Canada announces $151 million for polio eradication, after outbreak in Gaza Strip

VANCOUVER – Three RCMP members from a Metro Vancouver detachment could be fired over alleged “atrocious,” “racist” and “horrible” behaviour detailed by a fellow officer, including text chats that bragged about “Tasering unarmed black people,” court documents say.

A schedule from the RCMP shows Constables Philip Dick, Ian Solven and Mersad Mesbah are slated to appear next February for code of conduct hearings over allegations including discrimination, harassment and discrediting the police force.

None of the allegations have been proven.

In court filings to obtain a search warrant, an officer in the RCMP’s Professional Standards Unit in Coquitlam, B.C., says another member in the detachment trained by Dick complained about being harassed by the accused officers.

Among the key complaints, according to the filings, is that officers allegedly engaged in comments on a mobile chat group that were abusive, racist, homophobic and misogynistic that matched a “climate of harassment” created by the three officers.

“Members of the (chat) group never talk about their own lives,” the filings said “They use the group to say ‘negative stuff about work or horrible things about people they work with.’

“He (the complainant) described the behaviour in the chat group as ‘atrocious.’ He believed it was racist and horrible, so he used to just ‘skim’ it rather than reading all of it,” the documents say.

The filings also said the complainant tried to leave the chat group but was told it was “used for operational purposes and that he needed to be a part of it,” and was accused of “not being a team member” if he did not rejoin.

(Note Graphic Content)

The documents say that among the list of alleged comments made on the chat are instances where an officer “goes off about … brown people” making the Lower Mainland “unsafe,” using the N-word and the racial stereotype of eating chicken when describing blacks, dismissing a woman reporting a sex assault based on her ethnicity and calling her “dumb,” and making fun of a female RCMP employee’s weight by “insinuating that the shape of her vagina was visible through her clothing.”

The complaint also outlined a number of actions by the three officers outside of the group chat, including belittling Indigenous community members as having fetal alcohol syndrome and saying they are “not going to the reserve … because we’re not going to help those people,” the court document says.

In another instance described by the complainant, one of the members, who was “typically dismissive” of shoplifting files, was going “out of his way to attend” a case and try “to provoke the suspect into a fight” when he found out the suspect was black.

The court document says the complainant said the officer “later lamented that he hadn’t been able to ‘rile up’ the suspect sufficiently to justify Tasering him.”

The document also describes other alleged instances where members justified domestic violence by saying “women deserve it,” swearing in front of a four-year-old child while attending a tenancy dispute, and bragging about concluding police files by making up “whatever” when asked to followup on a case without any filings.

The Coquitlam RCMP standards officer also said in the document that a review of other chat logs from the accused officers from January 2019 to May 2021 “identified a variety of comments that were ‘chauvinist in nature, with a strong air of superiority and include flippant or insulting remarks about clients, supervisors, colleagues, policy and the RCMP as a whole.”

“In the messages, Constables Dick, Solven and Mesbah are frequently offensive,” the court filing said. “Constable Dick and Mesbah use racial and homophobic slurs, and all three frequently deride their co-workers.”

The BC RCMP referred The Canadian Press’s request for comment to National RCMP communications, who have not responded to the allegations or the conduct review.

A legal document released on Sept. 12 says the RCMP intend “to seek termination of the members’ employment at the hearing, and the three members have been suspended since June 2021 when the allegations emerged.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 20, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

OTTAWA – Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly says close to 45,000 Canadians are in Lebanon, months after warning there is no guarantee Ottawa can evacuate them if the situation deteriorates further.

She is also expressing concern that attacks like exploding pagers are only making the situation worse.

“My message to Canadians who even think of going to Lebanon is don’t go, and I’ve been saying that for months,” she told reporters Friday in Toronto.

Since the brutal Hamas attack on Israel last October prompted Israel to bomb Gaza, Hezbollah militants have been shooting rockets at northern Israel. That has caused communities near the border to evacuate, and Israel to strike both civilian and Hezbollah infrastructure.

By late last October, Joly started urging Canadians to leave Lebanon, saying that the military was assessing how to conduct a possible evacuation of citizens if needed.

The government has never been clear on how many people may need to be evacuated, only stating the number of individuals who had proactively registered with Global Affairs Canada. That stood at around 21,400 people in late July, with Ottawa cautioning many have not registered.

At that point, Joly had warned that “the situation on the ground may not allow us to help you” if things get worse. On Friday, she specified how many people could end up trapped.

“We know that we have around 45,000 Canadians in Lebanon,” she said.

“We need to make sure that message (to leave) is clear, that it is also well-followed by Canadians. And we need to make sure, also, that we’re well prepared.”

Joly said suffering in all parts of the region needs to end.

“We are very concerned for what is happening in Lebanon and of course, in the wider Middle East,” she said.

Joly noted escalating violence in Lebanon including the deadly attacks, widely attributed to Israel and said to have targeted Hezbollah militants, which involved exploding pagers and walkie-talkies.

The Associated Press reported that the pager attack killed at least 12 people — including two young children — and wounded thousands more.

“Notwithstanding any form of tactics or different strategies, at the end of the day we need this war to end,” Joly said Friday.

Her statement follows a social-media statement by Global Affairs Canada late Wednesday that drew criticism from Israel advocates.

“We are gravely concerned about the reports that civilians, including children, have been killed or injured,” the department wrote, following the pager explosions. “Canada is calling on all sides to avoid further escalations of violence and to protect civilians.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 20, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

CALGARY – Hockey Canada president and chief executive officer Katherine Henderson says the organization and the sport are headed in healthier directions since she inherited a body in crisis just over a year ago.

Henderson took over Sept. 4, 2023 after seven years as Curling Canada’s CEO.

Arguably the most powerful amateur sport organization in the country, Hockey Canada was, and is still, answerable for its conduct in an alleged sexual assault by members of the 2018 Canadian junior men’s hockey team at a gala in London, Ont., in June of that year.

The allegations have not been proven in court. Five players, all who went on to play in the NHL, go before a jury trial next year.

Revelations in 2022 that Hockey Canada used a portion of minor hockey fees to settle lawsuits in other similar cases ignited a firestorm that illuminated other problems such as racism, hazing, discrimination and homophobia in hockey, and cost the organization money in lost sponsorship.

Enter Henderson, who shouldered the mission of culture change both in Hockey Canada and in hockey in Canada. A new board of directors was struck within weeks of her onboarding.

“‘Daunting’ was the word I think walking in and I don’t think I’ve walked away from that,” Henderson said Friday. “It’s still daunting. I’m quite hopeful that we can make some very significant change and be the Hockey Canada and the sport of hockey that Canadians trust us to be and want us to be.

“I think we can earn that trust back.”

A Beyond The Boards Summit in Calgary, held within Henderson’s first official week on the job, examined toxic masculinity in elite men’s hockey as a root cause of racism, sexism, homophobia and discrimination in the sport.

Another summit exploring misogyny, sexism, homophobia and transphobia is scheduled for Nov. 14-15 in Ottawa.

“The healthier part of this is listening and thinking through what those things are that maybe aren’t healthy,” Henderson said. “I’m not sure I’ve solved it in a year, but I’ve certainly taken a lot of significant steps to say I want to understand it and what I can solve in the short term, I’m absolutely willing to do that.”

Henderson said she received a message after the Calgary summit from a northern Ontario hockey mom who demanded a sign that said “what happens in the dressing room, stays in the dressing room” be removed from her son’s team’s dressing room.

“There’s a perfect example of people listening to some of the things we are doing and then taking it upon themselves to say ‘I’m part of this too, I’m part of a movement that wants things to be better,'” Henderson said.

Publishing a financial statement, a maltreatment report and a detailed breakdown of where minor hockey fees are spent on Hockey Canada’s website were among initial overtures at transparency under Henderson.

How player intake programs, coach training and safe sport policies fostered respectful behaviour went under the microscope, she said.

“What we weren’t seeing was behaviour change, and that’s really the whole point of it. If that’s true, how do we make our education programs better for coaches, for trainers, for parents, for players?,” Henderson asked. “If education is going to be a big part of this and we want behaviour change, then we need to ask ourselves, is this good enough? What we’ve found out over the years is no, it’s not, so let’s replace it with things that are better.”

While over 100,000 women and girls are involved in hockey as players, officials and coaches for the first time, Henderson points out that still represents 20 per cent of membership.

“I’m not sure that’s good enough. When you look at fandom and how people play sport, it should be much higher than that,” she said.

Changes that Henderson makes will be in the shadow of an impending trial that will likely rivet the country’s attention.

Hockey Canada’s determination on whether players on the 2018 team breached the organization’s code of conduct and what sanctions might ensue is stalled. An independent appeal board has adjourned an appeal hearing until after the trial.

“We just took the advice, as did the players, the advice of the adjudicated panel that they were going to pause the appeal,” Henderson said. “We have to accept that as well. It’s an independent party that is looking at this.”

All members of the 2018 world junior team remain suspended from representing Canada internationally, Henderson said.

There was a process, however, that made defenceman Cale Makar eligible to play for Canada in the NHL’s 4 Nations Face-Off in February, and in the 2026 Olympic Games if he is selected.

“After being nominated by the Team Canada management group for consideration to play in the 4 Nations Face-Off, Cale Makar participated in an additional third-party review of the allegations regarding Canada’s National Junior Team in 2018 and was cleared to participate in the tournament and future international events,” Hockey Canada said in a statement.

Henderson acknowledged Canadians will be interested in the trial and its outcome.

“It’s of huge interest and we can certainly see people are following that along, but at the same time, I think there’s a tremendous amount of interest in what are we doing to make the game better?” Henderson said.

“Hockey is healthier, because I think we’ve stated accountability and transparency, and we started to act on that. A lot of that is telling people what we’re doing and then doing it.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 20, 2024.