[PHOTO] McQueen at night

I snapped a quick photo of this Alexander McQueen-themed storefront one night recently on Church Street.

[LINK] "Slain Cabbagetown woman came to start a life"

The Toronto Star's Rosie DiManno has a typically emotive, but thorough article describing the life of a recent murder victim. A refugee from Eritrea, Nighisti Semret was walking home from her work as a hotel cleaner to her rented room in Toronto's Cabbagetown neighbourhood about 7 o'clock yesterday morning when she was fatally stabbed by a passerby, apparently at random.

Proud and stoic, a private woman, Nighisti Semret didn’t want people knowing where and how she lived.

Now, sadly, everybody knows where and how she died.

A makeshift flower memorial — forlorn urban ritual for violent loss in modern times — marks the spot where the 55-year-old refugee from Eritrea was brutally slain early Tuesday, a gloomy, wet morning.

The attack was frenzied and seemingly random, Semret’s assailant shadowing her footsteps, striking suddenly from behind, repeatedly plunging the knife. Dropped it, picked it up again, fended off a couple of Good Samaritan wranglers who tried to seize him, and fled.

Semret never saw any of it coming, likely didn’t even hear menace approaching as she walked homeward, umbrella lifted over her head. She’d just finished her overnight shift as a cleaning supervisor at the Delta Chelsea Hotel. No doubt she was tired and anxious to get out of the wet, back to her cramped 12-by-12 bolt-hole at a city-run women’s rooming house on Winchester St., with its shared kitchen and bath down the hall. Home and safety were just 100 metres away.

[. . .]

Yet it was a better life than the one Semret had known in Eritrea, and vastly improved from the homeless, friendless existence of two and a half years ago, when she first arrived in Toronto.

[LINK] "Eritreans still tapped for tax, refugee says"

The Winnipeg Free Press' Carol Sanders reports that Eritrean migrants in Winnipeg are still being shaken down by their government to pay a 2% income tax. When I blogged about it last week, I speculated that it would be very difficult to make the Eritrean government stop. This press account, which suggests prominent figures in Winnipeg's Eritrean community are involved in the affair, doesn't make me hopeful.

Last month, the Canadian government threatened to expel Eritrea's consul if the country continued to collect a two per cent tax on Eritreans living in Canada. Canada adopted United Nations sanctions to stop the flow of money to Eritrean defence forces linked to terrorist groups. Eritrea agreed to stop collecting the diaspora tax from Canadians.

But members of the Eritrean community in Winnipeg say they were told at a closed meeting recently they still have to pay it, just not through local channels.

One man said he attended the Sept. 23 meeting at the Ellice Cafe because he thought it was "to discuss Eritrean issues." When he got there, he realized the event hosted by the Eritrean Community in Winnipeg Inc. wasn't an open community gathering.

People had to sign in and write down their phone numbers, he said. Some who showed up were not allowed entry.

[. . .]

He said Lambros Kyriakakos, the president of the Eritrean Community in Winnipeg Inc., spoke at the meeting. He is the president of the organization that sponsors Eritreans who fled the regime. He told the group he'd just visited Eritrea, the attendee said. He said the money Canadian Eritreans are sending to the regime is helping orphans and rebuilding the country. The man in the audience said they were told not to believe United Nations or media reports that their donations are funding military operations or terrorist groups.

He said Kyriakakos told them the Free Press and the Vancouver Province were directed by the National Post to fabricate such stories. The newspapers, they were told, are "mercenaries" funded by Eritrea's enemy, the government of Ethiopia, the man said.

[. . .]

If they don't pay the tax, they'll never get a visitor's visa to go there or their relatives in Eritrea will suffer as a result, say community members and a report to the UN.

[LINK] "Conservative MP Ted Opitz can keep seat in Etobicoke Centre, Supreme Court rules"

I've been following the ongoing court suit regarding the outcome of the 2011 federal election in the west Toronto riding of Etobicoke Centre, where incumbent Liberal MP Boris Wrzesnewskyj lost by a very thin and disputed margin to Conservative Ted Opitz. (I mentioned it first in February then in April.) Today, as reported by the Toronto Star's Tonda MacCharles and Les Whittington, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled to let the election results stand. News reports suggest the court was guided by its expected reluctance to override the outcomes of tight elections and so undermine democracy.

Conservative MP Ted Opitz won his Etobicoke Centre riding by a slim margin even at the top court, with a 4-3 ruling that sets new ground rules for how future contested elections will be decided.

The Supreme Court of Canada narrowly split over voting irregularities that included lost or unsigned voter registration certificates, calling them procedural or “administrative errors” that are not serious enough to trump the Charter right of electors to have their ballot counted, or to make Opitz give up his Commons seat.

The decision released Thursday is the first time the high court has pronounced on the modern version of Canada’s election act, and sets a high bar for overturning ballot results.

The court pointed to the need to discourage litigation as a means of settling ballot disputes, and concluded the entitlement to vote cannot be lightly tossed out.

On May 2, 2011, Opitz won by just 26 votes over Liberal incumbent Borys Wrzesnewskyj,

[. . .]

The majority decision, written by Justices Marshall Rothstein and Michael Moldaver, said the current Elections Act and Canada’s election system, which relies on an army of locally hired workers, aims to make voting accessible to all. It said administrative mistakes are “inevitable” in a system not designed for perfection or “certainty alone.” So the courts cannot demand “perfect certainty.”

“Rather courts must be concerned with the integrity of the electoral system.”

The court said burden of proof is squarely on the person alleging wrongdoing, and said if elections were easily annulled “on the basis of administrative errors, public confidence in the finality and legitimacy of election results will be eroded.”

[. . . ]
The ruling overturned a decision by an Ontario Superior Court judge who ruled in favour of Wrzesnewsky. Justice Thomas Lederer said problems with the registration of, or vouching for, 79 electors warranted cancelling their votes. The high court concluded at least 59 of the 79 votes should be restored.

The majority, including Justices Rosalie Abella and Marie Deschamps, said there was no reason to believe that the 20 remaining voters were not entitled to vote.

Because the remaining 20 votes were less than the “magic number” of Opitz’s election night 26-vote margin of victory, the court allows the May 2, 2011 outcome to stand.

[LINK] "Conrad Black loses bid to address Order of Canada review body"

I fear I might be too happy by items describing an ongoing downward arc to convicted British felon Conrad Black's life, for instance CBC News' coverage of the decision that his request to explain to the court why he shouldn't be expelled from the Order of Canada for his criminal behaviour. The man behaved disreputably for years, in the end renouncing Canadian citizenship so he could claim the status of a British lord (and denouncing Canada in the bargain), and was sent to jail as a direct result of his arrogance. I don't want a man such as he to retain the highest national honour Canada can give. If it makes him unhappy, well, he should have thought of that earlier.

Former media baron Conrad Black's request to Federal Court for a hearing before a panel examining whether he should be allowed to remain an officer of the Order of Canada has been rejected.

Black's 1990 appointment to the Order of Canada is under review because of fraud and obstruction of justice convictions in the U.S. related to his tenure as head of the Hollinger newspaper empire.

[. . .]

In July, Black submitted an application to the Federal Court for an oral hearing to address the advisory council looking into whether he can keep his Officer of the Order of Canada appointment, and give his side of the story.

The Federal Court "reached the conclusion that the application ought to be dismissed," Justice Yves de Montigny wrote in a ruling this month.

"While I am prepared to accept that the application is not premature and that the council’s decision to deny the applicant an oral hearing is not immune from judicial review, I find that procedural fairness and natural justice do not require an oral hearing in the circumstances of this case," he wrote.

Black was found guilty by a U.S. jury in 2007 of three counts of fraud and one count of obstruction of justice, but he was acquitted on nine other charges, including mail fraud, wire fraud, racketeering and tax fraud.

An Appeals Court later overturned two of his fraud convictions, but allowed a single fraud conviction and the obstruction of justice conviction to stand.

The regulations say the council shall consider "the termination of a person's appointment to the Order of Canada if the person has been convicted of a criminal offence."