It seems there’s plenty of room for interpretation as to where the Cons’ terror legislation falls on the spectrum from purely political red meat to help their poll position, to a political liability being pushed through for other reasons. But most of the Cons’ major bills tends to include both.
Continue readingTag: c-51
Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Alan Rusbridger explains the Guardian’s much-appreciated effort to provide both space and analysis of the need to fight climate change. And Naomi Klein makes the case for a Marshall plan-style response to transition the world to a sustainable society, while highlighting the need
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On dumbed-down messages
Shorter Tom Lukiwski: When it comes to terror laws, we Conservatives have no time for “legal jargon” like rights, life, liberty or justice. In fact, we’d like you to focus solely on one word.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On clear oversight
Shorter Chuck Strahl: I can’t see why a secret police service should be overseen by anybody other than the MPs who are willing to break their own rules to inflict it on the public in the first place.
Continue readingPolitics Canada: Why is Stephen Harper’s “Anti-Terrorism” bill so popular?
According to a recent survey published in the Globe and Mail Stephen Harper’s Anti-Terrorism bill enjoys the support of 82 percent of respondents across the country. Wow, impressive right? When we look a little closer we see that this supports comes even though most Canadians no little to nothing about the content
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Edward Keenan is the latest to point out that any reasonable political decision-making process needs to include an adult conversation about taxes and why we need them: This week, when asked about the prospect of raising taxes beyond the rate of inflation in
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Carol Graham discusses the high financial and personal costs of poverty: Reported stress levels are higher on average in the U.S. than in Latin America. Importantly, the gap between the levels of the rich and poor is also much greater, with the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Janine Berg writes about the need for strong public policy to counter the trend of growing inequality. And Gillian White traces the ever-increasing divergence between worker productivity and wages in an interview with Jan Rivkin: White: Some say that the decrease of collective
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Burning question
What exactly do we expect CSIS to do with a possible data dump of every piece of information held by every federal government agency when at last notice, it was struggling to find the capacity to check e-mails for malware?
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Frank Graves writes that we’re seeing the end of progress for all but the wealthiest few – and that we all stand to lose out if we come to believe that progress for the rest of us is impossible: There is a virtual
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, condensing this post on the risks of allowing CSIS to self-assess the scope of Canadians’ Charter rights under C-51. For further reading…– Again, the go-to source for analysis of C-51 is Craig Forcese and Kent Roach’s site here. – Clayton Ruby and Nader Hasan’s analysis is here.– John Mueller
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: The Pony Express Government
CSE has undertaken a domestic spy operation that is illegal in Canada, because it’s spying on communication of Canadian citizens. CSE is supposed to only spy on foreigners, and the Commissioner overseeing the signals intelligence agency is supposed to put a stop to any overstepping of that mandate. Something clearly
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: C-51 Being Pushed by “Fascist” language
A former Mountie and CSIS operative thinks Harper’s so called anti-terrorism bill is scary and unnecessary. Mr. Lavigne, 55, left government in 1999, but follows intelligence news closely. He spent years tracking dangerous radicals without the powers the government wants to give to CSIS. “I find it a little convenient
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Lee-Anne Goodman reports on studies from both the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PDF) and the Broadbent Institute (PDF) showing that enlarged tax-free savings accounts stand to blow a massive hole in the federal budget while exacerbating inequality. And PressProgress documents and refutes the pitiful
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Hot Room Politics
Media in Ottawa are too busy eating each other alive to focus on the main course passing authoritarian Bill C-51. Glen McGregor takes the proposed Press Gallery changes apart. @pdmcleod fair enough, moneybags. New territory to me. What's a more apt description? — Jesse Brown (@JesseBrown) February 24, 2015 @laura_payton
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Nora Loreto rightly challenges the instinct to respond to tragedy with blame in the name of “responsibility”, rather than compassion in the interest of making matters better: Blame is the projection of grief, sadness or fear. It is the projection of our
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On constitutional questions
Most of the analysis surrounding the Cons’ terror bill so far has assumed that CSIS’ powers will be interpreted based on a plain reading of the legislation. Under this reading of C-51, any action which could violate the Charter or other Canadian law would only be authorized by a warrant,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Sara Mojtehedzadeh reports on the work done by the Broadbent Institute and Mariana Mazzucato to highlight the importance of publicly-funded innovation: According to a 2014 report by the International Monetary Fund, Canadian companies have been accumulating “dead money” at a faster rate than
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On proper fixes
Since this headline seems to be getting far more attention than the actual accompanying interview (if mostly from people with a strong vested interest in distorting the NDP’s position), let’s take a moment to discuss what we’d expect a responsible party to do upon taking power – and what we
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On extended intrusions
There’s been plenty of discussion as to the similarities between the Cons’ terror bill and Pierre Trudeau’s 1970 invocation of the War Measures Act. And it’s certainly worth reminding ourselves that even in the face of an identifiable security concern, the impulse to attack civil rights tends to prove wrong
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