If taxation is theft (it is), then what’s this? “[A] forthcoming new law that would permit the government to take away one’s property or goods prior to being charged with a crime.”
Civil and criminal asset forfeiture is not new. In both cases, your property is charged with a crime separate from your own. I you are found innocent, your property may still be guilty. It’s i theft by the state for its own enrichment. The new Ruling Democrats in (The) British (are coming!) Columbia has proposed a law allowing the Government to take your stuff without charging you with a crime.
The details are sketchy because formal legislation has not yet been presented, but the shadows of the penumbras that justify the theft are as follows.
“By seizing this property from high-level, predatory criminal organizations and individuals, the province can take away this incentive and send a clear message to organized crime,” the government added.
What if the Government is a high-level criminal organization? Given that it also controls elections (and the courts), how are citizens expected to send a clear message to that organized crime?
The answer to that slippery slope is nothing short of a gang war where the Government is an armed gang, and the citizens (This is Canada) are not so much. And while it’s nice to see Civil Liberties Organizations suggest there is nothing civil about the proposal, where exactly do they expect to find redress?
“The BCCLA (British Columbia Civil Liberties Association) believes that UWOs are an unnecessary expansion of government power,” the organization said in a statement, adding that such measures are “an unacceptable infringement of Canadians’ rights to the presumption of innocence, due process and privacy.”
The Canadian courts may be worse than those in the US, and Canadians have significantly fewer rights, and those are quickly taken away if the COVID response is any indication.
I wish them the best of luck, and I’d like to thank British Columbia’s New Democratic Party for the warning. Gavin Newsom will be looking to impose something like this in California, and as California goes, so does Vermont, New York, Illinois…you get the picture. Or have we done that already?
