Canadian Senator: Constitution Fails to Restrain Government

Following months of gripping political scandal* surrounding what has been widely reported in the Canadian mainstream media as wildly excessive and inappropriate spending of government funds by Conservative Party Senators Pamela Wallin, Patrick Brazeau and Mike Duffy, members of the "upper house" debated, this week, a motion seeking the suspension of the three senators in question.

Senator Pamela Wallin wonders, if the Constitution fails to
restrain government in its treatment of politicians, what could it
"do to an ordinary citizen who crosses the government of the day"?

Photo by Sean Kilpatrick/ The Canadian Press

In response to the allegations against her, and the motion to suspend, without pay and privileges, herself and two of her colleagues, Senator Pamela Wallin delivered a scathing speech on the floor of the Senate, Wednesday. Wallin claims that both Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper and her Senate colleagues' efforts to suspend her are in violation not only of standing Parliamentary rules and procedures, but also the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, an addendum to the Canadian Constitution.

No doubt supporters of opposition parties (Liberals, NDP and Greens), who have, for the past several months, taken every opportunity to criticize the conduct of Wallin, Brazeau and Duffy, will hail Wallin's speech as proof of the incompetence and brazen disrespect for the rule of law of the Harper Government.

Of course, critics of Harper's Conservative government will quote only the lines from Wallin's speech which malign the current Prime Minister and serve their own political agendas; lines like,

"Due process and the rule of law [which Wallin claims are being disregarded by the government, in her case] are all we have to protect us from the tyranny of those with power and from the passion of the mob."

"This process is not in the interests of an independent, functioning and effective Senate – although it is most clearly in the interests of those who want to abolish this chamber." (The Harper government)

I can only imagine that if the shoe were on the other foot - that is, if the senators in question were belonging to the Liberal Party, under the infallible leadership of the young, handsome, and shampoo-savvy Justin Trudeau - critics of today's government would jump to their defense, claiming (as Wallin has), that the expenses were justified, since they were being "activist senators" who were actually attempting to get things done, unlike their Conservative colleagues.

Ultimately, whether or not Wallin, Brazeau and Duffy spent government resources outside the scope permitted by the rules of the Senate is of little importance. The most important remark made by Wallin in her speech to the Senate is this,

"If this chamber can take this extreme action with regard to a sitting senator, imagine what it could do to an ordinary citizen who crosses the government of the day."

The bottom line is that every single member of the unelected Senate, as well as the elected members of the House of Commons, including Prime Minister Stephen Harper and opposition leaders Justin Trudeau and Thomas Mulcair, see it as their moral right to steal money and property from you and me in order to pay their salaries; first by instructing  CRA bureaucrats to pen threatening letters demanding a portion of your income and, failing that, by sending armed men to retrieve your property and throw you in a cage, should you resist.

If the "rules" outlined in the Canadian constitution and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which is supposed to guarantee the fundamental rights of all people living in Canada, has been powerless to prevent these politicians from forcibly stealing from Canadians, then in what fantasy world could we expect the same politicians to reverently observe the rules that they wrote in respect to the manner in which that stolen property should be disposed of?


*This would be an appropriate place to use a sarcasm font.

BC Hells Angels Seek Judicial Arbitration with Rival Gang

Brian Hutchinson  reported, last week in the National Post, on a disturbing trend of systematic theft of private property by the state. There seems to be no end to the number of ways of which government employees can conceive to steal property by force, both threatened and enacted.

BC Hells Angels are seeking legal
remedy in a case of civil forfeiture.

Photo by Jason Payne/ Postmedia News

Similar to eminent domain, civil forfeiture is the "legal" process by which the state seizes private property which it deems to have been acquired from the results of unlawful activity, or is likely to be used to engage in unlawful activity. Legislation authorizing civil forfeiture is in place in ten provinces and territories across Canada. At first pass, it doesn't seem like such a terrible concept - that criminals should be made to pay restitution to their victims, in an effort to make them whole again.

Of course, the state does not dispose of seized assets by returning stolen property to its rightful owner, or paying restitution to victims of crime. As reported by the National Post, "most civil forfeiture cases in Canada involve marijuana grow operations and drug transactions". The property seized in the majority of civil forfeiture cases in Canada involve only non-violent "crimes", which being committed, created not a single victim. Doesn't it seem counter-logical that a non-violent, victimless act, deemed esthetically and socially displeasing to legislators, should be met with theft?

British Columbia Provincial Justice Minister Suzanne Anton defends the practice of civil forfeiture, claiming that it reduces the incentive for individuals to commit illegal acts by taking away the proceeds resulting from such acts.

Civil forfeiture fails to deter criminality. Instead it increases the incentive of the state to act in a criminal manner, stealing private property. Seized property is sold off to fund various "crime prevention" bureaucracies, and in the case of British Columbia, proceeds of sold off assets are put right back into the civil forfeiture program. Theft funded by theft.

While the incentive exists for the state to continue to practice civil forfeiture against individuals, the same incentive does not often exist for victims of this legally sanctioned theft, to mount a challenge in court. The cost of challenging a civil forfeiture case is often as much as or greater than the value of the seized property, so victims just walk away. Such is not the case for the Hells Angels, who have challenged the seizure of three of their club houses by the BC government.

Isn't it ironic that the state is attempting to steal from a group which it identifies as a gang, and which it claims operates criminally with the use of violence and theft? Isn't it even more ironic that the de facto criminal gang, in this scenario, the Hells Angels, is challenging the transgressions of the de jure criminal gang, the state, by means of judicial arbitration?

So what should the Hells Angels do if they lose their appeal? There's only one "logical" thing to do in a "civil" society, and that is to seize the proceeds of the crime from the transgressors (the state), to get back what was theirs.

UPDATE: Elderly Census Resistor Acquitted

Tobias walks free.
Photo by Chris Young / The Canadian Press

Audrey Tobias, the 87-year-old Ontario peace advocate who faced 90 days in jail for refusing to complete the government's *mandatory* short form census, was acquitted yesterday of the charge by Ontario Court Judge Ramez Khawly, as reported by the National Post.

Don't get the wrong impression, though. The completely bogus and immoral law requiring Canadians to submit to probing government surveys hasn't been struck down. Justice  Khawly, who ruled in favour of Tobias all but admitted, with his ruling, that he was unable to find the accused guilty only because such a decision would not have been good PR for the government.

While the official ruling claims that the prosecution failed to adequately demonstrate Ms. Tobias's deliberate intent to violate the Statistics Act, Khawly admits that he was unable to rule in favour of the prosecution, essentially, because of who the accused was. He said,

"Did no one at Justice clue in that on a public relations perspective, this was an unmitigated disaster? Are they that myopic that they could not see the train wreck ahead? Could they not have found a more palatable profile to prosecute as a test case?"

In other words, Justice Khawly would really like to be able to imprison peaceful people who decline to complete questionnaires distributed door-to-door by intrusive government-hired solicitors. He only wishes government prosecutors would bring less sympathetic cases before him.

I wonder if Justice Khawly will take such a lenient stand should I end up before him, accused of the same "crime" as Audrey Tobias after I refuse to tick the government's boxes in 2016?

Government Steals Land to Build a Murderer Training Camp

Ontario farmer Frank Meyers
Photo by Cole Garside

Earlier this month, the Canadian government took the final steps in the process of what amounts to the "legal" theft of a parcel of land owned by 85-year-old Ontario farmer, Frank Meyers. The Department of National Defence, utilizing the legal doctrine of expropriation (also known as eminent domain) strongarmed the elderly farmer into unwillingly "selling" his property so that a 400 hectare training facility can be built for Joint Task Force 2, a specialized team of trained killers with the mission of "counter-terrorism".

To those of us who are soberly aware of the nature of the relationship between the state and its citizens (subjects), even the official definitions of expropriation and eminent domain - the legal power of the state to take private property for the public interest - screams THEFT! But let's take a moment to cut through the legalese to make it as clear as possible what eminent domain really means.

The word eminent has dictionary definitions including high in station, conspicuous and projecting. That is to say that something that is eminent is of greater stature, prominence, and likely power than other things surrounding it. The word domain is defined as a territory governed by a single ruler or government.

When the two words are paired, we get a term which basically means that the party of greater stature, prominence and power is the party with the right to rule over a territory in question. In other words, might makes right. And who, in the cases of Frank Meyers and countless others, is mightiest? You guessed it; the state.

In an interview with Maclean's Magazine, Meyers said, “In other countries, they’re crushing you with bullets and guns and ammunition and tanks and explosives. Not in Canada. It’s pencil and paper here, and then they’ve got control.”

It's true that throughout the legal process by which the government seized Meyers' property, not a single bullet was fired, nor did any tanks roll up his laneway. His son even told Maclean's that the Department of National Defence had been "fair" with his family. However, the entire process was made possible only by the government's ability to forcefully evict Mr. Meyers, through the use of violence, if necessary.

Who owns the land?

Had Frank Meyers' known that ignoring letters, phone calls, court summons, etc. from the government would result in no action from state agents attempting to cage him, forcefully evict him, or kill him, he surely would have felt significantly reduced pressure to comply with their requests for him to surrender his land. This is evidenced in the final show of force by the state, when a senior military officer showed up at the home of Mr. Meyers accompanied by two (presumably) armed Ontario Provincial Police officers to notify him that from that point forward, he had no right to set foot on what was once his own property.

The sentimental value of his farm, it seems, is far greater than any offer of monetary compensation presented to Mr. Meyers by the Canadian government. He has lived on the land for his entire life, and it has been in his family for generations. "It is difficult to know that you’re losing everything you’ve got," Meyers told McLeans.

There has been a lot of discussion lately in libertarian and anarchist circles surrounding the tactical implications of the defensive use of force against government agents. The question has been eloquently explored by Chris Cantwell in his article, When Should You Shoot The Mailman, and Larken Rose in his piece, When Should You Shoot a Cop.

When is it appropriate to use defensive force to defend your property against agents of the state? If you ask me, the case of Frank Meyers is a perfect example not only of a tactically justifiable, but perhaps also a morally imperative time for the use of defensive force. I consider that if I were in Meyers' position, near the end of my life, facing the prospect of having my most significant asset, my home for 85 years, and the site of some of my fondest memories and most life-enriching experiences stolen from me, there is not much I wouldn't be willing to do in order prevent such a tragedy. Top that with the knowledge that my stolen property would be used to train militarized killers to commit murder in all corners of the world against people I have never met, and who have never harmed me, and I am angry.

To those libertarians who advocate achieving change through legal means, and who advise submission to violent government aggressors in most all situations, I ask you to put yourself in the shoes of Frank Meyers.

Elderly Woman Faces Jail Time For Refusing to Tick Boxes

This article was also published on The Art of Not Being Governed blog.

Anyone who knows me would attest that I have few illusions regarding the depths to which individuals who call themselves "the government" will stoop in order to indulge their inhuman desire to sadistically and remorselessly exert control over the lives of their fellow man. I'm rarely surprised by the most recent acts of cowardice carried out by agents of the state through their institutions of violence. Occasionally, however, their threats and initiations of violence against objectively peaceful, non-aggressive people are so frivolous that I question whether I may have had too much of my favourite lucid dream tea before bed, causing my dream-mind to have plucked me from between my sheets, depositing me, instead, between the pages of a novel penned by Larken Rose or Ayn Rand.

Take the case of 89-year-old Audrey Tobias of Ontario, who is facing up to 90 days in jail for refusing to complete the *mandatory* short form census questionnaire mailed to her in 2011 by Statistics Canada. The eight questions included in the short form questionnaire cover topics I would feel uncomfortable discussing with a barista who has served me coffee for years, let alone a creepy part-time census collector who returns day after day, knocking on my door after I've failed to respond to their threatening letters and automated telephone messages. Information demanded includes the name, gender, date of birth and relationship status (past and present) of every person living within a household, as well as the nature of relationships among inhabitants.

Audrey Tobias
Photo by Chris Young/THE CANADIAN PRESS

Audrey Tobias, a peace advocate, has refused to complete the census questionnaire as an act of civil disobedience in protest of the relationship between Statistics Canada and military contractor Lockheed Martin. Census data collected by Statistics Canada is processed using software purchased from Lockheed Martin, known profiteers of military conflict. Tobias has stated that she would be happy to comply with the government statute that claims to oblige her to complete the census, if only the data were processed by a different means.

While Ms. Tobias's courageous act of defiance and stated ideal of peace are to be admired, she should be reminded that the greatest barrier to world peace is not military contractors acting alone. The single greatest obstacle to achieving a free and peaceful world is the superstition of the state and the societal belief in governmental institutions of violence. Governments carry out acts of war whether or not they contract with this military contractor or that. Audrey Tobias was justified in her refusal to complete the census form not because of whom was chosen by statistics bureaucrats to process data, but because no human being is justified in demanding, at the point of a gun, that a person release information from the sacred safe of their mind.

If tomorrow, the Canadian government cancelled every single one of its contract held by Lockheed Martin, Audrey Tobias would still be morally justified in refusing to provide census data because she owns herself. Threatening violence against a peaceful person who refuses to surrender a part of themselves is, and always will be, the action of a coward.