The Canadian city of Montreal, once known as relaxed, welcoming and chic, has become a harassment zone for smokers, property owners who are forced to put out ashtrays for smokers (is this to enhance social intolerance?), and apparently for anyone from whom revenue in the forms of fines can be squeezed.
The parallels with other cities that have recently used "health" or other "for-your-own-good" arguments to extort money from citizens are quite evident. "Health and safety" arguments, whether fraudulent or not, will be regularly trotted out to provide excuses for cash grabs by cash-strapped and incompetently managed government at all levels.
But there’s another agenda here. That is, to condition members of the public to accept heavy-handed authoritarian measures as ‘par for the course’ and to wilt into apathy, expecting no more accountability from government than would a beaten-down citizen in some corrupt banana republic ‘democracy’.
Just as people have been duped into believing junk anti-smoking ‘health’ propaganda, the government hopes they can be duped into personally cleaning up the streets after they’ve already paid taxes to get the job done. They hope that people will be duped or brow-beaten into accepting almost anything that they’re told to. It’s hard not to interpret the ‘jaywalking’ crackdown described below as anything other than an attempt to simply intimidate … and make people open up their wallets and pay for the intimidation.
‘…and with so many bars and restaurants closing – and others reeling – from revenue drops of 25-33% after the smoking ban according to Voula Demopoulos, Montreal’s downtown may just die for good.
To top it all off this administration, which cut the police force by almost 18% at a time when street gang violence is skyrocketing, found the money to hire an additional 110 cops to give jaywalking tickets. Jaywalking in Montreal! My, my, my. What a heinous offense! What an urgent priority! What is heinous is that Montrealers have to walk around with identification as if this was Beirut or Moscow because if you don’t have some with you the police can’t give you a ticket. They may just have to take you to the cop shop for "processing".
This administration has no moral authority to govern. It continues policies of profligate pilferage of our pockets to fund programs that no one demanded and no suffrage affirmed. Deflecting Montrealers’ attention with nanny-state regulations won’t cut it any longer. Legislating niceness is not only not nice – it’s not fooling anybody anymore. Where’s the money’s going? Why all the overruns? Who’s responsible for ignoring core priorities? There aren’t any straight answers.’
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