[…] The long title of C-38 is “An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 29, 2012 and other measures”.

“And other measures” sounds like such a little thing; a tiny little afterthought.

It is anything but.

“And other measures” means destroying the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act and replacing it with an impostor law by the same name.

“And other measures” means throwing the Fisheries Act, the Species at Risk Act, the Canadian Environmental Protection Act and the Navigable Waters Protection Act under the bus purely for the benefit of big oil pipeline projects.

“And other measures” means no new laws improving tanker or pipeline safety or requirements that provincial environmental reviews are in fact equivalent to federal ones, despite the repeated insistence by Conservative MPs that those changes are actually in C-38. They are not.

“And other measures” means abandoning the Kyoto Protocol and stubbornly refusing to give climate change any acknowledgement at all. It means firing climate scientists and cutting climate research and pretending it is just about reducing government spending.

“And other measures” means taking money from Elections Canada for the investigation of election fraud and giving it to the Canada Revenue Agency for the investigation of charitable organizations that the government does not agree with.

“And other measures” means that cabinet ministers can override the National Energy Board at will without recourse. And the board should consider itself lucky . . the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy and the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development both ended up suddenly not even existing anymore.

“And other measures” means removing the Office of the Inspector General, the office responsible for providing impartial oversight of CSIS.

“And other measures” means weakening the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and allowing companies more control over seeds and crops.

“And other measures” means a whole slew of things — seventy in all — that will fundamental change many aspects of life in Canada today and for years to come. And all on an extremely tight schedule without proper debate or input from anyone outside of the Conservative Party.

[…]