The Conservatives have decided that Canada needs a hotline to report "Barbaric cultural practices". The ostensible idea here is to let people call in to report their neighbours to the government for doing things that are awful, particularly things that threaten women and children. That explanation does have a nice ring to it, but unfortunately it is complete bullshit. Let me break it down:
If a thing is illegal, you can call the police. We don't need a separate hotline.
If a thing is legal but it should be illegal, we should amend our laws, not have a pointless hotline.
If a thing is legal and should be, we don't need a hotline.
There is no circumstance where a hotline of this nature is useful in any way. Useful, that is, for protecting women and children. There is one use, and that is to convince racist white people to vote Conservative so they can call in to complain about people of colour doing things they don't like.
My suspicion is that this hotline is purely an election ploy and will be quietly scrapped as soon as it has served its purpose. Maintaining a separate law enforcement branch just to field complaints about people of colour is insane from any standpoint, but using it to leverage anti Muslim sentiment is working for the Conservatives. Which is just another reason this election is truly sad.
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