That the HarperCon’s might in any way be surprised by the public response to Public Safety Minister Vic Toews’ introduction of the “Snoop and Spy” Bill C-30 made the regina mom laugh! . The public responses to the HarperCons over the past while have been strong:
- The lack of action on Attawapiskat and the near-futility of the Crown First Nations Gathering;
- Stephen Harper’s announcement of changes to Old Age Pension during a speech in Davos, Switzerland;
- the closed doors on Committee meetings in the House of Commons;
- Joe Oliver’s attack on opponents of the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline; and
- the Omnibus bill,
to name a few. And, when placed against a backdrop of Canada as a Collossal Fossil at international climate talks, job loss such as that created by the Caterpillar plant closure in London, Ontario and the general outrage as evidenced in the unparliamentary language Liberal MP Justin Trudeau hurled across the aisle at Environment Minister Peter Kent, to name a few — how can anyone really be surprised?
Minister Toews must have felt significant pressure to ensure passage of the bill when he framed opposition to it as standing with the child pornographers. Oh, my yes, think of the children, a tactic recommended by another fascist:
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. —Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf
Oops! Was that a failure of impression managers in the Minister’s office? Did someone really fail to see the tipping point approaching?
From where trm sits, on the once-cold Canadian Prairies, something’s surely tipped. In the middle of February on the northern Great Plains the temperature hovers around 0 degrees Celsius and have for a while now. It’s a very early spring and the recently-revised digital revolution arrived in Canada, thanks to the Minister of Public Safety, Vic Toews.
Three digital phenomena, the Twitter user @vikileaks30 (mirrored here), the hashtags #TellVicEverything and #DontToewsMeBro and the “hacktivist” group, Anonymous, brought international attention to the Snoop and Spy bill. @vikileaks30 sent tweets (140-character messages) excerpted from public documents about Vic Toews rather seedy divorce proceedings, his spending habits as an MP and Cabinet Minister and challenged the Minister to open his browser history for all the world to see.
The hashtagging (assigning a label to a message) by Twitter users received notice world-wide for a moment and remained one of the most discussed topics on Twitter in Canada for several hours. In the Twitterverse (world of Twitter) that’s a long time. The Minister has asked the Speaker to investigate the vikileaks account, based on very bad computer sleuthing by the Ottawa Citizen.
Follow that up with Anonymous demanding the withdraw of B-30 and the resignation of Minister Toews with the promise to release additional information about him if he doesn’t has led to an interesting point. The Minister now hides between a real (imagined?) cloak as a victim of public attack, and apparently, the recipient of threats on his family and his life after admitting he did not read Bill C-30 before presenting it to Parliament.
Yes, trm might go into hiding, too, if she’d presumed such arrogance, made a huge fool of herself and yet again muddied the idea of democracy. It seems, though, that the PMO is trying to clean up the mess. Good luck with that! Canadians found Twitter and, apparently, know how to use it.
