Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Blogging Tories Vs. the Gag Law

It looks like my friends over at Blogging Tories are a threat to democracy.

Or so say a couple of ex-Tories who have launched a complaint with Elections Canada, claiming the site infringes on the infamous election gag law.

“They’re using a third-party agency to get elected,” fumes Eugene Parks, one of the complainers.

Is this the kind of society we are evolving into? Do people really think it should be illegal to express opinions on a website?

It’s unlikely of course anything will come from this ridiculous complaint.

The election gag law, after all, is designed to prevent people from “buying” elections. It is only triggered when there are election advertising expenditures above a certain limit.

Anything posted on the Internet is outside of its draconian reach --- for now.

Should the Liberals win this election, however, watch for the gag law to be expanded to include internet communications.

That’s why the Supreme Court’s ruling to approve the gag law was so dangerous. Once you accept the notion that election speech can be curtailed you start down a scary road.

Who knows where we will end up?

1 comment:

Wild said...

Hi Gerry,

Gag laws are double edged swords and end up becoming weapons against those who are not incumbents.

It is a tragedy that the door was opened for this type of citizen control.

I doubt that an investigation will yield any wrong-doing by bloggers or the Conservative party but I can imagine that laws will be crafted to be able to control even them.