Tag: Politics

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Provincial Liberals Policy Launder for Federal Conservatives?

David Eby, formerly with the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association and now a MLA with the NDP, has written a brief piece about forthcoming BC provincial legislation. The Missing Persons Act would let provincial authorities:

issue emergency orders to telephone companies and internet service providers to get access to your browsing history, text messages, e-mail, voice mail, banking records, you name it. If the companies or individuals don’t consent to the access, police can go to court without notice to you to get your records ordered to be handed over. Any record you can think of is covered by the new law.

However, there would be no notice to the individual(s) affected that such a request had been made, regardless of whether it was appropriate.

This kind of concern over finding missing people before they’re formally missing is something that the federal government of Canada has previously used to justify its lawful access legislation. Access to subscriber data (though less expansively than envisioned under the BC legislation) was presented as useful in missing persons’ cases, to return stolen property, and more. To date, the federal government has failed to push through its lawful access legislation, though the recent version (C-13) is scheduled for second reading in the coming weeks.

Of note, the BC Liberal party has a substantial number of past-lieutenants from the Prime Minister’s Office that have passed through. Also, the Chief Constable of Vancouver has been amongst the most fervent advocates for the federal lawful access legislation. As such, I have to wonder how much the proposed BC Act is an attempt to address genuine provincial issues and how much it is meant to quietly start introducing or laundering a flavour of the federal lawful access legislation. I also have to wonder if, after this legislation is passed, the Chief Constable of Vancouver will back off of his federal advocacy: was he trying to solve a particular provincial issue by way of lobbying for changes to federal laws?

It’s quite sad, though, that the meagre consensus that was achieved in the federal lawful access fights – that there would be some reporting system, however sad – was excised by the BC Liberals. It’s hard to claim transparency as a political party when you actively undermine attempts to inject it into new (to say nothing of previously past) legislation.

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Quotations

2014.2.14

Politicians are welcome to do strange things at home –read a book for pleasure, think for themselves–as long as they do it in private and nobody finds out. A politician who does random things in public, in front of cameras and microphones, is not merely departing from the disciplined advancement of a political idea, he is undermining it.

Paul Well, The Longer I’m Prime Minister
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Andrew Coyne: Conservatives’ effort to hide from public only gains them more enemies

“…the Conservative tragedy grinds on. When your only principle is paranoia — when your central organizing proposition is that “everyone is out to get us” — when every criticism is merely confirmation of the essential rightness of that proposition, and every deviation is evidence of disloyalty, then you are less a party than a cult.”

Strong words, this time from Andrew Coyne.
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Quotations

2013.7.30

Obama’s first director of national intelligence, Dennis Blair, wanted the CIA to use its [drone strike] capability more strategically. His reading of the intelligence suggested that the collateral harm of the operation–the anger that the strikes caused among Pakistanis, even though the targeting was precise–was damaging to U.S. security interests. The CIA, in a deft bureaucratic move, simply stopped providing Blair’s office with advance notice of strikes. The dispute went all the way to the Office of the Vice President, which sided with the CIA, although Blair “won” the ability to have a director of national intelligence representative at CIA covert action briefings at the White House.

Marc Ambinder and D.B. Grady, Deep State: Inside the Government Secrecy Industry
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How Stephen Harper is rewriting history

Starting with a $25-million museum overhaul, the Conservatives want to change the way Canadians perceive their past

A good article on the relationship between changing what and how museums present as Canadian history, and contemporary Canadian identity.

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On the Zimmerman verdict …

politicalprof:

So let me see if I have this straight:

In Florida, I can follow an otherwise law-abiding person around on a dark and rainy night, and if they decide I am a threat and respond, I get to shoot and kill them if I start losing the fight.

I am sure the people of Florida are sleeping much more secure in their beds knowing that this could never happen to their child or in their neighborhood.

Quality work all around.

Legalizing lethal stalking: a really great decision…

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Aside

Firearms vs Tampons

chartier:

Jessie Jessup

context

They were off the deep end a while back: I think that the Republicans are now drilling for oil at the bottom of the pool…

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Quotations

2013.7.10

… the cultural, political, and privacy concerns raised by the new business alliances of search engines, social networks, and carriers cannot be translated into traditional economic analysis. They raise questions about the type of society we want to live in–a holistic inquiry that cannot be reduced to the methodological individualism of economics.

Frank Pasquale. (2010). “Beyond Innovation and Competition: The Need for Qualified Transparency in Internet Intermediaries.” Northwestern University Law Review 104(1).
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Quotations

2013.7.8

This week, court documents filed by the RCMP pertaining to their investigation of Mr. Duffy were disclosed. They show that the Conservative Party of Canada was initially prepared to use taxpayer-subsidized party funds to repay the debt that Mr. Duffy owed because of improperly claimed Senate expenses. It balked, however, when it learned that the amount was $90,000, not $32,000.

The Conservative government of Canada: tough on crime over $32,000; anything above $32,000, you’re on your own – or not, since the documents confirm that Stephen Harper’s then-chief of staff, Nigel Wright, did, as reported, step in and give Mr. Duffy a personal cheque for $90,000.

Tabitha Southey, “Duffy the empire slayer: How the PMO created a big, big problem”
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Quotations

2013.7.7

An Ipsos Reid survey on federal politics, released on Wednesday, titled At the Midpoint, shows the public’s ambivalence. Among the more curious findings is one that suggests that Canadians believe that there is an inverse proportion between competence and honesty. Of the three major parties, the Conservatives are held to be the most competent and the least honest; with the NDP, it is the other way around. As usual the Liberals are somewhere in-between. On the face of it, greater competence is likely to attract the voters, but if the Conservatives drift on in their current direction, a desire for a change may yet prevail.

Editorial, “The Tory turning-point ahead of the next election”