Sunday, May 31, 2009

Priorities ... and Getting Them Wrong...

I see that Harper is getting ready to add another dust collector to Canada's legal libraries.

Speaking at a Canadian Jewish Congress 90th anniversary luncheon in Toronto, Mr. Harper said legislation will be introduced this week by Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan "to enable victims of terrorism to seek justice" and compensation from individuals, organizations and foreign states that support terrorism.


Why yes, what a lovely sounding idea. Let's tie up Canada's courts with lawsuits against people and powers that aren't even residing in Canada. Brilliant! I'm sure that Canada's courts have lots of spare time to deal with these lawsuits - and that's assuming that the accused party can even be brought before the courts to face these charges.

This has nothing to do with any meaningful sense of justice or improving Canada's profile on the international law stage. This is all about Harper trying to shore up his crumbling electoral support. Like any conservative, he knows that ridiculous "get tough on crime" laws that are utterly unenforceable are an easy way to make political points. Real governance, on the other hand, seems to elude this particular Prime Minister - who is obviously more about showboating and slandering his opponents than he is about actually governing Canada effectively.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

It is almost, but not quite, as if Harper simply has no clue what is going on in the country. he couldn't be more out of touch if he simply stopped any inbound information for 6 months.

This latest nonsense seems to be a sop to some insignificant person (or group of people) that supported Harper somehow, sometime.

MgS said...

It's getting hard to tell which is more out of touch with reality - Harper or Stelmach.

Anonymous said...

Isn't this a useless piece of legislation? The chances of collecting are remote at best. If the victim and terrorist are both dead who collects and who pays? Just wondering.

MAS

Collective Punishment

Ever since Pierre Poilievre opened his mouth and declared that Trans Women need to be banned from washrooms and locker rooms , there's b...