Policing in Canada (at least Ontario) has been a worrisome topic for over a decade now.
I lived in a town that had it's own police force until the mid nineties until the OPP took over. It was supposed to be easier on the town's budget to contract the job out to the Provincial police, but that changed in a hurry. The costs soon spiraled out of control as they became a quasi paramilitary force with more and more specialized equipment.
To justify their increasing costs they had to levy more and more fines, and became pettier and pettier in doing so, not giving a single shit about our so-called "Charter of Rights and Freedoms". They would foot patrol the town at night, asking people for their ID, using the "I can smell alcohol" line whether a person's been drinking or not. Absolute assholes. In the winter, if you were parked in the vicinity of a bar, they would trace an x in the grime of your headlights so they could stop you down the road (I wised up to this trick when I saw them doing this). They had no evidence that you were even in a bar, but they were confident enough to do this. I was picking garbage off my lawn one day when a cop car pulled up and asked me to identify myself. Apparently I fit the description of someone who was seen peering into parked cars - a middle aged guy in a suit, yeah right.
Anyhow, long story short, as it applies to this new law, as the costs of policing us continue to increase, the overreach of the police will increase correspondingly so they can collect enough revenue to justify their existence. Canada will soon be a police state, and I say that without hyperbole. This is one of the essential reasons I no longer live there.
I lived in a town that had it's own police force until the mid nineties until the OPP took over. It was supposed to be easier on the town's budget to contract the job out to the Provincial police, but that changed in a hurry. The costs soon spiraled out of control as they became a quasi paramilitary force with more and more specialized equipment.
To justify their increasing costs they had to levy more and more fines, and became pettier and pettier in doing so, not giving a single shit about our so-called "Charter of Rights and Freedoms". They would foot patrol the town at night, asking people for their ID, using the "I can smell alcohol" line whether a person's been drinking or not. Absolute assholes. In the winter, if you were parked in the vicinity of a bar, they would trace an x in the grime of your headlights so they could stop you down the road (I wised up to this trick when I saw them doing this). They had no evidence that you were even in a bar, but they were confident enough to do this. I was picking garbage off my lawn one day when a cop car pulled up and asked me to identify myself. Apparently I fit the description of someone who was seen peering into parked cars - a middle aged guy in a suit, yeah right.
Anyhow, long story short, as it applies to this new law, as the costs of policing us continue to increase, the overreach of the police will increase correspondingly so they can collect enough revenue to justify their existence. Canada will soon be a police state, and I say that without hyperbole. This is one of the essential reasons I no longer live there.