Category Archives: The Issues

Double Standard

You expect the police to speed and drive badly on patrol, after all it is the public they issue traffic tickets to in “protecting the public from bad drivers”, not their fellow officers.

Apparently this double standard applies to the photographic arts as well when it comes to police versus public allowable behaviours.

It is, in the eyes of the Abbotsford Police Department (APD), perfectly fitting for the APD to surreptitiously snap clandestine pictures of citizens for no justifiable reason.

Personally, I hadn’t realized the Charter of Rights and Freedoms together with the privacy laws were not the Law or at least the laws enforced in Abbotsford.

It is not, in the eyes of the APD, perfectly fitting for citizens to photograph ADP officers as they work their duty tour. Should you be as bold as to video the APD, you will quickly find APD officers in your face demanding your camera as one abbotsford resident found out recently.

Notwithstanding the fact your right to video on duty APD officers would, outside the boundaries of Abbotsford, be protected under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Moreover, videoing on duty APD officers would appear to be totally legal under the privacy laws.

So these days in Abbotsford, the police can ignore the public’s Charter rights, disregard privacy laws and deny the public the right to exercise their rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Makes one pine for the good old days, when speeding and bad driving were the only double standard the APD exercised, eh?

Emerging Abbotsford Police State?

I was leaving the Dragon Fort eatery the other day when I paused to observe an Abbotsford Police Department (APD) officer in an unmarked car stealthily wielding a camera. Looking around to see what or who was being so slyly photographed I recognized the subject of his attention as a new arrival in town.

There was something deeply unsettling about the image of an APD officer in an unmarked car surreptitiously taking photos of someone merely standing on the sidewalk.

One can understand police thinking in this matter: new face, tattooed and standing around in “that area” of the city. But understanding is not authorization agreement to or approval of this behaviour. The thought of the APD secretly photographing us is chilling, bringing to mind the behaviours of the secret police of the old communist state apparatuses and other despotic regimes.

One is left pondering the implications of this behaviour; wrestling with the morality of spying on citizens and wondering about the legality of secretly photographing any citizen.

Charter of Rights and Freedoms, privacy laws and requirements that the police obtain warrants would appear, from the behaviour of the APD, not to protect citizens from clandestine police spying in Abbotsford.

How many other pictures have the APD taken? Just how many secret police files on citizens does the APD maintain and exactly what is the purpose or use of these secret police files?

These questions and other problematic APD conduct underscores how essential it is we put in place and exercise citizen oversight and control of the APD before we find ourselves living in an Orwellian police state, living the novel 1984 with Big Brother watching our every move, seeking to control us and our thoughts.

Election Reform

While I agree with the essence of Mr. Bucholtz’s assertion that election reform is needed; I must dispute his premise that Single Transferable Vote is the reform the electorate should be demanding in making their votes count.

Mr. Bucholtz’s statement: “I am a strong believer in improving democracy, as opposed to just taking an apathetic approach to it” includes two problematic assumptions.

That STV is an improvement to democracy is debatable since STV and alternative reform proposals add complexity to elections. I am also uncomfortable with the assumption that nonparticipation and nonvoting are the result of apathy. It may well be that people currently feel no cadidate represents their views and positions.

I heard and hear far to may people who are not voting for policies but are holding their noses voting for “the least objectionable” outcome.

We should be pursuing a course of electoral reform to put the power back into the hands of the people, keeping reform simple. Thus I advocate adding one simple choice to every ballot cast at every level of governance in Canada – NONE OF THE ABOVE.

Democracy is defined as: government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system.

Power is only vested in the people in an electoral system that offers them a choice to exercise their vote for agents of their choosing. One could well argue that currently we are not a democracy since we are offered a limited number of bad choices made by others from which to choose our agents.

With one simple bold reform we can return the power back to the people, reclaiming it from politicians, political parties and the “powers that be”. In any electoral area where “none of the above” receives the most votes none of the candidates or parties are permitted to run in the next round of election.

The election process is repeated until such time as a candidate is judged and found to be worthy of exercising the voters will and power.

I will not claim this will be a neat process. In fact I truly hope that the votes held under this reform are incredibly messy and require several rounds of voting.

Fundamentally voters will be able to insist on being offered good candidates. The second (and any other needed) round should, with the elimination of party politics and politicians, be extremely lively offering opportunities and choices for a most eclectic offering of candidates.

We should also get the re-introduction of debate on issues, problem solving, policies, leadership and other positive outcomes. The new system should ensure the opportunity for many, if not a majority, of independents, new faces, new ideas, the evolution of new alliances and parties.

Yes it will be a little chaotic at first but as the author Alan Dean Foster wrote: “Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting.”

BE BOLD, embrace change, Carpe Diem.

Will someone please get them a Dictionary

A new notice posted at ARC: Attention Customers, the Parks, Recreation and Culture annual fee increase will take place September 1st 2007.

It is no wonder that with Parks, Recreation and Culture involved Plan A is such a bungled tragedy in progress for the taxpayers of Abbotsford, where the only sure results are that the taxpayers will be saddled with a ruinous burden of debt, the costs will keep rising, and should the City irresponsibly rush headlong into starting the arena construction – they will run out of funds before it is completed.

But then what can you expect from a department where management does not even comprehend a concept as simple as annual – happening once a year.

Or have management already forgotten the fee increases put into effect on July 1 of 2007? Is it that in their focus on squeezing every penny of cash flow possible out of taxpayer’s pockets that what was imposed just two short months ago was a “Plan A surcharge”? Perhaps it is just that city management is so use to misleading the public they “cannot help themselves prevaricating”?

Whatever the pretext, patrons will be forced to pay this second “annual” increase of the year, be left wondering when the next “annual” fee increase will occur or awaiting imposition of another “surcharge” and wistfully yearning for competent management at Parks Recreation and Culture.

A Picture is worth a thousand words.

Explaining to people the differences I have with the manner in which Abbotsford City Hall runs and behaves can be time consuming since the list of behaviours and actions that demonstrate City Hall’s mastery of mishandling the city’s business, finances, service delivery, citizen’s interests etc is mind numbingly long and wordy.

So I always keep an eye out for some way to illustrate, in a short and snappy manner, that Abbotsford City Hall sees a completely different reality from that its citizens live in and just how devoid of common sense Abbotsford City Hall is.

When I came across the city sign in the picture I knew I had found that concise piece of evidence. I did wonder if perhaps City Hall’s cognitive difficulties arise from mind altering substances rather than problems with the oxygen levels within city hall.

This sign, posted on a signpost carefully set in a big cement footing in Mill Lake Park, bears irrefutable testimony to the twisted, confused reality Abbotsford City Hall sees and inhabits. The sign’s existence providing the viewer clear evidence of the absence of common sense.

It also leaves the viewer tp ponder the question: Ice? What Ice??