If you ever find yourself charged with trying to kill a police officer, don't worry about being arrested - your family will just hide you away, and nobody will do anything about it, although the premier of your province might make some plaintive bleating noises. There's just one catch - you have to be a native protester.
The double standard that Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty has allowed to grow up around the land-dispute protest site at Caledonia, south of Hamilton, has now become manifestly absurd. Last Friday, police say, seven people connected to the land protest at a construction site - were involved in the "swarming" of a car, assaults on TV cameramen and the theft of a car that was then driven at police officers. Protest spokesmen solemnly claimed that these events were "political" and therefore not criminal. (Actually, of course, political violence can be considered terrorism.)
Criminal charges were laid and Ontario Provincial Police politely approached Six Nations Confederacy officials to ask that the seven be handed over. OPP spokespersons made cautious predictions that the native constabulary would co-operate. McGuinty worked up the courage to suspend incessant ongoing "talks" for a day or two, but resumed them when native leaders promised to hand over the wanted suspects.
They did not. The native leadership now says the seven have been "removed from the area." Since the whole business is "political" this is not, of course, a conspiracy to obstruct justice.
And McGuinty is still pretending everything is just fine. He does not see, or will not see, that treating defiance of the law as if it were respectable breeds more defiance of the law, even of arrest warrants. Tried to kill a cop? Hey, it was political! No problem!
In the course of Canadian history there have been many injustices, violent and non-, against native people. In many such cases white justice has, shamefully, looked the other way. But to err in the opposite direction now will in the long run do nobody any good.
We'll say it again: Enforce the law, Mr. McGuinty, before this gets any worse.