IN CANADA CRIME PAYS IN CANADIAN

When you look at real estate listings in New York City you can find a crime profile of the neighbourhood. It’s a Google map and when you click on the crime icon, the areas in the hood that have criminal activity turn orange. It’s like the opposite of the “local amenities” listing. Instead of three pharmacies, a dry cleaner and a pet shop, you get two drunk and dis-orderlies, three B&E’s and a domestic.  

Since you are moving to Canada, The Yes We Canada Podcast is delighted to offer you the crime profile of your new neighbourhood, downtown Canada. 

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IN CANADA, CRIME PAYS! IN CANADIAN

© 2021 MATT ZIMBEL   FEB. 9, 2021 – PUBLISHING

LISA: Canada Curious?  This is Yes We Canada, the progressive’s guide to getting the fuck out.  This episode?   In Canada, Crime Pays, In Canadian! 

Hello. I’m Matt Zimbel.

When you look at real estate listings in New York City you can find a crime profile of the neighborhood. It’s a Google map and when you click on the crime icon,the areas in the hood that have criminal activity turn orange. It’s like the opposite of the “local amenities” listing. Instead of three pharmacies, a dry cleaner and a pet shop, you get two drunk and dis-orderlies, three B&E’s and a domestic.  

Since you are moving to Canada, The Yes We Canada Podcast is delighted to offer you the crime profile of your new neighborhood, downtown Canada. 

I know a few people who have done time in the slammer. Not braggin’, just statin’. One of them was an international media mogul… you know, private jet, mansions in New York, Florida, London and Toronto, a master of the universe until, well, until he wasn’t anymore and he became, what he so eloquently described as, “a guest of the American people”. I’m sure we can agree, calling an American Federal Medium security Penitentiary a guest house, is the delightful spin of the aristocracy.  

My ex-mogul buddy, told me that the word in the big house is that these days, all the crime is taking place on the Internet. 

We have the Internet in Canada. 

You’ve been forewarned. 

We have crime in Canada, in every variety.  

Violent crime, hate crime, drug crime, sex crime, we even had white collar crime but that has been legalized recently because too many of our titans of industry were going to jail.

It is likely that up here, in the North, we have as many criminals and sickos per capita as you do in the US.   But our sickos are on a budget because I’m sure you’ve long heard the expression crime doesn’t pay…well, up here in Canada, crime pays in Canadian. 

Which is why Canadian thugs have smaller budgets than your thugs, and hence less access to semi-automatic weapons, which are restricted here.  

Just like in the U.S., gun control in Canada is a thorny subject, one that falls pretty much along the classic rural / urban, right wing / left wing lines.  The biggest difference is that in Canada our lawmakers are not full-time employees of the National Rifle Association. Handguns are also restricted and prohibited weapons in Canada.  This means that to carry a handgun, you need to get a permit from the RCMP, and for your Canadian citizenship test – what does RCMP stand for? 

Hint: Dudley Do-Right…always gets his man? Musical ride? Ring a bell? 

Come on you can do this….

Did you say the Royal Canadian Mounted Police?  Come on down!  

If you want a prohibited or restricted weapon in Canada, you need permission from the R.C.M.P and it is rarely granted.  To qualify, your life has to be under threat …ordinary police protection has to be deemed insufficient.  This will come as no surprise to you but the R.C.M.P rarely think of themselves as insufficient. 

You might be able to get a permit if you require a handgun for work, meaning you are handling dangerous goods or handling wildlife. And, technically, if you are handling wildlife, you should just stop that and go home because you are an American pervert.   Besides shooting a bear with a handgun doesn’t work:

Jeez, that tickles, eh?

Gun crimes in Canada are much less prevalent than in the U.S. but they do exist. We bought an old industrial loft in downtown Montreal. The day the sale closed we rushed from the lawyer’s office, keys in sweaty palms, to re-inspect the dump, now as owners. 

When we excitedly turned on to our new one way street, in our brand-new neighbourhood for the very 1st time, we were stopped by a gigantic police barricade.  Cop cars everywhere, a “command unit”, ambulances, fire trucks, police radio’s cackling to the left of us, megaphones barking to the right of us.  

“What’s going on here?”, we asked the police.

“Hostage taking.  Armed”.

“Is there any other kind?”

It all ended well.  No one got hurt. Turns out the loft is a lovely, peaceful, place to live, pretty much free of crime.

In 2020 in the United States, you had 615 mass shootings, which was 181 more than in 2019. 

In Canada in 2020 we only had one, but it was the worst in our history, when a white, male, dental technician went on a homicidal rampage for over 14 hours in Nova Scotia while dressed as a cop driving a car decked out as a replica of an RCMP cruiser. He killed 22 Nova Scotians. 

This was an exceptionally rare crime. Nova Scotia is on the east coast of Canada and is home to some of the kindest, warmest, most peaceful people you could ever meet anywhere.  You might want to live there when you decide to move to Canada. 

After your Canadian immigration status is approved and you cross the border into Canada, sporting your best weekend warrior duds, driving your army surplus tank with Confederate plates, with your cache of military style assault weapons safely stowed you’re going to love it here. 

MZ:  Welcome to Canada , Bienvenue au Canada.  Anything to declare?  

My second Amendment rights, tally – ho dude. 

Don’t start screaming at the customs officer about your 2nd amendment rights.  Because in Canada while you do indeed have 2nd amendment rights they refer solely to the terms and conditions of entry into the Canadian Federation by the province of British Columbia in 1871.  

Nice tank though.

You’re packing for Canada and I’m yapping on about packing in Canada.

Now, this might be hard for you to wrap your head around, but up here you do not have the right to bear arms to form a militia. You do not have the right to open carry. 

Lisa: Mom, does this holster make me look fat? 

Lyne: No, honey it makes you look like a patriot!  Sweetie, the jeans make you look fat..

Lisa:  Mom!

The only thing you have the right to open carry in Canada is your groceries. And even open carry groceries have a few legal limitations. The Canadian Supreme Court recently released a decision restricting the rights of Canadians to cross provincial borders with beer purchased in another province. And, as you have likely assumed, we take our beer very seriously here; your “Mom and Apple pie” is our “Pamela Anderson and Beer”. 

And remember for the citizenship test…  we don’t have states, we have provinces.  

We also have free Medicare for life, so actually studying for your citizenship testis not a complete waste of your very important American time. 

Oh, you are just the cutest little Xenophobe you!

While we’re taking about open carry, we do have to address the elephant in the room…and before you get any ideas, put yer huntin’ rifle down, that elephant  in the room is a protected species in Canada.  

This really pains me to tell you but …the National Rifle Association?  Yep, our fault.  Blame Canada.  You see the Executive Vice President of the NRA is a guy by the name of  Wayne LaPierre Jr.   Turns out the LaPierre family descends from the Daughters of the King that we covered on last week’s pod “How to French in Canada”.  Wayne’s people came to the New France later known as Quebec, Canada, in the 1600’s from Normandy. And we all know how popular automatic military assault weapons were in Normandy in the 1600’s.

So, though I lack any kind of legit royal authority, I would like to officially and posthumously apologize to the people of the United States on behalf of King of Louis the 14th of France– who four centuries ago shipped an innocent young orphan girl from Normandy over to the buggy colonies, eventually begetting those who begat and who begat again until Wayne Robert LaPierre Jr. was begat in Schenectady, New York in 1949. 

 And Wayne…you have some splainin’ to do.

On Dec.14, 2012 at 9:35 in the morning, a deranged twenty-year-old white male outfitted in combat clothing entered the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut and murdered 26 innocent people. Twenty of his victims were little children.  His weapon of choice was his mother’s Bushmaster AR-15 semi-automatic assault rifle. While doing the research for this podcast I came across a minute-by-minute timeline of the mass shooting. A six-year-old girl survived by playing dead in the washroom.  When she was eventually evacuated, she called her mother and said:  “Mummy I’m ok, but all my friends are dead” and that is when I could read no longer. 

[silence/space]

The Bushmaster AR 15 is a gun that is affectionately known as “America’s Rifle”. It is capable of shooting roughly one round per second and the gun has a magazine that contains from 30 to 100 bullets. There are more than 15 million AR15’s owned by private citizens in the United States. A few days after the Sandy Hook Elementary School Mass Murder, Executive Vice President of the National Rifle Association Wayne LaPierre gave a speech in Washington where he blamed the media for calling semi-automatic military assault weapons “machine guns”.   He then blamed video game industry for being overly violent and then Mr. LaPierre pleaded with congress to ensure that “every school in America” have armed guards, because, as he famously said, “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun… is a good guy with a gun.”  Which I trust the pro-gun feminist lobby of the NRA, found deeply offensive. 

Mr. LaPierre often speaks compassionately about how guns are an inanimate object. And you know where this is going right?  “Yep, guns don’t kill people… people kill people”. 

Which provides a lovely segue to the part of the NRA stump speech of deeply moving verbiage about, the importance of metal health. Followed directly by a quaint little coda about why background checks are a contravention of your rights as an American Citizen.   Why?   Because the NRA wants to make sure, that every crazy person in America has the right to buy one of their clients highly effective killing machines.  Why? Because it’s good for business, and because the 2nd amendment of the Constitution written into law in 1791, clearly protects the rights of the mentally insane to own military assault weapons.  

Now we’re just going to pause on the NRA’s touching remarks and ask a kind of naïve, libtard question – just who exactly do American children need protecting from while they are learning their three R’s; reading, writing, and reloading?

Most of the time, we are protecting our children from mentally ill white males, who are citizens of the United States of America.  Let’s just say it like it is. The commie threat?  Islamic Terrorism?  Nah, our own people,  killing our own children. 

And, so while I’m trafficking in NRA subtext; I ‘d just like to close by saying please join Wayne LaPierre and the NRA in demanding that congress mandate and pay for, armed guards in every school in America, so our clients can continue to sell their weapons specifically designed for killing and injuring as many humans in as short a time as possible. 

“Mummy, I’m ok, but all my friends are dead.”

And she was six.

And the NRA says “you’ll have to pry my talking points: 

God Bless the NRA

Hopes and prayers y’all…see you in church on Sunday!

Much has been written about the stereotype of “the ugly American”. He’s usually imagined talking loudly, touring a foreign country, slightly obese, stuffed into a Hawaiian shirt, sporting baggy beige cargo shorts held up by a Walmart fanny pack. The sandals are from Target and the white sport socks are from Dollar General. Who are you wearing?  “I’m wearin’ Dollar General”! This caricature is imagined as being grossly insensitive to the local culture and wantonly disrespectful of the citizenry. And I mean let’s be frank here, you have done your fair share of obnoxious tourism and you’ve also propped up some pretty bad assed junta’s, because you, my friend, are one neocolonialist bad boy!  

That said, there are ugly Canadians too, but the profile is slightly different. While the ugly American tends to be either culturally oblivious or in the case of the United Fruit Company, a conniving capitalist, the ugly Canadian is smug, slightly superior and packing a quiet disdain for you.  We do not approve of your race problems, your assault weapon epidemic or your Honey Boo Boo’s. 

Don’t be fooled, by the Ugly Canadian, we have our own pretty serious problems. 

December 6, 1989 was a freezing cold night in Toronto, Ontario.  My new-born second son, was spending his first night at home. My wife and I sat on the couch surrounded by a mountain of cardboard boxes containing all of our belongings. In the morning a truck was booked to move us six hours east to Montreal, Canada’s 2nd largest city and the largest French speaking city outside of Paris. We turned on the evening news and our hearts broke. 

-

At 5:10 PM that day a twenty-five-year old gunman went into the university École Polytechnique, separated the men and women and executed the women while yelling about how much he hated feminists. In twenty-minutes he shot twenty-eight people, killing fourteen women, most of whom were engineering students, before turning the weapon on himself. 

Following this horrific crime, gun control in Canada was tightened to the point where all guns had to be registered. But in 2012 under pressure from gun lobbyists and their base, the Conservative Government of Stephen Harper reduced the powers of the gun registry by exempting unrestricted guns from registration, much to the disappointment of many Canadians, including the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police.  

It is hard to get automatic and semi-automatic weapons in Canada but apparently not hard enough. On January 29, 2017, a twenty-seven-year -old Quebec City student by the name of Alexandre Bissonnette walked into a Mosque outside of Quebec City with a prohibited AK47 and two pistols and shortly after evening prayers shot and killed six innocent worshippers and injured nineteen. 

In the days of these tragedies the first question we ask is; what was the profile of the shooter?  Was he, and they are invariably “he’s”, was he a citizen?  What colour was he? The majority of the time, the answer to that question is white.  Was he from a cultural background that might offer clues to a where his hatred came from? 

Was he crazy?  Well, I don’t think there is any question there.  But what made him crazy? Maybe he wasn’t “crazy”, maybe he was just “troubled”, that ever so gentle mental health moniker lovingly accorded to our white male, Christian variety of mass murderers.   

“You know, ya could never trust a white, Christian, male with an AK47”.  

So yes, we do have crime in Canada. When you immigrate, you probably won’t ever say, 

“ahhh…you know, it’s so nice up here but damn, I really miss the open carry of military assault weapons by my angry fellow citizens who feel it’s their God given constitutional right to kidnap elected officials.” 

And it is really nice up here and yet every December 6th we think of the promise of fourteen young women who wanted to become engineers and every January 29th    of the six peaceful men who were at prayer in their Quebec City Mosque  who will pray no more and every April 19 we think of the  twenty-two innocent Nova Scotians shot and killed in the  largest mass murder in our history and every June 23rd we think of the three hundred and twenty-nine souls who perished when Canadian Sikh terrorists blew an Air India flight out of the sky. 

We may be prone to think we are better than you.  

We are not. 

THEME

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