Duncan – Bill C-51 is not going to make us safe. Nothing that takes away any of our freedoms will ever make us safe. To say that the government is not going to prevent lawful protests does not reassure me. Who will decide what is a lawful or unlawful protest?
The past couple of months we have been bombarded in the newspapers by the court case of the couple who were going to set a home made bomb off at the Legislature. Over $1 million has been spent on investigating and trying this couple. Any mental health worker would have recognized them as a dysfunctional couple needing help from a mental health facility and intervened. People like this may not be a daily occurrence to mental health workers but they are not unknown. A mental health worker would intervene and the person would be admitted to a proper facility. Perhaps we have cut back so much on mental health facilities that they weren’t available? Or is this case being used to frighten people into thinking we have terrorists around every corner? I hope people see it as it is – a charade.
Terrorists and terrorism do exist and we do have to do what we can to prevent terrorist activities but there has to be a balance in safety and freedom or we will end up in a police state. Some of us will remember McCarthyism, where many lives and careers were ruined by just a rumour.
Are we turning what should be called a criminal act into a terrorist attack? I’m not condoning crime, the outcome in lives lost is the same, but the cause is different and the solution is different. The killing of 14 women in the Montreal massacre in 1989 was a crime – the women were killed because they were women.
If our young people are being seduced by these terrorist groups we need to find out why! Are their lives so meaningless that they will join these groups? This is where our attention and money should be.
Trudy Thorgeirson
Duncan
