Publius provides the best analysis of the election I’ve seen.
If They Can’t Get Your Guns (Bumped)
They’ll just take the ammo.
The changes require — for the first time in Canada — gun owners to lock away all ammunition. At present, guns must be locked, but not ammunition. The proposed rules will require all gun owners to install a locking box or safe in their homes.
Toronto lawyer Ed Burlew, one of Canada’s leading experts in firearms law, described the proposed regulatory changes as “monstrous.” He said police already routinely charge lawful firearms owners with unsafe storage — a criminal charge — and that with the changes, more otherwise lawful citizens will be criminalized.
“It is not unintended consequences,” Burlew said. “This is a move to increase the ability of police to prosecute firearms owners for regulatory infractions.”
The draft regulations, made public recently, are currently in a 75-day review period. The public has been invited to tell Natural Resources Canada if they have concerns — before the end of June — and the final regulations will come into force in the late summer or early fall.
You might want to write your MP. (h/t The Rat)
Update: Brian Lilley comments.
Here Goes Mutton
Canadian Constitution Foundation;
The [Canadian Food Inspection Agency] notified Jones recently that they intend to destroy 41 of her apparently healthy sheep—including 20 pregnant ewes—on Monday, April 2, 2012.
The order was made under the federal government’s “scrapie eradication program.” Scrapie is an illness which affects the productivity and longevity of sheep but is not transmissible to humans.
None of the condemned animals have tested positive for scrapie in live biopsies. Furthermore, none of the animals show any clinical symptoms of the disease. Nevertheless, the CFIA has ordered the sheep destroyed based merely on the “suspicion” of being contaminated. The CFIA has declined all alternative risk-control measures proposed by Ms. Jones and her lawyer, Karen Selick of the Canadian Constitution Foundation.
Faced with the possibility of 2 years’ imprisonment and fines of up to $250,000 if she obstructs the CFIA’s proposed slaughter, Ms. Jones may have no realistic choice but to surrender the animals.
Update! They’re on the lamb.
If You’re So Much Smarter Than Your Grandparents
The Decline And Fall Of The American Empire
O, Sweet Saint Of San Andreas
Look at the people in the video below. Look at their self-satisfied little faces. These are the authors of the toxic sugar article. They are idiots. I do not say that to be insulting, but as a statement of fact. The woman on the right, in particular, should not be trusted with a pair of scissors. She calls herself a “medical sociologist” and works at UCSF. This should disqualify her from going anywhere near a scientific journal. She thinks that sugar is a poison because it is fermented to make alcohol. If you read the Daily Mail, alcohol is made by “distilling sugar”. This is what we’re up against: cretinous arguments made still more ludicrous by a woefully uneducated media.
Read the whole thing. Then send it to 3 random reporters.
“You can’t have a law for everything.”
It’s good to live in a province where the politicians still drive.
The Nannystate and Your Dog
If you’re walking your dog in Vancouver and want to quickly buy some groceries or get a coffee, be aware that you’re breaking the law if you tie up Fido to a pole and leave him unattended.
In the interest of curiosity, does this same bylaw exist in your community too?
Toronto Hydro: One Very Confused Government Agency
Toronto Hydro appears to be . . . well, confused.
America’s Newest Terrorist Suspect
An Online Protest Against Oppression
Wikipedia and many other websites have deliberately “gone dark” today:
Here’s why.
We Need A Famine
After all, have you considered how lucky we are that the government lets us drive cars at all?
The World Is Being Run By Crazy People
A Toronto elementary school has banned most balls from its playground, citing the need to protect staff and students after a parent got hit in the head with a soccer ball.
Related: Free range kids.
h/t Dan T.
Some aspects of curious Canadian farming regulations…
…and the Conservative government’s response to one of them (but they won’t dare touch the other). Publius gets his hands dirty:
…
Back in my undergraduates days I came across an article on the CWB. It was oddly fascinating. I looked upon it as some bizarre aberration, a historical quirk as not yet remedied. In modern day Canada a farmer could go to jail for selling wheat. To my mind it was absurd enough to go to jail for selling marijuana, but wheat? I had images of men in John Deere caps, half-hidden by the shadows of Regina’s back alleys, furtively glancing and quickly whispering: Durum?
From there I was brought into contact with the upside down world of supply management. Having been raised on the notion that food should be cheap, so that the poor would not go wanting, I found myself confronted with a government conspiracy to aide and abet the looting of the ordinary consumer. Here were actual Robber Barons, not the wrongly maligned the industrial titans of Gilded Age America. If there was one single event that drove home to me the inherent madness of statism, supply management was it…
Fly “Les Cieux Amicaux”
Americans! Watch out for the language police:
Flying the bilingual skies
The Tories [Conservatives] moved to extend the grasp of the official languages commissioner on Monday when they introduced an amendment to the Air Canada Public Participation Act that would make not only Air Canada subject to official bilingualism (it always has been), but also all of its “contracted carrier partners.” Now, if you fly United Airlines – or any other carrier that has a contract to provide regional or international flights on behalf of Air Canada – you can demand the same level of bilingual service found on the main airline…
Speaking of “real relevance”….
I present, Alberta Liberal Senator, Grant Mitchell. Whom, I add, is due to retire in 2026.
I’ve heard it said before, I didn’t believe it, but maybe a modern Liberal’s history really doesn’t start until 1968.
You Poor Oppressed Americans…
…ground down by your false consciousness (many up here think similarly about Canadian society)–from the estimable George Will:
…
Many members of the liberal intelligentsia, that herd of independent minds, agree that other Americans comprise a malleable, hence vulnerable, herd whose “false consciousness” is imposed by corporate America. Therefore the herd needs kindly, paternal supervision by a cohort of protective herders. This means subordination of the bovine many to a regulatory government staffed by people drawn from the clever minority not manipulated into false consciousness.
Because such tutelary government must presume the public’s incompetence, it owes minimal deference to people’s preferences. These preferences are not really “theirs,” because the preferences derive from false, meaning imposed, consciousness. This convenient theory licenses the enlightened vanguard, the political class, to exercise maximum discretion in wielding the powers of the regulatory state…
Conservative thinking
David Brooks in the NY Times:
The Planning Fallacy
Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post:
A Ponzi scheme that should be fixed
Both, curiously, have Canadian connections.
We Need A Famine
HP Sauce revolt: Online fury over salt cut that ‘ruins the taste’