Fargo shooting.Do the police need bigger guns in Fargo, North Dakota? It is eye-catching to say the least that in an incident that took the lives of a shooter and one police officer, while seriously wounding two more, the police officer who brought the incident to an end had to discharge 31 shots from his service weapon, before killing the shooter..Poor shot? Not at all. He hit the man 21 times. But it turns out the shooter was wearing body armour..Not every person who confronts police will be wearing body armour. And while ‘Dirty Harry’ was a great movie, people claim to have killed elephants with the .44 Magnum. Overkill for ordinary police work, maybe..Still… For most of that time, Officer Robinson was in danger of becoming a fourth police casualty, for no other reason than that his weapon lacked the necessary punch..Something to think about on both sides of the border..Wildfires.Three things are alarming about the wildfire situation.. BC wildfire alertsKelowna wildfire .One is that the fires are extensive as they are, with whole cities — West Bank Kelowna, Yellowknife — evacuated. Check out the Western Standard website. Some of the video looks like Hamburg in 1945. (Or Plymouth, where I come from, in 1940.).Second, it is a sad reflection on people that so many are apparently arson. (The Western Standard has run multiple stories, reporting the allegations from police and disaster officials.) The maximum penalty for arson under the Canadian Criminal Code is life, which in practical terms means about eight years. Is that enough when 20,000 people (Yellowknife) are kicked out of their homes, the taxpayer is on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars and every person who buys insurance will be paying for this next year?.Third, the prime minister claims the fires are evidence of climate change, anyway..Meta.We said this could happen. Just when there’s an urgent-need-to-know, Meta isn’t passing on the news. Transportation Minister Pablo Rodriguez, who was heritage minister in July when Meta began blocking Canadian news on its Facebook and Instagram platforms complains that "What Meta is doing now is completely unacceptable. We see that due to this ban, people do not have access to information that is absolutely crucial.". PABLO RODRIGUEZ .For once, I agree with him and Meta would be doing themselves a PR favour if they accommodated Canadians who rely on online news. However, this is the consequence of a policy that Rodriguez enthusiastically promoted..And it wasn’t that Rodriguez wasn’t warned..Freeland’s friend.Not that I’m any friend of Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, but the outrage about her friend getting an adviser job at Finance Canada is a bit overblown. There is a permanent civil service, but elected officials — whether in government or not — are allowed to bring on board staffers who are politically on-side to help them do their jobs. In Ottawa, they’re known as exempt staff and they serve up to the duration of the time in office of the people who appointed them. No doubt this person was Freeland’s friend; nothing wrong with that if they’re competent.. Chrystia FreelandChrystia Freeland in Ukraine .Where it gets icky is when political staffers move seamlessly into the permanent civil service after the government they serve is defeated. In an admirable expression of virtue, Stephen Harper neither encouraged nor facilitated these transitions, in the belief that a few years of political service should not be a gateway to the cushiest existence in the country..Sadly, the Liberals believe otherwise, which accounts for the overwhelming Liberal bias within the Canadian permanent civil service.
