Getting It Wrong...Again

Once again, the Harper government is demonstrating that it has no clue about Canada, our laws, or for that matter the notion of addressing real and material problems.

Yesterday, two events happened to underscore this:

First is our jet-ski riding Minister of Public Safety talking about reintroducing the powers of "preventative arrest" and "compelled testimony" as part of their legislative response to correct the Security Certificates.

If this strikes you as slightly brain damaged, it should. Those powers were "sunset claused" for good reason. Not once in the years since 9/11 have they been necessary, and the presence of such powers would not have prevented Air India either. (Which is turning out to be a veritable comedy of errors)

These powers are a direct abuse of our constitutionally guaranteed rights - they give the police the power to detain and interrogate people beyond the boundaries that are set out in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, without any reasoned checks and balances. Since they have not proven to be necessary in the last number of years since 9/11, it seems to me quite unreasonable to reintroduce them.

The second was the pin-headed tightening of immigration laws to keep foreign strippers out. While I do not particularly see why a stripper constitutes a "skilled trade" for work visa purposes, I don't especially care when the government's rationale is this:

She said the government was making an effort to protect women from exploitation.

"The previous Liberal government gave blanket exceptions to foreign strippers to work in Canada despite warnings that they were vulnerable to forced prostitution and other exploitation," Finlay told MPs.

Now, think on this for a minute - if we are talking about sexual exploitation, then the problem is not the person coming into the country, but the industry itself. Again, the Harper Government is missing the point entirely, and attacking the wrong problem.