclist ended up on the side of the car, holding on, and the driver continued along, driving westbound on Bloor Street [West]."
Burrows could not explain why the driver crossed lanes of traffic and drove up onto the curb.
"I don't want to try to say why the driver did that, only the driver knows exactly why he was, but he was travelling westbound in the eastbound lanes," he said.
[. . .]
The witnesses said it appeared as though the driver was attempting to knock the cyclist off by brushing against trees and mailboxes on Bloor Street, approaching Avenue Road.
Police said the cyclist sustained severe injuries after striking a mailbox and a tree while still hanging onto the car.
Witnesses said the 33-year-old cyclist, who has not been identified, fell off, was dragged and then run over by the rear wheels of the vehicle.
He was rushed to Toronto's St. Michael's Hospital but died of severe head injuries, according to police.
A major Chinese energy company has delivered a jolt of confidence to Canada's oil patch with a $1.9-billion investment that marks China's biggest entry into Alberta's oil sands.
In a deal that many took as proof of the oil sands' continued attractiveness to deep-pocketed investors, Calgary-based Athabasca Oil Sands Corp. on Monday sold a 60-per-cent interest in two of its undeveloped projects near Fort McMurray to the international unit of PetroChina Co. Ltd. (PTR-N109.71-0.04-0.04%) .
The transaction will hand approximately three billion barrels of Alberta oil to PetroChina, whose parent is the state-owned China National Petroleum Corp., but will leave operation of those projects, named MacKay River and Dover, in Canadian hands.
Chinese companies have engaged in a months-long buying spree of global petroleum assets, snapping up a refinery and oil and gas properties in Asia, Russia, South America and Africa. But for those in the oil patch, the acquisition of Alberta assets serves as a much-needed vote of confidence.
Canada's energy industry has spent more than a year watching oil prices fall and, in their wake, tens of billions in capital spending cancelled or delayed. Many see the Athabasca deal as a sign that stability – and even growth – is returning.
Canada moved closer to its second federal election in less than a year on Tuesday, after the opposition leader Michael Ignatieff announced that his Liberal Party would no longer support Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Conservative government.
“Mr. Harper, your time is up,” Mr. Ignatieff told a cheering crowd of Liberal politicians at a party retreat in Sudbury, Ontario. “We will hold Stephen Harper to account and we will oppose his government in Parliament.”
The Conservatives do not control a majority of the votes in the House of Commons and rely on the support of the Liberals and two smaller opposition parties to maintain power. One of the two smaller partiers, the New Democratic Party or the Bloc Québécois, would have to join the Liberals in order to bring down the government.
Bob Rae, a prominent Liberal member of Parliament, said his party would introduce a motion of no confidence in the government at the first opportunity in the Parliamentary calendar, probably in early October.
Exactly how either of the smaller parties, which are to the left of both the Conservatives and the Liberals, will respond when that happens is unclear. Last week, however, Jack Layton, the leader of the New Democrats, said that his party “would be the least likely of the political parties to support the Conservatives.”
Since 2006, Mr. Harper has maintained two governments without a majority of Parliamentary votes partly because the opposition parties were concerned that Canadians were weary of federal elections. There have been three since June 2004.
We took our friendship online. First we began communicating more by email than by phone. Then we switched to "instant messaging" or "texting." We "friended" each other on Facebook, and began communicating by "tweeting" our thoughts—in 140 characters or less—via Twitter.
All this online social networking was supposed to make us closer. And in some ways it has. Thanks to the Internet, many of us have gotten back in touch with friends from high school and college, shared old and new photos, and become better acquainted with some people we might never have grown close to offline.
Last year, when a friend of mine was hit by a car and went into a coma, his friends and family were able to easily and instantly share news of his medical progress—and send well wishes and support—thanks to a Web page his mom created for him.
In all that information you're posting about your life—your vacation, your kids, your promotions at work, even that margarita you just drank—someone is bound to find something to envy. When it comes to relationships, such online revelations can make breaking up even harder to do.
"Facebook prolongs the period it takes to get over someone, because you have an open window into their life, whether you want to or not," says Yianni Garcia of New York, a consultant who helps companies use social media. "You see their updates, their pictures and their relationship status."
[. . .]
Facebook can also be a mecca for passive-aggressive behavior. "Suddenly, things you wouldn't say out loud in conversation are OK to say because you're sitting behind a computer screen," says Kimberly Kaye, 26, an arts writer in New York. She was surprised when friends who had politely discussed health-care reform over dinner later grew much more antagonistic when they continued the argument online.
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