Montréal, 14 avril 2001  /  No 81
 
 
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Harry Valentine is a free-market activist. He lives in Eastern Ontario.
 
OPINION
  
CANADA BECOMING TOTALITARIAN
 
by Harry Valentine
  
  
          The Federal Justice Department is announcing a new law to control gang activities in Canada. The police will be given more powers to investigate gang activity, including breaking the law in the course of undertaking their duties. Anyone who associates with a gang member could be arrested and imprisoned. These proposed laws are supposed to be aimed at motorcycle gangs.
 
Born to be wild 
  
          Motorcycle gangs have been claimed to involve themselves in prostitution trade as well as the drug trade. In nations such as Holland and Switzerland, prostitution is legal and so are many drugs which are illegal in Canada. Those same nations have very large populations who ride on motorized two-wheeled vehicles, except they have no motorcycle gangs involved in the prostitution and drug trade. The politicians and bureaucrats in Ottawa are aware of this fact, yet they refuse to accept that their own anti-prostitution and anti-drug laws are the very reason as to why such activity has moved into the underground economy. 
  
          The sensible solution for Canadian politicians and bureaucrats to implement would be to legalise prostitution and drugs. Within a week, the prices would drop in both activities. Many smokers of marijuana may choose to grow their own plants; in fact, they would have little choice but to do so and keep it secret from people who depend on selling the marijuana at high prices. In time, the demand for marijuana would drop and people who previously sold marijuana at high prices will look to other more profitable areas of business. 
  
          However, the sellers of high-priced marijuana have no fear of a sudden drop in the demand or price of the product they sell. The marijuana sellers know only too well that the government officials will do everything in their power to keep the demand for marijuana very high, its supply very low and its price quite astronomical. 
  
  
     « The marijuana sellers know only too well that the government officials will do everything in their power to keep the demand for marijuana very high, its supply very low and its price quite astronomical. » 
 
  
          The government's own policies and actions are creating the very situation it is trying to combat via its new draconian anti-gang laws. In the beginning, any group of people riding motorcycles could be pulled over by the police at any time, on any public road. A group of people who are riding on motorcycles looks like a motorcycle gang... and the new law gives the police power to investigate. The anti-gang law will go further than groups of people riding on motorcycles however. The anti-gang law gives the state the power to investigate any group of people it so chooses. The right to the freedom of association may exist in Canada's constitution; however it is a right which government officials are conspiring to undermine, on the pretense that they are trying to control motorcycle gangs. 
  
          The government's officials and bureaucrats know full well that they can use the precedents from Holland and Switzerland to control gangs which engage in the prostitution and drug trade. However, using such a precedent would deny the government officials the chance to expand their power, their prestige, their status and their public image by curtailing everybody's rights. Once they get their precedent, they may legally use it to discourage people from associating with each other in groups... or gangs. A group of people organising a political meeting could find themselves being harassed by the police, in Canada's future. 
  
          The repressive nightmares which once existed in Soviet Russia could become reality in Canada. Canada is taking those crucial but necessary first steps on the road to becoming a totalitarian state. In the future, a group of university science students could find themselves arrested as criminals, if they got together in a group to discuss transferring the THC-producing gene from a marijuana plant into a dandelion plant, or a cabbage plant. 
 
 
 
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