Oct 10
5
Dalton McGuinty to ban self-defence in Ontario
The same weekend that ChristianGovernance discusses gun control and how a position predicated on the Lordship of Christ requires the abolition of gun control, we see media coverage that Ontario’s paternalistic Premier, Daddy Dalton, is taking the opposite position. (Excerpts of two articles are below with links to the complete articles.) We make the case that self-defence is a much more important reason than hunting and sports shooting for decriminalizing firearm ownership. In contrast, a Saturday National Post article reports that, in a case of citizen’s arrest, the Ontario government is arguing that “a Toronto grocer’s attempt to expand citizen’s-arrest powers is akin to seeking a return to the Middle Ages when there were no police forces.”
Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty’s totalitarian vision for Ontario is terrifying. He envisions a sterile, anti-septic society in which people place their trust in officials, bureaucrats and regulators and their hope in the civil government. This approach to building society is antithetical to a vision of personal responsibility and individual liberty. People die and get viciously assaulted while waiting for police to arrive at the scene of the crime. McGuinty and his Liberal government seem willing to accept such “collatoral damage” as necessary human sacrifices to the greater socialist good.
On the same page of the National Post is another story about the case which reports that the grocer was arrested along with the criminal he caught. He was charged with “kidnapping, possessing a concealed weapon (the box-cutter he uses to open cases of produce), forceable confinement and assault.” None of these charges would have been leveled if Ontario was a free society. It sounds like Mr. McGuinty wants to turn the province into a police state. The article continued: “Crown attorneys have since dropped the first two charges.” Isn’t that special! Mr. Chen’s trial began yesterday.
National Post – October 2, 2010
Accused’s view of arrest provision ‘medieval’
By Shannon Kari
A Toronto grocer’s attempt to expand citizen’s-arrest powers is akin to seeking a return to the Middle Ages when there were no police forces, the Ontario government is arguing as a high-profile trial is about to start. Wang “David” Chen and two employees at his store in Toronto’s downtown Chinatown are scheduled to go on trial Monday on charges of assault and forcible confinement. They are accused of having tied up Anthony Bennett in May 2009, and then puttting him in a van, an hour after he stole plants from the store.
Mr. Chen, 36, and his two co-defendants are challenging the citizen’s arrest powers in the Criminal Code, which permits it only when someone is caught in the commission of a crime. The provisions are “too narrow” and violate the Charter of Rights, their lawyer Peter Lindsay argues in written arguments filed with the Ontario Court of Justice.
The trial was supposed to get underway more than three months ago. But the trial judge ordered an adjournment because the Crown had not filed arguments on the citizen’s arrest issue and whether it violates the Charter.
The Crown submissions now before the court suggest Mr. Chen is asking for “medieval powers of citizen’s arrest” when there was a positive duty for individuals to apprehend criminals. “Society has changed since the Middle Ages,” writes Crown attorney Christopher Webb. “For example, the medieval punishment for theft was very severe. Anyone convicted of stealing a shilling or more could be hanged. People found guilty of minor theft could have their hands or ears cut off, be branded with hot irons, shamed in the stocks or whipped through the streets,” he adds. The plant theft, to which Mr. Bennett later pleaded guilty, was a relatively minor offence and something society takes a “more moderate view of,” in terms of the appropriate punishment, writes Mr. Webb. It was a crime that “would not authorize” the actions of Mr. Chen and his employees, says the Crown.
National Post – October 2, 2010
David Chen — Big anger in Little China
By Peter Kuitenbrouwer
When David Chen and his brothers bought a three-storey white-brick storefront in Toronto’s Chinatown two years ago, they inherited, on a balcony above the street, a life-sized fibreglass moose — one of a series that speckled the city many years ago. They painted the moose’s antlers with Chinese gold coins, painted the Yin and Yang symbols on its back and gave it Fu Man Chu moustaches. Then they named their grocery store after the mascot, calling it Lucky Moose Food Mart.
Luck, however, has proven elusive. In May of last year Mr. Chen’s video cameras caught images of a man stealing plants and fleeing on a bike. When the man returned an hour later, Mr. Chen and his brothers chased him, caught him, tied him up, threw him in a van and waited for the police.
Toronto police did arrest the thief, Anthony Bennett, charging him with theft. But they also arrested Mr. Chen, 36, jailed him overnight and charged him with kidnapping, possessing a concealed weapon (the box-cutter he uses to open cases of produce) forceable confinement and assault. Crown attorneys have since dropped the first two charges. Mr. Chen’s trial on the forceable confinement and assault charges begins Monday.
The case has become a cause célèbre in Toronto, clogging radio talk shows and filling the pages of the city’s four Chinese-language daily newspapers. Most opinion sides with Mr. Chen. “It’s been covered and covered and covered,” says Chi-Kun Shi, a Toronto lawyer who is helping Mr. Chen, and whose ex-husband, Peter Lindsay, is Mr. Chen’s lawyer. Merchants in Chinatown, she adds, “say David is their hero. These are business owners. They are not Rambo. They are not waiting around to do some kung fu.”
Having exhausted their anger at Toronto police (who say they must charge Mr. Chen because he broke the existing law on apprehending shoplifters) some in Toronto’s Chinese community have turned their wrath on Ottawa, which has failed in 17 months to lift a finger to rewrite the law. “People call the talk shows and say, ‘Is this racism?’ ” Ms. Shi says. “And you can’t blame them for using the R word when you consider the complete disregard the Conservative government has shown to the Chinese community over the David Chen incident.”
Jason Kenney, the federal Immigration Minister, said last year that “Mr. Chen is a victim of crime. The law should remember that property owners have the right to use reasonable means to protect their property.” His government, however, has not changed the law. Meanwhile Joe Volpe, the Toronto Liberal MP, this year introduced a private member’s bill to decriminalize Mr. Chen’s act. Olivia Chow, the New Democrat MP who has Lucky Moose in her riding, introduced her own legislation, the Lucky Moose Bill, in Parliament this week.