Should police be permitted to impersonate religious figures to elicit confessions from suspects and their relatives? In a social democracy like ours, one that protects the right to a relationship with a religious advisor free from police interference, the answer should be obvious: No. The appeal in question concerns the conviction of Jamaican-Canadians Evol Robinson, Jahmar Welsh and Ruben Pinnock in a Brampton court for the 2004 murder of Youhan Oraha. In pursuing the investigation for this case, a Brampton Ontario police officer of Caribbean origin impersonated a religious priest of the Caribbean Obeah faith in order to solicit confessions from the men's family members.

One reason the play is shocking: It is so badly written. The playwright, Beverley Cooper, used court transcripts and apparently knocked it together in a short time. It shows. If you have a couple of hours and want to know what really happened to Steven Truscott, you would be better off reading a book about him.

A dreadful murder in Toronto where the suspect was on bail has, once again, led to media outrage. Calls to restrict or even prohibit bail have been made. What is striking about the media outrage is how ill-informed the response seems to be about bail itself.

Earlier this month, Nicole Doucet was brought in front of the Supreme Court of Canada after she tried to have her allegedly abusive ex-husband, Michael Ryan, killed. She hired a hitman to do the job for $25,000, but unfortunately for Nicole and fortunately for Michael, the assassin turned out to be an undercover RCMP officer. Despite that, Nicole was ultimately absolved by the Supreme Court of Canada.

Another jail opened in Nunavut last week. It is long overdue -- the existing facility in Iqaluit, Baffin Correctional Centre is, as Justice Mahar of the Nunavut Court of Justice recently said, "notoriously over crowded and under resourced." And yet a rather bland factual news story about the opening of the new prison in Rankin was met with a flood of angry comments about over pampered prisoners, club fed hotels and similar complaints.

The Somali Canadian population is "undergoing the growing pains of integration into the larger Canadian mainstream" according to the head of the influential Somali Canadian Congress. Ahmed Hussen, a noted activist and newly minted Ottawa University lawyer, reflects on mentorship, influence and integration for Canada's large Somali population.

A trial still unfolding in Bordeaux, France is already attracting lurid headlines as a man is facing prosecution over his nine-year domination of an aristocratic French family. Thierry Tilly of Oxford, England has been described by prosecutors as the "Leonardo da Vinci of mental manipulation."

The unusually forceful language in the recent government report titled "Marginalized" underscores the abject failure of this government's simplistic and outdated "tough on crime" approach, particularly for Canada's Aboriginal population. Aboriginal peoples are 4 per cent of the Canadian population, but 20 per cent of the prison population. All Canadians must realize that it is in all of our interests -- in terms of public safety, cost and untapped human potential -- to heed the call of this report and take "aggressive action" to deal with this national disgrace.

A book has been written about him. He has cavorted with mafia bosses, terrorists, smugglers, murderers and thieves. It is even believed that he knows the final resting place of Teamsters' boss Jimmy Hoffa. Marvin "the Weasel" Elkind, a petty thief, little-known pro boxer, born in Jewish Toronto, shunted through foster homes ending up in reform school has a story that reads like a Hollywood gangster movie.

Once upon a time I wrote a book about being a journalist in the 21st century. I was leafing through its pages last evening, when I stopped at the chapter The Less Things Change... It's about my time, 50 years ago, working as reporter/anchor at a startup TV station in Zambia. The chapter starts by describing how we got our foreign news film back there in the 60s. Even after all these years, much is still the same.