Art Hanger is a Member of Canadian Parliament and chairman of the House of Commons Justice Committee and he has written one of the most moronic OpEds I’ve read in some time. He’s complaining about the Canadian Supreme Court’s decision saying that suspicion-less sniffing of backpacks by dogs is a violation of the right to be secure against unreasonable search and seizure.
His OpEd: Basic Logic Escapes Six Justices In Two Drug Dog Cases, which is, of course, funny, because the one really lacking logic is the one who wrote this dreck.
…a police-trained drug dog, sniffing the back-pack of someone under suspicion hardly violates this elusive clause that says everyone has the right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure.
This very basic logic somehow escaped six of nine members of the Supreme Court of Canada.
Everyone to be afforded the protection of this clause includes a fellow by the name of Gurmakh Kang-Brown, who was caught with 17 ounces of cocaine in his luggage during a random search at the Calgary Greyhound Bus depot. Everyone includes a high school student in Sarnia, Ont., caught with 10 bags of marijuana and 10 magic mushrooms during a search on school property.
Yet the Supreme Court, in what ranks high on the asinine decision list, recently rushed to protect their rights and privacy by ruling that police violated the charter by allowing their dogs to sniff search because they didn’t have enough reason to suspect drugs were present.
Didn’t they? And so what. Both culprits were caught with sizable amounts of illegal drugs – enough to generate a lot of misery and crimes committed by users needing cash to buy these drugs. Trained dogs led police to drugs that in no way could be mistaken as stashes for personal consumption. The last time I looked, our schools, including elementary, and transportation ports are constantly being used by drug pushers to apply their trade; hence, the sniffer dogs are employed to curtail the drug pusher’s activity.
As far as I’m concerned, anyone who chooses to deal in illegal drugs forsakes their rights and I believe that most people in this country feel the same way.
This guy is chair of a Justice Committee.
Let’s try to understand his reasoning. The search was OK, because it turned out that those searched were guilty. So this means that you can search anyone, because if they’re guilty, then it’s OK, and if they’re not, well then… oops.
Now maybe it would be all right for the government to simply shoot Art Hanger on sight, because if it turned out that he was a mass murderer then it would be OK, and if not, well then… oops.
Art continues his intellectual exuberance to the end, by suggesting how the Justices could improve themselves…
You know, police have another tool the justices might be wise to explore. It is called Drug Abuse Resistance Education ( DARE ), a basic program designed to educate children on the ravages of illegal drugs.