Hard to know where to begin on the recent report by the RCMP exonerating itself (surprise surprise) of any wrongdoing during the G20 summit here in Toronto. How about responsibility, for starters. Well, you all remember the infamous kettling incident where the police just rounded up everyone walking through the street, encircled them, and kept them standing in the rain for hours? Who was responsible for that again?

Bill Blair said, yeah, the Toronto Police gave the orders:

“I do acknowledge the operational command decisions were being made by a Toronto police superintendant who was the operational commander at the time here in Toronto,” he said.

How very interesting, considering the RCMP report claims that they were calling the shots.

 The RCMP assumed the role of security lead by authority of the G8 Summit Privileges and Immunities Order, 2010-2, and the G20 Summit Privileges and Immunities Order, 2010. These orders created the legal basis for Canada to host the Summits and, accordingly, provided the RCMP with authority pursuant to the Foreign Missions and International Organizations Act to take the lead role for security of the events.

The decision makers for the G8, in descending order, were the Executive Steering Committee, the UCC Commander, the Area Commander and the Site Commander. POUcommanders, if deployed, were given authority to make decisions with respect to the tactics and equipment to be used during time-sensitive operational situations. A similar matrix was created for the G20, but an added level of Jurisdictional Commander, e.g. the MICC Commander, appeared below Site Commander to reflect the addition of the MICC.

When asked what his [ISU’s Lead] expectations were of the UCC Commander and the TACC Commander in this situation, the ISU Lead stated that he would only expect the UCC Commander to get involved if there had been a strategic need to do so (e.g. need for additional resources). The ISU Lead was clear that the kettling was a tactical decision—that is to say, it was made by the Toronto Police Service.

Even more interesting is the claim that the RCMP broke their own rules in kettling protesters:

The RCMP reluctantly participated in kettling protesters at the G20 riots in Toronto in 2010, under orders from the local police, even though the controversial crowd-control technique is not part of the Mounties’ playbook.

So right out of the gate we have the Toronto Police claiming to give orders to the RCMP while the RCMP claims it was in charge (a number of times), and then admitting to using tactics contrary to its own “playbook”. The a TPS tactical decision overrides the RCMP’s stated policies? And who’s in charge again?

Moreover, it is the RCMP stated policy “always” to give crowds a way out.

Then there’s the back-pedaling being done on Bill Blair’s secret law (suddenly and without warning applying it to half of downtown Toronto , even when many people directly asked, certainly made it “secret”):

Documentation provided to the Commission indicates that the Public Works Protection Act regulation was enacted in response to concerns expressed by the Toronto Police Service that officers would not be able to demand identification from those wishing to enter the area in which the Summit was taking place.

“Wishing to enter”? Funny, that’s not how it was either interpreted or enforced. In fact, the law says a few different things that don’t coincide:

Powers of guard or peace officer

3.A guard or peace officer,

(a) may require any person entering or attempting to enter any public work or any approach thereto to furnish his or her name and address, to identify himself or herself and to state the purpose for which he or she desires to enter the public work, in writing or otherwise;

(b) may search, without warrant, any person entering or attempting to enter a public work or a vehicle in the charge or under the control of any such person or which has recently been or is suspected of having been in the charge or under the control of any such person or in which any such person is a passenger; and

(c) may refuse permission to any person to enter a public work and use such force as is necessary to prevent any such person from so entering. R.S.O. 1990, c. P.55, s. 3.

There was no provision for arrest if you didn’t “show your papers” simply walking around the fence, even though that’s exactly what the cops did, even though it’s obvious that this really only applied to people wanting to get inside the “Public Works” area. There’s also a lesser-known tidbit from around that time:

The Integrated Security Unit, comprised of security bodies including the Toronto police, RCMP and OPP, were concerned that lawyers were advising radical activist groups that police have limited right to question, identify and detain individuals near the fenced secure area downtown, Mukherjee said.

Blair made the request after ISU members decided extending the powers in the act, which covers buildings including Union Station and Toronto police headquarters, to the G20 fence, he said.

“The decision makers felt that a clearer articulation of what those limits are would be useful. It was not chief Blair alone. It was the ISU,” said [Police Services Board chair] Alok Mukherjee.

How about that? The RCMP claims in their report it was Toronto Police Services alone that “expressed concern” (i.e. wanted to terrorize people on the street without warrant), yet articles from that time show the RCMP (and the OPP) were in on the push for the secret law right from the get-go.

One of the more blatant lies maintained in the RCMP report is that police acted in good faith by “pre-arresting” people before they had a chance to cause trouble at the G20:

During the lead up to the commencement of the [G20] Summit, intelligence led threat assessments will be prepared by the Joint Intelligence Group (JIG). These reports will document threat levels relating to terrorism threats and planned protest threats.

The ongoing intelligence from these reports will have an impact on the deployment of human and material resources, where the potential for confrontation between protestors and police personnel are likely to occur. G20 Operations personnel conducted Vulnerability Risk Assessments in Toronto in December 2009 of the proposed venue, airport and hotels.

All “targeting” will be based upon criminal predicate: Suspects will be determined based upon their proven willingness, capacity and intention to commit criminal acts and/or create situations that pose public safety concerns.

The RCMP conclusion:

Finding No. 8: The JIG appropriately identified and assessed criminal threats to the Summits.

That a fact? Of the 70 or so pre-arrests that were “appropriately identified and assessed criminal threats”, how many of the charges stuck? Literally none. In fact, this was pretty much par for the course during all police actions during the G20, yet the cops managed to completely miss actual trouble-makers, and this more than once.

These are just three examples in the report. I haven’t even read the whole thing and already I’m finding the stench of bullshit unbearable. If you’re willing to hold your nose long enough and find more “inconsistencies”, I’d love to hear from you and append them here. I’m sure it’s filled with examples of this kind of crap which the mainstream media are missing in favour of easy-to-read, highlighted admissions of failure.

So Sarah and I took a trip down to University Avenue to visit with Janet Leiper, the Integrity Commissioner for the City of Toronto. I’m pretty sure you can guess that the topic of discussion was our less than lustrous mayor and his continuing antics. Specifically, we were curious to know what steps could be taken to oust the man (and I use that word lightly), and what her office’s role could be in that.

Janet is a surprisingly youthful and slim woman (for someone who listens to the bitching and moaning of the city all day), and was very cordial in welcoming us to her office — something that rarely takes place (most people just call). It wasn’t a big space, shared only with her assistant Wendy, and was filled mostly with office supplies, bulky office equipment, books, desks, and one small round table around which we sat.

She began by opening a weighty volume, the City of Toronto Code of Conduct for Members of Council and explaining that this, for the most part, was the territory that she treads. Then she drew a three-slice pie diagram explaining that, out of the three slices of a Member’s responsibility, she was responsible for interpreting complaints related to their conduct (the other two being legal / criminal responsibilities, and political responsibilities). To put it another way, the Code of Conduct is what she’s responsible for admonishing. Should the matter be criminal or a failure of political responsibility, her role would be only to advise people to take it up with others under whom these jurisdictions fall.

The role of the Integrity Commissioner is, for the most part, to smooth over relations so that, for example, when some Council member is having a tiff with another member, she can recommend that the two apologize. Her recommendations are the definitive word on whether or not the Code of Conduct has been breached and, when it’s something big, her recommendation is brought to Council for a vote for action. Janet is also a lawyer (this gig is only a part-time role for her), so she is basically the professional vetting of whether or not the Code has been breached — if she says yes, there doesn’t need to be any question about it. However, if a member of Council breaks a rule beyond simply the Code, it’s taken one step higher to the courts, precisely why Rob Ford is being tackled by Clayton Ruby.

We were told, in no uncertain terms, that we were more than welcome to contact Janet’s office any time we felt that the Code of Conduct was being breached, and even if it wasn’t specifically spelled out “in the letter” of the code, we could go by “the spirit” of the document which is spelled out in the preamble. In other words, even if the thing doesn’t mention a specific infraction, there are certain overarching elements that cover what the Code is supposed to be about. These include:

• Members of Council shall serve and be seen to serve their constituents in a conscientious and diligent manner;
• Members of Council should be committed to performing their functions with integrity and to avoiding the improper use of the influence of their office, and conflicts of interest, both apparent and real;
• Members of Council are expected to perform their duties in office and arrange their private affairs in a manner that promotes public confidence and will bear close public scrutiny; and
• Members of Council shall seek to serve the public interest by upholding both the letter and the spirit of the laws of the Federal Parliament and Ontario Legislature, and the laws and policies adopted by City Council

So let’s say you believe that the Mayor had a conflict of interest in using public money to fund his high school football team — start by having a gander of the Code of Conduct. If you can find anything specific covering such an action (or you believe the spirit of the thing has been breached), you should go right ahead and file a complaint with the Integrity Commissioner. That complaint can be private, or it can be formal (which will require an affidavit and some other paperwork), the second accusation obviously being the more serious one (and one that the Commissioner is able to discuss publicly). The Commissioner’s office will then investigate the complaint and provide a recommendation. That recommendation can be brought before Council for a vote, or she can recommend that you get a lawyer and they can take it from there.

In any event, the Office of the Integrity Commissioner is a great place to start if you think that members of Council have broken the rules. Just be sure to point out which part of the Code you think they’ve breached (she can’t actually recommend things like that, it would make her seem biased). Even if you’re not 100% sure, you can ask — that’s exactly why she’s there!

And, if I can share the one major take-away that this visit left me with: getting involved with the machinations of City Hall (or any level of government), is not at all difficult! Even if you don’t know exactly how to proceed with something like a complaint, all you have to do is ask and you will be directed to the right place. You’ll learn more about how the city works in 30 minutes than you could by reading all the newspapers around town, and along the way you’ll discover that most of these mechanisms are actually in place primarily for citizens, not just Council members, reporters, and others who would end up interpreting things for you.

And it’s exceedingly easy in most cases. I started with an email which resulted in an appointment for a phone call. We misunderstood and actually went down to the Integrity Commissioner’s office, but that’s usually way more effort than you’d have to put in.

We said our goodbyes, took the elevator down to street level, out onto University, and made our way up to discuss what we’d just learned over bevvies. While we didn’t actually do anything, the meeting emboldened us to take further steps to get our buffoon of a mayor under control. The bravado came from knowing we’re both just regular Joes off the street; we have no legal training, no lawyers, no money to back us, and no connections to support us, yet we have as much power to file a formal complaint that could oust the mayor (or any member of Council) as anyone else!

If I can recommend just one thing, if you’re frustrated with Mayor Ford or his minions, if things seem to be spinning wildly out of control, if City Hall seems to be working against you, the citizen, and not with you, don’t be afraid to get in touch with someone like the Integrity Commissioner and find out what steps to take to fix things. It’s easy, friendly, and even if you don’t get the answer you need right away, you’ll be pointed in the right direction.

Ford’s buddies at the Sun, the daily tabloid rag of Toronto, call his renewed threats on graffiti a “bleak future for graffiti vandals”, once again demonstrating a clear inability to see the reality of what such idiotic pronouncements produce. Or maybe they can’t read. Or maybe they don’t want to face reality. Either way, it’s quite obvious what his Rotundness’ comments will result in, no matter how much bluster his idiot supporters produce (hot air doesn’t remove paint, believe it or not).

Destroying anything and everything on a wall doesn’t actually work, and neither does calling 911 when we see someone painting on walls. I wonder what asinine stupidity Ford will follow up with this time. I’m also looking forward to seeing all the renewed vigour with which Ford will be represented in graffiti around the city. Seems like everyone but meathead and his hand-up-his-brother’s-ass brother can’t seem to see what’s happening around them. Then again, they can barely tell what’s happening in their own heads so I guess it’s not surprising.

I attended FlashInTO last night. The event bills itself as a “Toronto Flash User Group”, a monthly gathering of anyone interested in Adobe Flash and related technologies. I hadn’t attended in well over a year because the turnouts were becoming depressingly low, probably due to the previous subterranean location in Kensington Market, the regular mid-week date, and the exclusive availability of overpriced bottled beer and very little in the way of anything else.

Still, I thought, I’d give it another try – schmooze a bit, maybe chat about SocialCastr, and just see what was happening out there in the world of Flash and AIR. After all, Adobe recently released its roadmap for the Flash runtime, and just a couple of days ago announced even more news surrounding upcoming features and new pricing models. If anything, one might think that such topics would at the very least have been brought up at some point during the evening.

Well, one would be wrong. In fact, the entire evening was dominated by topics such as Unity, and HTML5, and ending with a shameless Apple love-in with literally not one mention of Flash. At all.

The “Emerging technologies in the real world” topic was interesting enough, with Demi Kandylis describing how his company used Unity to produce an interactive shadow puppet display for Sapporo, the Japanese beer maker. Demi’s team happened to use Unity, a 3D engine that can also be used to output to Flash, which could have become an interesting launchpad to at least mention some of the interesting work being done with Flash and 3D. But no mention of Flash, of course. Not even a hint.

The next presentation was part of what I see as the ongoing, and frankly insane push to get everyone to develop in HTML5. Here, Ken Peleshok demonstrated Adobe Edge, now in its 5th version and still able to perform only basic animations of the kind that Flash was capable of 15 years ago. The demonstration was pretty much a failure as Ken couldn’t get basic animations going with his code, but there was plenty of Apple-wielding supporters standing to the side exclaiming, “just you wait!” There was certainly enough opportunity to at least draw parallels to Flash animation, but of course that was never brought up. But why would anyone want to discuss Flash at an event called FlashInTO?!

I had to walk out on the final panel discussion because it turned into one of the most disgustingly overt Apple advertisements I’d ever witnessed, not to mention the conclusions that the panelists came to. The Apple logo featured prominently in every slide along with the panelists’ children, and everyone took the opportunity to casually wave around their iPads, Macs, or whatever piece of Apple hardware they were carrying to show that, yes, they were just the coolest people ever and could be trusted to deliver unbiased and reasoned opinions. Simon Conlin, the founder of FlashInTO (and later Flash In The Can…see below), started off by saying, “This isn’t supposed to be an advertisement for Apple or anything…”, and then motioned to the front of his laptop with the glowing Apple logo just to drive the point home before starting the accompanying slide show of panelists’ kids brandishing Apple hardware, often with the company’s logo as the primary focus and the kids in the corner of the images. Most of the time the kids weren’t in the picture at all, it was just photos of iPads, iPhones, and other iDevices.

Despite this end-of-night panel being billed as “A look at apps for kids, what’s good, what’s bad and much more”, there was literally one app that was shown while the discussion centered entirely around the “brilliance” of Apple’s marketing and design. And once again, not even a passing mention of Flash, Flash Builder, Catalyst, or any of the other Flash-related products that could easily have been incorporated into the discussion. Even Adobe wasn’t mentioned…it was a complete Apple circle jerk.

Believe it or not, though, the couple of overpriced pints I had downed allowed me to stomach things up until that point; it was only when the conversation turned to, “What the youth of today can teach us” that I packed it in. Once again with all attention on how Apple was genius for doing so, the panel began discussing how we, as software developers, should be tailoring our apps towards infants. After all, kids are completely uninhibited and have no preconceived notions about interacting with hardware or software, and so we should all be striving to dumb down our own products and make them as basic and infantile as possible. That way everyone could use what we produce without any real learning curve or impediments. And wouldn’t it be a good idea to cripple device functionality through our software to ensure that people only use our software when, how, why, and where we want them to?

I was this close to standing up and reminding them how their device-weaned spawn don’t have the wherewithal to keep their hands off of hot stoves or not run out into traffic (maybe that’s why adults think for a few moments before adorably mashing $800 devices with ball-peen hammers), but it was clear that they were really only into publicly masturbating to Apple propaganda and rhetoric. When, at some point in the past I’d mentioned that Applites offer up their firstborn to Steve Jobs, I thought I was only exaggerating – clearly I was wrong.

And just to drive home the point of the evening, a draw was held for tickets to this year’s FITC. That’s Flash In The Can, if you’ve never been. I haven’t, mostly because the tickets are ridiculously priced, and partially because even when I might’ve had a chance to attend, people who had deigned to call me their friend ended up attending, on free tickets, with other “friends” who had absolutely no interest in Flash, and without even mentioning the event until I found out about it accidentally afterwards. And that the FITC was held directly across from the street where I worked at the time just helped to drive that screw in a little deeper. Then there was the childish crap they pulled and subsequently tried to cover up using threats and intimidation, that just completed the picture of what kinds of people self-avowed Applites really are. Not all, of course – you may have an iDevice right now — but be aware that going down the Apple path almost always invariably ends up leading out of the asshole of one thing or another.

But while FITC of the past was actually about Flash, look at the lineup of topics for this year’s FLASH In The Can: HTML5 • Online Video • Kinect Hacking • Javascript • OOP • WebGL • OpenFrameworks. • CSS3 • Starling • jQuery • Flash Stage 3D • Augmented Reality • Digital Art • Robotlegs 2.0 + much more!
Out of the 80 or so presentations, five mention Flash. And these are: “Deep Dive in the Flash Platform Roadmap”, “Flash and HTML5″, “Moving Forward with Flash (or Not?)”, “OpenFrameworks 101 for Flash Developers”, “Tangled: HTML5 <video> and Flash”. In effect, that’s one presentation on the Flash Platform Roadmap I’d mentioned earlier, one presentation for beginner Flash developers, and three about how you should be abandoning Flash for HTML5 hype.

And just in case you had any doubt about their dedication to Flash, the only Flash element on the FITC website is the banner, FlashInTO has no Flash elements whatsoever.

Yeah, this is what things have come to. The word “ridiculous” doesn’t even begin to cover it, and although I tried not to make this into an Apple-bashing post, it’s unavoidable considering how it’s flaunted in everyone’s face so openly and readily; exclusively, even. And I can’t help but wonder when it’ll stop. What will it take for people to notice this insanity?

Sarah just got off a phone call with Ipsos Reid about the home care she receives as part of her MS care (specifically the companies and individuals she deals with), and about halfway through it became apparent that not only was their poll not balanced, it was in fact extremely skewed and primed for an awful lot of abuse. The questions were so clearly biased that the only conclusion I could come to is that they (some level of government) are getting ready to reduce a services for the disabled and needed a justification for such an unpopular move.

A sample of one of the misleading questions is (somewhat paraphrased…it was a long poll): “Thinking about the past two months, how often would you describe the care provided by your therapist as helpful or adequate? Always, sometimes, never?”

Sarah asked for clarification since she’s only seen the physiotherapist for all of about 7 hours, and certainly not in the last two months. In fact, her agencies are so chronically understaffed and over-scheduled that she has only really seen most of them once in the past 6 months.

“This only applies to in the last two months”, replied the pollster. Well, being honest she had to say “never”. Of course, this “never” was only to apply to the last two months, but there was no way to clarify the answer, and the pollster’s impatience was evident on the other end of the phone (like I said, long poll). There was not even a way to specify that “never” didn’t  actually mean “never” according to their own questionnaire. And the following queries continued to be within the two month period without this time frame being included in the questions, so that taken in isolation, the answers would literally be interpreted as never.

There were other questions that were equally, if not more misleading, essentially implying that the physiotherapist has been doing an awful job (“never” showing up, providing the “poorest level” of service, etc.), except that there were no options to clarify when, or even if the physiotherapist was here. “Only in the last two months”, was the constant reply, and Sarah wanted to answer as honestly as possible. I too can attest to the fact that the therapist was dedicated, caring, and a genuine helpful person, something that the Ipsos Reid poll twisted into literally the opposite thing. The options were always always or never, worst or best, etc. etc., with no way to qualify them.

Maybe if the remainder of the questionnaire was similarly misleading I might not have been so taken aback, but immediately afterward the section on the physiotherapist, a “Not Applicable” option suddenly became available in the list of possible answers. So the one service that is the least available and genuinely most useful is presented by the poll as a complete waste of time and money, and with an obvious and glaring bias when compared against the other home care services being reviewed. While Sarah could answer “not applicable” at some points, there were other questions where her answers were forced to be applicable even when they couldn’t possibly be.

To put this into context, imagine being called by a pollster and being asked, “How severe was the crime for which you were most recently arrest? Very, somewhat, not very?” What, you’ve never been arrested? Well that’s not an option (and hurry up and answer the question, we have other people to poll).

Now consider that such incredibly biased data were later used to justify new police powers, the building of mega jails, and the suspension of your civil rights. Or maybe it’s used to underpin the cutting healthcare services. Or maybe it’s being used to raise taxes, ban driving, or whatever.  It’s not not a far leap.

I’m not sure what can be done about this except to share our polling stories online to expose such bias and to take every questionnaire result with a big hunk of salt. At the very least, when being presented with the results of a poll, we should demand to see the whole question, the whole set of answers, and most importantly be critical of what (and why!) things may have been left out.

At the corner of Bay and Yonge.