The Government of Canada, having committed the great sin of legislators to assume that all matters can be settled only by the passage of legislation, will now have to face the consequence of their own patronizing politics and electoral arrogance. Will the consequence be great or small? Are we near the end of the firearms debacle as the government so badly wants, or are we not?
For the government to have precipitated this great clash of ideals in the midst of a population that scarcely cared to give it a second thought, is indeed a significant accomplishment. What is more, Canadians are captivated by the spectacle of a repressive government pushing the country to an unprecedented level of social awareness, as more and more Canadians realize the devastating impact this government's agenda is going to have on their everyday lives. There will be no stuffing the genie back in the bottle. This issue is going to consume many hours by many people for years to come. It will be widely followed by an alert and hungry public, their appetite whetted by every new firearms report in the media. Most certainly it is going to demand a great deal of the attention and focus of government for as long as the underlying conflict remains.
Having set the stage, the following depicts the kind of dynamic interaction that occurs when East meets West. The aim is to impart some idea of how the firearms script is going to be played out in the months and years ahead. So begins the case of the Citizens of Canada versus the Government of Canada.
In the campaign to supplant the rights of citizens with the privilege of government, Ottawa stands on its firmest ground in terms of the statute law in C-17 and C-68. The government also draws strength from the single- minded determination it has shown to defend the three key rights of government that are implied or assumed in C-68, namely, the right of government to hold to itself the absolute right of arms, the right of government to extinguish the citizen's right to arms, and the exclusive right of government to dispense all privilege of arms.
On the other hand, the government very weakly, and perhaps negligently, has failed to provide credible evidence that would be necessary to substantiate whether or not these rights have any historical basis, or that they will confer any overall benefit to society as compensation for the great harm they will inflict, or that there has been any common usage or practice of these rights in Canada over the years.
Since a history of limitations to the citizen's right to arms is indeed evident in the annals of Canada, there is no doubt that a limited case could have been made. So it is curious that the government has failed to forthrightly articulate its own rights, but has revealed only the instruments that will be used to enforce them.
In these circumstances, it is fair to speculate why it is that the government has swept aside the deeper issues. Firstly, the federal government must realize its case is not a strong one. Secondly, it is awkward to draw attention to the reasoning behind legislation that extinguishes rights, without also drawing attention to the existence of those rights. This is a big problem: how does one describe the dark, while concealing the knowledge of light?
The Doctrine of Rights, especially as it applies to the citizen's right to arms, is on firm ground all round, except in the statute law. This omission could have been remedied by making an inclusion in the statutes or in the Constitution. The effect of this could have been to bring about a state of completeness, consistency, and symmetry to the role of arms and to the right of arms in Canadian society, in the most direct and straightforward manner possible. Why this expeditious option to harmonize and rationalize everything was not pursued is, as noted, a matter of government ideology. The result being, the statutes of Canada have been made shockingly inconsistent and sharply at odds with history, jurisprudence and the fundamental principles of liberal democracy.
A characteristic of the Doctrine of Rights is the acceptance of justifiable limitations to rights in circumstances where society deems that the overall benefit of the limitations so outweigh the ill effects caused by the infringement attributable to the limitations, that society judges itself to be significantly better off overall.
In this, the Doctrine of Rights is flexible, except in regards to the existence of rights. The existence of a right is absolute. On this, the Doctrine of Rights is resolute and unyielding. A limitation to a right does not extinguish or diminish a right in any way; not the part that has been limited or any other part. Any right that has been limited continues to exist in its entirety as if it were not limited, but only the limited portions or elements of the right are held in partial or complete abeyance, according to whatever agreements might be struck within society from time to time. It follows then, that limitations have to be consensual. Without the general agreement and consent of the governed, a limitation is not a limitation, but an infringement.
On the other hand, the Doctrine of Privilege is inherently stiff and heavy- handed in its entirety. Power resides at the top from where it is dispensed downwards as privilege, to be granted or revoked. The citizen has no right to power not granted in privilege, and not having any independent power, the citizen is rendered powerless to act with independence. In that he is not free.
The inclusion of a right anywhere within a privileged system threatens the existence of privilege everywhere. It is anathema for a Priviligist to accede to the existence of any right, let alone the right to arms, since this constitutes the grievous heresy of empowerment. This would create a rival source of power in the wrong place with power flowing in the wrong direction, threatening the integrity of the Doctrine and the system.
It is in the context of this kind of unbending Doctrine that the rigidity of C-68 can best be understood. The intolerance of rights that is so necessary to the Doctrine of Privilege would help to explain the vehemence with which almost all amendments to C-68 have been attacked and defeated in committee and in the House. It would also explain why C-68 contains no affirmation or reference to the citizen's right to arms or to the other rights of citizens.
In working towards a resolution of our problems, it might be possible to imagine a hybrid system of governance based on a division of privilege and a division of rights. Such a system, however, would be in constant tension, and it is not unreasonable to predict that it would tend towards an unstable end state. In such a system, privilege would be dispensed downward to the people. On its way, it would be prone to siphoning at all levels of the bureaucracy acting on their own behalf or on behalf of the various privileged groups.
Insofar as the rights of citizens would interfere with this process, those rights would be subject to encroachment or attack by the government and the bureaucracy, supported by the privileged groups. Citizens would act to defend their rights. The result being, at best, a system in perpetual conflict or tension, and at worst, a slow and steady slide to instability as the erosion of citizens rights allowed the further siphoning of privileges, until none but a trickle remained.
It is fair to ask if this is the type of system that exists in Canada. If so, it goes without saying that citizens would not be content to live under it. However, consider how unacceptable the situation would also be for Priviligists. From their perspective, they would have to deal continually with the hindrance and annoyance of citizens' rights.
Although, what do we see in Canada? Does it not appear that Priviligists are indeed striving to secure and expand their hegemony? To remodel the system more and more to their liking, according to their ideology? Against the rights of citizens?
It is well worth the time to consider just how much Canada conforms to the hybrid model. A model that both sides are finding less and less tolerable as the system slides toward the unstable terminal condition.
Far better then, for Canada to move away from a hybrid model, and to formulate pure and coherent laws that reflect and affirm the Doctrine of Rights. So that citizens might exercise their rights freely without reference to government or bureaucracy, except as limited by justifiable and democratic laws.
For the moment, however, Canadians can only dream of such things, since the government is driving hard in the opposite direction towards a system of absolute privilege. Until the momentum they have built up over the decades can be turned around, Canadians have no option but to deal with the reality of everyday life under the advancing economic, political and social decay of our country.
What we have finally achieved in Canada is government by the privileged, of the privileged and for the privileged. What we see is a government endlessly collaborating with the bureaucracy to advance the position of the chosen elites over the rights of ordinary citizens.
First and foremost among those elites is that large body of parliamentarians who for 25 years have wantonly surrendered to the cabinet, to the courts and to all manner of appointed and unelected bodies, ever- increasing dollops of the democratic powers with which they had been entrusted by the people who elected them. Now, we are near the end. The democratic power of the people has been squandered by these hirelings, handed to passers-by, spilled to the ground, and paid in ransom to preserve the perks and pensions of parliamentary privilege. We have been robbed of our democratic inheritance while they were standing guard. But what do we see from them? There is no shame, but only the contentedness of cows.
In the Canadian system, every source of power at the national level is appointed in privilege; the cabinet, the Senate, the Supreme Court, the Governor General, the Human Rights Commission, etc, etc. Against this overpowering and totally privileged system, stands one and only one repository of the people's democratic power: the House of Commons.
The consequence of this arrangement makes the form of democracy that has evolved in Canada to be incredibly vulnerable. To any opponent, it is readily apparent that any number of small and possibly insignificant attacks on the power of the Commons, will, over time, translate directly into an efficient attack on the whole of the people's democratic power.
What is even more apparent to the enemies of democracy, is that if a knock- out blow (political or otherwise) could be delivered at any time against the power of the Commons, the democratic power of the Canadian citizen could be broken in an instant. And, since none of the privileged elites, not the armed forces, not the police, not any other creature of the system, could easily be convinced or would even be inclined to put at risk their own position of power and privilege, then it truly becomes the case that only the presence of a well armed and responsible citizenry would be left to stand against the onslaught of tyranny. Not just in the context of the political system that we have in Canada, but especially because of the political system that we have, and its peculiar vulnerability.
Consider though, is this not what has happened? Or, is this not what is happening? Perhaps not; but if not, it is nearly so.
Bit by bit, increasing portions of the Common's power has been ransacked over many years. Initially, there was the decisive and very successful attack in 1982 (The Constitution Act) which tore away a great chunk of the people's authority invested in the Commons right at the start. Authority that was quickly divested to the many unelected and privileged bodies, ironically, in the name of protecting the rights of citizens. Canadians claim to cherish these birds, but hire cats to guard them. Little wonder that Canadian rights, freedom and democracy have been devoured in the shadow of that hollow, defective and very deceiving promise. A broken promise that merely blazed the path for an unending stream of constitutional plunderers.
Now we have a situation where the proponents of privilege are moving beyond the initial phase of preparatory and probing attacks. Their strategy has now advanced to the point where they feel confident to strike down the rights of citizens directly in a series of all-out decisive engagements. Of these, C-68 is the first, and the most essential. Without it, none of the follow-on attacks has any chance to prevail.
Adding to this disaster, the decay of democracy in Canada has been greatly worsened by the Members of Parliament themselves. They have become as much the patrons of privilege as any one else. These guardians might wear the clothing of Rights and pretend to be Rightists, but they have been willing accomplices to the worst of plunderers. No further proof is necessary than to note the many times they could have saved or increased the store of our democracy, but did not.
Three options for the future of Canada can be foreseen.
First, Canadians can stay the course, and watch this country slide the last short distance to the pit of privilege.
Then there is the option to elect and democratize some or all of the other institutions at the federal level. This would render our Canadian democracy more secure, diffusing the democratic power, dispersing its vulnerability, and creating a series of democratic checks and balances.
Lastly, out of custom and tradition, or if the advantages truly outweigh the disadvantages, the people's democratic power could be restored to the House of Commons as in former times, but accounting for the modern-day need of citizens to exert greater control over the democratic powers we might choose to entrust to that institution.
If this last course is chosen, there is the great need to be laid before Parliament an Act of Restoration, to invest in that institution, and specifically in the individual elected members of the House of Commons, over the cabinet, and over the courts, and over all other bodies and institutions in Canada, the supreme power to decide by free and independent vote on all matters of state. And in so doing, to become the final arbiters and representatives of the people in all things brought before the House (though recognizing the role of constitutional law and its interpretation by the courts, and that the custom of governments having to resign at the defeat of a government bill must pass into history, except on a specific stand-alone motion of non-confidence).
The time has come for the people of Canada to take back the Parliament of Canada, and for the parliamentarians of Canada to take back the power and pre-eminence from which they have been bled so near to death for so many years. This undertaking is no less than the solemn and rightful duty of our rightful representatives to the one and only democratically elected body at the national level. Let no others be so bold as to rise against the affirmation of such self-evident, democratic and moral supremacy.
On this question of the Supremacy of Parliament, and specifically the supremacy of the elected Lower House, the future of Canada is going to turn, whether we see it now or whether we see it later on. The elected House must once again be made responsible; for in returning to it the responsibility to decide on all things, its members will be disciplined to act responsibly in all things by their electors, who once again will be able to hold them accountable for all things.
Once the House is cleaned, Canadians will be able to tackle the mess in the back yard. The first requirement will be to recognize the rights of citizens in statute law, and under constitutional law when and if an advantageous constitutional opportunity presents. Specifically, the statutes must be made to reflect the common law tradition of property rights and the citizen's right to arms, and in doing so, provide Canada with the basis for a stable, secure and harmonious accord of the kind that now eludes us.
That brings to an end the big picture. It is the work of statesmen, giants and jurists. Until they can be found to work their magic, Canadians have no option but to face reality. A reality that requires them somehow to survive the times of troubles into which they have been plunged for no good reason by their own government.
The only way to do that is for citizens to undertake whatever active, decisive, justifiable and reasonable actions as may be necessary to defend their rights, their freedom and their way of life; even in the teeth of a decrepit government fighting hard for all power, privilege and patronage that they can ransack from a house crumbling all around them.
From this greater struggle, the fight for firearms rights in Canada cannot be torn away. Any attempt to deal with the gun question without addressing the larger issues of freedom, democracy and the growth of info-age authoritarianism is bound to fail, just as the government's gun policy is foundering so badly. Our rulers got the diagnosis wrong. Now they stoop to quackery. Some symptoms they concoct, while others they exaggerate to ply a noxious remedy. It is not enough for us to foil that remedy. We must study the disease and find a cure.
The struggle forced upon us, which cannot now be avoided, must set as its objective the attainment of a stable and lasting accord on the great question of the role and the right of arms in Canada.
Expressly, such an accord must recognize the citizen's ancient right to arms, for without this recognition, there can be no lasting stability but only suspicion, and well-founded suspicion as it is plain to see.
Regardless of the unpleasant circumstances in which the firearms community finds itself in 1995, so long as you are able to keep your guns and use them freely as best you can, then you will continue to uphold the Doctrine of Rights and the citizen's right to arms, despite anything the government might say or do.
The day you let the government register your guns or restrict them or take them away, on that day you breath new life into the Doctrine of Privilege. In doing so, you acknowledge the right of government to extinguish the rights of citizens, specifically the right to arms, and even more specifically the right of your government to extinguish your personal rights, in a very personal way.
On the other hand, so long as a single gun survives under the free control of just one free Canadian, so survives the cause of freedom in Canada. If the government gets that gun, freedom dies, and the right to arms along with it, until some day it is resurrected.
In the simplest of terms, if the government gets control of your gun, their rootless ideology starts to take hold. If they don't, your rights are upheld, and their problems grow worse as your example encourages others.
Now that C-68 has passed, Canada is on a treadmill. There is only one way for the government to go. For them to stop is to accept that your right to arms survives, and that they could not destroy it. The day they stop is the day that the existence of the citizen's right to arms can no longer be denied in Canada.
That kind of admission, however, is the worst form of poison to the Priviligists who rule this country. So they will not easily stop, or be stopped. How could they? Oppression relaxed is oppression overthrown; the fate of tyrants everywhere, and they have chosen the tyrant's way. In the end it may well consume them. However, until our tormentors are gone, you will have to take a few straightforward, prudent and necessary precautions so that you are not consumed by them.
Canadians who have taken the time and the trouble to prepare themselves are the ones who are going to survive the C-68 regime. Those who do nothing, they will be the ones who bear the brunt of the unremitting government power that is about to descend on them; the power to register, the power to regulate, the power to restrict, the power to confiscate, the power to invade, search, seize, inspect and interrogate, the power to prosecute and the power to punish.
Almost none of which can be applied to the prudent citizen who takes precautions.
Where is our bridge-builder? It seems Canadians will have to wait.
In the meantime, the reality of the situation is that no one in Canada is going to have an easy time of it, least of all the government. Canadians are fast learning to defend their rights, their freedom, their families, their property and their privacy against the repressive laws of a criminal government. And the first thing they have learned is that every gun in the ground is worth at least a constitution or two, and any number of guarantees in law.