Vancouver Loves Brutal Totalitarianism

Maybe this will become a recurring theme for me.  Maybe I’ll call it Cities Gone Wild, and sell a bunch of videos through late night infomercials.  But are we to be happy that the British Columbia government has decided to cast aside liberty to appease our Olympic overlords?

A proposed B.C. law would allow municipal officials to enter homes to seize unauthorized and possibly anti-Olympic signs on short notice, civil libertarians say.

Violators could be fined up to $10,000 a day and jailed up to six months, the B.C. Civil Liberties Association said Friday.

We know that the Olympics have no regard for freedom and liberty (Moscow, 1980; Beijing, 2008), but Canadian governments are supposed to know better.  The rights and freedoms of our citizens are never to be restricted by the whims of foreign entities.  The IOC must conform to our laws, not the other way around.  I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised; the Olympics will be hosted by a city where the RCMP pepper spray law abiding citizens for objecting to a murderous tyrant, and taser people to death at the airport.  Of course, considering this history, one might hope that the government would be a little more sensitive to civil liberties.

Don’t worry, though, they have a really good reason for this oppression:

The government said in a statement that the changes will “provide the municipalities of Vancouver, Richmond and Whistler with temporary enforcement powers to enable them to swiftly remove illegal signs and graffiti during the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.”

“The legislation does not change the existing scope of authority to regulate signs and graffiti. Rather, it provides, on a temporary basis, a faster way of removing signs and graffiti that violate municipal bylaws during the short period the Games are underway.”

Can we please not conflate cleaning graffiti with illegal search and seizure?  If all they wanted to do was clean graffiti, then they wouldn’t need to enter anyone’s home.  Politicians may not understand this, but liberty is inherent; it is not granted by the government nor can it be legitimately taken away by the government to appease corrupt regimes.

In 2010, the city of Vancouver could take a stand and show the world that liberty and freedom trump Olympic niceties.  Instead we’re liable to hear Gordon Campbell talk about how he likes pepper on his steak.

(H/T: Skinny Dipper.)