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Jump to full article: National Post (ca), 2009-10-27
Intro: It's an odd world we live in: Ontario inmates now have more rights than truckers.
On Friday, Judge Luc Martineau of the Federal Court of Canada ruled that a May 2008 ban against all smoking in federal penitentiaries --even in designated outdoor areas -- went "too far." If civilians may smoke outside their office buildings, the logic goes, prisoners must be permitted to indulge their habit outside at prisons, too. According to Justice Martineau, inmates may be denied only those rights that are necessary to enforce their punishment, such as freedom of mobility.
. . .
Every time a law like this gets passed, observers assume that it represents the final frontier of government intrusiveness. But then the years pass, and nanny-state advocates keep pressing the boundaries of regulations further. Already, the Ontario Non-Smokers' Rights Association is actually pressuring the provincial government to go further -- and rewrite the provincial building code to forbid smoking in all apartments and condominiums. And who knows? They may soon get their wish. After all, a generation ago, who would have thought that many Western restaurants and bars would be smoke-free in 2009?
If the trucker decides to fight his ticket --and we hope he does -- we are confident large sections of Ontario's smoke-free law will be struck down. It is simply not possible in a free and democratic society for the state to be so intimately involved in regulating personal choices, even dumb ones, such as smoking. Until then, we supposed smokers increasingly will have to consider committing an indictable offence in order to indulge their constitutionally protected rights.
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