‘Canada used to be a free country before it exchanged its freedom for a charter to guarantee it’

George Jonas writes:

A video moment, captured during last summer’s G20 riots in Toronto, shows a group of York Regional police officers facing a slight, bearded figure. Wearing a black cap and a black T-shirt, the young man looks like a hirsute imp with an attitude. He refuses to let officers search his backpack as they’ve no grounds for it that he can see. He thinks he’s in Canada.

“This ain’t Canada right now,” one of the policemen advises him. (…)

If this isn’t Canada, it’s for a different reason. It’s because Canada doesn’t charge shopkeepers for detaining shoplifters and holding them for the police, but this Canada did charge a shopkeeper named David Chen.

Canada doesn’t ticket drivers for smoking in their own cars, but this Canada did ticket driver Tory Ashton for smoking while transporting a minor — one old enough to smoke herself, by the way.

Canada doesn’t prosecute people living in isolated farmhouses for firing warning shots to discourage arsonist wannabes, but this Canada is prosecuting firearm instructor Ian Thompson.

In a Canadian university, a moderator wouldn’t dole out the floor based on “equity policies” of sex and race, but in this Canada’s University of Toronto at least one moderator did, as Jonathan Kay reported last week.