Do we believe in experts or do we believe in democracy?
I know that we can believe in the ability of experts to guide us while also believing in democracy, but at the end of the day one has to win out over the other.
This week the Trudeau Liberals took the odd step of saying that our elected officials should, and always will, acquiesce to the will of the experts, at least in this one area.
When it comes to approving pipelines, deploying troops, funding major infrastructure plans, it is the elected government of the day that makes the final decision. Yes, they take the views of various bureaucrats, agencies and advisors into account but the final decision rests with cabinet on so many files.
Not with guns.
In their new gun legislation, the Liberals said they do not believe that cabinet should have the power to overturn a decision of the RCMP no matter how egregious. This move, quite literally, flies in the face of democracy.
No one elects their local RCMP officer, their detachment head, the commissioner or anyone else within the Mounties. The RCMP are bureaucrats, bureaucrats with guns, and in every other aspect of their lives are subject to civilian or political oversight.
Yet somehow, when it comes to determining which firearms are legal to own in Canada and what classification those firearms should be, Justin Trudeau and his Liberals think that this is a matter only for police.
We have an entire apparatus called the National Energy Board that studies pipelines for years and then submits reports with recommendations that cabinet decides on. We have the Department of National Defence made up of the most experienced soldiers, sailors and airmen that make recommendations on troop deployments and yet it is cabinet that makes the decision.
But on guns we rely on a single bureaucrat named Murray A. Smith working out of a lab in Ottawa to make all decisions on firearms and no one can appeal.
Not long before the last election the Harper Conservatives changed the law to give cabinet the final say. They didn’t strip the RCMP of their power to classify guns, they simply said the decisions of the RCMP could be appealed to elected officials and if a case was made, overturned.
That is how it should be in a democracy.
Justin Trudeau thinks differently.
In his push to show a public concerned with gang shootings on the streets of our major cities he has pieced together a bill that creates more paperwork for law abiding gun owners but does nothing to tackle gang shootings.
He promised to get “assault weapons” off our streets and will claim that allowing the RCMP to have sole discretion to classify firearms will make us all safer.
Hardly.
Show me the stats that we have a rash of shootings with any semi-automatic rifle in Canada. Don’t point to school shootings in the United States because we are not them.
In a functioning democracy, hired bureaucrats, especially the ones with guns, answer to elected officials and not the other way around. The fact that so many in our politics and media are willing to reverse that tells me some sad and scary things about the current state of this country.
It makes no sense. If the Cabinet of the day feels the police are correct then they simply let it go. Why give up this oversight?
It make sense if your goal is to use the RCMP as a “front man” to ban large numbers of firearms by reclassifying them as prohibited firearms while having “plausible deniability”. Having given all RCMP oversight away, once the bans begin the Liberals can say “Don’t blame us, the experts at the RCMP decided this – and we can’t do anything about it anyway”.
Well, Trudeau already warned us about it when he said that China is a dictatorship and it is the system that allows government to accomplish its goals without democratic accountability
Commonsense Conservatism is what we need to get back to in this Great Country.
This majority Lib government seem’s to be out of control.
Hard to believe really.
This current government is not Liberal, they are extremists under the guise of a Liberal Banner….. no different than what has happened in Ontario for the last 14 yrs.
Well technically I DO NOT believe in a democracy as in that “majority rules” and I am not for that. I believe in the respect of law abiding minorities and in this I believe in a Constitutional Republic which is closer to what we really are. (That or the LGBTQ etc community has really done a number on us “in the majority” not to mention the gender confused and their bathrooms and pronouns…)
Just say……..NO! I as as law abiding gun owner am tired of being treated as a criminal and I doubt I’m the only one to have the RCMP dictate which guns I can have is not acceptable these are the people that put a 60 year old rifle magazine on the prohibited list because it fit a Charger pistol of which theirs 460 in Canada compared to what 2 million rifle they continue to say it was designed for the pistol but it’s been proven they existed some 40 years before the pistol was manufactured so with the stroke of a pen you wind up with 2 million criminals maybe less people would be pissed if the charger pistol was put on the prohibited list that would make more sense they have reduced their level of intelligence to that of the prime minister of this country! A whole new level of stupidity!?
There are no measures to counter gun violent gang related crimes in the new gun legislation. How can the prime minister lie to the public and get away with it. It will do nothing to stop criminals from owning and using guns. This proposed Bill is so stupid. Legally, I can transport my handgun and ammunition to a gun range but I have to apply for another permit (and wait weeks) to transport it, without ammo, to a gun repair shop. What stupidity, it makes no sense. Trudeau, as demonstrated, by playing Mr dress up in India is an embarrassment to all Candians and is out of touch with reality. He is also a lair. Come on 2019. Until then, protest to your MP about these lies about public safety. This gun law does nothing to protect the public. Add 10 years to the sentence of any crime with a firearm. That would maybe stop some gun fights but i doubt it. At least it would be 10 years with that criminal off the streets.