Here, on Justin Trudeau's remarkable demand that Stephen Harper set up a federal shun registry to make life easier for Trudeau politically.
For further reading...
- Trudeau's Question Period interview is here, with the key passage starting at about the 3:15 mark. And some Libs went so far as to trumpet the demand for a public enemies list as a show of political talent.
- Carlos Tello reports on the RCMP's interest in stigmatizing the environmental movement - which of course matches the Cons' rhetoric. And Alex Boutilier reports that hundreds of public events have already found themselves under secret surveillance over the past few years. So there shouldn't be much doubt that Harper's choice would be to cast a similarly wide (and anti-democratic) net if he were to offer a list of pariahs.
- Finally, Thomas Walkom reminds us that if we're concerned about public health and safety, we should be spending far more time addressing ebola (or similarly threatening diseases), and far less obsessing over the war on adjectives.
After last week's excellent column on governments letting businesses escape accountability, this column bombs by portraying Trudeau's sarcasm about shun lists as support for same. He clearly wants the Harper government to "explain why we should stay away from engaging with Canadians." Seems like a case of truth being bent to generate a falsely premised column, Greg, which is far below your usual standard of quality commentating.
ReplyDeleteI don't see how one can treat the statement as sarcasm without bending over backwards to be generous to Trudeau. There's no distinction in tone from the rest of the interview, and it flows from boilerplate anti-"extremist" rhetoric as Trudeau's seeming policy response.
ReplyDeleteBut if Trudeau wants to repudiate it, that would certainly alleviate what's looking like reason for concern that he's happy to follow in Harper's footsteps on far too many fronts.