Bill Blair weighs decision on Canadian child porn prisoner seeking transfer home from U.S.

Tuesday, August 25, 2020 – by John McHutchion

Here’s what you need to know to get the day started:

Bill Blair weighs decision on Canadian child porn prisoner seeking transfer home from U.S.

Public Safety Minister Bill Blair must decide this week whether to allow a Canadian man serving a sentence for child pornography in the U.S. to transfer back to Canada — a move that would see him released immediately from custody and shave two years off his time behind bars.

In a May 28 ruling, the Federal Court gave the federal government 90 days to reconsider a decision by Ralph Goodale, Blair’s predecessor, to block Robert Scheiring's return to Canada on the grounds that he poses a threat to public safety and that he had abandoned his ties to Canada. That three-month period runs out this week. Blair's office told CBC News on Monday that a decision had not yet been made.

Scheiring, whose hometown is Winnipeg, moved to the U.S. in 2000 with his wife and three daughters for an employment opportunity. In 2010, he pleaded guilty to possessing and distributing child pornography after police discovered 640,000 images and 2,500 videos of children in sexually explicit poses.

Scheiring was sentenced to 14 years behind bars; he's scheduled to be released in the U.S. in August, 2022, after his prison term was reduced to reflect pre-conviction custody and good behaviour.

The maximum sentence for the equivalent crime in Canada is 10 years. Canada does not enforce foreign sentences that exceed the maximum domestic sentence — which means that if Scheiring is transferred to Canada, he'll be released into the community immediately with no supervision. He would, however, have a criminal record and be required to register as a sex offender.

If Scheiring serves out the rest of his sentence in the U.S., however, he probably would be deported to Canada upon his release. He would not have a formal record of his foreign convictions but still would be required to comply with the Sex Offender Information Registration Act, according to the Federal Court ruling.

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(Kirsty Wigglesworth/The Associated Press)

A British Museum employee looks at a marble statue of Crouching Venus during a press viewing in London yesterday. The museum plans to reopen to the public on Aug. 27 with a new one-way route through its ground floor galleries.

In brief

Nervous about potential exposure to COVID-19, some parents are forming education pods: private groups outside formal school systems. "The public school system is just not equipped. It doesn't seem to have the funding or the budget to be able to accommodate change or modernize," said Elizabeth Mah, a North Vancouver mother of two kids. She’s teamed up with a trio of like-minded families to form a pod. For many other parents with similar concerns, education pods are simply not possible, said Anna-Kay Brown, co-chair of the Jane and Finch Education Action Group in Toronto. "That's great for the parents who have the time and who can afford to do it. There are a lot of parents in my community that do not have that option or choice or can afford to do it," she said. The emergence of a tiered education system is a major concern for Brown, whose daughter and son will head back to school this fall. Read more on this story here.

Researchers and public health officials are calling for saliva-based COVID-19 tests in schools. But despite international efforts to make this option a reality, there’s still no word on when saliva-based testing will be allowed anywhere in Canada. In the United States, five saliva-based tests have been approved so far by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) — including, most recently, a headline-making test for COVID-19 developed by Yale University researchers with funding support from the National Basketball Association. Much like the current tests, which send nasal swab samples back to a lab, those tests — and other similar ones being developed in Canada — involve sending saliva samples to a lab for processing, with results back in around 24 hours. But no such saliva-based tests have yet been authorized by Health Canada. Only one company, U.S-based DiaCarta, has submitted a COVID-19 saliva-based test to Health Canada for review so far. Read more about saliva tests here.

The World Health Organization warns using plasma recovered from the blood of patients who've recovered from COVID-19 remains an experimental treatment, highlighting the need for better data including that from a large trial underway in Canada. Earlier this week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration gave emergency approval to expand the use of plasma to help patients hospitalized with COVID-19 after President Donald Trump appeared to apply political pressure on the agency via Twitter. Supporters of the treatment say plasma from recovered patients can help current COVID-19 patients at the start of their illness because the plasma contains the immune system's protective antibodies that work specifically against this virus. WHO's chief scientist, Soumya Swaminathan, said Monday the data isn't convincing enough to endorse its widespread use. Read more on the warning here.

Protesters and police clashed for a second straight night in Kenosha, Wis., amid anger over the police shooting of Black man. Police fired tear gas at hundreds of protesters who defied a curfew, threw bottles and shot fireworks at officers guarding a courthouse. Kenosha became the latest flashpoint in a summer of racial unrest after cellphone footage of police shooting Jacob Blake — apparently in the back, as he leaned into his SUV while his three children sat in the vehicle — circulated widely on social media. The 29-year-old was hospitalized in serious condition. Read more on the reaction to the shooting here.

Just as business meetings were getting underway and many classes were starting yesterday morning, the videoconferencing service Zoom stopped working. For about five hours, anyone who was not logged in already wasn't able to log in. By mid-morning, an independent monitor said they had registered 17,000 complaints. As CBC business columnist Don Pittis writes, most of us realize our daily lives depend on technology, from the electronic tallies of bits and bytes that pass for modern money, to the pocket computers that nearly each of us carry to provide a link to the world. But Monday's Zoom shutdown came as a rude reminder for those in meetings where no one else showed up — and for those trapped on the outside. Read more analysis here.

Now for some good news to start your Tuesday: A duo from Conception Bay, N.L., are working to lessen the digital divide by providing free refurbished computers to children in need this school year. Jon Brown and Gerry Ryan said they were concerned that some students in the Conception Bay Centre area would be disadvantaged if school was to move online later this year, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. After starting with computers from friends on Facebook, they were offered a donation site at the St. John's Farmers Market. Since Saturday, Brown said they collected 40 computers, which exceeded their expectations. "Donations have actually been overwhelming," he said. "I would say we've probably gotten double what I expected to get.” Read more how the duo are helping out students in need of computers.

What it's like being a performer during a pandemic

Over the weekend, German researchers held a concert with over 1,500 music fans to study how COVID-19 could spread at big indoor events. Here in Canada, provinces are still capping numbers at indoor shows and many venues are staying closed. Some have permanently shut down. This has been a huge challenge for musicians, and performing artists more widely.

Today on Front Burner, we convene a panel with two Canadians who work in the arts and depend on live audiences for their livelihoods. Miranda Mulholland is a Juno-nominated fiddler and singer, label owner, and a musicians' rights advocate. Nour Hadidi is a professional stand-up comedian who has written for This Hour Has 22 Minutes.
Listen to today's episode

Today in history: August 25

1878: The Saskatchewan Herald, the province's first newspaper, puts out its first issue in Battleford. Because the paper predated any railway in the area, founder Patrick Gammie Laurie transported his first printing press by ox cart on a 72-day trek from Fort Garry.

1937: Toronto announces school openings would be delayed because of a polio epidemic sweeping southern Ontario.

1943: Franklin D. Roosevelt becomes the first U.S. president to visit Ottawa. Roosevelt and prime ministers William Lyon Mackenzie King of Canada and Winston Churchill of Britain had earlier attended the Quebec Conference in Quebec City.

1953: Dmitry Stepanovich Chuvakhin is named Soviet ambassador to Canada. The post had not been filled since 1945, when Igor Gouzenko, a Soviet Embassy cipher clerk, disclosed a Russian spy ring in Canada.