Criminal Code proves Chretien is an Oxymoron

By Jane Gaffin
web posted December 2, 2002

 

Whitehorse, Yukonslavia, Kanuckistan - The Bible of the law-enforcement business has become so complex that I, begrudgingly, invested in a new pocket edition of the Criminal Code of Canada for the year 2003.

It is two-inches thick; over 1 400 tissue-thin pages.

Among the 11 acts incorporated into the Code, one is the firearms act and another is the Constitution Act (Charter of Rights and Freedoms). They clash. Ottawa never charter-proofed the firearms act. To bind these two documents between the same covers has created an oxymoron. It's akin to painting lipstick and mascara on a pig in an attempt to disguise it as a lady.

I could rattle off 10 ways that law violates an individual's civil rights under the Charter, gun owner or not. I'd still be at least seven short, according to Bruce Hutton. The executive director of the Law-abiding, Unregistered Firearms Association (LUFA) was in Whitehorse recently to give a talk. He told a group of 115 concerned citizens that several firearms organizations hired graduate students last summer to study the firearms act and the Constitution Act. They identified no less than 17 ways in which the firearms act violates the Charter.

For example, there is: loss of the right to be presumed innocent; loss of the right to be immune from unreasonable search and seizure; loss of right to remain silent; loss of right to consult with an attorney; loss of the right to own private property (the right to own private property is the cornerstone of democracy). To boot, the loss of right to self-defense has been severely compromised.

How can public agents morally incorporate the firearms act and the Charter into one volume when the two acts clearly are at cross-purposes? The only answer is to say that the Liberals have free-rein to do whatever they please. And what they are doing is not pretty.

A LUFA meeting attendee referred to the Canadian system of democracy under the Liberals as a "demockery". Writer John Orth preferred the term "sham democracy".

In his excellent research piece titled "Is Canada a Free Nation?", Orth pointed out that the parliamentary system maintains the trappings of a participatory system. "In theory, power at the federal level is shared by three distinct structures: Parliament, the Senate and the Supreme Court.

"This division of power should act as a system of checks and balances, preventing any person or group of people from arrogating themselves excessive authority."

But the reality is just the opposite, Orth continued. "All three of these supposedly-independent bodies fall under the effective control of one man."

That one man is Prime Minister Jean Chretien.

Whenever ordinary people start talking about law, perhaps it is justified for lawyers to grind their teeth. However, in my opinion, it is the ordinary people -- you and me -- who are affected by law. Law should be based on reason and common sense, written in a simple, straight-forward fashion to be obtainable by everybody of average intelligence. United States Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas often advises: "Whenever possible, the Court and judges generally should adopt clear, bright-line rules that, as I like to say to my law clerks, you can explain to the gas station attendant as easily as to a law professor."

That philosophy was echoed by Stuart Whitley. He was conducting constitutional cases in Manitoba during the years when much litigation surrounded the actual meaning of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, following its enactment in 1982.

"Did we get it figured out?" I asked, a bit cynically, in a 2000 interview. "We're still working on it," mused Whitley, the-then Yukon deputy minister of Justice.

His two law books, "Criminal Justice and the Constitution" and "Jurisdiction in Criminal Law", rely heavily on literary references extracted from classic literature and poetry to liven up the law. Although both volumes are directed at lawyers and law students, he explained, one of his chief objectives was to write in a style that makes law obtainable by the layman.

Early English law scholar, Sir John Powell, said "nothing is law that is not reason." But Canadian law has become so excessive and suffocating, it no longer makes sense. How can it therefore be reason?

On the bench, judicial activists pretend statutes are written in disappearing ink. They make up the laws as they go along. This purposeful practice has reduced the nation to a shambles of anarchy and lawlessness. If we could revive great law scholars from the dead, the likes of Sir Edward Coke or Sir William Blackstone, what would they think about certain sections of the Criminal Code conflicting with other sections? Is it reason? If it isn't reason, the masters have already determined it isn't law.

If it is considered to be law now, then it won't be long. A mob of government bureaucrats and lawyers are entombed underground Ottawa in a place tagged the "war department". They are zealously overhauling the Criminal Code.

I break out in a cold sweat at the thought of the results. The Code will bear no semblance to Canadian law by the time the Liberals socially re-engineer the law of our land into alignment with the wishes of the United Nations for a One World Governance.

It will be the last nail needed to hammer down and seal the lid of the coffin on parliamentary democracy forever...unless a miracle can reverse this trend.

Well, I did find some redeeming features in the present-day Criminal Code. Toward the back is a whole section titled "Forms of Charges". My imagination went into super-overdrive as a delicious idea about "reverse onus" wafted through the brain cells. Chretien and his cabal would have to eat the same stuff they've been dishing out to us ordinary waifs as daily fare for too many years with too much evil consequences.

About half of a 30 million population comprise a silent majority of civil rights advocates; of that half, about seven million are gun owners.

Roughly seven million to 15 million Canadians could be foot soldiers. They could push their wheelbarrow-loads of documentation to their respective local police detachments and instruct Mr. Officer to lay charges against Crime Minister Jean Chretien under s. 122 for fraud and/or breach of trust by public officer. (This was the one used against former NDP B.C. Premier Glen Clark.) As an extra safety measure, the police could throw in identical charges against every federal minister of Justice from Allan Rock onward.

It's payback time. Every Canadian lost representation in Parliament when Rock, at the behest of his boss, used the weasel tactic of premature closure to limit parliamentary debate on the highly-contentious, badly-flawed, freedom-sucking Bill C-68. It has caused no end to human suffering uselessly.

A sample of the charge quoted from the Code reads: (Whoever) "on the (day) of (month), (year), at (specific time) in (specific place), did commit fraud (OR a breach of trust) in connection with the duties of his (OR her) office, to wit: (specify the particulars of the offence), contrary to s. 122 of the Criminal Code of Canada.

Section 122 states: "Every official who, in connection with the duties of his office, commits fraud or a breach of trust is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years, whether or not the fraud or breach of trust would be an offence if it were committed in relation to a private person."

All 15 million Canadians are not likely to be successful in their bid to have that many charges laid against Mr. Chretien. But it only takes one charge sticking to get the job done. And, all he would have to do to avoid this nasty piece of business, is to repent and repeal. At this moment, the Liberal minister of Justice Michael Cauchon has the power -- without rubber-stamping any further legislation in Parliament -- to order a ban on every single gun in Canada by regulation and order-in-council.

The aboriginal people aren't above the gun law, either, and they too are going for non-compliance of registration before January 1, 2003 and embarking on expensive, extended court cases.

It was Chretien's mentor, the late Pierre Trudeau, abused his position as prime minister by running the country as a dictator, signing off thousands of orders-in-council every year, when six would have been five too many.

John Orth likened the order-in-council to a Royal Proclamation, an instrument better suited to a medieval fiefdom than a modern, democratic society. He suggested that if Canadians ever succeed in taking back control of the government, one of the first priorities must be to abolish this archaic practice.

Does all this muck and misery make you feel warm and fuzzy inside about your kind, gentle, benevolent, elected dictator? If it does, it shouldn't. Yet there is little outward display that people cherish their freedom. And Canada seems bent on destroying its democracy by serving as a loud mouthpiece for the United Nations.

Orth thinks there would still be some ray of hope if Canadians were showing some sign of fierce resistance -- demonstrations in the street; newspapers flooded with angry letters; hundreds of thousands of people marching on Parliament Hill; the Liberal Party's popularity decimated to single digits.

"Then at least the spark of freedom would still be alight," he declared. "Instead, we find the majority of Canadians are completely oblivious to these goings on.

"How can this be? The warning signs are everywhere. Why can so few see them? Alarm bells are ringing. Why can so few hear them?"

Jane Gaffin is an author and freelance writer based in Whitehorse, Yukon. She can be contacted at janegaffin@canada.com.

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