If it weren’t for blogs like Creekside or Dawg’s Blog (and many others) we would not have heard that the Combating Terrorism Act passed second reading in Parliament and is well on its way to being another nail in the coffin of Canadian democracy.
The mainstream media almost completely ignored this important story. A Google News Search of “Combating Terrorism Act” reveals only one reference to the bill — an annoyingly brainless one at that — in an article by Chris Malette in the Bellville Intelligencer (sic), where he writes:
“Bill C-17: Combating Terrorism. (Oooh. Kickin’ in doors and swingin’ clubs, eh? Not really — it’s all about imposing court provisions to force people to testify if their neighbour who looks suspiciously Arabic buys fertilizer.)”
That’s it. Our mainstream media is pathetic at best, criminally irresponsible at worst.
Bill C-17 is a victory of sorts for those who want to make the Magna Carta history. Under the banner of “combating terrorism” the act will make warrantless arrests possible and provides for 12-month preventive imprisonment of people suspected of planning terrorist acts.
It is not too late to try and stop this outrage, but it will be difficult to overcome the Tory-Liberal bloc that voted for it.
Contact information for MPs is available here. Go get ‘em!
Might I also suggest that we start writing to our local purveyors of news and tell them to wake up and start covering news that matters. (And send some kudos to the afore-mentioned bloggers — they deserve them.)
Paul S. Graham 
Hi Paul. Thanks for writing to this.
Most alarming about the complete lack of interest in C-17 is that news of it at “Creekside, Dawg’s Blog, and many others” as you mention, is actually just my same blog post in several different places.
Presumably if the Libs and Cons can get together to pass something this important through second reading with no MSM coverage, the only thing keeping them from working together on other issues is partisan party politics.
The good news is that your observations were reproduced by a network of bloggers who care about democratic rights and freedoms. While bloggers are often correctly criticized for following the mainstream media, your story on the Combating Terrorist Act shows that “citizen journalism” has an important role to play. I hope it gets wide play within the blogging community.