If it wasn’t so brazen, it might even be funny. Who would call a piece of legislation the “Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act?” Has Vic Toews shaved off his moustache and slipped back into Ottawa? Did you even know we had a polygamy problem? They’re apparently streaming across the border like red ants heading for the picnic basket. Not to mention the plague of forced marriages infesting the land from coast to coast to coast, all 77 of them in 2012.
As the ever-apocalyptic Chris Alexander recently told the Senate’s human rights committee, “We wish we could say in the Canada of 2014 these were no longer challenges for us domestically. But as we know from communities across the country and from the daily fact of violence against women, they remain challenges and we remain duty bound to act against them.”
So duty-bound dude, when may we expect the Zero Tolerance for Homicidal Practices Against Aboriginal Females Act? Or does building a new HQ for the RCMP do the job? Perhaps the Harper government might get around to it sometime after the Perpetual Celebration of the Beginning of All Past Wars Act or the Eternal Opposition to Vladimir Putin in Ukraine Act?
And what about the “Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act?” That’s the new prostitution law that became necessary when the old law was struck down as unconstitutional. The Supreme Court of Canada opined that the heart of any new legislation had to be the protection of sex-trade workers.
Instead, the Harper government left both male and female prostitutes at risk by criminalizing the buying, but not the selling of sex. Since the new law also bans advertising commercial sex, the transactional aspect of the business will slip back into the shadows, leaving all sex trade workers, women in particular, more vulnerable than ever.
Most legal experts think this law, like the old one, will be ruled unconstitutional. There is this exception — those justice department lawyers who thought that Marc Nadon’s appointment to the Supreme Court was a slam dunk. Of course, those are precisely the ones justice minister Peter MacKay listened to before passing this doomed, dimwitted and disingenuous piece of legislation.
And then there is the law whose name was so bad it sparked an international incident and had to be changed. That’s right. The Black April Day Act created April 30 as the day to commemorate the diaspora of Vietnamese citizens after Saigon fell to the Viet Cong in 1975. Thousands of those refugees from South Vietnam came to Canada.
There is only one problem with dissing Vietnam with the Black April Day Act. That country is now an important trading partner and a key ally in the Trans Pacific Partnership negotiations. Vietnam’s ambassador didn’t care much for the name of the private member’s bill or its intent. So he decided to act. He asked to appear before the Senate committee to air his concerns.
As reported by CP, he was turned down. The ambassador was then invited to make a written submission. He complied. But while it was being translated into French, the committee completed its “study” of the bill and his objections were never formally considered. Nor were the objections of any other witness who opposed the legislation.
But let’s not be gloomy. The act did get a new name. It was like the title of a Tom Cruise movie. It was also every bit as offensive as its predecessor: “The Journey to Freedom Act.” The ambassador’s journey to freedom through Harperland must have felt a lot like a day at the office back in Hanoi.
What do the Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices, the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons, and the Journey to Freedom Acts all have in common – apart from a certain slapstick hyperbole premised on the granddaddy of them all — the Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act? All are music to the ears of Stephen Harper’s credulous Christian base.
Harper is merely driving in the wedges. He knows that the base doesn’t like the idea of prostitution, so they will approve of the moralistic bent of the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act – and send in $5. He knows that his Christian base also abhors polygamy, so they will also send in $5 to support the Barbaric Cultural Practices Act. And they will also send in $5 to support the Black April Day Act because it is a reminder of the horrors of godless Communism.
The political opposition is left with this. Either they agree or they object. As soon as they object to any of this nonsensical legislation, they are presented as pro-polygamy, pro-forced marriage, pro-prostitution, pro-communist reprobates unfit to govern.
Stephen Harper’s dirty little secret hasn’t changed much since 2006. He knew then, and he knows now, that a united right versus a divided left will always end in a Conservative victory at the polls, provided he holds his base. And so he endlessly panders to their convictions. That’s why we have the Jobs, Growth, and Long-term Prosperity Act, the Safeguarding Canadians’ Personal Information Act, and the Fair Elections Act. Throw in a little cheating at the ballot box, (actually quite a lot of it) and we could even be talking dynasty here.
At least we are if you are satisfied with a government whose deepest thoughts fit on bumper stickers, and whose idea of the truth is the most self-interested lie.
Original Article
Source: ipolitics.ca/
Author: Michael Harris
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