by Arthur Richards I was going to write about my fears of Stephen Harper’s Bill C-51 and how useless and flawed it is but everyone has already done that and the vote has been cast. I have to say that I’m extremely disappointed that our ancestors fought and died in wars for these freedoms to have Harper take them away with the stroke of a pen.
Justin Trudeau says he’ll change it when/if he gets in power. Who is he kidding? Once the RCMP, Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Canadian Border Service Agency, US Customs (who now operate in Canada, legally), every small police force in Canada, your Internet service provider, airline operators and, worst of all, Ministry of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness (MPSEP) gets this power, they’ll never let it go. (By the way, when your Internet service provider is forced to monitor your computer activity, they will start charging money for each site you visit to cover their costs.)
Back in April when our governments were telling us that the oil spill in Vancouver was 90 per cent cleaned up, our daughter told me that she still couldn’t go to the beach because the beaches were all closed. I guess it’s all right for politicians to outright lie to us because their spin doctors can clean it up before the next election. I believe that Canadians are very smart people but we are political idiots and politicians know this. I thought that when we fought and won the battle against the HST, people would wake up to the fact that we can change bad laws and policies. I guess I was wrong. The government predicted financial hardship if it couldn’t have this extra tax. Somehow, it is still able to squander our taxes on overpriced contracts to US companies in an effort to keep the US economy afloat. I’m sure everyone has forgotten what happened with the last softwood agreement with the US but I understand the government just signed another one. Typical of the fox minding the chicken coup. The list goes on and on.
When I was a teen, I cared nothing about politics. In my 20s and 30s, I was struggling to raise a family and had no time for politics. In my 40s and 50s I criticized what I thought were bad laws. Now, I realize that governments have done enough studies and research to know exactly how we will respond to whatever they do and how to get around our objections. It could be by force like the G8 summit or diversion like Canadian military involvement in the middle east (and Bill C-51) by consuming our time with a multi-million-dollar persecution of suspended senator Mike Duffy which they know will go nowhere in the end except through court for a multi-million-dollar settlement with Duffy for slander.
The only way to fight bad governance is by using similar methods. For example, once the MPSEP starts putting our names on the list for objecting to government policies, every Canadian should criticize the government so we will all be on its list which will render the list useless.
Self-censoring is not freedom of speech.
Arthur Richards is a resident of Powell River
