Vic Toews Is After Perverts, Hippies, Inmates, and Immigrants

Gif by James Kerr.

Vic Toews, Canada’s current Minister of Public Safety, seems to hate the internet, gay people, immigrants, inmates, and basically anyone else who isn’t a Canadian born Christian. As a result of his often controversial and disappointing campaigns of scattershot conservative action, Vic Toews has not enjoyed an overwhelming amount of support during his time as a politician. People are so bummed out about his practices that the citizens of his own province once protested when he was awarded an honorary degree. So in lieu of staring at our watches, waiting for Vic to finally be ushered out to the pasture of retired (or maybe even disgraced) Canadian politicians, we thought it would be a good idea to provide you all with a rundown of Vic’s most stunningly offensive political moves.

Most recently, Monsieur Toews got into some ethnically close-minded hot water over a reality TV show he personally approved about Canadian border guards who arrest illegal immigrants. The show is called “Border Security” and describes itself as “a dynamic documentary series” in which “officers question, cross-examine, inspect, pat down, swab, search and x-ray suspects and their belongings.” While watching people getting swabbed and x-rayed might make for good TV, the really controversial nerve was struck when border security raided a Vancouver construction site and arrested eight illegal immigrants. Some human rights groups have come forward and complained that this show is exploitative and disrespectful to the privacy rights of those arrested and a petition has been started to cancel “Border Security.” Evidently Vic was highly titillated by the show because he’s still defending the production, adding that no one was massively exploited and they’re illegal immigrants… so whatever, relax.

But Vic’s not just getting his jollies from arresting immigrants, on camera, who are simply trying to work a construction job. Just last year, Vic tried to break the internet by putting forward the subtly named “Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act,” also known as Bill C-30. The Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act (which, by the way, said nothing about children or internet predators anywhere within the act itself, only in the title) would have made it possible for police, CSIS, and Vic himself to contact anyone’s phone or internet provider and request all of their personal online information without a warrant. That would have included your name, address, phone number, email address and, most importantly, IP address. With that information the authorities could have figured out all sorts of things, like who you’re in contact with and what websites you browse. Plus it could have all happened without a warrant and without your knowledge.

Sounds awesome, right? Vic thought so, too! He was so passionate about the bill that he stood in parliament and told an MP that he was either, “with us or with the child pornographers.” Then he admitted he hadn’t entirely read the bill he’d put forward. As a result of his inadequate literacy skills, Vic was countered by a massive amount of public outrage on Twitter and a “Vikileaks” campaign from Anonymous that revealed the name of his mistress and called for his resignation. The wildly unpopular bill was quietly shelved and forgotten about by everyone, but ol’ Vic claims it will be back. And to be fair, it was a bill that had been introduced and shot down before Vic fucked it all up, so he could be right about that.

Vic also made some headlines late last year when he pulled down a job posting for a Wiccan chaplain in British Columbia’s prisons. Not long after that he cut funding to all non-Christian chaplains in prisons. But it’s only a few non-Christian inmates who will lose out so who cares, right? Well, those inmates cared enough to file a lawsuit against Vic which means he is now being sued by convicted criminals. Good work, Vic! He also banned pizza parties from going down in prison. Even criminals need pepperoni, man.

Forbidden pizza parties aside, Vic’s stern record of being remarkably hard on crime is basically unflappable. Ol’ Vic once tried to lower the age when a child can be deemed criminally responsible to 10 years old.  He was also condemned by MPs when he said that Ashley Smith, a teenage girl with mental health issues who strangled herself to death in prison as guards watched on, was not a victim.

Vic is also opposed to same sex marriage, which has been deemed a civil right in Canada for almost a decade. As the debate surged through the provinces, Parliament, and the Supreme Court, Vic incited the rage of gay rights activists by consistently voting against marriage equality bills, saying the decision to make same-sex marriage a legal right was a mistake and gracefully compared it to putting “the jackboot of fascism on the necks of our people.” More recently he has posted a letter online urging the province of Manitoba to act against a piece of anti-bullying legislation in high schools because part of the legislation helps protect gay-straight alliances in schools. His reasoning? Catholic schools see it as a threat to religious freedom. And even though Vic can’t do anything about the legislation because it’s outside his jurisdiction, he took it upon himself to speak out and stand up for the oppressed Catholics who don’t want gay kids to be talking with, or be seen next to, straight kids. So brave.

Vic Toews is the kind of politician who believes what he believes, and there’s no hiding it. Luckily he has more in common with a bitter and angry stepdad than a political leader, so when Vic says, “This is my house and these are my rules,” the public usually responds with something that effectively states: “You’re not my real Dad.” Regardless, Vic Toews is someone that Canadians should have their eye on because we all know that harassing illegal immigrants on television, cracking down on homosexuals, and trying to detonate internet freedom are not winning causes that anyone with half a brain wants to see championed within our government.

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