A Win For Privacy Rights

Every once in a while, Canada jolts itself into privacy sanity. 

The long-gun registry was an expensive and inefficient disaster that, in the end, did little to prevent crime and everything to piss off law-abiding gun owners (they do exist you know).

Shucks, I'd love to be a fly on the wall in the PQ bunker. Marois must be all "maudit federalistes" this and "maudit anglais" that. This is how they roll. It will be used to "prove" Ottawa doesn't understand Quebec's needs.

Blah, blah.

Of course Quebec is the only big province dead set against destroying records. THAT would mean privacy is restored to people. In a province where the nationalist ideology based on one language dependent on the (manufactured) collective and "will" there's no place for individual thought.

I still can't fathom how anyone could accept a registry with their private information to which a bureaucratic agency has access to is a good idea. Notice what's happening in the USA where a police state is slowly shaping. Venture capitalists are now pouring money in security firms for the love of God. Canada is not immune. If anything, we're an easier target for becoming a benign police state - after all, we've abdicated the concept of individual rights and handed it over to the government a long time ago.

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So what does "statism" mean to me? It's such a weird term I agree and it means many things to different people to be sure. I can only look upon examples and draw from my own personal experiences. For example, in my business, I just found out, that if I don't follow every arbitrary regulation set down by the Ministry, they can come in and "take over my business."

A PRIVATE enterprise that doesn't receive a subsidy it must be reminded.

Think about this for a second. Digest it. Swallow that banana.

A bureaucracy, thanks to the law written by civil servants, can take over a private business in Quebec.

And people dare say A) we're extremists and paranoid and B) we're a capitalist democracy? More like socialist tyranny. I never voted or consented to allow the government that kind of power.

And for the record, the people running the Ministry wouldn't know the first clue of how to operate a business. They can write the laws and apply them but they don't have to live with them. I can just picture the scenario...

Bureaucrat (taking over): What's this?
Former owner: It's the form we must fill out.
Bureaucrat: Seems long to me.
Owner: I know. But it's required.
Bureaucrat: Not anymore it is! (laughs)
Owner: Not following
Bureaucrat: Seems to me we need efficiency. Who came up with that document?
Owner: It says....Tremblay.
(looks at tag)
Owner: Would that be you?
Bureaucrat: What's the difference? We have a business to run! How much does this person earn?
Owner: $16 an hour.
Bureaucrat: Seems a lot to me. You really are generous.
Owner: But I was just following the wage tables set by the Ministry.
Bureaucrat: Yeah well, what do we know, right?
Owner: Well, it was kinda of a struggle to balance the books.
Bureaucrat: Don't you worry. I fix. I, government.
Owner: Will I ever get my business back?
Bureaucrat: So. Will $13 an hour do for you?