Pubdate: Fri, 13 Jan 2017
Source: National Post (Canada)
Copyright: 2017 Canwest Publishing Inc.
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/wEtbT4yU
Website: http://www.nationalpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/286
Author: John Robson
Page: A8

ONTARIO'S BRUTAL ASSAULT ON A GOOD COUPLE

Canadians have rights, don't they? We love our Charter and the robust,
even convoluted, legal system that surrounds it. Yet increasingly we
live in a fools' paradise because one of the worst things that can
happen to us is to be sucked into precisely the elaborate legal system
we think protects us.

This point was driven home for me, horribly, at a Canadian
Constitution Foundation conference on Law and Freedom in Toronto last
weekend. I was there to talk about the surprisingly encouraging
"Comeau" court ruling that we can buy beer and take it home even from
(ugh) another province. But this straightforward case, upholding the
plain meaning of S 121 of the Constitution, still took four years to
yield an initial ruling immediately engulfed by bickering over which
court shall hear a long costly appeal that will, itself, almost
certainly be appealed.

It is a massive injustice that to get a simple right upheld you must
endure years of court battles, sometimes petty or ludicrous but always
extremely expensive and stressful, against a state with unlimited
resources and a bad attitude about any mere citizen with the impudence
to challenge its august will.

Without the CCF and its backers, Gerard Comeau could never have stood
against this judicial Juggernaut. And the politicians and bureaucrats
know it. But this matter, or the apparently endless procedural
wrangling in the CCF challenge to B.C.'s restrictive health-care law,
is nothing to a tragic case described at the conference that, I
confess, I was not aware of.

It concerns the Reillys, a couple dedicated to helping the unfortunate
who tailored two of their Orillia rental properties to low-income
people with often chaotic lives. The Reillys were the sort of
landlords who would personally drive carless tenants to the grocery
store and to addiction counselling sessions.

So in 2008 the police alleged drug-dealing at these two properties.
Furthermore, they said some rent was paid from drug profits. And under
Ontario's soothingly named Civil Forfeiture Act, the "Director of
Asset Management" seized the Reilly's two properties as the "proceeds"
and possibly "instruments" of crime.

The Reillys were never charged with anything. It was never suggested
that they were involved in drug trafficking. Moreover, despite deep
sympathy for their tenants' sometimes disorderly lives they had
evicted more than 50 for dangerous behaviour and tried without success
to have others evicted for drug use.

It gets worse. No tenant was even arrested in connection with this
seizure. The state never proved that the Reillys ignored any crime,
let alone condoned or quietly profited from it. It just swooped
because what Juggernaut wants, Juggernaut takes, casually crushing the
Reillys in the process.

They sold all their other properties to pay legal bills and mortgaged
their home. Their marriage broke down. They are elderly and their
lives are destroyed. And the case is far from over. Indeed the
contested properties, badly dilapidated in the tender claws of the
state, are being sold without any pettifogging determination whether
the seizure was lawful.

Yes. In Canada. To be sure, if the CCF does not run out of donations,
a court may someday rule that the Reillys never should have lost their
property. Then, after various appeals, a fresh legal battle can
commence over whether they were sold for an appropriate price and if
not what should be done. Some day the Reillys' estate may even be
awarded costs. But Juggernaut doesn't care. It has unlimited access to
our money and is determined to make an example of this couple for some
unimaginable purpose.

The human cost of this ghastly process is enormous. You would have to
be literally insane to put yourself in the Reillys position, so from a
broad policy perspective it helps force the unfortunate in Ontario to
choose between the street and government housing (curiously never
seized because of drug trafficking). But what makes my blood boil is
the direct individual cost of this aggressive attack on our rights.

Ontario's broadly phrased and aggressively implemented legislation,
originally aimed at organized crime, doesn't just permit seizure of
property on frivolous grounds. It allows the destruction of blameless
lives, through an abusive procedure whose intimidating cost, duration
and stress is a feature not a bug.

Nothing can ever give the Reillys back the time lost, the further good
deeds not done, golden years together in the glow of shared, lived
ideals. So when Juggernaut comes for you, best to roll over before
everything that matters to you gets it, right?

No. Never. We must stand up for the Magna Carta promise of due process
and swift justice that is our birthright. Donate to the CCF if you
can. Raise your voice. Stand together as citizens. Denounce this
unCanadian trampling of rights and resolve that it shall not continue.
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MAP posted-by: Matt