{"id":6321,"date":"2015-03-08T08:59:36","date_gmt":"2015-03-08T13:59:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=6321"},"modified":"2015-03-08T08:59:36","modified_gmt":"2015-03-08T13:59:36","slug":"when-growth-trumps-freedom-the-chill-in-canada-comes-from-our-government-not-the-weather","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=6321","title":{"rendered":"When Growth Trumps Freedom: the Chill in Canada Comes from our Government, not the Weather"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><a href=\"http:\/\/steadystate.org\/when-growth-trumps-freedom-the-chill-in-canada-comes-from-our-government-not-the-weather\/\" target=\"_blank\">When Growth Trumps Freedom: the Chill in Canada Comes from our Government, not the Weather<\/a><\/h3>\n<p>With the introduction of Canada\u2019s so-called \u201csecret police\u201d bill, there is increasing concern the rights of the oil patch will trump the rights of ordinary citizens in a new and chilling way\u2013through the kinds of fear tactics you\u2019d sooner expect in Soviet Russia than a western liberal democracy.<\/p>\n<p>Sound like exaggeration? Please prove me wrong.<\/p>\n<p>Bill C-51 would give Canadian national security and intelligence forces\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.theglobeandmail.com\/news\/politics\/anti-petroleum-movement-a-growing-security-threat-to-canada-rcmp-say\/article23019252\/\">the right to monitor ordinary citizens<\/a>, and even detain them for up to\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/thewalrus.ca\/bill-c-51-the-good-the-bad-and-the-truly-ugly\/\">seven days at a time<\/a>\u00a0if they are perceived to \u201cinterfere with the economic or financial stability of Canada or with the country\u2019s critical infrastructure.\u201d This includes what the government has branded the \u201canti-petroleum\u201d movement, whose participants have been\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.theglobeandmail.com\/news\/politics\/anti-petroleum-movement-a-growing-security-threat-to-canada-rcmp-say\/article23019252\/\">labelled \u2018extremists\u2019<\/a>\u00a0by the Prime Minister and Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). The legislation would subject environmental activists to increased surveillance and intimidation under the guise of preventing terrorism. I wonder how, exactly, a government with strong ties to the oil patch will define \u2018economic or financial stability.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>The truly chilling development as a result of Bill C-51 is that a citizen doesn\u2019t have to actually organize a demonstration to trigger the use of new powers. Under this legislation, the agency simply has to\u00a0<em>suspect<\/em>that you\u00a0<em>might<\/em>\u00a0do something that interferes with \u2018critical infrastructure\u2019 in order to monitor you or pay you a visit.<\/p>\n<p>By stifling free speech and democratic engagement, this effort demonstrates just how far some will go in order to cling to an aging growth-at-all-costs narrative\u2013absurdly pitting human beings against one another and against the planet itself. At worst, this is carbon-fuelled neoliberal fanaticism disguised as pragmatic politics, given that the oil sands contribute\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.vancouverobserver.com\/blogs\/climatesnapshot\/tar-secret-2-what-percentage-canadas-gdp-comes-tar-sands\">about 2%<\/a>\u00a0to Canada\u2019s GDP.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When Growth Trumps Freedom: the Chill in Canada Comes from our Government, not the Weather With the introduction of Canada\u2019s so-called \u201csecret police\u201d bill, there is increasing concern the rights of the oil patch will trump the rights of ordinary citizens in a new and chilling way\u2013through the kinds of fear tactics you\u2019d sooner expect [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6],"tags":[4013,3083,103,4012,391,632,3542,3543,746,765,792,793],"class_list":["post-6321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-liberty","tag-activists","tag-bill-c-51","tag-canada","tag-environmentalism","tag-growth","tag-police","tag-rcmp","tag-royal-canadian-mounted-police","tag-spying","tag-surveillance","tag-terror","tag-terrorism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6321"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6321\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6322,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6321\/revisions\/6322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}