WHITEHORSE, Yukon - Small beginnings. Men, capable of rattling chains in high places, are snooping into the complicated Allen Carlos case.

 

Inquiries are being made about the nest of federal "justice" employees and regulatory authorities whose combined efforts committed excessive bureaucratic abuse against the Whitehorse resident.

 

The more people learn, the more agitated they are to think their own government can drag a lone man into the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) to decide the intent behind the word "storage" that Parliament neglected to define in legislation and the Criminal Code.

 

To boot, the whole thing was rooted in a personal vendetta.

 

Two female feds filed unfounded accusations in 1999 with the RCMP, who investigated and shelved the incident as silly. Later, the report was resuscitated by others.

 

The whole sordid mess begs for an independent public inquiry. Infractions against his civil rights range from a bogus and embellished application for a search warrant to a rigged decision handed down by the SCC on April 17.

 

Some see the SCC ruling as a step closer to a police state and should serve as an incentive for the five-member Carlos family to seek asylum in the United States on grounds of political persecution.

 

It is scandalous to drive an ordinary citizen into the highest court simply because he was lawfully going about his personal business of loading guns during routine handling and inspection of them in the privacy of his home.

 

What happened to the day when private lives of law-abiding citizens were private without the state's encorachment? A man's house used to be his castle. Now the right to be secure against unreasonable search and seizure (s. 8 Charter)has been turned into an open season for police and inspectors to walk in and take what they want, when they want.

 

The SCC ruling convicted Carlos of three firearms storage infractions for which two lower courts acquitted him because the guns were considered to be "in use". The Crown's appeal was an "as of right" nuisance the SCC was obliged to hear.

 

The five-paragraph, summary-style decision was read within 10 minutes of the seven-justice panel hearing 90 minutes of argument from the Crown and defence lawyers.

 

The ruling is virtually meaningless, except to specifically convict Carlos. It quotes no law to substantiate the reason behind the ruling. Judges in lower courts will still have to grapple with what the SCC intended by "temporary" storage as opposed to "short interruption" in handling which may or may not constitute storage.

 

The matter was referred back for sentencing to Ontario-based deputy judge Deborah Livingstone, who refused to quash the search warrant but acquitted Carlos after hearing his case in territorial court in July 2000.

 

The Crown and defence will submit written arguments regarding sentencing. I have been appearing in court on Carlos' behalf every week or so while both sides figured out a schedule. The matter has now been adjourned to August 2 when a date for sentencing will be afixed.

 

The storage charges and conviction offend my sense of natural rights, fair and natural justice and raises my ire. The charges carry jail time. If a cell is part of the equation, then I am serving the sentence on the condition somebody pays my bills while I'm away.

 

Yes, of course, I can act as surrogate. Truscott, Milgaard, Morin, Marshall, Nelson are but a few names on the list of many who were raped by the system and served time for somebody else.

 

I can write inside a closet; Carlos has to be on the land, even though in the 57-page application for a search warrant some government wonk wrongly accused him of being "unemployed", which was translated into "dangerous".

 

God, give me strength. Carlos hasn't been "unemployed" in the nearly 30 years I've known him. He just doesn't draw a government cheque like those regulatory authorities who are resentful of his successes.

 

Carlos earns his money honourably, through brains and sweat of the brow as an independent hardrock mineral prospector. He is self-employed, not "unemployed". Minerals come from the earth. He has to be on the land to find them. Get it?

 

The expert woodsman needs his firearms for protection while working in the wilds, too. Yet the "justice" department--in its "wisdom"--predicted he was a "threat to society and to his family", albeit he was never charged with such nor was he ever removed from his home. Therefore, the search warrant became what is known in legal vernacular as a "poisoned" warrant.

 

A year had passed before the police finished their "vacations, rotations and whatnot" and stormed the family's upscale suburban home.

 

The four police officer seized his gun collection with a warrant that said he was a "risk to society and to his family". But they ignored the other tools of his trade. Sharp knives and axes are always "loaded", he contends.

 

The Liberals had Carlos marked for special treatment "since way back when" in order to send a message to the gun community: "Be good, obedient little Canadians. Bow down and show your love for Our Regulations...or you're next."

 

One gun guy, not quaking in his boots over the heavy-hand of the Canadian gun-grabbers, posted a clever Internet notice: "Buy a Gun - Help a Citizen."

 

"You can show Al Carlos your support (not to mention your solidarity with the Responsible Firearms Coalition) by making an offer on a nice little pistol."

 

A bidder offered higher than market value because the money was earmarked for the Al Carlos Legal Trust Fund, cached over in the Bank of Montreal, 111 Main Street, Whitehorse, Yukon, Y1A 2A7, Transit 0998, account no. 8075-985.

 

Just as judgments are often swayed by mob-think these days in the name of "judicial activism", sentencing is often decided the same way, too. This "mob of one", who knows the police shouldn't have been in the Carlos house, believes strongly that the accused deserves an absolute discharge and no criminal record.

 

His valuable firearms, including the adolescent daughter's Annie Oakley Commemorative grouse gun, should be returned in the same mint condition as when the Gang of Four seized the collection on February 15, 2000.

 

Two young officers attending were as puzzled by the purpose of the raid as were Mr. and Mrs. Carlos and their grown son. They had promised Paula Carlos to take care of the firearms while the valuable collection remained in custody.

 

This "mob of one" believes financial recompense should be awarded by the federal government, which is hiding a Supreme Court Challenge Fund from Carlos (and me) somewhere in the "justice" department in Ottawa.

 

This "mob of one" believes Carlos deserves an apology from the RCMP, the "justice" department, the Chief Firearms Officer, the feminists who filed unsubstantiated complaints, which were not sworn affidavits, and from the federal mining regulatory agents who manipulated the complainants, notably Leo VanKalsbeek (also a special RCMP constable), and David Latowski, who has never met Carlos.

 

In a statutory declaration, which will become public when filed with the court, I named names. The notarized document reiterates Latowski's verbatim interview with CBC radio at 7:30 a.m. on January 20, 1999. Only the afternoon before had the two female feds lodged complaints with the police--an innocuous event only deemed newsworthy by CBC.

 

The document discusses some unsavory details surrounding this case in which the Carlos family has been maliciously maligned, attacked and debated at great emotional and financial costs for undue reasons.

 

I address state persecution of its citizenry and the huge stakes Crown attorneys have in winning cases to enhance their careers. I give examples of government agents, who are supposed to be public servants, withholding services from the public over at Red Square, a.k.a. Elijah Smith federal building.

 

Since the livelihood and future of an independent prospector and his family depends on a healthy mining industry, the document discusses bureaucrats making arbitrary, anti-mining policies, which often conflict with statutes.

 

Regulatory authorities, who are given too much "discretionary power", have a lengthy history of running roughshod over the constitutional rights of individuals as well as companies.

 

Over the last 30 years, environmentalists who influence the law and environmental sympathizers who enforce it, have managed to destroy the hardrock mining industry. They are currently working to dismantle the placer mining industry.

 

The territory has no economy. More than 10 percent of the Yukon population moved out of the territory within the last three years in search of jobs that pay money. Residents, reliant on the resource sectors, actual feel threatened by their own federal and territorial governments.

 

Each department is represented by blindly devoted officers who enforce regulations as though they were "prohibition orders". Their actions are a direct assault on miner's and the prospector's livelihood, investment, property, legal security of tenure, as well as a threat to his ability to earn a living in this territory.

 

Carlos, who was protecting his rights, property and means to earn a living the only way he knew how, exercised his freedom of expression while trying to fend off attacks from a huge gang of Goliahs who represent:

 

The Department of Indian Affairs and No Development; mining land-use division; water resources branch; lands branch; Department of Fisheries and Oceans; environment department; justice department; Yukon Renewable Resources; Yukon Protected Areas Secretariat; Development Assessment Process Secretariat, plus others.

 

Before joining the Yukon exodus, exploration geologist Jim McFaull summed up the situation: "In eastern Europe, in the 19th century, an act such as this was termed a 'pogrom'. In Nazi Germany, in the 1930s, an act like this was termed 'the final solution'.

 

"In Yugoslavia, in the 1980s and 1990s, an act like this was termed 'ethnic cleansing'. In the Yukon today, an act like this is termed 'saving the environment from the miners'.

 

"The end result is always the same," he reminded.

 

These powermongers can do and say anything they want without risk of reprisals. Anybody else who dares voice an opinion without protection of a uniform, labour union or position of title gets arrested.

 

Carlos lost one battle. But the war isn't over by a long shot. The fight for the defence of the wrongly convicted isn't over until I say it's over, just as stalwarts have vowed the gun fight isn't over until they say it's over. Carlos' troubles have possibly done more than any one single factor to help galvanize the gun community nationwide.

 

As soon as the dysfunctional gun registry dies from lack of nourishment and shredders are working overtime gobbling the odious firearms act and regulations--which tread on fundamental rights and freedoms of every individual, gun owner or not--and Carlos has shed his shackles, a major victory can be declared.

 

Allen Carlos will be heralded as the vanguard who led what Mark Twain would have described as a "strike for liberty, a struggle for a principle, a stand against injustice and oppression."

 

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