Puck’s Blog

It failed once, thankfully, but that doesn’t mean their corporate backers don’t want them to try again.

The Conservative Party has released its platform and it devotes a half-page to copyright that leaves little doubt that it plans to bring back Bill C-61 and continue to support ACTA. According to the platform:

A re-elected Conservative Government led by Stephen Harper will reintroduce federal copyright legislation that strikes the appropriate balance among the rights of musicians, artists, programmers and other creators and brings Canada’s intellectual property protection in line with that of other industrialized countries, but also protects consumers who want to access copyright works for their personal use. We will also introduce tougher laws on counterfeiting and piracy and give our customs and law enforcement services the resources to enforce them. This will protect consumers from phoney and sometimes dangerous products that are passed off as reliable brand-name goods.

Read more at Michael Geists’ site (found via BoingBoing)

The upcoming election has me worried that our multi-party system might just hand the Conservatives a stronger government.  Here in Burnaby-Douglas the NDP and Liberal candidates are running extremely close, and both are legitimate options for a “not a Conservative” vote, but the local elections don’t take that into account and it’s worrisome.

I’m also baffled by the Conservative Party’s platform and that anyone would buy the bullshit they’re spreading.  Their ads are pushing things that nobody I know is incredibly worried about, aside from promises of lower taxes, which any Canadian knows is either a lie or just a reason for them to cut the social services we’re so proud of here.

“Tough on crime” is something that’s supposed to get you votes in Canada?  I got a flyer from the Conservatives that talked about how prisoners have tattooing rooms and that’s a luxury and the Conservatives would get rid of them.  Oh good, so then prisoners can go back to sharing dirty needles to get their prison tats done in secret and they can spread around HIV and hepatitis.  And then they get released…  Surely the Conservatives know that’s the reason for those rooms, but they don’t care.

I can’t even figure out why Canadians are backing them so much.  I’m pro-business, but our Conservatives want to make Canada more like America and surely every single Canadian can see how that’s working out for them there — collapsing markets, unending wars, civil liberties being thrown out the window and corporate interests controlling the government as the entire country seems on a nosedive to complete disaster.

I’m normally a pretty solid Liberal voter.  The party suits my centrist (for a Canadian) beliefs in the free market (with a watchful eye) and social services (for the important things).  The NDP are generally too business unfriendly for me, though I’d rather have them in than the Conservatives.  But I’m actually thinking about voting NDP in my riding simply because he’s the incumbent and from what I’ve seen has the better chance of beating the Conservative.  I don’t want to “split the vote” so that we get some ridiculous outcome like the Conservative candidate getting 35% of the vote but winning anyway because the Liberal and NDP each got 32%.

Even an NDP government gone crazy socialist could be recovered from. But we might not recover from the Conservative party’s pro-corporate, anti-freedom laws like the Canadian DMCA, and I’m scared.

Update: Yup, it appears the NDP is ahead, but there’s a strong danger the Conservative candidate could take advantage of a vote split and win our riding.  Ugh, I’m voting commie this year.