Incoherent ramblings

A parliamentary office response from first C-51 letter.

April 16, 2015 Incoherent ramblings , , ,

Eating crow.

Rather unexpectedly, I’ve received a response from the office of my parliamentary representative John McCallum for my questions about supporters and financiers of Bill C-51. This is the government’s terrorize-Canadians bill that’s milking the fear-porn from the recent shooting at the parliament to increase it’s secret policing and domestic spying infrastructure.

When I wrote Why you should support Canada’s bill C-51 terrorism bill, I also assumed that I’d receive no response.  With that assumption I wrote that I was sending a paper letter so that the civil servant who had to press the delete key for my first letter would have to file a union grievance against me.  Not only was that incorrect, but Mr Nicholson has done an admirable job answering those questions.

That said, it’s hard not to laugh a statement like “corporate donations are prohibited at the federal level.”

The response.

Dear Mr. Joot,

Please accept my sincere apologies for the delay in responding to you. We receive a great deal of correspondence, and do our best to reply in as timely a manner as possible.

I will do my best to answer each of your questions in turn. With respect to the authorship of C-51, it would have been written by officials in the Department of Public Safety and the Department of Justice. The bill was sponsored in the House by Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney. There is no way of knowing precisely who provided the impetus for the bill in cabinet, nor how those discussions progressed.

With respect to financial backing, as I am sure you know, corporate donations are prohibited at the federal level. As such, Members of Parliament may only receive donations from individual Canadians. Elections Canada has a detailed donor database that allows one to search through the donation records of MPs and federal candidates. I have included a link to their robust search tool: http://elections.ca/WPAPPS/WPF/EN/CCS?returntype=1

As far as we know, there are no previous versions of this bill that existed prior to the events of October 22, 2014.

Thank you for writing Mr. McCallum. Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any further questions or concerns.

Kyle W. Nicholson

Parliamentary Assistant

Office of the Hon. John McCallum, P.C., M.P.

Member of Parliament for Markham-Unionville

 

 Followup Q&A

In response to the additional question:

“Is there any public database of past corporate affiliations and employment history of politicians that are currently in office?”
Mr Nicholson writes:
“Unfortunately, there isn’t a central database. The Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner posts the disclosures every member of parliament must make, which includes an external income and assets – see https://ciec-ccie.parl.gc.ca/EN/PublicRegistries/Pages/CodePublicRegistry.aspx. As far as employment history is concerned, you’re pretty much limited to Google.”

 

Why you should support Canada’s bill C-51 terrorism bill.

April 15, 2015 Incoherent ramblings , , , , , ,

To my great surprise, the Canadian government’s attempt to enact a terrorize-Canadians bill is actually getting noticed.  There’s even been protests.

For those who find this objectionable, the stopc51 website makes it easy for people to write a form letter to their representative, but what about all those people who want to support this bill? There’s no startc51 website for people to use!

For all those people, I’ve drafted a form letter that they can use, based on the stopc51 form letter. I’m paper mailing my copy of this letter, with the hopes that a paper letter requires slightly more work to throw out. The civil servant who’s job is to press the delete key can file a union grievance against me.

EDIT: I ended up with a response to my original C-51 letter.

Form letter for support of bill C-51.

[your name and address, including postal code]

[date]

cc: [who else should get a copy of your letter?]

The Honourable [representative name here],

I’m writing to call on you to take a firm stand in support of the government’s carefully thought out, harmless, and effective Bill C-51. I’m asking you to side with Canadians and vote for this legislation.

I applaud the Canadian government initiative to exploit the fear-porn potential of the recent parliamentary shooting to its advantage.

The bill is prudent because it turns CSIS into a ‘secret police’ force with little oversight or accountability. Oversight and accountability are both highly overrated. History has proven that secret police forces have been important forces in many effective governments. Without a secret police force Stalin would not have been able to cull so many millions of the excess citizens of his country. Without a secret police force Hitler would not have been able to implement his death camps. In this day of omnipresent globalism Canada clearly needs its own secret police force to remain competitive.

The bill is useful because it opens the door for violations of our Charter Rights including censorship of free expression online. If people are able to express themselves openly, how can they be controlled?

The bill is effective because it will lead to dragnet surveillance and information sharing on innocent Canadians. Stephen Harper, Justin Trudeau or any other current or future politician would love to have such powers available for blackmail and manipulation purposes.

I applaud the government for trying to push this law through parliament in record time without a proper debate. No Canadian wants to see meaningful discussion in government. Reruns of Jerry Springer is clearly sufficient debate for most people. Inhibiting discussion is prudent since questioning authority and the power elite just feeds uncertainty in these difficult times.

If this bill doesn’t pass, it would limit opportunities for the Canadian government to spy on anyone, at any time. No Canadian wants to know when such spying has occurred. We want to create a shadowy and unaccountable secret police force that will have such a critical role in removing the freedoms of a nation that cannot be allowed to question government and authority.

Please, side with the majority of Canadians who are clueless and have never heard of this bill. Please don’t talk about or vote against this important legislation. Assuming you decide to vote for this bill, I hope you also won’t have any part in educate Canadians about this bill. Nobody needs to know what government allows itself to do “in our names.”

I’m one of the millions of Canadians who are perfectly happy with the status quo, which includes politicians who will not represent us in any meaningful way. I am assuming that you will be towing the party line and will vote for this bill. I already know that free expression is not tolerated in government, so when I see an affirmative vote for this bill, I’ll know that the world as I know it is stable and cannot be changed by individual action.

Please don’t respond to this letter. I do not want a response outlining the reasons that you will not be voting for this bill. Such a response would serve to destroy my worldview that assumes no politicians act for nor truly care for their constituents or Canadians in general. I want to continue to view politicians as pawns placed in positions of powerlessness and ineptitude, incapable of altering or even accurately observing the world around them.

Sincerely,

[your name here]

Posting your letter.

Note that mail may be sent postage-free to any Member of parliament at the following address:

Name of Member of Parliament
House of Commons
Ottawa, Ontario
Canada
K1A 0A6

Yes, we still pay for that “free” mail service through taxation, but I’m going to justify my exploitation of that service as a fair exchange for all the time that I have to spend weeding through the huge stacks of junk mail that Canada Post delivers to my mailbox daily.

My last letter to my “representative” (John McCallum) in parliament about bill C-51 went unanswered. I don’t really believe that I am represented by virtue of having voted or not. Will the actions of the Honourable John McCallum of Markham-Unionville surprise me, or make me doubt this position?

EDIT: as noted above, I did get an answer to my original C-51 letter.  It was neutral in tone, and matter of fact, giving no hint of whether or not the bill will be supported.  What sort of response will this letter produce if any?

Questions about bill C-51 to my “representative” John McCallum in parliment.

March 20, 2015 Incoherent ramblings , , , ,

Hi John,

As a new home owner in the Markham-Unionville riding it appears you are my representative in parliament. I have some questions about the Canadian Bill C-51, which appears is being carried along with the spree of fear porn that the media is pushing after the recent shooting at the capital.

I would like to know the following:

– Who are the specific authors of this bill? If they were bureaucrats and lawyers that were not members of parliament themselves, who were the members of parliament that backed their work?

– Who are the primary financial backers of the members of parliament that either wrote or supported the writing of this bill?

– Are there any known copies of this bill that precede the capital shooting? If so, the same questions apply to the authors or supporters of those bills.

Sincerely,

Peeter Joot

—
A copy of this letter and any associated correspondence will be made publicly available.

Cancellation billing correspondence with Bell Canada

January 3, 2015 Incoherent ramblings , , ,

Jan 3, 2015.

To: Bell Canada, Customer accounts.

From:

Peeter Joot, …. <address>

Account # xxxyyyzzz

Customer ID Number: xxxyyyzzzwww

Re: Disputing billing past cancellation.

To Whom it may concern,

I am writing to dispute the continued billing that I have received from Bell Canada, for services cancelled in August 2014.
Context: Within about a week of moving to a new house on August 12, 2014 I called Bell Canada to arrange for a move of service. Much to my surprise, your company was not willing to retain me as a customer, and I was informed that I would have to pay to move my home phone service to a new location, and was also obligated to accept a new phone number. Neither of these were acceptable, and I told the representative on the phone that I would call back to cancel the service after looking at what non-Bell options were available for home phone. That cancellation was made within a few weeks of my initial call. I do not have the dates for that second call, and the Bell representatives I have talked to tell me that they have lost all records of this second phone call. On that phone call, I was offered additional Bell services for free to attempt to keep me as a customer. A waiver of the move charge, something that makes no sense in this day when you ought to be attempting to retain customers, was also offered at this point. Neither the waiver of the move charge, nor the free services (internet and television related), were of interest at that point since by then I had already had home phone service installed from your competitor Rogers. Had you not required unacceptable move-charges when I initially called to arrange to have the service moved you could have retained me as a customer.

During that second call I was told that not only could you not cancel the service until an effective date of September 30th, you would also bill me for this additional service, whether I wanted it or not. I was and amazed at the meaningless charges that were imposed on me, but by this time felt that I did not have much choice. You have a corporate policy to extort your customers should they desire to keep using your services, so the fact that you are also willing to impose the same type of extortion on customers that no longer wish to use your services is not surpising.

Most recent payment history:

I have records of having paid the $39.49 home phone bill for August 2014 on Sept 9, 2014, and have records of having paid the ($39.49) bill for the services that should have ended Sept 30, 2014 on October 10, 2014.

Failure to cancel:

The house with the undesired Bell service was due to be sold in early November, and to ensure the new owners did not arrive in the house with a functioning phone service in my name, I contacted Bell through your online contact service on October 28, to ensure that the services had been properly cancelled. I talked to Marianne at that point who stated “I was asking because your home phone service is still showing active on my end. If the people you spoke with are not the Loyalty team then it will be the reason why the cancellation was not process. What needs to be done now is to call 310-BELL (2355) 1-800-668-6878 form 10 am – 9 pm and look for the Loyalty team to process the cancellation. I will note the account regarding what happened so you won’t have to render the 30 days notice anymore. “

It appears that your company lost the cancellation request that I had made. This is the same cancellation request where I was told explicitly by a Bell representative that the service would be cancelled effective September 30 2014.

Your representative Oszman (6028990), a nasty fellow to deal with, full of scorn and impatience, did manage to cancelled the service for real on November 3, effective November 4th. I was not surprised to find that your company’s claim that services could not be cancelled immediately was a fabrication.

I do not know if the lost cancellation request was made with Bell “Loyalty” or some other Bell customer service division. I understand from others in customer service roles that there are sometimes penalties for representatives that are not able to retain customers by offering incentives. Perhaps my cancellation request was “lost” to avoid such a penalty?

I have no intention of paying any bills from Bell Canada past the bill paid on October 10 2014 for the September service that I did not desire. For the record, I also consider that September bill to be invalid, but have paid it assuming that in some fine print somewhere I had agreed to be victimized by your company should I wish to cancel the service.

Sincerely,

Peeter Joot

A copy of this correspondence will be made publicly available on the internet.

Remembrance day, a celebration and glorification of war

November 11, 2014 Incoherent ramblings

Today I received the following Remembrance day message at work:

“Every year on November 11th, Canadians pause for a moment of silence in remembrance of the men and women who have served our country during times of war, conflict and peace. More than 1,500,000 Canadians have served our country in this way and over 100,000 have paid the ultimate sacrifice.

They gave their lives and their futures for the freedoms we enjoy today.

At 11:00 a.m. today, please join me in observing one full minute of silence.
“

This illustrates precisely the sort of propaganda that is buried in this yearly celebration of war. Many people will object to my labeling of Remembrance day as a celebration of war, but I think that is an apt label.

We should remember the collective insanity that drove so many to send themselves off to be killed or kill. We should remember those who profited from the wars, and those who funded both sided. Let’s remember the Carnegies who concluded that there’s no better industry than war for profits and pleaded to Wilson to not end world war I too quickly. We should remember the massive propaganda campaigns to attempt to coerce people into fighting these wars. We should remember the disgusting lies that have been used again and again to justify wars that are later proven false. We should remember the US companies like Ford and IBM (my current employer!) that provided financial and resource backing to Hitler, without which his final atrocities would not have been possible. We should remember how every war has been an excuse for raising taxes to new peaks, raising nationalistic debt servitude at every turn (*). We should remember that civilians are the people most hurt by wars, and not focus our attentions on those soldiers that held the guns or were shot by them.

There are many things to remember, and if we are deluded into focusing our attention on the “sacrifices of soldiers”, who are pawns in the grand scheme of things, then we loose.

It is interesting to see just how transparent the Remembrance day propaganda can be. It is not just the glorification of the soldiers who were killed and did their killing. We are asked specifically to also glorify the people that “serve” Canada in it’s day to day waging of what amounts to US imperialistic warfare in times of peace.

Ron Paul’s recent commentary on Canada’s current war mongering nature was very apt.  We should remember that the aggressions that happen in our names have consequences.

If it were not for acceptance of the sorts of patriotic drivel that we see on Remembrance day, and patriotism conditioning events like the daily standing for the national anthem, perhaps a few less people would be so willing to fight wars for or against governments that are not worth obeying.

We give governments power by sheepish compliance. This service is to an entity that is a figment of our collective agreement.

Today I’ll actually just remember my dad. He is the only person I knew that saw through the social conditioning of Remembrance day and so aptly identified it as a propaganda event.

 

 

Footnotes:

(*) I’m not sure how definitive the debtclock link above is, nor it’s sources.  Here’s a newer Canadian debt-clock.  That site is currently also vague about it’s sources, citing “Canadian Government Data” without specifying them, nor linking to them.