[onoway]

For anyone who thought I was being silly about the degree to which the government would like to monitor their citizens in Canada, I would like to offer this for their consideration.
http://www.cbc.ca/ne...lance-bill.html

Way back when the FLQ was rampaging about and Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act to "combat terrorism" there was a huge hue and cry about the loss of civil liberties. That was largely muffled when Pierre LaPorte (If I remember the name correctly) who wasn't even a particularly "important" civil servant, was abducted and murdered . What the Act basically allowed was the arrest and detention indefinitely and without trial or even formal charges being laid, of anyone suspected or accused of belonging to the FLQ (or any such designated group). It made the whole country a sort of Guantanamo Bay.A common comment of the time went something like, the apartheid government of South Africa and other such governments must have been green with envy at the legal freedoms it gave the government.

Along with some people actually thought to belong to the FLQ, various people who had given the governments of the day some flak, were also rounded up. Eventually everything got sorted out and things settled down, but the WMA as far as I know, still sits there ready for use.

The problems inherant in this Bill are obvious in terms of civil liberties. The minister who is talking in the video clip about respecting privacy, transparency and accountability is a member of the government which is known for arbitrarilly closing debates, firing their own appointee for overseeing the rights of veterans when he actually started doing the job he had been entrusted to, and being the most secretive government we have had for a very long time if ever. Among other things. I mourn for my country.

[jdeegan]

From what we hear, Canada has always been a totalitarian dictatorship with no civil society of any kind. Our powerful military stands ready to liberate your oppressed masses.