What Constitution?

I often use Canada as a model for things I don’t want to see happen here in the States, especially when it comes to gun control/crime issues.  Perhaps because Canada really is “close to home”, and it doesn’t take much of a stretch of the imagination for me to see Canada-style gun control implemented here in the US.

With that in mind, I find the following article especially disturbing.

Courts, particularly in gun cases, have begun to retreat from the idea that tainted evidence should be excluded from trials, legal experts say, pointing to a ruling this week from the Ontario Court of Appeal.

I like it when criminals are convicted of crimes, especially if that crime involves violence, or the use of a firearm.  However, I do not like it when the law is disregarded in making those convictions.  My deep and abiding concern is that I have seen a decent portion of the rights of the accused shredded in the name of the War on (Some) Drugs; and I mean that in the most personal sense.

It went on to say that even if the trial judge was right and L.B. was questioned and searched in breach of the Charter, evidence of the gun should be admitted at a trial anyway because any rights violations were not serious.

“Because any rights violations were not serious” is an absolutely terrifying statement to me.  Saying that means that the State values some of your “rights” more than other “rights”, which doesn’t really make them rights at all, now does it?

When I look at an utter disregard for the law like we’re starting to see in Canada, and then I couple it with the increasing trend here towards Nanny-Statism, I get concerned.  It’s not helping that the majority of the viable presidential candidates never met an authoritarian position that they didn’t like.

A loss of liberty, any liberty, is never a good thing.  Due process, at least in the US, is part of the Bill of Rights; and as I see due process eroding in Canada it really does make me afraid for us.

3 Comments

  1. Every American should be concerned. Canada’s been traveling down that slippery slope in much more aggressive fashion than the US – but the authoritarian elements inside the Republicrats love Canada, the implementation of the nanny state, the universal health care… It is frightening.

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