The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development said the average income of the richest 10 per cent in OECD nations is now nine times the average income of the poorest 10 per cent.

How rich are the 1%?

The OECD report found that the richest one per cent of Canadians saw their share of total income increase from 8.1 per cent in 1980 to 13.3 per cent in 2007.

Furthermore, the share owned by the richest 0.1 per cent more than doubled, from two per cent to 5.3 per cent.

At the same time, Canada's top marginal tax rate dropped from 43 per cent in 1981 to 29 per cent in 2010, the OECD noted in the report.

That 9-1 ratio is the largest gap in a generation, the agency says. Even in traditionally egalitarian nations such as Germany, Denmark and Sweden, the ratio has risen from 5-1 in the 1980s to 6-1 today.

The gap is 10-1 in Italy, Japan, Korea and the United Kingdom, and higher still, at 14-1 in Israel, Turkey and the United States.

The report found the main reason for the growing disparity is that high-skilled workers have seen their wages increase disproportionately because their jobs have benefited more from technological progress than the low-skilled.

"Our report clearly indicates that upskilling of the workforce is by far the most powerful instrument to counter rising income inequality," OECD Secretary General Angel Gurría said. "The investment in people must begin in early childhood and be followed through into formal education and work."

Promoting part-time work and more flexible work hours, for example, has promoted productivity and brought more people into work, especially women and low-paid workers. But the rise in part-time and low-paid work also extended the wage gap.

Wealth gaps

The OECD's wealth co-efficient (income gap from rich to poor):

• Norway, Germany and Denmark: 6-1.
• Italy, Japan, Korea, Canada and the United Kingdom: 10-1.
• Turkey, the U.S. and Israel: 14-1.
• Mexico and Chile: 27-1.

In Canada, the OECD says the average income of the top 10 per cent of Canadians in 2008 was $103,500 — 10 times higher than those by the bottom 10%, who had an average income of $10,260. In the early 1990s, that ratio was at 8-1.

"The social contract is starting to unravel in many countries," Gurría said. "This study dispels the assumptions that the benefits of economic growth will automatically trickle down to the disadvantaged and that greater inequality fosters greater social mobility."

"Without a comprehensive strategy for inclusive growth, inequality will continue to rise."

The group gathers data on 34 developed nations and compares them to guide policy decisions.

WOULD Stephen Harper attack Libya simply to justify spending tens of billions of dollars on F-35 fighter jets? Perhaps. But, add on doing it for major Canadian investors, reinforcing his “principled” foreign policy rhetoric and reasserting Western control over a region in flux and you pretty much have the range of reasons why a half dozen CF-18s, four other military aircraft and 240-personnel naval frigate are currently engaged in combat 10,000 km away from Canadian soil.

Over the past few months the Conservative’s plan to buy 65 F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jets has become a serious political headache. A recent poll showed 68 per cent of Canadians — including a majority of Conservative supporters — agreed that “now is not a good time” to spend between $16 and $29 billion on these controversial single-engine jets. So, sending Canadian military aircraft to enforce a UN “no-fly zone” in Libya provides an opportunity to soften opposition to the F-35 purchase, an issue bound to be a hot topic in the election campaign that formally began Saturday. Most critics of the F-35 purchase — from the NDP’s Michael Byers to Project Ploughshares Ernie Regehr to Liberal foreign affairs critic Bob Rae — support the “humanitarian” mission in Libya. With these and other liberal interventionists supporting a bombing campaign in North Africa, Harper can more easily justify spending nearly $1,000 per Canadian on the best fighter jets money can buy. (Québec housing group, FRAPRU, claims the cost of a single F-35 equals 6,400 social housing units.)

The right-wing press has already begun to connect the dots. An Ottawa Citizen headline read, “Libya shows why Canada needs jets” while a Sun Media chain commentary explained, “enforcing a ‘no-fly’ zone to shut down a dictator is an expeditionary air operation. Is that something Canadians want to be able to do in the future? If yes, you need an F-35, expensive or not.”

Over the past five years the Conservatives have further militarized Canadian foreign policy. Military spending is at its highest level since World War II — the Harper government expanded Canada’s role in the occupation of Afghanistan, claimed that Russia is planning to attack and sent two-thousand troops to police Haitians after a devastating earthquake.

The Conservatives draw significant support from the military as well as its associated companies and culture. To get us in the fighting spirit, for instance, the Canadian Forces released onboard video footage of a CF-18 destroying a ground target in Libya.

But there is more to it than pleasing the Great White North’s version of the military-industrial complex. On Monday the Financial Times reported that Western oil companies were worried that if Gaddafi defeated the rebels in the east of Libya he would nationalize their operations out of anger at the West’s duplicity. Presumably, this includes Suncor, Canada’s second largest corporation, which signed a multi-billion dollar 30-year oil concession with Libya in 2008.

Home to the second largest amount of Canadian investment in Africa, instability in Libya has put a couple billion dollars worth of this country’s corporate investment in jeopardy. Dru Oja Jay, editor of the Dominion and a candidate for the Mountain Equipment Co-op Board of Directors, notes “Canadian investors are legitimately worried about what’s going to happen to the $1 billion signing bonus Suncor paid out to the Libyan government, or whether SNC Lavalin is going to recoup its investments in the country, which is home to 10% of its workforce.”And these are some of this country’s most powerful corporations. Embassy magazine includes both Suncor and SNC-Lavalin’s CEOs among the nine most influential business executives in determining Canadian foreign policy.

Would a victorious Gaddafi have moved against Canadian companies? Even if he didn’t, with all the bad press SNC and Suncor have received could they continue in Libya without regime change? Finally, will the rebels dependence on the West lead to better contract terms?

Unlike Egypt or Tunisia, the Conservatives denounced Gaddafi’s repression at the beginning of the Libyan uprising. This is partly because Gaddafi has never been on great terms with much of the West, even if there have been warmer relations in recent years. Also, the Conservatives were widely derided for supporting Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and (to a lesser extent) Ben-Ali in Tunisia to the bitter end. So Libya gave Harper an opportunity to re-affirm his “principled” foreign policy rhetoric.

Beyond wanting to appear on the side of human rights and democracy, another element motivating the military intervention in Libya is the desire to influence the revolutions in bordering states Tunisia and Egypt, which are still in flux. Controlling Libya gives the West another point of leverage over developments in those countries. Bombing Libya tells democratic forces in the region that the West is prepared to use force to assert itself (as does tacit support for the Saudi military intervention in Bahrain).

Recent developments in Libya are a reminder that if you give the Western decision-makers an interventionist inch they take an imperial mile. In principle trying to stop Gaddafi from massacring people in eastern Libya is a good thing. But, the “no-fly zone” immediately became a license to bomb Libyan tanks, Gaddafi’s compound and other targets in coordination with rebel attacks. On Tuesday Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon claimed the UN resolution allowed for “boots on the ground”.

Beyond the inevitable death and destruction in Libya, the Security Council resolution further undermines state sovereignty, which provides the weakest states with some protection from the most powerful. This is the main reason why many Latin American and African countries have opposed the intervention.

Finally, let’s put the current moral outrage in perspective. A little over two years ago Israel launched a 22-day onslaught against Gaza that left some 1,400, mostly civilians, dead. There, the power imbalance between the two sides was much greater and the aggrieved population had been under the boot of the attacking force for as long as Gaddafi has ruled. Yet there was no talk of imposing a no-fly zone over Gaza. In fact, the Harper government cheered Israel on.

Yves Engler is the author of a number of books. His forthcoming (with Bianca Mugyenyi) Stop Signs: Cars and Capitalism on the road to Economic, Social and Environmental Decay will be released in April. Anyone interested in organizing a talk as part of a North America wide book tour in May and June please e-mail: yvesengler [at] hotmail.com.

CANADA pays dearly whenever Stephen Harper lets his ideology, partisanship, controlling nature or stubbornness trump common sense, or the advice of his ministers and civil servants.

While prime ministers have the final word, in Harper’s case it’s only his word that counts — regardless of the cost, at home or in terms of our world standing.

The Bev Oda scandal, for example, is as much about her possible contempt of Parliament over a doctored document, as it is about Harper’s uncritical commitment to Israel. The same pattern has been evident in several other controversies.

After Canada’s first-ever failure to win a seat on the UN Security Council, Harper minions blamed it on the 27 members who voted for Portugal. A better post-mortem came from Amr Moussa, secretary-general of the Arab League. In an interview last fall, he told me the 57-member Islamic Conference had voted as a bloc to protest Harper’s anti-Arab policies.

The tragic turmoil at Rights and Democracy, the Montreal-based human rights agency, was caused by Harper-appointed board members over three modest grants of $10,000 given to one Israeli and two Palestinian human rights groups after the 2008-09 Israeli attack on Gaza.

The board relentlessly hounded agency president Rémy Beauregard and he died of a heart attack after a tumultuous meeting. The staff revolted. The board fired three managers and sent in investigators, lawyers and auditors, ostensibly to ferret out improprieties. They found nothing.

The cost of this mess came to more than $1 million (about a tenth of the agency’s annual allocation). The bill included $50,000 to board member Jacques Gauthier for services rendered. He and another partisan director, Elliot Tepper, were rewarded with reappointments.

The Oda affair entails a funding cut to Kairos, a Toronto-based ecumenical group of 11 churches that has carried out development work abroad for 35 years.  It was refused $7 million not because it wasn’t “efficient and effective,” as Oda maintains. In fact, civil servants had given it top marks and recommended the renewal of its grant.

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney boasted in Israel that Kairos was cut off as part of his crackdown on anti-Semitism, implying that Kairos was anti-Semitic. Kenney said Kairos had advocated boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel — it had not. It called only for an end to the occupation of Palestinian lands.

Kenney also cut off $1 million to the Canadian Arab Federation, whose president had criticized the Israeli attack on Gaza; in fact, he was only quoting Norman Finkelstein, a critic of Israeli policies.

Kenney then went after another critic of Israel, barring former British MP George Galloway from entering Canada. But that ill-considered decision was tossed out by the courts, giving Galloway an even bigger stage from which to berate Canada.

The ruining of our trade and strategic relationship with the United Arab Emirates was triggered by Ottawa’s move to protect Air Canada from competition by Emirates Air and Etihad Airlines. But that wasn’t all.

For two years, the Harperites wouldn’t even meet with the U.A.E. ambassador in Ottawa even though it was during the period when Canada was using a U.A.E. military airbase to get in and out of Afghanistan, and our wounded soldiers were being treated at a U.A.E. hospital. Now our $1.5 billion a year trade is at risk. And Canada is out at least $300 million for an alternate airbase.

Another Harper ideological blind spot led to the fiasco over this year’s national census. Ignoring the advice of Ministers Jim Flaherty and Tony Clement, as well as experts at Statistics Canada, Harper ordered that the mandatory survey be made voluntary. Despite a national outcry and the resignation of Canada’s chief statistician, he wouldn’t budge. Now Ottawa is set to spend $30 million extra only to get a less reliable national portrait, according to experts.

In yet another case of ignoring civil service advice, an annual grant of $3 million a year was slashed from the Forum of Federations which promotes Canadian-style federalism abroad.

An Ottawa source told me: “It’s hard to see why they wouldn’t extend the funding to the Forum, beyond that it was established by the Liberals. Maybe they’re just being vindictive.”

TORONTO STAR

THIS is the kind of obviousness that a child can see—though the child may, later in life, become browbeaten into believing that the obvious problems are “non-problems”, to be argued into nonexistence by careful reasoning and clever choices of definition.

— Roger Penrose

… so obvious that it takes really impressive discipline to miss it …

— Noam Chomsky

Here we have Israel as an internationally recognized thug, keeper of the largest open-air prison on earth, regularly practicing war crimes against civilians, targeting civilian infrastructure and continuously disregarding the Geneva Conventions – virtually unanimously denounced by the international community, by every human rights watch group on the globe, and by international civil society for the last many decades¹ – and how do Canadian politicians and parliamentarians respond?

Israel, the modern state that shamelessly uses the Nazi holocaust to justify overtly racist domestic and foreign national policies, stockpiles nuclear weapons, incites wars on its neighbours, overtly funds propaganda in foreign countries, routinely practices international pirating, kidnappings and murders, openly performs political assassinations ¹ … and how do Canadian politicians and parliamentarians respond?

Israel has no significant economic exchanges with Canada and performs no significant geopolitical service of benefit to Canada; a Canada with virtually no economic ties with the Middle East and a Canada that is a net exporter of oil and gas.

Yet, apart from the independent-thinking Bloc Quebecois, it seems that half the time that English-Canadian politicians open their mouths it’s to denounce a “new anti-Semitism” that social scientists and statisticians tell us is a media fabrication or to express Israel’s “right to defend itself” or to declare Canada’s “unwavering support for Israel.” Not to mention Israel’s “right to exist”! ²

What about unwavering support for human rights and international law?

And I count the NDP (New Democratic Party)³ establishment prepared to sacrifice one of its own for stating a historic fact and happy to stand silent in the face of Zio-zeal.

The Canadian Zionism Question is: Why?

Why has Zio-zeal become English Canada’s new political religion? If Canada is Israel’s friend, why doesn’t Canada help Israel abandon violence as its main diplomatic tool and facilitate Israel’s integration into the community of nations that denounce violence and racism? Why doesn’t Canada help Israel and its people?

How do English Canada politicians benefit from being subservient to US geopolitical doctrine? Or how would they suffer from not trading away Canada’s sovereignty; and how are most Quebec politicians immune?

Would it be so difficult for English Canada politicians to not so enthusiastically kiss the ass of the Middle East tyrant? And not adopt unanimous parliamentary resolutions to suppress criticism of Israel on university campuses? And not spend valuable parliamentary resources “investigating” imagined new anti-Semitism in Canada?

How in God’s name can we understand this new madness?

What happened? Sure there was CanWest but it died, despite the government’s best efforts to covertly bail it out.

What is going on?

Some prominent cover-up artists have suggested that English Canada politicians are overly preoccupied with pleasing Jewish voters. But there just aren’t enough Jewish voters to explain transforming the Parliament into the embarrassing Zio-zeal fest that it has become, in the face of an opposing world consensus view. In addition there are growing numbers of Jewish Canadians who are critical of Israel and of Canada’s uncritical support for Israel and its policies. ⁴

No, there has to be more to it than Jewish voters. Not to mention that 56% of Canadians have a “mainly negative view of Israel”. ⁵ (The average global opinion for “mainly positive view of Israel” is 17%.)

Given the overwhelming evidence for the Zio-zeal phenomenon and given its obvious sovereignty implications, it seems fair to ask the Canadian Zionism Question: Why?

There are at least two categories of possible answers: One that involves the obedience of service intellectuals and political caretakers and a related one that involves “following the money”. There is also, of course, the always useful appeal to mythology:

And then, you know, there’s the obvious one – you love someone so much that you would do anything to spend all of eternity with them.

— The Vampire Diaries (TV series)

Is not the Zionism Question a worthy research question – brimming with societal implications – for tenured university professors? Or is everyone afraid of Stanley Fish and his crasser cohorts? Hey, those goons are in the US – remember?

New terms

Zionism Question: Why all the unconditional support for Israel and its crimes from Western politicians?

Zio-zeal: Western politicians’ beyond-the-call-of-duty enthusiasm to publicly support Israel and its crimes.

• First published at Activist Teacher blog.

1. See the work of Norman Finkelstein [↩] [↩]
2. “On Israel’s ‘Right to Exist’ and on Racism” by Denis G. Rancourt, Palestine Chronicle, June 30, 2010 [↩]
3. Canada’s “third” party that considers itself a social democratic party. — Ed [↩]
4. Independent Jewish Voices (Canada) [↩]
5. 2007 Global Opinion Survey, as reported in “For Israel, Every Traveller is an Ambassador” by Patrick Martin, Globe and Mail, February 23, 2010 [↩]

Denis G. Rancourt was a tenured and full professor of physics at the University of Ottawa in Canada. He practiced several areas of science which were funded by a national agency and ran an internationally recognized laboratory. He published over 100 articles in leading scientific journals. He developed popular activism courses and was an outspoken critic of the university administration and a defender of student and Palestinian rights. He was fired for his dissidence in 2009 by a president who is a staunch supporter of Israeli policy. visit Denis's website.

TWO men, and two men alone, have decided to extend the Canadian military mission in Afghanistan by three more years.

Stephen Harper did not seriously consult his cabinet, nor did Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff consult his caucus. They also cut the Commons out of the loop.

Both are following the precedent of former PM Paul Martin, who in 2005 quietly committed us to the mission in Kandahar.

It seems all three believe that committing Canada to war is too serious a matter to be left to the frivolity of a democratic debate.

But it wasn’t always so. When former PM Jean Chrétien informed George W. Bush in 2003 that Canada would not join the war on Iraq, he acted mostly because Canadians were overwhelmingly against it.

By contrast, Harper (who was then leader of the right-wing Canadian Alliance), wanted to obey Washington. And Ignatieff was already a pro-war American academic. Now the two have come together again, with the Liberal leader perhaps bringing an even greater commitment to the Afghan mission than the Prime Minister.

Harper’s flip-flops — won’t cut and run; won’t stay a day longer than July 2011; okay, will stay until 2014 — are all functions of political posturing. Ignatieff’s position springs from his written conviction that the Afghan war was essential to the Pax Americana.

Regardless of motivation, Harper and Ignatieff have publicly become the eager errand boys of America in Afghanistan.

And much of our mainstream media are their cheerleaders — as they were for Bush’s war on Iraq. Good luck to the two-thirds of Canadians who oppose the Afghan war; they’ll have difficulty finding fair news coverage.

While the Afghan mission’s raison d’être has gone through several reinventions, the main reasons are that it is a necessary part of the “war on terror”; Al Qaeda must be squished, the Taliban must never be allowed back in power; the Afghan people deserve our Western-style democracy, and their women need our “protection.”

But even those who accept the above premises no longer support the mission because it is failing on all of them.

Just as Bush’s war on terror served only to increase terror worldwide, the occupation of Afghanistan has steadily increased resistance and strengthened the Taliban. They now control wide swaths of the country, where they impose their interpretation of Sharia (Islamic) law and decapitate officials cooperating with the weak Karzai regime in Kabul.

In August Time magazine ran a cover that asked “What happens if we leave Afghanistan?” and showing the picture of an Afghan girl whose nose had been sliced off by the Taliban. Yet the editors were blind to the irony that such shocking things are happening now, under NATO’s nose. That’s what happens when the media become an echo chamber of the political establishment.

In this the year of the American surge, with more troops in Afghanistan than ever before, there’s little progress, the Pentagon admitted just days ago that: “Efforts to reduce insurgent activity … have not produced measurable results.”

Not only has NATO failed to provide security to Afghans in Taliban territory, it has yet to stop the inadvertent killing of civilians. Indeed, it is increasing collateral damage in Pakistan by drone attacks — affecting the same Pashtuns on both sides of the border.

NATO cannot defeat the Taliban in the foreseeable future. It has admitted as much. It just wants to ensure that the Taliban do not win. But the Taliban do not have to win the war to win.

NATO has no contact with Mullah Omar. It can’t distinguish between the Afghan Taliban and the Pakistan Taliban, and the many branches underneath. It can’t tell a real Talib from a fraudulent one. It only wants to beat up the Taliban enough to make them lay down their arms, sign on to the Afghan constitution and respect women’s rights.

Yet despite direct and indirect talks — both official ones in Kabul and unofficial ones in Saudi Arabia and the Maldives Islands — not a single important Taliban leader has surrendered.

Meanwhile the world’s largest production of heroin continues, a source of revenue and endless recruitment for the Taliban.

As for the Hamid Karzai government, it remains corrupt and elections continue to be fraudulent.

In reality, NATO is on a treadmill going nowhere. But it won’t admit defeat, least of all US President Barack Obama.

Battered in the midterm election, he cannot afford to give any opening to Republican and Tea Party warmongers. The 2014 deadline will, however, effectively neutralize Afghanistan as an issue in the 2012 presidential election.

Of course, Harper and Ignatieff are happy to oblige … the rest is propaganda.

Courtesy: The Star

B.C. Supreme Court will hear a case that began in an obscure fundamentalist Mormon community in the province's southeast corner.

The provincial government has asked the court to decide whether the laws that prohibit polygamy violate the right to freedom of religion.

Last year, prosecutors in B.C. charged two leaders in Bountiful, B.C., with one count each of practising polygamy, but those charges were later thrown out.

Now, the court is preparing to hear from more than two dozen witnesses, including experts and former residents of Bountiful.

It's a case that observers say is destined to make its way to the Supreme Court of Canada.

The provincial and federal governments argue polygamy harms women and children, and men don't have a constitutional right to marry multiple wives.

Vancouver-based constitutional lawyer Ronald Skolrood, who isn't connected to the case, says the outcome could have far-reaching effects on Canada's marriage laws and will likely be appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada.

The Canadian Press

Johra Kaleki, 38, was scheduled to be arraigned Monday but her lawyer argued successfully that she should be dispatched to a psychiatric hospital for a 30-day evaluation instead.

Lawyer Tom Pentefountas told Quebec court that an evaluation was necessary and, after grudgingly divulging some details of his case, he managed to convince Judge Serge Boisvert.

Police suspect the attack on the teen, who is now in hospital, was an “honour” crime. One expert says it's the 13th case of its kind in Canada since 2002.

Mr. Pentefountas told the judge his client was normally a balanced individual – but that the Afghan-born woman took leave of her senses on Sunday morning.

“We have a situation where a mother was alleged to have stabbed her teenage daughter, the reason being alleged that she came home late,” Mr. Pentefountas told the judge.

“My colleague is raising in the file the idea of crimes of honour, and we think there was a temporary lapse in the mental capacity of Johra.”

The Crown said Ms. Kaleki was hysterical that morning and had to be calmed down.

Prosecutor Anne Gauvin said she wasn't asking for an evaluation herself, but did not oppose the defence's request for one. Ms. Gauvin wouldn't go into any details about the case outside the courtroom.

The psychiatric report will show whether Ms. Kaleki is fit to stand trial and whether she can be held responsible for her actions.

Dressed in a grey T-shirt and track pants, Ms. Kaleki began sobbing quietly as her husband pleaded with the judge from his seat in the public gallery.

“Please, sir, my wife is innocent,” Ebrahim Ebrahimi told the judge as courthouse security tried to quiet him.

Ms. Kaleki is accused of three crimes, according to a charge sheet filed with the court: attempted murder, aggravated assault and assault with a weapon.

She returns to court July 12.

She is forbidden to communicate with any of her daughters, but the judge did not approve the Crown's request that a communication ban extend to her husband.

The family are considered important witnesses in the Crown's case, Ms. Gauvin said. “He's one of the Crown's witnesses and I believe his implication in the file is important and I don't want him to be polluted by what she could tell him,” she told reporters.

“He's also the father of four witnesses.”

The 19-year-old daughter is in stable condition in hospital. She is expected to survive.

“If there's one good thing about this whole story, it's that the victim will make it for sure,” said Montreal police Constable Olivier Lapointe.

“We have the confirmation from the doctors today. She has head, face, shoulder and arm injuries – but she will survive.”

Constable Lapointe says the husband is not facing any charges in the case.

“From what we have so far we think he even tried to intervene to stop the assault,” he said.

Three other daughters who were in the home at the time of the attack – aged 16, 14 and 10 – have been sheltered with youth protection.

Ms. Gauvin said they will remain there until the file is settled.

Police were called to the West Island home at 8:15 a.m. on Sunday.

Constable Lapointe said investigators quickly reached the conclusion that it was an “honour” crime after scanning evidence gathered from the home, from witnesses and from the victim herself.

One researcher who has done extensive studies on so-called “honour crimes” said this is the 13th case documented in Canada since 2002.

Amin Muhammad, a psychiatry professor at Newfoundland's Memorial University, said this latest case is surprising because it's not usually women who initiate the violence.

“Women are often the co-perpetrators,” Dr. Muhammad said. “Women don't usually attack. So in this case, it's a bit unusual.”

Dr. Muhammad said the Canadian government is becoming more aware of the problem, prevalent in many societies. Canadian immigration booklets make it clear that honour killings are considered barbaric and unacceptable.

Agencies

A CALGARY

Ms Goldring said she felt compelled to get an H1N1 vaccine because she is diabetic and has had a heart attack, two factors that Alberta Health noted as putting people at higher risk for serious complications from swine flu.

But soon after getting the shot last winter, Goldring felt ill.

"My body was aching and I was throwing up. Then I developed a spot on my leg," she said.

The rash spread quickly and Goldring ended up in hospital on Christmas Day. "By the time I got to emergency, it spread pretty bad and turned to blisters."

Her kidneys were shutting down. Doctors eventually diagnosed it as vasculitis, an inflammation that destroys blood vessels.

Her doctor, who asked not to be named, concluded it was probably connected to the H1N1 shot. Goldring, according to her doctor, is one of only 31 people since 1974 to have had this type of reaction to a flu shot.

Won't get shot again, says Goldring

Now, even using a walker to get from her living room to her kitchen causes her excruciating pain. She is on pain killers and steroids.

"It was like I was put through a fire. It was like someone lit me on fire," she said.

Goldring said she won't get a flu shot again. Desmond Fordyce, her partner, said he is worried the vaccine wasn't tested properly before widespread public vaccinations began.

"I think they're killing you more than giving you something for making you better," he said.

So far, 25 million doses of the vaccine have been distributed across Canada. Nearly 6,000 H1N1 shots resulted in an adverse reaction, of which more than 200 were considered serious. Health officials are investigating 13 post-shot deaths.

Col. Russell Williams

COLONEL Russell Williams, the former commander of CFB Trenton is charged with the first-degree murder of Jessica Lloyd, 27, who was found dead Monday, and Cpl. Marie-France Comeau, a 38-year-old air force flight attendant who was murdered in November. The 46-year-old Williams is also charged with forcible confinement, break and enter and sexual assault after two other women were allegedly attacked in their Tweed, Ont., homes last September.

While police scour cold cases for any links to Col. Russell Williams, the base commander details of what investigators know about the suspect are starting to leak out.

The Globe and Mail reports that Williams led police to Lloyd's body at a location near Tweed, a small town north of Trenton, after giving them a detailed statement about his alleged crimes and involvement in "four dozen so-called ‘lingerie break-ins.'"

Williams was interviewed Sunday by members of the Ontario Provincial Police's criminal behavioural analysis section, the Globe reported in its Wednesday edition, which led to police laying charges against him.

During the interview, he gave police his statement in a "crisp, business-like fashion," which he appeared to do out of a sense of duty, the newspaper said.

But since the charges against Williams were made public, police have acknowledged they are zeroing in on his past and are taking a look at his prior postings with the military during his career.

Williams has previously been stationed in Shearwater, N.S., in Ottawa, in the Middle East, as well as at the Canadian Forces language school in Gatineau, Que. Before joining the military in 1987, he studied at the University of Toronto.

"We are looking at other areas where he has been posted. That will be part of the investigation," OPP Sgt. Kristine Rae said yesterday.

Rae confirmed that other police forces are combing over their cold cases in light of the allegations raised against Williams, though she would not say which ones were involved, citing investigative reasons.

"Whenever you have two homicides and two home invasions and sexual assaults it's prudent to ensure that if there's any other investigations that have gone unsolved to see if there's any similarities. That's just good policing," Rae said.

Police have also been fielding calls from the relatives of victims of unsolved crimes, who are looking for information. Rae said police are asking them to be patient.

"Those inquiries will be reviewed and looked at," she said.

"If it's another police service, obviously there would be some information sharing there to see if there's anything we can help them with, to see if there's anything out there that's outstanding."

Halifax police said they had spoken with officers in Ontario, but "so far those discussions haven't provided any information that impacts any of our investigations," Const. Brian Palmeter said Tuesday.

While Halifax has three unsolved homicides from the time period Williams was stationed in Shearwater, Palmeter said "nothing so far has been provided to us to suggest any link to those files."

In Ottawa, police Insp. Al Tario said Williams is not named as a suspect or person of interest in any unsolved cases.

Toronto police Const. Wendy Drummond said her organization had not been asked by provincial police to reopen specific cases, nor has it been provided with new evidence or information with regards to anything unsolved at this point.

Glenn Woods, a behavioural science expert and crime analyst, told CTV's Canada AM that it would be unusual for a 46-year-old sex crime suspect to lack a criminal background.

"I find it a little unusual to have someone in this age range with no previous contact with the police, so that's a little bit interesting. But, I'm watching with very little information at this point," Woods said during an interview from Ottawa on Wednesday morning.

Woods said suspects in this age range typically develop criminal behaviours at a much earlier point in their lives.

"My experience has been that someone who commits this kind of crime starts thinking about it very early in life and I would be very surprised if there weren't victims from long before this," Woods said.

Mark Safarik, a former senior profiler in the FBI's Behavioural Analysis Unit, said police will be looking for any precursor-type crimes that Williams could be linked to.

"There's typically an escalation of behaviour that has occurred over a long period of time, and it's this precursor types of crimes that they'll be looking for," he said yesterday.

Safarik said as an investigator he would focus on burglary cases.

"Burglary cases at night where nothing is taken where victims are saying things like, 'I felt like there was somebody in the house but I didn't find anything missing, I heard somebody, I thought I saw somebody at my window, prowling, peeping,' " he said.

Safarik said the many postings Williams has held during his career will make the investigation more difficult.

"The other complicating piece is that those (military) communities themselves tend to be on the move all the time. So that people that were living there in a community two years ago aren't going to be living there now," he said.

Police two properties Williams shared with his wife, Mary-Elizabeth Harriman, who works as an associate executive director of the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada.

Investigators pulled evidence from a house in Ottawa that the couple had moved into only recently.

Michael Gennis, who lives next door to the house being searched in Ottawa, was shocked to learn of the allegations against Williams.

"It's shocking, you know, any time you hear about a situation like this, or a crime that has been committed such as this one," he told CTV's Canada AM during an interview from Ottawa.

"So, it was quite unsettling, in that we had just started to become neighbours and friends."

Gennis said his interactions with the couple were limited, but he found both Williams and his wife to be pleasant.

Police also were combing the couple's lake-front, cottage property in Tweed, the small town north of Trenton, where the two sexual assaults occurred that Williams is accused of.