When they were supposed to be there, they never were.
And this was more than just on one or two occasions.
Police, by simply being a “Peace Officer” as defined by the Criminal Code of Canada are often thought of as infallible and beyond reproach.
The roads in British Columbia are governed by the B.C. Motor Vehicle Act.
One would think that the police in this province would know the motor vehicle act like the back of their hand. But they don’t. And honestly they don’t care.
I find that the civilian police operate much the same as the military police.
“BLAME THE VICTIM”.
It’s just much easier that way.
Today I was on my way to get a bit to eat when I had a police officer in a cruiser no less, tell me that my scooter wasn’t a vehicle and that I shouldn’t be on the street.
No wonder alternate modes of transportation have never taken off in this city like they should. This place has year round cycling facilities that should make it second to none in the world, but Finland, Norway, and even Iceland have better year round cycling levels that Vancouver does.
With mis-informed police like this, no wonder no one in the city likes to ride on the city streets.
Bicycle riders, and via the pilot project in effect in the lower mainland, operators of e-scooters are required to operate their cycle following the same rules as car drivers.
Under the motor vehicle act, a bicycle operator and an e-scooter operator wishing to turn left at an intersection must do so from the right side of the lane closest to the centre line of the road.
The only other requirement for bicycles and e-scooters making left hand turns at intersections is that in the case of multiple left hand turn lanes, the bicycle or e-scooter operator must only use the right most left-hand turn lane.
This is what this would look like in the real world.
Marine Drive and Capilano Road in North Vancouver.
Bicycles and e-scooters are permitted to make left hand turns from the right most left hand turn lane and never from the centre left hand turn lane.
When making a left hand turn from a two way to a one way on is to turn from the lane to the right of the centre line and one is to guide their vehicle into the driving lane closest to the left hand side of the one way street. If there had been parked cars on the left hand side of Nelson street I would have turned into the second lane from the left hand curb.
Well, I present to you the BC MVA COP. A transit cop. A transit cop that probably lives in Abbotsford or Langley where killing bicycle riders is a team sport.
Yep, you’re not imagining things. He rolls down his window to announce “you’re not a vehicle, get off the road”.
I despised my full name, but that’s for a different post.
While my family lived on Canadian Forces Base Shearwater in Nova Scotia people like Bill Parker or my uncle Al always referred to me as Bob, Bobby, or Robbie.
No matter how much I preferred Bob or Bobby my father and my grandmother were always of the opinion that my birth name was Robert and that’s what I would be called.
It wasn’t until my infamous August 2006 telephone call with my father that I became determined to change my name.
The telephone call was the first time that I had an inkling that my father knew more about the events on Canadian Forces Base Namao than what he had ever admitted to.
In the aftermath of the telephone calls I had decided that I was going to seriously look at changing my name and possibly going through hormone therapy.
So, I decided that I wanted to work on my name first.
I tried different first names, but I always came back to Bobby, or more specifically Bobbie. What I really liked about Bobbie is that it is a unisex name. Bobby is generally a male name. Bobbi is generally a female name. And Bobbie is gender neutral. Tracing the history of Bobbie through the years it has gone back and forth between being a male name and a female name.
Nothing fancy about the name Bobby / Bobbie / Bobbi. They’re all the diminutive spelling of Robert / Roberta.
And the plan was that once I underwent hormone therapy that I would simply drop the “e” and go with Bobbi.
But then I had to do a stupid thing and I went on to pick a fight with the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence.
The fight was going to be inevitable. There’s no way that the shit from 1978 through 1980 was going to stay hidden and buried in the past.
So, 17 years after my name I’m still Bobbie.
At least I’m on Estradiol and I’m sprouting beewbs……….
And a convicted felon and an adjudicated rapist has become the president of the US of A.
Sir Misogyny the Orange is making wild ass claims that Canadians want to plummet down the “quality of life” rankings to join the US of A near the bottom of the list.
Vying to take Justin’s place is a man who has never worked a real job for a single day in his life, has been collecting a cushy government pension for quite some time now, and claims to support the “little guy” while calling for the age of retirement to be raised to 70 and beyond.
The fact that Christy Clark wants to throw her hat into the ring as the leader of the Federal Liberals shows just how uneducated the Canadian public really is. Christy was the premier of British Columbia after DUI Gordo stepped down. The problem with the BC Liberals is that they had nothing in common with the Liberal party in any other province or at the federal level.
The BC Liberals were the rejects left over from the collapse of the BC Social Credit party, which was as hard right and fundamentalist as they come. After the Socreds imploded under Vander Zalm the party knew that it would never be able to run as the Socreds again. So, it became the BC Liberal Party.
But the BC NDP wasn’t much better as it had veered to the far right, but it hadn’t veered right far enough for the real owners of BC. Even though the BC NDP were pissing off every union in BC and kissing billionaire ass left, right, and centre, it wasn’t enough. And when the BC NDP lost the election to the BC Liberals the leader of the BC NDP jumped into bed with BC’s own favourite billionaire.
I think that the dumbing down of Canada happened with Lyin’ Brian.
Instead of standing up to America, Brian dropped his paper bags of Karl’s money on the ground, knelt upon them, and pledged his fealty to Wall Street and to Ronnie Raygun.
And Canada has been influenced by American propaganda ever since. American propaganda is why there is such a wildly wrong interpretation of communism and socialism in the US of A.
With the absolute exception of the CBC, all Canadian Media is American owned.
Sure, just like in the oil fields, the head offices may be in Canada, but the shareholders and hedge funds are all American owned. And as such the media spews the American view.
There are Americans and Canadians that believe that the Soviet Union and China were / are communist when the Soviet Union and China have always been single party totalitarian regimes.
In the last 20 years China has veered off into some sort of hybrid mix of capitalism and totalitarianism. Meanwhile Russia veered off into some bizarre mix of capitalism and organized crime syndicates.
Communism by its very nature can’t exist in a state which enforces class stratification. For a state to be communist there can’t be “leaders”. Everyone would have to “lead”. And the state couldn’t own the means of production. Communism is where the workers own the means of production. I don’t think that any state workers in the U.S.S.R. or even pre-1990s China owned the means of production.
Socialism is the supposed condition that exists between capitalism and communism with the means of production and distribution being owned collectively for the benefit of the citizens of the country until a state of statelessness and classlessness can be obtained.
Capitalism is where the state serves to enforce the ownership of the means of production by the capitalists, and by force if force is required. Remember back to 1800s and the early 1900s when States in America would unleash state militias on unions at the bequest of the mine owners and would kill strikers to protect the assets of the owners.
It’s sad to see that there are Canadians that get all of their knowledge of America from TV shows like Beverly Hill 90210, House, Scrubs, etc.
The fact that an Australian Oligarch named Rupert Murdoch was able to worm his way into America and peddle his lies without contest shows just how unprepared the American government was for a takeover by foreign invaders.
Rupert lobbied Ronnie for the elimination of the “fairness doctrine” which led to Faux Newz, Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones, Gavin McInness, which of course led to Canada’s very own media of the loons.
The fact that a racist from South Africa can be viewed as a “captain of industry” when his first product was a means to move money around without the scrutiny of the banks, law enforcement, and government which of course benefits one type of enterprise in particular is pretty damning.
And ever since the late ’80s the media, all owned by billionaires, has been skewing hard right and trying to convince people one both sides of the border that a fascist oligarchy is the best style of government.
The greatest trick of the billionaires has been convincing the general public that the media has veered too far to the left when in fact all the billionaires care about is spewing their propaganda in a positive light. To the billionaire class there is no right and there is no left, there’s only the serfs and the elites.
See, back in the early 1900s, America was going through a gilded age. The poor were surviving hand to mouth. American cities had massive slums that rivalled the slums of the United Kingdom. But the rich were making a killing.
But the oligarchs took it too far in the 1920s which led to the stock market crash of 1929 which plunged America into the great depression.
FDR came to the rescue with his “New Deal” which brought in all sorts of regulations and laws that prevented the stock market and the banks from acting like no limit casinos. He also raised the taxes on the multi millionaires to the point of 90% and above tax rates.
No one but an idiot would pay those tax rates. All you had to do was invest in your company, or invest in your work force, and your taxes would come tumbling down.
That’s why America progressed so far up the social ladder in the ’50s and ’60s.
But this wasn’t good enough for the plutocrats or the oligarchs.
They wanted their money without any of the social obligations that came with it.
So these fuckers started putting their kids through Ivy League schools with the goal of getting their kids into positions of government to overturn FDR’s “New Deal” policies. And they succeeded.
Since the ’70s the rich have been waging a war on the public education system. You need to destroy the public education system if you ever want to return to the gilded age. You need to brain wash the next generation into believing that being a billionaire is not a sign of mental illness but is instead a sign of brilliance. You need to brain wash the public into believing that the vote of someone making $65,000.00 per year is worth as much as someone with $120 billion dollars in wealth.
While poking around on the intertubes yesterday I came across a story related to me that flew completely under my radar.
David Pugliese of the Ottawa Citizen has actually filed Freedom of Information Act requests with the Department of National Defence in order to try to discover who ordered the CFSIU paperwork and Courts Martial transcripts to be withheld from me, and to be as heavily redacted as they were the first time that DND released these document to me in mid 2020.
I applaud David for digging deeper into this story.
At this point in my life I’ve all but given up on dealing with the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence.
If there is one thing that I’ve learnt in my dealings with the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence is the truth is whatever they want it to be no matter how many lives they destroy in the process. Collateral damage is a minor expense when it comes to protecting one’s public image.
This was the response to an ATI that I had filed back in 2018 asking for copies of any emails that I had sent to the Minister of National Defence.
First, what is the “Corp Sec DSCS”?
The Corp Sec DSCS is the Corporate Secretary in the department of the Director Strategic Corporate Services (DSCS), Department of National Defence.
Basically the DSCS-DSMS is the gate keeper for information contained within the Department of National Defence that could prove detrimental if said information were to be released to the public.
You know, like a military police report from 1980 that runs in 180 degrees of opposition to what a military police investigation in 2011 concluded.
The DSCS-DSMS also function as the creative storytellers for the Minister of National Defence / Chief of Defence Staff / Vice Chief of Defence Staff carefully coordinating and concocting the BS that comes from all three of these entities so that a unified story is presented to the Canadian public.
In this above email between Denis Paradis, Major Zenon Drebot (Zenon Drebot Canadian Armed Forces – Office of the Judge-Advocate General) and William Bain they actively discuss hiding my correspondence with the Minister of National Defence from any ATI request.
How do they do this?
The first step is to encrypt the correspondence. Encrypted data is difficult to search, especially without the required decryption key.
Basically what’s supposed to happen is any email that is sent to the government is searchable and can be located by the ATI office, once located the ATI office is supposed to go through the email to assess if it can be released to the public and make any redactions as required prior to releasing the document.
However, the “space saver” is a literal fucking black hole. Once documents disappear into that black hole they’ll never see the light of day again unless they prove beneficial to the Department of National Defence, the Canadian Armed Forces, or the Minister of National Defence.
To further complicate matters, my emails were almost always to do with the subject of “child sexual abuse”. The CAF and the DND probably receive 1,000s of emails every month that don’t have anything to do with “child sexual abuse”. By stripping the true subject matter of my emails from the email and replacing the subject of my emails with “concerns with the Canadian Forces” the DSCS is making it all but impossible to find any trace of my emails.
And finally, my name is spelt “BOBBIE”, not “BOBBY”.
This is important as when the ATI section scans the email servers for emails from “Bobbie Bees” it won’t indicate any traces of “Bobby Bees”. Those are two separate persons. And under ATI guidelines “Bobbie Bees” is not entitled to the personal information of “Bobby Bees”.
The Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence have a knack for obfuscation.
National Post February 1st, 2019 page A6
By referring to Vice-Admiral Mark Norman as anything but his name, the Chain of Command within the Canadian Armed Forces and the hierarchy in the Department of National Defence could freely discuss Vice-Admiral Mark Norman and the military’s tactics for dealing with Vice-Admiral Mark Norman without risking their plots coming to the attention of Vice-Admiral Mark Norman or Vice-Admiral Mark Norman’s lawyers.
The Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence are organization the rely heavily upon being able to control the narrative and the optics.
The attitudes within the CAF and the DND are that civilians are simpering whelps that could never measure up to military standards and therefore the CAF and the DND will not be held to the same standards as mere civilians.
This attitude is endemic within the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence.
Everyone within the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service that was involved with GO2011-5754 in 2011 knew the full fucking truth about what had transpired on CFB Namao from 1978 until 1980, but they had assumed that I would never know the truth because the original courts martial in July of 1980 had been moved in-camera and everything had been sealed away from the public.
And if it hadn’t been for Master Corporal Christian Cyr flapping his trap on May 3rd, 2011 in an obvious glib attempt to show me that he knew what the truth was and that he knew that I was just trying to scam the military for money, I would never have been any of the wiser and I would never have been launched down this trajectory when Petty Officer Steve Morris told me on November 4th, 2011 that the CFNIS could find absolutely no evidence to indicate that P.S. was capable of what I had accused him of.
However, after hearing Morris basically call me a liar on November 4th, 2011, I wasn’t going to stop.
And after almost ten years, the truth came out, it was the babysitter’s abuse of younger children that brought Captain McRae to the attention of the CFSIU and that the CFSIU was in turn well aware that Captain McRae was giving children alcohol in the rectory at the base chapel and then taking them into the bedroom to “fool around” with them.
This has been a very slow battle with an extreme power imbalance between the CAF, the DND, and myself as the CAF and the DND both enjoy the ability to hide and withhold information from anyone or anything they declare to be an adversary.
I know that there’s so much more information that the DND and the CAF have related to child sexual abuse on the bases. But I also know from personal experience that the DND and the CAF can withhold any information that they want and that they do so knowing that they will face very little in the way of consequences.
Quick flight from YYZ to YVR. Took less than the 5 hour scheduled time.
The 777 is a nice plane.
The concert that I went to was a bust.
The artist is definitely a studio musician. Their songs and their song writing are great, but they just don’t translate into live performance songs, especially not if they’re being stripped down and performed as “acoustic” versions.
And I’m sure that the venue works very well for EDM raves and Hip-Hop shows that need to give the audience a lot of space to move to the energy, but this artist doesn’t have that type of energy to give. They’re more appropriate for a seated venue.
While partaking in some wandering around in Toronto I came across an interesting news story.
It was related to child sexual abuse in the British military.
She went through it with the British Forces as opposed to the Canadian Forces.
But same shit.
Which would make sense as Canada used to be a British colony and our justice system and our military are based upon British origins.
It’s shocking but also a relief to see that the same fuck-ups and flaws that harmed children on Canadian Armed Forces bases across Canada also harmed children on British Forces bases in the UK. What’s interesting is that the victim that is the initial subject of this story was sexually abused in Germany on a British base there. Canada had bases in Germany as well. Wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest that Canadian base brats were sexually abused there as well.
And I wouldn’t be surprised if the stats for child sexual abuse are grossly under reported to the public by British military officials as is alluded to in the article. A few years ago I requested from the Department of National Defence a list of all sexual assault investigation undertaken by the CFNIS since its inception in 1998.
I received a document that listed hundreds of sexual assault investigations.
You know what this document didn’t list?
GO 2011-5754.
The 2011 CFNIS investigation into my complaint of childhood sexual abuse on Canadian Forces Base Namao was not included on a list of sexual assault investigations from 1998 onwards.
So, if DND withheld the existence of my own case from me, how many other cases are they hiding and refusing to acknowledge?
The article also mentions the parochial patriarchal society that existed within these military communities which would often lead to the victims of child sexual abuse being forced and intimidated into silence.
Sadly I don’t think that we’ll ever see this type of reporting here in North America.
All of our Canadian Newspapers of any importance are owned by America hedge funds. And no society based upon subordination to patriarchal capitalism will do anything to upset its military.
Men fucking and raping women in the military is apparently okay. There is still some consensus in the military community and those around the military community that blame the sexually assaulted women for their own assaults as “they knew what they were getting into”.
Men fucking and abusing children in the military can’t be acknowledged least our enemies use it as propaganda to demoralize our troops and our society.
Children that commit suicide due to military sexual abuse don’t commit suicide due to military sexual abuse. Oh no, they commit suicide because they were nutcases or societal malcontents. And as long as the military pretends that child sexual abuse doesn’t exist in the military community, military dependents that kill themselves either as children or later in life as adults are just written off as mentally unstable nutcases seeking attention.
The Canadian Armed Forces will not, under any circumstance, disturb that old timey quaint notion that children are the safest in military communities. I would never trust the military to ever properly investigate any matter involving children on defence establishments, especially not if it risked tainting the public image of the military.
This is why I really want some form of basic acknowledgement for what I went through before I die so that the Canadian Armed Forces can’t simply write me off as some insane nutcase.
I am really hoping to undergo medical assistance in dying for this exact reason. If I were to commit suicide, then the Canadian Armed Forces win. If I undergo medical assistance in dying then the Canadian Armed Forces don’t win. I get to die knowing that medical professionals agreed that the events of CFB Namao were too traumatic and more than what anyone should have ever had to go through.
If there’s one thing that I’ve had to learn in my life it’s to not to count my chickens before they hatch.
As I mentioned previously, the justice in my matter has stated that the class action has merit and that I am okay to be the representative plaintiff.
I can promise you that this very much displeases the Department of Justice, the Department of National Defence, and the Canadian Armed Forces.
The DOJ has 30 days to respond to the decision. They can accept it, which will be very unlikely. Or they can appeal the decision, which is more than likely. I see no reason whatsoever as to why they wouldn’t appeal. They have nothing to lose and everything to gain. This decision can’t get any worse for them.
And if they do appeal, they’ll file their documents 30 minutes before the deadline.
The power imbalance that exists between myself and the Department of Justice is incalculable.
I have already made it clear that I want my name made public, this is why my name shows in the decision.
The DOJ still has the ability to request all names be censored.
The DOJ and the DND could also make applications to move this matter “in-camera” for reasons of National Security. This is the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces that we are talking about.
The Department of Justice has access to records and documents that I wouldn’t even know exist.
And don’t forget, but the DOJ also represented the Military Police Complaints Commission and by extension the Canadian Armed Forces Provost in February of 2013 when I filed my application for Judicial Review of the heavily flawed 2012 MPCC review of the 2011 CFNIS investigation.
The DOJ knew then exactly what the Canadian Forces hid and buried, but the DOJ was more than happy to sweep everything under the rug and assist the Canadian Armed Forces with further hiding their dirty laundry from the public eye.
If the DOJ had any ethics or morals it would have requested the RCMP become involved in reviewing historical matters of child sexual abuse on the bases in the days of the pre-1998 National Defence Act once it saw the wealth of documents that indicated how much the CFNIS had willing and intentionally withheld from the Military Police Complaints Commission.
Nope, the DOJ was more than happy just to argue about “new evidence” and “rules”.
You can be certain that the lawyers with the DOJ have already talked to the current and historical Minister of National Defence, the current and historical Chief of Defence Staff, the current and historical Vice Chief of Defence Staff, the current and historical Provost Marshal, the current and historical Judge Advocate General, etc. They’ve probably already had meetings with Daniel Edward Munro.
The DOJ will have access to internal communications that my lawyers and I will never have access to.
These communications will allow the DOJ to formulate an attack and a defence that will not be made clear during discovery.
And I know that documents like this exist. In my case I have records of emails with subject lines being changed to reflect less serious issues and that these files were further relegated to “encrypted files” so that they avoid any searches triggered Access to Information requests.
I also know that the Department of National Defence has a very strict retention period of 7 years for documentations and files.
And you can bet your bottom dollar that the DOJ is not beyond urging the DND and the CAF to follow their retention policy posthaste.
Okay, so I don’t know what’s going to happen next, but the justice reviewing the certification portion of my class action against the Canadian Armed Forces has agreed that the class action has merit to proceed.
The justice has also stated that I am okay to be the representative plaintiff.
I don’t know if the Department of Justice and the Canadian Armed Forces will try to appeal these decisions. I don’t know if they will be allowed to appeal. So I’ll have to wait and see.
If there’s one thing that I’ve learnt in my life it’s that nothing usually goes as planned.
Maybe it’s the eternal pessimist in me, but I have a very good reason to expect things to fail.
I come from a very long line of systemic failures.
It’s like my life has been falling through each and every crack imaginable.
My grandmother going through residential school
My father joining the Royal Canadian Navy.
The HMCS Kootenay incident.
The military’s lack of acknowledgment of PTSD and stigma to mental illness
The military’s culture of self medicating with alcohol and other substances
The military’s rules and regulations that put non-serving spouses at great disadvantage on the bases, especially in matters of child custody.
The military’s defective by design justice system.
The flaws in the National Defence Act
The “blame the victim” culture that existed on the bases.
The rampant homophobia that existed on the bases and which was condoned by Canadian Forces Administrative Order 19-20 which really made it almost impossible for male victims of sexual assault to be taken seriously.
The ability for dysfunctional military parents to use the transfer system to skip out on social services.
The fact that civilians such as civilian law enforcement and civilian social services needed permission to enter defence establishments.
So, will I continue to fall through more cracks?
Or will long overdue acknowledgements be forthcoming?
If there’s one thing that the public misunderstands about base brats it’s that as kids we moved around a lot. And not only were we moving, but the other kids on base would move as well.
Kids from dysfunctional families were pretty well segregated and ignored on base.
The Canadian Forces and the Department of National Defence will bray endlessly that your serving parent’s rank had no influence in the PMQ patch and that your serving parent would drop their military mindset at the front door of the PMQ.
That was absolute bullshit.
The PMQ patches were in all sense of the word the ultimate company town.
And as such children from dysfunctional homes were pretty well isolated from the others.
Sexually abused children, especially males, were seen to be willing participants in their own abuse and as such they were seen to be a risk to the other kids on base.
In the days after the CFB Namao child sexual abuse sex scandal my family, like others, were posted off CFB Namao. The babysitter’s family was the first to move. This more than likely had to do with rumblings on base that some of the junior ranks wanted to lynch the babysitter.
My family was punted off CFB Namao and down to CFB Griesbach in October of 1980. This was a total trip distance of 10 km, paid for by the Canadian tax payers.
So, how am I supposed to know who the other kids are or how to find them.
The DND, the CAF, and the DOJ all have access to the listings of military families that resided on the base from the summer of 1978 until the summer of 1980, but this is “protected” as personal information.
The CFSIU investigation paperwork and the courts martial transcripts contain the names of the other potential victims, but again this is “personal information” and can’t be released to protect the victims.
There was a crime stoppers appeal for victims of sexual assault on the base between 1978 to 1980 that was released in 2018. According to the MPCC paperwork this provided “hits”, but nothing that could be directly tied to me. This could be used to find other victims. But the DOJ, the DND, and the CAF would fight this tooth and nail.
Why don’t I go on line to the facebook groups? or Xitter, or Bluesky, or Threads?
The one problem with that is there is a certain contingent of former military dependent that will not acknowledge that bad things happened to children on the bases because if they did then they would have to face the fact that they were often the ones shunning, teasing, taunting, and isolating the hurt kids.
So, here we are in 2024.
My clock is quickly winding down.
And the DOJ knows full well well that they have nothing to fear as the organization that I am squaring off against controls all of the information required for my claim to be successful.
Unlike the kids who got diddled by sports players, priests, police officers, school teachers, etc., I have to contend with an agency that can legally silence potential witnesses that were part of the military back in the day. The security of information act / the official secrets act is so extremely vague when it comes to persons who were subject to the code of service discipline when they learnt about “information” on a defence establishment.
The section of the official secrets act / security of information act that deals with members of the Canadian Armed Forces on base isn’t limited to “secret” or “classified” documents, plans, sketches, etc. These acts cover “all information” which could include “police investigations”, “reasons for chain of command decisions”, “orders to subordinates”, etc.
Also, the 3-year-time-bar legally protects anyone who was subjected to the code of service discipline in 1980 from any modern day legal action, and I would also interpret that to also protect these people from any civil liabilities.
Even if the RCMP wanted to go have a chit-chat with retired Canadian Armed Forces officer Brigadier General Daniel Edward Munro, the National Defence Act protects Munro from any criminal investigation.
Charges against McRae pg1Charges Against McRae pg2
The above two pages are from the 1980 courts martial of Captain McRae. They are what are known as the “charge sheets”.
Yes, the Canadian Forces have ALWAYS had the authority to try service members on Code of Service Discipline matters, and that the National Defence Act allowed the military to try Criminal Code offences as Service Offences.
This also meant that the crimes of Gross Indecency, Indecent Assault, Buggery, and just about every other charge related to sexual offences against children were subject to the 3-year-time-bar that stipulated that no person that committed a service offence could be prosecuted for that offence if the tribunal for said offence commenced more that 3 years after the date of the offence.
The fact that the Canadian Forces could try sexual assaults against children as service offences meant that the summary investigation flaw would also apply. The Summary Investigation Flaw required that the commanding officer of the accused review the charges that had been brought against their subordinate. If the charges would result in a sentence of less than 2 years and not dismissal from the Canadian Forces , the commanding officer could conduct a summary trial where the commanding officer would be the judge.
If there was the risk that the charges would in charges of more than two years or dismissal from the Canadian Forces the commanding officer would cause the charges to proceed to courts martial or the civilian justice system.
However, the commanding officer could also chose to simply dismiss any or all of the charges brought against their subordinate. And once dismissed, those charges or similar charges arising out of the same or similar facts could never be brought against the subordinate at a later date by either a military or civilian tribunal.
When I asked the CFNIS in 2018 if they could talk to Daniel Edward Munro, whom was residing in the vicinity of the CFNIS detachment at CFB Esquimalt, this was the response the CFNIS investigator received from Ottawa.
3 year time bar pg13 year time bar pg2
So, not only is Munro immune from explaining to the military or civilian police what he did in 1980 and who may have possibly ordered him to do what he did, but he would also be silenced by the Security of Information Act as anything that he did on CFB Namao related to the investigation and prosecution of Captain McRae would be considered “information”.
As I mentioned in other blog postings, I had become acquainted with Fredrick R. Cunningham on November 27th, 2011. He filled me in on numerous details of the Captain McRae fiasco. He wouldn’t name names, but he would state that the military police were prevented by the “brass” from calling in the RCMP to deal with the babysitter, and that the military police had many more charges against Captain McRae but that the “brass” reduced that number of charges to those only related to the babysitter, all other charges related to other children had been dropped. Cunningham also noted that the military police at the time wanted to move this case into the civilian justice system but that the “brass” refused their requests. Cunningham wouldn’t say what his rank was or what unit that he was involved with, but he also begged me not to tell anyone that he had told me anything about the babysitter and Captain McRae.
I mentioned the contents of my conversation with Cunningham in a letter to the Provost Marshal. Weeks later Gilles Sansterre, the commander of the CFNIS telephoned me to say that the CFNIS couldn’t find any evidence to substantiate what this “Cunningham” guy said. Sansterre said he doubted that Cunningham could have known anything about the 1980 investigation and that Cunningham probably heard about this information 2nd or 3rd hand.
In 2020 with the release of the CFSIU investigation paperwork I would learn that Cunningham was in fact the Acting Section Commander of the CFSIU on CFB Namao and that he had been personally tasked by the base security officer, Captain David Pilling, with investigating Captain McRae for having committed “Acts of Homosexuality” with young boys on the base.
Everything that Cunningham had told me had been backed up by the CFSIU paperwork.
How powerful are the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence at keeping secrets?
In 2016, during part 2 of the CFNIS investigation into my complaint against the babysitter, the CFNIS tried to talk to Fred Cunningham. Fred outright refused to go for an interview at the CFNIS detachment located on Canadian Forces Garrison Steele Barracks (formerly CFB Namao). He would only talk to the CFNIS as long as no audio or video recordings were made. That’s an odd thing for the lead investigator of a major child sexual abuse scandal involving more than 25 children to say.
What was Fred afraid of?
Well, I think that Fred was afraid that if what he told the CFNIS in 2016 came anywhere near close to what he told me in 2011, then that meant that we would have run afoul of the security of information act / official secrets act. The actual penalties aren’t anything too serious under the acts.
BUT……..
What if the Canadian Forces were to retroactively dishonourably discharge Fred from the Canadian Forces effective the time period of the Captain McRae fiasco. I don’t know when Fred retired, but that would be a hell of a lot of pension money, wages, and housing allowances to have to pay back to the government.
Do I think it would have resulted in that? No. But who the hell would want to go against a government agency governed by intentionally vague and overreaching acts and regulations and spend all sorts of retirement money and retirement time fighting the government?
And this is the problem facing any lawyer dealing with matters against the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces. You’re not dealing with acts and regulations that are set in concrete. You’re dealing with acts and regulations that are so vague that they can be whatever the DND and the CAF want them to be from one day to the next.
The catholic church or even the scouts can be required to hand over the names of members of their organizations to police investigators, prosecutors, and even civil litigants. The DND and the CAF don’t have to meet those obligations as any information they have is considered “personal information” as the abusers and the serving parents of the victims were members of the Canadian Armed Forces and as such were “employees” and as such they would need to seek the permission of the involved parties to release said information.
So back to the topic at the start of this post, “why don’t I simply find other brats”? The secrecy surrounding the CAF and the military communities guards the military community with a large impenetrable wall of secrecy.
Throw into this the number of frequent relocations across the country, and then the children moving off and on their own when they “age off” the bases, and you have former brats scatted all over the country.
In the day and age that I lived on the bases children could only live in the PMQs on base until the 19th birthday. There were exceptions for children going to college or university. They had until 24 to get out of the military housing. The only other exception was for handicapped children.
I lived in 7 different PMQs, on 5 different bases, in four different provinces by the time I was 12. Might not be a lot of moves in and of itself, but when the other kids are also moving around this creates a lot of churn.
As I said, dysfunctional families on base were a dime a dozen. I spoke to my father only a handful of times between 1990 when I moved out of the house for the second time and 2006. I never spoke to my father again between 2006 and when he died in 2017. I suspect that there were a lot of other brats like this.
I know of another department manager at work that was a base brat as a child. They absolutely refuse to talk about their childhood as they’re ashamed of what they went through and they’re afraid of others finding out.
And this is why I don’t think that the Canadian Armed Forces or the Department of National Defence will ever have to own up to the full extent of child sexual abuse on Canadian Forces Base Namao nor any other defence establishment across Canada.
The impenetrable walls of secrecy, and the online army of flying monkey base brats ensure that the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence never have to worry their pretty little heads off. When the tools of secrecy can’t conceal the child sexual abuse, the legion of flying monkey base brats will attack the abused brats.
From the report: “Our most significant challenge this year was the erosion of the MPCC’s ability to exercise civilian oversight of the military police. The MPCC used a great deal of resources and effort to obtain relevant documents from the CFPM to enable it to conduct fair and fulsome investigations. In too many instances, we have seen resistance or refusal to disclose information the MPCC needs to investigate complaints; a reduction in the number of recommendations accepted by the CFPM; a refusal to respond to recommendations; a refusal to provide updates on files currently being reviewed by the Office of Professional Standards of the CFPM; and restrictive and unilateral interpretation of the MPCC’s jurisdiction. The MPCC has been forced to turn to the Federal Court to obtain the documents it is legally entitled to review as part of its mandate. These unfortunate barriers dilute the will of Parliament in setting up a strong oversight system for the police and must be addressed.”
The MPCC was created in 1998 as part of the passing of Bill C-25 in 1998 and the restructuring of the military police in the aftermath of the fallout from the failures of the military police to conduct proper criminal investigations in Bosnia and Somalia when the Canadian Forces were on “peace keeping” missions there but ended up with members of the CAF conducting illegal activities.
The Military Police Complaints Commission was created with input from the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence, meaning that the CAF and the DND knew how they wanted their new police forces to operate and that through careful consideration the MPCC would be relegated to the status of toothless hound dog.
The issues that Madame Tammy Tremblay raised above are nothing new. In 2015 then outgoing MPCC chairman Glenn Stannard has this to say in his interview with Gloria Galloway of The Globe and Mail.
The Canadian Forces Provost Marshal has the ability to control the findings of the Military Police Complaints Commission.
During a review, the MPCC cannot subpoena documents or witnesses. The MPCC also cannot administer oaths.
Without the ability to administer oaths the members of the CFNIS subject to the complaint can utter falsehoods all day long and there will be absolutely no repercussions.
If a person such as myself wishes to make a complaint against the base military police or the Canadian Forces Special Investigations Unit we have to first submit our complaint to the Provost Marshal. The Provost Marshal then knows what the complaint is about and can then tailor the documents released to the MPCC to paint the narrative that the Provost Marshal or the Vice Chief of Defence Staff which for the MPCC to see.
Even if the MPCC suspects that something is off and not right, there’s nothing the MPCC can do as the MPCC cannot demand the release of documents from the Provost Marshal. Sure, they can go to Federal Court to ask the court to instruct the Provost Marshal to hand over the records, but that would mean that the MPCC would have to know what documents to request.
As I learnt during the 2012 review of my complaint against the 2011 CFNIS investigation, the complainant cannot simply supply the MPCC with all the documents in their possession. The MPCC can only consider documents that are relevant to the documents supplied to the MPCC by the Provost Marshal.
And as the Provost Marshal is under no obligation to tell the complainant what they’ve supplied and what they’ve withheld from the Military Police Complaints Commission, following through with a MPCC review is almost 100% a waste of time.
This is why when I was interviewed by Claude Bergeron and Peter Cicalo of the MPCC in July of 2012 they were practically popping the champagne and cheering for the CFNIS.
I’m on the left….. the MPCC is on the right.
Peter and Claude were very impressed with the CFNIS investigation even though the Provost Marshal had actually withheld all of my email communications between myself and Master Corporal Christian Cyr detailing the 5 visits to the chapel.
After my interview with Peter and Claude I was so fucking nauseated that I just wandered around the city aimlessly until about 03:00 in the morning trying to work up the courage to jump off the Granville Street bridge.
The Provost Marshal withheld the fact that the CFNIS had in its possession the 1980 CFSIU investigation paperwork and the 1980 courts martial transcripts from the MPCC.
Both of these sets of documents indicated that in 1980 the military police and the CFSIU were very well aware of the babysitter’s abuse of young children on the base and the fact that it was the investigation of the babysitter that exposed the actions of Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae.
This of course ran counter to was I was told by Petty Officer Steve Morris on November 4th, 2011 when he stated that the CFNIS could find absolutely no evidence that the babysitter was capable of what I accused him of.
Well, if you don’t like the findings of the MPCC, file an application for Judicial Review.
Don’t think that the Federal Court will be of any relief. The Federal Court can only render judgements based upon the documents that the Provost Marshal submitted to the MPCC. Anything else is considered “New Evidence” and the Department of Justice will fight tooth and nail to have all “new evidence” dismissed.
When I entered all of my emails between myself and Master Corporal Christian Cyr detailing the visits to the chapel the DOJ demanded that these be struck from the proceedings as they were “new evidence”. Because the Provost Marshal failed to notify the MPCC about these emails, I couldn’t introduce these emails at Federal Court level.
And it gets goofier than this.
In 1998, the Provost Marshal issued CFPM 2120-4-0 to the commanding officers of the new CFNIS, and all of the detachments across Canada. This document was further reissued in 2006. This document stated that matters involving civilian victim are to be handed over to the outside civilian authorities having jurisdiction. This document further stipulated that the CFNIS could only conduct an investigation of offences involving civilian victims if the outside civilian authorities outright refused to conduct the investigation.
I introduced this document into my applicant’s records for my application for judicial review.
The Department of Justice requested this document be struck from my hearing as this was also “New Evidence”. New evidence even though this was a standing operating procedure of the Canadian Forces Military Police. But it appears that the Military Police Complaints Commission was never given a copy of this document even though this document has guided military police and CFNIS operations since 1998.
I can’t help but wonder if the Provost Marshal’s new found energy to fight the MPCC over documents has to do with the fact that the MPCC went around the firewall that the CFNIS and the Provost Marshal had constructed around the investigation into my complaint of sexual abuse on Canadian Forces Base Namao and accesses a parallel investigation being conducted into the sexual assaults on CFB Namao and discovered the CFSIU investigation paperwork and the 1980 courts martial transcripts in the possession of the CFNIS.
Militaries like the Canadian Armed Forces really don’t like outside civilian agencies and do-gooders sticking their noses into the military’s business. Militaries view themselves as being the saviours of their respective country, and therefore they should never be questioned.
The Catholic church did the exact same thing that the Canadian Armed Forces are doing. And that’s using their immense power and prestige to place themselves above examination by pesky civilians.
The only difference between the Catholic church and the Canadian Armed Forces is that the Catholic church is subject to civilian laws and the civilian courts. The Canadian Armed Forces are a law unto themselves.
Is there any chance that I will pass up on Medical Assistance in Dying?
No.
But Bobbie, aren’t you on hormones?
Yes, yes I am.
And aren’t you on anti-depressants?
Yes, yes I am.
Well then, you should be feeling much better, you should be happy.
No. No I’m not, and it’s nothing to do with being happy.
My brain is burnt out.
I can’t escape the ghosts of so many years ago.
40 years of untreated mental illness has taken its toll.
40 years of living with the fallout of Captain Totzke.
A dysfunctional childhood spent hopping from one Canadian Forces base to another being raised by a rage fuelled alcoholic and his cruel alcoholic mother.
I’m going through with the hormones because this is something that I always wanted to do. This was something that I would not have been able to undertake when I was younger. But the hormones won’t fix a damaged brain nor will the hormones erase 40 years of horrific memories.
I get the feeling that society believes that I owe it to society to fix myself and to live so that I continue to be a benefit to society.
I owe nothing to society.
Society in fact owed it to me to allow me to enjoy a normal childhood and a normal adulthood. Society instead said that it valued the image and prestige of the Canadian Armed Forces over my well-being. And as such society really has lost its “right” to tell me that I have live because I owe it to society.
Well, why don’t you commit suicide?
I’ve known for a very long time that if I were to commit suicide that the babysitter and my father would win and their version of reality would become my truth.
Since learning the whole entire truth about the events that occurred on Canadian Forces Base Namao and how the modern day Canadian Armed Forces are so very hellbent on keeping the secrets of child sexual abuse on Canadian Forces hidden from the public consciousness, committing suicide would be giving the Canadian Forces an easy way out. And you can bet your bottom dollar that the Canadian Forces would pull out all of the stops to tar and feather my name.
So, you’re not really going to take your own life, you’re just doing this for theatrics, right?
Nope. Just waiting to see if the Department of Justice or the Canadian Armed Forces are willing to do the right thing or if they’re going to do everything in their power to keep this matter hidden and buried from the public eye.
The hospital where I work is in the process of moving. The new facility is supposed to be opened by 2027. The acute portion of the hospital is expected to transfer from the old site to the new site in a couple of weeks. The old hospital will stay in operation for a little while longer as it will have to support the various research programs on site until the new research building is constructed. I’ve already made it very clear that I have no interest in going to the new site, that I’m more than content to stay at the old site and run it until I either decide to pull the plug or the site shuts down.
Management for the most part doesn’t know why I have no interest in going to the new site, but there are a few managers that do. Some co-workers know of my plans, but most don’t.
My plan for when I decide the time is right to die is to simply announce that I’ve received an excellent job offer in the maritimes and that I want to take it as I want to return to Nova Scotia to retire there.
Beeshive 