Bill C-51: The Cons Turn the Committee Hearings Into a Star Chamber

Well as could have been predicted, the committee hearings into Stephen Harper's totalitarian Bill C-51 are turning into a sinister spectacle.

With a little bit of Orwell, and a little bit of Kafka.

The Kafka part being that although the bill would give the security forces massive powers to invade our privacy, on a scale never seen before. 

The Cons don't think the committee needs to hear from Canada's Privacy Commissioner, 

The Commons public safety committee isn't planning to give the federal privacy watchdog the opportunity to share his concerns publicly with MPs over sweeping new information-sharing powers that would be given to national security agencies under the government's proposed anti-terror bill.

No doubt because the Harperite cult didn't like what he had to say about their bill last week: 

"While the potential to know virtually everything about everyone may well identify some new threats, the loss of privacy is clearly excessive," he writes. "All Canadians would be caught in this web."

And the Orwellian part is how the PMO fanatics are orchestrating the hearings and turning them into some kind of ghastly star chamber.

 Where their MPs and ministers don't even bother to seriously engage with the experts, who are tearing their bill apart clause by clause, word by word.

They just spout crazy stuff...



Or repeat the same grotesque party line over and over again.

Which as the CBC's Catherine Cullen reports, amounts to that hoary George Bush line from the early days of the Great War on Terror.

Either you're with us or you're with the terrorists.



And what all of the above makes only too clear, is why we all need to speak out as loudly as we can, and demand that the bill be radically changed or scrapped.

Starting with this Day of Action tomorrow.



Because although we can't stop the bill from passing, the more noise we make, the more its forced passage can be used against the Harper Cons in the next election campaign.

And the thought of letting those Cons get away with that totalitarian travesty. 

People like the monstrous Roxanne James...



Must surely be unthinkable.

For can you imagine what those brutish fanatics might do with those new powers once the bill becomes law? 

Or what their depraved master might do with them?



So we do need to make our voices heard. 

Let it be said one day, in better times, that he passed a bill to try to intimidate and muzzle them.

But they were not afraid, and they would not remain silent.

So they turned his bill against him.

And used it to destroy him...

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