Part of my regular morning routine includes scanning some of the dailies to see what’s been happening while I’ve been asleep. I tend to focus on news produced internationally because not only is local (i.e. Canadian) news irretrievably biased, it’s also woefully myopic. If I relied on them exclusively to tell me what’s happening around the world I’d be a very dull boy indeed.

But occasionally there’s an article, like the one in today’s Toronto Star, that inadvertently provides enough entertainment value to be worth a read.

Here we’re introduced to the work of the Founders Fund (not to be confused with the Founders Fund), a business incubator “by women, for women”.

At the outset it’s important to note that I take absolutely no issue with ladies supporting each other to build business. In fact, I think it’s great!

It sucks that a similar men-for-men organization would be screamed out of existence, this despite the fact that the growing inequality gap means that nearly as many men might also be helped out of increasingly abject poverty, not to mention increasing obscurity, but I don’t want to dwell on that.

What struck me as funny is the liberal use of words like “diversity” and “inclusivity” in the literature of the organization.

Really? Overtly excluding roughly half of the earth’s population is “diverse” and “inclusive”? I must be using the old, non-woke dictionary here.

I had to chuckle when I read that the fund (which keeps 50% of its members’ fees), supports “women-identifying entrepreneurs”. So it’s not just biological women who can apply for funding, it can also be any dude who’s willing to throw on a dress and call themselves a lady.

Honestly, though, that sounds pretty damn sexist.

Why would women need to wear dresses and even “act like a lady” to be considered women? I would expect that any guy walking into the Founders Fund offices claiming to be a woman, no matter how “cisnormative” and stereotypically masculine they may seem, would be considered for funding. Surely no one else, including any medical professional, has the right to override one’s self-identification.

It’s a funny corner this exclusively “inclusive” mindset has painted itself into.

The Star article goes over some of the types of businesses that are being supported by the Fund, such as Alder Apparel, which has chosen to focus on the apparently dismal dearth of “functional and fashionable women’s outdoor clothing”. A quick Google search seems to suggest otherwise but I’ll be the first to admit that the subjective world of fashion mostly escapes me so I could definitely be wrong there.

Although a number of prominent images on Alder’s site, not to mention many of those that appear in their extended image galleries, appear to feature traditional “thin, white and athletic” models (an image that Alder claims to be challenging), there’s a handful of differing body types and races on display so, I guess, racist patriarchy smashed?

The Founders Fund has invested in other ventures such as a pricey panic-attack app (which prior to the funding had for some reason somehow excluded “Black, Indigenous and people of colour communities”), athletic hijabs, something called a “a family mealtime experience”, a company that produces “gender-inclusive underwear for people ‘who defy gender norms.'”, and my contextual favourite, a “peer-based program to enhance students’ critical-thinking skills.”

Not mentioned is the fact that both the Fund and Alder, perhaps others, seem to be connected to Shopify, the same Ottawa-headquartered company that provided the building blocks for the government’s contact-tracing app.

I wonder if that “critical-thinking” program will touch on some of these subjects. Oughta be a hoot.

There’s a lot of news happening around the world and it’s simply not possible to cover it all. That’s understandable.

And even though some of that news is tragic, only a handful of it can possibly make the front page. I get it.

Every news outlet is (supposed to be) different and editorial decisions that include which stories to run will necessarily produce a bias. That’s fair.

Or at least it would be fair if there was even a hint of balance between the outlets. It would be fair if there was an occasionally alternative voice, if they weren’t all in lock-step, pushing forward a very obvious agenda.

Case in point: everyone remembers Treyvon Martin, the young black man whose name we’re all supposed to perennially keep on our lips, killed by a “racist white man” in Florida in on his grandmother’s front lawn after going out to buy some Skittles.

For a brief moment the media reluctantly wavered in their “racist white man” tirade when pictures of the killer began circulating. Turned out that, if anything, he was Hispanic or Latino. The story wouldn’t have been any better if Treyvon had been killed by a green Martian but the point I’m trying to make is how it was immediately spun into a “yet another racist white man kills an unarmed, innocent black child” narrative.

The brief moment was followed by renewed attempts attempts to paint George Zimmerman as a “white Hispanic“, as idiotic as that sounds. But if race is based on physical characteristics and ethnicity is based on culture and upbringing, as the increasingly absurd news kept promoting, then surely “Latino Catholic” would be far more accurate. Or since Catholicism is widely understood to have been founded in what is now Italy, maybe his ethnicity should be Italian? And since his mother is Peruvian and undoubtedly injected some of her culture into his upbringing, wouldn’t it have made sense to call him Hispanic? How about “Latino Hispanic-Italian”?

Come to think of it, it’s absurd to call someone a Latino Hispanic if they have Latino racial characteristics and Hispanic cultural roots, but this precisely the lengths that the media insist on to ensure that their narrative of a murderous “racist white Hispanic” (emphasis on “white”), is maintained.

And what kind of fucked up demarcation are we supposed to engage in to determine when someone has sufficiently “Latino” (or “Black”, or whatever), physical characteristics? Who gets to decide, and on what basis, who qualifies as predominantly black or Latino or white or Asian or Indigenous, and how is this not unbelievably racist and segregationist?

Yet this is precisely what the incoherent media demand, all so they can continue the narrative that yet another “racist white man” killed an unarmed, innocent black child.

And it was this completely false and ridiculously twisted narrative that spawned the Black Lives Movement which aims, ostensibly, to end “systemic” racism against black people, especially in the context of the police.

Except Zimmerman is neither white nor a cop. And the “stand your ground” laws that Zimmerman successfully used to get away with it aren’t mentioned at all by BLM.

But why should that matter when yet another “racist white man” kills an unarmed, innocent black boy?

Let’s contrast this against a very recent murder in North Carolina in which a 25-year-old black man walked up to a 5-year-old white boy playing in front of his house, put a gun up to his head, and literally executed him in front of his two young sisters.

The handful of US news outlets that bothered to report on this were careful to include “allegedly” in the headlines (was Zimmerman described as the “alleged” killer?), and made sure to remind their audience that the motive for the murder was unclear (flip the skin colours and it’s instantly “racism”, case closed).

Here in Toronto you won’t find a single mention of this story anywhere.

I searched CityNews, CBC News, Global News, the Toronto Star, National Post, Globe and Mail, and Toronto Sun, and although there’s an occasional article about racist (i.e. white) North Carolina cops being fired, apparently the news out of the same state of a little white boy being brutally murdered on his front lawn in front of his sisters by a black man simply isn’t worthy of even a mere mention. Is that because the victim is white or because the perpetrator is black? Maybe a little of both.

But none of this is new.

Everyone’s heard of Treyvon Martin and the immediate rage that followed his death but who’s even heard of Cannon Hinnant?

Everyone knows about George Floyd, maybe not so much about his less-than-angelic past, and who has any idea of who Timothy Coffman was? Where’s the outrage and protests for Corey West? What about Tony Timpa?

Everyone remembers Rodney King but who remembers Reginald Denny?

Due to sheer numbers, there are bound to be far more examples of these kinds of things happening to white people than to black people. The way these incidents are constantly ignored by the media, onlookers, and society in general, goes a long way in explaining why we simply don’t hear about them and why examples of such injustice, when black people are victims, flood every media channel out there.

I’m not suggesting that it’s acceptable when black people (or anyone!) are brutalized, what I’m asking is why similar incidents are nearly completely ignored when the much more numerous victims are white?

And who bothers to mention that in the US, white hate crime victims outnumber victims of anti-semitism, anti-Islamism, or anti-LGBTQ-ism, often by a large margin. The media go to great lengths to make it seem that the exact opposite is true. In fact, behind black people, white people are the second most likely group to be hated on of any racial, ethnic, gender, or sexual orientation group — as long as every individual is considered equally.

And even though they occupy the number one position for hate crime victims, black people are only slightly less likely to be hit by lightning (0.0002% = 1 ÷ 500,000), than they are to be the victim of a hate crime (0.0007% = 2,325 ÷ 328,200,000 total US population).

The overall numbers are minuscule no matter how you look at them, yet hate crimes against everyone except white people are regularly played up in the media. Why is that?

And to what lengths will the media go to defend, justify, and “explain” violence against a white person when they would balk at even the hint of a suggestion that a black person be criticized and analyzed in the same way?

When they claim that they want to “dismantle white supremacy”, are they advocating that everyone simply be left to their own devices or that it be replaced with the dominance of another group? Has anyone bothered to ask this question?

Don’t even get me started on the constantly evolving definition of what constitutes “white privilege” which now is supposed to mean how a white person’s life isn’t made more difficult because of the colour of their skin. I can write at length on this topic with plenty of personal, first-hand experiences of exactly how my life was made more difficult specifically, directly, and very openly because I’m white (and a man). I bet plenty of other white people have similar experiences to share, at least until it’s decided to shift the definition again.

Despite the daily avalanche of examples we see demonstrating something entirely different (I’m working my way through a detailed write-up about the OHRC’s latest road apple), we’re supposed to believe that black people are being “systematically targeted for demise” (according to BLM), and being oppressed by “white supremacy” and “white privilege” everywhere.

In the words of Jeanie Bueller, “dry that one out and you can fertilize the lawn.”

I took a trip to a local grocery store this morning to get some coffee and bread. I was surprised to see a line formed outside of the front doors, similar to ones we’ve seen not so long ago.

“That’s weird,” I thought as I peeked into the seemingly empty store expecting it to be visibly busy, so I asked the security guard why people were being held back.

He told me that there were only two cashiers working and that the lines to pay were causing unacceptable congestion. I couldn’t tell if this was true from outside so I just shrugged my shoulders and plodded back into line.

My little detour managed to lose me a few spots so I ended up waiting for an additional 10 minutes, not because the line was long but because the tiny trickle of people leaving/entering was excruciatingly slow.

In all, roughly 5 people had left by the time I got inside the spacious store. Not exactly the deluge that I was given as a reason for being kept outside in the first place. But maybe the crowd was inside, away from view?

Nope.

As I circled the store there I counted no more than 30 people inside, and no one at the checkouts. There was only one entrance / exit so unless these “long lines” spontaneously de-materialized into thin air, where did all of the shoppers disappear to?

I got a sort-of answer to my question when I strolled up to pay for my purchases at the still-completely-empty checkout. (This is not an exaggeration, there were literally no people in line).

I told the cashier that people were being made to wait outside based on a claim that the store, or at least the cashiers, were crowded. Except … where were all the people?

She turned to me and with a heavy, sputtering Filipino accent said, “only have two cashiers working so need to limit lines. Too many people!”

“Yeah, I already heard that. But what lines?”

“Would you like bags, sir?” she replied, seemingly ignoring my question.

I leaned in and made an obvious show of looking around to try to spot these imaginary “lines” of people, then asked again, “what lines?”

She stared at me blankly for a moment, as if the question had overloaded her brain, and only managed to blurt out “bags?” a second time before turning away. Didn’t even wait for my response.

I decided to ask one more time. “I’m sorry, what lines are you talking about? Was it very busy earlier?”

She turned around and, once again seemingly ignoring the obvious revelation that she and store security had been shoveling bullshit, cocked her head to the side with noticeable annoyance (I guess at having to hold up the throngs of invisible people waiting behind me), and asked once again if I wanted bags.

I decided to drop the questions. I knew it wasn’t a language barrier; she’d already used the same words I had. This was possibly an example of cognitive dissonance on full display. Or maybe it was a form of genuine mental illness in which she was hallucinating long lines of people where there were none. Maybe this was what life is like in the government’s “new reality”.

This could almost be a humorous anecdote if it wasn’t so indicative of the general public’s unwillingness / inability to see the reality that’s quite literally right in front of them.

When the police or military brutalize them, kick in their house doors, or violently pull them out of their cars for staying out too late or not obeying the newest set of arbitrary government dictates, as is being done in Australia (be sure to read the last few paragraphs!), a virtuous example being promoted here in Canada, these same people will ostensibly deny that what they’re experiencing actually exists. And we can be certain that this won’t be the result of a philosophical inquisition into the nature of reality.

It’s hard to know when a line has been crossed when that line doesn’t even exist.

The Toronto Star ran an article yesterday about going to the dentist while pandemicking.

I’d very recently gone myself with a chipped tooth so I can confirm everything that I read as being entirely accurate. I wasn’t asked “a lot” of questions but that’s an entirely subjective measure so I’ll leave it at that.

There wasn’t anything really exceptional about the write-up except for a brief line about halfway through:

Many dentists are now using a [pre-procedural] hydrogen peroxide-based rinse, which is thought to also help with viruses.

It wasn’t the insertion of a link to a name-brand mouth rinse product in this sentence that I found curious, even though it came across as a sort of stealth advertisement, it was the statement that hydrogen peroxide was in the rinse.

Ah, I thought, so that’s why the mouthwash tasted a little different. Dentist never bothered to tell me what was in it. I can’t say that I’m bothered by the chemical’s presence but it would still have been nice for the dentist to let me know what I was swishing with.

Whatevs.

But it got me wondering just how effective hydrogen peroxide is in dealing with viruses like Covid. So I did some research and it turns out it’s pretty efficacious. But there’s a catch.

According to information provided by the city, achieving the “high-level of disinfection” that actually kills bacteria and viruses requires that the chemical be kept in the mouth anywhere from 30 to 45 minutes depending on the variety used. I sure as hell didn’t swish for that long and I doubt most patients do.

Even “low-level disinfection” that kills “some” bacteria and viruses needs you to rinse for a minimum of 10 minutes, which I also wasn’t anywhere close to achieving.

As far I know, hydrogen peroxide is generally safe so it’s highly unlikely that rinsing with it will cause any problems. But at the same time, it seems that the way it’s being used also doesn’t offer many benefits in terms of virus protection.

I’ll readily admit that my familiarity with this topic is pretty shallow but it does seem that this particular portion of a dental visit is more wishful thinking than a proven solution, at least in the way that it’s being used presently.

It makes me wonder what other things are being done for our “protection” that, although they may be entirely benign, also don’t offer the stated benefits.

“Crisis actors” are people who have volunteered or been hired to play victims in emergency drills and training scenarios. This is a well-known and undisputed practice.

Somewhat less undisputed are the various theories floating around on the internet about crisis actors being employed by governments and large corporations to covertly produce knowingly fake “emergency” scenarios in order to promote an (often hidden) agenda.

Are crisis actors used to promote propagandist narratives? I’m not entirely convinced but given the types of things that governments openly get up to on a daily basis I certainly wouldn’t put it above them.

This is what’s running through my mind as I read articles on people protesting the imposition of face masks here in the city. They (the protesters), are invariably presented as idiots, “mostly white”, “Karens”, and other openly derisive and overtly racist terms to show the world just how despicable (and white), it is to question popular opinions and the wisdom of our benign and loving government.

Thing is, based on some of the things I’ve seen and heard I don’t entirely disagree.

Notwithstanding the unbelievable levels of blatant anti-white rhetoric being pumped out by nearly every facet of the establishment, the people being exemplified in these articles really do come across as a little dull. In fact, my own interactions with similar protests in the past has led me to the same conclusion.

When I’ve approached such people and told them that I agree with their cause, albeit for different reasons, I would’ve expected that they would be pleased to have both an ally and additional arguments to back their position. Instead, I’m often met with stone-faced ignorance, by which I mean that they quite literally turn their back and ignore me like I didn’t exist.

I can’t help wondering, are these people disinfo actors? Are they being put out there to demonstrate how stupid and ignorant one would look if one also questions the established wisdom of the authorities? Have I challenged their mission of painting dissidents as dangerous imbeciles in a way that they don’t know how to deal with?

As I said, knowing the well-established and proven public facts of how governments operate makes these suspicions perfectly reasonable. That they would engage in covert, soft censorship certainly isn’t beyond the pale for them.

Consider, for example, that the only anti-mask arguments being “advertised” like this have to do with the efficacy of face coverings, the size of the particles involved, and the illusory “rights and freedoms” of the protesters.

Why not, for example, question the general safety of masks given that the government itself provides exemptions for people with health issues?

Doesn’t that put borderline and undiagnosed individuals at dire risk of severe medical problems, especially during this hot and humid summer we’ve been having? Is it justifiable to knowingly put certain people in harm’s way — as admitted by the government in its own directives — in order to make others feel safe, especially when Covid numbers in the city are at a historic low? And if face masks are so risk-free then why have any exemptions at all, especially for people with underlying respiratory problems?

Perhaps the truth of the matter is somewhere in the middle: masks aren’t without risks but the government has deemed those risks (to individual human lives), acceptable. Similarly, the safety and efficacy of flu vaccines seem like highly germane and timely topics but you won’t hear anything even resembling a balanced discussion about them, just like the absurd and one-sided rhetoric being promulgated to support BLM. Why would individual human lives matter when there’s a false narrative based on twisted statistical aggregates, nonsensical comparisons, and “community effects” instead?

I’ve even been accused of “tricking” people and abusing their various mental conditions (only revealed after the fact), simply by having them conclude their own thought processes through a line of fairly simple and direct questioning.

“I have ADHD you asshole! You tricked me into saying that I’m okay with censorship and state murder just because I said that the government should kill anyone who disagrees! FUCK YOOOOUUUUUU!1!!!!!” This is an actual quote from an online discussion I was involved in, obviously not on the same topic but still indicative of the types of responses I’ve received.

After being accused of “weaponizing facts” and using “magical logic” for the umpteenth time I finally gave up. Their own opinions, as expressed by them, are as nothing to how they feel, and I certainly won’t convince them that what they say is what they actually mean. And heaven forbid I should engage in “bully tactics” like quoting them to demonstrate inconsistent or self-contradictory arguments.

Yes, questions are stupid (and racist, misogynistic, white supremacist, etc.), especially when someone’s own answers might lead them to conclusions that might make them feel uncomfortable. The horror. Just stab me already.

So it’s been about a week since our betters passed a municipal bylaw requiring the imposition of mandatory indoor masks pretty much everywhere except schools and daycare, transportation (noting that the TTC has its own bylaws), medical facilities, and residential buildings.

There are some neat specifics for businesses, like bars, which can legally allow patrons indoors:

*The bylaw allows for temporary removal of a mask or face covering when receiving services (such as having a meal) or while actively engaging in an athletic or fitness activity.

How thoughtful! You’re allowed to temporarily lift your mask to shove a fry in your mouth or down a few gulps of lager.

The implied stupidity makes it really hard to take it seriously. And I suspect this is why many people doubt government so-called experts and advisors. After all, this is the same caliber of people who brought us things like the smoking bylaw that penalizes business owners if they fail to police a 9 meter (29.5 feet) radius in front of their premises, a distance that often extends well into the street if not all the way across.

I haven’t heard of anyone being rounded up into cattle cars yet so for me the mask bylaw has so far been only a mild irritant. And there are loopholes in it that are big enough to drive a truck through. Nevertheless, I sympathize with the people who see this as a slippery slope.

Developments like the increasingly indefinite emergency measures being introduced by Doug Ford’s lackeys, when compared with something like the 9/11 anti-terror laws that over the years have never really abated, tend to produce some very plausible conclusions even if those conclusions haven’t yet been borne out.

When Doug Ford claims it’s not a power grab are we to assume he’s being honest? The oxymoron doth run deep there.

So is it so surprising when we find people resisting increasingly dictatorial demands by the state even as that same state tells us that Covid infections are way down “but we have to be ready for the next wave”? Sounds an awful lot like arbitrary, indefinite lockdowns and a complete stripping of people’s rights in the name of “public health measures“.

On top of that, it seems that in their frenzied efforts to impose their controls, governments may actually be openly violating the laws of their masters, something I realized while observing an interaction at a bank between a woman refusing to wear a mask and a front-door security officer refusing her access (to her own money).

The woman was showing the rent-a-cop the bylaw and claiming she had an illness, therefore couldn’t wear a mask. The diminutive female guard asked the woman what kind of illness she had and even after she was told it was asthma there was a lot of hemming and hawing.

At first I thought, how shitty of the government to make the businesses and ultimately their employees responsible for facing people’s wrath in increasingly tense times. Besides, I doubt most of these Covid bouncers have any training in determining which illnesses may or may not qualify so putting the onus on them to make safety decisions seems quite reckless.

Moreover, aren’t there provincial health privacy laws that specifically prevent random people demanding answers to exactly these types of questions? Aren’t business owners opening themselves up to lawsuits if they follow the city bylaw? Or do municipal laws supersede provincial legislation now?

Maybe until they get their act together we should #defundthestate

It’s that time of year again when government rolls out the “get your flu shot!” propaganda under the usual auspices of “keeping everyone safe”.

Well, you know…government.

Now I know that there are questions about the safety of flu vaccines, some of which (especially those indicated for very young children) contain thimerosal as a preservative, but that’s not what I’m talking about.

There are anecdotal indications in the news, and of course I have my own personal experiences with not contracting seasonal bugs while those around me (who proudly got the jab) got repeatedly sick, but these are hardly objective. So for this post I wanted to do a more thorough analysis using the statistics being provided by the very people making the claim that the flu shot keeps you safer: https://www.ontario.ca/page/flu-facts

On the same page that touts the flu shot as “the most effective way to protect yourself and your family from the flu”, the “Flu Facts” page links to Google’s flu tracker to provide yearly data on the infectious disease: http://www.google.org/flutrends/about/

The flu vaccine wasn’t widely promoted by the government until 2008 but has been promoted for kids since 2004. These dates, along with historical population numbers, provide a good basis to work with.

Here are the results of that work:

I split up the values into two ranges (pre-2008 and post-2008) for which complete data sets were available. For example, although flu data is available for 2003, it’s only for a portion of that year so I excluded it. Similarly, since 2015 isn’t finished yet, I left it out. The above numbers are condensed from a larger data set which you can download as an Excel spreadsheet (.xls / .xlsx), or an Open Office / Libre Office spreadsheet (.ods), and you can always recreate the calculations from the sources I linked to above.

Of course it would be a wild leap to say that you are more likely to contract the flu because of the introduction of the flu vaccine (though this may actually be true), I think that this result demonstrates that the inverse claim is also dubious. In fact, it looks like the trend for influenza infections is actually climbing rather than receding.

What’s unfortunate is that many people, often the same ones that uphold objective science and reject theology, are willing to entirely and instantly reject any such claims when they’re contrary to those pushed forward by the “authorities”. Sounds like dogmatic religion to me, but what do I know, I must just be a bitter anti-vaxxer.

I didn’t.

Instead of spending an hour to stuff a flimsy paper ballot into a flimsy paper box that’s manned by a well-meaning geriatric every four years and then using the remaining time exercising my “right” to wallow and complain when things inevitably go wrong, I choose to spend 99.998% of my time (yeah…do the math) making an actual difference. Trying to, anyways.

To put it bluntly, if you voted for any politician then it’s you who have no “right to complain” (as statists are fond of blathering), when the government that you implicitly “granted” the ability to fuck you over, fucks you over. I mean, you actually went out of your way to do that!

Slavery: involuntary subjection to another or others. Slavery emphasizes the idea of complete ownership and control by a master…

“The federal government and the provincial and territorial governments all have laws that provide rights and freedoms: laws against discrimination in employment and accommodation, consumer protection laws, environmental laws and, in the area of criminal law, laws that give rights to witnesses, victims and persons accused of crimes, to name only a few.

…

Section 1 of the Charter says that governments may limit Charter rights so long as those limits are ones that a free and democratic society would accept as reasonable*. It is also possible for governments to pass laws that take away some rights under the Charter. Under section 33 of the Charter (sometimes called the “notwithstanding clause”), Parliament or a legislature can make a particular law exempt from certain sections of the Charter – the fundamental freedoms (in section 2), the legal rights (in sections 7 to 14) and the equality rights (in section 15).”

http://www.pch.gc.ca/eng/1355760105725/1355760725223

* – Do you remember the “democratic” vote that took place for this? And exactly how “free” are Canadians when they need to be “granted” rights and freedoms, need to ask government for permission to marry someone, may not ingest anything that government doesn’t allow, do anything to their bodies that’s not government approved, are indebted to the government for their entire lives (and beyond) based on some non-existent “social contract” that they implicitly agreed to the moment that they popped out of the womb, and so on?

Although it’s lacking teeth,  an op-ed piece in the National Post fairly succinctly summarizes what I’ve been blathering on about for God-only-knows how long now. You don’t need to have a PoliSci degree to see what’s happening but although I doubt I’ll ever be able to shake my ageing parents’ (and many of their generation’s) scorn at my “naiveté”, “ignorance”, and “radical” views on government, at least I know I’m in fine scholarly company.

…the prime minister seems to have the unchecked power to decide when the House should be in session, when elections should occur, and even, in some circumstances, when their governments do or do not have the confidence of the House.

In the past I’ve referred to this as fascism, sometimes as a dictatorship, and often as a tyranny, but as I’ve tried to point out labels ultimately matter far less than deeds.

In the House, the prime minister and government have considerable control over day-to-day operations. This allows governments not only to set the agenda, but to carry it out with ease. The prime minister commands the steadfast loyalty of his MPs, largely through a carrot-and-stick approach; co-operative MPs might be rewarded with cabinet posts or coveted committee positions, while rogues can be — and at times are — punished with removal from caucus or even barred from running as a candidate for the party in future elections. All of these are vestiges of prime ministerial power. The party caucus has little leverage with which to counterbalance the prime minister’s power because party leaders are chosen (and replaced) by the party at large, rather than by the caucus. Thus, the government’s MPs have no effective mechanism through which to stand their ground against a very powerful leader or effectively represent his or her constituents.

Critics regularly cite our seemingly dizzying array of market choices as proof that government has little control in our day-to-day lives. Although they can hardly provide a straight and articulate answer without sneering derision, state supporters are often stumped by simple facts. For example, all of the so-called “choices” that the so-called “free market” offers are all directly controlled by government.

No?

Okay, name any product or service in Canada that doesn’t require government legal authorization, licensing, approval, etc. In other words, you have only the choices that government allows and you’re coerced, backed by threats of violence and imprisonment, into paying for this through taxes. Yes, you can buy things on the black market but you face the wrath of government if you decide thusly to exercise your “free choice” and of course you’re guilty until you can prove otherwise (which they can still arbitrarily reject).

Because they’re now stumped, government lackeys immediately pivot their argument to deflect by claiming that this is necessary to “keep us safe”. To this I would simply suggest cracking open a newspaper – the evidence of how government doesn’t keep us safe is in the news pretty much on a daily basis. Whether this involves food, health, personal safety, privacy, and a litany of other claims about protections, there are regular and glaring examples of how this simply isn’t true.

The statist argument typically changes course once again at this point to demand that nothing – our hospitals, roads, water and electrical systems, etc. – would exist without government. I’ve addressed these obviously specious arguments a number of times in the past but I will concede that government vehicles with government employees do sometimes drive up to a pothole, and one labourer and three supervisors spend three to four weeks filling it with a cop or two gladly accepting extorted taxpayer money to text or browse the web on their cell phones or chat with the crew, while out of sight pedestrians and cars are left to their own devices to share the dangerous inches left for them. Sounds an awful lot like the lazy welfare whores that government is keen to trot out to justify how we should receive even less state “benefits”, doesn’t it?

In other words, government supplies a few services through a wasteful, overpriced, badly (if at all) regulated process, something that is typically done far more efficiently by the private sector. This makes sense – the private business has to look out for their bottom line, government can just raise taxes and you’ll be brutalized or extorted by “authorities” and go to jail if you don’t like it. There’s no incentive for government to be efficient or benefit citizens in any way, and every single government institution behaves according to this.

Don’t believe? Just try and apply for any government “benefits” to see how hard your loving, benign government works for you. Call up a government “service” phone line and see for yourself how much service you receive. While you’re at it, try calling the cops when you actually need them – I have and that’s why I know better.

Rather than becoming more like a system of presidential executive authority, this situation has left Canadian prime ministers in a position more akin to historical monarchs. The evolution of Westminster democracy in Canada is very much a story about the struggle to wrestle power away from the Crown and shift it to Parliament, and specifically the House of Commons, our primary democratic body and check on unfettered prime ministerial power. The ability of prime ministers to retain and use these Crown powers, alongside other powers over MPs and the House of Commons, is resulting in a situation where prime ministers have the power to make decisions, partisan and otherwise, that limit or negate Parliament’s role as a guardian for accountability in our democratic system.

This is not simply about politics or even personalities. Almost all recent prime ministers have used these powers to try to advance their partisan interests. What it is about is the erosion of our democratic institutions and the effect on democratic governance.

The next rhetorical recourse of any good government lapdog is to state that, yeah, okay, maybe government isn’t perfect but we have “checks and balances” to ensure that things more or less work out for most people. And if we don’t like it we can vote in someone else!

These are other points I’ve addressed at length and are yet more claims that can be factually rebutted with a mountain of evidence to the contrary (this blog is filled with it). And while it’s claimed that the media would surely alert us to these issues it’s easy to demonstrate that this is highly unlikely to be the case. Unless you seek out increasingly derided alternative sources you will only know what government and friends want you to know.

If your final argument is that people are too stupid to know what’s good for them, hence the need for unquestionable government, then kindly shut your ignorance hole – you’ve just brilliantly insisted that you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.

Put this all together and the will of the people is entirely irrelevant and, in fact, something to be suppressed.

It’s at this point when state defenders throw up their hands and exasperatedly exclaim, “Oh well! Then I guess we must be living under a King or Queen then, huh?!”

Yeah, smart guy. Flip over your Canadian money or do a Wikipedia search – Canada is a monarchy and whether the titular head is the queen or Harper the effect is the same.