Magical criticism shield

The lawful access bill came down yesterday,
and Vic Toews gave it a torque short title – the “Protecting Children from
Internet Predators Act,” thus making it magically immune to criticism, lest
you be on the side of the child pornographers. Never mind that the words “children”
or “predators” don’t appear in the bill – the point is to make the
issue sound so scary that we need to give police these powers, even though
there has never been any demonstrated need. That said, it does appear
that the amount of data obtainable without a warrant is more limited than we
may be led to believe – but what is potentially worse is that it makes cellphone and internet providers reengineer their networks for the purpose of

surveillance. That could also mean a lot more leaks from the providers
themselves, or it could give police a lot of powers in the event of an event like a
G20. Still a lot of red flags raised that are being shielded by the government’s
invoking moral panic over child predators, hoping that people will look the
other way.

Here’s a look at the growing unofficial
opposition of former senior bureaucrats who have resigned (some in protest)
and who still have the inside connections to ensure that their criticisms carry
weight in an era where the opposition parties in the House are leaderless and
disorganized.

After QP yesterday, Justin Trudeau speechified for the assembled press to defend how much he loves Canada and to
disprove notions that he might support Quebec separating if Canada continues under
a Harper regime for many more years. Trudeau says that separatism is no longer the
bogeyman, but rather Harper is.

Even the Pentagon says that the price of
the F-35 is going to go up given the delays and reduced orders. Meanwhile,
Julian Fantino hints that we may end up reducing our order from 65 – even though
65 was an already dangerously low number that allows almost no margin for loss
or redundancy.

Up today: final hours of debate on
scrapping the long-gun registry, followed by a ton of other votes, including private
member’s bills on suicide prevention and heeding the call of free-speech advocates
by scrapping hate-speech provisions in the Canadian Human Rights Act.