Great, I have a Government that countenances torture

[shadowspar]

This is fucking unbelievable.

The Conservative government has quietly given Canada’s national police force and the federal border agency the authority to use and share information that was likely extracted through torture.

Newly disclosed records show Public Safety Minister Vic Toews issued the directives to the RCMP and the Canada Border Services Agency shortly after giving similar orders to Canada’s spy service.

The government directives state that protection of life and property are the chief considerations when deciding on the use of information that may have been derived from torture.

They also outline instructions for deciding whether to share information when there is a “substantial risk” that doing so might result in someone in custody being abused.

This apparently is substantially the same directive he issued to CSIS last summer (which I'd never heard about 'til now).

I don't much traffic in moral absolutes, but this is one I will put all of my chips behind. Torture is always wrong. Full stop. End of transmission.

Any nominal respect I might once have had for Toews or the Conservative Government as duly-elected representatives is now long, long gone. And Toews is a former fucking justice minister! He stands for everything that decent Canadians abhor.

Yes, we are a signatory to the Convention against Torture. No, it doesn't mean anything to the blinkered, power-drunk fuckers who could never for a second imagine that they could be the ones being tortured and wishing they had its protections.

Article 2
2. No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.

Article 4
1. Each State Party shall ensure that all acts of torture are offences under its criminal law. The same shall apply to an attempt to commit torture and to an act by any person which constitutes complicity or participation in torture.
2. Each State Party shall make these offences punishable by appropriate penalties which take into account their grave nature.

Article 15
Each State Party shall ensure that any statement which is established to have been made as a result of torture shall not be invoked as evidence in any proceedings, except against a person accused of torture as evidence that the statement was made.