WE MUST LEARN LESSON OF MASSACRE

The guy shuffles into the back corner of Nicky's in mid-morning,
carrying his ample frame in a slow sway around the customers who have
filled the tables out front. He turns sideways and settles into a
chair, and he greets the guy he is meeting and he asks the girl for
coffee. He hears what I am saying to the guy I am sitting with, just
two tables away, and we are talking about the deaths of the four RCMP
officers in a place in Alberta nobody had ever heard of. They were
gunned down in the prime of their lives, shot dead by a madman who
hated the RCMP and who needed little provocation to release that hate
in a torrent of killing bullets.

"You know what's funny," said the guy in Nicky's, "well, maybe it's
not funny, but you know what's funny about this? I used to be a hunter
and when they brought that damn gun registry law in, I got rid of my
gun and I quit hunting. Stupidest thing that's ever been done. You
think that guy who killed those cops registered his guns?"

While he was talking like this, there were funerals being planned and
memorial services and tears were flowing and lives that were shattered
were being held close to the bosom of the country. And everybody who
knew the cop killer, whose name is Jim Roszko, who was 46 years old,
whose whole life was built on hate, everybody who knew this guy or who
knew of him was making sure to say how much in contempt they held him
and how they were glad he was dead. Jim Roszko had ended that bloody
morning on his farm northwest of Edmonton by putting the gun he killed
four cops with to his head and ending his own miserable life.

This savage moment in Canada's history has turned the country inside
out, and the country has been forced to look in the mirror. People
have attacked Canada's weak marijuana laws, gun control laws, the
RCMP, the Supreme Court of Canada, any target they can find to attach
the sticker of blame for this massacre. Roszko lived on a farm and
inside a barn he was growing marijuana. They are called grow-ops. They
are everywhere in this country, even here, and the people who run them
are dangerous. A former RCMP member, who investigated grow-ops, tells
of what the police are dealing with. "You have young men with guns or
knives or baseball bats guarding these places that are literally worth
hundreds of thousands of dollars. We are in an Al Capone
prohibition-type era." The marijuana industry is worth tens of
billions of dollars in Canada, and as much as seven billions of that
is in British Columbia.

The four Mounties who died at the Roszko farm went into the service
knowing that some day they could be killed in the line of duty. That
is what they chose to do. And nothing can ever bring them back, or
erase the terrible scars that have been left on their parents, they
wives, their children, their friends.

But now, as the graves remain fresh, the country should wage war on
drugs. They are taking over our youth, swallowing up our kids,
throwing away futures in the biggest and most profitable industry the
world has ever seen. Legalizing marijuana is the first issue that
should be cast aside. Long jail sentences should be handed out to
anybody who is dealing drugs, or manufacturing them. They have become
the scum of the earth, and they should be treated that way. They
destroy and they kill.

This country has for far too long shown more compassion for the
criminals than the victims. Our justice system for drug offenders is
as soft as jelly. It is spineless, and ignores the damage that has
been done.

How else can you explain a Jim Roszko, who was prohibited from
possessing fire arms, owning an arsenal of them on his farm, including
the assault rifle he used to kill the police with? Everybody is that
area knew how dangerous this man was, everybody knew he had weapons,
everybody knew he hated the RCMP? And from that you can only wonder
why the four RCMP who were sent in there seemed so naive that by the
time they realized how serious the situation was, it was too late. Jim
Roszko should have been put away long ago. But he wasn't. Why not?

It should not be allowed to happen again. The price for the
indifference of our justice system is too horrific.