To Globe and Mail | 27Aug2010 | Orest Slepokura
Ottawa urges
immigrant communities to report suspicious behaviour
The Editor:
Re: "Ottawa urges
immigrant communities to report suspicious behaviour,"
Steven Chase, Globe and Mail online, 27 August 2010.
While vigilance is important in flagging unusual patterns of behaviour
by terrorist wannabes, citizens will need to be careful to not
overreact and end up confusing the imagined with the real. The
Commission of Inquiry into Nazi War Criminals in Canada headed by
Justice Jules Deschênes is instructive in this regard. Over 800
individuals were investigated during the life of the Commission in the
mid-1980s, with results contained in a 1986 study. A recurring motif
one discovers on reading it is how practically all of their leads led
nowhere. A case sourced to an anonymous letter is typical, including
"the denunciation as war criminals of a couple bearing a German name,
living in a secluded place under the protection of two black dogs and
offering old European furniture for sale (cf. Case No. 179 and Case No.
180, pp. 386-387).
Welcome to Kafka country!
Orest Slepokura
Strathmore, Alta