Speed Cameras: Stop The Surveillance State

Published 10/02/2025 · Updated 10/02/2025

The Globe and Mail’s Andrew Coyne takes a whole new slant on the-speed camera issue …. a position we haven’t seen in the extensive discussion of it on The Bulldog.

It’s well worth reading:

We have indeed become all too complacent about the surveillance state, too ready to yield to arguments of expediency: It raises money. It reduces speeding. If you’re not doing anything wrong you don’t have anything to worry about.

Sorry, yes I do. I have a right to move about without the state recording my activities, for the same reason I have a right to draw the curtains on my windows – and I have these rights regardless of whether I use this anonymity to commit some minor infraction.

The price of a free society is that we tolerate some level of lawbreaking. We could post a police officer every three feet, and it would reduce crime to zero, but it would be intolerable – not just because of what it would cost, but because of what it would imply. We are right to expect some limits on policing power, beyond the bare minimum of the presumption of innocence and probable cause.

To read the full column, click here. If you haven’t exhausted your free views on the Globe’s paywall, you can access it. Or better, you could take out a subscription and help out Canadian journalism under siege. The Globe is worth the price.