Last week, Canada’s Conservative party announced plans to set up a police hotline called “Report Your Neighbor,” which is exactly as terrifying as it sounds. This is the totalitarian nightmare of “Brazil” married to the paranoid delusions of “Arlington Road,” where all it takes is one malicious busybody deciding you look suspicious and poof! You’re an enemy of the state.
The justification for “Report your Neighbor” draws from that fulsome rhetorical well where the government just wants to protect innocent women and children from “barbaric cultural practices.” Which are what, exactly? According to Canada’s Immigration Minister Chris Alexander, the practices they condemn are various forms of sexual slavery — forced marriage, polygamy, and the like — as defined by the “Zero Tolerances for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act” which passed this summer in Parliament.