Canada’s terrorism bill

Canada’s ministry of homeland security

May 14, 2015 Incoherent ramblings , , , ,

This last month, I’ve seen one name come up more than any others related to police-state actions and government overreach.  That name is Steven Blaney, the Minister of Public Safety.  He’s the one that sponsored bill C-51, he’s the one who has apparently attempting to arrange for US soldiers to police portions of Canada, and who has recently been caught proposing that groups that opt for BDS bans against Israeli-government actions be prosecuted under hate speech laws.  As Greenwald comments he and the government now both deny the latter.

So what is this Ministry of Public Safety?  That ministry is named in an Orwellian fashion, and contains a number of departments that have a large potential to abuse their power:

 

Basically, here under one roof is all the capability to spy on Canadians, restrict our rights, and then lock us up if we don’t comply.  It’s like the little sister of the United States Department of Homeland Security, with bits of the NSA and CIA tossed in.  The only thing missing is military power.  The total (declared) budget of this ministry is 6 billion dollars.  Compared to its United States counterparts this is an infinitesimal amount of operating cash, and they want more.

Understanding that “Minister of Public Safety” is a misnomer brings a lot of clarity when you consider that this politician is the one that tabled bill C-51.  Basically that bill is an attempt to grant the police state subset of the Canadian government, run by Blaney, more power.  It would be more accurate to have named this bill the “Please grant my Ministry more power” bill.  It now also makes sense how this bill appeared so quickly after the recent parliamentary shooting.  Blaney isn’t a lawyer, but a civil engineer by trade, so wouldn’t have written this himself.  I’d guess this was written by general-council in his ministry long before this shooting and was held in waiting for just this sort of perfect catalyzing event.  That is, of course, pure speculation.

Interesting news.

As a first look at this Ministry and its head, I did a bit of digging, and found a couple of interesting articles

 

The first and second are excellent examples of just the sort of overreach and abuse of power that people are concerned that Bill C-51 would allow.  The only disclaimer is that these are events that have already occurred.

This ministry is indirectly responsible for gun controls, the subject of that last article.  I don’t know a thing about guns nor that specific Swiss weapon, but am completely unsurprised that a politician has been caught playing the game of saying things in the press contrary to reality.

Bills tabled by Blaney

What else is the Ministry of Public Safety up to.  Here’s a list of bills tabled by their figurehead:

An Act to amend the Criminal Records Act, the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and the International Transfer of Offenders Act

An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act and to make a consequential amendment to the International Transfer of Offenders Act

An Act to enact the Security of Canada Information Sharing Act and the Secure Air Travel Act, to amend the Criminal Code, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act and the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and to make related and consequential amendments to other Acts

An Act to amend the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act and other Acts

An Act to amend the Firearms Act and the Criminal Code and to make a related amendment and a consequential amendment to other Acts

An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act

 

This ministry has been busy.

 

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?