Yet Another Desperate and Despicable Ploy: More Harper Narrowcasting

The politics have a look of desperation about them. As they see their electoral chances diminishing among the wider Canadian public with each new sordid revelation, it looks like the Harper crowd is doubling down with its base, a strategy that I questioned in my earlier post today.

Steven Blaney, who could only be considered a Public Safety Minister in a Canada that has grown decidedly Orwellian, has announced a plan that will erode public safety but perhaps fire up the base. CBC News reports the regime minion has announced the Common Sense Firearms Licensing Act which would make life easier for many Canadian gun owners.

Currently, gun owners in Ontario, Quebec and P.E.I. have to apply to each province's chief firearms officer when they want to transport a restricted or prohibited weapon. Under the new rules, gun owners in all provinces would get permission to transport weapons as a condition of their licence.

But wait! There's more!

The government also plans to allow a grace period for gun owners with expired permits.

And even more ominously, this cryptic observation:

The new rules would also give the federal government more say in decisions previously made by each province's chief firearms officer.

Finally, you may recall this dandy little weapon that the RCMP banned earlier this year:

The national police force changed the Swiss Arm rifle from restricted to prohibited, the main reason being that the guns could be easily converted to be fully automatic. Automatic weapons, which shoot a spray of bullets with one trigger pull, are illegal in Canada.

In March, the government said it was troubled by the decision, and gave gun owners permission to keep the weapons, via a two-year amnesty.

Under the new plan, gun owners would also be allowed to use the weapons, in essence restoring them to their previous status.

Indeed, there is much to chew upon here for a segment of the Canadian population.

Think Again

For those who believe Stephen Harper was showing uncommon common sense when he seemed to repudiate his Firearms Advisory Committee last month, think again.

Vic Toews Strikes Again

Apparently dissatisfied with the way society currently holds criminals to account, Public Safety Minister Vic Toews has decided that its high time to make them literally pay for their crimes.

In a move that will save $10 million per annum and leave more for Bev Oda's special travel requirements, The Star reports that prisoners will now have to pay up to 30% of their income toward room and board, leaving them less for the frills they often purchase inside, such as cough medicine and aspirin.

Given that the top earners make the princely sum of $6.90 a day, this latest move is sure to teach them, as their incarceration clearly has not, that crime does not pay.

Tim Harper on the Vic Toews Debacle

In my opinion Tim Harper, a Star columnist with whom I tend to agree more often than disagree, misses the mark with his latest piece.

Entitled A mean town just got a whole lot meaner, the article laments the ugliness that has ensued in reaction to Toews' attempt under Bill C-30 to erode our online privacy under the pretext of ferreting out child pornographers. Toews and his government's resort to ad hominems, absolutism and other acts unworthy of a democratic government against those with reservations to the bill have provoked a furious response from the Twitterverse, including revelation of the ugly details of the Public Safety Minister's messy divorce.

Tim Harper suggests that those details should have remained private, arguing that Toews has done nothing criminal, hypocritical, nor unethical in his Parliamentary position:

In other words, there was no need to pull back the curtain on a family mess that involved others who did not choose politics as a vocation.

What the columnist ignores here is that the Twitter tactics were perfectly predictable, given the debased public climate fostered and promoted by Stephen Harper since assuming office six years ago.

In the Harper world, anyone who questions or impedes his government's vision is regarded as an enemy of Canada, a Taliban sympathizer, or disloyal to our troops. In Harper's Canada, anyone with a competing vision is villified, marginalized, muzzled, mocked or otherwise neutralized. And in Harper's world, if all else fails and real democracy threatens, there is always the prorogue option.

After six years of exposure to these abuses of power and with no recourse, is it any wonder that people, not only feeling impotent rage at their marginalization but also victims themselves of this government-led warping of public morality, are resorting to measures that in normal times would have been considered beyond the pale? Indeed, haven't more and more Canadians lost hope of legitimately influencing a government that no longer even pretends to represent the best interests of the people?