Harper government rewrites history

[oneh2obabe]

OTTAWA—The Harper government moved to retroactively rewrite Canada’s access to information law in order to prevent possible criminal charges against the RCMP, The Canadian Press has learned.

An unheralded change buried in last week’s 167-page omnibus budget bill exempted all records from the defunct long-gun registry, and also any “request, complaint, investigation, application, judicial review, appeal or other proceeding under the Access to Information Act or the Privacy Act,” related to those old records.

The unprecedented, retroactive changes — access to information experts liken them to erasing the national memory — are even more odd because they are backdated to the day the Conservatives introduced legislation to kill the gun registry, not to when the bill received royal assent.

The date effectively alters history to make an old government bill come into force months before it was actually passed by Parliament.

A source familiar with the complaint, speaking on condition of anonymity due to its sensitivity, said the government moved out of concern Information Commissioner Suzanne Legault is poised to recommend charges against the Mounties for withholding — and later destroying — gun registry documents while the legislation was still being debated.

Full article
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2015 ... urces.html

[Hurtlander]

Anyone that votes for the Harper government needs a lobotomy..
What the Harper government is doing is not right wing conservatism, it's purely totalitarianism...

[The Green Barbarian]

Anyone that votes for the Harper government needs a lobotomy..
What the Harper government is doing is not right wing conservatism, it's purely totalitarianism...

If that's the case, then I guess everyone who votes Conservative, Green or NDP will be lobotomized the day after the election, but you need a brain to be lobotomized and so that's why Green and NDP voters may have a way out.

[Hurtlander]

It's only the Harper cons rewriting history in attempt to muzzle the truth...

[flamingfingers]

Anyone that votes for the Harper government needs a lobotomy..
What the Harper government is doing is not right wing conservatism, it's purely totalitarianism...

Anyone who votes for the Harper government has ALREADY had a lobotomy!!!

[daria]

So, just to be clear, the Harper Government that adamantly refuses to comment on any matter "before the courts," is the same government that backdates legislation to massively interfere with the judicial process. Do I have that about right?

[daria]

Anyone that votes for the Harper government needs a lobotomy..
What the Harper government is doing is not right wing conservatism, it's purely totalitarianism...

The CPC is Orwellian to its core.

[daria]

JUXTAPOSE! Harper Govt that frantically backdates legislation to prevent criminal prosecution warns that removing tampon tax will take time.

[FreeRights]

If that's the case, then I guess everyone who votes Conservative, Green or NDP will be lobotomized the day after the election, but you need a brain to be lobotomized and so that's why Green and NDP voters may have a way out.

I'm amazed that you can be as staunch a Conservative as you are, where the actual issues don't matter. Only party lines do.

[The Green Barbarian]

I'm amazed that you can be as staunch a Conservative as you are, where the actual issues don't matter. Only party lines do.

*removed*

[FreeRights]

If only the actual Conservatives spent as much time calling the two better parties names, like you do, rather than driving the entire country into the dirt, we'd be in a much better place right now.

[The Green Barbarian]

If only the actual Conservatives spent as much time calling the two better parties names, like you do, rather than driving the entire country into the dirt, we'd be in a much better place right now.

Oh good grief. Time to put your big boy pants on. And I'm not an "actual Conservative". I am an undecided voter (other than I have decided that the NDP sucks and the Green Party is full of f-bomb dropping lunatics). Let's see what Justin can do. As far as your hyperbole, if you and your NDP loving gang of cry-babies spent as much time trying to make your party electable as you do whining and crying crocodile tears, perhaps they'd be considered a viable alternative by the center.

[mr.bandaid]

I see it a bit different than you GB. I feel that posters like yourself and Urbane maybe Rwebe are in here trying to build up your party in the same way as the posters you are taking on are in here to booster their party. So in an odd kind of way they are doing the very thing you accuse them of not doing.
The liberals in BC and the Cons federally will have their work cut out for them in the next election. Harper has long been accused of being a dictator running the Cons. Seems that regardless of which party you have in power, with time they will all become corrupt. Corruption starts at the top.

[FreeRights]

I see it a bit different than you GB. I feel that posters like yourself and Urbane maybe Rwebe are in here trying to build up your party in the same way as the posters you are taking on are in here to booster their party. So in an odd kind of way they are doing the very thing you accuse them of not doing.
The liberals in BC and the Cons federally will have their work cut out for them in the next election. Harper has long been accused of being a dictator running the Cons. Seems that regardless of which party you have in power, with time they will all become corrupt. Corruption starts at the top.

It shouldn't even be that. It should have nothing to do with parties, but actual individual issues. But some people - and I'm not saying it's only Conservative supporters - will literally nut-hug their party regardless what the issue is. We should be able to admit when something is wrong, and in the event that we're completely unable to criticism our own party, then that's when it goes sideways.

This issue, for example. How is this in the public interest to amend a law that allows people access to information, in what seems to be the specific intent to cover what was probably a scandal out of public view at least until after the election?

[mr.bandaid]

I played politics in a minor way with a School Board trustee position. I understand the reasons behind secrecy in some of the events that happen with running a government. Having said that, I do not trust Harper's government to be anything but self serving.