Under it’s current leadership it is almost a compliment. No one even knows if this is legal, but I guess it sure makes a good sound bite.

There is very little “liberal” about this Liberal administration. Well, as President Harry Truman said, “If you can’t stand the heat get out of the kitchen.” We’re going to stay in the kitchen. We’re going to pursue social justice. And we are going to commit the same “crimes” of criticizing this government when it curtails basic privacy rights and compromises due process of law with McCarthyite witch-hunts.

It is time for Canadians to wake up to the near Stalinist statocratic government we have that can abridge the most basic freedom of a citizen in a free society. That of political affiliation and assembly. That is what this government has tried to do. It will fail. It will fail just as other governments have failed that have crossed the line and incurred the people’s wrath. Nixon had his “enemies list”. We now have a Canadian Nixon.

It is timely that George Clooney’s movie on the battles between famed reporter Edward R. Murrow and Sen. Joseph McCarthy entitled “Good Night and Good Luck” is opening on movie screens across the country this week. Timely because it reminds all citizens of what can happen when the instruments of state are used to destroy a person’s character through innuendo, rumour and hearsay. Murrow won his battle with McCarthy. But it raises the troubling questions of what protections can be afforded ordinary citizens from the encroachments on their rights who do not have access to any voice. At the heart of what we now call McCarthyism was nothing more than political brinkmanship played before a national television audience to settle political scores and raise McCarthy’s image. He was finally brought down by a simple sentence from Boston attorney Joseph N. Welch who had had enough. He asked of McCarthy, “Senator, have you no shame. Have you no decency left?”

Canadians need to ask the same question of this government because there are even greater dangers to civil liberties lurking around the corner. At an Institute conference a Member of Parliament once characterized Canada as a “controlled democracy”.  Today, Canada may well be on the road to becoming a terrorizing democracy institutionalizing a culture of victimization and fear. Over the past few weeks the federal government has announced that it will proceed with several initiatives that to this writer put the lie to the image of a just and transparent society we  like to peddle to the world.

Next month the Martin government will bring forward legislation allowing for the monitoring of e-mail and internet communications. The bill would force providers of internet and telephone services to duplicate records of their clients’ activities and require, on simple request, that the information be passed on to police authorities. The proposal demands that network capacity be constructed to allow for tapping of some 8,000 individuals at any one time. Federal Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart has told Justice Minister Irwin Cotler that the law would allow security authorities to access more information about Canadians’ personal lives than ever before. Yet Ottawa remains strangely silent on consideration of any judicial safeguards and oversight even in light of the fact that current evidentiary requirements for standard wiretaps have already become flimsy and shallow.

The federal Liberals have also gone on record as being committed to proceeding with Bill C-17, the Marijuana Decriminalization legislation, and with Bill C-53, the Proceeds of Crime act. Though legalization, not just decriminalization, of marijuana is long overdue, the problem of C-17 is that it also allows for random stopping of motorists to check for drugs without any necessity of probable cause as exists in the United States. C-53, which seeks to allow the government to seize any assets obtained through illegal means, also has within it the reversal of burden of proof.