OPTION 6

[gullyfourmyle]

February 3, 2009

RE: ALL THE NEWS THAT’S FIT TO FUND – John Honderich

– SUNDAY STAR, FEBRUARY 1, 2009

OPTION #6

– investigative journalism by the unfunded

As noted by you Mr. Honderich, “In order for us to live meaningfully and participate in our community, we must be appropriately informed.” In your article, you suggested five options for ensuring that funded investigative reporting can continue as a mainstay of democracy.

The following is why I believe there is room for an Option 6.

Personally, I don’t think the Toronto Star has been fulfilling the role of keeping us appropriately informed for some time on key issues even with funded reporters. Let me explain:

The Seaton Land Exchange is an excellent example. My research has shown that much publicized deal amounts to a twenty billion dollar fraud perpetrated in plain sight by the Ontario Government right under the noses of every journalist involved.

When I ran for Mayor of Pickering in the last municipal election, an important part of my campaign was devoted to publicizing Seaton and what I saw as theft of public land for development uses the residents of Pickering and the GTA in general did not agree with as noted in a Star survey. I expected the news media to carry on as the story developed. But they didn’t. Instead every newspaper in the GTA complained at some point about how boring the municipal election was while discussing Miller’s haircut.

John Barber of the Globe and Mail wrote an entire article outlining exactly what he wanted to see in those elections. He described my candidacy like he’d written my literature and invented the issues himself. When I contacted him, he told me to keep him in the loop and never returned my calls after that.

Rather than picking up on my campaign, (with the single exception of Rogers Cable who televised the mayoral debate in the complete absence of any other media) the Pickering Mayoralty campaign which should have sparked debate all over the GTA was essentially blacked out and it ran in a media vacuum.

What history is going to record as the biggest fraud in Canadian history is still being kept under wraps. In the intervening years, I haven’t stopped talking publicly about it and have written letters to every level of government. The replies I get are the usual slimy responses that avoid any mention of the actual subject and no mention of the crimes.

The big deal about the Seaton Land Grab is not the financial aspect of the fraud, big as it is. It’s the public safety aspect of the fraud. It’s now beginning to rear its ugly head as the huge problem I predicted in 2005 when decisive action should have and could have been taken.

Right now, the City of Pickering, Durham Region and York Region have a conundrum on their hands. It was, despite objections by me and many others, agreed by all concerned levels of governments to run the Big (sewer) Pipe from York Region to the Pickering Water Treatment Plant on Lake Ontario to facilitate more environmentally burdensome development in York Region.

All was well and good from the government’s point of view right up until Cherrywood residents found out that the pipe would be vented right near their little neighbourhood. Suddenly all hell broke loose. The City of Pickering got on side to oppose it too and Durham Region said it would take another look at the issue.

The subcontractors running the project [the Environmental Assessment process] never once raised the possibility of the Big Pipe becoming a Stench Trench during public consultation. I was there. So much for open and transparent public consultation and informing the public in an open and honest manner. The 407 is going to pose exactly the same problem and so is the incinerator planned for Courtice that industry and the Ministry of the Environment are actively planning to make redundant long before it can be paid for. It's called zero waste. It's going to happen.

All this is about a noxious smell that will attract disease laden flies to the area by the millions but the air itself will not physically injure anyone.

What they’ve all conveniently forgotten is that the Big Pipe is being run to facilitate more developments in York Region that are going to generate hundreds of millions of tons of new, less smelly air pollution. (Toxic air raises risk of death – Toronto Star, Noor Javed , Jan. 30, 2009) That air pollution is already chemically injuring every single person downwind in the GTA and is killing thousands prematurely. But in the east where this effect is currently much less, the Ontario government has taken the bizarre, irresponsible and completely avoidable step to ensure that the existing safer air quality in the east will be intentionally downgraded to match and exceed the existing hazards in the west. Once implemented, the death toll will never stop. The air pollution is a much bigger deal than the smell of raw human sludge. The sludge won’t kill or injure anyone. It will make living near the odour unbearable when there is a leak. There are always leaks. No one can guarantee there will never be a leak.

So is it acceptable to reside downwind from millions of tons of air that will certainly injure and eventually contribute to our premature deaths but not acceptable for the air to smell like shit on a stick?

The injuries we’re talking about are so serious they alter or destroy DNA. That means they disrupt the ability of afflicted residents (and animals) to expect to bear healthy, non cancerous future generations. Imagine doing that intentionally to half of the GTA? That is exactly what is beginning to happen. There is no honest science anywhere that can dispute that assertion.

During the Seaton Land Environmental Assessment, I wrote and contributed a submission titled “Land Grab in North Pickering” that explained in simple detail the dangers of developing the Seaton Land and how it’s the lynch pin to an air pollution catastrophe. It also explained how the public safety factor works when applied to developing the Seaton Land. That included other projects such as the Big Pipe, the Incinerator and the 407 extension. It explained the legal responsibility the Ontario Government has to explore any public safety issue that might be brought to light by a public submission during an Environmental Assessment. That in fact is exactly why Environmental Assessments are done.

Rather than explore the public safety issue, the Ministry of the Environment substituted air quality information from the central Toronto area and described it as similar to air quality in the study area – which it was and is not. The map accompanying Noor Javed’s article in The Star shows clearly that I’m right. Combine that with a map that plots the jet stream and prevailing winds and its clear the Environmental Assessment was a fraud – a criminal offence that upon conviction comes with fifteen years in the slammer even if you are a Government Minister. Then the Ontario Government stated that it had completed the Seaton Land Environmental Assessment when in fact it had not. It then based the land transfer on this false information, thereby committing a massive and intentional fraud against the developers and the residents of the entire eastern GTA whose health they chose to dismiss as irrelevant. The fraud does not end there because the proposed Pickering Airport is a huge part of the plans for the area. So the federal government if it chooses to go ahead with the airport will be drawn into the fraud as well as an additional victim of provincial dishonesty. It is certainly going to base its decision on all provincial development issues having been conducted legally. They certainly were not.

When I made the submission, I set it up to establish a “known by date”. A date whereby the Ontario Government was officially aware and in possession of the facts regarding the public safety issues I identified and that have since been confirmed by independent scientific research and published in the media – the Toronto Star for a local example – the very same paper that pointedly refused to publish this same information when it was part of my election campaign when it would have done the most good. The “known by date” established legal responsibility for all participants. I have the signed and dated receipts. The failure of the media and in particular The Toronto Star to step up to the plate has allowed the culprits to remain at large so far. As a private citizen I have explored all avenues and have met with government corruption at every turn.

All of the physical dangers I warned of in the submission are now coming true. People are being chemically injured and killed. The public is starting to pay the monumental price for the failure of the media and local governments to fulfill what is a legal Care of Duty, an obligation assumed by those who work in the public sector when they know. They did. I hand delivered the information.

So you might think the $2,250.00 was a low budget for alerting the US public to the reality of the Viet Nam war, but sadly, I think I’ve trumped that by my efforts [totally unfunded] to alert the Ontario public to the formerly avoidable but now inevitable and unstoppable genocide committed by the Ontario government that can only get worse. The only difference is that the media in the US, as biased as it was, was a hell of a lot more open minded and more intelligently run than the media here is and the government did belatedly take action. The killing and injuries did stop. Here in Ontario and Canada we still have air quality regulators who wake up every morning in Disney’s Fantasy Land. Again, the intentionally escalated killing and injuries are just ramping up and there will be no end, it can only get worse. Ultimately millions of people in the eastern GTA are going to pay a formerly avoidable physical price with their personal health and lives.

Then there is the Dr. Richard Austin situation. That was a story that was brought to the public’s attention by the Toronto Star itself. Only, after identifying a serial medical malpractice case, the Star dropped the ball. CTV picked it up and expanded on it, did it again a year later and then dropped the ball again. I counted and recorded what I believe to be 17 different criminal offences illuminated by the stories run by the Star and CTV’s W5. After exposing the stories, neither media giant followed up to see whether or not the police would lay charges. They didn’t. So I followed up. When I did, the Toronto Police Service (William Blair’s office) lied in writing about why they were not investigating on multiple occasions. That’s covered under the Criminal Code. It’s called Obstruction of Justice. I have their responses in letters they wrote to me. It turns out the Toronto Police are not at all familiar with the Criminal Code where the medical profession is involved. They may be incompetent; over-worked or ignorant of their duties. Or all three. Or maybe they just can’t be bothered. By lying to me, the person reporting the crime, the police committed a crime against me and involved me directly in the case as a complainant.

Important questions need answers. Why would the Toronto Police Service’s office lie in writing on multiple occasions about why they have not investigated such a highly publicized series of criminal acts? How far up the chain does this go? Who is being protected? Why hasn’t the Ministry of Health stepped in and ordered a criminal investigation? Who is accountable? If there was indeed no crime, then why lie to me?

Two years ago I wrote a national internet campaign that went to every national elected MP and MPP (with the exception of Alberta as they were in election mode). In that campaign I talked about government and medical crimes and corruption. I thought at the time I’d quickly follow up with examples. But what happened was that I was overwhelmed by a barrage of cases that never made it to the public forum. It’s taken that long to dig myself out and make sense of the amount and variety of government committed crimes and cover-ups such as the Electro-magnetism issues here in Ontario and more seriously in Newfoundland where there have been many human fatalities that the federal government denies and refuses to do anything about. The crimes committed against the four hundred women [breast cancer detection process] in Newfoundland that were allowed to be heard without threat of criminal charges against most particularly the Premier, Danny Williams. How does one man’s comfort zone out-weigh that of four hundred women and the media doesn’t utter a whimper? There’s a juicy money laundering case in Quebec involving Caisse Nationale, wrong-doing by the RCMP and a former federal cabinet minister. I have copies of the cheques. In fact I have a copy of the entire file. It’s an open and shut case. Neither the police nor the media seem to want any part of these issues. There are legislative tools to make embarrassing issues “go away”. You see this on TV all the time but it really hits you when you have the evidence in your own hands. It hits you again when you realize the media are not only not interested but actively in fear of covering the stories. Where are the professional investigative journalists? Hiding under a rock?

Meanwhile, the police are living under a delusion that medical crimes are properly dealt with by the College of Physicians and Surgeons. They are not. The College has no jurisdiction when a criminal offence has been committed and has no obligation, expertise or will to conduct a forensic investigation. So they don’t. And so far, they know they can get away with almost anything. You know it too.

The stories published by the Star and broadcast by CTV were excellent and well done. Unfortunately, Dr. Richard Austin was charged, convicted and found guilty by the media; not the criminal courts where the crimes should be dealt with. Unfortunate is not nearly powerful enough a word. My extensive research on the subject has led me to believe that the Doctor might just be entirely innocent of all charges. If he is innocent, then who is guilty? Someone or some people are for sure and there needs to be a reckoning. Right now, there’s a class action civil suit being brought to bear on the doctor. No matter the outcome, the doctor is sure to be a ruined man in every way if he isn’t already, by the end of it if he lives long enough. A civil suit is not going to determine who committed the crimes. It isn’t going to establish whether the doctor is guilty or innocent. It isn’t going to fix the system that betrayed the doctor and the women, which is exactly what the women who were harmed have gone on record as wanting. From my perspective, the case needs a forensic investigation that includes examining the doctor’s staff, Scarborough General Hospital administration, the Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons, the Ontario Medical Association and the Ministry of Health. It cannot be done without a thorough forensic police investigation of the system from top to bottom done by competent officers who are not paying lip service to formality and who are not bound by government intervention, a gag order or limitations on what they can and cannot investigate.

Would anyone familiar with the dark side of the medical system be surprised if the police uncovered other unrelated criminal offences while they investigated the Dr. Richard Austin case? The Doctor Richard Austin case represents a unique opportunity to dissect the system like never before, identify shortcomings and fix them. But the police and the media are showing no signs of interest. Where are the investigative journalists when you need them? Funded or not?

Sixty or more women were allegedly maimed by the doctor. When that many people are involved, you’re well beyond the realms of incompetence and malpractice. Crimes at some level are definitely being committed. That apparently is okay with Toronto’s finest so far. I had to trick the freedom of information people to learn that the police are still not involved over a year after I reported the crimes.

It is apparently okay with Toronto’s media too. No one at The Star or W5 wants to know unless it was them that had the idea first apparently. So much for the Right to Know – It’s The Unkindest Cut of All.

But let’s not stop there. In 2007, Ontario passed the new street racing legislation into law. Having written one book on the subject, I thought I’d better research the new law to see how it related to my book STREET RACER and maybe add a chapter on the new legislation.

The more I examined what the government had done, the more the old familiar odour began to surround the issue. Just like the Big Stink in Pickering this law had poop oozing out of every phrase and dangling participle. The chapter I was going to write about the new street racing and stunt driving law turned into a second book titled ABUSE OF POWER. Turns out, by my understanding of how the law is supposed to work in this province, the Ontario Legislature collectively committed fraud when they passed the law! You don’t have to take my word for it either. You can go to May 14 2007 Hansard. There if you read objectively, you’ll see how the Ontario Legislature transformed itself into a lynch mob mentality before they voted to enact the law. Factual information was not an issue. Only one minor “fact” was even mentioned with respect to street racing and it was irrelevant. It’s very obvious to anyone who knows anything about street racing, road racing, drag racing, stunt driving and so on, that none of the people present when the vote was taken had any understanding of the issue they were voting on with the single exception of impaired driving that should not be in the same section. That it is amounts to legislative sloth of the first water. Besides, they didn’t even get that right. Essentially, the legislation – supposedly designed to catch street racers and drunk drivers instead targets everyone but street racers and has done nothing to stop drunk driving because it wasn’t written to catch real street racers or stop drunk drivers. It was written to increase tax revenues. The legislators will deny it but the complete results speak for themselves as does the information that was ignored or fabricated by the standing committee. The public thinks it was told the truth. It was not.

Meanwhile the real causes of accidents, as documented in my book and as recorded by insurance industry research, go almost completely unaddressed except where I explained to them their own liability if they didn’t do something about cell phones. It took only three weeks from the date I submitted the information on their legal liability to the announcement of the new law. And still they bungled that too. These are people who know so little about issue relevancy and put so little effort into getting the facts it’s no wonder we have the problems we do.

Besides being in my view, unconstitutional, Section 172 depends on information contained in data published by the Ministry of Transport when it gets around to posting it. They are three years behind right now as they try and block me from getting more damaging information on them from their own numbers.

The public has for years been fed partial or erroneous information by the government and the OPP in particular about causes of accidents. The MTO’s information comes directly from the police. Their own information shows that both the government and the OPP have been lying all these years while artificially keeping accident numbers high so they can collect revenue from speeders. That means the province has intentionally maintained a position that ensures people are killed and injured unnecessarily to harvest revenue it doesn’t deserve. None of this has anything whatsoever to do with street racing.

Again you don’t have to take my word for this; it’s all on the MTO website if you can figure out how to read it.

The only trouble is, to make sense of it, you have to take their numbers and rebuild all of their charts into something meaningful. As the information is organized and published it’s almost pure gibberish. That’s how the authorities have managed to get away with this deception for so long. You might as well buy my book and save yourself the trouble.

After writing the ABUSE OF POWER, I learned there was an on line petition opposing Section 172. Over 8,000 people had signed it. Hardly any are real street racers for the simple reason; there are hardly any real street racers. Street racing in fact amounts to 3/10ths of 1% of the total accident problem and it’s almost totally centered in the GTA. Of those, only a much smaller fraction are actually real street racers. Real street racers almost never have accidents – period. As a group in terms of accidents, they are the safest drivers on the road. End of story. Sure there are occasional accidents, but generally those few accidents are by young drivers with little experience and the fact they are racing at all as explained in my book, can be laid squarely at the government’s door.

Per capita, according to MTO, the unsafest drivers on the road are sober, between the ages of sixteen and fifty, driving at or below the speed limit on dry roads in broad daylight and clear lines of sight. Most are men but plenty are women. Real street racers represent less than one thousandth of one percent of the total number.

Empty vehicles kill more people than even Learner Street racers do every year.

As my book started to get known, my name was passed to a Global TV reporter who said she was putting together a story about the other side of street racing issues from the street racers’ perspective and would be interested in my story. She interviewed the author of the petition, Tim Chisholm, me the author of two books on the subject and a private citizen who had been victimized by the OPP with a fictitious stunt driving charge. He defended himself in court and the OPP officers were caught perjuring themselves in court trying to get the conviction. The officers were not reprimanded for testilying – an illegal tactic apparently used regularly by police. The police got away with a blatant case of perjury. I’ve heard plenty of other stories like it since. Collectively we contributed about nine hours of interview time and plenty of documentation to support our contentions.

When Global ran the mini-documentary, it was nothing like we expected. All of the information about government criminal wrong doing was gone and the program was merely a sugar coated same old, same old that completely ignored the salient points of our contribution. Looking at it, I could only assume the producers had taken several hours of information and chucked into the garbage. The show was titled One Year Later – it was a travesty on the one hand and another affirmation that there is no such thing as honesty or integrity in Canadian media. Were we naive? No. We knew at the outset just from being realists that there was potential that our information would or could be discounted. But the depth and breadth of journalistic treachery by the producers in this piece was breathtaking, disappointing and a heads up that traditional media has become not a conveyor of news but an obstacle between the news and the public.

The irony came when a Global News truck was nailed for street racing on its way to a story and the truck seized. At that point, maybe the producers finally got religion. If they did, it was too late to save the story and set the record straight with the truth.

(Make no mistake; my objection to the street racing law had nothing to do with the effort to stop reckless people committing what are criminal code offences with vehicles. It had everything to do with the dishonest way the problem was dealt with by legislators – especially the standing committee responsible for the hack job on the actual language of the legislation.)

Did the media pay any attention even then? No. Except for the single exception that I know of – Jim Kenzie. But even he has been set aside as an anachronism despite being 100% right in his position. He was frequently vilified by his own readership that lacked the mental equipment to grasp his position.

The difference between his position and mine was that he hadn’t realized that the government had bungled the legislation even worse than he thought and it certainly never occurred to him that the legislature engaged in a criminal offence when they enacted the law.

Elected public officials tend to believe that when they commit criminal offences that do not involve stealing money, assault or murder; that they are beyond the reach of the law. That is not so and that includes the entire legislature when it collectively commits a felony as happened with Section 172. As elected members of parliament, you are there representing public interests and safety – physical and financial. You have a Care of Duty to do your jobs to the best of your ability. If you do, you cannot be charged with a criminal offence.

The language of Section 172 rests on information within the Ontario Road Safety Annual Reports (ORSAR) being accurate. To the best of my knowledge it is. However, the language of Section 172 does not reflect what is in ORSAR. Section 172 is based on the assumption that street racing is an activity so heinous that it required the denial of constitutional rights enshrined in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. ORSAR shows clearly that the reality is quite different from that assumption. The standing committee had a responsibility to deliver language that was based on fact. It did not do that. The House had a responsibility to understand the language of the proposed legislation to ensure that what was about to be passed into law did meet not only a standard of honesty but also a standard of necessity as required by Section 33.1 of the Charter of Freedoms and Rights. The Legislature did not do that either.

As a result, thousands of completely innocent people have essentially been robbed by the police on behalf of the government via the non-refundable administration fees of various sorts. To make matters worse, many of these people have lost jobs and income due to the failing economy. That lost income is making the difference between putting food on the table, paying mortgages, rent and the ability to look for work. That is a hardship imposed directly by a Legislature that failed to use even a modest amount of common sense while developing and enacting Section 172.

The person I mentioned earlier is one of those people. He was completely innocent, yet he lost thousands of dollars to defend against phony charges that were part of a plan to nail him whether he was committing an offence or not. He is a single parent trying to put two sons through school, one of whose university education is now at risk. He has lost his job to the economic downturn. He is in dire financial straits, and will soon lose his car and his house if things don’t change soon. The money spent paying the administrative charges and for his defence is needed urgently right now. Thousands of other people are in his situation as well. This is a penalty exacted by the law that over-reaches its stated intent and places undue burden on society.

The crime is this: any and all of the legislature had access to the same information I did. It was your jobs to make sure that the reason for the law was based on fact. As such, based on the Criminal Code, you should have known. Not knowing is no excuse when it is your responsibility to know. None of you did your jobs. You all assumed the police and the standing committee were telling the truth. It was not a reasonable assumption to believe the police would provide truthful information. The track record of the police in court in terms of veracity is far less than sparkling clean. You should have known that too. What would anyone expect of a police force that perjures itself with impunity on such a regular basis to enable conviction quotas that a word was coined to describe that crime: testilying? What would anyone expect a police service to say when it has the opportunity to increase its budget, its personnel and buy an airplane by distorting data they feel no one will ever bother to check? Past performance is generally a good indicator of current and future performance. You should all have known that too. It is your job. Thus, the entire Legislature that voted yes to enact Section 172 committed a Criminal Code offence against Ontario drivers and their families when it enacted Section 172 and put them in needless peril. Every driver found not guilty or acquitted should have all of their money refunded complete with costs whatever they may be. Anything less tells me the Legislature is being run like a gang of thugs.

The law itself if intelligently written by knowledgeable people could have gotten the job done without victimizing a huge chunk of the innocent driving public.

When my election was tampered with as I mentioned earlier, the minister charged with dealing with it – Municipal Affairs and Housing’s John Gerettsen said I should take my concerns to the Ontario Press Council for a ruling. It turned out the Ontario Press Council was an old man sitting in a room with a secretary. The rest of the Council was made up of the people representing the companies who had blacked out my campaign. Guess what the ruling was by the kangaroos?

In your article you said: “…the important thing is for the dialogue to begin. At stake could be nothing less than the vibrancy and health of our society.”

Very true. But from here, I don’t know anyone who fights harder and does more research to get dialogue started to preserve that vibrancy and health in all its dimensions as a private citizen on a zero budget than I have. Your company does not want to know.

Another thing to consider is that the environment has consistently become an order of the day topic. It is the news. Yet there isn’t a newspaper in Canada that has an Environmental News Section where issues can be expanded upon and put into an understandable format. There is nowhere for ideas to be discussed and developed among readers. Instead it’s scattered like filler all through the pages. Peter Calamai’s Science column was reduced to an anecdotal sidebar this past Sunday. That editorial decision tells you clearly why the environment is in the shape it’s in. It’s still being treated as anecdotal by the media, business and by the government despite appearances. If that were not true, Seaton, and countless other environmental disasters being perpetrated by our sanctimonious, environmentally illiterate governments would be having brakes applied.

Out here in Pickering, we get the News Advertiser. It is a MetroLand paper owned by The Toronto Star. My Mayoral election platform was completely absent from that paper. My part of their questions to the candidate that should have been visible in September didn’t appear on their website until 10:30 pm the day before the election in November. Failing me and the electorate caused the News Advertiser to lose substantial credibility in this area. People wanted to know what I stood for and they still want to know the truth behind the Seaton Land Exchange. It is the biggest story in Ontario and the GTA and it has yet to hit the media three years later.

You said, “… as newsrooms shrink and editorial budgets collapse, it is precisely this type of in-depth journalism that I fear will disappear.” Sorry, you’re wrong – not about the budgets but about the journalism. In-depth investigative journalism is simply being driven back to its roots by lily-livered editors. Back to the amateurs who have a stake in the stories and access to the internet – back to people who have the courage to go where the funded media does not. Investigative reporting is a good fit with the internet. On it, support and awareness can go international in seconds flat as this story has done. Sure it would help to have funding. Sure it would be better if the traditional media was not so self serving but that’s why funded investigative journalism is in trouble. The news media has exactly the same problem as the Big Three domestic automakers. The public wants to know but the newspapers don’t want to print information that could be damaging to their advertisers – in particular, real estate interests. No one wins in the end.

The public has alternatives called YouTube, Facebook, Myspace and countless forums. They grow in power and reach every time the traditional media distorts the truth in the news.

While I as a private citizen investigate massive government crimes as an amateur with no funding, you say we should be concerned about investigative journalists wondering where their readership, funding and paycheque is going. If the media wants to restore readership the media needs to take a long hard look at how editorial decisions are made and who’s being paid what by whom. That answer is found in colour in the advertising sections of newspapers – especially under “Homes”. The media has sold its soul and is paying the price. I don’t think the print media cares about investigative journalism. Advertising pays the bills, professional investigations cost money. I’ve told MetroLand it’s papers are dead trees decorated with advertising by the pound, not news. For a while, they upped the real news to advertising ratio. But the ratio has slid away from news once more. Money talks.

Thank you for writing your article John. I was waiting for a trigger to set me off. Your thought provoking article hit the bull’s-eye. Long as it is, this article will be e-mailed to every federal and provincial elected politician in Canada. While these are Ontario issues for the most part, they can happen everywhere.

There are no shortages of crimes being committed by governments or within their institutions despite the hysterical objections made by one provincial Minister of Health when I e-mailed my original allegations so long ago. (Then it turned out he was having to initiate the investigation of a local medical crime himself at the very same time and the story with his photo was on the front page of his local paper the very next day…)

Yours truly,

John Newell, Pickering, Ontario

[M.Dancer]

My hat off to anyone who bothers to read that...

[Michael Hardner]

Brevity is the soul of sanity.

Can we have the Reader's Digest version perhaps ?

[M.Dancer]

Can we have the Reader's Digest version perhaps ?

That request is reserved for goat screed exclusively.

[August1991]

The Seaton Land Exchange is an excellent example. My research has shown that much publicized deal amounts to a twenty billion dollar fraud perpetrated in plain sight by the Ontario Government right under the noses of every journalist involved.

...

Would anyone familiar with the dark side of the medical system be surprised if the police uncovered other unrelated criminal offences while they investigated the Dr. Richard Austin case?

...

But let’s not stop there. In 2007, Ontario passed the new street racing legislation into law. Having written one book on the subject, I thought I’d better research the new law to see how it related to my book STREET RACER and maybe add a chapter on the new legislation.

...

Empty vehicles kill more people than even Learner Street racers do every year.

...

What do teh Seaton Land Exchange, Dr. Richard Austin, Street Racing and empty vehicles have in common? Nothing except that you managed to combine them into a single post.

I'm intrigued by your premise that empty vehicles kill more people than "even" learner street racers do. Were these empty vehicles moving or, uh, is this a rhetorical fluorish?

Kimmy? Calling Kimmy to the courtesy phone in the lobby! We have need for your logic and imagination to limn another poster's ravings.

Edited February 11, 2009 by August1991

[M.Dancer]

What do teh Seaton Land Exchange, Dr. Richard Austin, Street Racing and empty vehicles have in common? Nothing except that you managed to combine them into a single post.

I'm intrigued by your premise that empty vehicles kill more people than "even" learner street racers do. Were these empty vehicles moving or, uh, is this a rhetorical fluorish?

Kimmy? Calling Kimmy to the courtesy phone in the lobby! We have need for your logic and imagination to limn another poster's ravings.

My hat, is off.

[bush_cheney2004]

My hat off to anyone who bothers to read that...

My script scanned it for the usual "US" references.....this piece is only "Low" threat....extra points for liberal use of paragraphs.

[Oleg Bach]

My hat off to anyone who bothers to read that...

Put your hat back on. If you could use some sybology or maybe draw me a flow chart accompanied with a sentence or two - then the lazy blood in my bones might perk up...so is the reading going to take more than five minutes?

[Melanie_]

I skimmed, but this line jumped out at me...

I as a private citizen investigate massive government crimes as an amateur with no funding,

Now I know I can rest easy tonight, because John Newell of Pickering, Ontario is on the case!

[Oleg Bach]

I skimmed, but this line jumped out at me...

Now I know I can rest easy tonight, because John Newell of Pickering, Ontario is on the case!

Laying in bed this morning I relived six years of litigation and bickering with the feds and provincals....Thing clearify in time and become easier to peace together - I am full faithful in my blief that our judicary - governmental bureacrats and right up to the Supreme Court are very capable of cover ups - and very excepting of crime within their own system -- my God - I caught a dozen of the red handed and they all ran and hid - encluding that paper tiger the chief justice - who just loves grand photos of herself with fingers dripping diamonds ----those that are coward and will not stand up for what is right are classed in the same book as common crimminals - you either do your duty and maintain justice and if not - may as well join the damned mafia - From what I see - they are mafia and it is deeply disturbing to this group that there is at least one man living who knows exactly who they are ------ By knowing their sins - I know their weakness...and that is disturbing for these lazy arrogant jerks.

[gullyfourmyle]

If you actually read the piece, you would know how these three criminal cases are connected.

Empty cars killing more people than street racers is not a premise. It's a factoid that resides in the mountain of garbled information that the Ministry of Transport keeps regarding traffic accidents. Sometimes the empty vehicles are moving; sometimes they aren't.

Apart from investigating government crime, I study legislation. Since this is a political site, I presume those of you on this site must do the same thing because unless you understand how the legislation works, you can't fully understand the significance of what is being said in the political arena or in my post. Without a proper understanding of the legislation and the history of same, your contributions are going to have limited value or no value.

This country runs on legislation. If you haven't read and understood the legislation that is behind my post, then I can understand your problem with it.

Of course the legislation I'm referring to is the Criminal Code. I expect you are all familiar with that?

If you have a problem reading my post which is fairly lucid, how do you manage to understand the concepts delineated in the language this country runs on?

Have any of you actually read and understood any legislation yet? If not, I suggest you start with an easy one - the Provincial Environmental Assessment Act - tell me in 30 words or less why it is completely worthless. Be as brief as you can.

I dare any one of you to do it. Or you can do it as a group.

[M.Dancer]

I dare any one of you to do it. Or you can do it as a group.

Sorry, like the OP, I can't be bothered. See, while you claim the OP is lucid, I haven't seen anything that has convinced me it isn't a disjointed screed.

Oh yeah, one more thing

USA

[August1991]

If you have a problem reading my post which is fairly lucid...

I beg to differ.

[Michael Hardner]

Gully,

Here's a play by play on how you lost my interest:

As noted by you Mr. Honderich, “In order for us to live meaningfully and participate in our community, we must be appropriately informed.” In your article, you suggested five options for ensuring that funded investigative reporting can continue as a mainstay of democracy.

The following is why I believe there is room for an Option 6.

Personally, I don’t think the Toronto Star has been fulfilling the role of keeping us appropriately informed for some time on key issues even with funded reporters. Let me explain:

The Seaton Land Exchange is an excellent example. My research has shown that much publicized deal amounts to a twenty billion dollar fraud perpetrated in plain sight by the Ontario Government right under the noses of every journalist involved.

At this point I was still interested...

When I ran for Mayor of Pickering in the last municipal election, an important part of my campaign was devoted to publicizing Seaton and what I saw as theft of public land for development uses the residents of Pickering and the GTA in general did not agree with as noted in a Star survey. I expected the news media to carry on as the story developed. But they didn’t. Instead every newspaper in the GTA complained at some point about how boring the municipal election was while discussing Miller’s haircut.

I want to hear what this Seaton Land Exchange is, but I was still following the thread of your essay through this background paragraph...

John Barber of the Globe and Mail wrote an entire article outlining exactly what he wanted to see in those elections. He described my candidacy like he’d written my literature and invented the issues himself. When I contacted him, he told me to keep him in the loop and never returned my calls after that.

This is where you lost me.

You should have gone into a clear explanation of what happened. Instead, you start moving on to slagging Barber. I start to suspect that this article is going to be an aimless rant, and my right index finger moves the dial on my mouse down half a turn. Then I keep scrolling, thinking 'wow, I dodged a bullet not reading that'.

[gullyfourmyle]

This is where you lost me.

You should have gone into a clear explanation of what happened. Instead, you start moving on to slagging Barber. I start to suspect that this article is going to be an aimless rant, and my right index finger moves the dial on my mouse down half a turn. Then I keep scrolling, thinking 'wow, I dodged a bullet not reading that'.

Okay, I can accept that August1991. What you've said makes perfect sense. But I put Barber in because he is a microcosm that illustrates just how complete the the blackout of information is on these and other important subjects that the media censors. I don't believe I was slagging Barber. The man is a top notch journalist. The thing is, if a top notch journalist who has publicly stated that my methods and issues are exactly what he wants to hear about and then does nothing when he does hear, that should tell you something very important about what is going on in the media behind the scenes - especially when you consider that every media outlet with the exception of Rogers did exactly the same thing - black out my campaign. Unfortunately Rogers Cable doesn't have the distribution that would have made my platform and the Seaton fraud go mainstream.

Since then only one reporter has ever returned my calls (different reporter for the Star this time). He said he'd call me back after I described the issues. He didn't. But I had his e-mail so I contacted him again and he begged off saying that despite the fact that he is an investigative reporter and lives right here in Pickering, this was not his area of endeavour - don't call me, I'll call you. That was it.

Bear in mind that the Seaton fraud is by far the biggest fraud in Canadian history and fraud is far from the only crime or the most serious that the Land Exchange encompassed. Imagine a fraud to the tune of 20 billion dollars with a 'b', not an 'm' and the media implies by its actions that no one wants to know? But we do want to know about a petty theft at a convenience store?

The Seaton fraud should be the story of the century. Instead it's the best kept secret in Canada.

It's not hard to understand the consternation my claims cause. The province has been caught red-handed committing the largest crime in Canadian history. Among those who were defrauded were the developers. The public was defrauded in a totally different way. Then there is the public safety issue that's so big that it doesn't come under the Criminal Code, it comes under the Crimes Against Humanity Act.

The politicians get funded by the developers. The media gets funded by the developers. They all know each other. This is politics. This is what you people on this site ostensibly want to know about. This is not a skeleton in a closet. This is the entire boneyard. The corruption is wall to wall.

And in a classic case of poetic justice, it was the Toronto Star itself that inadvertently put the finishing touch on proving the crimes were undeniably committed. There is no way out.

These crimes come with long jail sentences. They are not petty crimes where you get a year or two or a slap on the wrist. The sentences for crimes of this nature are among the longest you can get in this country.

Please give it another try August1991, I appreciate your clear thinking.

[Michael Hardner]

First of all, my handle here is Michael Hardner not August1991.

Secondly, why don't you break this down into separate threads. Explain what the Seaton thing is first, then move on to the media war against you, etc.

[M.Dancer]

I think someone is miffed they lost an election in a landslide

[gullyfourmyle]

I think someone is miffed they lost an election in a landslide

Actually, I didn't lose the election in a landslide. Considering the odds stacked against me, I did spectacularly well. I went into it because the incumbent was pro-development and no one was opposing him. I didn't want to run and my wife was totally against it. She was worried our house was going to be attacked or I was going to be murdered or both.

The hype was such at the time due to my vocalizing the fraud that practically everyone who knew me was suggesting I get 24/7 protection and it was offered. But if someone were to bump me off, they'd have made a martyr out of me and then the fraud would have come out in spades.

I thought one of the councillors was going to run for mayor. If he had, there was no point in my candidacy. I waited until two weeks before the start of the campaign before I threw my hat in the ring. The day before the race started, my father-in-law died and I had to leave the country. So I lost the first week of the campaign and still had no campaign committee and zero funds.

By the end of the campaign I managed to raise $2,500 to pay for a few signs and literature. I even had a website but that happened so late in the campaign few people saw it.

A lot of people campaigned for me once they found out I was in the race without my even asking for help. Some of the councillor candidates even campaigned for me. The people who stepped forward were amazing and we had a lot of fun on the stump.

The reaction at the door was intense. When I told people what my platform was, the standard reply was: "You got my vote!"

During the course of the campaign only seven people stated they would vote for the incumbent regardless. In each case they explained they had personal ties. Can't hold that against him. But most people were furious and I had to listen to tirade after tirade against the incumbent. That led me to believe I had a pretty good shot. But the reality was that I was simply not able to get my message out fast enough.

I feel good about it though. I ran the greenest campaign in Canadian history. I shot straight from the hip and told the public the unvarnished truth like no one before me has ever done that I know of. What I got for that was my truck damaged and my signs destroyed.

In the end my $2500 generated 5000+ votes against the winning budget of $53,000 and 15,000+ votes. If more people had known I was running I'd have done much better. If my campaign had as much media publicity as the winning effort, I most likely would have won.

[gullyfourmyle]

First of all, my handle here is Michael Hardner not August1991.

Secondly, why don't you break this down into separate threads. Explain what the Seaton thing is first, then move on to the media war against you, etc.

Sorry for the mix-up Michael.

As far as splitting up the original post, it already is more or less in three sections. If I were to go back and repost, I'd end up using even more room on the site that I'm doing now.

All anyone has to do that's interested in the fraud is stop at the end of the Seaton section.

Those that want to read about the medical crimes can just read that part.

The street racing legislation is another section that can be read as a stand alone.

I suppose reading it all for the first time can be intimidating and overwhelming. From my fogged in perspective, having lived with that stuff and more in my head for years, what I posted is the tips of three monstrous icebergs. There is a lot more that could be said about each.

The street racing one in particular is very brief considering how much I've posted about it on other sites from other perspectives. It isn't as informative as I'd like either because to really explain how the government committed the crime takes quite a bit of explaining and some of it is very complex if you aren't used to dealing with legal jargon.

The bottom line is though that even the police, once they understand where I'm coming from concede that the street racing legislation is a train wreck. They won't go so far as to say it was passed fraudulently but they don't need to. All the information that proves the law was passed by employing fraudulent means is on government websites. Their own language convicts them.

[kimmy]

Kimmy? Calling Kimmy to the courtesy phone in the lobby! We have need for your logic and imagination to limn another poster's ravings.

I'm sorry, August... I can't help with this one. This appears to require the services of a shaman, gypsy, sorcerer, or houngan.

-k