[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by SebC

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/...rticle2345969/

Good article

Anyone who has dared to question these measures has been branded as “soft on crime.” But last week, the spin stopped working. The online-surveillance bill does not just put criminals in Conservative crosshairs – anyone with an Internet connection is now a target. And so, when Vic Toews asked Canadians to choose between the Conservatives and child porn, we chose the latter.

But behind the backlash is an inconvenient truth: We rarely stand up for civil liberties, except when our own are at stake. The vast majority of us don’t see ourselves as potential criminals, and so the impact of mandatory minimums seems remote, at best. When we are trying to get the bad guys off the streets, the thinking goes, who are judges to stand in the way?

Except that is exactly what judges are supposed to do. Last Monday, for instance, within hours of Toews’s child-porn pronouncement, Madam Justice Anne Molloy of the Ontario Superior Court struck down as unconstitutional one of the mandatory minimum sentences imposed by the Tackling Violent Crime Act of 2008.

The Prime Minister’s reaction was telling: “Canadians believe that the courts have not been tough enough in dealing with gun crime,” he told the House of Commons on Tuesday. “This government is determined to make sure that we have laws that can deal with serious gun crime.” In other words: laws that keep judges from judging.

But a free society needs judges like Anne Molloy: strong-willed jurists who defy political pressure. They are the ones who step in when our freedom, if not our individual self interest, is at stake. But the Conservative war on judges rejects this basic democratic principle. Instead, the government believes the judiciary should have little leeway in sentencing, and no leeway at all when police want private information about our online activities. All Canadians – not just criminals – will eventually pay the price.
The online-surveillance bill is the symptom, not the sickness. To protect our privacy, we must end the war on judicial discretion. Want to tell Vic Toews everything? Tell him this: Our judges are not standing with child pornographers when they protect our civil liberties.