I posted about this on Facebook on Dominion Day, what the P.E. Trudeau government re-branded as "Canada Day" in 1982 to help hide the truth about the Dominion.
I consider the Thin Blue Line to be another discussion about systems vs individuals.
The job of Law Enforcement is to enforce the law, not to interpret it or to ignore the laws the police departments or individual officers don't like. If a law is racist, then it is still their job to enforce that law.
Whether US or Canadian law supports the idea that Every Child Matters or Black Lives Matter is a matter of law and other systems, not law enforcement. This is even true if some law enforcement officers start a "Blue Lives Matter" movement in response to the feeling they are personally being targeted by the "Black Lives Matter" and other human rights and social justice movements.
Canada and the United States are founded and still exist today as an ongoing expression of the White Supremacist notion that Europeans and European systems have more of a "right" to govern over this land (Reminder: not part of Europe) than the Indigenous Nations and peoples who have governed and stewarded this continent for tens of thousands of years.
The Canadian Constitution hasn't been modified significantly since the one the British unilaterally imposed in 1867 with the first of the 11 British North America Acts. This was done without the permission of, or even notification to, a majority of inhabitants and citizens of existing nations. There have been minor changes, but not away from White Supremacy within the Canada Act 1982, and other Acts of the British Parliament.
The United States is similarly fundamentally flawed, with their constitution being one of the most outdated on the planet.
Lets use a concrete example. APTN recently did an in-depth called:
Behind the Thin Blue Line: Meet a secretive arm of the RCMP in B.C.
We could read that article and get all angry at the RCMP for this, but lets remember: they are law enforcement.
Where is the source of the conflicts with the sovereign nations in that part of Turtle Island (the name the peoples near where I live, such as the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe call this continent)?
That would be the British Columbia NDP government. That is the allegedly democratic body that is in charge of these systems, and passed the laws (and unlawfully approves "development" on land they don't have jurisdiction over) which the BC RCMP is then required to enforce.
The BC NDP even passed a law promising to change BC's racist laws to conform with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, but thus far has refused to do anything other than virtue signalling and theater. They could immediately cease the violations of human right being carried out by the RCMP, with simple changes to the injunction process on unceded lands, but refuses to do so even with their majority government.
BC (currently NDP government, allegedly the most "progressive" party that forms governments in Canada) and Canada (currently a "Liberal" government) are regularly called out by UN agencies for ongoing human rights violations. (PDF Posted by APTN, You can also go to the Treaty Body Database, limit to Canada, and look at April 29, 2022)
Note: What Canada and BC are claiming about Indian Act band councils granting them "permission" is in fact unconstitutional. Those federally created/regulated corporations administrating Canadian government services delegated to the federal government under the racist Constitution section 91(24) do not have any jurisdiction over activities outside of their reservations. They are not examples of self-determined responsible governments.
Blaming the police, and especially blaming individual police officers, is part of flawed Western worldviews which have a narrow focus on individuals rather than recognizing systems.
Police departments within "Canada" and "United States" are not law enforcement systems which contains some racist (the oddball "Bad Apples" narrative), but the enforcement arm of racist governance systems. Individual police officers are not the problem. If there are individual officers that are more overtly racially prejudiced, that can easily be understood as being the most loyal to Canadian systems (Patriotism).
What about the claim that law enforcement is the "line which keeps society from descending into violent chaos"?
First you need to recognize that Canada has a legal system, imposed by Britain based on British laws, religion and worldviews, and not a justice system. This set of systems called the Dominion of Canada have been carrying out a slow Genocide since it was imposed by the British.
Law is not the same thing as order, and sometimes laws and law enforcement itself can be the cause of violent chaos
(I have taken a course where Kim Tallbear was my professor. She is an amazing Indigenous academic who does anthropology of white peoples. )
(I have taken a course where Kim Tallbear was my professor. She is an amazing Indigenous academic who does anthropology of white peoples. )
Law enforcement in Canada is part of the ongoing colonialism project. Carrying out racist activities is in fact their job, given the laws they are required to enforce are examples of systemic racism.
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