A group effort
A year ago last March, I took Vic Toews to task for granting CSIS the authority to trade in information derived from torture. In that post, I described a scenario…
victoews
Is that the sound of goalposts moving?
Canada needs sealed video footage of Khadr interviews before he can return: Toews TORONTO – Omar Khadr won’t be coming home to Canada any time soon. The Canadian government has…
Mostly competent government
Stakeholders cry foul as feds cut funding for emergency preparedness Complaints from provinces, municipalities and fire departments across the country are mounting, as are concerns for public safety, after the…
Your move, Vic.
Omar Khadr formally requests transfer home from Guantanamo Ottawa has received an application from convicted war criminal Omar Khadr to transfer from Guantanamo Bay to Canada. A spokeswoman for Public…
Work-arounds
Before Justice Dennis O’Connor had even finished his final report on the Maher Arar case, officials in Paul Martin’s government were meeting with their American counterparts to determine how they…
I wonder if Justice McDonald would be pleased
CSIS is back in the news, this time defending a policy of paying surprise visits to people at their places of employment. The particular case described in the current news…
Monsters
A bit less than a month ago we learned that Public Safety Minister Vic Toews had loosened the rules governing the ability of CSIS to trade in information derived from…
Indulge me for a moment while I become hysterical
Much of the establishment media coverage of the public reaction to Bill C-30 — and Vic Toews initial comment on it in Question Period — has been annoying, to say…
Mostly competent government
How can tabling legislation in the House of Commons without knowing what it actually says be considered competence? Public Safety Minister Vic Toews says he is surprised to learn that…
Leave Vic Toews alooooooone!
Public Safety Minister Vic Toews wants an investigation. Public Safety Minister Vic Toews is calling for an investigation into how his divorce records ended up on Twitter. Toews has been…
Today in Gutter Politics
The Harper Government™ introduced the latest version of what is colloquially known as the Lawful Access bill today. This is the legislation that would force Internet Service Providers to equip…
I wish I could say I’m surprised but I’m not
CSIS may use intelligence derived from torture, Toews says The federal government has directed Canada’s spy agency to use information that may have been extracted through torture in cases where…
Mostly competent government
Perhaps the best place to start with this Globe and Mail article is half a dozen paragraphs in, where a part of the process followed when someone is to be…
Today in Gutter Politics
This could be the start of a whole new series. Wouldn't that be fun? I don't think this has been reported in the traditional media channels (yet), but courtesy of…
Mostly competent government
Public Safety Minister Vic Toews has changed his tune. He had previously indicated that the reason for zapping all the gun registry data was to help make it more difficult…
"I haven’t seen that statistic"
Howard Sapers is Canada's Correctional Investigator. If you want to know what's happening in Canada's prisons, he'd probably be a good place to start. Unless you're Public Safety Minister Vic…