The Harper government is signalling its intention to use hate crime laws against Canadian advocacy groups that encourage boycotts of Israel.

…

The government’s intention was made clear in a response to inquiries from CBC News about statements by federal ministers of a “zero tolerance” approach to groups participating in a loose coalition called Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS), which was begun in 2006 at the request of Palestinian non-governmental organizations.

Asked to explain what zero tolerance means, and what is being done to enforce it, a spokesperson for Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney replied, four days later, with a detailed list of Canada’s updated hate laws, noting that Canada has one of the most comprehensive sets of such laws “anywhere in the world.”

…

In January, Canada’s then foreign affairs minister, John Baird, signed a “memorandum of understanding” with Israeli authorities in Jerusalem, pledging to combat BDS.

It described the movement as “the new face of anti-Semitism.”

A few days later, at the UN, Canadian Public Security Minister Steven Blaney went much further.

He conflated boycotts of Israel with anti-Semitic hate speech and violence, including the deadly attacks that had just taken place in Paris on the Charlie Hebdo magazine and a kosher supermarket.

Blaney then said the government is taking a “zero tolerance” approach to BDS.

…

“We’ve asked our lawyers. What does that mean?” says CUPE president Paul Moist. “Is it now a criminal offence to walk around with a sign saying close all the settlements, Israel out of occupied territories?”

In France, the law has for years criminalized hate speech based on national origin, and authorities there have in recent years been using it to prosecute BDS advocates. To date, more than 20 have been convicted.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/ottawa-cites-hate-crime-laws-when-asked-about-its-zero-tolerance-for-israel-boycotters-1.3067497

Although he was 15 when his crimes occurred in Afghanistan in July 2002, the U.S. military commission made no distinction between juveniles and adults in sentencing him in 2010 to a further eight years behind bars.

While the government concedes the sentence for the most serious charge — the murder of an American special forces soldier — can only be considered a youth sentence, it argues the other four — including attempted murder — must be viewed as adult sentences.

No provisions exist for an inmate to serve both youth and adult sentences at the same time, so Ottawa classified him as an adult offender when he transferred to Canada from Guantanamo Bay in September 2012 under an international treaty to serve out his punishment.

The Supreme Court has twice before taken up Khadr’s case, both times siding with him.

In 2008, the court ruled Canadian officials had acted illegally by sharing intelligence information about him with his U.S. captors.

In 2010, the top court declared that Ottawa had violated his constitutional rights when Canadian agents interrogated him in Guantanamo Bay despite knowing he had been abused beforehand.

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2015/05/14/child-or-adult-supreme-court-hears-omar-khadr-case-today.html

“We have yet to be provided evidence that carding impacts crime in any shape or fashion,” Rinaldo Walcott, an associate professor at U of T said at a press conference Wednesday. “We have yet to be provided evidence that the database developed from carding impacts crime and its resolution in any way or shape.

“We find this totally unacceptable in the age of information,” said Walcott. “We believe that by ignoring available evidence, that the mayor, the Toronto Police Service and its board have clearly declared black communities collectively a public safety threat.

“The only way to think of such a declaration is to call it anti-black racism.”

Walcott was joined by Anthony Morgan of the African Canadian Legal Clinic, Ryerson University professor Akua Benjamin, Pascale Diverlus who is vice-president of United Black Students Ryerson and a co-founder of Black Lives Matter Toronto and academic Chris Williams, a vocal opponent of carding.

The group is asking for meetings with new police chief Mark Saunders, Mayor John Tory and Premier Kathleen Wynne.

Toronto police defend carding — during which people are stopped and documented in mostly non-criminal encounters — as an invaluable intelligence-gathering tool and say they police high crime areas of the city and not by race.

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2015/05/13/group-questions-why-toronto-police-dont-have-stats-to-defend-carding.html

“I find this provision almost Orwellian,” said Fred Vallance-Jones, an associate professor at the University of King’s College in Halifax and an expert in access to information law.

“It seeks to rewrite history, to say that lawful access to records that existed before didn’t actually exist after all, and that if you exercised your quasi-constitutional right of access to those records, well too bad, you’re out of luck.”

The government is setting a precedent to move retroactively on any record it doesn’t want exposed, Vallance-Jones said.

“That to me is the deeper concern.”

Michel Drapeau, a lawyer, former military colonel and access-to-information author, noted there has never been a charge laid under the Access to Information Act, let alone a conviction.

He said the rationale of moving retroactively to prevent a possible prosecution is “a dangerous and unwelcome precedent” that should be as unwelcome to the RCMP and the administration of justice as to freedom-of-information wonks.

“The optics of it are not good: ‘Oh, so that’s the way it works now?’ If you do something against the law in the RCMP, you’ve got your friends in high places, they change the law,” said Drapeau.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/budget-bill-c-59-rewrites-access-law-to-protect-rcmp-on-gun-registry-cp-1.3072548

Compare:

Crack-smoking scumbag Rob Ford’s privacy is breached when staff access his private hospital records. Although there’s no indication that the information ever left the hospital or was used in any way, the Ontario Privacy Commissioner immediately demands prosecutions. Send a message, she says; this is totally unacceptable!

Around 15,000 people have their privacy breached on numerous occasions by hospital staff with the information being given or sold to third parties, some of whom use the information to solicit patients while others use it for more troubling ideological purposes, with who knows how many other breaches being swept under the rug. The Privacy Commissioner shrugs her shoulders and says, well, guess we gotta change the laws, while downplaying things as best she can: “We have found no evidence to suggest that this information ever left hospital property or was used by the photographer for any other purpose,” said Trell Huether, a spokesperson for the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner, in an email.

The result here is that Rob Ford is just another exemplar of how government genuinely isn’t interested in the well-being and protection of its citizens, and certainly not in encouraging ethical behaviour or enforcing the law with any semblance of fairness or justice. It’s main purpose is to prop itself up, protect itself, exclude itself from any accountability, and to utterly destroy you if you don’t go along with their criminal racket. If you’re part of the gang you get a sweet ride otherwise you’re free to go fuck yourself.

If you haven’t broken the law, you have nothing to worry about, right? No one in this “democratic” country would be arrested without charges, correct? You have due process and checks and balances, no?

Not in the fascist tyranny of Canada you don’t…

A summons was issued in February for Merouane Ghalmi to appear before a Quebec Court judge in Montreal to sign a peace bond after the RCMP said it feared he would commit a terrorism offence.

No document was signed in the case on Feb. 26 and the case was postponed to give Ghalmi’s lawyers time to review the evidence.

Ghalmi has not been charged with any offence.

From: http://news.nationalpost.com/2015/03/25/rcmp-terrorism-arrest-amir-raisolsadat/

And C-51 isn’t even law yet.

There’s just not much money in it:

Scott and Maggie Cassella discussing equal opportunity sex toys:

Deep in the gooey grey mush of sexual nuance with Scott and Maggie Cassella at the Flying Beaver Pubaret:

On Toronto’s downtown-east side sits a quiet, unassuming, and intimate little comedy club called the Flying Beaver Pubaret.

The establishment is split into two halves: one a traditional Canadian booze can and the other a sliver of a (usually) comedic performance area. I’d find it shocking if a forty people could find room to watch a show and a hundred would probably fill up the place entirely. These capacity limits have not, however, been big concerns whenever I’ve visited.

Basically, the aptly named Pubaret isn’t spacious or particularly remarkable, and while it features many struggling and up-and-coming comics it’s not the kind of place you’d think to rub elbows with the likes of Kids In The Hall’s Scott Thompson or the incomparable Paul Bellini (also of KITH fame).

Yet the Flying Beaver is exactly the place to experience this juxtaposition in a truly intimate way — “rub elbows” can be taken literally. This is one of those iconic places, those awesome and seemingly undiscovered spots in which you can feel history being made. And did I mention that most of the interactive, meaty, uncensored, off-the-cuff discussions can be experienced for the price of a beer or two (and you get the beer)? That shit still blows my mind.

Here’s an example of the magic in which Pubaret co-owner Maggie Cassella asks Scott to recount his experiences performing at the Griffin Poetry Prize awards: