And I want to reiterate my sincere belief that the rights which we do have came about from long social struggles, of which gathering and protesting was an important part. The right to assemble isn’t about the right to get together for picnics or parties (though I like those as much as the next person), it’s about the right to assemble exactly when the government or another authority doesn’t want you to. And a moment when the police say “don’t come downtown, you might get caught in a mass arrest.” Is the exact moment when I think it’s important to assert my right to assemble. The crucial moments to assert your rights are always when they are threatened.

To conclude this section on repression, let me just ask one more time for you to review the accounts of events I’ve written about - combined with the other stories that you have heard or heard about - and judge them against the normal narrative of how this stuff happens: that a protest turned violent and the police responded in order to stop the violence. Then try to think about it in the light of the government and the police trying to discourage protest and demobilize people. Which one makes more sense?

So the officer proceeded to tell me "he needed to know what my problem was, as he knew the person using the equipment, that they were a nice person, would never try to offend anyone and emphatically stated he knew the individual was a Christian... and also that the operator was fearful of a confrontation. Lastly, he he said he showed up to keep the peace"

The situation went downhill fast.

His statement coupled with his earnest and pointed emphasis caused me to burst out laughing. And for some reason he took great offense first to that and then even more to my reply...which in retrospect my not have been one of my better options...

"there are an awful lot of alter boys that could attest being Christian is not a guarantee of an individuals good character. But if HE is indeed a GOOD Christian, then why is he working on a Sunday, breaking one of the ten commandments, knowingly contravening the disrupting the peace bylaw and breaking a littering by-law, simultaneously? Not very thoughtful or righteous, is it?" He was not very amused.

War is highly corrosive to democratic values hollowing a nation’s wealth, its institutions, and its legislatures. Leaders who are supposed to lead are diminished to pathetic sycophants, pandering to the grand subterfuge. Where the instigators of this war, most prominently the USA, measure losses in terms of lives lost and money spent we are far from recognizing the damage done on the home front, not physical damage to cities and populations but the damage done to our democratic institutions, to the trust and the credibility of government, to the social contract with citizens. This despicable war has proven us to be our own worst enemy inflicting far greater damage on ourselves than any coterie of terrorists could do in ten life times.

Harper’s Ottawa is a blighted political landscape where not so honorable members loiter in the halls of power lacking courage and conviction, oblivious to their misdeeds.

A Defence Department spokesperson confirms computers at the department's research agency were used to alter a Wikipedia page entry about the Joint Strike Fighter jet and the Conservative government's decision to spend as much as $18 billion on the aircraft.

Those edits included the removal of information critical of the government's plan to buy the jets and the addition of insulting comments aimed at Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff.

If it wasn't bad enough that the Toronto police lied to the public about a new 'security law' - passed down by the Government of Ontario - giving them new policing powers during the G20 Summit only to have to later admit that no such law ever existed.

Now, Toronto police are backtracking on another statement they made claiming that rubber bullets were not fired into the crowd outside the Eastern Avenue Detention Centre on Sunday June 27, 2010.

Veteran Sun op-ed columnist Eric Margolis is another casualty of Sun Media's shift to the far right, with little regard for longevity or popularity.

"I wrote for the Sun chain for 27 years because it allowed me total freedom of expression even when the editors disagreed with my opinions - something very rare in the media," Margolis told Toronto Sun Family in an e-mail today.

"This policy has changed. My views are displeasing to Ottawa," he says. "Accordingly, the Sun and I are parting company."

A Canadian man and his young son were kicked off a US-bound flight for watching a video of the 9/11 terror attacks just before take-off from Toronto's Pearson International Airport.

The crew of an Air Canada flight bound for Orlando in Florida were alerted by a passenger when he saw the young boy watching on his iPod the planes hitting the Twin Towers on 9/11.

The father and son were taken off the flight Wednesday and questioned by security agencies. Later, the police in charge of airport security cleared the duo, saying their action didn't amount to criminal offence.

Fortunately, civilians can do what politicians can't. In the interests of accountability and transparency, I read through 300 pages of evidence and pulled out the sort of uncomfortable revelations that Ottawa doesn't want U.S. oil customers, industry investors or Canadian taxpayers to know.

The evidence, of course, all points to one embarrassing conclusion: Ottawa has managed its mandate in the tar sands as irresponsibly as the U.S. Mineral Management Services oversaw the safety of deep sea drilling in the Gulf.

For the first time in half a decade, rock legends Pink Floyd reunited for a Palestine awareness benefit concert in England to raise money for young Palestinians, MSNBC reported Tuesday.

Feuding PINK FLOYD stars DAVID GILMOUR and ROGER WATERS put their differences aside on Saturday (10Jul10) to perform together at a the Hoping Foundation awareness benefit in England.

The two rockers hit the stage at Kiddington Hall in Oxfordshire, England to the amazement of guests in attendance. It was the first time the duo had shared a stage since Pink Floyd’s Live 8 appearance in 2005.

The former bandmates, who were accompanied by Guy Pratt and Waters’ son Harry, among others, played Floyd favourites:

“Wish You Were Here”

“Comfortably Numb”

“Another Brick in the Wall”

NEW YORK, N.Y. - There were cheers and hollers aboard the Iroquois Nationals lacrosse team bus on Thursday as the players geared up for a very different encounter than what they had planned for Day 1 of the World Lacrosse Championships in England.

Instead, with the Statue of Liberty in the background, team members got into uniform and filed out of the bus to pose for a gaggle of journalists and repeat their case for a few TV cameras: They should be allowed into England for the games using their Iroquois-issued passports. Why would the British demand they use U.S. and Canadian passports when they don't consider themselves citizens of those nations?

====

BTW, the Brits are trying to avoid the contest because they know they will lose.

Nima Shirazi

A coalition of nearly twenty American human rights and peace groups has joined the global justice community and numerous foreign governments in vowing to send more humanitarian aid ships to break the illegal Israeli blockade of Gaza this coming Fall. The coalition, united under the mantle US To Gaza, includes activist organizations such as CodePink, Jews Say No, Veterans For Peace, Voices for Creative Non-Violence, and Jewish Voice For Peace.

Canada's national police force has so far botched its investigation of what happened to a missing Alberta couple, a law-enforcement expert and former Mountie charged Thursday as authorities in northern B.C. joined the search for Lyle and Marie McCann.

"It has been a banquet of mistakes, of laziness, of unprofessional conduct — and two lives are in the balance here," said Bill Pitt, an Edmonton-based criminologist, law enforcement instructor and former Mountie.

"I think just about every protocol I'm aware of as far as investigation is concerned has been missed, sloughed off or tried to be explained in some ridiculous fashion.

"It's a blown investigation from beginning to end. Completely blown."

===

(Spectators were held in cages like this, only slightly larger, with an outhouse and a bench.)

"This whole scenario [was] a large-scale exercise ... to assess the psychological reaction of confined masses to arbitrary arrest and imprisonment and denial of basic Civil Rights."

Resistance must continue to the form of a class-action suit.

BY DEBBIE MENON

Come August, a military commission in Guantánamo will try Omar Khadr, a Canadian national captured outside Kabul in 2002. He was a boy, aged 15 then. Now a burly, bearded 23-year-old who has spent one-third of his life at Guantanamo. He bears scant resemblance to the fresh-faced, teen, who had survived multiple gunshots wounds and several major surgeries. There must be some reason why this lad did not die from his wounds. A shotgun blast to the back with sufficient force to exit the chest is a pretty fatal event. Perhaps the Power that kept him alive this long will reveal His purpose in time.

Accused war-criminal Omar Khadr has fired his American lawyers less than a week before his military-commission pre-trial hearings are slated to resume in Guantanamo Bay, one of his despondent attorneys said Wednesday.

Khadr, via a motion terminating his U.S. counsel and filed by his lawyers with the commission, said that he would either represent himself or boycott his trial.

"We have worked our hearts out on the case and were just eagerly looking forward to what we had planned to do," one of the lawyers, Barry Coburn, told The Canadian Press.

Prosecutors allege Khadr threw a hand grenade that killed Sgt. Chris Speer in Afghanistan in July 2002 when he was 15 years old. He faces a maximum life sentence on conviction.

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Richard Langer was working on his farm just outside Peace River, Alta., one morning last spring when he saw the gas cloud drift through.

"It was sort of a blue-green cloud," he recalls.

The smell — a gassy, tarry reek like a hundred roofing crews working at once — was bad enough. Then a truck idling in the middle of the cloud suddenly revved as if someone stomped the pedal.

That's when Langer, 71, felt something bad.

===

Just so Americans don't feel alone in their oil-related disaster.

Some B.C. politicians say officials should consider a native group's suggestion that Vancouver's Stanley Park revert to its original First Nations name, Xwayxway.

The chief of the Squamish First Nation, Ian Campbell, said Wednesday that the well-known downtown park should be renamed Xwayxway pronounced kwhy-kway as it was known for thousands of years.

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Canada's equivalent of Israel's Palestinians speak out. You can be quite certain politicians are eying up a potential money grab in this.

An explosion has torn through a Canadian Armed Forces recruitment centre in Trois-Rivieres, Quebec.

No one appears to have been injured in the blast which occurred at about 3 a.m. ET.

The glass doors of the centre have been blown out and police have sent a bomb squad to the scene.

---

Looks like someone is trying to tell the government and the military something.

In Ontario, they seem to be taking it in stride, but normally laid-back British Columbians appear ready for revolt.

The culprit: the much-maligned harmonized sales tax, which takes effect in both provinces on July 1. In Ontario, the tax will combine the provincial sales tax and the federal Goods and Services Tax into a 13 per cent levy and in B.C., 12 per cent.

But the HST could cost a lot more for B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell and his three-term Liberal government.

===

HST (Higher Sales Tax) has replaced the GST (Gouge and Screw Tax).

The Vatican has promoted Canada's highest-ranking Catholic priest despite recent controversy over his response to the church sex-abuse scandal.

Quebec Cardinal Marc Ouellet has been named chief of the Vatican's powerful Congregations for Bishops, which vets bishop appointments around the world.

Sixty-six year old Ouellet is the Archbishop of Quebec and the Roman Catholic Primate of Canada, the church's top official in the country.

Earlier this month, a victims' group said Ouellet had refused to apologize for crimes committed within the church.

An Ontario family caught up in a global espionage drama wants answers from the Canadian government amid fears they'll now have trouble traveling abroad — or might even get a late-night visit from Russian spies.

Brampton resident David Heathfield said Tuesday he'd like to hear from authorities in Ottawa after his dead brother's name turned up in U.S. court files about an alleged spy ring run from Moscow.

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The details sound like a script for a CSI Miami episode where everything is solved all too easily.
Is this really just another elaborate Russia bashing scheme?

A man from England faces a charge of impersonating a peace officer at the G20 summit security fence in Toronto.

Police say a man filming the security fence area last Thursday was approached by a security officer and asked to provide identification.

Police say the man indicated that he was not carrying identification because he was a peace officer working undercover.

===

Fake Cops. Fake Protestors. Fake Conference.

Israel agreed to sell South Africa nuclear weapons.

More than that, it makes any aid America gives Israel illegal. If Israel is nuclear, which is now official, and in violation of international treaties, just as with Iraq and Iran, then America has to demand inspections and disarmament. There is no choice. This is the law. Law for Iran, law for Iraq is also law for Israel. Israel has expected this day for years.

An eyebrow-raising photograph of one of the anarchists who set fire to a Toronto police car during anti-G20 protests this past weekend shows him wearing Nike clothing, a potential indication that provocateurs dressed up as black-bloc “anarchists” were again employed by authorities to cause mayhem in order to justify a brutal police crackdown and crush free speech, as peaceful protesters were attacked and arrested while the anarchists who torched the cars were left alone.

The picture shows the two culprits who set fire to the police car congratulating each other and looking remarkably relaxed about potentially being caught by police considering what they had just done. One of the men is wearing Nike pants – the distinctive logo of the company can be seen above his left pocket.

The Technological Revolution and the Future of Freedom, Part 1
by Andrew Gavin Marshall at Globalresearch.ca.

There is a new and unique development in human history that is taking place around the world; it is unprecedented in reach and volume, and it is also the greatest threat to all global power structures: the ‘global political awakening.’ The term was coined by Zbigniew Brzezinski, and refers to the fact that, as Brzezinski wrote:

For the first time in history almost all of humanity is politically activated, politically conscious and politically interactive. Global activism is generating a surge in the quest for cultural respect and economic opportunity in a world scarred by memories of colonial or imperial domination.[1]

In the wood-panelled confines of Walter Beauchamp Tailors, the only thing resembling a customer was a stern-faced cop, letting his eyes take a walk over a table full of neckties.

Perhaps he was dreaming of a return to normal life after the G20, of a saner time when his Toronto police uniform will no longer include a riot helmet, when he won't have to look sideways at regular people going about their lives.

If so, the burly sergeant was in good company on Tuesday, as downtown Toronto denizens, typically an imperturbable lot, felt the clamp tighten that much more around Canada's urban heart in advance of this weekend's gathering of world leaders.

Cars were shaken from their parking spots, buildings cracked and residents ran through the streets Wednesday as a magnitude 5.0 earthquake left a small town in western Quebec in a state of emergency and much of central Canada wondering what in the world was going on.

The damage appeared to be concentrated in Gracefield, Que., a tiny municipality of just over 2,300 not far from the epicentre of the temblor, which was located about 60 kilometres north of Ottawa and about 18 kilometres beneath the surface of the earth.

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Missed it :(

OTTAWA—Canada’s twin summits are ringing in at nearly a million dollars a minute but the cost is worth it because Prime Minister Stephen Harper and other leaders will get a chance to let their hair down and talk “face-to-face,” a PMO spokesperson said Friday.

Explaining the eye-popping cost of next weekend’s meetings, which will ding taxpayers for about $833,000 per minute of actual leaders’ meeting time, Dimitri Soudas said G8 and G20 leaders face daunting challenges from a struggling economy, global warming, rogue nuclear states and crises in Afghanistan, the Korean peninsula and the Middle East.

“You actually need leaders sitting around the table having these difficult discussions, making progress,” Soudas told reporters in a pre-summit briefing.

For starters. the entire Jewish religion is, of course, based on a concept of racial supremacy. The Jews seriously believe they are better than the rest of humanity. Yet I very much doubt that any rabbis will be summoned before any Canadian Human Rights Tribunals any time soon for possession of the Babylonian Talmud.

Beyond making Canada the world’s most pro-Israel country, the Harper government has strongly backed Israel’s onslaught against the 1.5 million people living in Gaza. Canada has refused to criticize the blockade. For example, Canada was the only country at the UN Human Rights Council to vote against a January 2008 resolution that called for “urgent international action to put an immediate end to the siege of the occupied Gaza Strip”. The motion was adopted with 30 votes in favour and 15 abstentions.

Thursday, June 3, 2010
Canada Is Zionist Jewish Occupied Territory: Member Of Rothschild Empire Calls Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, A Slave! (Truth Comes Out!)
Adam Rothschild calls the Prime Minister of Canada a slave!
June 1, 2010
“CJPAC owns your country; Stephen harper is like a slave”.
CJPAC is the Canadian Jewish Political Affairs Committee, and Stephen Harper is the Prime Minister of Canada. At the bottom of the screenshot Adam Rothschild makes another post:
“May Yahweh bless the CJPAC with control of the Canadian Government just like the AIPAC controls the United States
AM YISRAEL CHAI!!
-Adam R.”

The next time you struggle to comprehend how someone could spend their time trolling the internet in order to defend and downplay whatever government cover-up or abuse is in the news this week, consider the fact that they may be on a government payroll. The Canadian government has been caught paying a media group to monitor online political discussion and respond to misinformation, in order words to spread state-sanctioned propaganda, in the latest scandal to hit the Harper administration.

There have been recent reports that Iran has enabled the travel of al-Qaeda leaders to Afghanistan and Pakistan where they will be able to confront and kill American soldiers. If you think you have heard the story before, you have, in another context. In the earlier rendition it was Saddam Hussein who was hand-in-glove with al-Qaeda, helping the group in its nefarious planning to attack the United States and kill Americans. Saddam, who was in reality only a threat to his own people, was on the receiving end of a barrage of fabricated information claiming that he was secretly developing weapons of mass destruction and clandestinely dealing with the terrorists who were responsible for 9/11. Or so the story goes.

By Jennifer Matsui

Novelist Margaret Atwood’s decision to travel to Tel Aviv to share a literary prize worth a million dollars has ignited a controversy in which the septuagenarian author and vice-president of the literary human rights organization PEN International has come under fire by Palestinian rights activists. Ms Atwood’s acceptance of the Dan David Prize, whose previous laureates include Al Gore and Tony Blair, is viewed by Ms Atwood’s critics as a betrayal to the ideals she supposedly represents, and an unwitting endorsement of Israel’s race exclusive policies.

Rescue workers have been given the go-ahead to go back on to unstable ground to search for a family of four missing since Monday night when a huge sinkhole opened up and the family's home sank into it in St. Jude.

The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) said on Monday it has bought into the coveted Manhattan real estate market for the first time, taking stakes in skyscrapers valued at more than $1.45 billion.

The CPPIB said its real estate arm bought a 45 percent stake in 1221 Avenue of the Americas, the McGraw-Hill building, from SL Green Realty Corp for $576 million.

It also formed a joint venture with SL Green, which owns and manages Manhattan properties, to acquire a 45 percent stake in 600 Lexington Avenue for $87 million.

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And when a "terrorist sets off a dirty nuke" at the Israeli embassy in New York (to start a war with Iran) those investments and many others are toast.

By going to Israel to accept the Dan David Prize, Margaret Atwood has chosen to go over to the Dark Side. "If you do make the trip, there is no turning back. Please consider well what people who have appreciated your literary work and heretofore took seriously your vaunted support for human rights have to say.">>

Traffic was slowly moving on reopened highways and power returning to homes in southern Alberta after an overnight snowstorm.

Late Thursday afternoon, Environment Canada downgraded the area's winter storm warning to a wind warning with gusts up to 90 km/h, diminishing overnight. More snow between 10 to 15 centimetres was forecast over the Cypress Hills and in eastern sections of the Lethbridge region.

Up to 12 centimetres of snow fell on Wednesday night into Thursday morning in Calgary and surrounding areas, causing problems on major highways.

===

Global warming is causing snowfall now.

Canada's Federal Debt

The Canadian dollar rose slightly against its U.S. counterpart on Monday, remaining above parity, as a rally in global equities and optimism over aid for debt-stricken Greece supported riskier assets.

At 8:15 a.m., the Canadian dollar was at C$0.9984 to the U.S. dollar, or $1.0016, up from Friday's finish at C$0.9991 or $1.0009.

A prominent think-tank that's often critical of government spending policies says Canadian families spend more than two-fifths of their total income on taxes.

The Fraser Institute says its annual Canadian Consumer Tax Index calculated that taxes ate up 41.7 per cent of the average family's income in 2009.

That's up from 1981 when taxes accounted for 40.8 per cent of a family's income, or 33.5 per cent in 1961 when the Fraser Institute first compiled the index.

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Just so you don't think Americans are the only people being raped ... oopsy, I mean reaped by their government tax system.

Starting today, Canadians flying to the U.S. can take two carry-on bags and personal items with them on a plane.

Restrictions on carry-ons were imposed after a botched Christmas Day terror attack on a flight to Detroit from Amsterdam. Canada quickly banned carry-on luggage, then allowed U.S.-bound passengers one carry-on bag and some personal items in January.

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More booga booga.

A student supporter of Israel at Carleton University and an Israeli engineering student at the university say they are lucky to have survived an attack with what they say was a machete near a Gatineau bar early on Monday.

Lev. 25:44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?

The Canadian dollar rose to one-for-one footing with the U.S. currency on Tuesday, hitting its strongest level since July 2008, boosted by rising commodity prices and expectations for higher domestic interest rates.

At 7:38 a.m. (1138 GMT), the Canadian dollar was at C$1.0008, or 99.92 U.S. cents. Earlier, the currency rose to C$0.9999 to the U.S. dollar or $1.0001.

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The Canadian Air Farce (comedy program here in Canada) did a hilarious skit on this situation. It took place in a "dollar store" everything was a dollar. And next week's special was $1 US and 1 US dime for $1 Canadian.

OH, HOW SWEET IT IS!

Canada avoided a housing crisis, the progenitor of the U.S. banking crisis. It did so by having sounder banking and housing policies. Above all, it had no Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac.

Canada isn’t a free-market paradise. But it beats the U.S. in banking and housing policies.

The Canadian dollar rose sharply on Friday after data showed Canada's annual core inflation rate unexpectedly rose in February, increasing pressure on the Bank of Canada to raise interest rates.

The Canadian dollar hit a session high of C$1.0100 or 99.01 U.S. cents, up from about C$1.0168, or 98.35 U.S. cents just before the report.

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Wow! And to think the Loonie was at 50 cents US a few years ago. I don't think things are any better here. They're just that much worse in the US!!!!!!!

William A. Cook recounts how Canadian Zionists, in the form of B’nai B’rith of Canada, cast aspersions on his personal and professional character because he had dared to highlight the genocidal actions of former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his successors.

The revelation that Canada's spy agency interrogated captured Taliban fighters raises the spectre of a Canadian rendition program in Afghanistan, opposition critics said Monday.

Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff raised the R-word and quickly backtracked, but NDP Leader Jack Layton categorically questioned whether the activities of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service in Afghanistan made it complicit in the torture of battlefield combatants by less trustworthy Afghan authorities.

The Liberals and NDP agreed that a report by The Canadian Press shedding new light on the shadowy activities of CSIS in Afghanistan makes a full public inquiry into the detainee affair all the more imperative.

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If you find the video won't start when you click on the start arrow, try sliding the box on the progress bar slightly to the right.

Also available from here: http://www.ohcanadamovie.com/

QUEBEC — Starting in December, some passengers on Canadian airlines flying to, from or even over the United States without ever landing there, will only be allowed to board the aircraft once the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has determined they are not terrorists.

Bank of Montreal (TSX:BMO) had a $657-million profit in its latest financial quarter as revenue increased by 24 per cent from a year earlier, with its Canadian operations providing much of the lift.

BMO's overall revenue in the three months ended Jan. 31 increased by $583 million from the comparable period a year before, rising to $3.02 billion - in line with analyst estimates.

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It's "nice" to know the banks are doing well :-|

You can pretend that the Canadian political, corporate and media elite who actively promote the Racist JNF to Canadian adults and children aren't aware of the true nature of the JNF, however that won't erase the archived reports of JNF racism and complicity in ethnic cleansing that have been published by major Canadian newspapers, the Canadian Jewish News, the United Jewish Appeal of Toronto and in a domestically and internationally known TV documentary by Canadian Crown Corporation CBC's Fifth Estate in 1991. You can act as if the well documented paper trail of all this which is departmentally stamped and legally filed in the official records of the Canadian Human Rights Commission along with a departmentally stamped and legally filed reply from the Canadian Government proving its full awareness of the Racist JNF Tax Fraud and unintentionally confirming bureaucratic malfeasance on this issue will somehow disappear, but it won't.

(To view article, click on link and then scroll down to Item 4)

Junior Foreign Affairs minister Peter Kent is suggesting Canada stands ready to throw its full military weight behind Israel, telling a Toronto publication that “an attack on Israel would be considered an attack on Canada.”

The Harper government is promising to address criticism that a Montreal-based rights agency is anti-Israeli.

A civil liberties coalition says racial and religious profiling has become a fact of life when crossing the Canada-U.S. border.

Ecotex Healthcare Linen Service Inc. operated in the United State in the mid-1990s, before the weak Canadian dollar drove it back north of the border.