What was MP Garry Breitkreuz thinking?
March 29, 2012
OTTAWA Citizen, March 29 — Saskatchewan Tory MP Garry Breitkreuz found himself in hot water Thursday after an Ottawa mother complained he told a Grade 10 class that everyone in Canada should be armed — especially girls.
Wow! Breitkreuz has obviously never spent much time around a high school.
Any veteran teacher will tell you that the most dangerous creature in a high school is a grade nine or ten girl. From time to time, high school boys fight. The battles are usually structured affairs, played out according to a generally-accepted set of rules, and scored on a primitive points basis. Sure, passions run high, but the goal is a limited one, and at least around the school the thing plays out with an eye to future consequences.
As a vice principal I had occasion to speak to a few pugilists in my office. One conversation which comes to mind was with a young man who was no stranger to battle, in the school after sessions in various detention facilities. He commented upon a couple of his Somali friends: “The reason that those guys are so dangerous is that they are totally unco-ordinated. They just can’t fight. So they pick up anything they can lay hands on and use it as a weapon, and they’re so scared they don’t know how or when to quit.”
The deadliest fight I have ever broken up didn’t look like much. Seven or eight well dressed grade nine girls were gathered in a tight circle outside the school on the lunch hour of a snowy January day. Except that I noticed another equally well dressed girl on the ground, inside the circle. They were methodically stomping her into the ice. I broke it up. The girls moved away while I helped the victim. Then I had to restrain the bruised and bloodied kid from scrambling after the nearest of her attackers, teeth and claws bared.
It was all I could do to restrain a 105 pound, 14 year-old in a berserker’s rage. I had to pick her up. With feet off the ground she calmed down enough for me to get her into the school. The cause of the attack was a rumour linking the victim, a new girl to the school, with the boyfriend of one of her attackers. The scary part of the episode was that none of them knew how to quit.
When Garry Breitkreuz mused about arming teen-aged girls for their own protection, he was probably thinking about a deterrent for predatory older males. But in my experience the biggest threat to the fourteen year-old girl is another fourteen-year-old girl and her friends. Around a school yard boys fight to score points and win status. Girls fight to destroy rivals. This is absolutely not the place for firearms.
Time to plant a couple of maples
March 18, 2012
My dad always had the view that if you were going to plant a tree, you should choose the biggest you could handle because it would produce shade more quickly that way. On the 24th of May, 1984, I used my dad’s loader to lift three, twenty-five foot maples out of the woodlot, hauled them, leaves and all, to Smiths Falls in the back of my Ford Courier, and planted them on Ted and Maria Ferrant’s lawn. When we moved away twenty-six years later, the three maples were fine shade trees.
Around the house on Young’s Hill I used the same technique: dig a hole with the forked bucket on the loader. Then, as soon as the footing allowed it during spring thaw, drive into the woods and pick up an appropriate maple to fill the hole. Keep the tree out of the ground for as little time as possible. Water sporadically the following summer.
As long as I dug the trees into a sloping bank in a fairly dry location, they all lived. Similar plantings along the road did not succeed, though. I guess a shoulder next to a ditch, showered regularly by sand and salt, is too extreme an environment for a hard maple.
This weekend Charlie wanted trees to shade the back windows of his garage. The only problem was the high water table where he wanted to plant them. If we dug them down, the maples would have wet feet, and when we planted the maple orchard on the northern corner of the property for the plowing match, any of the bare-root saplings we plunged into a flooded hole died soon after.
Mom and I had decided to cull one maple from her perennial bed. It grew in the shadow of a promising, taller maple, so it was the first target today. Charlie and I dug enthusiastically around the root ball, but we couldn’t move it, no matter how much we pried.
Away I went for the old Massey Ferguson 35. Its lopsided loader has a narrow bucket with forks, though Peter Myers made me a plate to keep topsoil from falling off the root ball during these operations. It could be relied upon to push a 29″ wide “shovel” quite deeply beneath the roots of the tree. Charlie directed me into position with a series of frenetic hand movements. The tractor grunted, but the down pressure on the loader enabled me to get under it and lift the ball free of the rose bushes.
We carried our victim over to the back of the garage and I plunked it down on the turf. The tree needed to be higher than the surrounding land, so I brought a bucket-full of topsoil from a pile and put Charlie to work with a shovel. I think the covered root ball made a rather elegant berm on the lawn. Promising to do all mowing around them, Charlie brought stakes from the shed and carefully tied the sapling into place. The thing was done.
That had gone well. I had earlier shown Charlie a larger maple on a corner in the woodlot where it clearly wasn’t enjoying itself, covered with several species of vines and overshadowed by a black walnut tree. We decided we might as well try to dig it up and drop it into an abandoned hole at the other side of the garage.
My early memories of the Massey 35 involve getting the thing stuck in the road to the woodlot, two springs running. But conditions have improved with gravel imported for the plowing match. The ground showed no frost when I skidded the bucket off various rocks in an attempt to undermine the maple. Overpowering this tree wouldn’t work; I’d have to dig all around it. The poor old Massey dug and pried. On the fourth attempt the tree came free of the ground. With large pruning sheers Charlie disconnected our specimen from the trailing vines and we headed for the house.
This tree with its root ball was pretty heavy, but it slid into place just like the other maple. It sat up quite high above the soil level, hole or not, so I hope this maple will find enough dry soil to survive.
Family members came to look and all agreed that the back of the garage looks better with a couple of shade trees.
Ice out yet?
March 12, 2012
That’s one of the key questions of the year for the cottage owner in this area. The frozen lake provides a route to island cottages for a brief interval each winter, but as the sun warms that highway turns into a sword of Damocles poised to destroy docks, boathouses, and shoreline.
The question is when to stop using the ice as a playground and work surface and start fighting it off your property. The wind that tore roofs off buildings on March 3rd apparently caused the ice to shift on Newboro Lake, even though it was still a foot thick. Tony Izatt arrived at the Lodge last weekend to discover his dock had moved six inches inland.
“I guess I waited a week too long to put the pump in this year,” he told me by email. “I couldn’t believe that ice that thick could move around, but somehow it did. In any case, the bubbler is now in place, the barriers and signs are up, so we’ll see how things go as the ice breaks up.”
For the last four years I have maintained an ice report on my blog. At this time of year it is easily the most popular page on The Walnut Diary.
It started as a series of emails to keep volunteers up-to-date while we built Tony’s dock. That was in the spring of 2009. Here are some excerpts from that year:
March 4, 2009: We’ve spent the last two days driving pilings for the new dock on Newboro Lake. The ice is strong and thick out from shore, though I put a foot through at one point as I moved from the sloping ice on shore to the flat part. Water levels seem to have dropped steadily over the last two weeks. Nevertheless we were able to work with three tractors and a couple of trucks on the ice in fairly close proximity and there was no sign of movement in the ice.
March 20, 2009: We finished sheeting the dock in Newboro this morning, and none too soon. Yesterday’s task was to haul 150 2 X 6″ planks across 100′ of ice to the dock frame. Walking was generally solid in the open, but we had to build a bridge of planks near shore. Vehicles on the ice now in this area? Crazy. Would I still walk on it? Yes, with precautions against falling through.
The big mistake in 2009 was that I didn’t bother to include an all-clear notification after a check that the ice was in fact all melted. I rectified that oversight the next year:
28 March, 2010: Tony Izatt wrote: “I watched a stand-off between 1/4 acre ice sheet and my dock pump on Sunday afternoon. The pump held its own against that high wind and didn’t allow the ice sheet within 15′. What was also really cool was to see the wave action at the back of the ice floe eat away at it.”
1 April, 2010: The ice is out on the Newboro/Chaffey’s/Bedford Mills level except for a few floes in the middle of the lakes.
Next year after pack ice knocked the huge concrete dock at the Newboro Lock off its footing, wrecking it, I ran into some of my Ice Report correspondents:
10 April, 2011: This morning at the public dock at Newboro I watched a pontoon boat come ashore and disgorge four cold, but euphoric voyageurs. Bill and Kohar Palimenakos and their guests Perry and Soula Pezoulas came back in after the first night at the cottage this year. Perry joked: “Bill and Kohar have the motto: ‘Last to leave, first to open.’
Then they all jumped in, telling me about how they had battered their way through the ice with two-by-fours to make way for the trusty pontoon boat. I guess that’s what cottage life is about.
Perhaps the highlight of the 2012 Ice Report was the following:
7 March, 2012: I wandered over to the beach to look out onto the Big Rideau. From the north a pickup truck was throwing a bow wake a cruiser would envy. The driver was making pretty good time, obviously heading for Portland. I shut off and watched. At one point the truck disappeared into the spray, but it ploughed through the low spot and continued unerringly towards the Bayview launch ramp. Remembering my own misadventure with rotten ice at that ramp many years ago, I booted the Ranger over to where I could watch and see if the truck emerged o.k. onto Hwy 15. Surely enough, a very clean, late-model gray Ford made its way past me on the highway, occupants grinning and giggling like adolescents. The man and his blonde companion looked to be in their late sixties. They’d certainly gotten their thrill today.
You can watch ice-out for yourself on the webcam at
http://www.lenscove.com/Page.aspx/pageId/92750/Webcam.aspx
Video-chat with a Snowbird
March 4, 2012
My sister Glenda’s rapidly settling into life in central Florida, where she has rented a home and golf cart for a couple of months in a gated community. I decided to find out about Snowbird life by asking her about her electric vehicle (EV). She shouted answers into the screen of her laptop over a fresh breeze. To gain Internet access she parks her cart close to the clubhouse to pick up wireless reception. Spotting her online, I called her on voice, then switched to video. At that point Glenda stood up and showed me around the cart and the adjacent area with the camera on her laptop. She took great pride in reaching around the display to point out the little Canadian flag on her cart.
1. What services does the electric vehicle provide for you?
All transportation within the park, which means I cannot go out on the highway. If I could I would go shopping with it, but I can’t.
I go to everybody’s houses, to the pool, to open houses, I run all dreadful errands, like delivering grapefruit off my tree to those who want it, and I check out all of the houses for sale and nobody knows that I am doing it. Of course if I were a golfer the cart would be crucial. For me it’s just fundamental. There’s a difference. Sometimes I am challenged to a race by 80 and 90-year-olds who want attention because to them I appear young.
Yesterday was interesting. Connie and I were travelling in tandem and Carol turned out of a side street and cut us off. Three of us were stopped talking in the middle of the road on all different angles. A truck came along, so we pulled into Mary-Anne’s driveway and the renter came out to find out what’s going on, so before long we were all sitting in our golf carts, engaged in a four-way conversation.
Most people have a Canadian flag, sometimes teamed up with their provincial flag on their cart. I’m going to buy some Canadian paraphernalia at the Dollar Store for next winter.
2. In what situations does the EV do a better job than a car?
What I like best is that there are no noise or fumes. It’s very easy to drive. When all of the carts are lined up they take very little space in comparison to the car parking lot. There’s no privacy and so you can wheel up beside somebody and chat. An old guy this morning was taking his dog for a joyride in the rain. Dogs love their chariots.
3. How well accepted is the EV in your environment?
Listen, it’s major for fun. There’s also the functional aspect, but I would suggest you really need one here in order to maximize the pleasure. Some owners of adjoining houses pour shared concrete runways for the carts so that the driveway isn’t blocked.
4. Do you have to break the law in order to drive your EV?
No. But if I were to look at the regulations, you need to be 16 with a driver’s license, and you’re only allowed two riders on a regular golf cart. Some put their kids where the golf bags go, but you don’t want to have an accident.
5. What changes would be required to allow the use of a similar EV in the Smiths Falls area?
I would only be able to use it on my property, and that would be confining. We’d need a change of mentality because cars would over-run you on the Golf Club Road. The same applies for the ZENN electric car produced in Quebec for $12 k but we aren’t allowed to drive it. That’s what I’d love to have to go shopping.
They have the laws in place for EV’s on low-speed roads in Quebec and B.C., but not in Ontario. I would love one of those cars. They’re designed with lots of space for groceries, and they’re easy to park.
6. Do you miss a gas engine when using your EV?
Absolutely not. I don’t miss the price, either. I like the roof over my head. This one is well designed and I have a windshield if I want it and a fold-down cover at back, but I don’t have side curtains.
7. How would you improve your current ride?
Ideally EVs would come in designer colours. Your house should match your golf cart, or at least the shutters should. I’m sitting next to this EZ-Go and it’s white and black like mine, but it has a burled elm dashboard, and I’m turning green with envy here, looking at that dashboard.
I don’t have signal lights, so I have to use hand signals. I can’t quite remember what they are, so I just turn around and wave.
8. So life in the sunny south is good?
It’s gorgeous here at this time of year. I’m surrounded by hibiscus plants and palm trees. The house backs up onto an orange grove at the back and the third hole of a golf course at the side. What’s not to love?
If you like birds or woodlots, you’ll want this book.
February 26, 2012
Every now and then a book comes along which every landowner will want as a reference. The title explains the book’s purpose: A land manager’s guide to conserving habitat for forest birds in southern Ontario, by Dawn Burke, Ken Elliott, Karla Falk, and Teresa Piraino, 2011. What the title fails to convey, however, is just how exquisitely put together this Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources publication is.
On one level it’s a well-illustrated coffee table book. A flip through the volume reveals many pieces of the work of wildlife artist Peter Burke and the contributions of many photographers. The bird portraits are varied and illustrative. For example, a shot by Robert McCaw of a pair of nesting pileated woodpeckers makes the gender distinction between the otherwise-identical birds easy: the male’s red crest continues down to his beak. The female, on the other hand, has a black “moustache.” An image which sticks in my mind is a Ken Elliott shot of the forest-floor nest of an ovenbird. It’s just a dark spot in the leaf cover, but the zoom shows the nest. So much for carefree walks through forest leaves in spring: I could step on one of these and not even realize it.
A later section of the book is set up as a guide to forest-dwelling birds, beginning with my personal favourite, the ruffed grouse. Perhaps the most interesting page is the profile of the yellow-bellied sapsucker. I have long suspected this critter of killing off the odd white birch in my garden by drilling its neat rows of holes for sap and insects, but I hadn’t realized that hummingbirds depend heavily upon sapsuckers for their survival. Apparently the little guys follow sapsuckers around and can’t survive without them. I’d always wondered what happened to the hummingbirds if cottagers forgot to fill those red feeders.
If there’s a villain in the book it’s the cowbird, the biggest natural threat to the survival of songbirds in Ontario. Cowbirds don’t raise their own young. Instead, the female lays up to forty eggs per year in other birds’ nests. Robins and blue jays simply eject the strange eggs and continue nesting. Other birds don’t have that evolutionary advantage, and often raise the fast-maturing cowbird chicks to the detriment of their own smaller and later-maturing offspring. Cowbirds love lawns and closely-grazed pasture. The further the forest-dweller’s nest is from the habitat of the cowbird, the more likely the pair is to raise their young successfully. According to Elliott, that’s a main reason why houses in the woods (with their lawns) are tough on forest birds.
But the main purpose of the book is to provide a primer on forest succession and management of tree harvesting activities to protect or improve bird habitat. In a presentation at the Annual Kemptville Woodlot Conference last week, author Ken Elliott put up slides to illustrate tree growth over the thirty-year period after different harvesting methods. He explained to us that these colour illustrations had to look as good as the rest of the book, so he asked artist Peter Burke to do paintings of each type of tree, then Lyn Thompson and Ken used Photoshop to group the paintings into the denser figures for the blocks on the chart. It wouldn’t hurt to have a magnifying glass at hand when perusing this volume. A great deal of material went into it, so even the small photos hold interest.
For me the most startling illustration in the book is a map of southern Ontario which graphs tree cover. The counties north of Lake Erie show very little green on the map. This is the area which was almost a desert in 1905 when Edmund Zavitz began his lifelong mission to bring it back to health with tree plantings. Even with the 50 Million Trees Program currently under way in Ontario, Essex County still has only 5% tree cover.
Our area of eastern Ontario, on the other hand, boasts 48% tree cover, so our growth area lies in connecting forest patches and managing existing forests to increase the distance of the woodlot core from its edges and marauding cowbirds.
The core of the book’s content deals with harvesting methods in woodlots. Clear cut, shelterwood, group selection, diameter-limit, stand improvement and single-tree selection harvest plans are examined with explanations and graphs indicating the impact of each harvest method on 85 species of forest-dwelling birds. For the forester the critique of each method may prove informative. It appears as though, apart from clear cutting, diameter-limit harvesting is the most damaging to the health of woodlots, yet municipalities regularly legislate diameter limits because they are easy to understand and enforce.
I asked Ken, “Why should woodlot owners be concerned about the bird population of their property?”
“I think the best explanation comes on page 81 of the book. Birds have evolved as a fundamental part of these ecosystems. Although you often don’t see them or what they are doing, they can usually be heard and it should be reassuring to know that the work they do as pollinators, insect predators, seed dispersers, and fungi vectors may be critical to the overall health of forests. On top of this their beauty and elusiveness provide entertainment for many nature enthusiasts and hunters. So although we can’t say what the forest would be like without birds, we do know that having them in the forest provides an important piece of the puzzle and seeing and hearing them is a great reward for those who get time to go exploring in the woods.”
A land manager’s guide… is available in full colour online as a PDF file at http://www.mnr.gov.on.ca/en/Business/Forests/Publication/STDPROD_089385.html.
Have a look. Then you can order a hard copy (ISBN 978-1-4435-0097-5) for $15.00 from the Landowner Resource Centre in Manotick.
Creepy surveillance from your local store
February 22, 2012
I read somewhere last week that most espionage is now commercial. This is worth a read.
Review: Husqvarna 346xp chain saw
February 21, 2012
See below for a review of the Husqvarna 346xp.
Short version:
Don’t order a chain for a Husqvarna saw from Alamia.com unless you know exactly what you are doing.
Longer version:
I learned of http://www.alamia.com from this forum, and when I decided to buy a new saw, their price for a Husqvarna 346XP was very attractive. I ordered it online and had it shipped to Wellesley Island NY where I picked it up and brought it across the border into Ontario myself.
At the $468. US I paid, the saw is a very good machine, well worth the money and the trouble to get it here.
Last week I decided to lay in a couple of chains for the saw, so I clicked the appropriate boxes and paid online, all without any need to speak to a sales person. That was my first mistake.
After three days I drove to Wellesley Island Bld. Supply and picked up my chains. When I tried to put one on today, it was too short. A call to Alania and Sean answered:
“Oh, you likely need an 80 rather than a 78. Husqvarna uses both, depending upon which bars they have in stock at the time. Send them back and I’ll send you some 80’s.”
I expressed my disappointment with their online sales software that this eventuality was not addressed, and given the complexity of the shipping arrangements, decided to write the transaction off to experience.
Then I looked at the bar. It’s printed right there, the last number, 80 (drivers).
I thought I could maybe cut a chain down for my Husky 51, 64 drivers. Nope. It’s a wider chain, a .58, whereas the new one is a .50.
After 32 years as an English teacher, I still find new ways to be illiterate. $42.00 for the chains, $12 for shipping, $2.50 for bridge toll, $12.00 for gas. $68.50 to learn something completely new? Not so bad.
Conclusion:
Cory Sly at his small engines shop in Elgin extended the chains and made me a new one for the Husky 51 for a total of $30. Turns out Cory’s prices are better on chains than Alamia’s.
Online shopping is great, but sometimes it’s better to buy local.
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While I’m at it, I should comment on the saw in question:
The following is a contribution to a discussion on the Chain Saw forum of TractorByNet.com
DisplacedPA:
Your original question was a request for feedback on the Husqvarna 346XP, so here goes:
I bought one last fall from Alamia for 468 USD. They were about 800 CDN at the time in Ontario. I was looking for a lightweight, high performance saw, as I’m not getting any younger or fitter. In my salad years I proudly wielded a McCullough ProMac 85 with a 28″ bar because I loved its cutting speed. Needless to say, I concentrated on the block wood and left the limbing to my dad with his lighter saw.
More recently I have used an inherited Husqvarna 51 with a 13″ bar. It’s a good saw, but limited in what it can cut. I bought the 346 with a 20″ bar to fill that gap, and it has filled that role well.
So far I have blocked up five trees over 20″, two wind-fallen Manitoba maples (box elder), two hard maples, and a bitternut hickory. When sharp, the saw cuts very well. I touched a rock and ruined a chain, but you can’t blame the saw for that.
Cutting speed in block wood is good. The real difference, though, is in the limbing. The 346 with a 20″ bar still weighs a lot less than the 51 with a 13″ bar. It is much less tiring to use because, apart from the weight, it reaches 7″ further. That means less back fatigue from stooping.
One surprise with the lightweight bar came when I jammed the tip roller after a pinch. I’m a bit prone to this particular goof. Once I had to pry the tip apart with a screwdriver to allow the chain to move. I’d never seen that before in 50 years of chainsawing. The bar still works fine, but it brought to my attention the fact that this is a lightweight, high performance machine, and shouldn’t be abused.
The safety concerns I read online are over-rated. Just don’t start cutting up loose blocks in a woodpile. It works like any other chain saw, just better.
I would definitely buy another 346XP. Thr new chain on the 51 is for volunteers. I’ll keep the light one for myself.
Rod
Cagney and the wolf’s cache
February 20, 2012
The snow has melted off the twenty acres to the north of the house on Young’s Hill. This afternoon our English springer spaniel Cagney discovered something buried in the grass around some young pines. She chewed, pulled up something meaty, and kept eating. Strange, that’s a large mouse if it has that many mouthfuls. She took another bite and retreated, so I prodded the newly-uncovered clump of grass and knocked out about a Mason jar-full of coarsely chopped beef. Must be a cache left by one of the bush wolves or coyotes who live on the property, buried in the snow and grass and now exposed. The meat looked fresh.
When looking from above I initially couldn’t see anything except the hole Cagney had made with her nose and paws, but there was quite a volume of food down there.
The neighbours must have drawn a dead cow out to the quarry. Erin and her mom have had a good winter if they’ve left this much food uneaten.
Bill C-30: An Act to Pick Our Pockets
February 20, 2012
Why don’t you ever say what you mean, Mr. Harper? Your minister Tony Clement said: “If only one Canadian complained about the mandatory long-form census, that was good enough to kill it,” when the real purpose was to reduce the credibility of census information so you could make decisions based upon hunches rather than data. Take the Crime Bill, for example.
You eliminated the long-gun registry because it was a Liberal legacy, but you took your time about doing it because it was such a great cash cow for the Conservative Party. Your argument was that no one should be made a criminal or subjected to arbitrary search and seizure just because he owned a rifle or shotgun.
But then you came out with Bill C-30, the Lawful Access Act. Former Prime Minister Paul Martin tried a version of this bill before, but it died on the order paper due to an election. Some regulation of electronic communications is necessary to get our house in order, but C-30 goes way beyond any reasonable law in that it gives police, public employees, and “Inspectors” the right to snoop into the online activities of ordinary Canadians without notifying anybody of what they are doing.
Sure, the bill has the usual pages of how notifications and permissions have to be obtained, but the loopholes are there: any policeman or employee in a police station or anybody appointed as an “Inspector” can snoop without the victim’s knowledge and not leave a record.
This bill, if enacted, will make Canada a police state. And this comes from a government which killed the long-form census because fewer than ten Canadians over a period of two years complained about it? A government which killed the long-gun registry rather than risk making criminals out of farmers with unregistered .22’s?
These were feints before the real roundup. Mr. Harper, your thought police (all right, “Inspectors”) will do more harm to ordinary Canadians of all ages than any number of long-gun registries or long-form census rules.
And how did you defend this invasive legislation in the House? An hour before the first reading someone changed the name to the “Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act.” The only thing Bill C-30 has to do with child pornography is that both are about the Internet.
Then Vic Toews, your Minister of Public Safety, stood up in the House of Commons and faced down any critic of the bill with what may go down in history as the stupidest comment ever made in the Canadian Parliament: “He can stand with us or with the child pornographers.” So a government which didn’t want to make a criminal out of a farmer with an unregistered shotgun has now called virtually all Canadians outside Parliament Hill the worst kind of criminal.
This comment was so mystifying that I tried to track its origins down with Google. It traced partly to the attack-dog style of your government, Mr. Harper, and the way you have trained your ministers to respond with bullying put-downs to opponents. “You’re not supporting our troops!” and “Liberals are soft on crime!” over the last six years have been standard substitutes for reasoned argument in question period. On June 20, 2004 you yourself said, “Paul Martin supports child pornography!”
But the child pornography accusation of Toews was more extreme than the others, so I looked a little further. Then I came up with the following quotation:
“The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation.”
Was this the idea floating around in the mind of your Minister of Public Safety —
hide behind the children and you can manipulate the people any way you want?
So if the long-form census was to cut off support to needy people and aboriginals because you would no longer be able to count them, and the long-gun registry was to fill the party coffers and erase a liberal tradition, what’s the point behind Bill C-30?
It’s not eliminating child pornography. Effective laws are already in place to do that. But the same part of Bill C-30 which allows emergency access to Internet records for an Amber Alert can allow access to businessmen who want to find ways to make the Internet pay.
Mr. Harper’s favourite slogan in the last election was: “Canadians don’t care about that. It’s all about the economy.” Most of the Internet in Canada is still free, but if corporations can track our clicks they can meter them and make us pay. Internet copyright laws in Canada are just about unenforceable at the moment. On Torrent sites I can download first run movies and view them along with yesterday’s T.V. programs if I want, all without commercials. My friends in the United States can’t do that.
Bill C-30 is a giant step toward tracking our keyboard clicks to make us pay. There’s no moral or safety issue here, just indirection and scare tactics, the standard techniques of the pickpocket and the mugger.
the Walnut Diary 