We have a prime minister who insists that we cannot have a serious discussion about decriminalizing marijuana, because he can “predict with a lot of confidence” that marijuana will never be produced and sold by “respectable businesses run by respectable people.” And so, based apparently on the psychic powers of our leader, we continue at enormous public expense to make criminals out of many Canadians, most of whom wouldn’t dream of breaking any other laws. Case closed.
And yet cabinet minister John Baird reserves an almost profound compassion for citizens who don’t want to tell “how many bathrooms they have” – a disclosure we’re required to make for property-tax purposes (without anonymity), but not in fact on the census long form. The Conservative logic at the moment is that it’s better to disable an exemplary system rather than to risk penalizing a small number of people for not answering imaginary questions.
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Tabatha Southey, The Globe & Mail, July 16, 2010:
“Long-form census? Nah, we’ll ask Paul the octopus.”
(via thundertype)
