Canada and the World

Hi! For whatever reason I am not able to post my comment for the article below, so I'll post is as a new post!

Let me ask something to anybody who is reading this blog post right now. I am certain that most of you knew that Aboriginals were the original founders of our nation, Canada and that they were the first group of Canadians; however, how many of you know that they are considered as one of the founding nations of Canada in the Constitution, along with the English and French. Few Canadians are also unaware that up until the 1983-87, the First Nations People were excluded from taking part in the Constitutional developments of Canada. On top of that, First Nations peoples have had to deal with conditions of extreme poverty and isolation, and geographical dispersion, not only from the rest of Canada but within diversity of aboriginal cultures, languages and political views. Hence, it does not come as any surprise to me that now, almost a decade after the world stepped into the 21st century; Aboriginal women still have to run away from their homes in order to make their own choices about motherhood. It is ridiculous and preposterous to see that in a nation where the Charter of Rights created by Pierre Trudeau and signed into law by Queen Elizabeth II of Canada on April 17 1982 plays such a significant role in every aspect of the country, the original founders of Canada does not have the freedom to make maternal choices. I believe that if there is anybody to be blamed for this then it is the dark chapters of Canada’s history.
In the early 1970s, the Indian Act was passed and this prevented the First Nations to not only form their own political parties but to even speak in their own language and follow their traditions. Going farther back in history, around 1928, innocent Aboriginal children were sent to government-funded and Christian run residential schools were the children were taught to be “civilized.” Here, the children started each morning with prayers and other Christian religious services followed by classes were they learned to “fit” into the Canadian culture. How ironic is it that the founders of Canada themselves have to rebuild and change themselves to fit into a different culture created by “foreigners” who took over their land? Moreover, in these schools were they were supposedly being taught to be civilized and good Christians, the children faced tremendous physical, emotional and yes, sexual abuse as well. Nonetheless, that was history and now the Aboriginals are now considered to have the same rights as any other Canadian. Nonetheless, the reason why I blame this cruel history for these women’s pain is because if it was not for the isolation that these Aboriginals faced for generations now, their thoughts would have progressed and become more liberal and acceptant of abortion and single motherhood. Since they have been excluded from the fast progressing Canadian society, their values and beliefs did not get a chance to develop fast enough to match the rights that a Canadian woman that is not of the Aboriginal descend.
If you think about it, this is really quiet sad and pathetic and it is not enough for the government of Canada to just have the abortion facilities in the reserves. I also wonder how long can Yee, the woman mentioned in this article continue to help these young females single-handedly. I believe that the government of Canada should expose Aboriginals to more progressive Canadian thinking and by that I do not mean that send them to residential schools again. What I mean is that we should give them time to get used to these new ideas of rights and freedom. I believe to some extent they are also constantly battling the fear of losing their culture again like many groups of First Nations have through the torturous history and hence feel that it is important to hold onto traditional values. As a result, we need to assure them that their values, culture and beliefs will not be snatched away from them and slowly allow them step out of their shells. One of the first steps towards doing this is to give them more opportunities to come out of the isolated reserves and try to adapt to the new lifestyle changes. It might be a lot to ask for; however, in the long run, it might actually be a good idea.
I chose this article because a lot of times this group of people is ignored. It is not enough to give their history a couple of pages in the history textbooks. Canadians should know about them thoroughly and completely. It is a dark past of Canada and in some ways, a lot of the story is untold and I believe that it is time to make their problems, negligence and hardships known to the rest of the nation.

Joanna Smith
Ottawa Bureau

The narrow staircase leading down to the basement has fewer than a dozen steps but getting to the bottom can be a difficult task.

“It’s not that fancy, but it’s cozy and comfortable,” Jessica Yee says as she walks past a basement bedroom in a hallway stacked with plastic storage containers and a portable closet stuffed with clothes.

Black birds, flying on the wind through bright red leaves, are stenciled on the wall above the concrete floor.

Only a handful of girls and women have made it this far.

This brown-brick house with green trim nestled on a quiet side street in a lively Toronto neighbourhood has served as the end of the road – and, in a way, a new beginning – for six or seven travelers over the past two years.

Their histories and realities have varied – they ranged from 14 years old to about twice that age; some were mothers already and some were not – but besides being female they all have at least four things in common.

They came from remote rural communities. They were Aboriginal. They were pregnant. They did not want to be.

They also shared the same reproductive rights as any other Canadian woman, including the one that allows them to terminate an unwanted pregnancy if they so choose.

But because of geographical distance, a lack of confidentiality in their small communities and a complex cultural stigma surrounding abortion, they had to journey down the narrow staircase to that basement bedroom for those rights to mean very much at all.

The way that Valerie Gideon, regional director for Ontario of the First Nations Inuit Health Branch at the federal health department, explains it, accessing an abortion is a straightforward process once an Aboriginal woman informs the registered nurse or visiting primary care physician that she wants to terminate her pregnancy.

“She would be provided with all that information about what those options would be, what services are available to her . . . and then if she made an informed decision where she wanted to access the service then she would be referred to the appropriate centre,” said Gideon, added that a federal program would cover the cost of transportation, meals and accommodation.

Yee and other women who work with these communities explain the process is far more complicated than that.

The eldest daughter of a Mohawk mother and a Chinese father, the 24-year-old Yee is already a highly respected activist in the pro-choice movement, something which she prefers to call the fight for ‘reproductive justice’, given there are many women she feels have no real choice to begin with.

As the founder and executive director of the Native Youth Sexual Health Network she spends her days flying across Canada and the United States speaking about everything from disease prevention and gay rights to cultural competency and access to abortion.

And every so often Yee has opened her doors to someone who has travelled alone on a bus hundreds of kilometers away from home so she could seek an abortion in Toronto, because if you are an Aboriginal woman living in a remote Northern Ontario community, that can be the only way to get one.

“It can be a really frightening experience for some people,” says Yee, whose support for the houseguests is volunteer work separate from her day job. “On the one hand, people just want to get it over with and get here, but on the other hand, if they’ve never travelled by plane, by bus, by anything – that is where we step in.”

They and the women she refers to other safe havens across the country come to her from a wide network of pro-choice contacts she has made throughout her travels, who often keep their positions secret until they hear through the grapevine that someone needs help.

She can pick them up at the bus station, give them a bed to sleep in – especially pregnant girls too young to book a motel on their own – escort them to the clinic and listen to their stories and concerns.

To explain why she feels this generosity is necessary, Yee likes to refer to an interactive map of the country put together by the abortion rights group Canadians for Choice that shows where women can find service providers.

She notes how few of them are located outside the biggest cities.

“If you look at the map. . . who does that really affect? Who lives there?” Yee says at her kitchen table, where a red laptop is plastered with stickers about sex education and Mohawk pride. “We live there, as Aboriginal people.”

It is not surprising that geographical distance would be a barrier for abortion-seeking women living in remote Aboriginal communities, given that getting to a city hospital to see a specialist for something as simple as migraines can be just as difficult for anyone living on an isolated reserve.

It is not the full story.

Secrets are hard to keep in small communities, especially when a woman needs to get permission from her band council – which Health Canada says is done upon the referral of a health care professional without disclosing any details – to pay for the travel.

A family physician who performs about a dozen abortions a month in northern Canada says this can happen even though health care professionals are required by law to keep medical information confidential.

“The person that works at the front desk, who will be Aboriginal from that community, knows everybody in town – knows your mother,” says the doctor, who asked not to be identified for security reasons.

The doctor said language can also be factor, especially in areas where indigenous languages are still strong, because a patient often needs to bring a family member as an interpreter.

There is also a deeply ingrained cultural stigma that surrounds the abortion debate in Aboriginal communities.

Conservative MP Rod Bruinooge (Winnipeg South), who chairs the parliamentary pro-life caucus, says his Aboriginal background informs his stance against abortion.

“My aboriginal elders have taught me that the cycle of life honours both birth and death, and respect for the unborn is a foundation of this philosophy,” Bruinooge, who did not respond to an interview request for this article, wrote in the National Post in December 2008.

This position frustrates Yee because she believes it tries to paint all indigenous belief systems with the same brush and ignores a cultural history of abortion that she argues was distorted by the role of the church in colonization and the tragic residential school system.

Yee says midwifery tends now to be fully focused on the act of giving birth, whereas it used to include knowledge of how to terminate an unwanted pregnancy.

“We don’t have words for ‘abortion’, but we have words for ‘How do you make your period come?’” says Yee. “What are the teas, the herbs, the plants, the medicines for if you can’t carry a child to term – if there was war, if there was famine, if there was disease in the community.”

Yee worries about this cultural stigma being reinforced by outsiders.

She says she has a friend who was interning as a nurse in a northern Ontario community when a young woman came in for a pregnancy test. The result was positive and the white doctor grabbed a bottle of prenatal vitamins before going in to tell his patient the news.

Yee says her friend asked him what he was doing, given it was possible the patient did not intend to go through with the pregnancy and he dismissed her objections.

“He was like, ‘Well, this is an Aboriginal community and you’re new here and you just don’t know that they don’t do that,’” says Yee.

And there is one 21-year-old woman who came to Toronto from northern Ontario who sticks out in her mind. She was in an abusive relationship, had no access to birth control in her community and had decided to have an abortion because she was trying to get her child back from provincial care.

“She was such a champion of her own health care, (considering) what she had to go through to get here,” says Yee.

MATTHEW FISHER

KANDAHAR AIRFIELD, Afghanistan — Brig.-Gen. Daniel Menard, commander of Canadian Forces in Afghanistan, was sacked Saturday for alleged conduct unbecoming an officer.

The decision by Lt.-Gen. Marc Lessard, who commands all Canadian troops overseas, was made following allegations made earlier in the day, that Menard had had an inappropriate intimate relationship with someone in Task Force Kandahar. This had “caused Commander CEFCOM to lose confidence in Brig.-Gen Menard’s capacity to command,” officials said in a statement that was released just before dawn on Sunday in Kandahar.

An investigation is being conducted into the allegations and Menard, who was to command the biggest NATO campaign of the war in Kandahar in the next few weeks, is to return to Canada immediately, a military spokesman at Kandahar Airfield said.

Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan and civilian employees, including journalists embedded alongside them, must follow very strict rules governing behaviour with each other. No intimate personal relationships are allowed in theatre, including those involving married couples deployed at the same time.

“Sexual activity or any other form of intimate contact in any context with another individual is prohibited anywhere in the Joint Task Force Afghanistan Area of Operations,” according to theatre standing orders governing personal relationships.

Brig.-Gen Jon Vance, who preceded Menard as commander in Afghanistan, is being rushed to Kandahar to take over for Menard. Vance will command the Canadian task force again until September when Menard’s nine-month tour had been scheduled to end. Vance is to be replaced by Brig.-Gen. Dean Milner, who was also to have replaced Menard.

Task Force Kandahar will be commanded for the next few days by Col. Simon Hetherington, the current deputy commander of Canada’s 2,800 soldiers in Afghanistan.

“As soon as Gen. Lessard became aware of the allegations on May 29, he made the assessment and the decision,” Hetherington said in confirming that Menard had been relieved of command at 2:20 p.m. ET.

“I am not happy to bring you this news,” Hetherington told a small gathering of reporters at 4:30 a.m. Kandahar time.

“It is what it is.”

“I can’t discuss any details of anything that is under investigation. Nor can I go into information on the identity of the alleged other person . . .

“The allegations against Gen. Menard are just that, allegations against Gen. Menard.”

Menard joined the Royal 22nd Regiment as an infantry officer in 1984. Being only 42 years old and already a flag officer, he was considered one of the army’s top young commanders.

Only last Tuesday, Menard pleaded guilty at a court martial in Gatineau, Que., to negligently discharging his rifle. That incident, which took place in March, involved Menard inadvertently firing his rifle as he was about to board a U.S. army helicopter in Kandahar with Canada’s top soldier, Gen. Walt Natynczyk.

Menard was fined $3,500 for the negligent discharge and had only returned to Kandahar on Thursday evening after three weeks of leave in Canada.


“This will be very interesting weeks and months. We are looking forward to it,” Menard said when encountered in a cafeteria hours after he returning here from Canada. The general was referring to a major campaign against the Taliban that he was expected to lead this summer that many believe is the most critical of the eight-year war against the Taliban.


Soldiers waking up to the news in Kandahar on Sunday morning expressed shock and disbelief at the allegations against Menard, but declined to discuss their thoughts on the record.

Asked whether it might effect the military’s standing among the public, Hetherington said: “I don’t see it as a mark against the Canadian military, at all.”


Menard’s emergency replacement, Vance, left Afghanistan on Nov. 25 after a nine-month tour in which the Canadian task force began, for the first time, to live among the Afghan population in small communities to the southwest of Kandahar City. It was a counter-insurgency tactic that was later applauded by U.S army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top NATO commander in Afghanistan, who personally visited Vance three times to discuss ways the program could be implemented across Afghanistan.

“It is an administrative and logistics matter to get Gen. Vance here,” Hetherington said. “Gen. Vance is likely to arrive here in five to seven days; call it a week . . .

“It can be assumed that he was selected because of his recent Afghan experience. His reputation with the allies is sound. He is a proven, professional officer.”



http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Canadian+commander+Afghanistan+fired+alleged+relationship/3088294/story.html

Robert Benzie
Queen’s Park Bureau Chief

JERUSALEM—Premier Dalton McGuinty came to one of the oldest cities in the world to discuss a future of clean water and green energy with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

McGuinty, who has been treated like a head of state in his trade tour of Israel, pointedly did not discuss politics in this holy and disputed city.

“We didn’t get into that at all,” he told reporters Monday at the Jaffa Gate before privately touring the Old City of Jerusalem and praying at the Western Wall.

“We quickly discovered that while we live continents apart (and) have different political circumstances and different histories, when it comes to building an economy we’re actually on the same track and we can and should do more together.”

While the premier is visiting the West Bank on Thursday and Beirut on Friday, Israel’s ongoing tensions with its Arab neighbours — including controversial Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem — were not broached.

Indeed, the one-hour meeting in Netanyahu’s office, coming the day after McGuinty had an eventful audience with Israeli President Shimon Peres, began on a light note.

“So this is your first visit?” Netanyahu asked him.

“My very first visit — Israel is a small country with a big history,” the premier replied.

“It’s about the size of Canada,” Netanyahu cracked, ignoring the fact Israel is just 1/450th the size of Canada


“We’re just the opposite. Big country, small history,” said McGuinty.

Unlike the session Sunday with Peres, where the president sold the premier on a new “virtual” Israel-Ontario brain research institute, the Netanyahu meeting was held behind closed doors after a one-minute photo-op.

“Very positive, very constructive — one of the most constructive and positive meetings that I’ve ever had with an international leader,” a visibly pleased McGuinty said afterward.

“We ended the meeting by saying that what we’ll do is we’ll put in writing a concrete proposal because there are so many different areas and in particular we want to focus on the brain research, water, energy and renewables,” he said.

Netanyahu, who is travelling to Canada later this week and will speak Sunday to more 5,000 people at Toronto’s Direct Energy Centre to launch the United Jewish Appeal’s Walk With Israel, was keen to learn about Ontario’s efforts on education.

“He wanted to know what we were doing in Ontario in terms of education, how it was working, why it was working. He asked if we might immediately set up during the course of this trip another meeting between his education people and some of our people,” said McGuinty.

The Israeli leader was especially interested in Ontario’s new all-day learning for 4- and 5-year-olds, which is being phased in starting in September, and in the province’s success at posting online school rankings based on standardized tests results.

“Then we switched gears and we talked about energy from renewables. That’s a big issue here as well, obviously. They’re trying to reduce their energy from . . . carbon-based fuels so we have some common ground there,” the premier said.

“Then we talked about water. They have a tremendous expertise here. They’re very conservation-oriented. They understand that there are global opportunities as well. Then we talked about the proposal put forward (Sunday) by President Peres and he was very keen on that as well.”

Netanyahu’s warmth toward McGuinty is in part fuelled by Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s staunchly pro-Israel stance that has Canadians very popular here.

Earlier Monday, in Tel Aviv, Jon Allen, Canada’s ambassador to Israel, told Ontario delegates with McGuinty that “we are at the apex of a bilateral Canada-Israel relationship.”

McGuinty noted Israel’s “innovation-based economy,” and agreed Ontario can learn from Israel and vice versa. “It’s a simple but profound truth that we’re doing well on our own but we can do better together.”

Dr. Eli Opper, the chief scientist for Israel’s Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labour, said collaboration is key.

“So you need to be modest or humble to accept the notion that you can’t go it alone with your knowledge,” Opper told the Ontario delegation.

“Even the largest companies in the world are aware of the fact that the state-of-the-art new products, they do not have all the new knowledge they are needing. So the answer is cooperation.”

OTTAWA – The G8 should ensure that women have access to safe abortions in developing countries where the procedure is allowed, the United Nations Secretary General said.

That was the closest that Ban Ki-Moon came Wednesday to crossing swords with Prime Minister Stephen Harper over what he called a vital plan to cut maternal and child mortality in the third world when Canada hosts the G8 and G20 summits next month.

Critics say the Conservative edict that no Canadian aid money go to funding abortions effectively rubs out a portion of the good work that industrialized nations can do for desperate, and desperately poor, mothers.

But Ban played the sphynx on a day-long visit to Ottawa.

He urged Canada as host of the summits to propel the world toward meeting one of the eight Millenium Development Goals – improving maternal health – that come due in 2015 but declined to cite the UN’s own studies, which show that access to safe abortions in the developing world would cut the number of women who need care from the complications of the procedure from 8.5 million to 2 million.

In fact, a spokesperson for Harper, Dimitri Soudas, said the issue of abortion never even came up in a 45-minute discussion that focused in part on Canada’s signature initiative for the G8.

Behind the scenes, though, it may be a different story.

Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff said after meeting Ban that the seasoned South Korean diplomat was on the Liberal side of what has become a political football match.

“I made it very clear to the secretary general that we support initiatives on maternal and child health but that they must guarantee full reproductive rights for women,” he said. “He made it pretty clear to me that if we’re going to maintain those Millenium Development Goals, we have to offer the full range of reproductive health services for women.”

Ban committed just one diplomatic breach in a day spent avoiding thorny matters such as abortion, a proposed global bank tax, disorganized rebuilding efforts in Haiti and the U.S. military tribunal of Omar Khadr at Guantanamo Bay.

Just before meeting with a government that has condemned the 1997 Kyoto climate change deal and refused to meet with its emission reduction targets, he urged Canada to change course and “comply fully with … the Kyoto Protocol.”

And he said he wants the G20 meetings in Toronto, where the global economy is the primary agenda item, to keep in mind the dangers posed by climate change and “push for a green recovery for the global economic crisis.”

Climate change has come up at previous G20 meetings and Harper said he anticipated “a range of subject matters will be talked about, including climate change.”

But the economy is at the top of the list of the G20, he said.

“That is its mission.”

Bank taxes, bailouts and bloated deficits around the world will be top of mind, but Ban urged Canada not to lose site of the billions of people living in poverty, and of outstanding commitments by the developed world to raise the global standard of living

The sharp decrease in the rate of malaria infection, improvement in child health, school enrollment and food production show that success is possible, but only if accompanied by political will, he said.

And the need for that will is urgent.

“You simply do not have any idea how many poor people … are starving to death,” he said.

KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN—When the paramount concern is death by Taliban suicide attack, the little things go unnoticed.

So small wonder that nobody – not the Canadian police, nor the American MPs, nor even the Afghan cops – was aware of the pungent little plant at their feet Tuesday afternoon as they stepped with considerable relief back inside the bomb-pocked walls of the Afghan Provincial Police Headquarters in downtown Kandahar.

Together, they had just completed an extended foot patrol through the heart of the city the Taliban vows will soon be theirs again. They rubbed shoulders with hundreds upon hundreds of Kandaharis – everyday people far more accustomed to soldiers barging through town in hermetically sealed armoured vehicles.

And from the Toronto Star’s vantage, a good three-quarters of Kandahar was happy to meet them face to face, eye to eye. Better this than being run off the road by a convoy of LAVs. There were many smiles, waves and friendly “Salaams.” Bakers handed out flatbread fresh from the oven to the passing patrol. One woman even reached beneath her burqa, wagging a hand of welcome.

It was a sitting-duck scenario and everyone knew it. But however nerve-ratting the job of dismounting and patrolling on foot – one of the Americans on Tuesday called it a “sphincter-tightener” – it also is crucial to the counter-insurgency strategy NATO is rolling out to bring the population to its side.

And crucially, there were newly minted Afghan police in the mix, all graduates of the Canadian-led training program at nearby Camp Nathan Smith, where RCMP, OPP, even Toronto cops still toil in relative obscurity.

Back safely at police HQ – and don’t kid yourself, this much-bombed compound is a routine target of insurgents, most recently a multiple-suicide bomb attack in March – one each of the Canadians, Americans and Afghans was selected to line up for a valedictory photo.

Which brings us to the little plant. There at their feet, right inside police headquarters, stood a thriving foot-high marijuana shrub.

Joint patrol, indeed.

Call it a reality check. For several days now, the small gaggle of reporters here at Camp Nathan Smith have been subjected to bit of a dog-and-pony show on the wonders of police training – well-intentioned Canadian police officers leading us from the classroom to the firing range, assessing with carefully scripted enthusiasm the six-week course that currently is transforming some 50 young and job-hungry Afghan men into fully fledged policemen.

And truth be told, things look better than they did some two years ago, when Kandaharis complained the then payless and endemically corrupt police were robbing them blind. For starters and most importantly, pay reform is starting to work for the cops of Kandahar City (if not the outlying districts) – the rank and file now receive regular monthly stipends of 12,000 to 15,000 Afghanis ($260 to $325), more than enough to live on without shaking down the citizenry for their daily bread.

What is especially striking is the extent to which the Canadian police mentors have extended their own footprint – volunteers from cop-shops across Canada now are venturing out regularly to all 12 Kandahar police substations to monitor the progress of their newly minted trainees. In so doing, they are taking chances far beyond what the rest of the NATO civilian police mentors do.

A case in point: Toronto Police Service Const. Amir Butt (one of 11 Toronto police in the program) two days ago ventured out to dangerous District 9, a transient-filled patch of the city, when word came that a batch of his graduates had uncovered an IED.

“I just needed to make sure they were following through. Their job is to create a ring of security so local Afghan civilians don’t stumble onto the bomb and get killed. But sometimes they just call and tell us its there and then they run away,” Butt told the Star.

“But they got it right this time. And the only way we can be sure is to go out there and see for ourselves.”

Two years ago a chronic Kandahari complaint was the lack of Pashtoons in a police force dominated by Afghanistan’s more northern ethnicities – Uzbek, Tajik, Hazara. The current crop of trainees includes 33 Pashtoons in a class of 50. The other 17, all Dari-speakers, learn in their own language – thus two sets of teachers offering guidance in both languages.

Moreover, the Canadians now have expanded their training to focus on the top with a modified leadership and management course, the intent being to train a new wave of Afghan cops capable of becoming trainers in their own right.

But now the caveats. For all the Canadian bravado – there was even a Mountie from Ottawa walking alongside the Afghan police in Tuesday’s precarious foot patrol – the reality is a full 50 per cent of the police trainees are illiterate, incapable of reading or writing in either language.

And even if you write off the pot plant found at police HQ as a weed borne by the wayward wind, Afghanistan’s fledgling police force is without question populated by plenty of pie-eyed pipers. And little wonder, given they are the most easily reachable fodder for insurgent bombs.

The attrition rate is massive. There is a constant dilemma of quantity versus quality. And with public approval for military involvement in Afghanistan on the wane just about everywhere, one gets the sense quantity is winning.

One final, awkward tangle is the fact that whatever strides are being made in police training, the ANP fall under the jurisdiction of the Afghan National Directorate of Security, or NDS – the very organization at the heart of the Canadian detainee scandal. It’s one of the reasons why everyone here at Camp Nathan Smith seems to be speaking in press releases – there’s political kryptonite up the food chain. And nobody wants to go there.

Privately, one senior Canadian development official here told the Star he feels disgust at how the detainee saga has consumed every molecule of oxygen on Canada’s role in the country. “It’s the only f—king story and it makes me sick. People have put their lives on the line to do so many other things that have gone completely unnoticed. It has made a lot of us bitter and twisted.”

Butt, the Toronto officer, is a touch more philosophical. Taking chances for the right reasons suits him, but he is under no illusion – Canada, he says, still is doing good work. But we almost certainly won’t be around long enough to see it through.

“It’s going to take years, obviously. But I see it working. And if we aren’t here to finish the job, I’m keeping faith that others will step in behind us. I just have to hope that is how it goes.”

Link: http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/afghanmission/article/807990--canadian-police-mentoring-in-afghanis