C-51 Hearings Continuing

This should be nauseating. A harpercon backbencher, LaVar Payne of Medicine Hat is going to ask questions:

Mr. LaVar Payne (Medicine Hat, CPC):

     I'd like to thank Minister MacKay and Minister Blaney and their officials for coming. Certainly this is a very important piece of legislation and Canadians expect their government to protect our citizens as well as make sure that Canada is safe and secure.

    Minister Blaney, if you would like to go ahead and make that quote, I'd be more than happy to hear it.

Remember folks, that "conservatives" have killed more Canadians, through bad policies, than the terrorists have with their guns and bombs. Remember too, that their foreign policies, specifically, blind devotion to Israel and participation in bloody occupations, are what make us a target in the terrorists' eyes. So, not only is Payne's ass kissing disgusting simply for being ass kissing, his entire premise is erroneous.

Hon. Steven Blaney:

    The chair is tough on me this morning, I must say.

Aha-ha-ha. Puke.

    What I want to say is really important. 

Thanks for the heads-up.

Our system is based on trust.

Ahem. I've just spent about half-an-hour looking for a post I wrote about a book on how Canada's parliamentary system was based on a minimum level of trust in the people working within it, and that harper's brazen dishonesty has made it untenable. If I find it later I'll put in a link. Because I can't remember the title at the moment. But, basically, Blaney's party countenanced Bev Oda's altering an official document, changing its meaning, and using that changed meaning to justify a policy decision. The policy choice itself was fairly innocuous (if stupid). Oda had every right to cut funding for the religious charity KAIROS. What she didn't have the right to do was alter the written recommendation from her staff that she fund KAIROS by scribbling "NOT" in after the fact. A cretin like Blaney needs to have it explained that changing the information and advice of your experts is dangerous. If the experts say crime is going down, but you want to scare peope, go in and change the document to make the "facts" fit your theory. 

That's why Munir Sheikh resigned as Chief Statistician at StatsCan, because idiot sleaze-ball Tony Clement kept saying that Sheikh agreed with the idiotic decision to cancel the long-form Census.

When harper refused to share basic financial information about the costs of his policies with Parliament (and was subsequently found to be in contempt of Parliament) that exposes Blaney's blithering about "trust" right there.

All of harper's policies are designed to encourage division among Canadians, thereby making "trust" impossible to achieve. Here's Alex Himmelfarb:

A growing body of international research, most notably by Sweden’s Bo Rothstein and, in the US, Jong-Sung You, points us to what may be the underlying factor we’ll need to address if we are to turn things around: the decline of social trust.
By “social trust” is meant something more than whether we trust our neighbour or others in our community or in similar circumstance. It is rather the generalized belief that most people in a society can be trusted, including those quite different from ourselves.
Social trust is not the same as political trust, but where it is high people are readier to trust their democracy, more willing to give the benefit of the doubt to government when something goes wrong, and less likely to see the latest scandal as indicative of the entire class of politicians. Even when governments perform so badly as to make political trust impossible, where social trust is high, citizens still participate, still try to make things better. Because they trust the future and their ability to influence it, they are still capable of outrage rather than the indifference or fatalism of the jaded.
High social trust implies solidarity, the sense that the members of a society share a common fate and mutual responsibility and this is reflected in greater commitment to helping others. Individuals take responsibility not only for themselves and those in their social milieu, but also for the stranger, and for the direction of their society.
...
According to the research, the most important factor in determining the degree of social trust in a society seems to be its level of equality, both economic equality and equality of opportunity. In highly unequal societies rich and poor live such fundamentally different lives that it’s impossible to develop the mutual empathy essential to building trust and a sense of shared fate. When this is coupled with lack of opportunity for economic progress we get conflict, politics as a zero-sum game and a downward spiral of distrust. Highly unequal societies are also characterized by widespread corruption, which undermines all manner of trust.
...
Over much of the post-war period, with some exceptions, most notably our shameful treatment of Aboriginal people, Canada did pretty well in both social trust and equality, tucked in just behind the Scandinavian countries and Netherlands. The last couple of decades, however, have seen a sharp decline in social trust and an accelerating increase in income inequality, and while mobility is still pretty high it won’t stay that way if income inequality continues to grow. We are in better shape than many but are moving in the wrong direction.
Canadians are rightly proud of our universal medicare but we are allowing it to erode. Public funding for education is in decline so more of the burden and related debt fall to students and their families. Wages are under assault – witness the attacks on collective bargaining and the abuse of the foreign workers program. Fewer than forty per cent of unemployed Canadians have access to employment insurance. Our income support system is fragmented and inadequate – and too often demeaning.  Huge gaps – childcare, civil legal aid, pharma- and home-care – exacerbate inequality.   Old fault lines are deepening and new ones are emerging, particularly with respect to constrained opportunities for young Canadians. We are squandering the Canadian advantage.

So much to be said about Blaney's ignorant ravings.

As politicians we get elected because people trust in us, actually. 

Says the Election Fraud Party of Canada. It is to weep ...

It is important to maintain that bond of trust, the trust of Canadians towards their institutions. Are they perfect? No, they are not. Are politicians perfect? They aren't either. Well, that's why we have mechanisms to review and see if there have been mistakes. Have there been mistakes in the past? Yes. Will there be mistakes in the future? There could be, but we must ensure we do everything to avoid them.

Whether he actually believes this or he's shamelessly lying, either way, it's sickening.

The quote I want to give you, and I'll give it to you right away, is about the Security Intelligence Review Committee. They are this Canadian model designed 30 years ago that is keeping an eye on our intelligence community. They are experts. They have independence. They don't have political interference. They have the knowledge and the expertise to conduct their activities. They have a deep understanding and knowledge of CSIS. You only have to read the report to know how deep they can go. Actually, this is the mandate we the parliamentarians have given them. They are actually an extension of Parliament. SIRC is an extension of Parliament. They are acting on our behalf and they are reporting to this very Parliament. That's what our Security Intelligence Review Committee is.

    Well, this security intelligence review process is an example of the Canadian legal system striking a better balance between the protection of sensitive information and the procedural rights of individuals. Who said that? The Supreme Court of Canada.

Such desperation makes it obvious he knows that what he's pushing is toxic. SIRC! SIRC! SIRC! The part-time oversight body run by retired hacks and white-collar criminals.  The harpercons eliminated the Office of the Inspector General and intend for SIRC to take on its responsibilities, but have not given SIRC extra resources for its new responsibilities.

Here, read this whole article. It's an indictment of Blaney's stupidity.

That's all for today.