The Lawful Access bill came down yesterday,
and Vic Toews gave it a torque short title – the “Protecting Children from
Internet Predators Act,” thus making it magically immune from criticism, lest
you be on the side of the child pornographers. Never mind that the words “children”
or “predators” doesn’t appear in the bill either – the point is to make the
issue sound so scary that we need to give police these powers, even though
there has never been any actual demonstrated need. That said, it does appear
that the amount of data obtainable without a warrant is more than we
may be led to believe – but what is potentially worse is that it makes cell
phone and Internet providers reengineer their networks for the purpose of
surveillance. That could also means a lot more leaks from the providers
themselves, or gives police a lot of powers in the event of an event like a
G20. Still a lot of red flags raised that are being shielded by the government
invoking the moral panic of child predators, hoping that people will look the
other way.
Here’s a look at the growing unofficial
opposition of former senior bureaucrats who have resigned (some in protest),
and who still have the inside connections to ensure that their criticisms carry
weight in an era where the opposition parties in the House are leaderless and
disorganised.
After QP yesterday, Justin Trudeau speechified for the assembled press to defend how much he loves Canada and to
disprove notions that he might support Quebec separating if it continued under
a Harper regime for more years. Trudeau says that separatism is no longer the
bogeyman, but rather Harper is.
Even the Pentagon says that the price for
the F-35 is going to go up given the delays and reduced orders. Meanwhile,
Julian Fantino hints that we may end up reducing our order from 65 – even though
65 was an already dangerously low number that allows almost no margin for loss
or redundancy.
Up today: Final hours of debate on
scrapping the long-gun registry, followed by a tonne of other votes, including private
members’ bills on suicide prevention, and heeding the call of free speech advocates
by scrapping hate speech provisions in the Canadian Human Rights Act.
