Syria conflict attracts Canadians to fight on front line

The mother of a young Canadian man currently in Syria has been asking for months how and why her son ended up there among a group of extremist fighters.

"How do you sit there and admit to somebody, my son has gone off to fight in a war where I don't know if he's a terrorist or not?" the mother said to CBC's Adrienne Arsenault.

"Are you going to openly admit that? Probably not. 'Cause the first thing a mother says is, 'What did I do wrong? How could this be my son? What did I do?"

As she worries about her son, the mother is too scared to reveal her identity.

The situation in Syria threatens to escalate, as a panel of U.S. senators on Wednesday voted to give President Barack Obama the authority to use military action against the Syrian government after the White House said the regime carried out a chemical weapons attack.

Estimates vary as to how many Canadians are jihadi fighters in Syria. Government estimates and others who track jihadi fighters put the figure at a range of a few dozen to as many as 100 fighting in Syria against the government, a figure that should cause alarm, given that the public number of Americans fighting there is much smaller, meaning Canada may be overrepresented.

"When you look at it in context, it is certainly disproportionate," said John Amble, who researches regional militant Islamic groups.

"The community of which foreign fighters tend to originate is also much smaller in Canada, there are just fewer Muslims," he said.

A Canadian named Abu Muslim was part of a raid on a Syrian airport a few weeks ago, said Bilal Abdul Kareen, an American filmmaker who has lived among an Islamist group for a year.

"He was a part of that process," Kareen said.

A social media report from a jihadi group claims a Canadian was killed in the airport raid, but CBC could not confirm that or track down Abu Muslim's family.

Speaking from Aleppo province, Kareen said he has encountered 20 to 30 Canadians.

CBC News has anecdotal evidence of at least three Canadian deaths in Syria, but the Department of Foreign Affairs has not answered requests for official numbers.

Linked up with extremist group

The young man whose mother spoke with Arsenault had a hard time during his teenage years. There was a suicide attempt, a bipolar diagnosis, isolation, but then apparent salvation. He converted to Islam and calmed down.

"He had found somewhere where he belonged," she said.

But happiness was fleeting. Just before he turned 20, he moved into a boarding house and became secretive, angry and political.

He eventually told his mother he was leaving the country to go to Egypt to study to become an imam.

In November, he left, but didn't go to Egypt. Instead, he went to Istanbul and then Syria, where he joined up with an extremist group.

His mother would get an occasional text, but as the fighting in Syria worsened, his contact became limited and his anger grew.

"When I last talked to him he was so cold, his biggest thing was, 'Canadians are scum, we're all sinners, we're evil, we don't deserve to be on this Earth.' Where did he get that from?" asked the mother.

"Where do you get that from? My son wasn't like that. My son is gone."

CSIS, which had been tracking the young man, and others like him, has no new information on him, she said.

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Obama's indecision on Syria strains U.S. credibility: Neil Macdonald

As President Obama tries to push his reluctant nation into yet another foreign war, the issue of the moment in Washington is whether America's credibility and reputation are imperiled, particularly in the Middle East.

Obama's adversaries say it is, and so does the president himself. His subalterns, Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, are up on Capitol Hill, invoking America's solemn duty to act where others won't.

"The world is watching," declared Kerry.

It's a perfect example of American solipsism: the assumption that America actually possesses the virtuous reputation that the doctrine of American exceptionalism preaches.

Americans are taught from childhood that their country's actions are informed by universal values of good and evil and a duty to export democracy, if not guided by the Almighty Him/Herself.

That's not to say America doesn't try to do the right thing — and even succeeds, occasionally. Its leaders do struggle with ugly truths, which is refreshing, given the feckless amorality of people like Vladimir Putin.

But to seriously talk about American credibility, especially in the Middle East, requires both a disassociation from history and an utter absence of irony. Both are on full display here this week.

Most of the current debate centres on President Obama's warning a year ago that chemical weapons were his "red line" and that the Syrian regime would trigger "enormous consequences" if it used them in that country's civil war.

That red line slowly became a running joke, as Western governments concluded Assad gassed his citizens repeatedly and with impunity in the months that followed. (Putin further stoked the absurdity, maintaining the rebels, not Assad, had committed the atrocities.)

Red lines set, violated, moved

In fact, "red lines" are old hat in the Middle East. They are constantly being set, violated and moved. The term was popular there before it ever entered the American lexicon.

But in a region where people remember the betrayal of the Sykes-Picot agreement as though it was yesterday (Great Britain and France secretly carved up the Middle East between them after World War One), and regard the Crusades as though they happened last week, it is the long history of American and other Western actions that burdens the U.S.

U.S. President Barack Obama said in 2012 that if there was evidence that Syria had used chemical weapons against its own people, it would represent the crossing of a "red line" and that it would trigger "enormous consequences." (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

Americans might move on after a week or so; the rest of the world doesn't.

Take chemical weapons. Obama and Kerry are boiling righteously about their use in Syria, but Washington was considerably less outraged just a few decades ago.

There is ample evidence America supplied Saddam Hussein with the precursors for the chemical weapons he used in battle against Iran in the 1980s. Even when he turned them on his own citizens, and the U.S. Senate was finally persuaded to pass economic sanctions, the House of Representatives stopped them dead.

The Reagan administration, which propped up tyrants throughout the region, opposed taking any action.

"I always found it ironic," Rep. Chris Van Hollen said last week, "that the United States went to war on false pretenses that Saddam Hussein had chemical weapons and weapons of mass destruction in 2003, when he did not have them, but failed to take any action in 1988 when he actually used them."

One suspects Iraqis felt that irony, too. Certainly they remember George H.W. Bush telling them to rise up after the first Gulf War, before leaving them to Saddam's tender mercies.

Going back much further, there is still debate over whether British colonial authorities deployed chemical weapons as part of the wholesale slaughter its air force carried out to suppress Iraqi uprisings after the First World War.

Certainly Winston Churchill was keen. "I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes . . . [to] spread a lively terror," wrote the great man.

Empty declarations

In any event, does anyone think the average Syrian distinguishes between the rape and torture and bombs and bullets Assad's executioners have used to dispatch their wives and husbands and children, and the sarin gas he's alleged to have dropped in the suburbs of Damascus last month?

It's just as likely they recall George W. Bush's empty inaugural declarations in 2005 about protecting the oppressed of the world from dictators. And of course, Barack Obama's words as he went to war against Muammar Ghaddafi two and a half years ago: "As President, I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action."

More than 100,000 Syrian corpses later, Obama has done nothing.

Yes, the White House did announce in June that as a result of earlier chemical weapons attacks by Assad, it was authorizing the CIA to arm the Syrian rebels. But as of today, those arms remain undelivered.

More than two years ago, Obama and his officials began declaring that Assad must go. Now, fearing who might come next, "regime change" in Syria is out, and "containment" is in. Any military strikes will somehow be limited to deterring use of chemical weapons without influencing the outcome of the civil war — as though such a thing is possible.

In Egypt, the United States is now backing and financially supporting the military junta that removed a democratically elected president from office and massacred his supporters. Because American law forbids the provision of financial aid to any government installed by a coup, Obama has simply chosen not to call it a coup.

The list goes on. And on.

Serial hypocrisy, of course, is not unique to American foreign policy. As the polished ex-diplomat and former State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told me this week, "Consistency is hard. I mean, obviously if we were looking across the world today and asking what leader you would take out because he has killed not hundreds of thousands of his people but millions of his people, it would be the regime in North Korea. But we are not doing that because they have nuclear weapons. You do what you can do."

Crowley clearly thinks America is routinely singled out unfairly in an unfair world.

But America singles itself out. And, of course, so did Barack Obama. He was going to be so different. It would appear he's not.

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TIFF unites stars, audiences for celebration of film

Toronto returns to the cinematic spotlight today, as the Toronto International Film Festival gets underway for its 38th edition.

Celebrities, actors, directors, producers, cinephiles and star-chasers are descending on downtown Toronto for the annual 11-day movie extravaganza, which officially kicks off tonight with the world premiere of Bill Condon's The Fifth Estate.

Charting the rise of WikiLeaks and its outspoken head, Julian Assange (portrayed by in-demand British actor Benedict Cumberbatch), the drama is an example of one theme emerging across several TIFF movies this year: the current information age.

"We have a number of films dealing with the idea of living in an information society, what that means now. [In addition to The Fifth Estate], we have a documentary called The Square, about the Arab Spring and the Tahrir Square revolution and how so much of that was about information — about Facebook and Twitter and YouTube," TIFF artistic director Cameron Bailey told CBC News.

"These things are now part of our lives. People are asking questions about having political change enacted through media, but also how information about us is held through governments, by authorities."

A movie can sometimes provide deeper context and enhance our understanding of history as well. For Bailey, this is the case with a movie such as Justin Chadwick's Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom. One of TIFF's gala premieres, the film stars noted British actor Idris Elba as anti-apartheid hero and former South African president Nelson Mandela.

"It's powerful to see dramatized things that we read about in newspapers or see on television news, but you don't often know the context, the emotional and social context," he explained.

"Mandela is a good example: most of us grew up hearing about the inspiring story of Nelson Mandela and hearing of the change he was able to bring about in South Africa. But to know a little bit more about the man illuminates that social change he brought about — it goes beyond the headlines."

Vast lineup from around the globe

TIFF's hefty 2013 lineup spans 366 feature-length and short films altogether, from titles by promising first-time feature directors like Canadian Jeff Barnaby (Rhymes for Young Ghouls) to venerable Japanese animation guru Hayao Miyazaki (The Wind Rises), who revealed just last weekend his intention to retire from filmmaking.

The former Canadian ambassador to Iran, Ken Taylor, will discuss his role in Drew Taylor and Larry Weinstein's documentary, Our Man in Tehran, during an onstage Mavericks chat. (TIFF/Canadian Press)

Altogether, TIFF's 2013 offerings span more than a dozen different programs, including Docs, Contemporary World Cinema, the City to City spotlight on modern Greek filmmakers, Short Cuts Canada and the cult favourite Midnight Madness, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year.

Beyond TIFF's glitzy, celebrity-studded red carpet premieres, the vast number of film screenings, and a host of industry-only sessions, special events this year include:

• onstage Mavericks chats, including those with director Spike Jonze, Indian film veteran Irrfan Khan and former Canadian ambassador to Iran Ken Taylor.
• a 30th anniversary presentation of The Big Chill, the seminal, star-studded comedy-drama that opened at TIFF in 1983.
• a new edition of writer-director Jason Reitman's popular "Live Read" series, which this year will see Hollywood stars perform a one-take, full script read-through of Boogie Nights — without prior rehearsal — before a live audience.
• a program of cinematic art projections at locations around the downtown core.
• a Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art showcase tied to TIFF's upcoming exhibition on filmmaker David Cronenberg.

"We have a mission statement: to transform the way people see the world through film … it's something I feel like I have tattooed on my brain," Bailey said.

"We're about a lot more than the red carpets and glamour of the festival. We actually are about trying to bring that transformative experience, through cinema, to our audience."

Ahead of the TIFF awards luncheon, the festival will close with Life of Crime, Daniel Schechter's 1970s-era caper comedy based on the late Elmore Leonard's story The Switch. Its high-profile cast includes Jennifer Aniston, Tim Robbins, yasiin bey (aka rapper Mos Def), John Hawkes and Isla Fisher.

Leonard, who died in August, "wrote indelible characters. Some of the characters just stay with you — the language they spoke, the way they talked about their work, their lust for life. He was an amazing conjurer of the criminal world," Bailey recalled about the iconic American author.

"We loved [Life of Crime] because it's fun. It's light. It's the world of Elmore Leonard and I think there was a cinematic reference that we really enjoyed as well: this is essentially the same group of characters that we see 20 years later in Jackie Brown, but played by different actors 20 years earlier, when they're still in Detroit. So for anybody who loves movies, who loves the world of Elmore Leonard, I think it's a real thrill and a real pleasure to watch."

The Toronto International Film Festival continues through Sept. 15.

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Saint Mary's frosh chant on underage sex prompts student apology

Students at Saint Mary's University in Halifax are shocked and disappointed by their own behaviour after a video of them chanting about non-consensual underage sex with girls was posted online, says the president of the students' union.

"These are great leaders," said Jared Perry, president of the Saint Mary's University Students' Association. "This was simply a moment with a lack of judgment."

The chant spells out the word young, and includes the lines: "Y is for your sister […] U is for underage, N is for no consent […] Saint Mary's boys we like them young."

Perry said the chant had been used for years during orientation week.

"I definitely agree that's not appropriate," he told CBC's Information Morning. "It's not tasteful, and I sincerely apologize to everyone who has been offended."

Perry said events set for Wednesday night at the school were cancelled as staff met with orientation leaders.

"A lot of them showed a ton of remorse for their actions. Many of them ended up crying, speechless, jaw drops, and they're very disappointed by their actions. It's one of those things that you don't realize until after the fact."

Outrage after video goes viral

The 15-second video, which was posted on Instagram, has been taken down. But reports on the cheer have been viewed thousands of times.

"People are mad. People are upset. People are angry," said Steve Proctor, a communications manager for Saint Mary's University. "People don't understand how it could happen. That's the reaction shared by the administration."

Proctor said senior administrators who have been on the football field in the last few years have never heard the cheer.

"As you can hear in the clip, you can't even tell what they're saying," he said. "If we had heard the cheer, action would've been taken immediately, as it was in this case."

"I really believe… nobody who was actually doing the cheer believed in what it was."

All of the 80 frosh week leaders and the entire Saint Mary's University students' union executive have been ordered to take sensitivity training. The executive will also attend a conference about sexual violence and consent.

"I hope that people will look at how we react to this and how we move forward," said Perry. "This is a huge learning experience for myself, my executive team, and all the orientation week leaders. Hopefully we'll be able to implement some sustainable practices that will help tackle this."

Proctor said the school will use this as a teachable moment.

"This is a problem, this is a concern that stretches not only across the province, but across the country."

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Brian Sinclair ignored by Winnipeg ER: report

A confidential report into the 2008 death of Brian Sinclair at a Winnipeg hospital shows that four members of the public approached emergency room staff on four separate occasions to report concerns about Sinclair but were "largely ignored."

"For largely legitimate reasons the 'public' is not perceived as a useful source of information for the triage team; rather they are an interruption at best and a threat frequently," states the report, which has never before been made public.

Sinclair, a homeless double-amputee who went to the Health Sciences Centre for a blocked catheter and a urinary tract infection, died in the hospital's emergency department waiting room on Sept. 21, 2008, after sitting for 34 hours without receiving care.

The finding is among details obtained by the CBC News I-Team from the Critical Incident Review Committee's final report of Nov. 7, 2008 — a document that will not be entered as evidence in a judicial inquest into Sinclair's death that began last month.

Authorities have never shared the report with the Sinclair family or its lawyer, Vilko Zbogar. When CBC News informed him of the document's contents, Zbogar called them troubling.

"There's an approach of contempt or antagonism towards the public, just a lack of respect of the role they have to play in the system," he said.

"It looks like Mr. Sinclair had no chance, no matter how many people came up to nursing staff to seek help for him."

Report kept confidential by law

Recommendations contained in the report were released publicly by the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority (WRHA) in November 2008, but the report itself has been kept confidential under provincial legislation governing critical incident reporting.

"If it turns out the public is viewed as the enemy, a threat, or a disruption, then there is yet one more deep cultural problem in the WRHA that needs to be addressed," says Arthur Schafer, an ethics professor at the University of Manitoba.

In a statement to CBC News, the health authority says it cannot confirm or deny the contents of the Critical Incident Review Committee's report because the document is protected by law.

But WRHA spokesperson Heidi Graham says the health authority has acknowledged there were "gaps" in the way the emergency department functioned.

"This is why WRHA has always acknowledged that Mr. Sinclair came to us for help with a treatable medical condition, which we failed to provide," Graham said.

"It's why our counsel, on day one of the inquest, called this a 'failure at all levels' and said the WRHA, including its employees, collectively failed Mr. Sinclair."

Four attempts to alert staff

The report attempts to explain why ER staff failed to provide care to Sinclair, despite the four attempts by members of the public to alert staff to his deteriorating condition.

After Sinclair had already spent the night at the hospital, "someone from the waiting room approached a security guard to report that a person [Mr. Sinclair] in the waiting room was getting sick," the report states.

"The security guard called housecleaning to clean up," but no one addressed his medical condition, according to the report.

Another visitor in the waiting room later approached a different security guard, who mentioned to the triage aide that there was a person in the waiting room who "didn't look so good." Again, no medical help was offered, the report said.

Other visitors tried to help, too. The report says a family that was in the waiting room on the night of Sept. 19, 2008 — the day Sinclair entered the emergency room — returned to the ER the following night, a Saturday, for their daughter's care.

"They reported that they were concerned when they saw the same man in his wheelchair in exactly the same place on Saturday night" and they alerted a security guard, according to the report.

"The security guard explained that Mr. Sinclair was a homeless person who was in the ER to get inside and watch TV," the report states.

It also says the couple then "expressed concern about Mr. Sinclair to one of the nurses, who responded, 'We are very busy but we will get to him.' They enquired again after 20 minutes and were told, 'We have not had a chance to see him yet.'"

9 security guards were on duty

Nine security guards who were on duty during Sinclair's time in the ER have been called to testify at the inquest. Several of them testified that members of the public had alerted them because they were worried about Sinclair's condition.

Members of the public are expected to testify in October.

The report also describes the staffing level in the hospital's emergency department.

On Sept. 19, 2008, the day Sinclair arrived at emergency, the report says, "The charge nurses was short five nurses for the department and was only able to fill two of those."

But the report says there was no staff shortage on the following day.

"Although many staff noticed Mr. Sinclair in the waiting room during his stay, no staff member saw him as a patient in need. This cannot be explained by staffing shortages as there were full staffing levels from 7:30 on September 20th," the report states in part.

In analyzing why staff largely ignored efforts by the public to draw attention to Sinclair, the report cites staff having very high levels of competing priorities for their attention. It also notes that staff have been influenced by negative experiences.

Waiting room a 'war zone,' say staff

"The staff describe the HSC waiting room as a 'war zone'; 'I am constantly under attack'; 'I have recurring nightmares that I look up from the desk into the barrel of a gun'; and 'security is there to protect us,'" the report says.

Schafer said the committee's report is an indication of major problems.

"One's reaction is shock. How is it possible that conditions in the emergency room were a war zone and yet nothing was being done about this?," he said.

"Does the Health Sciences Centre and its supervisors at the WRHA — are they ignorant of these conditions? Are they unable or unwilling to correct them?"

When the committee's recommendations were announced in November 2008, then WHRA vice-president Jan Currie said staff "did not realize that Mr. Sinclair had come seeking care."

The health authority's chief medical officer, Dr. Brock Wright, initially told the public that Sinclair had failed to present himself to the triage desk, but the Critical Incident Review Committee's report states otherwise.

"The WRHA were putting out statements that were false, misleading and deceptive, and they allowed these statements to stand for months without making any effort to correct them. That's deeply worrying," said Schafer.

Video shows Sinclair at triage desk

In February 2009, the WRHA acknowledged that security camera video footage showed Sinclair approaching the triage desk upon arrival.

However, that acknowledgement came after that information was made public by the province's chief medical examiner.

The Critical Incident Review Committee's report describes Sinclair arriving in a taxi van at the emergency department just before 3 p.m. on Sept. 19, 2008, with the driver pushing him in his wheelchair up to the triage desk before departing.

"Brian is spoken to by the triage aide who is then observed to presumably write something," the report states.

WRHA officials have said from the beginning that Sinclair had not been triaged.

"They knew that there were flaws in the triage system. There were previous instances of individuals not being triaged," said Zbogar, the family's lawyer.

"They knew that there was a problem, and to allow that problem to persist is what killed Brian Sinclair, and that indicates to us that it's not just negligence, it's recklessness."

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Ariel Castro, Cleveland abductor, dies in prison hanging

Ariel Castro, the former Cleveland bus driver who held three women captive in his home for nearly a decade before one escaped and exposed their plight, has died from an apparent hanging while serving life in prison.

Castro, 53, was found hanged in his cell around 9:20 p.m. ET Tuesday at the Correctional Reception Center in Orient, a community south of Columbus in central Ohio, JoEllen Smith, of the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, said early Wednesday.

Prison medical staff performed CPR before Castro was transported to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. He was in protective custody because of the notoriety of his case, meaning he was checked every 30 minutes, but was not on suicide watch, which entails constant observation, Smith said.

Castro was also watched closely in Cuyahoga County Jail in the several weeks after his arrest and before his case was resolved by a guilty plea, with logs noting his activity every 10 minutes. He was taken off county jail suicide watch in early June after authorities determined he was not a suicide risk.

Castro's attorneys tried unsuccessfully to have a psychological examination of Castro done at the Cuyahoga County Jail, where Castro was housed before he was turned over to state authorities following his conviction, his attorney, Jaye Schlachet, told The Associated Press early Wednesday. Schlachet said he could not immediately comment further.

In an interview last month after Castro's conviction, Schlachet and attorney Craig Weintraub said their client clearly fit the profile of sociopathic disorder and that they hoped researchers would study him for clues that could be used to stop other predators.

Amanda Berry's 911 call for help

The three women disappeared separately between 2002 and 2004, when they were 14, 16 and 20 years old. They escaped from Castro's Cleveland home May 6, when Amanda Berry, one of the women, broke part of a door and yelled to neighbours for help.

"Help me," she said in a 911 call. "I've been kidnapped, and I've been missing for 10 years and I'm, I'm here, I'm free now."

The two other women were so scared of Castro that they held back initially even as police officers began to swarm the house. But quickly they realized they were free.

"You saved us! You saved us!" another of the captives, Michelle Knight, told an officer as she leaped into his arms. Castro was arrested that evening.

Elation over the women's rescue soon turned to shock as details emerged about conditions of their captivity. Investigators say they were bound with chains, repeatedly raped and deprived of food and bathroom facilities. Knight told investigators she was beaten and starved several times to force her to miscarry.

Messages left for the women's lawyers were not immediately returned early Wednesday.

Castro said he had pornography addiction

Castro was sentenced Sept. 1 to life in prison plus 1,000 years on his guilty plea to 937 counts including kidnapping and rape.

In a rambling statement, he told the judge he was not a monster, but a man suffering from a pornography addiction.

Knight was the only one of the three who appeared in court at his sentencing.

"You took 11 years of my life away, and I have got it back," she said in the hushed courtroom during her victim impact statement. "I spent 11 years in hell. Now your hell is just beginning."

In early August, the Cleveland house where Castro held the three women captive was demolished as part of a deal that spared him a possible death sentence.

This is the second high-profile suicide in an Ohio prison in a month.

On Aug. 4, death row inmate Billy Slagle was found hanged in his cell just days before his scheduled execution. He was condemned to death for fatally stabbing a neighbour.

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Verizon pullback a blow to Canadian wireless consumers

Verizon's decision to stay out of Canada deals a stinging blow to the government's efforts to make the wireless market more competitive and consumer-friendly, say industry experts.

"Without someone like Verizon, what will end up happening is the Big Three will win," says Walid Hejazi, a professor at the Rotman School of Management.

The Big Three -- Bell, Rogers and Telus -- have a combined 90 per cent market share. They have spent much of the summer telling consumers through an ad campaign that Verizon's entry into the wireless market would be "unfair" and cost Canadian jobs.

Meanwhile, critics of the Canadian telecom industry said the entry of Verizon would force the Big Three to offer better services and rates.

On Monday, Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam ended the feverish speculation when he told Bloomberg news service that his company, which has more than 100 million wireless subscribers, would not be coming to Canada.

McAdam made the comments after announcing that Verizon would be paying $130 billion US to buy the 45 per cent stake in Verizon Wireless currently held by British telecom Vodafone.

Greg O'Brien, editor and publisher of Cartt.ca, a news site about the Canadian telecom and electronic media industries, says the possibility of Verizon entering the market was always tenuous and fed by the wishful thinking of Canadian consumers.

"Verizon's interest was never really all that real," says O'Brien.

"They were just kicking the tires at Wind and Mobilicity and [considering buying] some spectrum because these are all assets that would maybe provide them with some growth. And they decided in the end that it just wouldn't."

Government seeking greater competition

The federal government has stated that it would like to see more competition in the Canada's wireless market, and has been taking a number of regulatory steps to nudge this along.

It stages auctions periodically to sell telecom companies the rights to transmit signals over the electromagnetic spectrum. The federal government reserved about 40 per cent of the 2007 spectrum auction for new entrants, which led to the launch in 2008 of Wind Mobile and Mobilicity, which are co-owned by Egyptian and Dutch firms, respectively.

More recently, the federal government has said it would like to see four competing wireless companies in every market across Canada.

To that end, it relaxed ownership rules last year to allow a foreign corporation wanting to enter a specific business sector in Canada to buy companies with less than 10 per cent market share.

In June, reports emerged that U.S. wireless giant Verizon was considering buying Canadian company Wind Mobile for $700 million. (John Minchillo/AP Photo)

Bell, Rogers and Telus went on the offensive earlier this summer after reports emerged that U.S. giant Verizon had offered to buy Canadian upstart Wind Mobile for $700 million. The Big Three undertook a public relations campaign that argued the federal government was giving foreign companies preferential treatment.

The government countered with a PR campaign of its own. Industry Minister James Moore travelled across the country telling consumers that allowing foreign ownership would increase competition and lower wireless rates in Canada, which are among the highest in the world.

Despite Verizon's decision not to proceed in Canada, Hejazi said he is "encouraged" by the fact that the government is going to continue with its pro-competition strategy for the next wireless spectrum auction, which will take place in January 2014.

The Canadian government has said foreign-owned companies would be able to buy two of four blocks in the 2013 auction, leaving Bell, Rogers and Telus to bid on the other two blocks.

Tiny market

However, it's unclear whether any foreign-owned companies are currently interested in bidding on the blocks of 700 mHz spectrum.

Between the three of them, Bell, Rogers and Telus control more than 90 per cent of Canada's 26.9 million wireless subscribers. In global terms, this is a tiny market.

Kevin O'Leary, the chair of O'Leary Funds and one of the judges on Dragon's Den, told CBC's Heather Hiscox on Tuesday that to a company the size of Verizon, the Canadian wireless market is a "rounding error and it's completely irrelevant."

O'Brien says that the Canadian market is still appealing to foreign-owned companies, but "the market opportunity available now is not."

Hejazi says that Verizon was likely frightened off by the prospect of aggressive lobbying efforts by Bell, Rogers and Telus in a comparatively small market.

"They don't want to come into Canada and fight Telus, Rogers and Bell at every turn," says Hejazi.

Hejazi recently finished work on a study commissioned by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Trade looking into the impact of reducing restrictions on foreign investment in telecommunications, finance and transportation.

The study, which Hejazi says is expected to be released later this year, suggests that by increasing competition, foreign ownership not only improves service and lowers prices, but makes the Canadian economy as a whole more competitive.

But given that the deposits for the Jan. 14 spectrum auction are due by Sept. 16, O'Brien says it's unlikely that another major player will step into the fray.

And due to loopholes in the regulation of the wireless industry, it's conceivable that one or more of the Big Three could still gain access to some of the 700 mHz spectrum reserved for smaller players by leasing it from the successful bidders.

While Minister Moore has vowed to seek greater competition in the wireless market, O'Brien says that the process should have begun long ago.

"The point I've been making for a long time is that the federal government should have started making the foreign investment liberalization before the 2007 wireless spectrum auction, because now the industry is completely hamstrung."

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Legal marijuana: How could it work?

While the debate rages for and against legalizing marijuana, there's also a debate about how to legalize it, if that's the direction chosen.

In Canada, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau's call for legalization has spurred the discussions, while in the United States, it's Colorado and Washington moving in that direction and Alaskans voting next year on doing so.

Internationally, Uruguay is close to becoming the first country to legalize pot, although in most countries it was legal until some time in the 20th century.

Eleven years ago today, a Senate committee issued a major report recommending that Canada legalize marijuana, as well as explaining how to go about it.

"Whether or not an individual uses marijuana should be a personal choice that is not subject to criminal penalties, but we have come to the conclusion that, as a drug, it should be regulated by the state much as we do for wine and beer," committee chairman Pierre Claude Nolin said at the time.

Senator Pierre Claude Nolin addresses the media at a news conference in Ottawa Sept. 4, 2002, after releasing a special committee report recommending that Canada legalize the use of marijuana. (Tom Hanson/Canadian Press)

Eleven years later, the Conservative Senator tells CBC News he still stands by his committee's report. "The public is already there," Nolin observes, adding that the challenge is with the politicians.

Washington, Colorado experiment with legalization

Since then, Liberal governments twice took steps on changing marijuana laws (which went nowhere), while Colorado and Washington voters opted to legalize recreational marijuana use.

In March, Washington state named UCLA drug policy expert Mark Kleiman its marijuana guru. He sees an advantage for Canada "to hang back and see how the experiment comes out" in the two states.

But not for long. "We'll know a lot more two years from now than we know now about the risks and benefits," he tells CBC News. Kleiman does not think "legalization is going to be any screaming triumph."

A disappointed David Malmo-Levine watches televised coverage at the B.C. Marijuana Party offices in Vancouver on Dec. 23, 2003 of the Supreme Court of Canada's decision that possession of marijuana remains a crime. (Richard Lam/Canadian Press)

David Malmo-Levine, one of Canada's best-known pot activists, says legalization will be easy. "The right way to legalize marijuana is to focus on the legitimate concerns of harm from misuse of marijuana and of excluding people from the market."

The harms he has in mind are impaired driving and health problems from substandard, mouldy or contaminated cannabis.

Decriminalization not a recommended route

Nolin, Kleiman and Malmo-Levine all say that decriminalization as an interim measure is not the route to take toward legalization.

Even though he notes that about 60,000 Canadians face possession charges every year, Nolin says "I would keep the bad system we have, keeping in mind we must change it."

"We're kidding ourselves with decriminalization, because we're keeping it illegal" he argues, and that makes it more difficult to prevent problematic use.

Decriminalization would be equivalent to prohibition of alcohol in the 20th century and Kleiman notes that certainly wasn't a success.

He also says decriminalization would do nothing to get rid of the illicit market, have very little impact on consumption or address the issue "about people getting products that are completely untested, unlabelled, with no idea about what's actually in them."

"I'm not sure inching in through decriminalization matters one way or the other," he argues.

Malmo-Levine, who has studied the international record, says "decriminalization is worse than nothing at all." His view is that "harmless people don't need to be harmed less, they need to stop being harmed."

Applying a wine model to marijuana

If a wine model is used for marijuana legalization, consumers would be able to grow their own pot or buy it from a government store. (Anthony Bolante/Reuters)

Malmo-Levine also favours using a system similar to what Canada has in place for wine, at least initially, for marijuana legalization.

He says parents would be able to set the rules over their teenage children's use and, as with wine, there would be no monopoly on production or sales. People would be able to grow their own marijuana, the same way they can make their own wine at home or at a commercial operation.

Kleiman sees some problems with the wine model. He wants liquor boards to "take a much broader view of the public interest and hold themselves accountable for the total damage done by alcohol, both drunken misbehaviour and the health consequences of heavy drinking.

"And I think that applies to cannabis as well."

He's against "a purely commercial market in cannabis, like the one we now have with alcohol," because he expects it would result in the same pathologies. "I would much rather have people grow their own or form co-ops or get it from a state monopoly, where the people in charge won't have a strong vested interest in fostering addiction."

He recommends Canada allow private cultivation, but require that growers only sell their cannabis to the government retailer. That idea sounds like the old Canadian Wheat Board.

The advantage of this approach, Kleiman says, is the state can keep control of the marketing effort and hinder "the development of an economically and politically powerful industry that then can't be moved, like the existing beer industry."

He lists off some more advice. "You want to keep the price high, you want to keep the marketing down, you want to make sure that consumers know what they're getting, not just in the sense of knowing what the chemistry is, but knowing what the likely effect is, so I'd want to have very strong vendor training in place."

A binding quota for pot users

Washington state's drug guru Mark Kleiman recommends a legalization scheme that requires marijuana consumers to set a binding quota for how much they can buy each month, although they would be able to revise their quota with a month's notice. (Courtesy UCLA Luskin )

Kleiman also recommends requiring marijuana consumers to set a binding quota for how much they can buy each month, though they would be able to revise their quota with a month's notice.

"Cannabis is not a bad habit for most people who use it, any more than food is but ... we shouldn't have a laissez-faire approach towards selling it" because a limited number of people will have their bad habits run away with them.

Kleiman and Malmo-Levine both stress the need for a system of quality control, both for impurities such as pesticide residues and mould, and for the active agents in the cannabis. That requires testing and labelling.

As he did in the 2002 Senate report, Nolin today recommends that as a first step toward legalization the prime minister should appoint a special envoy on marijuana (and all psychoactive substances) who would join the Privy Council Office and convene a conference of key stakeholders. Canada should also seek amendments to United Nations conventions and treaties governing illegal drugs.

As for legislation, in the words of the report, it "should stipulate the conditions for obtaining licences as well as for producing and selling cannabis; criminal penalties for illegal trafficking and export; and the preservation of criminal penalties for all activities falling outside the scope of the exemption scheme" for cannabis.

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RCMP's Senate expenses probe focuses on Duffy-Wright deal

While tourists were enjoying the splendours of Parliament Hill this summer, behind the scenes RCMP investigators were secretly hunkered down in a former Senate smoking room, interrogating witnesses in what has become the largest police probe involving parliamentarians in years.

CBC News has been given an exclusive glimpse inside the RCMP investigation of the Senate expenses scandal through interviews with a number of people close to the police probe. All spoke on condition of anonymity.

The investigation is being headed by Cpl. Greg Horton, a 21-year veteran of major crime investigations and now assigned to the special RCMP branch that deals with "sensitive" matters of "significant risk to Canada's political, economic and social integrity."

CBC sources were unanimous on one point: Horton and his investigators are tough, thorough, extremely well-prepared and seem deadly serious about a probe that could lead to criminal charges of fraud and breach of trust.

Sources say the federal Office of Public Prosecutions has already assigned a prosecutor to the Senate probe.

There is no indication the Mounties have interrogated any of the four senators actually at the centre of the expense scandal: Mike Duffy, Mac Harb, Patrick Brazeau and Pamela Wallin. Sources say investigators have not knocked on the prime minister's door either.

But CBC News has learned that over the past two months, Horton and his squad have questioned at least five other senators as key witnesses.

Some of those interviews were conducted in the sumptuous Salle de la Francophonie, an ornate meeting room near the main Senate chamber, decorated in paintings and sculptures of French kings, and used as a private smoking lounge for senators until the 1980s.

Although none of the senators questioned in the Francophonie this summer has been accused of any wrongdoing, sources say a Senate lawyer was usually present anyway.

Senator Mike Duffy leaves a meeting of the Senate internal economy committee on May 9 in Ottawa. An initial report on an audit of Duffy's expense claims was altered by a Senate subcommittee. (Sean Kilpatrick/Canadian Press)

So far, the sources say, the line of questioning has been focused in large part on Duffy's travel and housing claims, and on the now infamous $90,000 personal cheque he got from the prime minister's chief of staff, Nigel Wright, to reimburse the government for the disputed expenses.

They say the Mounties want to know what exactly was the deal Wright made with Duffy in return for the $90,000 cheque.

Who else in government and the Conservative Party knew about the deal? The RCMP say Wright has admitted telling three other high-ranking officials in the Prime Minister's Office, but not Stephen Harper.

Was there a secret deal in place with the Conservative Party — or some other source — to repay Wright the $90,000 he gave to Duffy?

For instance, sources say the Mounties have been asking specifically about Wright's sole access, as Harper's chief of staff, to a special stash of Conservative Party funds ostensibly to pay for partisan political activities in the Prime Minister's Office, a story first reported by CBC News.

Finally, sources say the Mounties are asking a lot of questions about how and why a Senate committee report on Duffy's housing and travel allowances was altered in the senator's favour, finding that he was merely the victim of errors and unclear rules.

As Horton says in one court filing: "I believe there was an agreement between Duffy and Wright involving repayment of the $90,000 and a Senate report that would not be critical of him, constituting an offence of frauds on the government."

CBC has confirmed that all three members of that Senate committee have been interviewed by the RCMP — Conservative senators David Tkachuk and Carolyn Stewart Olsen, Harper's former press secretary, and Liberal Senator George Furey.

Horton has accused Tkachuk of being in contact with both Duffy and Wright during the audit process, while chairing the committee that eventually watered down the audit report on Duffy's expenses. Tkachuk claims he was never pressured to alter the report.

Marjory LeBreton, the Conservatives' former Senate leader, was also questioned by the Mounties this summer.

Finally, Cpl. Horton and his crew sat down with Senator Elizabeth Marshall, former auditor general of Newfoundland, and a member of a special Senate subcommittee that referred the expenses of Brazeau and Harb to the independent auditing firm Deloitte.

Until the RCMP have completed their investigation, it is impossible to predict whether criminal charges will be laid, and if so, against whom.

Most of those at the heart of the scandal have already moved to mitigate their respective situations.

Last week, Mac Harb dropped a lawsuit against the Senate over his expenses, agreed to pay back a total of $231,000, and resigned from the upper chamber, ensuring his parliamentary pension.

Senator Pamela Wallin speaks with Prime Minister Stephen Harper at a campaign rally during the 2011 federal election. A Senate report on Wallin's expenses has been forwarded to the RCMP, but the Mounties have not said whether they are investigating her. (Liam Richards/Canadian Press)

The Senate has referred an audit of Pamela Wallin's expenses to the RCMP, but the force has yet to indicate if it will investigate her.

No matter. She has already paid back $38,000 in expenses, and after an external audit, has agreed to refund the government an additional amount likely to top another $100,000.

Of course, Duffy has paid the government the $90,000 he got from Wright.

And both Duffy and Wright have hired some of the best criminal lawyers in the country.

So far, the RCMP have not indicated whether Wright is a witness or a suspect.

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Syria inaction risks world community's credibility, Obama says

Failing to respond to last month's deadly chemical attacks would damage the credibility of the international community and increase the risk for other such attacks, U.S. President Barack Obama said during a news conference in Sweden today.

"In the face of such barbarism, the international community cannot be silent," he said Wednesday in Stockholm, where he was meeting with the Swedish prime minister before heading to the G20 meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia.

The president also renewed calls for intervention in Syria, part of his push to convince Congress when it reconvenes on Sept. 9 to vote in favour of his call for U.S. mlitary strikes to punish the regime of Bashar al-Assad for its alleged chemical attack Aug. 21.

"If we don't [act], we are effectively saying that even though we may condemn [the chemical attacks] and issue resolutions…somebody who is not shamed by resolutions can continue to act with impunity," he said.

"My credibility is not on the line. The international community's credibility is on the line," Obama said. "America and Congress's credibility is on the line, because we give lip service to the notion that these international norms are important."

Obama also said that based on evidence, he is confident Assad's regime is responsible for the use of chemical weapons on two Damascus suburbs last month that killed hundreds, and he believes Congress will approve his military strike resolution.

'Rebalancing' situation in Syria

French officials, meanwhile, were shoring up support for a punitive military response to the alleged chemical attack, saying it would help shift the balance in Syria's 2½-year-old civil war.

French President Francois Hollande, right, speaks with Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, left, and Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault in Paris, days before French legislators are expected to convene Wednesday to discuss the Syria crisis. (Kenzo Tribouillard/Reuters)

"If you want a political solution, you have to move the situation. If there's no sanction, Bashar Assad will say, 'That's fine, I'll continue what I'm doing,"' French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told France Info radio Wednesday morning, hours ahead of a debate by lawmakers on the wisdom and necessity of a military response to the alleged chemical attack.

As the Obama administration worked to build its own support ahead of the Congress vote, the U.S. and Israel conducted a joint missile test Tuesday in the eastern Mediterranean in an apparent signal of military readiness. A missile was fired from the sea toward the Israeli coast to test the tracking by the country's missile defence system.

French government spokeswoman Najat Vallaud-Belkacem said punitive action in Syria would "rebalance" the situation on the ground.

Putin warns against action

But Russian President Vladimir Putin, one of Assad's most vocal supporters, warned the West against taking one-sided action in Syria, although he told The Associated Press that Russia had frozen new shipments to Syria of an air defence missile system.

There's a major difference between the French debate and the one planned in Washington on Capitol Hill: President Francois Hollande has an easy majority in the French parliament, and he neither needs nor — unlike Obama — wants a vote of approval. But with the prospect of military action against Assad facing dwindling support internationally, the French government has been building its case.

U.S. officials say any action will be limited in scope, not aimed at helping to remove Assad. During the press conference Wednesday, Obama said that a military strike would only be a first step and that further work would have to be done to find a solution to "underlying problems" in Syria.

Putin said Russia "doesn't exclude" supporting a UN resolution on punitive military strikes if it is proved that Damascus used poison gas on its own people, but he questioned alleged evidence released by Britain, the United States and France as part of their efforts to build international support.

Any proof needs to go before the Security Council, Putin told The Associated Press. "And it ought to be convincing. It shouldn't be based on some rumours and information obtained by special services through some kind of eavesdropping, some conversations and things like that."

Fabius said Syria would certainly come up at this week's G20 meeting in Russia.

"We will discuss with the Russians, because they are an important player in the region. Up until now they've been blocking things. If there's been an evolution that would be very desirable."

On Tuesday, the White House won backing for military action from two powerful Republicans — House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner and Eric Cantor, House majority leader.

In Syria, Al-Baath newspaper, the mouthpiece of the country's ruling Baath party, slammed U.S. senators and members of Congress for their support.

An editorial in the newspaper's Wednesday edition branded the American lawmakers who backed military action in Syria as "advocates of war and terrorism."

"When the Obama administration seeks a broader mandate from the Congress, which it basically is in no need of, this means that it prepares itself for what is bigger and more dangerous."

In Paris, Hollande said the U.S. vote "will have consequences on the coalition that we will have to create." He did not specify whether that meant a military coalition.

Fabius on Wednesday acknowledged the U.S. vote was crucial.

"If the United States backed off — which I don't plan on, but anything can happen — this type of action wouldn't be possible and so we would have to consider the Syrian question in another way," he said.

More than 100,000 dead, 2 million fled Syria

Since the outbreak of the Syria conflict in March 2011, the two sides have fought to a stalemate, though the Assad regime has retaken the offensive in recent months. Rebel fighters control large rural stretches in northern and eastern Syria, while Assad is holding on to most of the main urban areas.

The Syrian conflict, which began as a popular uprising against Assad in March 2011, later degenerated into a civil war that has killed more than 100,000 people.

The UN refugee agency said Tuesday that the number of Syrians who have fled the country has surpassed the two million mark.

Along with more than four million people displaced inside Syria, this means more than six million Syrians have been uprooted, out of an estimated population of 23 million.

Antonio Guterres, head of the Office for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, said Syria is losing an average of almost 5,000 citizens a day who are heading across its borders, many of them with little more than the clothes they are wearing. Nearly 1.8 million refugees have fled in the past 12 months alone, he said.

The agency's special envoy, actor Angelina Jolie, said "some neighbouring countries could be brought to the point of collapse" if the situation keeps deteriorating at its current pace.

Most Syrian refugees have fled to Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey.

With files from CBC

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