Jay Currie
Events, dear boy, events.
Vax Pass
I am in the midst of being the Campaign Chair (a silly title if there ever there was one) for the Peoples Party of Canada candidate in Victoria, John Randal Phipps. Which is my excuse for not blogging much.
The single issue in this campaign is the Vax Passport set to be introduced in BC tomorrow. This is a particularly obnoxious idea. Basically, it is a rule that people have to show proof of vaccination (and I use that term loosely) in order to access pubs, restaurants, sporting events, gyms and so on.
It has nothing whatsoever to do with health. Rather, it is a means to coerce and punish the unvaccinated. Which is nuts simply because the vaxxed are able to be infected and transmit the virus but are less likely to know they actually have the damn thing.
Here is the Israeli Ministry of Health on its version of the Vax Pass:
My own bet is that the BC Vax Passport, despite our superabundance of Karens, will fail in a matter of weeks. First off, of the 5 million or so British Columbians less than 1.5 million have applied for their vax passport. That leaves 3.5 million without papers. Second, while there may very well be enforcement at large venues, I can’t imagine a lot of very close to the edge pubs and restaurants showing a Gestapo like diligence in checking their potential patrons at the door. While the restaurants were packed tonight with people enjoying their “last suppers”, after about a week of 25% houses, the hospitality industry is going to get very slack. (And, amusingly, the BC Government has given fast food places and cafes an exemption for dining in without alcohol for 30 minutes or less. The MickyD’s exemption. They really are just making shit up.)
I have two bright kids, one a coder, one a designer, working away at my own, private Vax Pass App. It will look quite a bit like the BC Gov’t app – when that is available – and it will feature a QR code (see above, took three clicks) leading to a web page with something like.
I’m Good…Thanks
or,
Good Service gets great Tips
At a guess, in a couple of weeks, that will be more than enough to gain entry to most of the smaller venues – if those venues ask at all.
Never underestimate the power of human laziness when people are asked to do a silly thing which will cost them money.
#NoVaxPassportsAnywhere
#VotePPC
Surf’s Up
4th wave incoming.
British Columbia has a vax rate over 80% for first jabs with second jabs catching up fast. We also have exponential growth in “case” numbers and hospitalizations and admissions to the ICU are rising as well.
Our Health Minister and Public Health Officer have called a press conference tomorrow where, I expect, they will announce some restrictions – almost certainly travel restrictions, earlier bar closings and, perhaps, a return of the indoor mask mandate.
They will also probably have some unkind words for the unvaccinated although I would be very surprised if any form of vax passport was introduced.
While these measures will be pitched as public health responses to the 4th Delta wave they are, in fact, political responses to a fearful population a vocal portion of which is demanding “action”. The population is fearful because, it turns out that even a successful vaccination program, and BC has many shots in arms, does not actually stop COVID. While this may be blamed on the unvaccinated, the evidence from Israel and Gibraltar and Iceland suggests even high levels of vaccination, while helpful as to outcome, does not stop the Delta 4th wave.
I suspect Dr. Bonnie Henry already knew this. Minister Dix is a smart guy and likely knew this was coming. But the vax was oversold as immunizing when it isn’t. For the fearful, the vax was “the solution”. Now that it turns out to be pretty much a therapeutic rather than a sterilizing vaccine the fearful feel even more vulnerable. Which, in turn means they are advocating for restrictions, the harsher the better. Which is what, I suspect, Dix and Henry will be responding to tomorrow. (Remember, Henry did not impose BC’s first mask mandate, it was imposed by the government at the request of the BC Retail Council – public health had very little to do with it.)
Frightened people demand solutions, the more draconian the better. Politicians have to deal with those demands. The new school year is around the corner, the COVIDians – double vaxxed for safety and masking even without the mandate – are petrified that the Delta variant will kill them. They want the government to back up their fear with the traditional “strict measures”.
It will be interesting to see which way BC jumps. Will it continue along the path to more complete re-opening even at the risk of a rise in “cases” – as Alberta has done – or will it start the mask mandate/travel restriction regime again? Politically, this is a question of whether the government values fear over freedom. From a public health perspective there does not seem to be much that will stop the Delta 4th wave – at least anything which is open for public discussion.
I suspect fear is going to win tomorrow. I hope it doesn’t, but the fearful are a very motivated bunch. I hope that Dr. Henry stops short of re-imposing masks but, even more, I hope she takes a moment to remind people to take a walk in the sun, eat well, lose a bit of weight and rely on their vaccines, their natural immunity and the systems which support it.
The 4th Delta wave is upon us. I suspect the vast majority of us will be just fine.
UPDATE: I was wrong. Fear did not win this round. The only significant announcement was a vax requirement for people working in LTC facilities. While I doubt this will make much difference there is a logic driven rather than fear driven reason for such a mandate.
Elections
Apparently Justin Trudeau thinks that the best use of the nation’s time as we head into a Delta driven 4th wave of COVID is to have an election. Okay, I never thought he had any judgement and an election call at the moment would confirm that but here we are.
There are huge issues facing Canada. Unfettered immigration, useless but expensive carbon taxes, deficits to 2070, price inflation, real estate markets which have put housing in the luxury goods category, a stalled First Nations reconciliation process, the collapse of any number of energy projects, increased homelessness, opioid deaths, a health care system which seems incapable of dealing with even a fairly mild pandemic, senior care in a shambles where our elderly died in droves as much from neglect as COVID and on and on.
Judging from the Liberals activities in the run up to the election, while those issues get the occasional nod, the strategy seems to be to spend lots of money in seats the Libs either hold or would like to win. As to substance, the Libs seem very committed to “doing something” about climate change, keeping immigration levels up over 400,000 per year and not being racist. Unfortunately, this is also pretty much the substantive position of the Conservative Party. The CPC’s big selling point is getting rid of Justin and his gender balanced Cabinet of flakes.
No doubt, over the course of a campaign, these positions will be “fleshed out” but there’s where the two main parties stand going into the election. There may be issues surrounding COVID vax mandates for federal employees and for institutions (read banks) which are federally regulated. The current polling suggest Canadians like authoritarian measures to defeat the virus which is why Trudeau floated the mandate and why we have not heard a word against it from the Conservatives.
The paid for media and the CBC – but I repeat myself – will cover the election like a horse race. Polls will be taken and breathlessly reported. A leaders’ debate will be held and performances will be compared. The NDP and the Green Party will be taken seriously for a few weeks. The Bloc will be ignored simply because it does not run outside Quebec.
The consensus position, tacitly agreed upon by the major parties and the major media is that despite COVID and deficits and slow economic activity there is very little need for significant change. The big question being whether Trudeau will gain a majority or if O’Toole can hold him to a minority.
You will notice I do not mention Max Bernier or the Peoples’ Party. I don’t because the PPC plays outside the consensus. The PPC and its supporters think that significant change is absolutely required and that issues like the deficit, immigration, economic development, First Nations policy, housing and health care need new thinking. (I also don’t mention the Maverick Party but will discuss it in a subsequent post.)
The mainstream parties and their captive media will be running in a consensus election fought lightly in a couple of dozen urban ridings in BC and Ontario. Outside those ridings Max and the PPC will be addressing real problems and offering real solutions.
Will it matter? In terms of seats and outcomes, while I would be delighted to see the PPC win a few seats, the real target for the PPC is the national and regional popular vote. Yes, I do know that does not matter electorally. After all, the CPC won the popular vote in the last federal election. (My own sense is that the Maverick Party has some chance of winning seats in Alberta and Saskatchewan which will be discussed in that subsequent post.)
Max and the PPC need to crack the 5% barrier this time out. If they can do that and Max can win in Beauce, they will have sent a huge message to the CPC. That message is important. Now, if Max and the PPC manage to cut through and beat the Greens – not an unrealistic goal – the message that there are real problems which need real solutions will go mainstream whether the gatekeepers like it or not.
There are really two elections coming up: the Tweedledum and Tweedledee, paid for media, horse race and a vote on whether Canada is a serious country.
Coercion, Mandates and Vax Passes
The government of Quebec is planning on introducing a vax passport. The government of Canada is looking at “mandating” COVID vaccination as a condition of employment for the federal government and corporations regulated by the feds. Dr. Bonnie Henry hinted today that she was fed up with healthcare workers who were not vaxed. If you want to enter a restaurant in New York City you have to prove at least one shot.
As I have said before, I am not at all an “anti-vaxer”, I am just not in any rush to get “the jabs” as I would like a lot more data on their long term effects. One mid term effect which is now emerging is that the efficacy of the jab in preventing serious illness appears to wane at about the 6 month mark. And, of course, the jab does not prevent infection or transmission of COVID, it appears to reduce the severity of COVID should you contract it. And all of this comes at the price of potential adverse consequences for a small number of those jabbed.
Against that people are arguing that there are good reasons to encourage people to get jabbed – principally their own health. Encouragement in the form of celebrity endorsements, free stuff, lotteries and the like seem like fair ball to me. But we go over the foul line when we impose consequences for not being jabbed.
I use the term “consequences” advisedly. Not being permitted to attend an event without vax proof is a consequence and, in my view, incompatible with a rights based view of humanity. It is a mild infringement to be sure, but it really is the top of a slippery slope and should be subject to strict scrutiny. Now, it can be argued that a venue or a rock band or a restaurant has a right to exclude whomever it wants so long as it does so without violating general anti-discrimination laws. However, this sort of exclusion regime will almost certainly be operated using government issued credentials.
The entire concept of a vaccine “passport” or “certificate” issued by the government – provincial, in the case of Canada – is acceptable right up until it is used to visit consequences, however well-intentioned, on those who lack that passport. This is not a loss of “priviledge”, it is the loss of the most basic right to be treated equally because you are person and a citizen.
Confronted with a disease which has a recovery rate of 99.9% for the non-elderly and relatively healthy the inner authoritarian in everyone from Premiers to pundits suddenly is put on parade.
“Just as we began to think the COVID pandemic was coming to an end, a fourth wave has arrived, due almost entirely to the unvaccinated. As a result, restrictions are coming back, masks are returning, and our short precious summer looks like it may become even shorter yet. Scott Gilmore, Macleans
(Interestingly Gilmore is so eager to administer “the stick” that he contradicts his claim about the nasty unvaccinated in the very next paragraph. “Even those of us who fully vaccinated are being forced to mask back up. This is because we have now learned that the new and deadly Delta variant can still be carried and transmitted by the immunized.” Which is it Scott? And, Scott, look up the word “immunized”.)
Once that inner authoritarian is in charge, the sky is the literal limit – no flights for the unvaxed, no restaurant dining and, at the extreme end, no job, no grocery shopping, no public transport. The rationales range from the alleged danger of the unvaxed spreading the disease to interesting theories about how the unvaxed will destroy “herd immunity” and act as human petri dishes for the incubation of ever nastier “variants”. That there is not a shred of evidence for any of these outcomes does not seem to deter the “papers please” crowd.
I suspect parts of Canada are in for a nasty, authoritarian, fall. Scott Gilmore is a reliable indicator of bien pensant thinking in Canada and he wants to beat the unvaxed with all manner of sticks. Can’t wait really. The government of Quebec, fresh off six months of curfews, seems to enjoy curtailing the rights of it citizens.
The BC government seems more modest in its medical authoritarianism – vax mandates for healthcare workers, maybe. But BC’s case numbers are going back up and with that rises a need to “do something”.
Here is the root problem: COVID19 is not going away. It will, eventually, but when is deeply uncertain. The “vaccines” don’t actually work quite as well as had been hoped. They do not immunize, rather they confer a degree of protection from serious illness. With flu season just around the corner, the public health establishment has pretty much run out of bullets. A fact tacitly conceded in Alberta where all restrictions have been cancelled as has non-symptomatic testing.
Vax mandates and passports are not going to change the COVID outcomes. They will let Scott Gilmore put a bit of stick about and Premier François Legault to coerce the long suffering people of Quebec a while longer but there is no reason to believe this is anything but an extension of the sanitary theatre we have had to put up with for the last 18 months.
The Gilmores and Legaults might be better advised to look at improving the general health of the population, actually building the backup facilities to prevent the healthcare system from being overwhelmed and to take a serious look at the treatment options for COVID. Not nearly as much good, clean, totalitarian fun; but ultimately more productive.
Proud Dad
Simon Currie said Lowndes was a friend of his for 20 years.
“Jay took me in when nobody else really would,” he told CTV News. “The police need to stop killing Indigenous people.” BCTV
Simon (rose tattoo above) and I disagree on virtually every political point. But he gets the fundamentals right.
Killing anyone who is trapped in a parked car is revolting. No police officer should ever do that unless there is a clear need for self-defence. It is an operational failure and a complete failure in supervision and training.
Jared Lowndes was murdered. The officers who killed him need to be charged with the crime. Usual presumption of innocence but the evidence needs to be tried and a verdict reached.
I’m proud of Simon for standing up and demanding justice for Jared Lowndes.
Interesting: Be Prepared
“In preparation for this change, CDC recommends clinical laboratories and testing sites that have been using the CDC 2019-nCoV RT-PCR assay select and begin their transition to another FDA-authorized COVID-19 test. CDC encourages laboratories to consider adoption of a multiplexed method that can facilitate detection and differentiation of SARS-CoV-2 and influenza viruses. Such assays can facilitate continued testing for both influenza and SARS-CoV-2 and can save both time and resources as we head into influenza season.” CDC: Lab Alert
The PCR test was used all over the world to detect “cases” of COVID. Implied in the CDC notice is that the test detected influenza as well. Which would explain why there was no “flu” this past flu season. If you tested positive on the PCR you were regarded as a case of COVID but you might well have had plain old flu.
[Update: My 20 year old bio-chemist, lawyer and reader, son, Sam, points out that the CDC is pulling one PCR test of 20 or so which are approved. PCR lives! (Still far more cycles than there should be, but he has a point.)]
From Israel, a heavily vaccinated country, we have the Prime Minister stating, “We do not know exactly to what degree the vaccine helps, but it is significantly less…the Delta mutation leaping forward around the world, including in vaccinated countries such as Britain, Israel and the US.”
In BC, having seen our numbers steadily drop heading into summer, our case count is rising again. Given the lifting of virtually all public health restrictions this is not surprising but it is a bit worrying.
The “vaccine will fix everything” strategy is examined by a professor in this Twitter thread. (h/t SDA)
On this beautiful summer day (though some mention the whole drought thing) it is worth thinking a little about what happens next with COVID. The good news on vaccines is that, so far, while they do not stop infection or transmission they do seem to reduce the severity of the symptoms for people who are infected. And, yes, it may well be that even without the jab those people would have had mild infections, but the hospitalization and death numbers seem to be encouraging. The jabs don’t seem to do as well against the variants but that is not yet a huge problem.
At the moment there is a fair bit of media enthusiasm for assorted coercive measures to be taken against the unvaxed. Vaccine passports are all the rage in the dimmer reaches of Ontario and Quebec and Manitoba seems to have implemented such a scheme. It is obvious nonsense from a direct public health perspective because the vaccinated an be infected and spread infection, but it seems to satisfy the more basic urge to “punish” the non-conforming.
The back and forth on testing, case rates, the need for non-pharmacological measures, the efficacy of vaccines and the safety of those vaccines, not to mention treatment and prevention options can make for interesting Twitter threads but there is a real flu season coming up shortly. To prepare for that season is something everyone, every family, can start doing right now.
If COVID and the flu continue to circulate, and there is no reason to believe they will not, jabs not withstanding, there will be non-medical consequences which may be more severe than the illnesses themselves.
Right at the moment, supply chains in BC and in Canada generally, are holding up quite well. However, they have been under considerable stress and the dislocations caused by gov’t reaction to increased case counts could be severe. It would be prudent for families to stock up on non-perishable essential goods. (Looking at the current crop conditions in Canada and much of the US it would be prudent for economic reasons as well.) Simple things like rice, flour, pasta, sugar, salt and beans are a starting point. Canned goods are good to have. A well stocked freezer – on sale ground beef, on sale frozen fruits and vegetables – may come in handy. And, why yes, toilet paper and paper towels are great to have. Cash – and while 100’s a lovely they can be hard to spend if things go sideways. 20’s are more practical.
Believe it or not, now is likely the time to buy PPE – mask, gloves, hand sanitizers. And, yes, indeed, I don’t think any of those items made a speck of difference in the first waves. However, right now they are practically being given away and it is not at all out of the question that the Phi variant or some such will be surface contact transmissable.
Stock up on your vitamins and supplements: Vit D & C, quercetin, zinc. Ivermectin if you can get it. There are plenty around at the moment, that could change.
Now, normally, this is the moment where people say, “And get the vax!” I am still waiting to see how well it performs and what side effects emerge. Your mileage may vary and you may not alreadly lead a largely self-issolated life. You do you.
My own scenarios for the Fall and Winter range from a nothingburger where, like the Great Influenza of 1918, COVID burns itself out and we see no substantial third wave, all the way to “the vaccine has compromised vaxers immunity and, like the ferrets, the vaccinated are all very sick and many of them die.” Being neither a virologist nor an epidemiologist, I have no idea what is going to happen come “seasonal upper respiratory virus” season. And I have no idea what the government/public health reaction is going to be. My only thought is to be prepared for the worst.
Being able to hunker down for a few weeks is never a bad thing. Depending on the severity of the Fall wave, you may want to close your door to the world for a month without the government telling you to.
Meanwhile, good long walks, trimming that last 5, well, 15 really, pounds, avoiding MSM are all useful things to do right now.
With luck, COVID will be a bad memory by Christmas. I hope so.
Disquieting
There has been a good deal of optimism generated by the growing number of people who have been vaccinated against COVID-19. Despite the fact that the vaccinated can still get COVID and spread COVID, vaccination has been seen as a way out of the COVID mess. Let’s hope so.
However, there seems to be a bit of a problem emerging in such high vax nations as England and the Netherlands are seeing cases, hospitalizations and deaths rise again. Israel, with an over 80% double jab rate, is seeing case numbers rise and attributing that to the “delta variant”.
There is now some talk of the need for a “booster” shot in the Fall.
Not being an epidemiologist I have nothing useful to say about these infection rates in the face of the vaccine. However, from a public policy perspective, it underlines something which has been a weakness from the earliest days of the COVID issue: non-pharmaceutical interventions (masks, social distance, lockdowns) and the arrival and distribution of the vaccine have been the go to public responses. Other responses have largely been ignored.
Were you to rely on the mainstream media and our public health people – not to mention the politicians, you could easily form the impression that there were no other alternatives.
I have banged on about how losing a few pounds, getting outside, taking Vitamin D were all things which, while they will not “prevent” COVID infection, will certainly make you more able to put up a good fight if you happen to catch COVID. (And we are seeing much more evidence that the people who are most at risk of dying with COVID are over 80, often suffering a number of co-morbidities, diabetic or very obese – people at much greater risk of death even before they caught COVID.) Simply encouraging people who can to improve their overall health could significantly reduce the overall risk COVID poses.
Frankly, Public Health officials should have been pushing exercise, weight loss, sun exposure and Vit D pretty much from the go. But there is no reason not to start now. (Especially if the vaccines are not super effective against the delta variant.)
The ivermectin and HCQ questions remain outstanding. It was not helpful that one of what looked like a positive study of ivermectin appears to be an out and out fraud. However, looking at countries and states in which one or both have been used suggests some efficacy. The argument is going to go on for a while but, again from a public policy perspective, it would seem sensible to set up and run proper trials for both substances.
A new entrant, SaNOtize, is an anti-viral nasal spray developed in Vancouver and currently approved for use in Israel. It has been tested and found to reduce viral loads in confirmed COVID-19 cases by 95% in 24 hours and 99% in 72 hours. Here is a report of a double blind clinical trial conducted in England. Is this the silver bullet? I have no idea. However, it shows promise, has been trialed and has a fairly well understood mechanism of action. (And, apparently, no side effects.)
I suspect there are other promising treatments out there which I am unaware of. The point being that we need to be developing alternatives to complete reliance on vaccines which seem to have varying efficacy and worrying side effects which are only now emerging. This is not at all an “anti-vax” position, rather it is a prudent position. If, for some reason, the vaccines’ effectiveness against emerging variants is reduced, having treatment options and a generally healthy population would be, as Martha Stewart used to say, “a good thing”.
Math
Much has been written about the government of Ontario’s plan to decolonize Grade 9 math in the name of social justice. It is a stupid idea for any number of reasons. Apparently, math as currently taught is too objective which means that it excludes other ways of knowing. And so on.
In the great sorting hat of modern society, math, because it is objective and only partially language based has always been a route forward for immigrants of all hues for generations. You might not speak English very well, but quadratic equations, trigonometry and algebra don’t care. With some hard work, even if your English assignments were terrible, the Vietnamese kid or the Sri Lankan or Filipino student could get an “A” in math and often do well at physics as well.
Being a math nerd is the least discriminatory niche in a high school ecology.
I was never much good at math. In Ontario I would have been decolonized twice because I took Grade 9 math twice – once during regular term and once in the summer following Grade 9 because my parents recognized that my barely passing the first time was going to be a problem going forward. I stumbled along for two more years. In those years I managed to acquire just enough math to be able to understand and enjoy Physics 11 and Physics 12 (both taught by the single best teacher I ever had, R.A. Nordman.) (Later I learned a lot of statistics as an adjunct to a thesis I was trying to write. The thesis came to a sad end when my advisor said, “Oh, that should not be a problem, all you need are a couple of simultaneous differential equations.” I was cooked.)
The kids who were “good at math” generally went the STEM route in university, we math under achievers went off to the Arts or, sadly, the Faculty of Education where we were rarely troubled by math again.
“The education minister’s spokesperson Caitlin Clark told The Toronto Sun that the new curriculum reflects a changing world.
“We are taking action to ensure all children, especially those facing barriers to success, have meaningful pathways to quality learning, graduation, access to post-secondary education and good-paying jobs,” she said.”
This is reminiscent of the Indiana State Legislature attempting to fix the value of π at 3.2. There may be all sorts of good jobs which do not need a strong grasp of math but there are no jobs where a decolonized version of the subject will give you an edge.
But I may be looking at this through the wrong lens. A more imaginative lens would note that a) there were only so many “good-paying” (yes, the construction does grate but it’s a quote) jobs, b) certain, preferred, racialized groups were not getting an equitable number of those jobs because c) those jobs had the racialist requirement of a grasp of Grade 9 math which, d) was so racist that the preferred racialized groups were doomed by the system to fail. Take down the systemically racist hurdle of the current Grade 9 math curriculum and replace it with “anti-racist, anti-discriminatory learning environments” and “infuse Indigenous knowledges and perspectives meaningfully and authentically into the mathematics program.” Problem solved!
Or something like that.
In fact, all that this sort of nonsense ensures is that smart (and better off) parents – white, black, Asian – send their kids to private school or homeschool them or pay for after school tutoring. When the pure public school victims of this posturing arrive as undergraduates – courtesy of whatever diversity initiative is available – they will have no chance at a STEM education. There is no “Indigenous knowleges” based calculus or computer code or algorithmic logic. In short, the Ontario public education system is rendering its students, apparently all its students, unfit for the modern world.
And, of course, like most such programs the real beneficiaries are those, often already privileged, kids whose parents are able to pay for the Kumon classes or, well, in my case, summer school. The public school victims might get a job as a diversity hire, but someone has to actually write the code, calculate the stresses, figure out the odds and mine the data – and that someone will have a pretty solid grasp of Grade 9 math.
Hateful
Perhaps not my finest writing but the Lulu girls tossing paint on an East End Vancouver church were revolting examples of ignorance.
However, apparently, calling them “skanks” triggered the Twitter hate patrol. I appealed, the above is a screenshot of Twitter rejecting the appeal. I like Twitter mainly for the tweets of a bunch of people involved in the junior mining industry so I have removed the tweet.
But this is a great example of just how dangerous rules surrounding “hateful conduct” are. Because there is no precise definition of “hateful conduct” pretty much any mildly insulting speech can fall into the bucket. It is completely arbitrary.
Now mothers the world over have admonished their children with “If you have nothing nice to say don’t say anything.” Which is idiocy. Political conversation ranges from compliment to invective. It is in the nature of that conversation to say harsh things both as to their truth and for effect.
The Twitter “hateful conduct” wheeze essentially puts users on notice that if they insult or disparage some identifiable person they may lose access to their account or lose their account altogether. Of course, it is only Twitter and life goes on.
Unfortunately, our Liberal government wants to effectively criminalize a variant of the “hateful conduct” rule. Bill C-36 proposes to include in the Canadian Human Rights Act this:
13 (1) It is a discriminatory practice to communicate or cause to be communicated hate speech by means of the Internet or other means of telecommunication in a context in which the hate speech is likely to foment detestation or vilification of an individual or group of individuals on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination.
It tries to narrow the grounds a bit a little further on:
Definition of hate speech(9)
In this section, hate speech means the content of a communication that expresses detestation or vilification of an individual or group of individuals on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination.
Clarification – hate speech(10)
For greater certainty, the content of a communication does not express detestation or vilification, for the purposes of subsection (9), solely because it expresses mere dislike or disdain or it discredits, humiliates, hurts or offends.
Now, I suspect that my Tweet would not fall afoul of this language but that would not be a bar to an an a complaint being filed.
And the Libs are very keen on the idea of anonymous accusations:
Non-disclosure of identity — Commission(8)
The Commission may deal with a complaint in relation to a discriminatory practice described in section 13 without disclosing, to the person against whom the complaint was filed or to any other person, the identity of the alleged victim, the individual or group of individuals who has filed the complaint or any individual who has given evidence or assisted the Commission in any way in dealing with the complaint, if the Commission considers that there is a real and substantial risk that any of those individuals will be subjected to threats, intimidation or discrimination.
At the moment, C-36 looks pretty much dead in the water simply because the Libs seem to want this Parliament to die and hold an election. But if they win it will certainly be back.
Of course, if it passes, anonymous denunciations can go both ways. The gender critical ladies are certainly the butt of a lot of internet hatred. So are Jews whenever Gaza heats up.
Attempts to police speech, particularly political speech almost always end badly.
Jay Currie 