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Wednesday, July 02, 2008
Union Bosses Finally Taking on Gag Laws
Union bosses in British Columbia are going to court to take on Premier Gordon Campbell's election gag law.
So I wrote a column which appears in today's Vancouver Sun, to ask them: What took you guys so long?
Gag laws, after all, have been around at the federal level for a long time.
Up until now, however, union bosses and other leftist-leaning types thought they were a good idea because they supposedly stopped the "rich" from buying elections.
But in BC, Campbell's law will stifle union bosses, so suddenly gag laws are a bad thing and must be stopped.
I suspect, that other left-wing groups will also realize gag laws are bad thing when the next federal election rolls around and they are prevented from speaking out against the Harper government.
Too bad their ideological blinkers prevented them from seeing the dangers of these laws when they were first enacted.
Posted by Gerry Nicholls on July 2, 2008 | Permalink
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Comments
Gerry,
You incorrectly describe the situation. It is not as simple to say that either someone is for gag laws (meaning they would support ANY gag law) or they are againt them (meaning that they object to ALL gag laws). The latter, clearly, describes you but there is no reason to think the former ever was a correct description of the unions or anyone else, for that matter. Even when they did support some restrictions it was not a blanket support for any and all restrictions. Their position is much more nuanced than that. They argue that some sorts of restrictions can "enhance" democracy while others do not.
It might be true that their view is not principled at all and based solely on self-interest and it might also be true that no gag laws are justified. But simply from the position taken by the unions there is no reason to think that their view of gag laws has changed at all. It also is not obvious that all gag laws are anti-democratic any more than laws against vote buying are ("Hey, it's MY vote, so I should be able to sell it if I want to!").
Posted by: Fact Check | 2008-07-02 10:01:07 AM
Well, it IS legal to sell your vote in a democracy -- provided you sell it to an approved briber for the right bribe: namely, a politician promising favourable policies.
Posted by: Grant Brown | 2008-07-02 10:50:43 AM
The sole raison d'être of gag laws is to protect the turf of the players competing for power and to keep others out of the game. They can only be described as anti-democratic.
Posted by: Alain | 2008-07-02 12:18:52 PM
The sole raison d'être of gag laws is to protect the turf of the players competing for power and to keep others out of the game. They can only be described as anti-democratic.
Posted by: Alain | 2-Jul-08 12:18:52 PM
So if a newspaper had gotten the details of Operation Neptune and was preparing to publish them you would consider a gag order stopping publication to be inappropriate.
Posted by: The Stig | 2008-07-02 1:07:35 PM
Off topic Stig and nothing to do with my comment.
Posted by: Alain | 2008-07-02 4:17:34 PM
Restrictions on spending severely circumscribe democratic rhetoric. Money should be available from all over the world for any democratic party in any country. No limits on the amount should be imposed. We live and die in a global economy. We should not be afraid to welcome global input.
Posted by: Agha Ali Arkahn | 2008-07-02 9:27:21 PM
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