I’m tired of this sad trend—the one in which it isn’t inherently oppressive social institutions being questioned, but the victims of them. Victim blaming is a lot easier than changing things. Attempts at discrediting feminism are made because admitting that gendered oppression exists would be an admission that things need to change. Attacks on feminism are a large-scale version of victim blaming: the oppressed are blamed and everything is done to justify the oppressor’s actions.

There’s this socially constructed illusion of choice that everyone can succeed, monetarily and in earned respect, if they just work hard enough. However, as we know, that equality will never exist without equity; this pull your life up by the bootstraps mentality does no one any good. Rachel Fudge writes about this in her essay “Girl, Unconstructed” published in Bitch magazine’s 2006 collection Bitchfest. Fudge is critical of the Girl Power movement in contrast to the Riot Grrrl movement, zeroing in on the confusion between equality and equity: “[Girl Power] turns the struggle inward, depoliticizes and decontextualizes the cultural messages about gender and behaviour … If, as Ann Powers wrote so hopefully nearly a decade ago, girls are seen as ‘free agents,’ they have only themselves to blame for their failures.”

The all-about-personal-choices rational excuses crimes such as rape and forcing individuals to live in poverty. If you don’t want to get raped, don’t dress like a slut. If you don’t want to be attacked, carry a weapon and don’t walk outside after dark. Don’t have a baby if you want to succeed in your career. This messaging tells us there rules are to be followed—forget changes in accepted behaviour amongst genders and middle to upper class nepotism within the workplace. The rules women are expected to follow are especially highlighted by mainstream media, school dress codes, court rooms—and almost everybody—when it comes to sexual violence.

“Victim blaming is not just about avoiding culpability—it’s also about avoiding vulnerability,” Dr. Juliana Breines writes in a 2013 article for Psychology Today entitled ‘Why Do We Blame Victims?’ “The more innocent a victim, the more threatening they are. Victims threaten our sense that the world is a safe and moral place, where good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people.”

Bad girls are the ones that don’t follow the rules. They may have sex, be working class, be queer, have an addiction, live with mental-based illness and/or be a person of colour. In Canada, notably, the dehumanization of Aboriginal women also persists. A recent example being the case of Cindy Gladue, a sex worker who was brutally murdered, and whose alleged murderer was initially found not guilty until a recent appeal. Stephen Harper has said that Canada’s missing and murdered Aboriginal women is not an epidemic and not on the Conservative’s radar. Aboriginal women are dehumanized the same way other racialized women are when it comes to sexual violence. Black women must live with the hypersexualized Jezebel stereotype used to justify sexual violence because—so the horribly misogynistic and racist theory goes—being women of colour, they are inheritably hypersexual and animalistic. You’d be forgiven for thinking the only time powerful white folks seem to care about women of colour who are victims of sexual violence is when is when the crime is committed outside of western society.

This month, for instance, a horrific story has been making headlines. A 10-year-old girl living in Paraguay, who was raped and impregnated by her stepfather, is being denied her right to an abortion. This is undeniably a huge injustice. Nothing like that would happen in North America. Like, in 1988 when Stephen Friend, a representative in the Pennsylvania General Assembly, said it is almost impossible for a woman to become pregnant through rape, because her body will “secrete a certain secretion, which has a tendency to kill sperm.” OK, that was 27 years ago. But only three years ago Republican Todd Akin said that from what he understands from doctors, “If it is legitimate (emphasis mine) rape, the female body has ways to try to shut the whole thing down.”

Akin apologized for his comments, but then retracted his apology in his 2014 paranoid titled book Firing Back: Taking on the Party Bosses and Media Elite to Protect Our Faith and Freedom. Here in Canada, during the same year as Akin’s comments, Rob Ford’s niece, Krista Ford reiterated the rules for women in a tweet: “Stay alert, walk tall, carry mace, take self-defence classes & don’t dress like a whore. #DontBeAVictim #StreetSmart.” Her famous uncle is no better.

But even though media headlines and interviews with neighbours glorify the good girl—the straight-A, virginal, young, white girl—the courtroom does not award the same spot on the pedestal. Alice Sebold, author of Lucky and The Lovely Bones, was raped in 1981 and has fought inside and outside of the courtroom to prove this. In a 1989 piece for The New York Times, she writes about how not only did the justice system fail her but even her own father could not figure out how she was raped if she did not want to have sex: “When I was raped I lost my virginity and almost lost my life. I also discarded certain assumptions I had held about how the world worked and how safe I was.” As we see with Gladue’s case, 26 years later, not much has improved. In her book Men Explain Things To Me Rebecca Solnit writes, “Credibility is a basic survival tool.” How does a victim gain credibility when they live in a world that denies bad things happen to those that don’t deserve it?

“When bad things happen to good people, it implies that no one is safe,” Breines writes. “That no matter how good we are, we too could be vulnerable. The idea that misfortune can be random, striking anyone at any time, is a terrifying thought, and yet we are faced every day with evidence that it may be true.”

A former This intern, Hillary Di Menna is in her first year of the gender and women’s studies program at York University. She also maintains an online feminist resource directory, FIRE- Feminist Internet Resource Exchange.

The Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act (Bill C-36) is inspired by the Nordic Model of sex work laws; pimps and johns will be held criminally accountable but not the sex workers themselves. At first glance, this seems reasonable—it isn’t the sex worker who will be punished. However his or her safety, critics say, will be in jeopardy.

These new laws will prevent workers from discussing safe sex practices online with clients, Caroline Newcastle, a sex worker and representative with Prostitutes of Ottawa-Gatineau, Work, Educate, Resist (POWER), a non-profit group for current and former sex workers, told the Toronto Star. “It’s essentially full re-criminalization,” she adds, point to the phrasing of  the proposed laws. In the same Star report Valerie Scott—one of the original workers named in Canada V. Bedford—calls the bill “a huge gift to sexual predators.”

“This will simply move sex workers out into more isolated and more marginalized areas of the city,” elaborates Jean McDonald, head of sex worker support group Maggie’s, in an interview with the Globe and Mail.

Today, human rights group Pivot released a press release that links to an open letter to Stephen Harper signed by 200 legal experts from across Canada expressing their concerns: “Targeting clients will displace sex workers to isolated areas where prospective customers are less likely to be detected by police.”

Justice Minister Peter MacKay says the federal government wants to pass the new bill this week, CTV News reports, calling it urgent. However, NDP justice critic Francoise Boivin says she wants the government to slow down and thoughtfully craft a new, Charter-compliant law.

The safety of these women is not something to push through and get over with. Hopefully, the next five months will be spent actually consulting these workers in order to come to a decision with their safety in front of everything else.

Canadian politicians have also taken a stand—albeit with significantly more loaded language. Over the past few days, Stephen Harper and foreign affairs minister John Baird have been in discussion with the Ukrainian ambassador Vadym Prystaiko. And, in public statements, both Harper and Baird have compared Russia’s actions to that of Nazi Germany on the eve of WWII.

While on CBC’s Power and Politics, when asked about Russia’s right to protect so-called “Russian rights” in Crimea because of it majority Russian-speaking population, Baird answered: “The Sudetenland had a majority of Germans. That gave Germany no right to do this in the late 1930s.”

On March 4, Harper also told the House of Commons: “What we’ve seen is the decision of a major power to effectively invade and occupy a neighbouring country based on some kind of extra-territorial claim of jurisdiction over ethnic minorities. We haven’t seen this kind of behaviour since the Second World War.”

This statement followed the decision to raise the Ukrainian flag over Parliament Hill in a sign of support for the new Ukrainian government, and a universal condemnation of Russia’s actions in the House of Commons on Monday.

Indeed, politicians from all sides of the Canadian political spectrum are condemning Russia’s actions and showing support to the new government. Liberal MP Chrystia Freeland arrived yesterday in Kiev, to join the Canadian  Conservative-led delegation, which arrived last week to welcome and show support to Ukraine’s fledgling government. She spoke to CBC news about the importance of solidarity:

It’s really important for me right now as a Canadian MP outside Canada in a country which is in grave jeopardy to present a united front with the government … So there’s no dissent between me and the Liberal Party and the prime minister and the foreign minister on Ukraine right now.

While not physically represented in Kiev, the NDP party has been expressing concern for Ukrainian citizens since December 10th 2013, near the start of the peaceful protests. Paul Newer, the NDP foreign affairs critic, also wrote to Baird asking for a government-wide delegation to Ukraine. While the “government-wide” aspect of the request was ignored, Dewer was reported to tweet “Glad for Canadian delegation to #Ukraine as NDP requested. Too bad only MPs from one party. We all stand with Ukrainian people.”

Harper, along with six other G-8 countries, has also agreed to boycott all preparatory meetings of the G-8 meeting scheduled in Sochi later this year, recalled the Canadian ambassador from Russia, and has suspended all joint military activities with Russia with threats of further severing of ties if the situation is not resolved.

Harper said in a statement March 4 that: “We continue to view the situation in Ukraine with the gravest concern and will continue to review our relations with President Putin’s government accordingly.”

Ukrainian Crimean Tatars, a muslin minority in the Crimea region that are strongly opposed to Russian rule, have planned another protest outside the Russian embassy this Friday.

Some civil-society leaders today call for a boycott of Israel… Most disgracefully of all, some openly call Israel an apartheid state. Think about that. Think about the twisted logic and outright malice behind that… A state, based on freedom, democracy and the rule of law, that was founded so Jews can flourish as Jews, and seek shelter from the shadow of the worst racist experiment in history.

Now perhaps credit to Harper for trying, but this sort of statement seems to indicate misunderstanding of a few things, as well as outright ignoring others. By calling any critical statement towards the Israeli government anti-Semitic, Harper appears to be claiming that the state of Israel is in fact the entire Jewish population. Not only is this mistaken, but it serves to highlight Harper’s questionable approach to issues in the Middle-East.

As Tyler Levitan, spokesperson for the Ottawa Independent Jewish Voice, said in a recent press release on the issue: “This is a continuation of Harper’s outrageous efforts to disparage the Palestinian people, as well as the growing international solidarity movement that supports the non-violent Palestinian campaign to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel until Israel is willing to accept Palestinian rights.”

During his speech Harper repeatedly compared recent calls to boycott Israel to that of the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany, during which Jewish shops were boycotted. He then went on to describe that Israel was being singled out for criticism on a global scale, and that such an approach was unbalanced, weak, and wrong.

However, as Levitan notes, ‘“Palestinian human rights activists support universal human rights for all people, so we are not singling out Israel. It is Harper, who refuses to challenge Israel’s systematic human rights abuses, who is making an exception of Israel by exempting it from criticism.”

Harper’s biased approach to the Middle-East was commented on by some of the Knesset—two of their members openly heckled Harper, and then stormed out in protest. Ahmad Tibi, one of the hecklers, said that he walked out on Harper’s speech as the approach Harper was taking was “biased, non-balanced,” and added “that’s why Canada has a very marginal role in the Middle East.”

Not only this, but Harper seems to have completely ignored how the Canadian government is against the Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. In fact Harper was deafening in his total exclusion of the subject, refusing to be dragged into commenting on it at all.  Tibi’s view on the situation was: “When you are controlling, discriminating, confiscating, occupying lands from one side and putting them in the corner without any basic rights, you are by this way ruling and committing apartheid in the occupied Palestinian Territories.”

While Harper is on his tour, there is a planned protest outside the Israeli consulate happening today, January 22, at 4pm in Toronto, as well as twelve other cities across Europe and North America. The protest is in support of nearly 50,000 African asylum seekers on strike since the  January 5. The strike is in response to a recent amendment to the Prevention of Infiltration Law, which previous amendments were condemned by the High Court of Justice as “a grave and disproportionate abuse of the right to personal freedom.”

More information on the protest can be found here.

Note the pregnant pause, as the voiceover really lays into that “thinks he was…born to be prime minister”, as if to suggest Justin Trudeau is infantile and entitled. The quote they pull from him is so blatantly designed to paint him as privileged and (by association) feminine (?), that the little pixie-dust sound effect they use is kind of redundant. Alas, the Conservative Party of Canada isn’t known for its tact, and it’s in the party’s best interest to use base signifiers like pixie-dust and pregnant pauses to communicate some sort of feminine inability—the less nuanced the debate is, the more likely the party’s voter base is to make a knee-jerk opinion about the young Trudeau.

But why, why all this emasculation? Who’s Justin Trudeau but a young, attractive (as far as Canadian politics goes), affable, well-spoken fella with a pedigree and name that’s still darling to the Canadian public? Ah, I see, I see.

Given the blatancy with which the Conservative Party is advertising itself, I would like to propose an idea. Do away with all this fancy “radio” stuff, and these large complicated concepts like “economics” and “job creation” and really cut to the kernel of this whole ad campaign.

For the consideration of the Conservative Party of Canada, a children’s book—Stephen Harper and the Damsel Economy, a Pop-up.

Let’s open it up and take a look, shall we?

See Stephen Harper ride an ATV.

See Stephen Harper play hockey.

See Stephen Harper drink a Guinness.

See Stephen Harper drink an Alexander Keith’s.

Drink, Stephen Harper, drink.

See Stephen Harper drill into something with a power tool.

See Stephen Harper take aim at something with his rifle.

It’s plain as day: Stephen Harper is a masculine man!

A masculine man is necessary to balance the economy.

Stephen Harper’s opponent, Justin Trudeau, is encircled by some kind of fairy dust, and is therefore not a masculine man.

Stephen Harper is just the kind of masculine man Canada needs to save its fragile, coquettish economy.

The end.

I didn’t find anything Mr. Mulroney had to say particularly compelling—he comments on the charter of values in Quebec, Thomas Mulcair’s NDP leadership and Justin Trudeau’s stance on legalizing marijuana—but I did find myself not hating him as much as I once would. Putting aside the fact that watching two extremely rich white guys discuss how to run the country makes me gag reflexively, Mulroney is almost a refreshing Conservative, free from the mechanical robot speak of the Harper party liners. Then, I started wondering if we were entering an era of lionizing Brian Mulroney.

There’s a homogenous candour about him now that allows him to speak freely about policy, and the failure of the new conservatives in Canada, without becoming too transparent (he’s still a politician after all). Like Nixon post Watergate I think there is still a belief within Brian that the country needs him and a comeback would never be out of the question(Aw). Politicians, like boxers, can never truly rule out getting back in the ring so their guard has to always be at least half up. It would also be creepy, though, if he became too open—sort of like if your parents opened up to you about their sex lives. He’s in the box I want him in, the sweet spot where I can still dislike most of what he stands for while somehow daydreaming of days when Conservatives were more thoughtful, less ideologically stunted and perfectly cozy hanging out just right of centre.

(I suppose the worst thing you can say about Brian Mulroney now is that he gave Canadian media Ben Mulroney.)

Offspring aside, Mulroney, really, is a reminder that Conservatism used to be a far less pernicious force in Canadian politics. We can quibble over his tenure’s failures, and his tendency toward corruption (also one time this happened), but he never did as much to divide the country as Stephen Harper is doing now. He never touted the values of smaller government while consolidating all federal power within his office. Mulroney never politicized governmental scientific research and he didn’t turn our prison system into a draconian throwback to medieval Europe. We’re now seeing the dangers of a populist conservative movement in the United States, ideological ignorance combined with an unwillingness to compromise, and, as it turns out, the archetype of Conservative as lawyer-come-political operative is not the worst thing in the world.

Image via pixdesk.ca

The image of Stephen Harper “muzzling” anybody frightens me. Hair slightly un-coifed, half a glass of Chablis to the wind, his dog-eared copy of Atlas Shrugged has been tucked away on the dresser where his tighty-whiteys are neatly folded in the drawers below. It’s Friday night god dammit and Stephen’s here to party. The safe word is: prorogation.

My musings on our Prime Minister’s psychosexual tendencies aside, as most of us have heard, the real muzzling is going on in the research lab not the bedroom.

On September 22, the New York Times Editorial Board wrote a piece criticizing our government’s policy of obstruction between scientists and the media. The board notes, “There was trouble of this kind here [America] in the George W. Bush years, when scientists were asked to toe the party line on climate policy and endangered species. But nothing came close to what is being done in Canada.”

Let’s just all live with that quote for a few minutes.

I’m not sure what to be more embarrassed about: that the newspaper of record (in a country where 57 percent of the people believe that the devil is an actual real thing) has felt compelled to completely justifiably trash our government and characterize the issue as “an attempt to guarantee public ignorance.”

OR

That the shit-tonne of great Canadian reporting on this subject has gone largely un-read.

What I do know is that this government’s policy of stifling communication, particularly on the topic of scientific research, is indicative of controlling a message that is so at odds with what I identify as Canadian that it sickens me to think about it. Isn’t this consolidation of power precisely what a multi-party, bicameral legislature is designed to safeguard against?

So how does the Prime Minister, who has adorably said (with a straight face) that he “believes in small government” and “doesn’t believe in imposing his values on people” justify his government’s actions? He doesn’t of course. He does what researchers are being instructed to do: evade and avoid.

But wait, the Information Commissioner (a largely toothless position) Suzanne Legault (appointed by Harper) is investigating a complaint brought against the government that states their policy is illegal under the Access to Information Act. So Canadians have that going for them…

Until then, Canadian scientists will continue to stand in solidarity with their government-owned brethren, fighting for transparency in what is supposed to be an apolitical field. Also, organizations like Evidence for Democracy,  the Canadian Science Writers’ Association and Democracy Watch are committed to being vocal about the issue and keeping it in the public consciousness.

University of Ottawa biologist, Jeremy Kerr, summed it up well at a rally against muzzling when he said: “The facts do not change just because the Harper government has chosen ignorance over evidence and ideology over honesty.”

The facts don’t seem to be much of an issue for the majority of Canadians, fearlessly led by the Harper government. However, anyone who believes that restricting Canada’s access to unfiltered scientific research is wrong will continue to get screwed. What was that safe word again?

The prime minister looks on in mild amusement as his wife is gnawed by a dog.

Stephen Harper began his eighth annual Northern Tour August 18, accompanied by his wife, Laureen, and a gaggle of ministers.

The tour launched Sunday as the prime minister and his entourage landed in Whitehorse, where Harper spoke at a Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) BBQ and attended an afternoon picnic in Miles Canyon.

In his remarks at the CPC BBQ, Harper announced financial support for the Centre for Northern Innovation in Mining, compared himself (again) to Diefenbaker, and accused his political opponents of “dangerous ideas and vacuous thinking.”

On Tuesday in Hay River, Harper met with fellow Conservatives at the local golf club.

In a post on the Northern Tour blog, Laureen provided teasers of tour plans, including a photo of herself on an ATV from 2012’s tour, suggesting there may be some off-roading in the Harpers’ future. Regardless, with Harper’s social media platforms documenting the couple’s Northern adventures, Laureen and Stephen’s fun vacation up North presents a lighthearted perspective but tends to ignore the very real, critical issues facing Northern communities—something we’d love to hear more about.

After campaign-style stops in Whitehorse, Hay River, and Gjoa Haven, the tour is scheduled to hit Rankin Inlet and end in Raglan Mine, Que. later this week. The Northern Tour is funded by tax revenue, and you can tune into extensive coverage on the prime minister’s blog, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

The changes allow agents of  Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (HRSDC), the branch of government in charge of the program, to enter the premises of any business employing TFWs and search without a warrant.

Harper’s government has been reviewing the TFWP for some time, and have made other changes in the past few months: the workers must now be paid the “prevailing wage,” where before employers were permitted to pay TFWs 15 percent less than their Canadian co-workers. This decision, made in April, infuriated businesses and opponents, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, said it would push labour offshore.

Stephen Harper has made much of the issues surrounding the TFWP, particularly after the subject entered the limelight, with RBC under fire for outsourcing labour this spring. The program, designed to fill positions when Canadians are not available to work, provided cheaper labour before the change required employers to adhere to the prevailing wage. However, this latest amendment has consequences far beyond the program itself.

HRSDC officials can now enter any business they suspect of fraud relating to the TFWP—like businesses suspected of employing undocumented foreign workers, or misreporting their use of the program. Officials are also permitted, under the new rules, access to all documents on the premises—essentially, to search without a warrant.

In their report on the change, the Globe and Mail interviewed Richard Kurland, an immigration lawyer practicing in Vancouver. “This is a civil liberties grab,” Kurland said to the paper.

It’s a tough call: both the wage change and the new policing policies are arguably beneficial for temporary foreign workers, and will prevent at least some of the worst aspects of the previous policy—systemic (and often encouraged) exploitation that benefits business at the expense of poorly paid imported labour with very few rights in this country.

But since when does Stephen Harper care about the rights of foreign workers? The TFWP and the outsourcing of labour are hot topics for Canadians these days—some are concerned about exploitation, treatment, and rights, but many are more afraid of being replaced by cheaper labour. For many people, the most damning part of the RBC fiasco was the company’s audacity in demanding Canadian workers train the outsourced staff set to replace them. The story made headlines across the country, playing on recession-era anxieties about the dwindling job market—and this latest reform seems more tacked on to the end of that outraged bandwagon and less a result of finally listening to the years of activism surrounding TFW rights.

Harper’s positions just don’t add up. His interest in the rights of foreign workers over the profits of Canadian businesses is stunningly out of character. While it will force employers who participate in the TFWP to subject to random audits, raising the standards of TFW rights immeasurably and with good reason, it also gives officials powers they have in no other branch of government, powers to enter premises unannounced, take photos and videos and seize documents. It’s hard to trust motives. Instead of wage raises, will we get deportations? Abuses of power? Degradation of privacy?

A spokesperson for Justicia For Migrant Workers, a Canadian non-profit and advocacy group, says this is precisely the concern. “While theoretically inspections may improve some work places,” says Chris Ramsaroop, an organizer with the group. “There are many more issues that may arise from federal officials entering workplaces. Will these regulations be utilized by the Canada Border Services Agency (in collaboration with Citizenship and Immigration Canada) to undertake more immigration raids on migrant worker communities?”

The change sets a troubling precedent: The rights of foreign workers are a noble cause, and Harper has used that noble cause to his advantage—a smokescreen to introduce policies open and available to government abuse without, as Ramsaroop says, addressing the fundamental problems with the TFWP.

“There are numerous issues that could have been undertaken by the federal government to protect the rights of migrants,” he says, “Including addressing recruitment fees, providing workers the ability to apply for residency to Canada, and ensuring their human rights are respected. These regulations do not address any of these concerns.”

The Force Four Entertainment-produced series, called “Border Security: Canada’s Front Line” is currently on season two and has not yet been cancelled. Thankfully, though, the common sense of others won out in regards to one particularly exploitative episode.

The filming of a March 13 Vancouver construction site raid and the arrests of eight migrant workers will not air as part of the series. Also, there are now restrictions on where cameras are allowed. Filming is done away from the border and kept on the inland enforcement of those with “serious criminality.”

A memo from CBSA cites, “negative public response may continue,” as the reason for the episode’s cancellation. Such negative public response includes: Amnesty International, BC Civil Liberties Association, LeadNow, Council of Canadians, No One Is Illegal and the Canadian Bar Association (CBA), all of which have spoken out against the series, and wish for its cancellation. Thompson’s petition on change.org has over 24,000 signatures and an open letter addressed “To Force Four Entertainment, Shaw Media, Global BC, National Geographic, Canadian Border Services Agency, and all other producers, financiers, and broadcasters of Border Security: Canada’s Front Line,” has garnered 250 signatures from media professionals.

Diana Thompson, wife to Tulio Renan Hernandez , a worker who has been deported to Honduras told the activist group No One is Illegal: “We all feel extremely relieved by the news and are grateful to everyone who spoke out. We want this episode and the whole show cancelled.”

Picture from Diana Thompson's Change.org petition

The show, which follows CBSA, has been criticized for exploiting the confusion and language barriers of people. Or as the Border Security site says, “From confused visitors to phony immigrants.” National Geographic gets more dramatic while describing this trashy TV, “Passengers react in a variety of unpredictable ways—they lie, argue, play the victim, plead ignorance and even threaten legal action.  But they are no match for the investigative tactics of the CBSA officers.  After all, the law is on their side.”

Concerns about the show regard harming not only the dignity of fellow human beings but in some cases putting them further in harm’s way. A letter addressed to Toews from the CBA explains that those seeking refuge for themselves and their family may be endangered further, having their faces filmed for television. The letter also says what many are worried about: “We question whether those foreign nationals participating in the filming can be considered to have provided free and informed consent.”

Though people are asked to sign a waiver, they are filmed first, then asked while they are detained. Language barriers, confusion and fear that not signing will affect their release factor before signing.

Force Four Entertainment released a statement after the raid, saying they were being mis-characterized and that the show was not exploitative tabloid television but a documentary about the CBSA. However the letter originally sent to Toews for approval wasn’t trumpeting education but sensationalism calling the project a, “documentary-style reality television series.” The letter, fit for Tory propaganda continues, “It would be a valuable opportunity to promote important messages about Canada’s commitment to border security to give profile to the agency as a professional and effective law enforcement organization.” And so the show was approved and funded by our federal government.

Josh Patterson, executive director of the BC Civil Liberties Association also appealed to Parliament Hill at a Vancouver news conference in March, “The federal government must respect the rights of every person it deals with, regardless of their immigration status.”

The show airs Mondays at 8 and 8:30 on the National Geographic Channel. For now.