Within days of the Ottawa attack Harper talks of ramping up hate laws and giving the state new powers that “would include ‘preventive arrests,’ potentially taking the country down the slippery slope of guilty-until-proven innocent authoritarian policies”. This is “terrorism used as a catalyst to break down civil liberties and accumulate more state power.” This is how dictatorships form and Harper is wasting no time in seizing the opportunity(?). This is the wrong way of dealing with the threat. Minority Report is here. It makes one question who the real terrorist is.
Here’s how gun control works in Canada – Vox
I think it’s safe to say that most of us don’t know a lot about Canadian gun laws so here’s a brief primer of which guns are legal and which ones aren’t, licensing and registration.
Why Are Lawyers So Expensive? I’ll Tell You Why — Lawyerist
Because you get a lot for your money. “Your problems are now my problems. My clients go home and sleep soundly for the first time in weeks or months. I go home and think about the legal issues all evening. At night I dream about my client’s… case. Sometimes I wake up in a cold sweat and pull up the scheduling order on my phone, convinced I blew a deadline. When I am at the playground with my kids, I check my email in case I get something from opposing counsel or the court. When I go out to dinner with my wife, I talk about hearings and depositions.”
Why Are Lawyers So Expensive? I’ll Tell You Why — Lawyerist.
MANDATORY CHARGE POLICIES HAVE UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES
In Ontario when a domestic assault situation is called into police SOMEONE WILL BE ARRESTED. “Some are under the impression that when a woman is being abused by her male partner, all she has to do is call 911 and the police will arrive like knights in shining armour. This is not always the reality. Currently across Canada, one person or both involved in the violence are charged right away with a criminal offense, taken to jail and through a costly justice system.” A woman charged says “We had no idea how the system worked, we had no one to turn to to find out what we should do. She had a part-time job, but earned too much for legal aid and too little to afford a lawyer.” Zero tolerance policies never, ever work but rather promote injustices.
Why doesn’t the justice system help abused women? | rabble.ca.
Online hate speech could be curtailed under new anti-terror push – Politics – CBC News
We need a thoughtful, debated, reasoned approach not a kneejerk reaction. ‘We could not arrest someone for having radical thoughts. It’s not a crime in Canada.” “No law can possibly deter hateful thoughts from those who think them,” “This is a very slippery slope … and is going to have to be dispassionately and reasonably debated.” How ironic that Harper would use this tragic event of a soldier who died guarding a symbol of Canada’s efforts to preserve democracy to pass laws that diminish democracy in Canada.
Online hate speech could be curtailed under new anti-terror push – Politics – CBC News.
HERE COME THE CANADIAN THOUGHT POLICE
“Your words, your thoughts and your beliefs could be made criminal. It seems the Conservatives mean to, once again, seize upon a tragic event to fast-track a potentially unconstitutional law. Canadians are asked to blindly stand by and be stripped of their civil liberties in the interests of security. And they couldn’t even wait a day. We understand well how the rhetoric of terrorism works, it allows governments ‘to exploit the fears of its citizens and ignore objections to the manner in which it responds to terrorist violence.'”
http://www.ipolitics.ca/2014/10/24/here-come-the-thought-police/
LET’S NOT GIVE AWAY WHAT WE’RE FIGHTING TO KEEP
As Harper is and will use this tragic event to push forward his “1984” agenda in “a rushed and ludicrous overreaction – one that will be wildly intrusive, impossible to enforce, that repeats what hate crime laws already prohibit and that would ensnare far more loudmouths than menaces” we have to think and debate long and hard the wisdom of willingly giving up the very rights and freedoms our enemies would forcefully take from us.
Reid: We’ve seen MPs unite, now we need them to be divided | Ottawa Citizen.
YOU ARE BEING TRACKED – LICENSE PLATE SCANNERS
Massive surveillance – license plate scanners. Did you even know they exist? Did you have any idea how much police use them on a routine basis? There is no privacy. There is no escape. Big brother is here and he is most definitely watching.
Here’s how they’re being used in Ferguson, Missouri.
https://privacysos.org/node/1565
LET’S NOT THROW AWAY OUR RIGHTS TO PRIVACY
In light of yesterday’s attack on our military and parliamentary institution, we have to be very careful to discern and exercise discretion in giving up or forfeiting our constitutional and democratic rights to privacy. “A bill that lowers the bar for police to conduct digital surveillance and mine the protected online data of Canadians for an expanding number of reasons is disturbing.” I think it is probably common ground that we are willing to infringe upon the rights of war combatants but let’s not let this recent event lead us all over the precipice like a bunch of lemmings.
EDITORIAL: Online privacy should trump all with feds’ privacy bill C-13 – Saanich News.
FEWER ARRESTS = LOWER CRIME RATE
“Clearly, there are some crimes — again, crimes — that the police just can’t be bothered to take seriously anymore, even though enforcing the law is their only job.” (e.g. possession of marijuana) “Triaging of minor offences might make sense in a country plagued with rampant, serious crimes. But we’ve gone from extremely safe to even safer, in a country where the number of law enforcement officers has been stable. What’s wrong with this picture?” My theory is that local politicians want their communities to have the lowest crime rates to encourage residential, commercial and industrial development so they encourage the police to make fewer arrests and be more engaged in community involvement instead.