Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you probably know by now that Canada’s women’s hockey team kicked ass at the Olympics yesterday. Claiming a 2-0 victory over Team USA, Canada’s women’s team took their third gold medal in as many Olympics.

But it seems that half an hour after the fans had left the arena, the locker room party spilled onto the ice and some of the women were spotted drinking beer (gasp!) and champagne (double gasp!) and smoking cigars (triple gasp!) on the ice while still kitted out in their team uniforms and wearing their gold medals. But the biggest shock is that Marie-Philip Poulin was apparently spotted taking part and she’s only eighteen (infinity gasp!!1!1eleven!!!).

Are you still with me? Do you need some smelling salts? Ok, carrying on…

The IOC’s executive director of the Olympic games, Gilbert Felli, after being tipped off by an AP reporter has launched an investigation into this behaviour and is quoted as saying:

“…that is not good. It is not what we want to see. I don’t think it’s a good promotion of sport values. If they celebrate in the changing room, that’s one thing, but not in public.”

“We will investigate what happened. … We will first find the facts and then act accordingly.”

Sucked into this “investigation” are the International Ice Hockey Federation, the Canadian Olympic Committee and Hockey Canada.

Hockey Canada‘s response last night was

“The members of Team Canada apologize if their on-ice celebrations, after fans had left the building, have offended anyone.”

“In the excitement of the moment, the celebration left the confines of our dressing room and shouldn’t have. The team regrets that its gold-medal celebration may have caused the IOC or COC any embarrassment.

“Our players and team vow to uphold the values of the Olympics moving forward and view this situation as a learning experience.”

Which I really think can be best summed up as “meh, our bad” and a possible “get a life, Gilbert”.

Oh, and for those going “but an eighteen-year old was drinking and BC’s age of majority is nineteen!” — she’ll be nineteen next month.

And she’s of legal age where she lives.

And she scored two points in the first round of the game.

Did I mention that we won by two points? I’m willing to cut her a bit of slack.

Trashee mentioned this in his week’s summary.

The Ottawa Sun is reporting that Jayhaed Saadé’s pirate radio station is off the air. It’s unclear what finally caused the plug to be pulled, just that he was being “forced to go off air”. Industry Canada’s threat of fines in the order of $5000/day probably played a role.

I didn’t hear his last broadcast, but people in the Digital Home forum said that someone could be heard in the background telling him to turn it off. Whether it was his father or someone from Industry Canada is unknown. He apparently is confident that his application for a broadcast license will be granted, something that most of the posters in the forum think is highly unlikely.

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Yesterday’s Ottawa Sun had an update on the pirate radio station being run by Jayhaed Saadé out of his dad’s business in Greely. Apparently, Saadé Jr. was being interviewed by the reporter when he found himself served with a second cease and desist notice.

“They’re telling me I have to take it down. I’m not taking it down,” he said Wednesday, minutes after the encounter.

This despite the fact that the letter from Industry Canada says he could face fines of $5000 a day and up to a year in jail. Absolutely incredible, not to mention stunningly stupid.

Georges Saadé, his father, finally seems to be realizing that they can’t win. According to Saadé Sr., both he and his wife have told Jayhaed to turn it off. Junior, it appears, is now not only ignoring cease and desist orders from Industry Canada, but also his parents.

“He’s hard-headed. He won’t do it,” Georges said Friday afternoon. “I know it’s not good for him to have it on anymore. I want him to turn it off.”

I’m not sure why this is such a hard thing to achieve. If his parents are really serious about him turning off the transmitter, they could flip the breakers, and if necessary get an electrician to completely disconnect the power.

What Junior doesn’t seem to realize is that the next time Industry Canada knocks at the door, it’ll probably be with police in tow and an order to surrender everything related to the operation of the pirate radio station, which could include Junior’s computers, mixers, the antenna, and everything else. And while he would probably have his computer returned and maybe the mixers, he won’t get the transmitter or antenna back. I’m not sure exactly how much it cost, but 2000 watt FM broadcast transmitters are not cheap.

I doubt he’s read my other posts about this, but maybe he’ll see this one: Hey Jayhaed, it’s one thing not to have any respect for the government, and another to not have any respect for your family. Have you thought about the impact a $5000/day fine would have on your family? What about if your dad has to do jail time because of your actions? It’s not worth it, kid. Turn off your illegal transmitter now and spare your family all this potential grief.

A tip o’ the hat to Bob (VA3QV) for writing about the story in the Ottawa Sun.

The CBC had a story on the news this morning about Jayhaed Saadé, a kid in Greely who has set up an unlicensed radio station broadcasting out of his parents’ restaurant on 91.9 MHz. Industry Canada has told him to stop broadcasting immediately. The laws on this sort of thing are very clear and the penalties include fines of up to $5000 and even jail time. Predictably, a lot of people have made comments supporting the Saadé and encouraging him to continue broadcasting even without a license, but at the same time there are also people saying that ignorance of the law is no excuse and that he should stop broadcasting, at least until he obtains a license. (According to the story, Saadé didn’t know he needed a license and has said he’ll apply for one, but that he “can’t shut off the station”.)

It’s a low-power station and he’s a kid, so it’s no big deal, right?

Wrong… (more…)

The City of Ottawa is poised to approve rules that will allow the speed of a residential street to be automatically lowered to 40 km/h if 60% of the residents on the street agree. According to a story on CBC’s website, this policy will go to city council for final approval on October 28th.

The intent of this is to make residential streets safer by making drivers drive slower. But this is only going to work if there is increased enforcement with less tolerance for drivers exceeding the posted speed limit. Since many police officers give drivers a 10 km/h “cushion” before they issue a ticket a street that has it’s limit lowered is really having it lowered to 50 km/h.

Instead of lowering the limit to 40 km/h, a street that has 60% of its residents agreeing that the limit should be lowered should be subject to aggressive zero-tolerance speed limit enforcement. Be clocked going less than 10 km/h over the limit and receive a written warning the first time, and a fine subsequent times. (Of course, vehicles clocked going more than 10 km/h over should receive a fine on the first offense.)

And it occurs to me that this could have ramifications for bus routes on residential streets that have had the speed limit lowered, particularly for routes that are on many of these streets. The affected routes are going to need to have their schedules adjusted to respect the lower limits, or you’re going to see bus drivers pushing the limits to adhere to their schedules.

CBC had a story yesterday evening about a CUPE union executive who is suing the union for violating her privacy by reading her emails. According to Katherine Thompson, when she was the secretary-treasurer of CUPE’s Air Component Lesley Swann, the then-president strong-armed an IT consultant into providing access to her emails, which Swann then allegedly monitored. (A union executive using strong-arm tactics – imagine that! But that’s for another time.) Swann says she believed that Thompson had violated the union’s bylaws, which is why she did what she did.

The case seems to hinge on whether it was reasonable for Thompson to expect that the communications she made using the union’s email system were private.

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The Youth Criminal Justice Act prohibits the names of young offenders and victims from being identified. Sometimes this means that adults involved in the crime and/or related to the youth can’t be identified. Occasionally, a young offender is charged as an adult, such as the recent case of one of the killers of Stefanie Rengel. Melissa Todorovic was only identified as M.T. until she was finally sentenced as an adult, at which point it entered the public record.

In the case of young victims, I can understand why their names are suppressed and I don’t have a problem with this. There are even some crimes that I can accept the name of a young offender not being published — petty crimes rather than violent crimes, for example. Kids do stupid things when they’re growing up, but this doesn’t mean their name should be splashed across the news à la “Timmy Smith convicted of stealing a chocolate bar, full story at 11!”

But when it comes to crimes involving motor vehicles, such as the seventeen-year old street racer in Orleans who smashed his car, shattered a bus shelter, broke a wall and landed on someone’s front lawn, I don’t think the anonymity afforded by the Youth Criminal Justice Act should apply. If you are old enough to possess a license to drive a motor vehicle, you are old enough to have your name published if you do something stupid or illegal while driving. Driving is a privilege, not a right, and with it comes responsibility.