Every political big top seems to have one clown that's a little out of control. The Federal Conservatives' recent recalcitrant Bozo is Minister of Public Safety Vic Toews.
Vic wants to enact legislation that will allow government and the Polezei to probe people's privates in a way not seen since Orwell's 1984, Stalin's Russia or Hitler's Germany. The so-called Lawful Access bill is chilling in its implications and astounding in its scope.
The legislation would require telecommunications companies to hand over personal information of customers, called basic subscriber information, to police without a court order.
In addition to name, address, phone number, email address and name of service provider identifier, the bill will require companies to hand over the Internet protocol address. The opposition parties and Canada’s privacy commissioners say this will allow police to build a detailed profile of people, including law-abiding citizens, using their digital footprint — without any judicial oversight.
The proposed bill will also require Internet service providers and cellphone companies to install equipment for real-time surveillance and will create new police powers designed to access the surveillance data. This means police can order a telecom company to preserve data for a specified period, but must first obtain a warrant to read the actual content.
When the outrage to this ridiculous invasion of privacy reached critical mass, a petulant Toews accused those against the bill of siding with child pornographers (!) Really Vic? Privacy commissioners, members of Parliament, prominent academics, respected journalists, civil libertarians and decent members of the public who oppose this legislation are pro kiddy porn? Questioning the ramifications of legislation does not automatically make one sympathetic to those who exploit children.
Vic, Vic, Vic...such clumsy politics, such puerile polemics. Why not just label everyone resisting the 3 a.m. jack boot on the front door as Poopie-Heads and blast them with a squirt of seltzer.
Oh the irony! Wasn't this the government who just got rid of the intrusive gun registration legislation? Victor, don't you know that what we have in the “lawful access” legislation is a bill that violates the privacy rights of law-abiding citizens, while leaving criminals easy ways to avoid it entirely. Doh!
To the Conservatives credit most of their M.P.'s are distancing themselves from this dystopian proposal and even Harper is quoted as saying, "...we will ensure that Parliament fully studies this bill and that private life is also protected in this regard," which is in effect, the political equivalent of slamming a whipped cream pie in the Toews clown face.
Toews is not acting like a leader. He's acting like a narrow-minded, short-sighted Philistine who preys on people's fears and works their guilt for his own ends. Thankfully, he's now on his clown tricycle back-pedalling furiously out of the spotlight.
I leave you with another quote from a historical clown, albeit one who more resembles Stephen King's Pennywise than the innocuous Bozo:
"The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation. " -Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler, Publ. Houghton Miflin, 1943, Page 403.
Sign the petition to stop online spying!
Premier Christy Clark decided to forego the formality of a throne speech to outline her party's plans for the year. Instead she took the opportunity to return to familiar territory and use the Bill Good Show as her soap box. Some have joked that Good became Christy's ersatz lieutenant-governor but to his credit, Good tried to hold Clark accountable - at least twice.
The entire exercise was a waste of time and filled with Christy's dodging and weaving, her nervous giggling and her empty platitudes.
Technically, since the legislature was prorogued, there was no need for a formal throne speech but nevertheless the premier has an obligation to inform all citizens of its plans in a neutral environment. Not all B.C. citizens could access the Bill Good show, and her former employer's flag ship was hardly neutral.
Familiar themes soon emerged from Christy's answers to Good's queries: It's not her fault. It was the previous government's policy; it's too late; it's too difficult to change; it's complicated; do people really want Dix? This broadcast should have come with air sickness bags.
Instead of offering what Clark was so quick to tout to the voters as her "fresh" approach to a moribund government, she made it clear to the listeners that she had nothing new to offer and that she was still stuck in the Liberal morass.
Clark tried to take credit for initiatives she had absolutely nothing to do with like the eight billion dollar shipbuilding contract (an essentially apolitical process), the family law collaborative divorce change (she was at 'NW), yet she tried to deny responsibility for things she was guilty of (see Community Living B.C. cuts) such as the gutting of the CLBC which started while Christy was Deputy Preem.
She was unable to answer how an internal review of recent community service cuts to the developmental handicapped could happen if her government didn't even know how many clients were waiting for help. Her response? "Exactly."
Her lame excuse for the glacial speed at which the HST is being handled was ridiculous, and she couldn't explain why it took 19 months for an HST freedom of information request to be released, despite her insistence that her government was a more "open" one.
When Good asked her why the delays for trials was longer than ever despite more judges and more money thrown at the problem, Clark replied, "I don't know..."
More than once an exasperated Bill Good exclaimed, "But you're the premier!"
Her most egregious bafflegab, however, occurred when she was asked by a caller about the unfairness of the Port Mann bridge toll. The caller explained that carpooling with a friend involved travelling over the Port Mann every day but since his partner was dropped off before the bridge he wouldn't be paying the extra $1500 dollars a year out of his disposable income, despite riding on the Highway 1's improved infrastructure.
"That was the previous government's policy," protested Christy. "But that was YOUR government!" a frustrated Good ejaculated.
Clark's unwillingness and inability to deal with the unfair tolls will come back to haunt her. Suburban communities, especially south of the Fraser will seethe with resentment over the tolls, while the Sea to Sky and North Shore bridges continue to be free for the privileged on their way to Whistler.
The answer, clearly, is to either eliminate tolls or make them more equitable. Vancouver could follow San Francisco's example when it comes to tolling. That region implemented $1 tolls on all seven state-owned bridges back in 1988 to pay for administration and maintenance costs of the infrastructure. The tolls have since risen to $5, with $3 paying for critical seismic upgrades to all bridges, and another $1 increase approved by voters to pay for a package of transportation improvements including BART extensions, new express buses, highway upgrades, and pedestrian and cycling facilities.
Adopting a similar model here would raise enough to invest in future transit, pay for a new Pattullo, create a third SeaBus, expand West Coast Express, and expand transit to UBC and Surrey just for starters. With this tolling model commuters would also think critically about their travel and routes creating fewer congested roads.
What isn't going to work is the pig-headed refusal by Christy and the Sycophants to ignore the tolling issue. Commuters' personal radiators will continue to boil over as they pay to sit in the snail trail of daily commutes.
Don't know if newly elected Diane Watts would abandon her job as mayor of Surrey to take over the Liberal leadership but if Christy's popularity continues to plummet or if (read "when") she loses the next election, watch for Watts to roll up her sleeves to tackle the Liberal mess.
Ask not for whom the bell tolls, Christy, it tolls for thee.
"[Why do] teenagers and 20-year-olds appear at the same time so mentally agile and culturally ignorant. Visual culture improves the abstract spatialization and problem solving, but it doesn’t complement other intelligence-building activities. Smartness there parallels dumbness elsewhere. The relationship between screens and books isn’t benign. As “digital natives” dive daily into three visual media and two sound sources as a matter of disposition, of deep mental compatibility, not just taste, ordinary reading, slow and uniform, strikes them as incompatible, alien. It isn’t just boring and obsolete. It’s irritating. A Raymond Chandler novel takes too long, an Emily Dickinson poem wears them down. A history book requires too much contextual knowledge, and science facts come quicker through the Web than through A Brief History of Time. Bibliophobia is the syndrome. Technophiles cast the young media-savvy sensibility as open and flexible, and it is, as long as the media come through a screen or a speaker. But faced with 100 paper pages, the digital mind turns away. The bearers of e-literacy reject books the way eBay addicts reject bricks-and-mortar stores."
-The Dumbest Generation, Mark Bauerline
