Soldier charged in August 2006 Afghanistan shooting

Master Corporal Robbie Fraser faces one count of manslaughter (s. 236 of the Criminal Code of Canada) and one count of negligent performance of duty (s.124 of National Defence Act) following a Canadian Forces National Investigative Service investigation into the death of Master Corporal Jeffrey Walsh, in Afghanistan, in August 2006.

No further information on the charges was contained in the official news release.

As recently as Sunday, little information had been released on the incident.

_______________________________________

Update:

A new Canadian Press story with comments from MCpl Walsh's father.

It's the inaccuracy that grates

In the army, it would be difficult for a "gun" to be fired inside a vehicle, as in several news stories over the past 24 hours:

The allegations are that a gun belonging to another solider [sic], Master Cpl. Robbie Fisher, somehow went off in the vehicle, and the single shot hit Walsh.

This is a rifle, specifically the C-7 (right):

This is a Canadian-manufactured version of the M-16A2. it fires a bullet that is .223 inches/5.56 millimetres in diameter. It is carried by individual soldiers and fits inside just about any vehicle.




On the other hand, this is a gun [left].

Specifically, it is the M777 155 millimetre howitzer used by Canadian Forces in Afghanistan.

It is worked by a crew of several soldiers and simply doesn't fit inside any existing military vehicle.

While nits are being picked, the vehicle involved could not be a Jeep, as the CityNews story quoted above calls it. The same reference appears in the Canadian Press stories on the shooting incident as well.

The Canadian Forces has not used jeeps - i.e. the military version of the World War II light utility truck - since the early 1980s. Jeep refers to the trade-marked civilian vehicle.

Canadian Press has an excellent style guide and a caps and spelling guide that deals with just these pesky details.

Too bad more people writing news - including Canadian Press - don't use it.

Williams to end blackout

Premier Danny Williams has been going through a self-imposed media exile for about a month.

Russell Wangersky discussed it on Saturday in his regular Telegram column.

And you have to say, it’s probably been the right decision.

After all, in the days leading up to the blackout, things were getting, well, out of control.

The present silence is, without a doubt, an improvement over the media stylings that were taking place just before Williams departed the airwaves, when he was talking about keeping an eye on people and threatening lawsuits against anyone who would call the character of sitting politicians into question.

Sometimes, everyone has to sit back and take a deep breath, and ask whether the direction we’re taking is a fair one, whether you’re in the media or the political community or anywhere else.

The blackout ends today at 11:00 AM. The Premier will be meeting with reporters to discuss provincial ferry rates.

His scrum partner will be none other than transportation minister John Hickey. This one should be interesting for all the questions not about ferry rates.

Williams isolated on Equalization

Alberta's out of the Equalization war.

That didn't take long.

Like Kramer in "The Contest".

[Alberta finance minister Lyle Oberg] says it doesn't make sense to oppose the new equalization formula when Alberta, as a wealthy province, neither gains nor loses from a payout system designed for poorer jurisdictions.

"It doesn't matter to us," Mr. Oberg said, adding later: "We also recognize that there's certainly a high chance that this is going to come in whether we say anything or not."

Well, d'uh, on all counts, he said, in recognition of Vernacular Monday.

There was never any reason for Alberta to wade into the discussion.

So now the Great Jihad for Handouts is down to Saskatchewan and Danny Williams.

Hmmm.

Something to watch for in the Globe story: a comment from Ken Boessenkool.

"It's not just a new tone, it's frankly a more sensible tone," Mr. Boessenkool said of the Alberta finance minister's position, contrasting it with that of Mr. Klein, who he said liked to "rattle the populist cage."

Mr. Boessenkool, a Conservative who has written for years on equalization, said the program is not a transfer of money to provinces such as Quebec from Alberta because it's paid for from revenue that Ottawa collects from all Canadians.

Boessenkool has considerable influence in Ottawa or, at the very least, knows which way the wind is blowing on a given file.

________________________

Update:

There was a clue to Alberta's position in February, with Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach expressing a preference for more cash flowing to provinces through transfers other than Equalization.

Just last week, on the heels of federal finance minister Jim Flaherty's visit to St. John's, Bond gave a prediction on what the feds might do, taking a cue from Ken Boessenkool's recent paper on Equalization.

NS and NL: same old, same old

This column could have been written about Newfoundland and Labrador.

Could have, but hasn't been. Yet.

So much of what has been going on in this province since 2001 (That's right - Grimes and Williams are on the same wavelength) harkens back to the very darkest days of the 1980s, yet not a single politician seems to be able to break out of the public policy cycle that has held this province back.

In the fishery, the offshore and just about every other sector of the economy, the dominant thinking is the same sort of thing we have tried before with a stunning lack of success.

And, as in Nova Scotia, the young people of Newfoundland and Labrador are packing up and heading to somewhere else.

(h/t tip to nottawa)

Voting with their feet

The 2006 census data is being released on Tuesday.

In anticipation of the complete data being release in the coming months, here is a simple table comprising population figures for Newfoundland and Labrador over the past 15 years. The source is Statistics Canada.

The year before the cod moratorium was announced there were 568, 474 people living in Newfoundland and Labrador. Within five years, the population had declined by 17,000.

With the end of federal income supports for those involved in the groundfish fishery, the population dwindled rapidly. By 2001, there were 512, 930 in the province.

The population showed a net gain over the next three years, with an estimated 514,209 people living here in July 2004.

Between July 1, 2005 and July 1, 2006, however the population showed a net decline of 4,185 people. While there are many causes for the change in population, declining economic prospects in Newfoundland in the fishery and with the slowdown in the offshore undoubtedly accelerated outmigration.

Yet more on the Argentia video

Ed:

Thanks for linking my site on your blog. My name is Gerry Carew and I created the website www.broadcasttherock.com one more correction to your post The Danny Williams and Andy Wells videos were shot by me and my company www.thevideoman.ca I volunteered to do this for them so that they would have a record of these very interesting shows. I posted them on my website because I knew they would be popular and I hope they get lots of hits to their site from my intiative.

If you don't mind correcting that I would appreciate it.

Lots of interesting videos to come stay tuned!

Gerry Carew
www.broadcasttherock.com

No Gerry, I don't mind at all. Thanks for the information. In the meantime, I would suggest if anyone has more information, then by all means add it to the comments section of the Argentia post.

The foreign bogeyman

...Rhetorically at least, there has been good mileage to be made in Newfoundland politics by charging governments past and present with having sold the country down the river and by challenging the legitimacy of allegedly perfidious agreements. At one level, indeed, Newfoundland history is a record of attempts to undo the past. If foreign bogeyman can be made part of the story all the better, although the greatest loathing in this particular tradition is perhaps reserved for local politicians who are believed to have aided or engineered the betrayal of their own people. In St. John's especially, a paranoid outlook in such matters has, going back to the nineteenth century, never been far below the surface. In sum, the scapegoat, either at home or from abroad, has figured prominently in Newfoundland political history.

Peter Neary, Newfoundland in the North Atlantic World, 1929 - 1949, (McGill-Queen's university Press, 1988)

War museum continues with exhibit despite controversy

The Canadian War Museum will continue with an exhibit that, in part, notes the ongoing controversy over the Allied bombing campaign against German civilian targets during the Second World War.

In response to complaints from veterans groups, including the Royal Canadian Legion, the museum asked prominent historians to review the exhibit and offer comment. The Museum has not released the commentaries but a spokesman for the museum said the historians viewed the exhibit as "accurate and balanced."

Two of the historians did suggest that the panel in question could be removed since it was "unnecessary."

"Mass bomber raids against Germany resulted in vast destruction and heavy loss of life," the disputed panel reads. "The value and morality of the strategic bomber offensive against Germany remains bitterly contested. Bomber Command's aim was to crush civilian morale and force Germany to surrender by destroying its cities and industrial installations. Although Bomber Command and American attacks left 600,000 Germans dead, and more than five million homeless, the raids resulted in only small reductions in German war production until late in the war."

The Legion, meanwhile, is looking to the senate committee on veterans affairs to conduct an inquiry into the exhibit. It is also continuing a boycott of the museum that began in 2005.

The controversy is reminiscent of complaints about a CBC series, The valour and the horror and its episode on Bomber Command, entitled "Death by moonlight."

The series attracted criticism from historians including Dr. Jack Granatstein. The series was also the subject of a senate committee review.

Sinc eopening in 2005, the new museum has also been the subject of controversy over its protrayal of Canada's military heritage and the design of the building.

Oddly enough, Dr. Dean Oliver, the War Museum's director of exhibits but who at the time was teaching at Carlton University, was critical of the Valour and the Horror. Oliver is a graduate of Memorial University and York University.

Williams media silence golden?

The Telegram's Russell Wangersky muses on the Premier's retreat from the news media.

Dumont fires second candidate

Latest poll shows gap closing among the three parties in the Quebec election.

Implosion video correction

The following came in response to the post on the Argentia implosion in 1999:

The video of the demolition of the building in Argentia was not shot and edited by the company that did the demolition.

It was shot and edited by Tristram Clark and Ray Fennelly for an early Newfoundland online video site, www.cfog.net. I think it also appeared at www.thetelegram.com as part of a daily video feature called Newfoundland Today.

Tristram also recorded and edited the Danny Williams and Andy Wells performances at the Big Brothers benefit which is also streaming at the broadcast on the rock site.

Credit where credit is due. They did an awesome job.

Thanks for the correction.

Suicide verdict questioned in death of Russian reporter

This past week, Moscow police found the body of Ivan Safranov in the courtyard outside his apartment.

It looked like he had jumped, an apparent suicide.

Friends and co-workers suspect Safranov is just the latest in a series murders targeting journalists who cover stories sensitive to the Russian government or the Russian mafia.

Safranov a former army colonel, worked for Kommersant.

A-NOIAing to government

Industry minister Trevor Taylor is excited about 18 local companies going to a forum next week designed to highlight procurement opportunities in the Alberta energy boom.

NOIA started working on this project last summer in the wake of the Hebron collapse.

Search in vain for any acknowledgement of the supply and service sector's local association work on this file.

That's okay. People in the industry know what is happening.

Magnum Force

Head over to Offal News, if you don't already as a matter of course, and check out Simon Lono's latest observations on the Hickey affray with Roger Grimes.

Lono draws in a West Wing episode which is always cool. Lono demonstrates he has a .44 Magnum mind in a .357 world. Read toward the end and you'll see the bit where that happens.

Lono could have been quoting Harry Callahan: "A man's got know his limitations."

A soldier, once and always

Corporal Kevin Megeney's remains are on the way home from Afghanistan.

The investigation is continuing into his death and into another death in August that resulted from a gunshot wound. In the August case, the military investigation has reportedly ruled out foul play, suicide or enemy action. Odds are good this latest one will head to the same conclusion.

But here's a pet peeve from the media coverage, where Corporal Megeney is referred to repeatedly as a "reservist". maybe more than once your humble e-scribbler has let that word slip from his own lips or typed them onto a page somewhere.

No more.

There's something about that word that just doesn't sit right.

The fact that Corporal Megeney volunteered on a part-time basis to serve in the army doesn't make him any different from the person who opted to volunteer for full-time service.

There's a tendency - and it may still come from the military as well - to consider the reserve component of the Canadian Forces as a haven for lesser beings compared to their Regular Force counterparts.

Their liability was supposedly different. They could opt not to show up. Blah. Blah. Blah. You hear them all. Maybe things have changed in the past six years but for a long time there was an attitude toward Reserve Force soldiers. They were reserve, as in hold-back, or even slack.

It's time to adjust that attitude.

Kevin Megeney did his job.

He worked hard at it.

He showed skill and ability.

When the chance came, he volunteered to go to Afghanistan where others didn't.

Now he's dead.

Grieve him.

But Corporal Megeney was never a reservist.

He was a soldier.

Whenever we speak of someone like Kevin Megeney, let's just call them by the simple name they deserve.

Where are they now?

Over at Broadcast the Rock, someone has done the great service of posting two clips from a celebrity fundraiser for Big Brothers Big Sisters in 2000.

It's a great organization and local celebrities should be commended for putting in considerable effort to let people have a whoop or, in one case, a serious laugh at their expense.

But still.

Ya can't help but wonder where these guys are now.

Well, actually, they have become best buds, apparently with one - who later become Premier - giving the other one a nice appointment at the province's offshore regulatory board. About a year or so after this event, the guy doing Mambo #5, took over as leader of the Progressive Conservatives and later defeated Roger Grimes in the 2003 general election.

So for your Friday enjoyment here is Andy Wells demonstrating why he went into politics and not music, and Danny Williams doing his version of Mambo #5.

Who needs I.P Freely?

Imploding the Q

From John Gushue's ...dot dot dot a video of the demolition of the old combined bachelor quarters at Argentia, in November 1999. Warning: the video is on autoplay, meaning that when you click the link the video will start right away.

John introduces a new website called Broadcast the Rock, a video sharing service of the type that have been springing up everywhere in the past few years.

Here's the youtube.com version:



Your humble e-scribbler worked on the project.

The Argentia Hilton was a multi-story building at the old United States naval facility that, at the time it was built, was reputedly the tallest building in the province. It housed single soldiers, sailors and airmen and some transient personnel travelling through Argentia without families. There as also a medical facility there, a barber shop and other similar offices.

The Q, as it was known, was such a large building that the most effective way to demolish it was by implosion. That's a technique that involves planting explosives at key parts of the building structure and detonating them in a planned sequence.

In this case, the company with the site clean-up contract decided to do something spectacular with what turned out to be the last implosion anywhere on the planet in 1999. They hired Prime Communications and your humble scribe started working with that company about a week or two before the implosion project.

The demolition was used a fundraiser for the local health authority. Tickets were sold with the winner getting the privilege of pushing the big red button - literally - that triggered the explosives. They hired a company to set the charges but they also rigged pyrotechnics to add to the visuals. The large red bursts are five gallon canisters of gasoline with squibs attached. They had nothing to do with the demolition, rather they created the visuals that gave the crowd reaction you can hear on part of the video.

Watch the video a couple of times and you will notice the multiple camera angles involved. The company set up a series of remotely operated cameras aimed at the building from various angles to get this edited version so you can see what happened from the various perspectives.

The event was a huge success. The amount raised ran into the thousands and the lucky button-pusher was a 12 year old boy. He was beside himself with excitement. The weather was a bit chilly on that November day but a few thousand people turned out for the show.

Various versions of the video turned up around the world on year-end highlights reels.

What would Danny do? More like what is Don doing?

It is truly bizarre for a pollster, especially one who does business with at least one of the provincial government's referenced in this Daily News article, to make public comments slamming the Premier of Nova Scotia and the Mayor of Halifax and praising the Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador.

But that what Corporate Research Associate's Don Mills did yesterday in Halifax.

It's possible, of course, that all three get Mill's quarterly omnibus results, but it is still curious to see his comments.

Well, more specifically, it's curious to see this comment:

"If Halifax withdraws from the bid, the consequences for this community will be devastating," Mills told a business audience of more than 200. "We will never get this chance again."

Admittedly the context is different. He's accusing politicians of equivocating. Then he praises Danny Williams for leadership. But if "leadership" produces a situation on, say, Hebron, that matches exactly the situation Mills just described about Halifax, then leadership becomes as useless as its opposite.

Mills' polling can still show Williams being overwhelmingly popular, but the responses to that single question don't give the full picture on what is going on in Newfoundland and Labrador.

The media get a slam as well for reporting on the projected costs of the Halifax Commonwealth Games bid. There's a novel idea: slamming reporters for doing their job. That is soooo effective at generating the coverage you'd like to see.

There's other coverage of Mills' speech. CBC has it. There's also a more complete story in the Chronicle Herald that includes some of Mills' strong criticisms of Premier Rodney MacDonald.

This speech gives us some real insight into Mills' grasp of politics in Atlantic Canada and that should colour how we take his future analyses.

If Mills was really so clued in, then he'd know to thank his lucky stars he lives in Nova Scotia.

In Newfoundland and Labrador, he'd have a Premier showing "leadership" but if someone like Mills stuck his head up to criticise what the "leader" was doing publicly, he be slapped with a lawsuit before his ass hit his seat at the hotel. At the very least, the "leader" would be threatening lawsuits very openly and very publicly.

Mills might even be kissing his polling contract with government, good bye. Subscribers would dry up.

Mills should know when he's got it good.

He should also add a few questions to his omnibus so he can pick up a better view of politics in the Atlantic provinces.

___________________
Update:

From the comments section, this blog link on the Games bid being yanked.

There are accounts of the controversy at the Daily News, a column from the same paper that supports the cancellation based on cost overruns, from the Friday Globe and Mail, a story from Glasgow- also bidding on the games - that claims the Halifax bid was more than double the Glasgow bid, and this one from the Chronicle Herald.

Confusion at Disneyland 2

On Goose Bay and the Conservative's promises:

CBC Here and Now, March 7, 2007

DEBBIE COOPER: Steven Harper also committed to a beefed up military presence in Goose Bay. Is the government still committed to that?

JIM FLAHERTY: Yes.

DEBBIE COOPER: When?

JIM FLAHERTY: The when is being worked on. I mean there is work . . .I know there is because as Finance Minister I see it. There is work afoot to accomplish this. We have only been the government for 13 months. The last group were there for 13years and didn't get a whole bunch of things done.

We've accomplished quite a bit in the 13 months but there's more to be done and the Goose Bay commitment remains.

DEBBIE COOPER: So people are going to have to have more patience there?

JIM FLAHERTY: Yes but not for too long.

But, then there's this testimony by Major General Mike Ward.

Ward is a lot more than the model of the modern major general. As he described himself to the standing committee on national defence:

My role, on behalf of the Deputy Minister and the Chief of the Defence Staff, is to harmonize, synchronize and integrate the Force Development activities of the Navy, the Army and the Air Force, as well as the duties carried out by DND's Assistant Deputy Ministers.

Force development is that function that continuously conceives and redesigns the military so that it is better geared to fight the next war than the last one. It includes analysis of government policy on defence and the security environment, as well as we can predict it, out into the future. It uses that analysis to identify possible future scenarios within which we would apply military force or use military skills in things like humanitarian interventions. In those scenarios, we test our forces and our equipment to determine what changes might need to be made as we replace or modernize them at key stages in their lives.

That role, incidentally is Chief Force Development. Basically, if Goose Bay is on anyone's table, it would definitely be on Ward's.

That's what makes his remarks - excerpted below - very telling.

Those familiar with Ottawa will not find it at all bizarre that a defence and security initiative is being lead by Indian and Northern Affairs Canada. The rest of us can just call that the place is known as Disneyland for a reason.

But I digress.

Standing Committee on National Defence
Thursday, February 8, 2007

Hon. Joe McGuire:

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

We have been concentrating on the equipment required in our overseas operations, and rightly so. Our soldiers are in the field and so on, but the government has announced a major domestic initiative in the north to exercise our sovereignty in that area.

I am just wondering what procurements are required for that initiative. The minister has made some commitments to Goose Bay and other areas that he has in mind for exercising that sovereignty. What kind of equipment--ships, planes, ports, whatever--is going to be required, and how far along is that process? Has it got to the Public Works level? Exactly where is the planning for our northern initiative?

MGen M.J. Ward:

In response to government direction, we've been in the process of developing a “Canada first” defence strategy, which really characterizes the defence policy initiatives that are key to the government's desires. In keeping with that, in the capability development realm, we've been following up with analysis of specific scenarios, including the Arctic, that allow us to understand what types of roles the Canadian Forces can provide in that region, and also against the types of gaps or deficiencies we may have in, for instance, the ability to survey our Arctic, to know what's going on up there, to potentially to respond or to maintain more presence.

So we're going through a number of analyses to look at what our options might be, and that's tied up in the defence strategy that's going through the cabinet process at this time. The government will have us look at a number of initiatives to see how we can do a better job in that particular part of our domestic land space, air space, and approaches.

Hon. Joe McGuire:

Are there any first steps being implemented on the Goose Bay commitment, in Bagotville, and so on, on the initial announcement the minister was making on Goose, and the role Goose was going to play in the north? Is there anything imminent there as far as the equipment purchases or instructions to public works to proceed with some equipment purchases?

MGen M.J. Ward:

We really can't say because of what's in the plan, but there really hasn't been specific action taken on the Goose Bay initiative. [Emphasis added]

Hon. Joe McGuire:

So the whole northern initiative, the arctic initiative, is at a very elementary stage?

MGen M.J. Ward:

Part of it is at the highest levels of government in terms of specifying a lead department to review an arctic strategy. The Privy Council Office certainly has a keen interest in making sure there's a balance of effort and an understanding of who the lead department would be. INAC has been determined to be the lead department.

Hon. Joe McGuire:

They're still trying to identify the department that will lead the initiative? Is that it?

MGen M.J. Ward:

No, my understanding is that INAC has been determined to be the lead department for the development of the strategy, but several government departments also have roles to play in that. Foreign Affairs certainly has a significant role to play, as it affects our offshore or issues beyond our territorial boundary. So it will take some time I think for each of the government departments to get together and discuss those issues. We'll be having discussions in coming weeks with INAC officials just to make sure we each know what each other is doing with regard to the Arctic. So it's at a fairly preliminary stage.