Senators Walloped with ‘Intense’ Amount of Anti-C-51 Email
Words like ‘horrified’ and ‘terrified’ came up frequently, they report.
Many senators say they’ve been stunned by the overwhelming flood of email they’ve received over C-51, the highly controversial Harper government security bill that passed a Senate vote earlier in the month.
The vast majority of the messages expressed firm opposition to the legislation; words like “horrified” and “terrified” came up frequently.
Senator Percy Downe of P.E.I. reports having received 6,000 email messages on the bill, 150 from his home province.
“Normally on an issue of importance I might get 20 or 30 at the most from PEI, so this was a lot more,” he said.
Senator Joan Fraser received approximately 3,100 messages about C-51, while former RCMP officer Senator Larry Campbell only reported receiving a few hundred.
Senator Mobina Jaffer, an international activist for human and women’s rights, has received a whopping 10,000 email messages since May and they continue to trickle in, even though the bill is out of the Senate now.
“But not one letter I got was in favour of C-51 though, and that’s not normal,” she said.
Senator Grant Mitchell, deputy chair of the Senate committee on National Defence and Security, was the lead critic for the Liberal Senate caucus. He also was involved in the Senate’s pre-study of the bill at committee.
He compares his C-51 feedback to the response he got to the Kyoto bill and C-279, NDP MP Randall Garrison’s transgender bill of rights, which Mitchell is co-sponsoring through the Senate.
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