The Enemies List

They tell us laws against drugs are about stopping the pushers - but lots of people committing no other crime are jailed for possessing or using drugs.  Supposedly prostitution laws are aimed at the pimps, but its the sex workers facing the worst consequences from their legal non-status.

This government claims their full court press about 'migrant smuggling' is about punishing the smugglers not the refugees, and yet...

Migrants entering Canada with the help of human smugglers would be denied permanent residency and face mandatory jail time and reduced health coverage under a proposed law to combat human smuggling.

Mean spirited, racially charged petty policy sadism, from this government?  Shocking.

Also certainly in violation of international law and the Charter - as well as basic standards of decency.

Perhaps we should start making a list of the groups the Conservatives seem to have in mind to fill all these new prisons we don't need for crimes that aren't being reported:

• Drug addicts:  They oppose Vancouver's inSite program and by extension any attempt to shift the public policy approach to addiction from the failed model of criminal sanctions to a rational harm reduction public health paradigm. 
• Sex Workers:  Confronted with a legal decision that states flatly that the current approach to prostitution laws leads inexorably to the marginalization of sex workers and massively increases their odds of being abused or murdered and they insist they will appeal the overturning of this failed and oppressive legal structure
• Protesters:  Political opposition, demonstrating, protesting - clearly anyone engaging in such activity is some kind of subversive anarchist and should be beaten, imprisoned in the pouring rain in intersections for hours on end, jailed and even if released ordered by the court to give up their rights to free speech and freedom of association. 
• Environmentalists: The Harper government isn't in the pocket of the oil industry, That would imply that they are in any way two separate things.  They regard anyone  pointing out  the devastation of the Alberta Tar Sands as existential enemies.  It's personal.
• 'Separatists and Socialists': What, just because a significant percentage of Canadians voted for them they think they have a role in public policy and potentially even government?  Traitors!
• Immigrants: The Harperites were big fans of Australia's right wingers, amusingly known as the Australian Liberal Party, and Prime Minister Howard's 'barb-wire encircled desert prison camp' approach to immigration.  They could probably fill at least a few of their expensive new prisons with the huddled masses yearning to be free.