Public Safety ignores the Public - Cheney/Bush Visit ATIP

BLOG POST posted on December 15, 2011 by infil00p

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Last fall, there was a visit of both George W Bush and Dick Cheney to Vancouver. The Cheney visit was the one done by the Bon Mot Book Club, with the VPD protecting Cheney, members of the Fraser Institute, "journalists" from Globe and Mail, and others who have no problem with torture, and of course the George W Bush visit was in Surrey, where Mayor Dianne Watts wouldn't comment about her support for Torture and War Criminals.

Anyway, since this was a relatively current event, and the fact that I knew that Don Davies, the NDP MP in my riding, filed a complaint about this, I decided to use that as a starting point. The Access to Information request shows one hundred pages of complaints from various parties sent to the CBSA, Jason Kenney as well as to Vic Towes, the Public Safety minister who determines at the end of the day who gets into Canada (Jason Kenney gets to determine who gets to stay, that's a clear distinction that is made in the form). Since the CBSA is an agency that's accountable to Public Safety, Vic Towes got to use his form letter. The problem is that Vic Towes is advised to remove an entire paragraph of the cover letter that would normally apply to George W. Bush.

This is a very small and very revealing release. Once again the CBSA has their very festive mail label, and even though they could have saved time and e-mailed this to me like what the RCMP does, they chose to send it on CD-ROM. There is no mention of the Occupy movement in this e-mail, and it entirely consists of e-mails from Lawyers against the War, and other Anti-War persons which are way too respectful in my opinion. As usual, the file is below. The fact is that this is proof that letter writing doesn't work, and ATIP just proved that the Conservatives find their own laws inconvenient.

A201104930.PDF - The list of complaints with senders redacted.