Even Conrad Black Can't Stomach Bill C-51

He knows a thing or two about law enforcement, the judicial process and essential liberties.  All that has Conrad Black incensed at Bill C-51 which he sees as a threat to the freedom of the Canadian people.  He doesn't like the place into which he believes Stephen Harper plans to lead the country.

As presented, Bill C-51 makes a Swiss cheese out of due process, and the three national political parties have approached the problem from distinctly different angles. The government have swaddled themselves in Stephen Harper’s default-toga of protecting the public, aspersing civil liberties concerns, and uttering tired pieties that “the law enforcement agencies are on our side,” presumably referring to their objectives rather than their political preferences. It is easy to be cynical about this and resignedly conclude that Vic Toews and Julian Fantino ride again (itself a terrorizing thought, and thought-terror is assumedly covered in the vast sweep of this bill). The government is responsible for preventing terrorist outrages from happening and it has to be given some licence to protect the country and everyone in it. But it is hard to be overly sanguine about the medieval antics of the government that took the giant leap backwards that was the omnibus crime bill. Nor is it reassuring that Mr. Harper, as is his frequent custom, is imposing a shortened debate on Parliament.

...We have ample proof, from the McDonald Commission’s 1981 report and elsewhere, that the law enforcement agencies in this country, as in others, are capable of outrageous and unfathomably stupid abuses, and anyone who has had anything to do with any arm of the law knows it (although most people in these occupations are reasonably dedicated and honest). Definitions have to be tightened; oversight has to be stringent and prompt and answerable to parliament, and we should be careful of too much reciprocity with foreign governments. Only 10 or 12 other countries have as much respect for human liberties as Canada does and must retain; the United States, with its 99.5% conviction rate and stacked rules — a criminal justice system that is just a conveyer-belt to its bloated and corrupt prison industry — is not one of them. If we go to sleep in Canada, we will wake up in an unrecognizable despotism, like Argentina, Turkey, or Louisiana.

RCMP + CSIS - Add Water and Stir. Voila, the Stasi Lives Again

They were East Germany's dreaded secret police.   They spied on ordinary East Germans, tapped their phones, intercepted their mail, assessed their 'reliability', used informants, kept dossiers on persons of interest and ordinary citizens alike.  

The hated Stasi fell with the Berlin Wall but they live on - in today's RCMP, the Royal Conservative Mounted Police, Harper's personal security apparatus. Today the RCMP, in conjunction with our official spy agency, CSIS, and the Canadian Border Service Agency, operate a domestic spying network called the Integrated National Security Enforcement Team, INSET.

And just whose security is INSET enforcing? Yours? Mine? Canada's? Hardly. Don't be naive. They're the taxpayer funded security service of the fossil fuelers and especially the tar sanders, corporations like Enbridge and Kinder Morgan.  Oh yeah, and the Peoples Republic of China.

71-year old Leslie Askin received a "visit" from state security officers.  Why? She had taken some photographs of what she thought were Kinder Morgan storage tanks in Burnaby, B.C.  She wasn't sneaking around.  She wasn't trespassing.  She stood a good distance away and took her photos.  She wanted to show the condition of the 60-year old tanks to the National Energy Board.

Askin was spotted by Kinder Morgan security and they, in turn, set Canada's secret police apparatus on her.

Kinder Morgan says it reports all potential threats to police to "ensure the security and safety of our facilities and the surrounding community is maintained."

"It is our security protocol to record and file an internal report of any suspicious activities surrounding our facilities and to inform the RCMP of the incident," the company says.

Ten days later Askin had RCMP officers on her doorstep demanding answers.

In a statement, a spokeseperson for E-INSET confirms they did visit an individual who was seen taking photographs of Kinder Morgan's storage terminal.

"The protection and security of critical infrastructure falls within the mandate of E-INSET. Any and all tips reported to us are followed up on to the fullest extent." But, in Askin'scase: "there were no issues and the file was concluded with no further action taken."

Askin has filed an access to information to try and find out what is in her police file.

"I am now in the INSET’s database and I will be there, I guess, until I drop dead," she said. 

When dealing with a state secret police agency, they're never entitled to the benefit of the doubt. Never.  They're thugs who operate in the shadows, in service not to the country but to powerful, immensely wealthy corporations who could easily do their own security.  But those corporations lack the intrusive powers of the state, they lack the professional spy apparatus, the very service that INSET serves up to them on a platter.

My father and my uncles went to war, sacrificed enormously, to fight this sort of thuggery.  We're damned poor Canadians if we fail to stand up to it in our own time.

I have an idea.  Let's catalogue Kinder Morgan and Enbridge facilities.  Then let's organize groups of people to individually visit those facilities, monitor them, record licence plate numbers, and take plenty of photographs.  20 or 30 monitors a day, new faces rotated in daily.  Nothing remotely illegal.  No trespassing, no obstruction, no heckling. Just maintain a vigil at a safe and legal distance, letting Kinder Morgan and Enbridge and the Canadian Stasi and our despotic government know that we will not be intimidated and we will respond in kind in keeping with our democratic and constitutional right of dissent.

They want to gather intelligence on us.  We should gather intelligence on them, every scrap we can collect.  To the Stasi, being exposed was like the noonday sun to a vampire.

They can intimidate us, one by one, but they'll have a hell of a hard time doing it if they have 20 or 40 or 100 new names each and every day, a list that could quickly grow into many hundreds, perhaps even thousands.  Watch, we can make them stand down, crawl back into the slime beneath their rocks. 

The RCMP has served notice that it is quite prepared to criminalize democratic dissent.  I won't have it.  No, not in my Canada.  What about yours? 

And if the goons demand your name, tell them "Leslie Askin."