More politics stuff...

[felis_ultharus]

I'm really learning a lot about the specifics of government these days. For instance, contrary to what my high school social studies teacher and university political-science professor both told me, it seems a bill has to pass through the House of Commons completely before it gets to the Senate.

The same-sex marriage bill is in Committee right now. They're hearing from dozens of individuals and organizations, most of whom are antiqueer. I've been able to connect Harper to a few of them (he's given speeches at some of these organizations), and I think he's been stuffing homophobic speakers into these public meetings as a stalling tactic.

These right-wing groups are really alarming because they're so sneaky. Take the so-called "Centre for Cultural Renewal". Go to their website, and they say nothing about about being a right-wing, antiqueer organization. They say nothing about queer people at all. It's all feel-good PR with veiled comments about "reintegrating religion and philosophy with politics".

Stealth fundamentalism is the way of the future for these antiqueer groups. They've gotten very good at disguising their true aims, because they know Canadians would never support them. Like that American Christian organization trying to take over the Conservative Party, they're trying to sneak in through the backdoor.

Meanwhile, I was amused at two bills introduced yesterday at almost the same time (the sheer randomness struck me):

• C-406, to change the name of Cambridge riding to Cambidge-North Dumfries.
  
• C-407, to legalize assisted suicide (euthanasia) in Canada.

Could you imagine if the euthanasia bill sailed right through parliament without controversy, while the Cambridge-North Dumfries one ripped the fragile coalitions to shreds and became the most debated bill of the year? Mass hysteria and violence in the streets as Canadian society was torn apart into warring militias of Cambridgites versus Cambridge-North Dumfriesians, digging trenches and going to war?

In better news, the Inuit of Labrador passed their last major hurdle to getting their Land Claims Agreement made official (it passed third reading in the House). That's one piece of good legislation that's made it through this year, at least.

ETA: Okay, now the Liberals are saying that Harper might manage to stall the same-sex bill until fall. I don't know what Harper hopes to achieve by stalling. His popularity drops and support for same-sex marriage rises with every passing day.

I found this marvellous poll on harper_sucks.

Comments

[jenjoou.livejournal.com]

ugh, right-wing ninjas. As if it were scary enough that fundamentalist Christians are trying to dictate our countries politics, now they're trying to do it while we're not looking. This could make me paranoid...

And at least if anyone gets seriously injured in the Cambridge vs. Cambridge-North Dumfries war and the pain gets to be too much, they'll have the option of requesting euthanasia.

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

I'm already pretty paranoid about it. It's not so bad when they're just sneaking into the Conservative Party, but sooner or later, they're going to figure out that they can make greater headway taking over the Liberals and NDP simultaneously.

This sort of thing has already happened. One white supremacist group tried to infiltrate and environmental organization in the US recently.

In Canada, no one's noticed that the Green Party took a major leap to the right recently. The NDP got a better rating on environmental issues from Greenpeace this year.

I hope this minority government gets people interested in their country's politics and gets them voting and following the news. We've left this thing on autopilot for too long, and it's getting close to crashing.