Blackout in Canada

Technicalities! Technicalities! Everyone hates technicalities. The supposed joy of pedants and bureaucrats and bane of all right-thinking freedom-loving folk everywhere. Red tape strangles commerce and justice alike. We all know that!!!

Except...technicalities exist for a reason. Oh how I hate writing that! But technicalities are about more than dotting i's and crossing t's and filling out form after form after form...Yes, technicalities protect justice and freedom and democracy.

What keeps the police in check? Technicalities. What enforces our rights? Technicalities. What ensures the people have a voice in government? Technicalities.

But technicalities make the perfect arch-demon. Because those who would abuse the system know we all loathe it. They can introduce injustice and tyranny bit-by-bit simply by streamlining and reforming away all those pesky technicalities that give formless power its democratic form.

And the Stephen Harper government is the dungeon master of dismising technicalities while introducing counter-revolution. They've done it before. They came as close as possible to committing a coup d'etat without actually eliminating democracy when they ignored the technicalities around proroguing parliament and ended a session and called an election all to avoid a vote of non-confidence on their brutal, dishonest and disastrous budget in November of 2008. And, let's not forget, to also avoid a Liberal-NDP coalition government.

Right now, they're about to do it again. But this time with a majority government. The Harper government is introducing massive reforms of Canada's environmental laws in its spring budget. In a budget! Oh the technicalities!!! So many will not care. So many will not do a thing to save our precious techicalities.

So for good measure. Here is the reason why you should care. Rather than debating huge changes to Canada's environmental laws and various regulations, the Harper government will simply sneak a whole new regime through the budget backdoor. Because we all hate technicalities like parliamentary debate, full and open reviews, public participation and, well, democracy. It's all so messy and inefficient and gets in the way of letting multinational corporations make a profit while they destroy the planet and the economy.

If you want more information and/or want to do something, please visit: http://www.blackoutspeakout.ca/. Help stop Harper's creepy creeping tyranny...