Check It Out: Petitions and more petitions
By Joan Janzen
Did you hear about the bipartisan group petitioning for medical marijuana as an option for arthritis patients? In other words, there’s joint support for joint support for joint support.
But seriously, there have been a lot of petitions being pumped out during the last couple of years. Recently Pierre Poilievre, a PC Member of Parliament, posted a petition to “Stop the Great Reset”. The petition is a result of Justin Trudeau’s words spoken at a United Nations conference: “This pandemic has provided an opportunity for a reset. This is our chance to accelerate our pre-pandemic efforts to reimagine economic systems.”
Pierre said, “I sometimes wonder if this is the government covering up the WE Scandal? They also don’t want any scrutiny of this grand reset the PM is now talking about, this idea that he is gong to renovate Canadian society to fit his Trudeopian ambitions. This is not a time to engineer society to his liking or to his socialist ideology. This is a time to get people safely and securely back to work, to protect their lives and their livelihoods, not a time for government to take advantage of the crisis in order to massively expand the powers at the expense of Canadians’ freedom. That’s what we should be talking about here in the finance committee. I am beginning to wonder if this filibuster is about more than just covering up the WE Scandal but also about covering up the government grand scheme for social and economic engineering, to cover up the power grab that he has lusted over since the beginning of this crisis.”
By the way, filibuster is a political procedure where members of parliament debate over a proposed piece of legislation so as to delay or entirely prevent a decision being made on the proposal. Wikipedia says, “Due to the often extreme length of time required for a successful filibuster, many speakers stray off topic”, but Pierre has relentlessly stuck to the topic, and has now posted a petition.
Another petition has been posted to scrap Bill C-10, a bill which threatens to seize control of online media content in Canada, putting liberty and freedom at risk. This bill would give power to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to “assign penalties for non-compliance” for those who do not comply with the party’s ideology on the Canadian internet.
Jay Cameron, a lawyer for the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms said, “It is clear from recent statements by the PM that the federal government wants to increase control and penalties for speech and content that is not approved of by the ideologues in the Liberal Party. The purpose of Bill C-10 is not to increase freedom of ‘thought, belief, opinion, and expression (section 2(b) of the Charter) but to further restrict it.”
Canadians who sign the petition want the internet to be an independent forum where ideas, beliefs and other ventures can be discussed without government regulation or censorship. Because we have freedom of thought, belief and opinion, these on line petitions are easily accessible, and Canadians can choose to sign them, or not to sign them.