At protests around the country, often left wing protests we hear form screaming mobs, “THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE!”
That’s not actually true, those protests are normally mobs, not an expression of democracy.
As boring as it may be, this is what democracy looks like.
We elect politicians at the local level, at the provincial and federal level to run the affairs of state and that includes passing laws.
But too often, much of the detail is left to bureaucrats and filled in through regulation rather than legislation.
At other times our actual legislators pass laws that violate the fundamental freedoms of all citizens and narry a peep is heard.
We’ve talked this week about how wrong it is to allow the RCMP to be the body that decides which firearms are allowed and which ones are banned while also enforcing the law. We cannot have the people that make the laws, and can change them without consultation, also be the ones who enforce them.
We’ve spoken on this show about crazy zoning bylaws that infringe on the rights of landowners, from regulations on cutting down trees on your own property to how many vehicles or what kind of legal structures you can have your land.
Then there are those bodies set up to defend human rights while actually trampling them, the various human rights commissions and tribunals across Canada.
As has been pointed out several times it is free to lodge a complaint against someone at these commissions and tribunals those doing the complaining will bear no cost for lawyers or court time while those defending themselves receive no assistance and cannot have damages awarded if they beat back the prosecution.
Regular rules of evidence and normal court proceedings are not followed but rest assured these bodies have enormous power. Just ask Maxcine Telfer, she is the Mississauga woman who nearly lost her house after the Ontario Human Rights Commission ordered her to pay $36,000 in damages to a woman who worked for her for six weeks and was then let go.
After the decision lawyers called for sheriffs to seize Telfer’s home and sell it as a way to collect the money.
Should a bureaucratic driven body that is not a real court have the ability to award such large damages? $36,000 is more than many Canadians make in a year and more than most of us have lying around at our disposal.
The human rights commission and tribunals were all proposed and passed by people who just wanted to help and do the right thing but as we all know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
In 2008, Ontario passed a new law giving new powers to the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
We all like animals right? Who is against cuddly little animals?
Well consider section 11.4 of the act.
“An inspector or an agent of the Society may, without a warrant, enter and inspect any building or place used for animal exhibit, entertainment, boarding, hire or sale, either alone or accompanied by one or more veterinarians or other persons as he or she considers advisable.”
A representative of the OSPCA can enter your farm or boarding kennel without a warrant?
Police can have all the evidence in the world that a building is being used as a crack house and they cannot enter without a warrant and yet a private charity, which is what the OSPCA is, can enter without warrant and have charges laid against you?
At this point I no longer care about fuzzy little animals, this is wrong.
When subjects like this come up people are afraid to speak out. Who wants to be against kittens, or human rights?
But these issues need to be discussed, reviewed and debated and they need and deserve pushback because as the examples I’ve given you have shown they lead to power grabs by government.
And that’s the Byline.
Thank you for shining the spot light on this travesty and for keeping the pressure on the war on our freedom. You were spot on with every example which were just a few of the many.
Fantastic issue Brian, you just keep tugging on the tail of the leviathan.
So true – we can change governments but we can’t change the bureaucracy. The bigger the bureaucracy the more of government we have lost control over. I agree the size of federal/provincial/municipal administration has grown so large that we are now dealing with redundant rogue bureaucrats/bureaucracies in competition with each other, building little fiefdoms and insulating themselves from government/voter oversight or down-sizing. They must produce/manufacture startling “stunts” to justify their existence, so they are constantly in a state of , “mission creep” – Shaking down some little guy over some petty infraction in a very spectacular public display of excessive force/power .
The signs are everywhere. Every time you pick up a paper or watch the news or surf the net, there is another daily example of some civil abomination created by some heavy-handed rogue bureaucrat throwing stones at us from the safety of the bureaucratic castle they have built. The government shrugs and says there is nothing they can do because they are as afraid of bureaucratic vindictiveness as we are. The recent arbitrary firearms reclassification by some petty bureaucrat in the firearms control regime is a prime example – and look at the government response to being undercut/embarrassed by their own bureaucrats – they were like gutless dweebs fawning over this uncivil rogue bureaucratic behaviour.
The bureaucratically repressed citizenry need a battering ram to knock these bureaucratic castles down. That battering ram is parliamentary oversight committees with more power than the bureaucracies. Think we’d ever see something like that in a nation in the strangle hold of public sector unionists?
In one of his examples about the “tyranny” — my word, not his — of bureaucrats, John Robson decries the number of bureaucrats it takes to write the federal budget. So what’s his solution? He doesn’t provide one, does he? Does he want individual citizens to tweet portions of the budget to the Finance Minister? A flash mob, maybe, to suggest which tax credits to cut?
The reality is that a developed society will of necessity have more rules and regulations in place to deal with the foibles of human nature. If there were no traffic rules, accident and mortality rates would probably rise. If there were no regulations for food and water safety, disease would probably be rampant. If there were no tax laws, the incidence of tax fraud would probably be astronomical. Consequently, the politicians are the “ideators” and the bureaucrats are the “formulators.”
While I agree that at times bureaucracies and bureaucrats run amuck, improvising unnecessary regulations in order to justify their own existence, I don’t think that dismissing their necessity out of hand is a convincing argument.
While I understand there are those who share Gabby in QC’s opinion, I completely disagree, for it is based on the assumption that without laws, rules and regulations imposed by government, human nature is so bad that it would be a disaster. I have more confidence in people than to assume they will always do the wrong thing without police/government control. I do not object to a minimum of laws or community standards which enable people to live safely and more or less in harmony. However we have moved far, far beyond that with a bloated government at every level (local, provincial and federal) with even more bloated bureaucracies. The result is a continual erosion of our freedoms: free speech, freedom of association, freedom to do business and private property rights. We have everything from helmet laws to trying to dictate what we eat and being prohibited from cutting down a dangerous tree on one’s private property. I totally reject collectivism or statism if you prefer.
Gabby says:”The reality is that a developed society will of necessity have more rules and regulations in place to deal with the foibles of human nature”
You have a fundamental misconception of the function/purpose of government in a free and civil society. it is not the governmen’t job to legislate against the minutial of “human foibles” it is the government’s roll to protect the individual’s basic rights to freedom, property and personal security – people who offend against these rights commit crimes Gabby, not human foibles. Human foibles are best left to society and individuals to iron out between ourselves. Human foibles are not crimes.
Alain @ January 14, 2012 at 6:30 pm, may I call your attention to the very interesting discussion on what constitutes Canadian conservatism? You yourself participated in that discussion, held here:
http://blogs.canoe.ca/lilleyspad/general/what-is-canadian-conservatism/
One commenter in that discussion expressed in a nutshell what I believe. Darin Gregory said: “I absolutely believe in freedom from overbearing government, oppression et cetera, but I also believe that there needs to be a balance between our rights and freedoms as individuals and the necessity to maintain order and civility within our society.”
Mr. Gregory’s statement harkens back to Russell Kirk’s 6th principle of conservatism: “… conservatives are chastened by their principle of imperfectability”.
Those principles of conservatism are very close to my own.
You say that people who share my opinion base themselves on “… the assumption that without laws, rules and regulations imposed by government, human nature is so bad that it would be a disaster.” Rather than the stark contrast you posit, between repressive order and absolute freedom, I think there needs to be a balance between individual rights and the common good, which entails some rules and regulations, even seemingly excessively bureaucratic ones. I think it’s unrealistic to think that removing those would result in an ideal society where everyone behaves according to acceptable norms.
Thank you Bill Elder for expressing better than I did my opposition to Gabby’s views. By the way Gabby I am not trying to pick on you, since I know others share your views, but I am suggesting that you give it some more thought. Cheers.
Mr. Elder, perhaps the word I used — foibles — is not strong enough, but it’s not my style to use overstatement when trying to get a point across. I leave that to the polemicists, be they professionals or amateurs.
If poorly expressed, my point remains valid, IMO. Human nature is imperfect; that’s why any society that aspires to be “civil” needs laws, rules, and regulations to establish and maintain order so that “freedom, property and personal security” can be enjoyed by its citizens. IMO, “freedom, [the enjoyment of] property and personal security” do not happen spontaneously; they are the desired result of laws, rules & regulations. You seem to believe those exist a priori.
I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree. That applies to you also, Alain. I don’t equate your expressing a different POV as “picking on” me. No bureaucrat has put the kibosh on expressing one’s opinion, to my knowledge.