Section 47.1 of the Canadian Wheat Board Act says:

The Minister shall not cause to be introduced in Parliament a bill that would exclude any [grain]…unless:

1. the Minister has consulted with the board about the exclusion or extension; and
2. the producers of the grain have voted in favour of the exclusion or extension, the voting process having been determined by the Minister.

The Federal Court (a special federal court that rules on civil suits against the government) ruled that the introduction of Bill C-18, An Act to Reorganize the Canadian Wheat Board, violated the rules of “manner and form” introduced by the Wheat Board Act. I’d say the Speaker should have refused to allow the reading of the Bill. But given that the Bill has been passed by both Houses, what should the Governor General do?

This interesting article about British Parliament explains that it is reasonable that Parliament be bound by “manner and form”: whenever the sovereign is an entity other than an actual person, there must be rules to determine the sovereign’s will. Parliament is sovereign, and so must follow manner and form rules; and because Parliament is sovereign, they can pass manner and form rules to define their own will.

The Clarity Act is a similar piece of manner and form legislation.

If the manner and form rules have not been followed, Parliament has not actually passed an Act, they’ve just made vacuous statements. So the Governor General has no act to sign. The Governor General does not have the power to pass Acts on his own, so if he decides to sign some piece of paper that resembles an Act, the courts should ignore that piece of paper.

The government should have amended the Canadian Wheat Board Act as a separate piece of legislation and there would have been no problem.

BC has automatic roadside suspensions for drivers with a blood alcohol content over 0.05. These suspensions are in addition to penalties under the Criminal Code for drivers with a BAC over 0.08. The BC Supreme Court just found the extra penalties for BACs over 0.08 to be unconstitutional.

The judge framed the roadside suspensions as a case where the police act as judge, jury and corrections officer. Obviously the Charter protects people against this kind of informal trial. But I’d argue that it’s not the police officer acting as a judge, it’s the breathalyzer. The police are stopping motorists and administering breathalyzers as they would normally, but then instead of the breathalyzer telling the police officer to recommend charges, the breathalyzer runs the trial and tells the police officer to administer punishment.

If breathalyzers are accurate beyond a reasonable doubt, there’s no reason why their ruling would be less just than that of a jury. For other crimes, our justice system is designed so that bias can only be applied into letting people go free, but that’s still unfair to society. A police officer can decide not to recommend charges, a Crown prosecutor can decide not to recommend a trial and a judge or jury can decide that there is insufficient evidence. Automated justice is juster justice.

It’s also worth pointing out that the reason BC had to use administrative penalties rather than a normal criminal charge is that the federal government has jurisdiction over the Criminal Code. Bill C-10, the Safe Streets and Communities Act, does a lot of things, but fighting drunk driving isn’t one of them. And it’s better to let BC experiment rather than immediately roll it out over the whole country. Which is why provinces should get jurisdiction over the Criminal Code or separate from Confederation.

CRTC regulates TV commercial loudness after 30 years of nonstop consumer complaints — next on the agenda: telegrams typed in ALLCAPS, parchments that are too crackly when unfurled.

Via CBC a cool, interactive, 360° video of the riots. They don’t look that bad. I would have felt safe.

“Striking postal workers seek public’s support”? I think they’re disastrously overestimating the goodwill Canadians have towards lazy, incompetent thieves.

The NDP and the Conservatives, both, are products of industrial capitalism: the former represent factory workers and the latter factory owners. Both love factories.

The Liberals and Bloc have shit the bed so thoroughly that progressive liberalism in Canada is essentially dead. In the absence of real change I’m adjusting my long-term plans to include an eventual escape to the Eurozone. Git while the gittin’s good — before things get so bad we’re ghettoized in a post-industrial econocalypse.

Enjoy the next five years, and shame on us all.

It’s not paranoia if they’re actually out to get you. I’ve avoided “liking” politicians on the Facebooks because of 1984, and it turns out I was totally right: Harper is a cryptofascist and Facebook is a telescreen.

Heil Harper!

Just kidding, I like that Iggy is taking actual stands and scoring rhetorical points this election — he collapsed QUICK last time. The linked article, above, locked me up as a Liberal this round.

This election vote ABC — Anything But Conservative.

Idiot Toronto mayor Bob Ford was sent up by NOW, and had city custodial workers scrap the paper where they found it. Click through for story:

I am currently reporting from a secret location somewhere in The Great White North. Without going into specific affiliations* my vote cannot determine the outcome of my local race, barring outlying events.

I’m left with a party vote — my candidate can’t win. I plan to cast for Federal funding so the candidate of my choice in the riding in which I eventually settle will be better able to undo whatever damage the Conservatives are able to wreak in this next cycle.

Essentially: when I vote GreeNDP in Toronto next time I want them to be able to afford signage.

Comments on this strategy? Make sense? I figure that we’re heading for another minority — what’s changed?

* (this election vote ABC — Anything But Conservative)

Zeb recently pointed me to the CBC’s Vote Compass app. You may have filled out a socialist/capitalist-libertarian/authoritarian test that’s popular online, but instead of asking you generic political questions, this one asks you about controversial issues in Canada. This results in a different centre of gravity than the international Political Compass test.

It’s quite a sophisticated application, with the ability to remove but not weight areas of concern and compare your answer with parties’ positions on an issue-by-issue basis. They missed an opportunity by not having the Share on Facebook option publish your score. In fact, given that it’s a Flash app, there’s no way to link to your score and the saving feature doesn’t seem to work.

The way it was produced sounds surprisingly rigorous and the political parties were given an opportunity to dispute the calibration. Relevant quotes and links to party documents are provided for each question. The questions about who you think would be the best Prime Minister seem kind of useless, but I’m assuming CBC is going to publish statistics from the app throughout the election.

The left-wing blogosphere has decided it’s rigged in some way or another, but I’m satisfied that it’s good enough. When anybody asks me for advice on who to vote for, this is where I’ll send them if I don’t know how to vote strategically in their particular district.