It is the hottest of hot buttons,fuelled by hysterical tabloid head-lines, fulminating talk-radio hostsand rabid partisans on Twitter andFacebook.

The Liberal pledge to provide$10,000 tax credits for businesses togive training and work experienceto 1,200 “highly skilled Canadiancitizens, trained elsewhere, already

living in Ontario for under fiveyears” has been the first big issue ofthis election campaign.

As soon as the $12 millionpromise was leaked on theweekend, ProgressiveConservative LeaderTim Hudak pounced.

The Conservativeshave gone into overdrive,believing they have founda wedge issue they can ex-ploit.

Using rhetoric and advertisingsome would call xenophobic, theTories darkly warn that Liberal

Leader Dalton McGuinty haslaunched an “affirmative action forforeign workers” scheme.

Tory insiders say their suc-cess in framing the Grits’

poorly communicatedpolicy — designed tohelp foreign-trained ar-chitects, engineers,

lawyers and other pro-fessionals — has boosted

fundraising and helped PCcandidates across Ontario.

“Our phones are ringing off thehook,” enthused one senior Con-servative.

Indeed, Hudak could barely con-tain his excitement Thursday in Ot-tawa, almost shouting: “DaltonMcGuinty wants to spend up to $50million (over four years) to handover jobs to foreign workers whenwe have so many unemployed inOntario. It’s wrong. People are re-acting strongly against it.”

His party even created a new adwith the incendiary — and tech-nically inaccurate — slogan: “Onta-rio workers need not apply. You justget the bill.”

Battle lines drawn over immigrant job creditBoth parties believethey’ve struck gold ROBERT BENZIE QUEEN’S PARK BUREAU CHIEF

JOBS continued on A6

FULL INDEX PAGE A2Store and box price Monday to Friday $1.00including tax (prices higher outside the GTA)

ON0

MOSTLY CLOUDY. HIGH 25C (WEATHER MAP ON S10) H thestar.com H FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 2011

STARS LIGHT UPOPENING NIGHT

MILLIONMILLION

TONIGHT’S JACKPOT

$10$10

A proposal drafted at Toronto CityHall to slash all funding to majorarts organizations is sending shockwaves through Toronto’s culturalworld, the Star has learned.

The proposal, prepared by citymanager Joe Pennachetti in re-sponse to a request from Mayor

Rob Ford’s office, is intended to bepresented at a meeting of the city’sexecutive committee on Sept. 19.

If passed by city council, the planwould eliminate more than $6 mil-lion of annual funding that goes di-rectly to 10 of the city’s top artsorganizations, including the Toron-to International Film Festival,which opened Thursday.

The leaders of those organizationshave scheduled a summit on Fridaymorning at the Four Seasons Cen-tre for the Performing Arts, con-vened by the Toronto Arts Council.(The council hands out $10 millionin arts grants from the city, but the$6 million for the major groupscomes directly from city hall.)

“I haven’t seen anything on paper,but the newest recommendationwould most certainly affect majorarts organizations in a dramaticway,” said Claire Hopkinson, exec-

utive director of the arts council. “It would involve alarming reduc-

tions to a number of arts organiza-tions . . . We feel it is important tolet the people of Toronto know andappreciate the importance of fund-ing for the arts from the city.”

For that reason, the arts council, incollaboration with Business for theArts, is organizing a news confer-ence at Roy Thomson Hall nextThursday.

Arts grants on chopping blockCity proposal would eliminate

$6 million in annual cash for top cultural groups STAR EXCLUSIVE

MARTIN KNELMANENTERTAINMENT COLUMNIST

Canadian Opera Company:$1,317,015National Ballet of Canada:$1,148,600Toronto Symphony: $1,134,036TIFF: $800,000Art Gallery of Ontario: $540,000Caribbean Carnival: $494,190Luminato: $200,000National Ballet School: $137,332Gardiner Museum: $135,980Pride Toronto: $123,807

WHAT THEY GOT IN 2011

ARTS continued on A25

Kienan Hebert is a “super happy allthe time” 3-year-old prone to sleep-walking at night in his Sparwood,B.C., home.

Randall Peter Hopley, 46, is a con-victed sex offender who wasbanned from the local library in thesame small mining town for aggres-sive behaviour this past April.

Both the missing boy and the manare now the focus of a massivesearch in the town of 3,900 and itssurrounding woods near the Alber-ta-B.C. border.

Kienan was wearing blue Scooby-Doo boxer shorts when he wastucked in Tuesday evening at hishome in the southeastern B.C.town, about 260 kilometres south-west of Calgary. The boy’s father,Paul Hebert, said he had a sick feel-ing in his gut when his red-hairedson was nowhere to be foundWednesday morning.

“Everyone’s on hand, the profes-sionals are doing what they can do,and we just have faith that Kienanwill be coming back home and safe,”Hebert said. “He’s a great kid. He’ssuper happy all the time. If you seehim, you’ll think he’s a cute littlebutton. He’s just a happy kid.”

Hebert added that he doesn’tknow Hopley.

An Amber Alert was issuedWednesday night, identifying Ho-pley and describing his brown 1987Toyota Camry with licence plate098 RAL. Police have warned thepublic not to approach the vehicle.

Hopley has a string of convictionsdating back to 1985 that range fromsexual assault to break-and-enter.He just finished serving a two-month sentence for assaulting awoman outside the Sparwood Pub-lic Library and is on probation.

MISSING continued on A25

Sex offendersought insearch formissing boyMay havebeen takenfrom hisbedroom in smallB.C. town

CHLOÉ FEDIO STAFF REPORTER

Bono The Edge Hayden ChristensenFreida Pinto Elisabeth Shue Dev PatelJuliette Lewis Scott Speedman Mia Wasikowska and more, E9

“We can handle this one of twoways,” Const. Paul Mohit allegedlytold Vaughn Nembhard as he sathandcuffed in the back of a policecruiser on Queen St. last February.“We let you go now and you forgetthis ever happened, or we chargeyou with assaulting a police officer.”

Nembhard thought of what his fa-ther had told him the last time hewas stopped and questioned by po-lice: make them put everything on

the record. “Take me to jail,” he said. Mohit’s partner, Const. Lukasz

Aleksandrowicz, shook his head. “I don’t know why you would want

to waste a nice Sunday.”Nembhard, a 35-year-old Rogers

customer service agent, is accusingToronto police of racial profilingand discrimination after he was ar-rested in February for assaulting apolice officer, a charge that was lat-er dropped.

Nembhard believes he was target-ed by police, slapped with a bogus

charge and arbitrarily strip-searched because of his skin colourand the limp he has walked withsince suffering a stroke 13 years ago.

According to his complaint,Nembhard was walking on QueenSt. W. in Parkdale — steps awayfrom his Jameson Ave. home —around 1:30 p.m. on Feb. 20. He wasabout to make a cellphone callwhen a marked police cruiser en-tered the driveway in front of him,blocking his path.

From the car, the officers asked

where he was going. Nembhard ig-nored them and walked around thefront of the vehicle.

He said he has been questionedand “harassed” by police a numberof times in his life — “The first timewas when I was 12 or 13” — and sincehe was not breaking any laws, he didnot want to cooperate with them.

Aleksandrowicz and Mohit lefttheir car and stood in Nembhard’sway, according to the complaint.

Disabled, strip-searched, humiliatedEXCLUSIVE Parkdale man, 35, accuses Toronto police of racial profiling

“I asked the officers if they stopped me because I am black. Both of them laughed,” says Vaughn Nembhard, who has filed a human rights complaint.TARA WALTON/TORONTO STAR

PROFILING continued on A25

BRENDAN KENNEDY STAFF REPORTER

ON ON0 FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 2011 H TORONTO STAR H A25

NEWS

Representatives of TIFF, the Na-tional Ballet of Canada and the Ca-nadian Opera Company said theywould certainly feel the loss of thecity money.

“We currently receive $800,000from the city, and we have had agreat working relationship with thecity under current and past admin-istrations,” said Jennifer Bell,TIFF’s vice-president in charge ofcommunications.

“Our year-round activities bringin $170 million in independentlymeasured economic impact.”

“The city’s funding goes to greatuse supporting our year-round ini-tiatives . . . with only a small por-tion going to the festival. A fairamount of our funding goes direct-ly back to the city (through paid-duty officers, permits, passes to thecity, etc.).”

Kevin Garland, executive directorof the National Ballet of Canada,said, “It would be a huge setback ifthe city pulled the rug out now.

“There was a tremendous com-mitment and investment to our cul-tural infrastructure from privatedonors as well as governments, andthe result was we have built a cul-tural scene that we can be proud of,which makes this city a tourist des-tination and delivers major eco-nomic impact.”

“If we lost our grant from the city,we would have to become a differ-ent kind of company,” said Alexan-der Neef, general director of theCanadian Opera Company.

Hopkinson said there are otheroptions under consideration andshe hopes the city will be persuad-ed not to adopt the worst-caseplan.

“I can’t imagine city council wouldapprove drastic cuts,” says Jeff Me-lanson, the mayor’s adviser on thearts since November 2010.

“And if it did happen, I would feelbetrayed.”

In recruiting Melanson, Fordagreed there would be no cuts to thearts.

Cut would be‘huge setback’ARTS from A1

Ever since he retired from the Bed-fordshire County police homicidesquad in 2002, Trevor Marriott hasbeen researching what he considersthe most famous cold case of all: theidentity of Jack the Ripper.

And now after almost a decade’sworth of research, Marriott hascome up with the name of the manhe believes is the most likely candi-date: Carl Feigenbaum, a Germanmerchant sailor.

Marriott has put together a com-posite sketch of the suspect from adescription of him included in doc-uments when he was jailed in 1894at Sing Sing after he was foundguilty of murdering a woman inNew York City.

Feigenbaum could have been the“first transatlantic serial killer,”Marriott told the Star.

It’s generally believed that Jackthe Ripper killed five women in1888 in the Whitechapel district ofLondon, and was suspected in asmany as 13 other deaths before 1891.

Marriott pins much of his argu-ment on statements from Feigen-baum’s American lawyer, as well asshipping documents.

Marriott found the ship Feigen-baum was believed to be on — theNordeutscher line’s Reiher — wasin Whitechapel during each of theso-called Jack the Ripper murders,except for one.

But on that date, another mer-chant boat from the same companywas docked in Whitechapel. Fei-genbaum could have switchedships on that occasion, Marriottspeculates.

And once Feigenbaum was im-prisoned for a New York murder in1894, and then executed in 1896,there were no more Jack the Ripperkillings.

The charge and executionstemmed from the murder of a NewYork woman that was similar to theJack the Ripper killings, where thevictim’s throat was cut almost to the

point of decapitation. At the time of Feigenbaum’s trial,

his lawyer gave a news conferenceannouncing that Feigenbaum hadtold him he was Jack the Ripper andhe suffered from a “singular diseasewhich manifests itself to force himto kill and mutilate women.”

And found among Feigenbaum’s

possessions when he was arrestedwas a cloth case for a long-bladedknife and a stone for sharpening,Marriott said.

Inquiries revealed that Feigen-baum worked as a merchant sea-man for the Nordeutscher shippingline. But the crew lists for the Reih-er have long ago gone missing, Mar-

riott said. The loss of these crewlists is a bit suspicious, he added.

“I suspect (the lawyer) had thecrew lists at one point,” he said.

Feigenbaum’s New York attorneyalso told a news conference that hehad done his own inquiries and hehad placed Feigenbaum in White-chapel at the time of the murders,

Marriott said. Marriott was not able to find a

confession among the lawyer’s pap-ers, but he did obtain Feigenbaum’strial transcripts from the New YorkMunicipal Archives.

They revealed him to be a thiefand compulsive liar. He freely stoledifferent people’s identities andFeigenbaum wasn’t even his realname.

His actual name was Anton Zahn,Marriot said. And he was from Ger-many.

It’s highly unlikely Marriott will beable to find evidence that will iden-tify Feigenbaum, beyond the shad-ow of a doubt, as Jack the Ripper.But he believes Feigenbaum is the“best candidate.”

At one time or another, more than200 people have been suspected ofbeing Jack the Ripper, includingAaron Kosminski, Prince AlbertVictor, the Duke of Clarence andFrancis Tumblety.

And according to documents ob-tained in a freedom of informationrequest Marriott filed in 2008, theLondon police had even considered“R. Churchill” — or RandolphChurchill, a respected member ofParliament and Winston Chur-chill’s father — as a possible “per-petrator of Whitechapel murders.”

One historian has gone so far as tosuggest the killings were fiction — aforgery by newspapers to sell theirproduct during a newspaper war.

Marriott said his investigation isalmost done. He is now concentrat-ing on a book about the case detail-ing the evidence about Feigenbaumas well as a screenplay.

Marriott’s sleuthing gets a thumbsup from Xanthe Mallet, a forensicanthropologist at the University ofDundee.

“I would say (Feigenbaum) is areasonable suspect from the evi-dence I’ve seen,” she said.

She’d like to see more work doneon the victims, perhaps reviewingtheir inquests to see what they re-veal about the possible killer.

The victims were all prostitutes,many of whom had nowhere to liveand wandered the streets to getmoney for food and a bed for thenight, except for Mary Jane Kelly,who had a room of her own.

Is this the face of Jack the Ripper? German sailor is likelysuspect for murders,former detective says

A composite sketch of Carl Feigenbaum, whom a British researcher believes was Jack the Ripper.COURTESY TREVOR MARRIOTT

DEBRA BLACK STAFF REPORTER

They continued to ask him wherehe was going, where he lived and ifhe was “wanted.”

Nembhard said the officers — onewhite, the other Middle Eastern orSouth Asian — also shoved him andrefused to provide their names andbadge numbers.

“I still did not know why they werestopping me,” Nembhard says in hiscomplaint. “I asked the officers ifthey stopped me because I amblack. Both of them laughed. Theystill did not give me a reason forstopping me.”

With his cellphone in hand,Nembhard said he decided to re-cord what was happening. As hedid, he said he was tackled to theground by the officers, who tried to

turn off the recording function. Nembhard was handcuffed and

placed in the back of the cruiser. Moments after the car was start-

ed, Nembhard claims the officerspulled over and gave him the ulti-matum.

Nembhard said he was strip-searched at the police station, andreleased five hours later. The offi-cers say they charged Nembhardwith assaulting a police officer be-cause he struck Aleksandrowicz inthe chest with his right arm.

Nembhard has not been able tomove his right arm since his stroke.

The charge against Nembhardwas dropped a couple of monthslater when the Crown concludedthere was no reasonable prospect ofconviction.

The Star obtained the disclosure

provided to Nembhard while thecase was still before the courts, andit describes how police suspectedhim of concealing a weapon be-cause he was limping with his rightarm tucked inside his coat.

“The officers recognized these tobe characteristics of an armed per-son,” the arrest record states.

Nembhard has filed a complaintwith the Human Rights Tribunal ofOntario against the Toronto PoliceServices Board, Chief Bill Blair andthe arresting officers.

None of the allegations has beenproven in court and the police haveyet to file a statement of defence.Police spokesman Mark Pugashsaid he could not comment on theallegations. “Our lawyers are still inthe process of looking at it,” Pugashsaid.

Nembhard, who has no criminalrecord, is seeking $250,000 in com-pensation for “discrimination,mental and physical suffering, andinjury to dignity, feelings and self-respect.”

Nembhard says the incident hasleft him feeling degraded and hu-miliated, fearful of police and lessproductive at work.

“I felt kidnapped,” he said. “And Iwas just walking in my neighbour-hood.”

Nembhard’s lawyers, Barry Swa-dron and Kelley Bryan, called thepolice claims “outrageous.”

“If it was a white guy with a limp,they would have said, ‘This guy hasa disability,’ ” said Bryan. “Becausehe’s black they assume he has aweapon.”

Nembhard said his experience iscommon to his black friends, butwants others to know, too.

“I want people to know this hap-pens a lot more than they think.”

‘I was just walking in my neighbourhood’PROFILING from A1

Head librarian James Bertoia saidHopley used to come in to surf theweb but was banned from the li-brary after he got into a shoutingmatch with a woman at the publiccomputers in April.

Bertoia added that a police officercame to the library and “was con-cerned about what (Hopley) mightbe accessing online on the comput-ers.”

RCMP Cpl. Dan Moskaluk wouldnot say why investigators namedHopley as a person of interest.

“Putting it bluntly, amongst us wedo have people that have previouslybeen involved in criminal activity ina variety of criminal offences . . .Some of them become quite goodcitizens and partake in our commu-nities and integrate back, but somedon’t,” he said.

The boy is known for sleepwalkingbut has never exited his home dur-ing past incidents, added Moskaluk.

Local volunteers took time off workto join search-and-rescue officials,a police dog unit and an RCMP heli-copter in a search for the toddler onWednesday and Thursday.

Sparwood Councillor Jim Bankssaid residents in the tight-knit com-munity have a history of pulling to-gether. The town was rattled in De-cember 2008, when eight local menwere buried by an avalanche whilesnowmobiling in the mountainousbackcountry.

“It’s a very unsettling situation in asmall town where so many peopleknow each other. It’s a compactcommunity,” Banks said.

Hebert said this is just the latesthardship for his family.

“We have eight kids. Our 6-year-old has had three heart surgeries,and now we deal with a kidnappedchild — to me, kidnapped. He alsocould be lost; we won’t speculate onwhat’s going on. But we hope for thebest for Kienan’s safety and thathe’ll be home safe,” Hebert said.

Hopley’s criminal record coversmost of his adult life.

The National Parole Board con-firmed that Hopley was convictedof sexual assault in 1985 and sen-tenced to two years in federal pris-on.

He was released in 1987. The boardhad no additional informationabout the charge because recordsare destroyed after 10 years.

Provincial court records show nu-merous convictions for Randall Pe-ter Hopley, born in 1965.

In November 2007, he wascharged with break-and-enter, un-lawful confinement and attemptedabduction, confirmed Crownspokesman Neil MacKenzie.

Hopley pleaded guilty to thebreak-and-enter and was sen-tenced to 18 months in jail, but theunlawful confinement and at-

tempted abduction charges werestayed over concerns about evi-dence, said MacKenzie.

Hopley was also convicted in 2006for a break-and-enter in Sparwood,for which he received a conditionalsentence of nine months, accordingto court records. In 2003, he re-ceived a one-year conditional sen-tence for theft under $5,000, and in2002 he was handed a three-monthconditional sentence after he wasconvicted of break-and-enter.

‘We have faith Kienanwill be coming home safe’MISSING from A1

Edmonton

Sparwood

Lethbridge

Calgary

Banff

Nelson

Kelowna

ALBERTA

BRITISHCOLUMBIA

UNITED STATES

100 kmRandallPeterHopley, 46,was bannedfrom thelibrary in thesame smallmining townthis pastApril.

With files from Petti Fong and The Canadian Press