On Sat, Jan 23, 2010 at 10:58 AM, William Robb <[email protected]> wrote: > > ----- Original Message ----- From: "frank theriault" > Subject: Re: Today's Outing > > > >> >> Sure - why bother to ever have them sit? Let's just permanently >> suspend parliament so those pesky MPs never have to bother us with >> their stupid laws again. > > Frank, how many laws are there? > A while back I called the CBC Good Question with that. > They didn't even try, although they did say it was one of the best questions > they had ever been asked. > So I asked the same question of a couple of the lawyers in my wife's office. > They had no idea either, but figured it had to be at least 20,000 if one > takes into account all federal laws plus provincial laws (just for the one I > live in) plus RM laws for the area surrounding where I am as well as civic > laws. > Do we really need more laws? > As an example, in order to combat auto theft, didn't the feds recently pass > a law specifically prohibiting it? > Wasn't it enough that we already have laws in place regarding theft? > My favourite now is the anti cell phone while driving laws. > Why bother? > Not only is it not changing anyone's habits from what I've seen, but we > already have driving without due care and attention laws in place that are > applicable. > If Parliament's sole job is to pass laws, then they have long since outlived > their usefulness, as the best they can hope to do now is slice and dice the > laws that are now in place. > If there are so many laws in place that it is no longer reasonably possible > for a citizen to know them all, then it is no longer reasonable to expect > said citizen to be able to obey them all, and it becomes unjust to punish a > person for not obeying them. > We have long since passed that point, and truthfully, in many instances, > ignorance of the law may well be a legitimate excuse for not obeying the > law. > > William Robb >
I'd love to see somebody get some political mileage by advertising the dumbest laws on the books and promising to repeal them. There's an absolutely crazy collection of both outdated law and laws passed just to 'do something' like the anti-cell phone driving laws (An issue already adequately covered under negligence if accidents occur). -- M. Adam Maas http://www.mawz.ca Explorations of the City Around Us. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
