I (naively) hoped that this wouldn't re-surface but now that it has, I'm not surprised. Harper and Co. are steadfast in toadying up to Washington and Co. and seem to not only disregard the numerous times similar legislation has been shot down, but the fact that almost this exact same legislation has been shot down everywhere but the US.
This in particular is politics at it's worst and anyone that actually uses this line should be ashamed of themselves:
"The bill will likely be promoted as protecting public health, however, there is a danger that the provisions could be used to stop the entry of legitimate generic medicines."
I also naively thought that by "killing" C-30, the online surveillance bill, the Canadian government was respecting the wishes of Canadians who vomited all over it. C-55, introduced on the exact same day, however, retains the ability to bypass warrants, at police discretion. Couple that with the ratification of ACTA (which the EU flat out said NO to), and escalating language over copyright, and C-30 is still on the Canadian government's agenda. All they did was boil it down to the crux: warrants come second.
All my Canadian friends are frustrated with Harper. I wonder how did he get elected in the first place? :) From aside, it feels like Canada is being infested with neoliberal policies in disguise under the very leadership of the Prime Minster.
The Conservative's got power because the Liberal party has basically been withering away since Jean Cretchen, 2004 being the transition point. The Liberal party had withered away enough by the latest election to allow the conservatives get a majority government this time. Furthermore, the left's vote is split between the NDP & Liberal parties, while the Conservative party united into one party to better capture the right wing vote. If the NDP & Liberals were one party, the election would of gone to that party. Maybe in a decade or two, the NDP & Liberals will merge and Canada will have our own version of Democrat vs Republican.
The same way bush got elected twice (despite all the tech people I hear from in the US hating him): a quiet(ish) massive population of conservatives coexisting uneasily with us. In Canada especially in our rather significant rural areas like the prairie provinces.
Wait...I don't mean to spread false information, so please, anyone, correct me if I am totally off base, and I will even delete my comment, but...
I thought it was pretty much agreed upon that George Bush Jr. won through voting machines that had been tampered with and because voting ended as soon as Bush had the majority vote in Florida, when in reality it was later found out Al Gore had more votes.
Or did I just pull that out of my ass?
Again, if it is false, I'll gladly remove this comment since I was watching it all (i.e., the American gov't) crumble from Canada.
The quantity of votes isn't the determining issue in American election. Instead, it matters whether you win a majority of electoral college votes.
Florida had enough votes to swing the electoral college. There was a big controversy about this, and a Supreme Court case, and frankly I have no idea what actually happened.
The voting machine tampering affected the popular vote count but he won by the electoral college so it was kind of a moot point.
The liberals here like to blame every conservative win on voting machine fraud and gerrymandering and the conservatives like to blame every liberal win on minorities and illegal immigrants. In reality, the country is split pretty evenly (not geographically uniformly) and we got a second term with Obama despite DieBold's management publicly endorsing Romney. So both sides have a tendency to inflate their claims.
We've got the Conservative Party of Canada on the right, and the Liberals, the NDP, the Greens, and the Bloc on the left. The left is too busy competing with itself to win against the right.
We've got the Conservative Party of Canada on the right, and the Liberals, the NDP, the Greens, and the Bloc on the left.
This is another myth of Canadian politics. Most Liberal voters, if given a ranked ballot, would choose the Conservatives second, and vice versa. The Liberals have, in practice, been as right as the Conservatives ever have been.
Honestly, I know politics isn't allowed on this site, but this is why I'm hoping the States will reject the Keystone XL pipeline. If they do, it kind of gives me some hope that all the toadying up would diminish, if at least slightly.
Corporations who want legislation passed will try repeatedly until it is passed. They have no incentive not to. What really matters is just how many people will continually combat this. Eventually people tire of fighting and they win.
Harper and Co. are steadfast in toadying up to Washington and Co.
Such partisanship is not necessary: ALL Canadian parties toady up to the US, given that it's 10x our size and are our overwhelmingly dominant trading partner.
Err....do you remember the Iraq war? We weren't in it. Harper demanded that we enter. That was a pretty big deal at the time.
The other parties do toady, but there has been a significant increase in toadying under this government. They believe in what they're doing.
I do recall there was a fair bit of Americanized copyright legislation under the liberals though. It just kept failing to pass due to frequent changes of government near the end.
Err....do you remember the Iraq war? We weren't in it. Harper demanded that we enter.
Firstly, the opposition generally will be against whatever the party in office does. However to your actual example,
while that is the standard revisionism, it's completely wrong.
Harper didn't demand that we were in it. He demanded that we be honest about what we were doing in Iraq. At the same time the Liberals proudly promised that they were working overtime to convince the UN Security Council to allow the invasion of Iraq, at which point we would be in there guns in hand.
So compare that to what you just said (I don't blame you as it is the completely standard narrative).
-We were in Iraq
-We were working all channels to get the UN to sanction the war
-Then we would be in the war
Wow, I can't believe they are still going forward with this. Hopefully Canadians continue to speak up on Copyright issues, and make sure unpopular bills remain so for a reason...
To be frank, with the current government being a majority it doesn't really matter what Canadians do or say. Our prime minister will see to it that whatever he wants to pass will pass.
What we need to do is make sure that he gets replaced next election, and that a lot of the changes he's implemented are removed.
I agree that he has to go, but I disagree that us being active will have little affect. Due directly to complaints, we killed off the first 2 versions of their copyright change bills and their attempt to implement warrant-less wire-tapping.
These things have a bad habit of coming back again (like right now) but voicing your opinion definitely helps to sway the conversation and hopefully send them back to the drawing board...
This in particular is politics at it's worst and anyone that actually uses this line should be ashamed of themselves:
"The bill will likely be promoted as protecting public health, however, there is a danger that the provisions could be used to stop the entry of legitimate generic medicines."
Right out of the US playbook.