Look, I know each week a conservative politician in Canada will open their mouth and say something stupid and be the Worst Politician In Canada (for that week). That’s how the news cycle works. But I don’t want people to lose perspective. Yes, Rob and Doug Ford are incompetent and ignorant. Yes, John Baird is a contentious blowhard who probably shouldn’t be in any diplomatic role, much less Minister of Foreign Affairs. Yes, Stephen Harper is a smug robot who has to work overtime to keep his contempt for Canadians’ general predilection for egalitarianism under the surface. Yes, Jason Kenney is an embarrassment who frequently says and does stupid things.
But not a one of these people is worse than Vic Toews, because as bad as they might be, they are all still occasionally capable of doing good things in public service. Not so Toews, whose track record speaks for itself: he has constantly and consistently advocated for bad public policy. When Vic Toews was made Minister of Justice, he attempted to pass a three-strikes law (which was obvious at that time to be extremely bad policy), advocated for lowering the age of criminal responsibility from twelve to ten, and added police representatives to judicial advisory boards (a move that practically the entire judiciary complained could cause severe imbalance in the judicial nomination process). He also very likely “forgot” to inquire closely into the Karlheinz Schrieber affidavit.
As President of the Treasury Board, his job was one of government oversight, which meant that Toews introduced the new Lobbying Act, which actually makes it easier for lobbyists to arrange unreported meetings between government officials and lobbyists’ clients. Toews also scrapped the Co-ordination of Access to Information Requests System, which was a useful and cheap tool for Canadian citizens to exercise oversight over public documents.
And now, of course, as Public Safety Minister, Toews is demanding that ISPs install equipment to track their users and that such information be available to the government without warrant. Why? Because of child pornographers, of course! The flood of child pornography that we all know threatens to drown the nation apparently demands it, according to Toews.
Again: Vic Toews is the worst politician in Canada. Any politician can say stupid or thoughtless things (Justin Trudeau does so regularly). It is quite another thing, however, to consistently advocate for and draft, and execute bad or actively harmful government policy. Vic Toews does so and he has done so for most of his government career, in service of an authoritarian ideology that is at odds with the right-wing small-government ethos for which he so frequently agitates (and which belies his political career, now in its seventeenth year). To use a line I have used before: if Vic Toews agrees with you about anything, consider strongly the possibility that you are wrong about everything.
UPDATE: And just as I write this, up pops Vikileaks on Twitter, making a point about personal privacy by publishing excerpts from affidavits in Toews’ divorce case.
Related Articles
14 users responded in this post
Toews is the very worst manifestation of the neo-con jackals currently running the government. The man’s a monster.
On comment boards about the snooping bill you get a lot of “if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear”.
There’s an official name, I think, for the logical fallacy of thinking “If X, then Y” proves that “If not X, then not Y”. Anyone remember what it’s called?
Because in this case, it’s probably true that if you DO have something to hide, you DO have something to fear. But that doesn’t prove that those with “nothing to hide” have “nothing to fear”.
[As President of the Treasury Board, his job was one of government oversight, which meant that Toews introduced the new Lobbying Act, which actually makes it easier for lobbyists to arrange unreported meetings between government officials and lobbyists’ clients. Toews also scrapped the Co-ordination of Access to Information Requests System, which was a useful and cheap tool for Canadian citizens to exercise oversight over public documents.]
So wanting to know all YOUR secrets isn’t hypocritical at ALL.
@drmedula it’s about who is accountable to whom. The idea of democracy is that government should be accountable to the people, apparently Toews feels that that should go the other way.
Gravy: That would be denying the antecedent (in propositional terms) where A implies B does not mean that not A implies not B.
In general, that is the ‘standard’ argument which is basically “trust us with all your secrets, we’ll only ever act on them if it’s criminal”.
And I can tell you this much. I’ve been stopped at the airport before and had my laptop checked as basically a random check for “child porn”. I had to sit there for just about an hour as they looked through just about every picture and movie on my laptop. Needless to say, I only ever bring my iPad with me when I get on a plane, because I’m never going to get put through that again.
Psych:
Perfectly consistent with authoritarianism. You get to vote once every four years. The rest of the time, you do as you are told.
To use a line I have used before: if Vic Toews agrees with you about anything, consider strongly the possibility that you are wrong about everything.
Well, we both breathe oxygen, so I guess I should rethink my entire life.
Seriously, wouldn’t it save time if you just posted a list of all the politicians you hate, followed by a YouTube clip of Darth Vader saying “If you are not with me then you are my enemy!”?
@Mike Smith
What, MGK hasn’t provided sufficient reason to dislike the guy? And since when is explaining why specific politicians are despicable some kind of weird, negative thing?
“It is quite another thing, however, to consistently advocate for and draft, and execute bad or actively harmful government policy.”
Plus the big red flag when a cabinet minister repeatedly drafts and sponsors legislation so clearly setting itself to be doomed by the first Charter challenge.
Toews’ omnibus crime bill is built on new mandatory minimums. Ontario Superior Court just struck down a mandatory minimum sentence as a Charter violation.
C-30 compels ISPs to give up user information without a warrant? Are they nuts? There’s no way that doesn’t get challenged in court at the first possible opportunity.
Why write laws so clearly invite protracted Constitutional legal battles? I find it difficult to believe that Toews has even read the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Authoritarians hate the Charter, and the Conservatives probably figure that they can get mileage out of “activist judges” interfering with their legislative agenda. “Criminals have more rights than Real Canadians! Please give generously.” They can depend on Sun Media to churn out headlines confirming the narrative.
@Walter Kovacs: Thanks for being up on your logical fallacies! And can you really blame security for searching your computer? After all, you are Rorschach. 🙂
@Mike Smith: In Vic Toews’s Canada, oxygen breathes YOU!
I think he’s been carefully trained to do so, to maximize the nostalgic appeal of the Trudeau name.
@Mike Smith: I want to thank you for at least not stooping to asserting “ad hominem” in your utterly substanceless dismissal of a post that amply describes what’s bad about Vic Toews. I hate false claims of the ad hominem abusive argument fallacy almost as much as I hate politicians for no reason whatsoever … other than what they say and do.
The Vikileaks twitter link is no good, so I am assuming the account was killed. As to ‘nothing to hide, nothing to fear’, I imagine anyone with that attitude would have no qualms with the government’s agents watching them have sex, or watching other activities most people tend not to be ashamed of, but wouldn’t want an agent of the government watching. Privacy is distinct from ‘hiding’.
@Hypo-Calvinist: The Vikileaks twitter did indeed go down, but there’s been a trend in recent days to tweet something along the lines of #tellviceverything…