Roger Varley has been in the news business almost 40 years with The Canadian Press/Broadcast News, Uxbnridge Times-Journal, Richmond Hill Liberal and Uxbridge Cosmos. Co-winner with two others of CCNA national feature writing award. In Scout movement over 30 years, almost 25 as a leader. Took Uxbridge youths to World Jamboree in Holland. Involved in community theatre for 20 years as actor, director, playwright, stage manager etc. Born in England, came to Canada at 16, lived most of life north and east of Toronto with a five-year period in B.C.
Orwell wasn't crazy: he just had the wrong date
This is going to be my last take on the subject of loss of rights and freedoms and then I'll leave it alone. But I hope you will at least hear me out and read this column to the end before deciding that I'm a conspiracy nut or some other kind of nut.
What follows is a rather snaky path, but I hope you'll follow me.
The recent Rahim Jaffer affair must have caused some embarrassment to Stephen Harper's Conservative Party. That's because a key plank in the party's platform - so important to the Conservatives that it's always a major part of their election campaigns - is about getting tough on lawbreakers: and by tougher they mean making it easier to put people into jail and for longer periods of time.
Most especially, the Conservatives want to get tough on youth crime. They call for measures to make it easier to detain youths charged with violent crimes and to give them sentences up to 14 years. Immediately, one's mind triggers images of gangs of toughs swarming and beating up defenceless victims and, of course, those things do happen and a reasonable person would agree that maybe such youths should be detained. But occasionally, as happened in Calgary recently, youths are charged because they've been involved in a schoolyard fight or a scrap on the street.
Should a student be charged with assault after a schoolyard fight and should he or she be detained? Should a youth who is convicted of assault after a scrap on the street face a sentence of up to 14 years? If the Conservatives get their way, having scared us all with images of roving gangs of toughs, they will have the power to impose such sentences. And that, strange as it seems, can lead to other, more Draconian, measures. Let's follow the bouncing ball over to the United Kingdom, where they are years ahead of us in this regard.
Welcome to Orwell's 1984: The government there managed to convince the public it needed added powers to combat youth crime and “anti-social behaviour” and, years ago, introduced anti-social behaviour orders. Any youth handed one of these orders – for spray-painting graffiti, consuming alcohol under age, intimidating people etc - is subject to a specific set of conditions. Break them and he could end up in jail for as long as five years. That'll keep the rowdies in their place, right? But now, these orders are being used to impose controls on anyone's so-called anti-social behaviour. Not only that, but orders can be issued based on hearsay evidence from neighbours who don't even have to appear before the court hearing the case. And the terms and conditions imposed under these orders can be absolutely mind-boggling.
Just to whet your appetite, one woman was given an anti-social behaviour order because neighbours complained she made too much noise while engaged in sex with her husband. In January, she was taken to court for breaking the order, having been caught when the local council put recording equipment in the house next door. She was given eight weeks in prison, suspended for 12 months. The judge told her: “if you commit further offences of this nature, that sentence will be passed and you will made to serve it." Two months in jail for noisily engaging in a private act with her husband in her own bedroom!
A 17-year-old boy accused of harassing neighbours was ordered to enter and leave his home only by the back door until he is 21. If he breaks the order, he faces a prison sentence. A senior citizen was given an anti-social behaviour order for making too much noise when he put his garbage in the garbage bin in his yard.
Everyone's a terrorist: Then the public accepted the terms of the Terrorism Act – indeed, almost demanded them – following the London bombings. Because they were aimed at “terrorists”, why would the average person be concerned? Except those measures are now expanded and are being used against the general public. The public are buying into the line that if you aren't doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about. But who would think they were doing something wrong just by taking photographs on the street?
If anyone takes a photograph of a policeman in England, the police now have the power to arbitrarily stop them, demand their ID and search them and any bags or packages they may be carrying. Indeed, they can stop anyone who has been taking photographs of anything, anywhere, and demand an explanation. I saw a video of a small boy using his cell phone to take pictures of a crashed van being hauled away by a police tow truck. A policeman went up to him and ordered him to put the camera away.
And if you stand up for what you believe are your rights and give the policeman an argument, the policeman can decide you are exhibiting anti-social behaviour and get you that way.
Innocent until proven guilty?: The next step in the U.K.'s anti-social behaviour program is now coming into effect. Remember how the Conservatives want to get tougher on youth crime? As I saw in a video shot by a cameraman who accompanied police officers in their squad car while they explained the new program to him, the British police now can drive into residential areas, spot teenagers on the street, stop them and photograph them because they might possibly exhibit anti-social behaviour in the future. And the photographs go on file.
Not bad enough for you? Then you'll love this: it's straight out of Orwell. In a BBC interview, - (you can find the video on the Internet) - former prime minister Tony Blair said it is possible to spot families whose circumstances made it likely that their children would grow up to be "a menace to society". He called for early intervention, including action before such children are born. He singled out unmarried teenage mothers, or mothers-to-be, and those with drug and alcohol addictions as the sort of people who could be forced to accept "help" as part of the solution to their problems.
Not only that, but government can – (and has done so) – remove babies from their mothers immediately after birth and put them up for adoption because there is a “possibility” the mother might cause harm to the child in the future.
This anti-social behaviour mantra can be and is applied to people attending protest rallies. Combined with the terms of the Terrorism Act, it's a great way for the police to clamp down on public protest. And they do, violently and often without provocation. That means when people finally realize they no longer have any rights, by law they can't protest.
The U.K. got to this point because the government managed to convince the people tough measures were needed to fight terrorists and to keep people safe from violent criminals. By convincing the people as they did, the U.K. now has one closed circuit television camera for every 14 people. It is estimated the average person in London can expect to be captured by up to 300 cameras in any given day.
Ready for the truly ridiculous? They now have CCTVs equipped with sound so that unseen monitors can tell you to pick up the litter you just threw on the ground and put it in a trash can.
Police also have the power to check anyone's e-mails. The government has quietly adopted a new plan to allow police across Britain routinely to hack into people’s personal computers without a warrant. The move allows police or MI5 officers to examine covertly the hard drive of someone’s PC at his home, office or hotel room. Material gathered in this way includes the content of all e-mails, web-browsing habits and instant messaging.
Folks, you can Google all of this. That's how I found out. And not just from possibly suspect web pages spouting left-wing or anarchist or conspiracy theory rhetoric, either. You can cross-reference it in so-called mainstream media and read and see government officials and ministers espousing all of this and defending it. If you think it's all just too far-fetched to believe, imagine how I feel. This is my homeland I'm talking about.
It's getting closer: Although not as far along the path, the U.S. is heading in that direction. Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman recently introduced a bill that would allow the military to hold anyone deemed a threat to the U.S. - including U.S. citizens – and interrogate them for information. And, just as in Britain, there are moves afoot to require everyone to carry a national ID card.
The U.S. Constitution, Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights combined guarantee that country's citizens the right to bear arms – (and whether you agree with that or not, a guarantee is a guarantee) – and forbids the use of the armed forces against the citizenry on home soil. Yet during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, U.S. military forces went house to house in New Orleans, not to help residents in trouble but to search for and seize guns. And they did it at gunpoint.
So what has all this got to do with Canada? Well, both the U.K. and the U.S. started by convincing the public it was time to get tough on crime and make it easier to put people in jail. And then, thanks to 9-11, they were able to use the terrorist threat to take it even further. Even in Canada, the government can arrest people and hold them for years without charging them or taking them to court or telling anyone why they are being held. All they need to say is they are suspected terrorists. And we buy into that because, hey, they all have Middle Eastern sounding names anyway, so no need for you and I to worry, right? Except the key word there is “suspected”. If they can suspect that man, they can suspect me. Or you. And if they do, they don't have to explain themselves to anyone.
All this is done, of course, in the name of national security and public safety. For the public good. But I'll tell you this: I feel less of a threat from terrorists and/or criminals than I do from my government.
These threats to our rights aren't just coming from the federal government, either. Talk about anti-social behaviour? Just a few weeks ago a Toronto store owner was fined $720 – (that's not a typo: $720) - because his cleaning lady mistakenly put out a bag of garbage at the wrong time and in the wrong container. Don't forget, also, that Uxbridge council says you can't put a protest sign on your lawn because it wouldn't be good for the neighbourhood. And now they're considering telling you how many visitors you can have in your home on any given day.
Okay, so now you can all roll your eyes, shake your heads and tell yourselves I have finally gone around the bend, that I'm paranoid. I don't mind. I won't be around when the full effect of all of this comes to pass, as I firmly believe it will.
It will, that is, unless some of you, maybe even just a couple of you, start talking about this with your friends and neighbours. Start taking the time to look at what's happening in the U.K. - where Magna Carta was signed 800 years ago – and then tell me it can't happen here.
But I don't really expect any of you to do that because, after all, life's pretty good right now and none of this is really having much effect on your present day-to-day affairs, is it? Sadly, someone close to me told me he wouldn't mind being watched by CCTVs all day if it meant there was no litter on the street!
It seems to me, that attitude is the best thing the Conservatives have going for them.
Tell me, am I wrong?
