The challenges of Luka Magnotta's 'not criminally responsible' defence

Luka Magnotta has admitted killing Concordia University student Jun Lin in May 2012, but his defence lawyers will spend the next few weeks attempting to convince a jury that he is not criminally responsible for that act because he was mentally ill at the time.

"I intend to show you that at the time of the events, he was not criminally responsible," Magnotta's defence lawyer Luc Leclair told a Montreal courtroom on Monday, the first day of the highly anticipated trial.

Magnotta has pleaded not guilty to all five charges against him, including first-degree murder, but has agreed to the underlying facts of the case.

In the lead-up to the trial, it was speculated Magnotta's lawyers would rely on the not criminally responsible, or NCR, defence. Quebec Superior Court Judge Guy Cournoyer confirmed that soon after the trial began when he told the jury their task would be "to determine whether he committed the five offences with the required state of mind for each offence."

Under Section 16 (1) of Canada's Criminal Code, a person cannot be found criminally responsible "for an act committed or an omission made while suffering from a mental disorder that rendered the person incapable of appreciating the nature and quality of the act or omission or of knowing it was wrong."

'The important piece is not simply the mental disorder. The important piece is the next part of the phrase, which says mental disorder which renders the accused incapable.'- Patrick Baillie, forensic psychologist, lawyer

It's the second part of that statement that is key to a successful NCR defence, says Patrick Baillie, a Calgary-based lawyer and forensic psychologist with Alberta Health Services who has provided expert testimony in several NCR cases.

"The important piece is not simply the mental disorder. The important piece is the next part of the phrase, which says mental disorder which renders the accused incapable," Baillie said.

"This isn't something that distorted the person's thinking or they were depressed and they did something they wouldn't ordinarily do because they just didn't care, but rather the mental disorder left them incapable of knowing what they were doing or knowing that it was wrong."

Premeditated behaviour doesn't rule out NCR

In Magnotta's case, the Crown will likely attempt to convince the jury that the behaviour Magnotta exhibited prior to and after the alleged crime shows that he clearly knew what he was doing. Crown prosecutor Louis Bouthillier​ told the jury Monday that he intends to prove Magnotta planned his crime six months in advance.

Andrea Yates, seen talking with her lawyer in 2002, drowned her five children in a bathtub in Texas in 2001 but was found not guilty by reason of insanity. (Pool/Reuters)

But, Baillie says, that doesn't necessarily invalidate an NCR defence, because a defence lawyer only has to prove one of the two conditions: that the accused was incapable either of knowing what they were doing or of knowing it was wrong.

"You can still have planned and premeditated behaviour; the issue is whether or not you knew that it was wrong," he said.

A typical example is the case of Andrea Yates, the Texas mother of five who drowned her children but was found not guilty by reason of insanity in 2006.

"She knew what she was doing but did not believe that it was wrong because in her distorted way of thinking, she came to the conclusion that the children would be better off dead," Baillie said.

'Organized behaviour' could undermine defence

In Magnotta's case, the defence might have difficulty proving that he "didn't appreciate the nature and quality of the acts," said Michael Lacy, a veteran criminal trial lawyer and a partner at Greenspan Partners LLP in Toronto.

The Crown will likely argue that Magnotta acted with "orderly conduct," he said. The actions Magnotta is accused of — which include killing Lin, committing an indignity to his body, publishing and mailing obscene material and harassing Prime Minister Stephen Harper and other MPs — are inconsistent with someone suffering from a serious mental disorder, Lacy said.

The Crown will also likely bring up the allegation that Magnotta travelled to Europe immediately after the alleged crime, sparking a massive international police manhunt.

"That also evidences a level of organized behaviour that, at least viscerally, for most lay people... is sort of inconsistent with someone having a serious mental disorder," Lacy said.

However, mental illness is complicated, and the behaviour could be a part of whatever disorder Magnotta may have, Lacy said.

Defence to argue Magnotta was schizophrenic

The defence said in court Monday that it will show that Magnotta was schizophrenic and was hearing voices and feeling persecuted before the crime occurred. Schizophrenia is one of the most common diagnoses in NCR cases, Baillie said.

"Most NCR cases come back to some form of delusion or hallucination and therefore, typically, are tied to psychotic disorders: schizophrenia, a reaction to bad drugs, postpartum depression, those kinds of conditions," he said.

Lacy also stressed the fact that while Magnotta has not been diagnosed as a psychopath, psychopathic behaviour itself does not render an accused not criminally responsible.

"Having no conscience about what you do is not a disease of the mind that would render you not criminally responsible," he said.

The challenge for psychiatric experts testifying in NCR cases, Baillie said, is assessing after the fact how an individual behaved in the moment. This is where a past medical record becomes key. 

Vince Li was found not criminally responsible in 2009 for beheading a fellow passenger on a Greyhound bus. Psychiatrists testified Li was schizophrenic and suffering a major psychotic episode at the time of the gruesome killing. (John Woods/Canadian Press)

"In the majority of NCR cases, there is a full medical record," Baillie said. "These people are not strangers to the mental health system. A majority of them have had recent hospitalization, so there is a psychiatric record."

That is, in fact, what happened in Magnotta's case, according to Leclair. The defence attorney told jurors Monday that his client had had a one-hour psychiatric assessment at a Montreal hospital just weeks before Lin was killed. He also said the court would hear from health workers who treated Magnotta and be presented with his past medical record.

Yates, too, had had contact with mental health professionals, as did Vincent Li, who was found not criminally responsible in the 2008 death and beheading of fellow Greyhound bus passenger Tim McLean. Yates had been diagnosed with postpartum psychosis and depression and had attempted suicide; Li had been previously hospitalized for delusional behaviour.

NCR cases rare and not usually violent

When there isn't a mental history, "there has to be very thorough evaluation to make sure the person is not malingering, or more commonly known as faking it," Baillie said.

Baillie said he expects multiple psychiatrists to testify at Magnotta's trial but noted that in his 20 years as an expert on NCR cases in Calgary, the successful ones have been those where the Crown's experts and the defence experts agree.

"Typically, when you get into the battle of the experts, at least out here, the court comes to the conclusion that the accused was not NCR," he said.

NCR cases are rare — and do not usually involve violent offences, Baillie said. Much more common are cases in which a person commits an impulsive act like a theft  or leaving a restaurant without paying because of some delusional belief or perceived danger ("the restaurant diners have turned into zombies and are out to hurt me," for example).

"Just under 10 per cent of [NCR] cases are serious personal violence, and the majority are violence against family members and friends," Baillie said.

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ISIS may not even be the worst beheaders: Neil Macdonald

Back in July, Barack Obama signed an executive order punishing anyone responsible for some of the hideous excesses of the Congolese civil war. 

Hardly anyone noticed Obama's order. But for the record, the people it targets have reportedly committed: mass rape (of men and women, by rebels and government soldiers) often in front of communities and families, or forcing people to rape each other, as a weapon of war; inventive torture (forcing men to copulate with holes in the ground lined with razor blades, forcing women to eat excrement or flesh of relatives); casual and varied forms of murder (including firing weapons up women's vaginas); use of child soldiers; and ethnic cleansing.

The list goes on.

The Congo war has killed five million people, directly and indirectly, since 1998 — more than the wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq put together, as one national newspaper here noted recently.

Obama's punishment for the culprits? Financial discomfort.  

He broadened the reach of U.S.-UN sanctions to take in a wider group of participants. (They'd better not show up in America, or open a bank account here, or they'll be sorry.)

Then, a month after he signed the order, Obama invited Congo's unsavory president, Joseph Kabila, to the White House for dinner.

Compared to the acts committed by Kabila's military and the rebels fighting it, and the interventions by neighbouring Rwanda, the 20,000 or so fighters of ISIS are tenderfoot apprentices in the atrocity business.

Yet ISIS merits what is obviously just the beginning of a full-scale American re-invasion of Iraq, and perhaps even Syria.

'The heart of darkness'

House Speaker John Boehner on the weekend became just the latest prominent American to predict the inevitable deployment of U.S. ground forces.

Meanwhile, the campaign to soften up a mildly skeptical Western public is blaring at near-feedback levels.

ISIS has now become the arch-villian, the Keyser Söze of revolutionary groups. 

It is denounced as "the heart of darkness," (Obama), a "death cult" (Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott) and a genocidal terrorist caliphate (Stephen Harper).

None of those leaders spends much time at all talking about the Congo (the subject was last raised in the Canadian House of Commons three years ago).

Soldiers from the Democratic Republic of Congo patrol against the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) and the National Army for the Liberation of Uganda (NALU) rebels near Beni in North-Kivu province. Democratic Republic of Congo is struggling to emerge from decades of violence and instability, particularly in its east, in which millions of people have died. (Reuters)

When they do, they speak in far milder terms than they do about ISIS, even framing it in the mournful abstract.

At a Francophonie summit in 2012, Harper gently asked whether Canada could help find "solutions" to advance "peace, development and democracy in the DRC," the Democratic Republic of Congo, where all the fighting is.

So why the cognitive dissonance?

Moral relativism

The most charitable view is that national leaders tend to act on the fears and desires and preoccupations of their voters, and while ISIS has terrified Americans by beheading a handful of Westerners, nobody really cares what goes on in the Congo.

It's far away, in the middle of a continent widely perceived as dirty and savage, and the victims are all, well, black Africans.

Western politicians also take their cues from news outlets, and while editors don't like to discuss such things, Africa (along with a few other wretched parts of the Earth) barely makes the news menu, if at all.

A struggling baby panda in some zoo will easily knock an African genocide off the nightly newscast.

It's not a conscious racism — journalists profess, probably sincerely, concern for suffering and death everywhere. And the level of education among editorial staff, like diplomats, can be remarkable where world affairs are concerned.

But what makes it onto front pages and newscasts and national agendas tells the story.

Passenger liners that crash in Africa barely make world briefs, or "in other news" sections voiced over by the anchor. Jets that go down carrying Europeans or North Americans stay on front pages and newscasts for days.

The current Ebola epidemic only began grabbing serious space on American newscasts when Obama said its spread had become "exponential," and declared it a threat to American national security.

Move over Keyser Söze

But even within the Middle East, where brutality and savagery are often considered normal governance, ISIS has assumed a special status as evil incarnate.

Yes, ISIS has carried out beheadings, often for apostasy, which in ISIS's book means not following its deranged interpretation of Islam.

But so has the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, whose princes walk hand in hand, sometimes literally, with American presidents, and are welcomed in the society salons of Georgetown.

The Saudis have beheaded 46 people so far this year, including 19 in the first three weeks of August. Like ISIS, the Saudis favour public beheadings, and have sometimes strung the decapitated corpses up to rot in public.

Grounds for beheading in Saudi Arabia include sorcery. Seriously, sorcery.

And, of course, apostasy. (The Saudian Arabian version of Islam, Wahabbism, isn't all that different from the ferocious ISIS interpretation.)

Yes, one might argue, but the Saudis are America's allies, not its sworn enemies.

Well, setting aside the fact that that hardly excuses beheading apostates, or sorcerers, in the 21st century, most of the 9/11 attackers were Saudis, and wealthy Saudis have funded some of the most anti-Western radicals worldwide, not the least of which were the Taliban.

Incidentally, they have also funneled an awful lot of money to the opposition fighters in Syria, which of course means ISIS.

Which probably brings us to what's really at issue here: oil.

The Saudis have lots of it, and as long as they're willing to be good fellows and keep selling it on the open market, well, their virulent extremism is just the religious quirk of a close and valued ally.

ISIS, meanwhile, made the gross error of beheading some white people, and has taken over oil refineries, and sold the oil, and threatened the order of things, and there are few crimes more serious than that.

So, to war? Again?

Oh, and will someone please check up on those Congolese bank accounts?

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Hong Kong leader says Beijing won't back down in face of protests

Pro-democracy protesters demanded that Hong Kong's top leader meet with them on Tuesday and threatened wider actions if he did not, after he said China would not budge in its decision to limit voting reforms in the Asian financial hub.

Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying's rejection of the student demands dashed hopes for a quick resolution of the five-day standoff that has blocked city streets, forcing some schools and offices to close.

It drew a defiant response from the students.

"If Leung Chun-ying doesn't come out to Civic Square before midnight ... then I believe inevitably more people will come out onto the streets," said Alex Chow, secretary general of the Hong Kong Federation of Students, the organizer of the university class boycotts that led to the street protests.

Chow said the students were considering various options, including widening the protests, pushing for a labour strike and possibly occupying a government building.

Leung's blunt rejection of the demands from the students, who are pushing for him to step down, comes as no surprise. The Chinese Communist leadership is wary of conciliatory moves that might embolden dissidents and separatists on the mainland.

Protesters block a street in Hong Kong near an image of Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying. Hong Kong's leader says Beijing will not back down in the face of pro-democracy protests. (Carlos Barria)

Hong Kong police continued a light-handed approach to the protests, having shifted tactics Monday after their use of tear gas and pepper spray over the weekend failed to drive out tens of thousands of people occupying streets near the government headquarters. The sit-ins instead spread to the financial district and other areas.

"We are not afraid of riot police, we are not afraid of tear gas, we are not afraid of pepper spray. We will not leave until Leung Chun-ying resigns. We will not give up, we will persevere until the end," Lester Shum, another student leader, shouted to a swelling crowd at Admiralty, near Hong Kong's waterfront.

The protesters want a reversal of a decision by China's government in August that a pro-Beijing panel will screen all candidates in the territory's first direct elections, scheduled for 2017 — a move they view as reneging on a promise that the chief executive will be chosen through "universal suffrage."

'New civil disobedience'

Occupy Central, a wider civil disobedience movement, said in a tweet that the deadline set by the pro-democracy protesters includes a demand for genuine democracy and for Leung's resignation. It said it would "announce new civil disobedience plans same day," without elaborating.

China's government takes a hard line against any threat to its monopoly on power and has condemned the protests as illegal. So far, however, it has not overtly intervened, leaving Hong Kong authorities to handle the situation under the "one country, two systems" arrangement that guaranteed the former British colony separate legal and economic systems and Western-style civil liberties after China took control in 1997.

Hong Kong's free press and social media give the protesters exposure that may help prevent China from cracking down in the same way it has on restive minorities and dissidents living in the mainland, where public dissent is often harshly punished.

Despite Leung's urgings that they disperse, thousands of people — many of them university and high school students, some doing homework — gathered on a six-lane highway next to the local government headquarters.

"The people on the streets are here because we've made the decision ourselves and we will only leave when we have achieved something," said Chloe Cheung, a 20-year-old student at the Hong Kong Institute of Education. "We are waiting for the government to respond to our demands for democracy and a say in what the elections will be like."

Larger crowds expected

Even larger crowds are expected to flood the streets Wednesday, China's National Day holiday. The government said it was cancelling a fireworks display marking the holiday.

With dozens of bus routes cancelled and some subway entrances near protest areas closed, Hong Kong's police and fire departments renewed their calls for the protesters to clear the streets.

Protesters have stockpiled supplies and erected makeshift barricades ahead of Chinese National Day. (Carlos Barria/Reuters)

The protests have been dubbed the "Umbrella Revolution" by some because the crowds have used umbrellas to block the sun and to deflect police pepper spray.

Many of the protesters were born after the agreement with Britain in 1984 that pledged to give China control of the city of seven million, and have grown up in an era of affluence and stability, with no experience of past political turmoil in mainland China.

Their calls for a great say in their futures have widespread support among many in Hong Kong disillusioned by a widening gap between the city's ultra-wealthy tycoons and the rest of the population.

"I am committed to taking part in the protests as long as they remain peaceful," said Peter Chin, a 22-year-old student at Hong Kong University.

"We are really basically just calling for the government to speak with us but they've been mute. We'll keep staying here until they're ready to consult with us," he said.

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Ebola outbreak in Liberia brings perils for body recovery teams

It's a sad fact of life in Monrovia, Liberia, these days.

The wail of an ambulance siren doesn't mean help is on the way. More often than not, it signals that a convoy carrying the "dead body management team" is about to arrive.

On Monday, CBC News rode along in one of those convoys. The weather was miserable. The task at hand was even more so.

Overnight, the Liberian Red Cross had received a list of names: 19 people whose lives may have been taken by Ebola, the disease that has galloped across West Africa and claimed more than 3,000 lives, according to the most recent figures from the World Health Organization.

In thick Monday-morning traffic and a heavy downpour, the ambulance and the siren really just clear a quick path for the young men riding in the vehicles farther behind. 

They are the ones who will suit up in full protective gear, enter the private homes of grieving families and haul away a body to the flatbed truck that makes up the rear of the convoy.

On this day, six Red Cross teams spread out across the Liberian capital. Victor Lacken of the International Federation of the Red Cross tells us Monrovia clearly needs more. 

"We're behind the curve on this," he says.

The team we accompany is led by Alex Wiah, a mortician by trade who says most of the victims he's seen recently are female. "It's because women do most of the caring for people who are sick."

CBC's Adrienne Arsenault talks to team leader Alex Wiah. He's a mortician by trade but admits this job, handling Ebola victims, is particularly tough. 'It hurts because they are our family,' he says. (Stephenie Jenzer/CBC)

And sure enough, the first name on the list given to Wiah's team is a woman.

We travel to a part of the city known as Waterside, a short walk from the poor neighbourhoods of West Point where the Ebola outbreak led to an unpopular quarantine in August.

The team suits up and climbs a slippery, rocky slope to the home of Teresa Jacobs, her husband and three children. 

Neighbours say she'd been sick for years, suffered from a liver disease and did not die from Ebola.

Still, the new reality in Monrovia dictates all of the very ill should be isolated. 

A community Ebola awareness group advised her husband to keep his wife from seeing her kids and locked the gate to a room where her body was left after she passed away.  

And in the end, they called the body management team.

Lacken explains that sometimes in a household or community, there's concern about the stigma attached to the disease. 

The Red Cross has organized six teams that pick up bodies across the Liberian capital. The organization's Victor Lacken says more are needed. "We are behind the curve on this." (Stephanie Jenzer/CBC)

"Sometimes it's a bit of denial," he says. "People don't like to admit a person in the house has Ebola."

As the Red Cross team carefully yet quickly hauls away the body of Jacobs, neighbours gather to watch and some cry out in sorrow. 

Her body will end up at the crematorium, along with all the others who were on the Red Cross list this day. 

Tomorrow there will be another one. Everyone hopes it will be shorter. 

In all likelihood, it will not.

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Checked-bag fees may heighten carry-on chaos

They call out your row number and you finally get to board the plane. But before you can take a seat, you must fight through a crowded cabin to find room for your carry-on bags. You desperately open one overhead bin after another, only to discover they're already jam-packed with winter coats, knapsacks and suitcases that sometimes look suspiciously larger than the limit.

If there's not enough room, some bags — maybe yours — are sent to cargo, running the risk of a flight delay.

Now, predict experts, carry-on chaos is about to go sky-high because some passengers will lug even more on-board to avoid paying the new fees for checked baggage.  

"Let's face it, we'll push the envelope rather than pay the additional charges," said Candace Pyette just before she checked her suitcase at Toronto's Pearson Airport for a flight home to Sault Ste. Marie.

Air Canada also appears to be predicting possible problems. CBC news has learned the airline just today started a trial crackdown on oversized and overweight carry-on at Pearson Airport, in part, to "facilitate an orderly transition to the implementation of a domestic first checked bag fee beginning in November," says company spokesman Peter Fitzpatrick.

'We'll push the envelope rather than pay the additional charges.'— Airline customer Candace Pyette

A member of a flight crew puts a bag in the overhead container on a recent Spanish flight. Aviation experts say checked-bag fees will encourage people to cram even more into their carry-on bags. ( Stefano Buonamici/Bloomberg)

Come Oct. 29, WestJet will charge passengers $25 for the first checked bag on its lowest economy fare flights within Canada and to the U.S. Air Canada will follow on Nov. 2, charging $25 for the first checked bag on economy class travel within Canada and to the Caribbean and Mexico. They are among the last carriers in North America to implement the fee, and both airlines estimate it will affect about 20 per cent of their travellers.

At Charlottetown's airport, passenger Margaret Shaw said that once the fees kick in, she'll be "very inclined" to pack only carry-on. She added, "It's going to make it more uncomfortable for everybody."

Pearson passenger Mike Goulart agreed: "For carry-on, it's already stuffed as it is. Who knows what's going to happen?"

Chaos forecast

Passengers already have reason to bring more baggage into the cabin owing to the slow creep of checked luggage fees. For example, in 2008, Air Canada introduced a $25 fee for a second checked bag and a $75 fee for oversized or overweight luggage for economy-class travel on domestic flights.

Air Canada service agent and union rep Sheila Fardy notes that if a flight is full, often there isn't enough overhead space: "You see all these people still standing up, walking up and down, lost with their bags."

Agents tag carry-on that won't fit and send it to cargo. Fardy, who works at Pearson Airport, often at the gate, said this can cause delays and anger passengers: "It can be unpleasant. Ninety per cent of them don't want to give up their bag."

Recently, on a plane destined for Kingston, Jamaica, there was no room for about 25 carry-on bags, said Fardy. She and her colleagues scrambled to move them to cargo, causing a 25-minute delay.

More bags, more trouble?

Airline analyst Rick Erickson says airlines introduced the latest checked bag fees to improve their bottom line. But he predicts they're about to encounter problems with more carry-on bags. "There'll be inevitable delays of aircraft that will prove to be costly to the airline. And then there's going to be frustration on the part of the passengers."

There are also safety concerns. Pearson passenger Patti Wierzbicki said she saw a suitcase fall out of an overhead bin and hit a man in the head when she boarded a packed plane from Sault Ste. Marie to Toronto. "With more carry-on luggage, you're going to see more congestion in the aisle, people trying to get those bags up there, and accidents happening," she predicted.

Policing the sneaks

Some think travellers will try to sneak on bags that exceed the size and weight limits to avoid the new fees: "There's too many cases that are too large that are taken on board right now. So it's going to be even worse," said Charlottetown passenger Jacqueline Foster.

Air Canada is now stepping up it's policing of overstuffed carry-on, but Fardy believes it will be difficult because of limited staff and limited visibility at check-in: "A passenger's family can be around the corner holding the carry-on bags, and we wouldn't know that."

Fitzpatrick tells CBC that "we will continue to monitor the situation and will further adjust as required."

The Air Canada spokesman added that the company successfully introduced a first $25 checked bag fee for U.S. flights in 2011 "without adverse customer or operational impact."

WestJet spokesman Robert Palmer says "the implementation of any baggage fees does tend to result in a change in consumer behaviour," but he added that, in the past, consumers learned to adjust.

And if they don't adjust? In 2010, U.S. discount carrier, Spirit Airlines, introduced a fee for carry-on luggage to help decrease the amount being stuffed into overhead bins. Three American carriers now charge for carry-on bags. There's no word yet if any Canadian airline is considering doing the same.

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Downsizing: Lies, damn lies, and french fries

It's amazing, sometimes, what you let your mind believe.

After several weeks of nightly walks, I wasn't losing weight. I was deeply frustrated about that, and one night I just broke down. I felt as if the weight should be coming off, and I couldn't understand why it wasn't. 

But here's the kicker. I was still gorging on fast food.

You see, when you're an addict, you become exceptional at one thing: lying.

I was a pro. Like, if there was an all-star lineup of liars, I'd be in the starting lineup.

It wasn't malicious. Lying was something I deemed necessary so I could continue to feed my addiction.

It didn't matter if you were family, a friend or a co-worker, everyone was fair game. 

And the person I lied to most was myself.

I had somehow convinced myself that I wasn't eating fast food every day. I'd hide the burger wrappers away. To this day, I'm still finding soda cups stashed in nooks and crannies around the house.

This way burgers, that way health 

So, there I was, standing at a crossroads.

'I would argue with myself. "What's more important? A cheeseburger or staying alive?"The cheeseburger lost every time.'

One path — to certain death. The other — to  health, and God knows what else.

I continued to eat burgers and fries for another few weeks. Then I waited until I drove Caitlin to the airport for a visit home. 

I hit a drive-thru on the way back from the airport, ordered two meals with desserts, went home, sat on my couch and ate.

After it was all gone, I stood up and walked to my patio door. I saw my reflection in the glass and uttered two words: "Never again."

The following week, as I removed fat and sugar from my body, was awful.

I was some crooked.

Withdrawal symptoms

I paced around the house. I had constant headaches, my hands would tremble, and I barely slept. Bear in mind, this is food we're talking about, not some hard street drug.

When the thoughts of a fast food fix would creep in I would argue with myself.

"What's more important? A cheeseburger or staying alive?"

The cheeseburger lost every time.

The withdrawal lasted about a week, maybe two.

These days, I have a balanced diet. I eat a lot of veg, and I think a lot about what I put into my body. I've used it as a trash can for way too long.

A hard habit to break

I've read that the key to changing any sort of habitual behaviour is replacing it with something more positive. For me, that's exercise.

Every now and then I find myself driving towards a drive-thru. Even turning into the lot, sometimes.

It's not because I'm going to buy onion rings. It's just a habit.

Something in my brain tells me "this is where I need to go." And I go. It's the strangest thing.

These restaurants were my church, my place of comfort, my haven.

Now the task is to redefine what comfort means to me.

I will move heaven and earth to find it.

And believe me when I say, that's no word of a lie.

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Foreign worker paid $25K for a non-existent job

An Ontario immigration consultant is under investigation for charging foreign clients up to $25,000 to help them enter Canada to work at low-skill jobs. In at least one case, the worker arrived to find the employer no longer existed.

"[The consultant] said, 'You must be thankful to me. I legally brought you to Canada,'" said Mohamad Tehrani of Iran, one of David Aryan's clients.

"But, I would not have paid this amount of money only to come to Canada and be unemployed."

Tehrani, 29, is from Iran and said he wanted to work hard in Canada and build a life here.

Tehrani has been in Canada looking for another job for seven months. Other employers don't want to hire him, because his visa only allows him to work for Trade Nine Enterprise, a defunct business. (CBC)

He connected with Aryan, a regulated immigration consultant, last year. Aryan's services are advertised on a Persian website, promoting an "opportunity" for low-skilled jobs in Western Canada arranged by "agents."

"After a year of employment, we would proceed to apply for the permanent residency," reads the site.

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It stipulates clients must pay him $5,000 up front plus another $20,000 when the work visa is approved. However, rules governing immigration consultants forbid them from charging fees contingent on visa approvals.

Tehrani didn't know that, so it sounded great to him.

"I wanted to change my life. Change my future. I can speak English fluently. I have academic degrees," he said.

Tehrani's family paid the full $25,000. He also paid for his flight to Vancouver in February for a food processing job, arranged through Aryan.

Under federal rules, employers are supposed to cover flights for low-skilled workers, but Tehrani said he didn't know that either.

Employer out of business

When Tehrani arrived, he went to the job site in Delta, B.C., eager to introduce himself to his new boss. He said he was stunned when he found the employer, Trade Nine Enterprise Corp. Ltd., wasn't at the address he was given. An unrelated company was doing business there instead.

Trade Nine Enterprise Corp. Ltd. was dissolved several months before the federal government gave approval for it to hire 10 foreign workers. (CBC)

​"I found two or three workers there and they denied the existence of this company. I showed them the address, the name of the company… they said there's no company like that."

It turned out that when the federal government authorized one-year work visas last fall, for Tehrani and nine other foreign workers, Trade Nine Enterprise had already gone out of business.

The B.C. corporation was dissolved months earlier, in June.

Tehrani eventually reached someone connected with the former company. He said the man insisted he was not his employer, but said he might call him about possible work and never did.

He said he feels duped by the whole experience.

"[Aryan, his agents and the 'employer'] deceive both the applicants and the government without being held accountable," he said. "It's a profitable business."

Questionable government approval

 "[The government] effectively gave a Labour Market Opinion (LMO) for 10 workers to a company that didn't exist," said immigration consultant Phil Mooney.

"This file clearly, in my opinion, should never have been approved."

Mooney is the former CEO of the Immigration Consultants of Canada Regulatory Council, the body that regulates consultants like Aryan. He said he believes several rules were broken here.

Phil Mooney, former CEO of the immigration consultant regulatory body, says he's amazed that the federal government allowed this to happen. (CBC)

"I am very convinced after looking at all of the information on the case that basically there is a … conspiracy here," he said. "There are many people taking advantage of this individual who has paid a substantial amount of money to come to Canada."

Seven months after arriving, Tehrani is still in B.C., unemployed. He said his parents are paying his bills because he said he can't find anyone willing to hire him.

"Whenever they find that I have a job-specific work permit they rescind their offers. They say you must have an open work permit," he said. "But, I am still trying my best."

He filed complaints against the consultant with the regulator, which is investigating, and the Canada Border Services Agency.

Consultant blames client

CBC News tried to find Aryan, but his Toronto office is empty and his cellphone doesn't accept messages. He responded to an email, saying everything that went wrong in this case was Tehrani's fault.

"Tehrani has been one of the most problematic clients that I have served, in the past two decades," said Aryan.

He insisted his client jumped the gun by showing up at the workplace too soon.

Immigration consultant David Aryan advertises this location as his Toronto office, but CBC News found it empty. (CBC)

"Tehrani decided to not follow the instructions he was provided … he further took the liberty of taking matters into his own hands and approached his employer directly. He proceeded to aggressively demand his employer to allow him to begin working immediately."

Aryan claimed it was Tehrani who was "cheating the system."

"I believe that he is playing victim here while throwing me under the bus, simply because I was doing my job according to the books."

When asked how he justifies his $25,000 fee, he said the money isn't for job placement, but for various other services, including an "employment search."

'Prices are what they are'

"I do not find it of any relevance to the matter. My prices are what they are and no one forced Mr. Tehrani to sign the contract that he did," said Aryan.

Mooney said consultants are only supposed to charge for immigration advice and paperwork, not for a job. He added that Aryan charges at least 10 times what a consultant should.

Even though Tehrani did get his work visa, Mooney pointed out, he didn't get what he paid for.

"The individuals involved in this scheme saw nothing wrong with cheating possibly up to 10 people, with basically years' worth of their income from their home countries."

Tehrani claimed Aryan later told his family that if he wanted another job, they could pay him another $15,000. They refused. Aryan denies he ever offered to help Tehrani find another job.

Aryan's services are advertised on a Persian website offering opportunities in Canada which also outlines a $25,000 fee. (CBC)

Mooney said countless foreign workers are stung like this — people take their money but the promised jobs don't work out. Often they end up working under the table, he said, because they desperately want to stay.

Creating illegal workers?

"What does an individual do if they are not able to work legally in Canada? They work illegally. If they work illegally, they are not paying taxes," said Mooney.

"Desperate individuals do desperate things. Individuals with no way to make a living could also turn to a life of crime."

The Canada Border Services Agency is aware of this case and said immigration consultants found guilty of misrepresentation face fines up to $100,000 or up to five years in prison.

"The CBSA takes this issue very seriously and works closely with its partners to identify, investigate and prosecute those engaging in immigration fraud to the full extent of the law," said a statement from the agency.

In the last six years, the CBSA has investigated 172 serious complaints against immigration consultants. Thirteen have been found guilty so far.

Mooney thinks the key to curbing this is empowering foreign workers, by telling them exactly what the rules are when they apply or when they pick up their visas.

"I want to see things done to prevent this. So why aren't we working harder to inform the potential foreign workers about how things really are?"

Submit your story ideas to Kathy Tomlinson at Go Public

Follow @CBCGoPublic on Twitter

See the Persian website

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'I'm pretty hard to kill': Wikileaks founder Julian Assange tells CBC

In an exclusive Canadian broadcast interview with CBC Radio's Q with Jian Ghomeshi, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange accuses Google of being "in bed" with the U.S. government for allegedly spying on him and because of the way it collects personal data.

He also talks about how it feels to be vilified, his health and the personal toll of being holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for the past two years fearing extradition and, possibly, prison.

"I'm pretty hard to kill. And I come from a very long-lived family line," said Assange, who had been rumoured to be in deteriorating health.

The Australian internet publisher, who released a trove of U.S. diplomatic and military documents in 2010, fled to the embassy in June 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden where he was to face questioning over allegations of sexual assault and rape, allegations that he denies.

He fears, he has said, that if he were to be extradited to Sweden he would then be handed over to the U.S. where he would be tried for one of the largest leaks of government information in U.S. history, leaks that some critics have said put national security and people's lives at risk.

"In some ways, the conflict that has come about as a result is not altogether unwelcome, but it's not something that my children, for example, signed up for,"Assange said. "So that's really the greatest irritation."

Assange, speaking from the embassy via phone, said the attacks on his character are just part of the nature of things of being a publisher and "infuriating big powers."

"We've had many of those over eight years. I'm used to them to a degree. The size of the counterattacks that started in late 2010, they pushed the organization right to the very edge but we have lived through it."

'Perverse nature' of fame

Asked what people get wrong about him, Assange replied "almost everything."

"That's the perverse nature of not simply celebrity but the perverse nature of being famous and having a superpower as an opponent.

"Anyone who has that situation has the same result."

A police officer stands guard outside the Ecuadorian Embassy where WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange fled to in 2012. (Sang Tan/Associated Press)

​

Assange said that, according to his own counter-intelligence sources, he estimates there is around $12 million worth of surveillance on him and the Ecuadorian embassy, and that approximately 16 people monitor the embassy 24 hours day.

"That's a difficult circumstance for someone that's running a publishing organization involved in a dozen different legal court cases around the world, most of them involving the United States, to preserve our ability to act.

"On the other hand, there can be no raids in the middle of the night, no subpoenas, because it's an embassy."

Assange told Ghomeshi that, in 2010, he made the strategic decision that he would have to publish those government documents on principle. (Former U.S. army private Bradley Manning, now known as Chelsea Manning, was sentenced to 35 years in prison for handing over the bulk of the material to WikiLeaks.)

He said he knew his organization would have a "very hard fight" on its hands that it wouldn't necessarily win, but we had a good chance for five or seven years.

"And I think that is bearing out. There is an increasing realization, even in this country, that what has happened is quite unjust."

The Google fight

Assange also spoke about his new book When Google met WikiLeaks, which recounts a secret meeting Assange had with Google chairman Eric Schmidt in 2011 while Assange was under house arrest in London.

Assange said Schmidt used his girlfriend at the time to help collect information about the WikiLeaks founder for the U.S. State Department.

"What we do know is that the information collected as a result of the interview, very quickly, some parts of it, went to the U.S. State Department, to the top of the U.S. State department."

Assange said the U.S. government  used Schmidt's then girlfriend "as the secret back channel for that communication.

"She doesn't formally work for the U.S. State Department, she has no formal role in being the back channel for the U.S. State Department, but of course, within the State Department, they had known about this visit.

"This got me very interested in how was it that the chairman of Google was literally in bed in a way with the U.S. State Department."

Assange said Google, which he said is "striving to be the geopolitical visionary of the United States" has been involved in selling search services to the National Security Agency since 2002.

Assange says that while he was under house arrest in 2011, he had a secret meeting with Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt. (Daniel Ochoa de Olza/Associated Press)

​

For him, this means that Google "is formally part of the defence industrial base."

"This close connection between Google's business activities, its business model, which it can't get away from, and the U.S. government, created an opportunity for the NSA to stick its fangs into everything that Google was collecting."

When asked for comment, a Google spokesperson said "we're not inclined to respond."

But last week, Schmidt himself told an ABC business program that "the fact of the matter is Julian is very paranoid about things and it's true that the NSA did things that they shouldn't have done.

"But Google has done none of those things. Google never collaborated with NSA and in fact, we've fought very hard against what they did and since what the NSA did, which we do not like. We have taken all of our data, all of our exchanges, and we fully encrypted them so no one can get them, especially the government."

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Liberia struggles to fight Ebola as newest, largest clinic reaches capacity

[The CBC's senior correspondent Adrienne Arsenault, producer Stephanie Jenzer and videographer Jean-François Bisson are in Liberia's capital city of Monrovia reporting on that country's ongoing battle against the deadly Ebola virus.]

Liberia's newest and largest Ebola treatment centre was desperately needed to combat the spread of the fatal virus, yet the facility has barely helped to stop the worst outbreak in recorded history. 

The centre, known as Island Clinic, was exactly seven days old when CBC News toured the "green zone," or safe zone, of the facility on Sunday. It has almost doubled the Ebola treatment capacity in Liberia's capital city of Monrovia, a major urban centre overwhelmed by an exponentially increasing number of cases of the deadly virus. 

When it opened, there were 120 beds available. Within hours, the clinic was already stretched — every space available filled with the city's most frightened and seriously ill. Somehow, room was made for more patients and currently, by adding beds and sofas where possible, staff estimate the total number is likely closer to 200.

The World Health Organization funded the clinic and handed it over to Liberia's Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, while UNICEF, the World Food Programme and USAID have joined the WHO donating supplies and support.

'A drop of water in an ocean'

WHO spokesperson Pieter Desloovere said the building can't handle increasing capacity yet again because of the heavy load on the water supply and electricity, but he acknowledges the need.

"It's a drop of water in an ocean," he says. "The demand is so huge."

Another challenge will be to keep Island Clinic fully staffed, not to mention finding qualified or willing-to-be-trained workers to help run the more than 20 planned facilities in Liberia over the coming months.

There is another problem brewing at the facility, as well: a threat by workers to walk off the job by Tuesday over wages. Many staff receive about $300 per month, but some told CBC News they've heard rumours the government is about to reduce that paycheck. 

"We agreed to risk our lives, but we are not satisfied with the pay,"  one health worker told the CBC's Adrienne Arsenault.

CBC coverage of Liberia's fight against Ebola

Be sure to follow Adrienne Arsenault and Stephanie Jenzer on Twitter at @adriearsenault and @StephJenzer as they provide the most recent news and coverage from Monrovia.

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Missing Ontario toddler found safe

Ontario Provincial Police have found a missing two-year-old girl who wandered from a farm in Norwich Township near Woodstock, Ont.

According to CBC reporter Kerry McKee, Brooklyn Honderich has been found safe and is currently with paramedics. 

Her disappearance sparked a huge search effort by police. 

A helicopter and two canine units were used to conduct a large-scale sweep of the cornfields east of Norwich following the girl's disappearance just before 7 p.m. ET Sunday. 

"We had searchers out all night, searching the corn, and all the property and all the areas of highest probability," said OPP Const. Larry Plummer in an interview with CBC News earlier Monday morning. 

Plummer said the girl's parents were working on the farm when the girl wandered away.

"They were working, and she was outside playing, and they noticed she was missing," he said.

Plummer told CBC that the family owns a barn and cattle at the farm property but lives somewhere else nearby. 

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Mulcair's dilemma: Canadians like him, but will they vote for him?

Liking a political leader and wanting to vote for him or her can be two very different things.

Take the example of Canada's three federal leaders.

Justin Trudeau's approval ratings are high and he tops the polls on who would make the best prime minister. But his chief rival on that latter question is not Thomas Mulcair, who boasts similarly impressive approval ratings, but rather Stephen Harper, who has ratings no incumbent leader should envy.

Harper's approval ratings have been relatively consistent for some time. A simple average of polls conducted since mid-May gives the prime minister an approval rating of just 34 per cent, compared to a disapproval rating of 58 per cent.

While that is an improvement on his average numbers from earlier in the year, when his approval rating was around 31 per cent, it is lower than the 37 per cent Harper was able to manage in the latter half of 2012.

It is also considerably lower than the approval ratings of his two main opponents on the other side of the House of Commons. Over the same period of recent polling, Mulcair has averaged an approval rating of 43 per cent and Trudeau 45 per cent. Their disapproval ratings, at 32 and 39 per cent respectively, are also superior.

Yet Mulcair is not as competitive on the question of who would make the best prime minister. An average of recent polls suggests about 17 per cent of Canadians would select the NDP leader, compared to 28 per cent for Harper and 31 per cent for Trudeau. And Mulcair's numbers have been worsening — he was polling at around 20 per cent earlier in the year.

That trend is somewhat contrary to Mulcair's improving approval ratings. Before the Senate scandal re-ignited last fall, the NDP leader's approval rating averaged about 34 per cent, with equal proportions disapproving or having no opinion. After the scandal broke, and Mulcair received rave reviews for his performances during question period, the number of Canadians saying they had no opinion of the NDP leader dropped by about 10 points.

Virtually all of those people who finally formed an opinion of Mulcair liked what they saw.

But that has not translated into higher support, as Mulcair continues to lag on leadership polling and his party remains stuck in third place.

Trudeau, on the other hand, has remained ahead on both measures despite his growing disapproval rating. His approval rating has been generally consistent since he became leader of the Liberal Party. However, in the first three months of his leadership his disapproval rating averaged 27 per cent, with 29 per cent undecided. For the remainder of 2013, those undecideds fell by about 10 points.

But the number of Canadians who said they disapproved of the Liberal leader also increased by about 10 points. Nevertheless, this has yet to hurt his party in the polls.

One factor holding Mulcair back may be the lack of familiarity Canadians have with him. A poll by Abacus Data, conducted Aug.15-18 and interviewing 1,614 online panelists, found 51 per cent of respondents either had a neutral impression of the NDP leader or did not know what kind of impression they had of him. This compared to just 34 per cent for Trudeau and 28 per cent for Harper.

The challenge for Mulcair, then, would seem to be to get more Canadians to get to know him. The polls suggest that in the past this has worked well for the Official Opposition leader, at least on a personal level. This may explain the recent NDP campaign to roll out policy proposals and to contrast Mulcair's experience with that of Trudeau.

But it may not work. The same Abacus Data poll asked respondents if Trudeau was "in over his head," borrowing an attack-ad line from the Conservatives. The survey found that a majority of Canadians said that he wasn't, or that if he was he could "learn on the job."

It would appear that Canadians are giving Trudeau the benefit of the doubt, while Harper retains a solid base of support. Unless Mulcair can turn sympathy into votes, it leaves him and his respectable approval ratings in the lurch on the question that matters most.

The Abacus Data poll asked the following questions: "Do you think Justin Trudeau 'is in over his head', as Conservatives have been saying?" and "Do you have a positive or negative impression of the following people? Prime Minister Stephen Harper / NDP Leader Tom Mulcair / Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau". As the poll was conducted online, a margin of error does not apply.

This article reviews trends in national public opinion surveys. Methodology, sample size, and margin of error if one can be stated vary from survey to survey.

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Head lice build up resistance to treaments that dominate the market

With elementary school students back in class, more kids may be going home with itchy heads. That's due to the lice that get spread by the head-to-head interactions that happen frequently enough among kids that age.

While the official recommendation for treatment will likely include using a product on their hair that contains pyrethrins or permethrin, scientists are finding that head lice have acquired resistance to those compounds.

Over the past 35 years or so, head lice have built up considerable resistance to the pyrethroids via genetic mutations, says lice expert John Clark.

"The efficacy of all those products has gone way down. It started out at 100 per cent, now we're down to 20 to 30 per cent in recent clinical studies."

Natural pyrethrin formulations, made from chrysanthemums, were introduced in 1945 for the control of head lice. Permethrin, a synthetic pyrethroid, dates back to the 1980s.

With the start of school in the fall, numbers of cases of lice begin to rise, particularly in day-care centres, kindergartens and elementary schools. Head lice, like this one being viewed with an electronic microscope, mostly spread via head-to-head contact. (Frank Gunn/Canadian Press)

Products containing those compounds — Nix, Rid, Kwellada, R&C Shampoo — dominate the head lice treatment market in North America.

"When these products came on the market, they were very efficacious and very good louse control agents," says Clark, who directs the Massachusetts Pesticide Analysis Laboratory and is a professor of environmental toxicology and chemistry at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

He has co-authored a numbered of lice studies, including one published this year that looks at what scientists call "knockdown resistance" in head louse populations.

'Treatment failures'

The Clark paper documents how lice studies over the years have found the frequency of the mutations steadily and rapidly increasing, so that now the mutations are almost always present "within North American head louse populations and likely a major reason for the treatment failures encountered with pyrethrins- and pyrethroid-based pediculicides in both Canada and the United States."

Nevertheless, public health officials and organizations such as the Canadian Paediatric Society (CPS) and the U.S. Centres for Disease Control continue to recommend products containing those compounds.

Clark says we're "trapped in this scenario where we're being forced to use compounds that clearly aren't near as efficacious as they were 30 years ago."​

Head lice, Pediculus humanus capitis, cause infestations that, overall, cost an estimated $1 billion in the U.S. annually. This frontal view of a head louse was captured with an electron microscope. (Bioimaging Unit/Oxford Brookes University)

Bayer Healthcare, which claims its product Rid is "the #1 head lice treatment brand" in the U.S. — which they don't sell in Canada — told CBC News that while "lice can develop resistance to pediculicides," the insecticides used to kill them, "when used according to directions, RID is effective in killing lice."

Bayer also notes that products like Rid which contain pyrethrin or permethrin are approved by the FDA for the treatment of head lice.

Clark says it's hard to find financing for a rigorous clinical study that looks at whether a product still works.

"Unfortunately, until we actually do something like that, there's nothing driving any of these organizations to change their position."

"The safest method"

A 2014 U.K. study that compared treatment with a mousse or a lotion containing a permethrin to  just wet-combing the hair found that, "none of the treatments was significantly more effective than any other."

This month, Consumers Reports published their advice on how to treat lice, saying "the safest method of getting rid of lice is to physically remove the insects and their eggs by combing with a lubricant such as a hair conditioner."

Michael Hansen, senior staff scientist with Consumers Union, says the conditioner, or olive oil, especially helps with the removal of nits, the louse eggshell.

Earlier understanding was that a louse cemented her nits to a hair shaft, usually near the base, but he says the nit can actually be slid up and down the shaft.

He pointed to a 2014 study in the Journal of Medical Entomology that says ordinary hair conditioner is just as effective at removing nits as special nit-removal shampoos and conditioners.

Consumers Reports has a step-by-step guide for lice and nit removal from an infested scalp.

Infestation usually involves less than 10 live lice, according to the CPS.

But an adult female louse can produce up to six eggs per day, which hatch seven to 12 days later.

Best practices

Consumer Reports says "the safest method of getting rid of lice is to physically remove the insects and their eggs by combing" — with a metal nit comb, not a plastic one — using hair conditioner or olive oil as a lubricant. (iStock)

When removing nits, it's important to use a metal — not plastic — nit comb, Hansen says, "because the tines of those metal combs, they're small enough so that an individual hair can go through, but not the egg itself."

"Concentrate around the ears and the nape of the neck, those are the areas where you'll see the bulk of the eggs being laid."

Clark agrees with the Consumer Reports statement on nit-picking. "There's no question that it can be effective, it's just very time consuming." There's also professional salons for lice treatment, he adds.

New products available

For parents without the time and the energy for tedious nitpicking, there are new products on the market.

A number of products contain dimethicone, which suffocates lice. One Canadian manufacturer, Pediapharm, claims the insects "cannot develop resistance."

Clark says that's debatable.

"Insects have been around a long time and to say that we're going to come up with the silver bullet that's going to eliminate a louse that's been around for a million years and they're not going to find a way around it, is sort of naive.

"It may take a little longer to develop resistance, but I'm sure they can develop resistance even to the physical acting type of compound."

Hansen adds that the products sold in North America with lower dimethicone concentrations don't kill the nits, so "you have to continue to use it every few days."

A lousy strategy

Clark says over-reliance on one insecticide is a lousy strategy because of insects' ability to acquire resistance. He recommends, on a community level, using a variety of products "that have novel modes of action."

Lice are found nearly everywhere on the planet there are human heads, including Siberia. And head lice are fast, capable of travelling up to 23 cm in a minute.

In addition to dimethicone compounds, he mentions products containing ivermectin, spinosad and benzyl alcohol, which kill lice in different ways. Those three usually require a prescription.

When asked about those compounds, Hansen doesn't dispute their effectiveness, but he notes they're "incredibly expensive" and questions their worth.

"Just do the simple combing every couple days, it works," he recommends.

Clark calls their prices "unbelievable," although they're often covered under insurance plans.

He says that in the U.S., a person has to twice use an over-the-counter product relying on pyrethrin or permethrin, and then show they're ineffective, before a doctor can write a prescription for one of the new products.

Hansen and his co-authors call for "an approach to management of head lice infestations that balances effectiveness and safety with treatment expense and the need to use treatments that have novel modes of action."

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The world's most dangerous country? Pakistan's fight against religious extremism

While much of the world is currently focused on the threat posed by ISIS, a Pakistani couple living in exile in the United States continues to speak out about the heavy cost of Islamic fundamentalism in their homeland.

Also this week on The Sunday Edition:

Michael's Essay - Loving Oblomov: Michael recounts his failure to finish Tolstoy's War and Peace. On the first Sunday of autumn, he recommends instead Ivan Goncharov's lesser-known Oblomov.

Hip Hop class - Essay: Rebecca Hass signs up for a dance class, and puts hip hop and hope together with surprising results.  

The art and craft of Alex Colville: The Art Gallery of Ontario is hosting a new exhibit of the Canadian painter's works. AGO director and CEO Matthew Teitelbaum will be our guide.
 
Tribute to Bob Carty: We cele​brate the passion and brilliance of our colleague Bob Carty, who died on Sept. 21. Many of Bob's radio documentaries won international awards for investigative journalism and human rights, but we have chosen to broadcast one that ​demonstrates​ his sense of humour and his love of music. It's called "Banjo Bob."

Husain Haqqani and Farahnaz Ispahani have spent their careers fighting to improve the lives of their fellow Pakistanis. Ms. Ispahani is a journalist and was a member of the Pakistani parliament, while Haqqani, her husband, was Pakistan's ambassador to the U.S. from 2008 to 2011.

They are both passionate advocates of liberal, secular values, democracy and the rule of law – and it has cost them.

Both have received numerous death threats. Ispahani says that when her father was ill and dying, she could not go home because of threats from the Sunni militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.

Haqqani was forced to resign as ambassador in 2011 over allegations that he had sought U.S. help to head off a possible military coup, while Ispahani was stripped of her seat in parliament, ostensibly because she holds dual U.S.-Pakistani citizenship.

They now live in Washington, D.C., where Haqqani is director for South and Central Asia at the Hudson Institute and Ispahani was, up until recently, a public policy scholar at the Wilson Center. A few years ago the couple was included in Foreign Policy magazine's list of "Top 100 Global Thinkers," for "pushing tough love for their troubled country."

They both say religious violence in Pakistan is on the rise. Suicide bombings, so-called "honour killings" and assassinations of members of the media, the judiciary and politicians accused of blasphemy have become so common as to be almost routine.

"Time is running out," says Ispahani in an interview with Michael Enright on CBC Radio's The Sunday Edition. "It is escalating to a point where the state can't stop it if they wanted to."

'Every world leader's worst nightmare'

In addition to being unable to prevent sectarian violence, successive Pakistani governments have failed to provide their citizens with basic necessities. About two-thirds of Pakistan's nearly 200 million people live on less than two dollars a day. And of course, Pakistan has the bomb.

Farahnaz Ispahani, a Pakistani journalist and academic now living in Washington, D.C., says that when her father was ill and dying, she could not go back home because of personal threats from the Sunni militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. (Wikipedia)

​

All this makes for a combustible mix. As CBC foreign correspondent Brian Stewart once put it, "The mere thought of Pakistan boiling over into unpredictable chaos is every world leader's worst nightmare." Many commentators regard it as "the most dangerous nation in the world."

In recent months, Pakistan has been embroiled in a political crisis. Former cricket star Imran Khan and Canadian cleric Tahir ul-Qadri have been leading crowds of protesters through the streets of Islamabad, the capital, demanding the resignation of Pakistan's current prime minister, Nawaz Sharif.

Although Haqqani and Ispahani are not political allies of Mr. Sharif, they deplore the attempt to topple a democratically elected government.

"They are tapping into the people's overall unhappiness at the government's inability to supply basic services," says Ispahani, who has written a forthcoming book about religious violence in Pakistan.

"But it is an orchestrated protest, designed to clip the wings of an elected civilian government. My husband and I come from a different political background to Mr. Sharif, so we don't have any personal interest in supporting him. But we do support him."

Ispahani and Haqqani point to Pakistan's military, with its emphasis on an almost permanent state of war with India, as the cause of many of the country's problems, including religious extremism.

"The Pakistan military created jihadi groups to fight in India and in Kashmir. But during what I call their 'off-season,' when they're not fighting elsewhere, these jihadi groups turn their focus back home," says Ispahani. "Some like killing Shias, some like killing Ahmadis, Hindus, Christians, Sikhs. The Pakistani military has created a monster. Because they need them sometimes, they can't turn them on and off at will."

'Baying for blood'

Ispahani also blames "mob rule."

"No one has been put to death for the blasphemy laws by the state. But the number of people who have been targeted, murdered, burnt alive by mobs baying for blood, is huge. That's why I believe what Mr. Khan and Mr. Qadri are doing is so dangerous. They are conflating Islam and the anger of the youth about corruption and no jobs – and unleashing it."

Husain Haqqani was forced to resign as Pakistani ambassador to the U.S. over allegations that he had sought U.S. help to head off a possible military coup. (Wikipedia)

The couple agree that the West can have influence in Pakistan, by tying aid and business relationships to human rights.

"The rest of the world should not be doing business with a country where leaders like former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and countless others have been killed. There has been no human rights qualification. That is what we wish," says Ispahani.

"The relationship with the west has been one of dependence, deception and defiance," says Haqqani, whose most recent book is called Magnificent Delusions: Pakistan, the United States and an Epic History of Misunderstanding.

"I support engagement and economic assistance for the poor in Pakistan. But most of the aid has gone for primarily military purposes. The international community needs to stop allowing Pakistan's officials and its government to sell them a bill of goods, and get away with saying aid money is going to help the poor."

"Pakistan is at that last moment where either reform comes, or we go further down the slippery slope," says Haqqani.

"I would love to go back to Pakistan if I didn't feel physically threatened, I would like to make these arguments to my countrymen at home."

The Sunday Edition airs on CBC Radio One at 9 a.m. ET.

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U.S. economy climbs, but expect turbulence: Don Pittis

On the face of it the numbers certainly look good.

With every revision, the U.S. Commerce Department has upped its estimate. On Friday, its third and final assessment showed gross domestic product increasing at a healthy rate of 4.6 per cent this spring.

Five per cent growth in a mature advanced economy is a strong number. Since the Second World War, the average U.S. annual growth rate has been just over three per cent. 

But more important, it is easy to forget that despite all its troubles, the economy of our southern neighbour remains the world's hugest. Five per cent growth in that single economy represents something near a trillion dollars added to the globe's economic activity.

And for the country's biggest trading partner, that kind of growth cannot help washing over the long undefended border.

Don't expect a smooth transition

Despite much worse figures in the first three months of the year, widely blamed on weather, these are not just good growth numbers.They are trending toward spectacular. And so long as this is not just another false dawn, the transformation to sustained growth is, unfortunately, not likely to be smooth.

But before getting gloomy I should mention some of the positive signs buried in Friday's statistics. Consumer spending was relatively weak, but another way of thinking of that is that consumers are keeping their powder dry, holding back on spending till they are confident the corner has been turned. For the economy, that is money in the bank.

The place where the growth really happened was in business spending.

"Real non-residential fixed investment increased 9.7 per cent in the second quarter," says the Bureau of Economic Analysis in its release, up from less than two per cent in the previous quarter. Investment in office buildings and factories grew nearly 13 per cent, up from three. Equipment purchases rose 11 per cent up from a decline of one per cent.

Is there pent-up growth?

While some of those increases could represent investments delayed from the frigid first quarter, business spending of that magnitude may signal the beginning of a virtuous circle, releasing a pent-up surge in real investment in the economy that has been lacking during the last seven years of economic doldrums.

Not that there hasn't been lots of money floating around. It's just that new business investment, the kind that creates jobs and represents the rumbling engine of growth, has been in short supply. Instead, all that money has been bidding up the price of existing assets.

And of course that is where we come to the rough patch, not just in the United States but in Canada and many other parts of the world.

As I have moaned about many times in the past, all that money our governments and central banks keep pumping into the economy has been doing little but inflate the value of stocks. And Canadian houses.

Asset buying has created a virtuous circle of its own, as rising prices and low interest rates encourage the well-heeled to borrow and bid prices even higher. That has made them a lot richer, at least on paper, but it has done little to stimulate the productive part of the economy.

Spiral down in assets

The danger now is that as the U.S. central bank tightens the money supply by cutting bond buying and raising interest rates, this asset-based part of the economy will move from a virtuous circle to its opposite, the vicious spiral.

In the long run this is a good thing, and must happen. As we've seen, during periods of rising asset prices there is no need for businesses to invest. In such times, money tucked away in stocks (or Canadian houses) will turn into more money, even if the productive capacity of the country as a whole remains relatively unchanged.

And with luck, this is about to change. In the next phase the companies that do well will not be those cutting staff and increasing profitability. It will not be the companies that count on artificially low interest rates to borrow to buy back their own stock. 

In the real growth stage of an economy the companies that do well are those that hire and expand, the ones that invest to turn good ideas into excellent products and services. That in turn means good jobs and, eventually, a surge in consumer spending. It is what we have been waiting for.

But the transition is a tricky one that must be well managed. A disruptive crash in markets will do no one any good. A 50 per cent fall in Canadian house prices as predicted by Hilliard MacBeth last week, could overwhelm the economic benefits of a low Canadian dollar and a U.S. growth spurt.

It will be a balancing act. It will be the time that U.S. central bank chair Janet Yellen and Bank of Canada governor Stephen Poloz earn their enormous salaries. 

With luck, strong U.S. growth means there is only a short gap between the Great Recession and recovery. But hang on tight. It may be a rough crossing.

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31 feared dead in Mount Ontake eruption in Japan

Thirty-one people were presumed dead on Sunday near the peak of a Japanese volcano that erupted unexpectedly a day earlier while it was packed with hikers out to admire autumn foliage, sending a huge cloud of ash and rock tumbling down its slopes.

Police said the 31 people were found in cardiopulmonary arrest but declined to confirm their deaths pending a formal examination, as per Japanese custom. An official in the area said rescue efforts had been called off because of rising levels of toxic gas near the peak, as well as approaching nightfall.

Hundreds of people, including children, were stranded on the mountain, a popular hiking site, after it erupted without warning on Saturday, sending ash pouring down the slope for more than three kilometres.

Most made their way down later on Saturday, but about 40 spent the night near the 3,067 metre peak. Some wrapped themselves in blankets and huddled in the basement of buildings.

"The roof on the mountain lodge was destroyed by falling rock, so we had to take refuge below the building," one told NHK national television. "That's how bad it was."

More than 40 people were injured, several with broken bones.

Japan among world's top seismically active sites

Earlier, the Fire and Disaster Management Agency had said authorities were trying to confirm the whereabouts of 45 people.

It was not clear whether those 45 included the 31 people found in cardiopulmonary arrest.

The volcano was still erupting on Sunday, pouring smoke and ash hundreds of metres into the sky. Ash was found on cars as far as 80 km away.

Volcanic smoke rises from Mount Ontake, which is Japan's second-highest volcano and lies about 200 km west of Tokyo. (Kyodo/Reuters)

Volcanoes erupt periodically in Japan, one of the world's most seismically active nations, but there have been no fatalities since 1991, when 43 people died in a pyroclastic flow, a superheated current of gas and rock, at Mount Unzen in southwestern Japan.

Ontake, Japan's second-highest volcano 200 km  west of Tokyo, last erupted seven years ago. Its last major eruption was in 1979.

Satoshi Saito, a 52-year-old hiker who climbed Ontake on Saturday and descended less than an hour before the eruption, said the weather was good and the mountain, known for its fall foliage, was crowded with people carrying cameras.

"There were no earthquakes or strange smells on the mountain when I was there," Saito, who usually climbs Ontake several times a year, told Reuters. He also said there were no warnings of possible eruptions posted on the trail.

"But a man who runs a hotel near the mountain told me that the number of small earthquakes had risen these past two months, and everyone thought it was weird."

Hikers took shelter at lodge

Video footage on the internet showed huge grey clouds boiling toward climbers at the peak and people scrambling to descend as blackness enveloped them.

NHK footage showed windows in a mountain lodge darkening and people screaming as heavy objects pelted the roof.

'All of a sudden ash piled up so quickly that we couldn't even open the door.'- Shuichi Mukai, mountain lodge worker

"All of a sudden ash piled up so quickly that we couldn't even open the door," Shuichi Mukai, who worked in a mountain lodge just below the peak, told Reuters. The building quickly filled with hikers taking refuge.

"We were really packed in, maybe 150 people. There were some children crying, but most people were calm. We waited there in hard hats until they told us it was safe to come down."

Flights at Tokyo's Haneda airport suffered delays on Saturday as planes changed routes to avoid the volcano, which straddles Nagano and Gifu prefectures, but were mostly back to normal by Sunday, an airport spokeswoman said.

Sakurajima volcano near nuclear plant

Japan lies on the Ring of Fire, a horseshoe-shaped band of fault lines and volcanoes circling the edges of the Pacific Ocean, and is home to 110 active volcanoes.

One of these, Sakurajima at the southern end of the western island of Kyushu, is 50 km from Kyushu Electric Power's Sendai nuclear plant, which was approved to restart by Japan's nuclear regulator earlier in September.

An injured person is lifted by a rescue helicopter of the Japan Self-Defence Force (JSDF). RThe rescue operation was called off Sunday levels because there was toxic gas near the peak and nightfall was approaching. (Kyodo News/Reuters)

The Nuclear Regulation Authority has said the chance of volcanic activity during the Sendai plant's lifespan was negligible even though five giant calderas, crater-like depressions formed by past eruptions, are also nearby.

Kyushu Electric has said it would install new monitoring equipment around nearby calderas and develop plans to remove highly radioactive fuel to a safer site if the threat of an eruption is detected.

There are no nuclear plants near Ontake.

An official at the volcano division of the Japan Meteorological Agency said that, while there had been a rising number of small earthquakes detected at Ontake since Sept. 10, the eruption could not have been predicted easily.

"There were no other signs of an imminent eruption, such as earth movements or changes on the mountain's surface," the official told Reuters. "With only the earthquakes, we couldn't really say this would lead to an eruption." 

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Canada urged to give as much as it can in fight against ISIS

The world is going to have to give more and do more to fight ISIS, according to the U.S. ambassador to Canada.

In an interview with CBC Radio's The House, Ambassador Bruce Heyman told Evan Solomon that the message from the United States to all of its coalition partners, including Canada, is "we're going to need more at this point to defeat ISIL."

The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) goes by several names, including the Islamic State and ISIL. All names refer to the militants who have taken over large swaths of land in Syria and Iraq.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper revealed in New York City this week that Canada has been asked and is considering whether to contribute more support to the U.S.-led coalition. 

Canada will 'do our part'

On Friday in Ottawa, Harper would not go into details about what is being considered, but he said "We do not stand on the sidelines and watch. We do our part."

"That's always how this country has handled its international responsibilities, and as long as I'm prime minister that's what we will continue to do," he said.

CBC News has learned that cabinet next week is going to discuss sending CF-18s to join in the U.S.-led campaign in Iraq and Syria. 

Canada has sent 69 special forces personnel who will serve as military advisers to Iraqi and Kurdish forces. That 30-day mission will be reassessed by Oct. 5. 

The government has also given $28 million in humanitarian aid in the fight against ISIS.

Military support for U.S.-led coalition

Belgium, Britain and Denmark all signed on to join the military coalition against ISIS on Friday, committing fighter jets and other military support only to the Iraq part of the military campaign. The operation in Syria is being left at this point to the United States and the five Arab nations that began conducting airstrikes this week.

But according to Heyman, more military support is just one viable option.

"We'd like as much more (support) as Canada is willing to contribute. Whether it's through humanitarian aid, whether it's militarily, at every level," he said.

The Americans have been running a full court press this week, trying to build support around their mission to destroy and degrade ISIS.

This week at the United Nations U.S. President Barack Obama reached out to the world.

Cracking down on foreign fighters

"Promises on paper cannot keep us safe. Lofty rhetoric and good intentions will not stop a single terrorist attack. The words spoken here today must be matched and translated into action," Obama told the UN Security Council after it passed a binding resolution aimed at cracking down on foreign fighters. The resolution will require member nations to enact laws to prevent citizens from travelling to foreign countries to join terrorist organizations.

Heyman reiterated Obama's urgency. "This is something we have to deal with now. If we don't deal with it now, it will be a greater problem and will be much more difficult for us to contain later....the reality is we have no choice, we have to go now."

CBC Radio's The House airs Saturdays on CBC Radio One at 9 a.m. and on SiriusXM Ch. 169.

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Why the Newfoundland soccer stabbing has shaken parents to the core

Driving along Route 60 into the community of Topsail at 6:30 a.m. on Friday, with daylight slowly bringing the landscape into focus, it was hard not to notice the lights at the soccer field shining brightly onto the green artificial turf below.

It was the first hint of something out of the ordinary.

The next tell-tale sign of trouble was the RNC patrol vehicle, parked on one corner of this impressive complex, the officer inside keeping a watchful eye on things.

But it was the scene on the field that sent chills up my spine. 

Dozens of soccer balls were scattered over the playing surface. Training cones remained in orderly positions, ready for players to be put through their paces. 

Nicholas Layman, 19, has been charged with attempted murder following a stabbing at a soccer pitch in Topsail. (CBC)

An uninformed passerby might wonder why the field had been left in such a state at this early hour.

The silence and peacefulness on this morning, however, was in stark contrast to the chaos and confusion that broke out just before 8 o'clock on Thursday night. 

Young, fresh-faced athletes were honing their skills during a soccer camp when someone from the stands bolted onto the playing field and stabbed an 11-year-old boy in the neck.

Dozens of players and coaches were on the field, and family members were watching from the sidelines.

The usual sounds of a coach giving instructions, boots connecting with a ball and laughter were replaced with sobs and shouts for help.

Immediately, shockwaves spread far and wide as news of the chilling attack was transmitted via social media and news organizations. As the victim was being tended to by stunned parents and, later, seasoned emergency responders, a frantic manhunt was initiated. The search climaxed a few hours later when police arrested a 19-year-old male suspect.

The questions began almost immediately. Why would someone publicly stab a young boy? Would the victim survive? What justice is merited for such a horrendous crime?

The entire country has been gripped by this tragedy, and the local soccer community is especially jolted. 

The field in Topsail is a modern facility, situated on the Conception Bay shoreline. The atmosphere is picturesque and placid, the perfect place for young people to congregate and enjoy a sport that is played around the world.

This act, however, will forever taint the community and scar those who had the misfortune of witnessing it or, worse yet, were directly involved.

Elite soccer levels have long been associated with hooliganism, with overzealous fans often becoming unruly, violent and destructive.

But what happened at the field in Topsail went beyond all comprehension.

I have covered many crime- and disaster-related stories over the past two decades. But this is not just a crime story; I felt a connection that runs much deeper, and is much more personal. 

As a parent of two young boys, who have both played soccer, my thoughts immediately went to the family of this young victim, and how they must be coping with such a traumatic and senseless act.

It won't be an easy road, but it's a certainty that the wider community will do all it can, proving once again that the indomitable spirit so prevalent in this province cannot be easily broken.

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