Canadian Green MP warns against harsh anti-terror measures

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Canada’s Green Party has provided a welcome counterpoint to Prime Minister Harper’s call for tougher anti-terrorism laws in the wake of a soldier outside the Canadian Parliament.

On October 22, while she was still locked in her parliamentary office, Green leader Elizabeth May wrote on her blog:

“So, while it is too early to jump to conclusions, I intend to hold fast to the following: we must ensure that this appalling act of violence is not used to justify a disproportionate response. We must not resort to hyperbolic rhetoric. We need to determine if these actions are coordinated to any larger group or are the actions of one or two deranged individuals. If it is the latter we must develop tools and a systematic approach to dissuade our youth from being attracted to violent extremist groups of any kind. We need to protect our rights and liberties in a democracy.

“We do know that through history these kinds of events open the door to a loss of democracy. Naomi Klein details the elements of seizing the opportunity created by tragedy or tumult in Shock Doctrine. The title of her new and important book on climate, This Changes Everything, is correct – the threat of the climate crisis changes everything. The shootings on Parliament Hill do not change everything. It is up to all of us to ensure that, to the extent we encounter demands for change, we keep in the forefront of our minds that once we surrender any rights it is very difficult to restore them. Let’s demand answers, sensible policies and proportionate responses.”

Speaking in Parliament the following day, Elizabeth May conjectured:

“If I were a betting person, and it is good for my bank account that I am not, I would put money on these being the acts of isolated, disturbed and deeply troubled men who were drawn to something crazy. I do not believe that it was a vast network or that the country is more at risk today than it was last week.”

Earlier in the month she had opposed Canada giving military support to the US effort in Iraq, finishing her speech by saying that “bombings have never ended an Islamic or any religious extremist threat. Time after time it has made matters worse.”

There are only two Green MPs in the Canadian Parliament, but they voice the concerns of many Canadians.

25 COMMENTS

    • Sometimes the voice(s) of sanity and restraint are lost amidst the howls – of left wing loonies. The above article,posted by Keith ,whom I thought I would never agree with, is perfectly sensible, the good guys deserve to win effectively, but not effect revenge or retribution – agreed.Frank ..Sometimes the voice(s) of sanity and restraint are lost amidst the howls of fear and hysteria are lost , because some of the extreme left are so silly -that is why

      • At the risk of COUNTRY BOY calling me an idiot, I must confess that DAN’s above post makes no sense to me. In other words it’s nonsensical to an idiot like me or, in the words of Robert Frost,”forgive me my nonsense, as I forgive the nonsense of those who think they talk sense”.

        • Put simply, in my view, the silliness on the extreme left is a wee bit sillier than the silliness on the extreme right. Or perhaps there is just more of it, it has a louder voice and/or it gets the headlines more.

          Therefor, when the left of the left says something perfectly sensible, it does not get taken as seriously as it deserves.

          • “Put simply, in my view”…in my view you could of started and ended your post right there, Danny Boy!
            The vagueness of comparing the extreme silliness of right and left, in your view, is just, umm….silly.

            • This is what I mean ……Green Party MP Steffan Browning made the suggestion to consider homeopathic remedies to treat the deadly Ebola virus, while acknowledging “some people will see it as wacky”.

              YOGIBARE , you must agree surely on this one at least.

              • You must think we’re in deep trouble because your next King also believes in homeopathy, as do many thoughtful people I know. Personally I would require more scientific proof before accepting that water has memory, however, I also accept there are many things we still don’t understand. A French scientist thought he had proof until James Randi was unable to duplicate his experiments. This does not mean that proof of water’s memory will not be found one day, one has to keep an open mind. Remember Copernicus had this total novel idea that the earth actually revolved round the Sun, although he was careful enough to have this crazy notion published after his death to escape the Pope’s wrath. The Ptolemy model continued to be used for some time, as Galileo found to his cost.
                At less the Green MP you quoted realised his idea would be regarded as “wacky”. I can think of some Key ideas I consider “wacky” that we now have to live with- selling off SOE that were returning more money than it would have cost to borrow internationally, refunding investors in Canterbury Finance, tax cuts for the rich while kids live in poverty, funding Charter schools when we have a good public eduction system, giving Rio Tinto $30 million and power bill discounts, and the Warner Brothers fiasco, to name a few. I do accept that, in your view, these may have been wonderful ideas.
                My sense is that your a throughly decent person, Dan, I just wish you would do more critical thinking before posting some of your comments.

                • Thank you, and I am sure that you are a thoroughly decent person too. I just dont think mentioning homeopathy for a fatal disease ( even Russel N distanced himself from it), talking about water having memory and so on, is mainstream enough to unify the average voter.

  1. All they need to do is let the wannabe jihadis leave the country. Both of these guys had tried to buy tickets out. Most likely they would have been cannon fodder for ISIS and died safely somewhere on the other side of the world. Problem solved. Pointless human beings relegated to history.

    Gary Brechers idea.

    • @ Toasty . Are you toasted ? @ Toasty ? See @ Dan . He’s an idiot too . Two idiots . Hmmmm ? I wonder if two idiots make an intelligent comment when combined ?

      ( ….. ? )

      Nope .

        • I suspect the real reason the gNats are back to bug us is because of people like you. Desperate Dan wanting to feel the Toasty warm embrace of dear leader, the key to their being.

          • I will say it again (I think the moderator did not allow my last port, and fair enough, that is their right). Is this site for those who actually want to establish an effective opposition (which every democracy needs) or is it simply a forum for left wing loonies to rejoice in each other talking complete shit?

            • I’m guessing this is a rhetorical question as you have already decided that you’re much, much more clever than us “loonies”.

              • Not at all but consider this. A couple of elections ago, the maori party went into coalition with National.There was a cry from elements of the left about the perceived hypocrisy of it all. The maori party, in government, has gone on to achieve things it simply could not have achieved in opposition. Sometimes you can be to far one way for your own good and therefor never be in a position to make change.

          • Using the well known idiom CB could be said to have lots of balls in the air. For example his contempt for all banksters, which includes PM Key, and all those people who didn’t vote in the last election. Juggled on the other hand is his love of old style Kiwi living and farming.
            He is also not afraid to express his views in a forthright manner. My Mexican friends would say he has “tener cojones”, although I suppose one could argue that it’s easier to do this behind a pseudonym.

  2. “We need to protect our rights and liberties in a democracy.”

    Usually any proposal starting with “We need” is not going to end well. “We need” can imply a disproportionate or misdirected response – need can generates an emotive response rather than a considered one and looks to the immediate physical threat rather then the intangible causes. Need speaks to empire rather than to the rule of law.

    Rights and liberties are essential to democracy. Canada has a common law history and so they should be aware of and recognize natural rights, and yet speaking of protecting a right that you don’t even recognize is meaningless, because rights are most effective when they are asserted, not when they are unknowns.

    So the rights May was really talking about were the rights and liberties of the civil state according to Roman democracy, not to common law democracy. Even with May’s overt pacifism the problem with the civil response remains because of it’s secular nature, being unable to produce a rational strategy for responding to people who are driven by belief in the unbelievable.

    Whether or not there is deity who sometimes intervenes in the affairs of man is pretty much irrelevant to the fact that the religious act as if it were so, meaning that the religious context must be taken into account when formulating a response. It’s pretty hard to do that honestly when you are a non-believer.

    The point of all this is that the people like Harper and May are the absolute last people that you should be taking security advice from. Islamic State is a problem for the same reason – trying to combine secular thought with the inspired thought doesn’t go well.

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