The LiquidLegends Lounge - Page 158

Harper isn't a very good prime minister in terms of being a good person, although he seems to do fine in terms of economics or w/e. There's a lot of nation-state protection focused stuff passing lately that has people ruffled up because they finally affect white organizing/organizers whereas previously they were almost exclusively targeting Muslim and Indigenous groups.

Here is a simple illustrated recent example:

I was born in Canada, have lived here my whole life aside from a handful of vacations, and I have citizenship status. Both of my parents have citizenship status and were born in Canada. All of my grandparents had citizenship status and were born in Canada. All of my great grandparents had citizenship status, and half of them were born in Canada. So on and so forth.

I have Nikkei status in Japanese law. This basically means I'm a person of whole or partial Japanese descent, born outside of Japan, and who doesn't currently and has never in the past held Japanese citizenship. This makes me eligible to apply for Japanese citizenship (which is normally impossible or difficult), although I have to pass various tests and such (which I have no chance of passing).

Under the recent Bill C-24 in Canadian law, persons who either currently have citizenship status in another country, have had it in the past, or are currently eligible for it (me) fall into a secondary class of citizens. People in this second class are eligible to have our Canadian citizenship revoked upon charges of terrorism / treason / threatening national security. As long as you don't do those things this isn't too much of a problem, except...

Under the recent Bill C-51 in Canadian law, the definition of those crimes has been expanded greatly. Currently, being suspected of these crimes is enough to be detained / arrested for them, which is also grounds to be charged for them. So basically, any second class citizen who is merely suspected of various crimes is eligible to have their Canadian citizenship status taken away.

Under the same Bill C-51, basically any kind of anti-nationalist, decolonial, or indigenous protest can be qualified as threatening national security due to the overly vague wording of the bill (it's been slammed by lawyers but it still passed). This includes protesting various government bills, such as Bills C-51 and C-24 themselves, as the current government can't handle being called out on it's white supremacy etc.

These laws intersect with other problematic Canadian bills. For example, a Palestinian person in Canada recently had their citizenship status in Canada revoked and they were deported back to Israel. This person was never charged with national-security threatening crimes in Canada, but their punishment was requested by the government of Israel, and the Canadian government consented to this international extension of these two bills. So basically any kind of refugee is pretty boned at this point.