It's a good question, but unfortunately and predictably, the government is providing us with no answers.
As reported in today's Star,
The federal privacy watchdog’s concerns over electronic snooping are being met with silence from members of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s cabinet.
Interim Privacy Commissioner Chantal Bernier directly appealed to four cabinet ministers and the federal government’s chief bureaucrat to reform Ottawa’s electronic snooping practices between February and March. Only one cabinet minister, Treasury Board President Tony Clement, has responded to Bernier’s letter.
Meanwhile, a Star reader offers a pungent assessment of how our country has devolved under the Harper regime:
Re: Conservative snooping Orwellian, Letter May 5
I have been musing of late about so many events happening in our beloved country, at the speed of light it seems. One thing sits very uncomfortable with me. Communism was defeated by the progress of democracy and economics in most of the communist countries but here we are in Canada using the very same methods they used to control their citizens — every piece of personal and public information is being scrutinized and stored by threatening the people who provide us our freedom to the world via the Internet and our personal habits of buying, education, business, and so on.
What the hell happened? Democracy where are you?
Carole A. Zaza, Toronto
And finally, this brief video points out some of the things we should be thinking about as the regime continues its unwholesome, undemocratic and wholly unprecedented intrusions into our privacy:
They used 1984 as a road map, Lorne, not as a warning. That's what happened.
ReplyDeleteAnn unfortunately, Owen, we have taken some pages out of other dystopian novels to let them get away with it. Fahrenheit 451 emphasized the narcotizing strategy of reality television, and Brave New world offered soma.
Delete.. 'the fact of the matter' .. 'I've been very clear' .. or 'let me be very clear' ..
ReplyDeleteWell uh .. Canada is being treated to fiction, obstruction.. and malfunction
OK..
and distortion, ignorance, malice, entitlement, presumption
immaculate assumption, greasy rhetoric.. deadening repetition
partisan blasphemy, deflection, infection, conflation .. retardation ..
Yes.. I have used the word retardation.. full apology
but that's our current Harper Party Govinment..
Temp Foreign Werkers n interns & employers pulling hard for them
all hands n slaves sweating at the oars.. tweeting, selling, swearing fealty ..
OK.. they are trying to bail a wormy loggy ideologically sodden ship
the Wondrous Rapture Ship Harper..
for yet another very scary fascist end around
of anything recognizable as democratic, strong or free
Think Harper as Berlusconi .. or some 3rd world dickhead
its pretty hard to understate the problem ..
If your heart glows Canadian ...
If you're a Harper/McKay 'Conservative' 1st.. dim Reformer
or thuggy Northern Alliance trog .. well good luck to you
its OK to attack Canada eh ..
or whining about how the First Nations seem implacable
But don't complain when you get yer ass trashed
for pretending to speak for Canadians.. you aint ever met
don't care a whit about or respect..
When those crazy Canadians rise up and kick yer stinkin arse
to the disgusting junk heap of failed, pretenders..
All of the descriptive terms you have applied to this regime, Salamander, bespeak the deep and abiding contempt it has for all of things that traditionally made Canada the envy of the world. Let us hope that all citizens rediscover their pride in and allegiance to the country and and oust these reprobates in 2015.
Delete