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	Ottawa Confirms at Least One Canadian Citizen Found on Texas Polygamist Ranch CFTKTV April 26, 2008 http://www.cftktv.com/news/14/707007 OTTAWA - The federal government confirmed Friday that at least one Canadian citizen was living on a Texas polygamist ranch raided by U.S. authorities. Foreign Affairs says the Canadian government is providing that person with diplomatic assistance, but a spokeswoman for the department offered no further details. "Consular officials have confirmed the presence of one Canadian citizen," Eugenie Cormier-Lassonde said in an e-mail. "Contact has been made with the lawyer representing the Canadian and assistance is being provided." Texas officials stormed the Yearning for Zion Ranch earlier this month following a call to a family violence shelter, purportedly by a 16-year-old girl who said her 50-year-old husband beat and raped her. More than 460 children have been seized from the ranch, which is run by a breakaway Mormon sect. The Foreign Affairs statement noted that the welfare of Canadian children in the United States is the responsibility of the Child Protective Services agency in the relevant jurisdiction. It said the department will work with the agencies involved to provide assistance to any Canadian that requires some. A spokesman within the Texas government said he wasn't aware of the Canadian statement - and even if he had been aware of it, he still wouldn't be able to elaborate. "Once the children are in foster care, we don't like to talk about any particular child's characteristics at all," said Patrick Crimmins, spokesman for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services. Reports have surfaced that some of the children taken from the ranch are Canadian, likely from the B.C. polygamist community of Bountiful. Earlier this week, leaders of the community - one of the most guarded and controversial in Canada - spoke out against the raid. The community leaders apparently hoped to protect themselves against what they fear could result in similar actions by Canadian authorities. A spokesman for B.C. Attorney General Wally Oppal wasn't able to offer more detail about the Canadian citizen living on the Texas ranch. referring calls to Foreign Affairs. Meanwhile, a New Democrat MP is calling on the federal justice minister to step in and see that criminal charges are laid in connection with Bountiful. Bountiful has become a difficult issue for B.C.'s attorney-general as he decides whether to pursue charges under laws that forbid multiple marriages. The province has received a legal opinion that suggests a better approach would be to first refer the case to the B.C. Court of Appeal for an opinion on whether laws against polygamy would withstand a Charter challenge. But Dawn Black, the New Democrat MP for the riding of New Westminster-Coquitlam, has written a letter to federal Justice Minister Rob Nicholson, asking him to intervene. "As an advocate of women's and children's rights, I strongly oppose the polygamy practiced in Bountiful, and I share the concerns of many Canadians about the treatment of young girls there," Black writes in the letter. Black suggests using Canada's recently updated age-of-consent laws, which raised the age of sexual consent to 16 from 14. "The advantage of this course of action is that these charges would not encounter any Charter of Rights defences based on religious freedoms," she writes. Successive attorneys general in the province have struggled over whether to lay charges, saying they had no evidence of sexual abuse or of polygamy because no witnesses have been willing to come forward. But Black says that shouldn't prevent legal action. "That happens sometimes in domestic abuse cases, too, and still prosecutions come forward," she said in an interview Friday evening. With Oppal expected to announce how he will proceed in the next week, Black said Nicholson should "use whatever influence and power he has" to encourage criminal charges. "By doing nothing, you're implicitly saying, 'This is OK,"' she said.
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