Timmy Hos sets up shop in the great white north
Tim Hortons announced this week that they’ll be expanding into one of the few remaining places in Canada still free from the signature brown paper cups and Timbits. The three planned shops will be set up in in Iqaluit, Nunavut, in partnership with the North West Company, the once iconic fur trading outfit now turned retail company. Iqaluit’s 6,200 residents will no longer have to tote boxes crammed with dozens of doughnuts on inbound flights from airports outside of the region. No word yet if the menu will expand to include seal snack wrappers.
Randy Quaid flees from “star whackers”
There’s a large conspiracy afoot in Hollywood and Randy Quaid, best know as cousin Eddie in the National Lampoon’s Vacation franchise, believes he’s the next on the hit list of the “star whackers.” Quaid and his wife, fearing for their lives, are claiming asylum in a Vancouver immigration court following an arrest by Canada Border Services Agency for outstanding U.S. warrants. Quaid believes a nefarious cabal is behind some of the recent deaths of Hollywood stars including Heath Ledger and David Carradine, and claimes that their deaths are surrounded by “odd, mysterious circumstances.” The couple said they were in Canada to accept an award from a film critic group and that they were considering moving to Vancouver to restart Quaid’s movie career.
So much for being a friendly neighbour, eh?
The conservative government is planning to overhaul the “abused” and “exploited” immigration policies of Canada by introducing Bill C-49, otherwise known as the Preventing Human Smugglers From Abusing Canada’s Immigration System Act. At the Port of Vancouver, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney and Public Safety Minister Vic Toews announced the details of the recently tabled bill, which include a minimum sentence of 10 years for anyone caught smuggling in more than 50 people and not allowing smuggled immigrants to apply for residency for five years. Critics were quick to point out that without added resources it would be difficult to enforce and that determining who is a smuggler and who is being smuggled would be nearly impossible to determine.
Khadr pleads guilty at Guantanamo Bay
Nearly a decade later, Omar Khadr’s legal odyssey seems to be approaching an end after the Canadian government accepted Khadr’s guilty plea deal. The deal will allow Khadr to return to Canada to serve the rest of his sentence following a maximum of one year in Guantanamo Bay prison facility. Dennis Edney, Khadr’s lawyer, told the CBC that Khadr will face a maximum of eight years in Canadian prison and then will follow standard parole procedures. Khadr, only 14 at the time, was arrested by U.S. soldiers in July 2002 for allegedly throwing a grenade and killing Sgt. Christopher Speer. Edney said that Khadr “would have confessed to anything, including the killing of John F. Kennedy, just to get out of [that] hellhole.”
