Conditional Conservativism
The Conservative Party is the third federal party of which I have been a member. I manned a phone bank for NDP MP Libby Davies and put up signs for Liberal MP Hedy Fry. I’m not exactly a lock step partisan. I support whichever person most closely fits with my ideals at the time. I was in college when I supported the NDP, and my prime motivation then was getting invited to lots of parties. I supported the Liberals under Hedy Fry, because I had just returned back to Canada after 3 years in Europe and the Middle East, and well, that kind of place rubs off on you.
But after thinking about and re-evaluating what I want for myself and my country, I switched support to the Conservative Party. It was a positive choice – not because it was a less worse than the other parties – it was demonstrably better than the Libs and Dippers, and it’s ideals were laudable.
So here we are a couple years into government and more and more the party is betraying our ideals. I had a minor fit over the Quebec nation resolution, another over changes to immigration policy, another over their giving in to European threats on visitor’s visas, the stupid light bulb ban, Kosovo independence, and a few over things I didn’t put on the blog.
But free speech? Come on …
Ezra Levant has word that the government is sitting on its hands while the mandarins in the justice department are running wild and supporting the CHRC in its campaign to stifle free speech. Referring to an anti-free speech legal brief produced by the Justice Department, Ezra writes:
I simply don’t believe that a single member of the Conservative government, let alone the Justice Minister or the Prime Minister, would agree with, or even understand, the following passage (from paragraph 116):
“on a macro level, the general tone of society can affect the mind”, and can lead to incivility and the “breakdown of community protection”
I don’t even think the lawyers who drafted the brief even know what the hell that means. But they’re just following old instructions, and they’ll continue to do so until someone in the Conservative government yells “stop!”
I’d like to invite readers — and fellow bloggers — to go through the memo in detail. Give it a good fisking. Don’t be intimidated by all the legalese; focus on the arguments, the logic, the history, the psychobabble, the plain old unintelligible political correctness of it.
And, if you happen to be a Conservative Member of Parliament, ask yourself: does this legal brief speak for the government? And, if you happen to be the Conservative Justice Minister, what are you going to do about it?
A year ago, I would have believed that to have been an honest oversight. But now, more than 2 years into their government, it’s incredible – the Tories must know about these cases, and they must have signed off on them. That isn’t the party I joined, that isn’t that party I occasionally throw money at, and most of all it isn’t the party I’ve spent countless hours volunteering for.
It’s not on.
I’m not going to go as far as Mike Brock and quit the party. For one, I don’t like the Libertarian Party - they’re filthy with 9-11 Truthers. So I’ll hold my judgement until the convention this fall, but until then?
Until then, I’ll do my best to find honest conservative criticism of our government and post it here, hopefully get some of us together, hopefully we can make a difference at the convention – and if not?
If not, we have proof of what a few ideologues can do if pushed too far.
More on the free speech betrayal here, here, and here. Oh and here.
It took weeks, but finally, my MP (Pierre Polievre) responded to my communications regarding the HRCs. He even appologised for the delay…
The response was so ‘cookie cutter’….and after lecturing me on ‘arm’s lenght separation’, it referred me and my concerns to the Justice Minister…..on the very day his wussy response (or lack or appropriate response) came out!!!!
WHAT A COPOUT!!!!
On the other hand – what did I expect??? There is no law-enforcement agency (that I am aware of) in our country that could possibly investigate the HRCs, because they have all been implicated in one way or another with their (in my view) illegal activities. So, who could possibly investigate??? How could the government (a minority one at that) take any action without any such investigation????
I just don’t know!
xanthippa
May 14, 2008 at 5:38 am
Ezra writes that “…I’d like to invite readers — and fellow bloggers — to go through the memo in detail. Give it a good fisking. Don’t be intimidated by all the legalese; focus on the arguments, the logic, the history, the psychobabble, the plain old unintelligible political correctness of it.
And, if you happen to be a Conservative Member of Parliament, ask yourself: does this legal brief speak for the government? And, if you happen to be the Conservative Justice Minister, what are you going to do about it?…”
I have worked in both the federal and Ontario public services for more than 20 years as a communications consultant and speechwriter. Over that time, I have witnessed the stifling of political debate occur on myriad occasions, but this has been overwhelmingly due to the “dumbing down” of political debate due to the eroding “quality’ of Canadian literacy (i.e. I note that many human rights complaints feature claimants claiming perps “wrote” such-and-such when “such-and-such” actually appeared between quotation marks, is attributed to someone else, and is appropriately contextualized.)
Currently in the Ontario Public Service (again, I might add), the drive is on for “plain language”. Unfortunately, “plain language” does not include things like “sub-atomic particle accellerator”, just as an example, so when this “policy” gets hamfistedly implemented (a public service tradition), a sitting minister’s briefing documents can be seriously compromised (i.e. although many have been SO FUNNY and SURREAL that I’ve had to leave my office to regain my composure). Said “briefing document” is read by the Minister in question (perhaps the same Minister for whom speeches were written out in PHONETIC constructions because said Minister could not actually “read” the English language as it is “normally” expresssed in its written form!)
Oh, the tales I could tell….
Oddly, NONE of said tales are IDEOLOGICALLY based for the simple reason that I don’t think the average provincial or federal politician actually knows what the word means or how to spell it. Hence, the current menance to “freedom of speech” in canada is not taken seriously by the political class because THEY DON’T UNDERSTAND THE DEBATE.
Canada and Canadians suffer from the shared delusion that to become a lawyer requires above-average intelligence. This is FAR from accurate, but this hocus-pocus superstition is why lawyers are WAY overrepresented in Canadian political ranks. (NOTE: The Sockpuppet Three are Ontario law school graduates yet are clearly oblivious to the absurdity of their claims within the context of a parliamentary democracy). Oddly, in day-to-day life, most people with EXPERIENCE of Canada’s legal profession (either as clients or practitioners) agree that lawyers are usually ethically compromised (or compromisable) at best. This is frequently expressed quite succinctly as: “Lawyers are scum.” I only hear current practitioners outragedly objecting to that last sentence (LOL)
Yet Canadians – and Canada’s political classes – continue to choose from the ranks of broadly recognized “scum” for political leadership.
Wake up. Connect the dots.
BTW, in over 30 years in Canadian public services, I have yet to meet a genuinely “honest” politician. Also, for the past few years, I’ve made it a habit to ask as many people as I can whether or not they agree with the following statement – “Decent people don’t go into politics anymore”. I can count on one hand the number of intelligent Canadians who have actually “strongly disagreed” with it. Very telling….
Simon Fleischmann
May 16, 2008 at 11:48 am
[...] Published May 18, 2008 Uncategorized Tags: Canada, Conservative, free speech, Politics I was on about this last week. Ezra Levant has more today on the Party’s betrayal of its membership. From Ezra [...]
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