Ryan Kelpin is a 23-year-old Welland native studying political science and sociology at the University of Toronto.
RYAN KELPIN/Special to Bullet News
Some people just have to learn their lesson the hard way.
Just ask Vic Toews, the newest internet meme.
If you haven’t been paying attention to the Canadian media and political cycle in the last week, boy have you missed a lot. The crux of it all though was the Conservative government getting slightly drunk on its majority and deciding they would attempt to jam an internet “monitoring and identification” bill down the throats of Canadians.
Big mistake.
Apparently they had not taken note of the major backlash that happened towards a similar bill in the U.S., a country that is more than ready to have their freedoms quashed at any time using vague and usually illegitimate justification. Who knew we would take our objection to the level of trending worldwide on Twitter, something that is usually reserved for the deaths of celebrities and weird internet fads? Memo to angry Conservatives (here’s looking at you John Baird): Canadians take their Charter of Rights and Freedoms pretty damn seriously.
According to the Harper Government (as it prefers to be called): we shouldn’t register guns, those aren’t dangerous and the registry is an invasion of privacy into the lives of people who are doing nothing wrong. But we need to register your computers and online identities without a warrant because they destroy lives and we need to assume everybody is guilty.
I’ll let you ponder over the amazing daft hypocrisy of that statement for a second… OK… good?
The bill itself would allow for the police and other unnamed government entities to obtain your online information without a warrant. That’s right, without a warrant; the Harper comparisons to George Bush become more founded every day. A lot of people on the left of the spectrum have been wondering when incremental police state laws would start to hit the table with these Conservatives. The answer is now, the very second they get a majority government that can’t really be stopped by anything but the will of the Canadian people. To make it worse, if you don’t agree with their bill, you are apparently hiding something or in the wise and ever-so-substance filled words of Vic Toews, “you are with the child pornographers.”
Well looks like Canada has become a proud nation of child pornographer supporters.
In my opinion, Toews deserves everything he is getting right now. To make those kind of statements (like he does time and time again) and then say you don’t want to play “gutter politics” is so beyond disingenuous I’m feeling a level of disgust I usually hold for when Rick Santorum opens his mouth.
The fact that he called the majority of Canadians pedophile sympathizers that need to be watched becomes even more pathetic when the revelation comes forth that he had a love child with a mistress and had an affair with his kids’ babysitter, ending in divorce with his wife. Not to mention being convicted of breaking campaign finance laws in Manitoba, while saying that 10 year olds should be able to go to prison for crimes they commit. Guess what Vic? Transparency is a two way street.
The news organization (and regarded tool of the aforementioned political party) that tried to pull the Jack Layton massage story a few days before election day calls this campaign against Toews an invasion of privacy. Really? Vikileaks obtained public court documents and put them online. On the other hand, you guys found a retired cop with an ideological skew and illegally used his notes to defame a man who had no legal charges or allegations leveled at him. But hey, that’s just the civility you would expect from the friends of those who coined Layton “Taliban Jack.” Consider the moral high ground surrendered.
Vic Toews threatening investigations into a completely legal exercise of freedom of speech just further makes the Conservative government look firstly, like a joke, and secondly, having inherently anti-conservative values.
The greatest irony of all: he still doesn’t get it. Maybe he wanted this to happen, maybe he is actually the ultimate internet troll! He is still advocating a bill that EVERYBODY is outraged about. Anybody who isn’t outraged apparently has never studied history, thinks “having nothing to hide” means nothing will happen to them, or other naïve sentiments.
He is mad that somebody used the legal system within the law to leak court documents showing that he is kind of a sleaze… all while promoting the illegal spying on Canadians on the internet. Even more so, that he thought there would be no negative implications like the #TellVicEverything hashtag that became one of the top trends on twitter worldwide (I may have sent a few) shows that these Conservatives may have already kind of lost their minds with power. Even some Conservative backbenchers have defied the iron fist of Harper and have broken the party line, speaking out against this mass violation of civil rights. I say, it’s about damn time the muzzle is taken off of them.
Toews has already taken the civil out of civility, why not take the rights out of civil rights?
The Conservatives are on the wrong side of this battle no matter how you look at it. The Canadian public hasn’t even needed to use time allocation and closure to come to a quick decision on this much like the Conservative government likes to. Some governments just have to learn lessons the true democratic way.
Thankfully there are no mandatory minimum sentences for being funny and honest on the internet.
9 Comments on "Column: Tell Vic this – Turns out that Canadians take civil liberties very seriously"
Could not have said it better myself. Very well done! These civil “servants” need to be reminded of their oath of office & who they “serve”, the Canadian People. Thank you for speaking the truth loud & clearly.
“Thankfully there are no mandatory minimum sentences for being funny and honest on the internet.”
Well, not yet.
Ryan,
Thanks for having the courage to express so articulately what so many of us Canadians feel: that we cannot allow the present government to use their false majority to bully us into following their partisan agenda and to undermine our constitutional and social rights , won through years of fair, democratic process.
There is one word missing from your great article. The last word should have been “YET!” It would have been funny if it had not hit the nail on the head. Keep writing – you write so the general public can understand.
You’re in the social and political sciences. How about looking at Harper and his science minister. Both are far out religious fundamentalists – You know the world was built in 6 days and is only 6000 years old – its on the internet. The one thing Harper does not want is to let the facts interfere with his beliefs or agenda. So lets suppress the facts. Even the science press is starting to speak out at the restricted and doctored research stories. One thing Harper forgets about police states is that they usually behead the politicians.
Hey Ryan Kelpin, are you really just 23 years of age. Keep up the excellent work. Sometimes I honestly believe that we will never recover the Canada that, for me, used to be such a source of pride. From time to time, this pride is temporarily restored because of articles like this from young Canadians.
Our political so-called leaders have made fools of themselves again, first off they condemned Toews for calling anybody that didn’t support his wire tapping , internet tapping and spying in general, supporters of child ponography, thats when the sh!t hit the fan, Who the hell does he think he is? Thats when the Harper gov’t found out what power the people have. Toews showed his ignorance when he said he did’nt even read the bill, When the opposition members and backbenchers from the con party condemned his claim the party changed tactics, they said he did’nt really mean what they said and that we were being too hard on Vic., his privacy was being held up for public ridicule and all the juicy items they revealed. When they tried to shift the blame onto the NDP and then the Lib’s and were asked for proof they were oddly silent, could it be one of their own was guilty? It is no more than anybody else could find themselves in if his Bill C90 goes through. For somebody who preaches Fire and Brimstone he sure is a poor example of a good christian, I’m surprised his mennonite church has’nt banned him, I’m sure they wont let him teach the teen church classes held each Sunday, better to be safe than sorry.
Vic Toews should be banished!
Absolutely outstanding article on the hypocrisy of the “Harper Government”… on so many levels and in so many ways. These guys are scary.
@HHKID
That’s a whole different column (that I would be glad to write about it, haha). The examples are many: RCMP, StatsCan and probably the Parliamentary Budget Office soon enough for stepping out of the partisan line. And it isn’t just happening at the federal level, Rob Ford and the rest of the stooges are effectively removing the Transit Chief of the TTC for using facts instead of suburb-based political pandering. And they pretend it’s “fighting the bureaucracy.” We are slowly losing our grip on a meritocratic system of stratification and a functioning substantive democracy.