Anglais
While she sits in healing lodge, there is little sign Terri-Lynne McClintic has changed her ways

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Rafferty had already violated the little girl once, in his car, down a lonely rural road. Tori — as she was known to friends and family — needed to urinate. It was McClintic who led her a few metres away.
“I told her she was a very strong girl. She said, like you? I said, you are much stronger.”
That was McClintic, speaking from the witness box, at Rafferty’s first-degree murder trial in 2012.
She took Tori back to her boyfriend. Tori didn’t want to let go of McClintic’s hand.
Read more:
Trudeau accuses Tories of ‘playing politics’ over Tori Stafford murder
“She asked me to stay with her. I tried to hold on to her hand but I couldn’t stay because I knew what was going to happen. I couldn’t be there for that. I left.”
McClintic, as the star witness against Rafferty, told court how she heard screams and, when she went back, saw Tori on the ground.
Put a garbage bag over the youngster’s head. Kicked her. Struck her over the head with a hammer.
Helped bury her under a nearby pile of rocks.
At her own half-day trial, two years earlier — most of the proceedings kept out of the media for seven months because of a publication ban — McClintic pleaded guilty to first-degree murder.
“You are admitting you’re guilty of murdering Victoria Stafford?” Justice Dougald McDermid asked.
Yes.
“You understand that I will have no choice but to sentence you to life?”
Yes.
“Have you been threatened or coerced in any way to plead guilty?”
No.
“And why are you entering a guilty plea today?”
McClintic: “Because I feel it’s the right thing to do. A little girl lost her life. I need to give something back.”
Ninety-seven days passed before Tori’s remains were found.
Eight years into a mandatory life sentence with no chance for parole until the quarter-century mark, McClintic is doing cushy time at an Aboriginal healing lodge in Maple Leaf, Saskatchewan, although it’s unclear whether she has a drop of Indigenous blood in her.
The graphic details of Tori’s suffering during her last years on earth, well, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau didn’t want to hear them. “Ambulance-chasing politicians,” Trudeau called Conservative MPs, who hammered away at the Liberals this week in the House of Commons, decrying the child-killer’s transfer from the high-security Grand Valley Institution for Women in Kitchener.
A Tory motion on Wednesday to reverse the transfer was easily defeated. Trudeau didn’t even stay for the vote. He bailed.
In all likelihood, the opposition was indeed milking the gruesome details of abduction, rape and murder for political ends, jabbing the Liberals in their vulnerable wheelhouse underbelly as soft on crime. So what? There is no high road in covering one’s ears to the brutality Tori endured. Those of us who were in court, heard it from McClintic, were sickened too. But bearing witness is the least we can do for Tori. Trudeau must be made of daintier stuff.
Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale had already countered, limply, by punting the controversy to Correctional Services Canada, for a review of whether the move to the lodge was in accordance with the law. Correctional Services Canada, via commissioner Anne Kelly, is “comfortable” with the relocation. A relocation that took place last December, although McClintic had earlier been transferred to medium security on the Tory government watch.
Tori’s dad, Rodney Stafford, only learned of it a few weeks ago, when told by his mother she’d been contacted by Corrections, trying to reach him, because McClintic had applied for day passes. First he knew the murderess was at an Aboriginal healing lodge — a place without fences, with both single and family residential units so that children can stay with offenders. The emphasis is on reintegration, restorative justice, following Aboriginal practices and spirituality.
Rodney Stafford has been on a mission ever since, one he doesn’t consider political. He is imploring as a father, even posting a message to Trudeau on Facebook: “From father to father, can you kneel before your child’s headstone knowing they spent the last three hours of their life begging and pleading for mommy and daddy to come save them, alone, 8, scared, can you sleep soundly knowing there’s more injustice unfolding before you.”
This is not an indictment of healing lodges — nine of them across the country — which serve a useful purpose, created by 1992 national legislation to allow Aboriginal communities to provide correctional services, part of a larger undertaking to address overrepresentation of Indigenous people in the prison system.
The minimum security Okimaw Ohci Healing Lodge, where McClintic now resides in apartment-like units that include kitchenette, eating area and living room, is on land that belongs to Nekaneet First Nation. In has emerged that the band wasn’t happy about getting McClintic dumped on them either but had no choice; they lost having any input on prisoner selection six years ago.
“We have no say in who goes where,” Band Chief Alvin Francis told the CBC. “My heart goes out to the Stafford family because it’s a horrible crime.
“I can’t say it’s acceptable. (Elders) are concerned about who comes there. Because with no fence there, she can walk off, right?”
Band member Cherish Francis told CKOM News Talk Radio this week: “When you have cases like this that are horrendous it is a safety concern for everybody because we have children in our community and I know there are mothers out there in our community that are absolutely concerned for their children.”
McClintic had a crummy life, born to a stripper mother who gave her up to another stripper to raise, shuffled among foster homes, in trouble with the law from a young age, with booze and drugs persistent themes in her chaotic life. Only 18 herself on the day, April 8, 2009, when Tori was abducted and slain.
She is deeply, perhaps irreversibly damaged. But even the most bleeding heart among us grasp that she is also guilty of a ghastly crime, fully deserving of a life sentence. More worrisomely, there’s been little indication that McClintic has changed her violent ways at all since incarceration.
In 2012, she was back in court, pleading guilty — “yeah” — to a frenzied assault against another inmate at Grand Valley. Had planned to plead innocent on that charge until a damning letter, seized by a guard, surfaced during disclosure.
“I got in a couple shots, good ones, like one or two decent face shots, but the f—-n b—- totally threw me for a spin,” McClintic wrote to another incarcerated friend. “She pretty well curled up in the f—-n fetal position on the floor, arms over her face, legs curled, sometimes kicking. I was standing over her tryin to get some shots through her arms, finally I brought my foot up, tried stompin on her face a couple times … threw a couple kicks in the whole time. She’s like, what the f— Terri, what the f—, just saying it over and over … »
Head-stomping is what an enraged Terri-Lynne McClintic does.
Something she might want to ponder during “nature walks” at unfenced Okimaw Ohci Healing Lodge.
Rosie DiManno is a columnist based in Toronto covering sports and current affairs. Follow her on Twitter: @rdimanno
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Anglais
‘Business as usual’ for Dorel Industries after terminating go-private deal

MONTREAL — Dorel Industries Inc. says it will continue to pursue its business strategy going forward after terminating an agreement to go private after discussions with shareholders.
« Moving ahead. Business as usual, » a spokesman for the company said in an email on Monday.
A group led by Cerberus Capital Management had previously agreed to buy outstanding shares of Dorel for $16 apiece, except for shares owned by the family that controls the company’s multiple-voting shares.
But Dorel chief executive Martin Schwartz said the Montreal-based maker of car seats, strollers, bicycles and home furniture pulled the plug on a deal on the eve of Tuesday’s special meeting after reviewing votes from shareholders.
“Independent shareholders have clearly expressed their confidence in Dorel’s future and the greater potential for Dorel as a public entity, » he said in a news release.
Dorel’s board of directors, with Martin Schwartz, Alan Schwartz, Jeffrey Schwartz and Jeff Segel recused, unanimously approved the deal’s termination upon the recommendation of a special committee.
The transaction required approval by two-thirds of the votes cast, and more than 50 per cent of the votes cast by non-family shareholders.
Schwartz said enhancing shareholder value remains a top priority while it stays focused on growing its brands, which include Schwinn and Mongoose bikes, Safety 1st-brand car seats and DHP Furniture.
Dorel said the move to end the go-private deal was mutual, despite the funds’ increased purchase price offer earlier this year.
It said there is no break fee applicable in this case.
Montreal-based investment firm Letko, Brosseau & Associates Inc. and San Diego’s Brandes Investment Partners LP, which together control more than 19 per cent of Dorel’s outstanding class B subordinate shares voiced their opposition to the amended offer, which was increased from the initial Nov. 2 offer of $14.50 per share.
« We believe that several minority shareholders shared our opinion, » said Letko vice-president Stephane Lebrun, during a phone interview.
« We are confident of the long-term potential of the company and we have confidence in the managers in place.”

Anglais
Pandemic funds helping Montreal businesses build for a better tomorrow

Many entrepreneurs have had to tap into government loans during the pandemic, at first just to survive, but now some are using the money to better prepare their businesses for the post-COVID future.
One of those businesses is Del Friscos, a popular family restaurant in Dollard-des-Ormeaux that, like many Montreal-area restaurants, has had to adapt from a sit-down establishment to one that takes orders online for takeout or delivery.
“It was hard going from totally in-house seating,” said Del Friscos co-owner Terry Konstas. “We didn’t have an in-house delivery system, which we quickly added. There were so many of our employees that were laid off that wanted to work so we adapted to a delivery system and added platforms like Uber and DoorDash.”
Helping them through the transition were emergency grants and low-interest loans from the federal and provincial governments, some of which are directly administered by PME MTL, a non-profit business-development organization established to assist the island’s small and medium-sized businesses.
Konstas said he had never even heard of PME MTL until a customer told him about them and when he got in touch, he discovered there were many government programs available to help his business get through the downturn and build for the future. “They’ve been very helpful right from day one,” said Konstas.
“We used some of the funds to catch up on our suppliers and our rents, the part that wasn’t covered from the federal side, and we used some of it for our new virtual concepts,” he said, referring to a virtual kitchen model which the restaurant has since adopted.
The virtual kitchen lets them create completely different menu items from the casual American Italian dishes that Del Friscos is known for and market them under different restaurant brand names. Under the Prasinó Soup & Salad banner, they sell healthy Greek options and their Stallone’s Sub Shop brand offers hearty sandwiches, yet the food from both is created in the same Del Friscos kitchen.

Anglais
Downtown Montreal office, retail vacancies continue to rise

Some of downtown Montreal’s key economic indicators are heading in the wrong direction.
Office and retail vacancies in the city’s central core continued to climb in the fourth quarter of 2020, according to a quarterly report released Thursday by the Urban Development Institute of Quebec and the Montréal Centre-Ville merchants association. The report, whose first edition was published in October, aims to paint a socio-economic picture of the downtown area.
The survey also found office space available for sublet had increased during the fourth quarter, which may foreshadow even more vacancies when leases expire. On the residential front, condo sales fell as new listings soared — a sign that the downtown area may be losing some of its appeal to homeowners.
“It’s impossible not to be preoccupied by the rapid increase in office vacancies,” Jean-Marc Fournier, the former Quebec politician who now heads the UDI, said Thursday in an interview.
Still, with COVID-19 vaccinations set to accelerate in the coming months, “the economic picture is bound to improve,” he said. “People will start returning downtown. It’s much too early to say the office market is going to disappear.”
Public health measures implemented since the start of the pandemic almost a year ago — such as caps on office capacity — have deprived downtown Montreal of more than 500,000 workers and students. A mere 4,163 university and CEGEP students attended in-person classes in the second quarter, the most recent period for which figures are available. Border closures and travel restrictions have also brought tourism to a standstill, hurting hotels and thousands of local businesses.
Seventy per cent of downtown workers carried out their professional activities at home more than three days a week during the fourth quarter, the report said, citing an online survey of 1,000 Montreal-area residents conducted last month.

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