Ontario is moving to ban smoking in cars if there’s children present. Like most government ideas, the invasive arrogance is only matched by the plain old goofiness. The smoking rates are at the lowest ever and people can smoke in less places than ever. But the asthma rates in the children are at their highest. Ever. You do the math.

Smoking is not to blame.

There must be another variable and there is: Pollution.

The worst of this is produced by the government, this oh-so-health concerned government, who burns coal to generate electricity like it’s 1913. The second is the amount of cars and their exhaust, which is much more dangerous than any tobacco smoke. Telling people not to smoke in their car with their kid is a bit like banning Bar-Be-Ques in hell. Smoking is not the problem. The government is.

Having taken care of the logic, I’d like to move onto the ad hominem attack, which is probably what you were waiting for.

I am so fucking sick of the pious health nuts in this country. A wise immigrant once told me that “Canadians mistake apathy for manners.” This means that no one will ever take a stand for fear of offending people. We call that polite.

Contrary to public opinion, we never even took a real stand on the Iraq War. Our position was this: We’ll wait and see what the U.N. tells us to do mixed with “a proof is a proof.” And Canadians actually feel like we stood up for something. We didn’t. We bent over for something.

Since we’re human, we do have to occasionally stand up for something. So what do we stand up for? The safest, most inoffensive things we can think of.  We’re anti-cancer. We’re pro-child safety. Who the fuck isn’t? Is there a pro-cancer lobby of pedophiles out there? Oh wait. Someone might get offended if we talk about pedophiles or criminal justice. Let’s take on bullies instead. Yeah, we’re anti-bully. We’re very strong on this issue. Bullies are bad. So is cancer. Especially if kids get it.

Well, congrats Canada. You’re taking another totally meaningless stand on another totally safe issue and your so-called cure will only make more people into criminals, give the government more power and distract you from anything that might actually be important enough to be controversial. So don’t break your arm patting yourself on the back.

You stupid fucking pussies.