Item on the front page of the Globe and Mail:

Canadians who know less about Fair Elections support it more: poll

So if we first accept the premise, then express the thought in another way, we should get something to the effect that the more Canadians know about the Fair Elections Act support it less. If you discount members of the Conservative Party Machine and their major beneficiaries (oil, finance, pharma, media and the COC types who would be happy to have the unrestrained playpen for their bad behaviour), the rest of us tend to feel that this is part of the Con plot to enshrine regressive politics as the default and only choice in the way that we run the country. The equating of lack of knowledge with support fits well with the overall strategy of a party that likes to hide behind a cloak of secrecy, to destroy knowledge by shutting down laboratories and discarding research libraries, knowing that people in general will be baffled into accepting disturbing changes if they don’t have the tools to understand the changes, why the changes are taking place, and what are the driving factors and people behind the changes. Ignorance begets compliance, at least to a point, particularly when it is accompanied by repeated chanting of the mantra that all this saves tax money (without the concomitant explanation that fees and prices for everything are also rising as a direct result of tax cuts, and that services are severely curtailed, along with the ability of people to act in common to improve our common lot.

So while we have been shedding tears (some sincere, some crocodile, some of joy) over the death of Jim Flaherty, progress continues apace on stringing the razor-wire circle of constraints on citizen action. We ignore this at our peril and at the peril of all humanity, given the widespread deployment of similar initiatives around the failing globe.