Guess what? According to the Criminal Code of Canada, Frank Miller's "Sin City" and just about every other violent graphic novel is illegal

I don't have a strong opinion on legalized prostitution one way or another. Victimless crimes are not something that I spend much time worrying about. So as long as the prostitute isn't underage, or a victim of sex traffickers or an abusive pimp (the punishment for whom I think spending decades in jail would be appropriate), and it's done in private and not on my street corner, I couldn't care less.

Having said that, the federal government has just proposed a bill to regulate prostitution that must be the most ridiculous and confusing crime bill in the history of Canada.

It makes the selling of sexual services legal, but not in public places where it remains illegal, and it makes all advertising and communication for the sale of sex illegal. But wait, it gets more confusing by making all purchasing of sexual services illegal.

So what that means is that the only way sex can legally be sold in Canada, other than the traditional way of marrying a rich husband, is if a prostitute, in a private location, telepathically realizes that the person they are with wants to buy sex, and removes the money from that client's wallet or purse without their knowledge.

Yeah, it's that preposterous.

But more worrisome, while reading through the proposed bill, was something I'd never heard of before with its references to the illegality of "crime comics."

The new prostitution bill refers to them as part of Section 163 of the Criminal Code, so I went and looked it up and here is the relevant section:

Corrupting morals

• 163. (1) Every one commits an offence who
  • (a) makes, prints, publishes, distributes, circulates, or has in his possession for the purpose of publication, distribution or circulation any obscene written matter, picture, model, phonograph record or other thing whatever; or
  • (b) makes, prints, publishes, distributes, sells or has in his possession for the purpose of publication, distribution or circulation a crime comic...

• Motives irrelevant

  (5) For the purposes of this section, the motives of an accused are irrelevant.
• (6) [Repealed, 1993, c. 46, s. 1]
• Definition of “crime comic”
  (7) In this section, “crime comic” means a magazine, periodical or book that exclusively or substantially comprises matter depicting pictorially
  • (a) the commission of crimes, real or fictitious; or
  • (b) events connected with the commission of crimes, real or fictitious, whether occurring before or after the commission of the crime.

• Marginal note:Obscene publication

  (8) For the purposes of this Act, any publication a dominant characteristic of which is the undue exploitation of sex, or of sex and any one or more of the following subjects, namely, crime, horror, cruelty and violence, shall be deemed to be obscene.

That is just about the most subjective, preposterous and unenforcable law I've ever read.

What exactly is "undue" exploitation of sex, crime, horror, cruelty and violence, as opposed to say, the amount that the government and courts would consider "due"???

This law seemingly makes graphic novels like Frank Miller's Sin City series, which is both brilliantly creative and rife with all those elements in extreme and egregious amounts, illegal in Canada. The same might be said for HBO's wildly popular Game of Thrones. Are we going to see RCMP raids on Chapters/Indigo bookstores now? The library at my son's high school is filled with Japanese Manga graphic novels which would easily be considered illegal by the Criminal Code's definition. Does that mean that we can expect a mass arrest of the leadership of the Toronto District School Board?  As appealing as that prospect may be considering the other forms of child abuse the TDSB perpetrates, jailing them for stocking school libraries with "crime comics" is absurd.

It's understandable, and even laudable that the government would want to discourage prostitution. But the new bill by which it is attempting to achieve that goal is obviously a predestined failure. Even more significantly, the silly new bill highlights an urgent need to get rid of the deadwood in Canada's legal system.

Not Very Happy Hookers

The, deranged, "politically" correct revisions to prostitution-related terminology, as promoted on rabble.ca, is detailed more HERE.

In related news, Canada's Supreme Court has struck down current prostitution laws and given Parliament a year to re-write them. 

Canada's Supreme Court rules prohibition against making fun of "protected" groups is unconstitutional

In its ruling in the Whatcott case, the Supreme Court made an important statement.

While upholding the validity of certain aspects of Canada's Hate Speech legislation it did rule that:

.. expression that “ridicules, belittles or otherwise affronts the dignity of” does not rise to the level of ardent and extreme feelings constituting hatred required to uphold the constitutionality of a prohibition of expression in human rights legislation.  Accordingly, those words in s. 14(1)(b) of the Code are not rationally connected to the legislative purpose of addressing systemic discrimination of protected groups and they unjustifiably infringe freedom of expression.  Consequently, they are constitutionally invalid and must be struck from s. 14(1)(b).

So while it's not ok to say that people of a certain group should be discriminated against, we can keep making fun of them for their stupid cultural or other practices.

Which must come as a relief to Canadian comedians - at least those who haven't had to pay fines based on idiotic Human Rights Commission rulings.

UPDATE:  A good review of the ruling by Jon Kay in the National Post

Uh-oh..Vice President Joe Biden admits gun control legislation won't make a difference in affecting mass shootings

Hey Joe, you work for Obama - get with the program! You're not supposed to tell the truth in public.



h/t Small Dead Animals

CUPW bosses using union dues to fund a hateful agenda reiterates the need for Bill C-377

It was a grey, drizzly, crappy day this Friday morning. Looking outside should make one for a moment of those hardworking Canadians, serving their fellow citizen and doing a job for the government by making sure you get your mail delivered on time.

To get that job, the mail sorters, the carriers, the truck drivers, the front line workers manning the post offices were all forced to join a union, The Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW).

If you are a postal worker who doesn't like what the union does, it doesn't matter, you had to join. If you think union politics are insidious, it doesn't matter, you had to join. If you don't want union dues deducted from every one of your paychecks, it doesn't matter, it gets taken from you and you have no say over it.

I've worked in unionized environments. For the government. the vast majority of union members are decent, hardworking people. They do their job, cash their cheques, and for the most part, their only involvement with the union is getting a free calendar from them once a year and the odd notice for a union barbecue or holiday party. Not much in return for the hundreds of dollars culled from each employee over the course of each year from their weekly salaries.

Union employees and representatives are another mater. With few exceptions, the ones intimately involved with the union are the worst, most inept employees, and are prone to pettiness and sleaziness. They focus on the union as a way of protecting their ability to be inept and sleazy in the workplace.

The union bosses, who make big salaries and don't even work in your workplace, are the worst of the lot. They run their operations like Stalinist fiefdoms. They live lavishly while pretending to be regular Joes. They travel the country and beyond with large expense accounts and little concern for how the money is spent. Because for them the cash keeps coming and coming, every week, out of the workers' dues.

Think of the history of the long and intricate involvement between unions and organized crime and that tells you much about union "ethics."

Union bosses love playing the big shot, taking money from regular working people to pay for their depraved, insidious political goals. The Canadian Union of Public Employees regularly sends its bosses on "solidarity missions" to the communist dictatorship in Cuba or to prostrate themselves at the feet of authoritarian buffoon  Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. All this on the dime of union members, who are never told how much it costs.

Public service unions in Canada do not pay taxes nor do they disclose their spending.

For the guy and gal postal worker out there in the cold today, doing the hard job to let those union bosses live it up, the worst part is, they don't even get to be told by the unions how their money is spent. The union bosses want to keep it that way for a very logical reason. They know out much disgust and outrage they would face from their own membership upon seeing how their money funds the waste and malfeasance of the  high-living bosses.

The current example is the all-expenses excursion CUPW is sending six "delegates" to in Brazil for a "Let's Destroy Israel" conference. In a facade of trasparency, the union is letting anyone from its membership apply to go. But the twist is that, "Priority will be given to members who have experience with issues and activities related to this trip.." In other words, their cronies who share the hateful, politicized fanaticism of the union bosses get the largesse dispensed to them. While the average postie who isn't interested in destroying Israel is left to pick up the tab.

Union members have a right to expect their dues to be used to support workplace safety, fairness and collective bargaining; not the pet Jew-hate or communist cheerleading projects of the union kings.

Bill C-377, which has passed its Second Reading and has gone to the House of Commons Finance Committee, has the union commissars in a full-blown panic. It will force unions to disclose their spending on items over $5000. The unions are apoplectic with fear of having to tell the people whose money they squander exactly how they are doing it.

The unions have become so enraged, one of their stooges, a CUPE organizer named Humberto da Silva, who makes videos for the union-financed website rabble.ca, produced a video in which he compared Prime Minister Stephen Harper to Adolf Hitler because of the introduction of the spending transparency Bill.

Transparency wasn't actually big on Hitler's to-do list. Like CUPW's bosses, making life bad for Jews was. If  CUPW and some of the other union honchos want to find Hitler comparisons, they need not point all the way to the Prime Minister's office in Ottawa. The nearest mirror would do much better.

Immigration Minister Kenney attempts to expedite deportation of foreign criminals

And naturally The Opposition wants to keep criminals here, since that is a major part of their support base