SOME of the smuggled gold necklaces that entered the country illegally. Police photo.

GOLD ITEMS smuggled into Canada for the price of an airline ticket, according to police.

A Scarborough man and a company have been fined $1 million in court for operating a smuggling ring that snuck expensive gold jewellery into Canada.

The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) said Rahu Sinnathamby, and a company called Lovely Gold Inc., pleaded guilty in Brampton court last March to breaching two counts each under the Customs Act.

The smuggler was fined a total of $760,000, and he and the company ordered to pay $246,614 in regulatory penalties, according to a release from the CBSA.

They said a two-year investigation revealed that in October 2018 the parties enlisted travellers to bring gold jewellery as earrings, bracelets and other items from India to Canada.

The CBSA said evidence gathered during a two-year long investigation lead to the conviction of the man, and a corporation, for gold smuggling activities.

Investigators determined the ‘jewellery smuggling operation’ had been in operation for about 17 months and many smuggling trips were conducted.

The CBSA said in July 2018 the investigation identified a link to a separate traveller attempting to smuggle an even greater quantity of jewellery into Canada.

Court heard that the smugglers paid for the airline tickets of the travellers and ordered them not to declare the jewellery to border officials when they touched down at Pearson airport, where the scam was discovered.

“This successful prosecution highlights the tireless work and great investigative efforts of both CBSA border services officers and our criminal investigations team,” said Lisa Janes, the CBSA
Regional Director General. “The discovery of this jewellery smuggling scheme demonstrates our commitment to ensuring the integrity of Canada’s border laws and economy.”

Police said if you have information about the exploitation of the border for criminality, call the CBSA Border Watch Toll-free Line at 1-888-502-9060

COMEDY LEGENDS Wayne & Shuster in the Canadian military entertained our troops.

THE MIMICO MICE hockey team used the names of Leafs players to have fun.

This flashback is for the Toronto Maple Leafs failed run again for the Stanley Cup 2021.

Toronto comedy legends Johnny Wayne and Frank Shuster loved hockey and their highly-rated show dominated Canadian radio and then TV for nearly four decades.

The duo were members of Harbord Collegiate’s Oola Boola Drama Club, who wrote and produced their shows before signing a one-year contract with CBC radio in 1941.

They placed their promising careers on hold by signing up for the Canadian Army as infantry officers during WWII. Before long their comedic skills had them writing and producing The Army Show to entertain the troops.

The pair wrote hundreds of hugely funny skits, but one of their most memorable made Mimico residents proud of their imaginary hockey team called “The Mimico Mice.”

Wayne and Shuster would perform a 1946 mock match between the Mimico Mice, a two-player team, who would face-off against Toronto Maple Leafs, complete with authentic sound efforts from Maple Leaf Gardens and the late and legendary Foster Hewitt calling the play-by-play, using the names of actual Maple Leaf players of the era.

The sketch was a blast and guarantee to fetch a gut-busting laugh from hockey fans.

Shuster once said fans always remember and wanted to talk about the Mimico Mice. Here is a sample of their great comedic writing skills and love of Canada’s national sport.

“He’d go, ‘Wayne passes to Shuster, and Shuster goes down the ice.’ We’d lose about 110-0. Sometimes we got one goal for neatness,” Shuster said. “I still bump into people who say, ‘How are the Mimico Mice doing?'”

“We loved hockey anyway,” Shuster says. “I played pickup games and sold Eskimo Pies at Maple Leaf Gardens when I was in high school. Johnny was a regular at the games. He considered himself the number one Maple Leaf fan.”

Johnny and Wayne performed the hockey sketch for a U.S. audience on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1958. The bit involved brawling, yet highbrow, hockey players, and it ended with four players pulling out musical instruments to form a string quartet in the penalty box.

Through the late 1940s and early ’50s, Wayne and Shuster appeared on many Canadian and U.S. television programs but their breakthrough in the States came from The Ed Sullivan Show. Sullivan was so impressed by the Canadians that he invited them back 66 more times, a show record.

Wayne and Shuster, along with other artists, made it easier for other Canadian artists to penetrate the U.S. market.

The success of SCTV and their retirement in the 1980s finally opened English Canadian television to new voices of humour. Codco, Kids In The Hall, This Hour Has 22 Minutes, Red Green and The Royal Canadian Air Farce were some of the successful shows launched in the 1980s and ’90s.

Here’s hoping The Mimico Mice bring home the Stanley Cup.

It’s time to define what defunding the police means. It’s a question of ‘framing.’ If it means reducing the size of the Service – no!  If it means, RE-TASKING or restructuring the Service, we answer yes.

Removing funds achieves nothing; funding new responsibilities and redirecting accountability does. Are police necessary to regulate traffic or act as first responders to non-violent health care calls? Yet, we need skilled officers with better techniques to resolve violent conflict, investigate organized crime and encourage public accountability to our diverse population. It also requires all of us, as an involved community, to work together with the police to identify criminal conduct.

Police are insular, slow to modernize, or accept outside advice. I personally tried developing courses with them and was often met with a polite but reluctant thanks. Policing originated in the 1800s in Europe, The U.S. and Canada, as an arm of the Courts before evolving into its own entity. In Canada, policing is under the Solicitor General and is responsible for laying criminal charges but the decision to prosecute belongs to the Attorney General. It’s a check and balance.

Historically, most laws were written to protect property. In the Southern U.S., it was started to oversee the slave industry. If you have no property you have few rights to enforce; therefore, policing has an historical social-economic focus. An economic Theory goes, “the more people who own property, the less crimes of self-help.”

Today, the ‘street-cop’, still a quasi-military structure has more than the original purpose of property protection on their plate. We have added: social, psychological, health (drugs, pandemics), human rights, intellectual property, hate and such — a multitask. The generalist tries to be everything for everyone. Like many large institutions the Services resist change. In the past, hiring required physically large men to reflect power.

Once a very hefty, retired Long Branch officer, confided, “If I met a belligerent drunk at the old Long Branch Hotel — a regular Friday event, he could choose to have it ‘out’ around back or he could come along peacefully, sleep it off at the jail and go home – his choice, either way, no charges.” It was a Police Force, not a Service.

The term ‘Service’ has replaced ‘Force’ trying to market a new image for its multi-tasks. The street-cop’s role has become too challenging trying to satisfy diverse cultures and modern psychology. It’s too complicated for a generalist. Force is no longer the universal answer. What we need is certified uniform training and licenses to work in a variety of specialities

RE-TASKING, requires more than just a corporate declaration of new roles. It needs the officer’s personal

accountability for the job requirements. Policing is more than a job. It is a profession. Justice Tulloch, in his ‘Independent Police Oversight Review’ recognizes this need. He suggests, a professional body for policing, like England and Wales.”

Policing is a calling in the same way many doctors are called to medicine and teachers are called to teaching. Policing should be seen as a distinguished profession …. the requirements needed to enter and continue in the profession of policing in Ontario remain largely static, ill-defined, and inconsistent.

A police officer may be promoted for various reasons. Unlike some other professions, there is no standard educational requirement …. the hallmarks of a profession are a well-developed code of ethics. It provides members of the public with a clear idea of the values and responsibilities; they also serve as a mechanism for ensuring professional accountability.

Most professions have licensing requirements. This is the case for doctors, lawyers, electricians, architects, accountants, engineers, real estate brokers, teachers, and many other regulated professionals. It should set the standards for policing including standards on police education and training for both new recruits and seasoned officers.

The net effect would redirect the individual officer’s duty to the professional standards and not his colleagues. They would have to meet evidence-based standards of the licensing authority, the ‘College’, and could not work without a revocable license. “The goal of the Licensing Authority, the College, would be to develop a culture of professionalism in policing.” Criminal Conduct would still be enforceable by agencies such as the SIU.

Higher qualifications, means higher costs. We need to re-task not defund; hoping monies are diverted to other social agency is not a political competence. We closed Psychiatric Residential Facilities, promising to divert the savings to community housing. Ask some ‘street-people’ where’s the money. We are the problem. We start thinking taxes when we speak ‘costs. We must recognize — better performance means a price for quality goods. It’s your Ontario, you decide.

Judge Lloyd Budzinski retired after 28 years and was a former Crown Attorney, Defence Counsel and Onario’s Assistant Deputy Minister of Criminal Law. He was Chief Prosecutor in the high-profile trial of ex-RCMP officer Patrick Michael Kelly, who was found guilty of murder for throwing his wife from at 17-floor balcony in 1981.