1mo ago

Canadians on Lemmy, Help Create a Petition Against Trampling Civil Liberties

There is a bill which was rushed through in June 2024 known as Bill C-70. https://www.parl.ca/legisinfo/en/bill/44-1/C-70 It was reported by Committee that they were not granted sufficient time to work on the bill.

Numerous people have reported a significant number of flaws with the final bill, far more than enough to repeal the effects of the bill and rework it. Note that quotations are intentionally only obtained from websites provided by the Government of Canada.

Information on Petitions

A petition is not allowed to contain links, but quoting text from government websites may add strength to a petition.

Proposed Petition

Petition to the Government of Canada

Whereas:

Members of Parliament were denied sufficient time to review Bill C-70 and to properly fix it in Committee;

Senate Member: "Colleagues, we are taking less time to review this consequential bill than we did with anti-terrorism bills in the last three decades — in 2001, 2012, 2015 and 2019 — all of which were passed quickly enough in the heat of the moment and were flawed.";

Senate Report: "Given the importance of the subject matter of Bill C-70, the committee is of the opinion that it would have benefitted from additional time to study this legislation.";

Thought crime: Canadians who align in thought with a foreign entity can receive life-in-prison even when no association with said foreign entity exists; and

House Member: C-70 "has manifest flaws in it that have been raised to all of us through a variety of sources in civil society, academia and from ordinary Canadians."

We, the undersigned, citizens and residents of Canada, call upon the Government of Canada to:

1 Repeal/revert/cancel/undo/reverse Bill C-70 and its effects; and

2 Revisit the issues raised by Bill C-70 in sufficiently long Parliamentary sessions and Committee meetings to get things right.

Next Steps

You can help! A petition has not yet been created. If you are willing to assist with the process of creating a petition, your help would be greatly appreciated. Feel free to contact me if you can provide support.

I am hopeful that Lemmy users will come together to create a petition, even though it means sharing your contact information with someone online.

Alternatively, if you are someone who could get maybe 6 friends or colleagues to agree to sign up for petition accounts, you are welcome to create the petition amongst your group.

https://mander.xyz/post/26444218 That link gives information about creating a petition account.

Feel free to "save" this post and revisit it.

You may also decide it is worth sharing this information with other people you know outside of Lemmy.

5 comments

Once the election is officially called on Sunday, will the bill be considered dead and have to be reintroduced in the next parliament? In effect, don't petitions also die when the bill associated with them dies?
It may as well be delayed until the bill is re-introduced with the next government, as it may not even be re-tabled in the House with its current deficiencies.
- Quite the opposite regarding the petition. It is true that there is essentially no chance of any of the outstanding petitions being read. What is important, though, is trying to get this petition going through as soon as we can. A petition which makes it onto the website will remain visible to the Members of Parliament and to Canadians in general, even after dissolution of Parliament, bringing the potential for a much wider audience.
  The very fact that petitions are not allowed to include links demonstrates the risk-adverse technological policy applied to Members of Parliament when it comes to links, such as pointing out a thread on Lemmy. But they'll gladly visit a link on one of their own websites if asked to do so.
  As for the possible methods for undoing a bill, that's why the wording of the petition asks for multiple possible actions, depending upon the timing.
  Edit: Upvoting you for taking the time to raise good points.
  
  So, from my understanding, the bill dies, but the petition persists. Thanks for clearing that up!
  
  Perhaps I explained it poorly. Getting a petition published now would make it visible to the public. It could have become a talking point.
  According to the official website, petitions will not survive dissolution and will need to be recreated. Since petitions which make it to the website remain visible to the public, it could have become a historial petition which would have still been visible and searchable.
  
  As it stands, we now just have a post on Lemmy which will get buried amongst the other Lemmy posts. But approximately 21 days after Parliament resumes, a petition could get created. And so people who are interested in collaborating on this petition happening at that time or on other possible topics can still get in touch with me at any time.
  The bill has already received royal assent and has passed into law, flaws and all. It is still perhaps a lot more reasonable to ask for a bill to be undone than to have people draft another 100 pages of a bill which only undoes some changes.
  Why raise the concept now? The primary and only stated reason which I could find for pushing the bill to become law expediently without due consideration and without necessary corrections was to be able to complete the registry and other parts of legislation by June 2025 or perhaps slightly later, ahead of an October 2025 election. This reason will no longer exist. Hence it would seem logical to create a new bill to repeal these changes and then spend the needed time to get the changes right in yet another bill.
  As it stands, a lot of people may be going to jail who have nothing to do with foreign interference. As I said, do not threaten anyone, do not intimidate anyone, be very careful not to cause any damage during a protest, do not make use of violence, and a whole host of other things which could be used as justification for putting someone unliked into jail for life. No requirement exists anymore to prove any link to foreign interference and the wording makes it appear that it does not even matter if no such link exists.
  If someone invades the country and you use violence, could you end up being placed in jail? Is it ridiculous? You tell me what you think.