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.

Vic Has A Warning For All of Us

Our alleged Public Safety Minister, Vic Toews, issued the following warning today:

Online hacker group Anonymous a threat to us all

Maybe. Or perhaps it is a threat only to those who seem to have an unhealthy, intrusive, and/or pruient interest in our Internet lives.

Is The Channel About To Be Changed?

Always adept at averting attention from their criminal acts, look for a Harper push to change the channel with this information.

In my humble opinion, neither Towes nor any other member of his 'rat-pack' deserves any gesture of contrition, only contempt.

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?

Heather Mallick on Vic Toews

Heather Mallick offers an entertaining yet perceptive analysis of the Twitter woes afflicting the man who would be our Lord and Master in today's Star that is well-worth reading. Her opening reads thus:

As Public Safety Minister Vic Toews demands an investigation into how the story of his alleged infidelities, love child and subsequent divorce ended up on Twitter, I am demanding a different investigation entirely.

How did a man like Toews find not one, but possibly three women who found him attractive enough to go the distance, so to speak? I would have thought it would be just the long-suffering one, Lorraine, to whom he was married for more than three decades.

A good question indeed.

Message to Premiers and Prime Ministers: Even the Right is Demanding a G20 Inquiry

Politicians should know they are in trouble when even the more conservative elements of society, traditionally unquestioning supporters of the police and their tactics, begin to demand a full public inquiry into the massive abuse of people and their Charter Rights that took place during Toronto's G20 Summit. For example, The National Post has published an editorial calling for an inquiry. The Toronto Sun's Joe Warmington writes very critically about the police misbehaviour. The Globe and Mail has solid coverage of the report by the Canadian Civil Liberties Union demanding an inquiry. A more politically balanced paper, The Ottawa Citizen, baldly states that McGuinty is wrong to oppose an inquiry, as does The Toronto Star.

Despite the facile denials by both Premier McGuinty and Federal Public Safety Minister Vic Toews of the need for such an inquiry, a consensus seems to be emerging that it is the only way to clear the miasma of suspicion and cynicism that has engulfed Canadians over what transpired last June. The graphic video footage seen by so many clearly reveals that our complacent assumptions about Canadian rights and freedoms are little more than quaint notions, easily suspended at the whim of our political leaders and their underlings.

Only a full inquiry can begin the healing process.

What Do Big Brother and the Harper Conservative Government Have In Common?

The simple answer is, "They both know what is best for us."

In so many ways, it is such a relief to know that we Canadians no longer have to think for ourselves, as the Harper Government has assumed that burden for us. The latest evidence of their benevolence comes from a story by Richard Brennan in today's Toronto Star about the long-delayed release of a report on the effectiveness of the long gun registry.