The Toronto Star reports today that Stockwell Day, Minister of Public Safety, intends to beef up anti–terrorist legislation which would allow authorities to violate fundamental human rights. Stockwell Day, of course, puts matters more gently. Authorities would have the power to engage in “preventive arrests.” This is a partial response by the Conservative Party to the Supreme Court of Canada decision which struck down previous anti–terrorist legislation because it sanctioned arbitrary detention of suspected terrorists. The SCC decision gave the government one year to fix legislation so that it wouldn’t run afoul of Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms. But the government seems determined to make an ass of the law. This time, instead of permitting arbitrary detention, it’s going to take a crack at arbitrary arrest.
But the Conservatives have even more ambitious aims. They hope to beef up CSIS, too, giving it powers on a par with the CIA or MI–6, so that it can expand its intelligence–gathering operations. Perhaps, recognizing that violating domestic constitutional provisions is going to be a tough haul, they’ve decided it would be easier to violate foreign sovereignty. Makes me proud to be a Canadian.
In a related story, Jerry Falwell died yesterday at the age of 73. According to a reliable source, the late Rev. Falwall is at this very minute sitting at the feet of the King of Kings & Lord of Lords. A related story, you ask? You bet, says I. It’s no great secret that Stockwell Day and his boss, PM Stephen Harper, are both conservative Christians who have a thing for legislating traditional values. It was Jerry Falwell, through his Moron Majority, that first made it sexy to hoist the aims of the religious right onto the chancel of the Republican platform. While the Moron Majority’s influence has waned south of the border, Falwell’s favoured child has undergone something of a resurrection here in the promised land. While Day and Harper (or at least Harper) are too subtle to make it obvious, nevertheless, their agenda rests entirely upon conservative Christian values.
There is an obvious correlation between their religious perspective and their foreign policy. If you believe that there is an imperative to convert the world to your religious point of view, then why wouldn’t you apply the same approach to your politics? Religion doesn’t need constitutional safeguards, so why bother with them in your foreign policy either?
Related posts:
Wed, May 16, 2007
From the Drainpipe