Federal Transport Minister Jean Lapierre says his government must move quickly to put together a package to persuade Bombardier Inc. to build its proposed new, larger airliner in Canada.

Otherwise, Ottawa risks seeing Montreal lose hundreds more aerospace jobs, Lapierre said yesterday in an interview with The Gazette.

On Thursday, Bombardier announced 2,000 layoffs - 1,440 of them in Montreal.

Lapierre said persuading the Montreal-based company to build its new CSeries aircraft in Canada "is the most important file that we have to look at in the short term.

"If Bombardier is going to go ahead with that ... it's a $2-billion project," he said. "Can Canada afford to lose Bombardier? Can Canada afford to lose a world leader in aerospace?"

Losing production of the CSeries aircraft to another country would hit Montreal particularly hard, said Lapierre, political lieutenant for Quebec. [. . . . ]

Lapierre said any deal probably would involve Bombardier picking up one-third of the cost of developing the large airliners. One-third would come from the company's suppliers and the final third from government. Lapierre said Ottawa, Quebec and possibly Ontario could contribute, given that Bombardier has a lot of activity in Ontario.

"The project is $2.1 billion, so we're talking about $700 million each."

Newspaper reports published in recent weeks have put the tab to develop the aircraft at $4 billion. [. . . . ]

[. . . . ] The RCMP know full well that until 1997 it was the former Ports Canada Police who had the primary responsibility to police Canada's Ports and Harbours and waterfronts and piers and docks and cruise ship terminals etc., etc.

[. . . . ] Firstly, it should be known that the oldest police force in Canada was the former Ports Canada Police.

[. . . . ] The descendents of the Quebec River Police, the modern federal Ports Canada Police were only disbanded some few years ago in 1997 – mainly by the political influence of organized crime that had worked hard for many years at whittling away at their strength and numbers and by port officials and 'other' police departments (like the RCMP) who for the most part, unknowingly just let it happen.

[. . . . ] For whatever reason the Federal Government of Canada used in determining the disbandment of the former Ports Canada Police, they have still yet to justify it publicly, for there is yet, still no official public record of ‘why’ this was ever done.

[. . . . ] Besides, when they disbanded the former Ports Canada Police the federal government also abdicated their responsibility by putting this policing burden squarely onto the backs of the provinces and municipalities. Most city police departments (and RCMP) should admit this decades long absence they all lament is because they have neither the resources, expertise, knowledge, nor experience to step in and take on the dedicated ports policing role. If they only visit the waterfront when called (but no calls come), then quite conveniently one can claim that they are doing ‘a great job’ as the perception (not reality) is that now no crime exists on the waterfront anymore and we don't need to go there – a convenient approach to ports policing isn't it just!

[. . . . ] After much political pressure from Senator Kenny and various former Ports Police members (who still support the premise of having a dedicated ports police - in charge of ports security) and the IAASP – International Association of Airport & Seaport Police, the best our Canadian government and the RCMP can do after a decade of unfettered organized crime control of Canadian Ports, is to come up with one single police constable to be responsible for enforcing the law on Canadian waterfronts starting in N. Van. [. . . . ]

THE takeover of B.C.'s Organized Crime Agency (OCA) by the RCMP is just the latest example of the carpet cops putting the boot into the good guys to the advantage of organized crime.

I have written many columns about RCMP Cpl. Robert Read and how he got jammed by the carpet cops for trying to do the right thing. Read, you'll remember, was investigating a number of corruption-related issues at our consulate in Hong Kong, a part of which allowed Asian gangsters to buy their way into this country.

[. . . . ] A similar matter played itself out in another case in federal court last week. In 2000, RCMP Staff Sgt. Bob Stenhouse, frustrated with the lack of efforts to combat the threat posed by the outlaw motorcycle gangs, leaked a few documents to journalist and author Yves Levigne for his book Hells Angels at War. [. . . . ]

RCMP said the grow op comprised 20 full-sized shipping containers buried and hooked together underground. The operation was just starting up but police seized more than 1,300 plants and several hundred thousand dollars in grow equipment.

RCMP have recovered more evidence that the crash of a small plane in the south Okanagan is connected to the cross border drug trade into the United States. The pilot made a forced landing in a field near Keremeos on Tuesday after his plane ran out of gas. The plane had caught the attention of American law enforcement agencies because of its suspicious flight pattern. It was being monitored by a US Customs plane when it went down. The Americans had spotted items being dropped from the plane and RCMP say they have now recovered two bags along the flight route containing a substantial amount of marijuana.

The crash landing of a small plane Tuesday afternoon in the Similkameen valley may be related to the cross border drug trade. RCMP say the plane crossed the US/Canada border without reporting to customs and landed at the Princeton airport. When police approached the plane, the pilot took off but eventually ran out of fuel and made a forced landing next to the highway near Keremeos.

A BRITISH MAN has been arrested at Pearson airport with more than five kilos of heroin strapped to his legs and torso. And police are looking into whether the dope was manufactured by the Taliban or al-Qaida and being smuggled here to help fund their causes.

RCMP and Canada Customs officials said the suspect was arrested last Friday as he arrived at Pearson on a flight from Pakistan. [. . . . ]

[. . . . ] Pakistan, an ally of the United States in the war on terror, banned several militant Islamic groups, but most re-emerged under new names.

Hizb-ut-Tahrir has refused to change its identity despite the closure of offices and the arrest of several members.

British and US nationals of Pakistani origin comprise the backbone of this secretive group formed in Jerusalem in 1953.

It wants to establish a supra-Islamic state on the model of the caliphate as it existed in the early days of Islam.

The group came to Pakistan through second-generation Pakistanis living in the West, particularly Britain and the US.They claim they had supporters in Pakistan for a long time but formal operations took longer to establish. [. . . . ]

In a tape seized by authorities, radical Islamic cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri is heard urging Muslim women to breed children for the purpose of creating suicide bombers....

The recording, one of dozens handed over to authorities, was reported by British investigative journalist Neil Doyle in his new book "Terror Tracker," which chronicles his efforts to penetrate the internal workings of the al-Qaida terrorist network.

Hamza has been indicted by the U.S. on 11 terrorism charges. Authorities are studying the tape to build a case for the cleric's extradiction to the U.S, Doyle said....

[. . . . ] Are we safer now than we were on 9/11? Was the war in Iraq a mistake? Supporters of President Bush will answer yes to the first and no to the second; supporters of Senator Kerry will take the opposite view.

As a supporter of the war and of the president, I have noticed a common omission in the arguments of the naysayers: This is their failure to look at the side of the equation that our enemies control.

[. . . . ] The war has not been won. A thousand Americans, and many more Iraqis have died. Iraq is a mess. The price tag for the mess is $200 billion. How can it not have been a mistake?

This calculation, however, omits two crucial ledger columns: the cost of having not fought the war at all and the gains that can be achieved by continuing the war until it is won.

If we had not invaded Iraq, Saddam Hussein would still be in power; Abu Musab al-Zarqawi would be in command of an al-Qaeda army in northern Iraq; the UN’s, 17th resolution ordering Saddam to comply or else would have been successfully defied, the largest chemical weapons factory in the Third World, in Libya, would still be humming along with an advanced nuclear weapons plant (both now shut down). And what would the forces of terror – the Zarqawis and Zawahiris – be doing in the face of another toothless appeasement by the world community? That, of course, is the question that Saletan and Kerry – and those who agree with them – cannot answer.

This report relays the findings of the Special Advisor to the Director of Central Intelligence on Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction. . . . Thus, we extracted the key findings from each of the major sections of the report and provide them as a separate, much smaller file.

[. . . . ] Our Director of Security, Mr. Jean Brisebois, oversaw an evaluation of both sites on the Loyola campus, in collaboration with members of the security forces that would be involved in such an event. It was their collective, professional assessment that the security of the guest speaker, the attendees and faculty and students could not be guaranteed at either location.

The reasons for concluding that the event could not take place at either venue included traffic control on the Loyola campus, the proximity of a residential neighbourhood for which we have a certain institutional consideration to keep in mind, and the location of four separate educational and health and social service facilities, other than the University itself, adjacent to the sites originally proposed. [. . . . ]

Don't take the word of your lazy rolling-news update anchor or the AP rewrite guy on the Duelfer findings on Iraq. Instead, read the report for yourself. It is an amazing document. It renders John Kerry, on foreign policy and national security, either a complacent fool or an utter fraud. It's not about WMD, it's about the top-to-toe corruption of the entire international system by Saddam Hussein. The "global test" is a racket, and anybody who puts faith in it is jeopardizing America's national security. If the lazy US media won't pick up this story now, shame on them. Here's what I wrote six months ago, in The Sunday Telegraph of April 25th:

'War without the UN is unthinkable," huffed The Guardian's Polly Toynbee a year ago, just before it happened. For a certain type of person, any action on the international scene without the UN is unthinkable. And, conversely, anything that happens under the UN imprimatur is mostly for the unthinking.

No matter how corrupt and depraved it is in practice, the organisation's sunny utopian image endures. Say the initials "UN" to your average member of Ms Toynbee's legions of the unthinking and they conjure up not UN participation in the sex-slave trade in Bosnia, nor the UN refugee extortion racket in Kenya, nor the UN cover-up of the sex-for-food scandal in West Africa, nor UN complicity in massacres, but some misty Unesco cultural event compered by the late Sir Peter Ustinov featuring photogenic children of many lands.

[. . . . You have to link and read the details!]

So the conventional wisdom stays conventional - that we need to get the UN back into Iraq. No we don't. Iraq deserves better than an organisation which spent the last six years as Saddam's collaborator. As Claudia Rosett put it, "We are left to contemplate a UN system that has engendered a Secretary-General either so dishonest that he should be dismissed or so incompetent that he is truly dangerous and should be dismissed."

It happens so fast. All I want to do is have a look at the Internet chat rooms police warn parents about.

But I can't just watch.

Men, attracted by my tender 13 years -- that's how I portrayed myself for this research -- can't resist.

This is how police patrol the Internet for adults who are trying to lure teens or who are trading child pornography. But anyone can log on.

I sign up for Yahoo's chatrooms, give myself a screen name and password, and get in.

[. . . . ] That's all it took. A few minutes and a supposed 30-year-old is asking a 13-year-old to meet in person for a sexual adventure.

[. . . . ] The Internet

- Keep the computer in a high- traffic area of the home, never in a child's bedroom.

- Set ground rules for your children.

- If you don't know how to use a computer, take a course on it.

- Get your child to take you on a tour of where they go on the Internet.

- Do not allow your child to put personal information on their user profile -- a profile strangers can look up.

- Check your child's buddy list and surfing history.

- Use a filter.

- Be suspicious if your child always flips screens when you appear; he or she may be hiding something.

- Go to www.bewebaware.ca for more age-appropriate tips or www.media-awareness.ca.

The Conservatives signalled their intent to make immigration a key battleground for the next general election with a warning that uncontrolled settlement posed a threat to the nation's values.

David Davis, the shadow home secretary, noticeably toughened the party's rhetoric on the issue as he confirmed pledges to set an annual ceiling on the number of new arrivals. He said tougher curbs were needed "before it is too late".

Immigration was the centrepiece of an uncompromising speech that also committed a future Tory government to recruit an extra 40,000 police officers and provide an additional 20,000 prison places.

[. . . . ] It is probably the first time since the 1970s that the incendiary political issue of immigration has featured so strongly at a political conference. New policies were first outlined by Michael Howard, the party leader, in his address on Tuesday.

Mr Davis said uncontrolled immigration would add six million to the population over the next 30 years - the equivalent of six Birminghams - putting public services under threat and "endangering the values that we in Britain rightly treasure".

David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, has said that there is "no obvious limit' to legal immigration. This policy, said Mr Davis, had allowed immigration to soar since 1997 to record levels.

"The Government says that it doesn't know if this level of immigration is too much or too little. Well let me tell them. It is too much. Far too much. And we must do something about it."

Mr Davis said he did not diminish the contribution immigrants had made to the life of the nation but this was not a justification for the current rate of settlement.

"Britain is already the most densely populated major country in Europe and immigration isn't evenly distributed; it goes to our most overcrowded areas. It puts a burden on housing, health, schools and other public services and it does so where that burden is heaviest to bear." [. . . . ]