Ezra Levant knows first hand how ‘Section 13’ can – and does – get abused. Here he is, with Chris Shaffer of the Canadian Constitution Foundation, discussing the issue:
(Sorry – I can’t seem to figure out how to embed the video from this source – please, do follow the link:
As they say – this is just the Federal version – and there are a lot of Provincial versions of this law out there. So, this is not the end of the road, just a first baby step in the right direction!
Thanks to BlazingCatfur for this tip (I am shamelessly copying his post – keep checking there often, he’ll have updates:
A long battle but section 13 is dead
As I write this I am still only being updated by text message on the proceedings in the Senate chamber but I am told Bill C-304 has passed third reading and will receive Royal Assent tonight making it law.
What does this bill do?
There are a number of amendments to the act that help limit abuse but the main one is this:
From first principles, there can be no other conclusion that non-voluntary taxation/deprivation of any individual of the fruits of their labour (i.e. violating their property rights) is, in fact, a form of slavery.
Let’s not forget that under the feudal system of serfdom, at the beginning, the workload required of the serf was relatively light: for example, in Poland, it was 1/2 day per week of labour per adult serf. But, as time went on, this amount kept creeping up and up, until, between the work required of the serfs for their lord and the Church, all adults and children laboured 6 days a week, from sundown to sunset.
With the growth of our government, forced taxation will inevitably lead to the same level of oppression!
Oh, you say, but we have more personal freedom than serfs ever did.
Perhaps, for now.
After all, the lord could control who may or may not travel (no fly list, anyone? … try to cross a border without a passport), the guilds controlled strictly who may or may not practice which trade (try practicing a trade without a license now – under Ontario’s new regulations, you may not even cut another person’s hair without first being accredited by and paying license fees to the government) and you could only live where your lord permitted you to (try building a house on your own property in Ontario – good luck!)
While on the topic, the Western Center for Journalism asks if, perhaps, some of this NSA-collected material might have been used to influence Chief Justice Roberts to change his vote at the last minute on Obamacare.
‘The average professional in this country wakes up in the morning, goes to work, comes home, eats dinner, and then goes to sleep, unaware that he or she has likely committed several federal crimes that day. Why? The answer lies in the very nature of modern federal criminal laws, which have exploded in number but also become impossibly broad and vague. In Three Felonies a Day, Harvey A. Silverglate reveals how federal criminal laws have become dangerously disconnected from the English common law tradition and how prosecutors can pin arguable federal crimes on any one of us, for even the most seemingly innocuous behavior.’
After all, Kiera Wilmot, a 16-year-old student, faced 2 felony charges of bomb-making and was to be tried as an adult for a school science-experiment that produced a ‘pop’, in which nobody was hurt and no damage happened – only popular outcry forced the authorities to eventually drop the charges.
And, of course, who can forget why ‘the authorities’ kept such a concise log on citizens’ activities in Fahrenheit 451! If they could not catch the real culprit, an early-morning dog-walker would be a suitable substitute… (Yes, it is since having read this book in English that I cannot bring myself to use the word ‘fireman’ and instead use ‘fire-fighter’.)
P.S. In the above video, they say that when the EFF asked the US government to clarify how they were interpreting the laws, they were told the answer was ‘classified’. Consider the implications of that! How can you possibly follow the laws if you are not permitted to know how the government will enforce them? Do you still think you have ‘nothing to hide’?!?!?
Xanthippa's Chamberpot 