Awhile back I commented that Star Wars had been making headlines lately. I somehow managed to contribute to this situation when a slightly humorous blog post I wrote on a Friday afternoon ended up causing a media firestorm (The Atlantic Wire has a couple good roundups of the debate). It all started when my colleague Peter Jaworski over at the Western Standard gathered some statistics on the number of Canadians who claimed to be Jedi Knights on the 2001 census and compared those numbers to other countries:

I followed up on this with a post on Reason's Hit & Run blog integrating Canada's long-form census controversy with news that someone had robbed a bank in a Darth Vader costume. An off-the-cuff comment I made about the political leanings of the Jedi ended up causing waves across the blogosphere:

Dan Drezner over at Foreign Policy took issue with this statement and argued that we really don't know enough about the history of the Galactic Senate to come to any firm conclusions. He does, however, have a few thoughts of his own about the ideological leanings of the Jedi:

Blogger Jonathan Bernstein followed up on this by looking at the institutional structure of the Galactic Republic:

While the U.S. deals with the Gulf oil spill, an overhaul of financial regulations, and overbearing immigration laws, the big summer controversy in Canada is whether the government should stop coercing people into handing over detailed personal information to big brother.

Much like in this country, Canadians are required to fill out a census form every five years. A randomly selected group of people, however, are given a long-form census with invasive questions about personal relationships, work and migration histories, and family background, among other things. While I wouldn't have thought that making such questions voluntary would be all that controversial, a surprising number of people are up in arms over the proposal.

Many groups are worried that a voluntary census would hamper the government's ability to collect reliable data, which is then acquired by these groups at prices far below market value. Yet, considering that in 2001, 21,000 Canadians listed their religion as Jedi Knight, it would appear as though collecting information under the threat of coercion doesn't work very well either. Census data from other countries also shows that the world's Jedi population is growing. But as many European countries move to eliminate the census altogether, Canadian Jedis are up in arms.

Last weekend in Toronto, G20 summiteers agreed to cut deficits in half by 2013 and "reduce government debt-to-GDP ratios by 2016." And it only cost them a billion dollars and a few breaches of civil liberties to achieve this result.

Here's your G20 wrap-up, with bonus late-breaking news of violence against journalists:

The big story from the event was not what the leaders did, but the police state that downtown Toronto was turned into.

The government had prepared for the event by spending an exorbitant amount of money on security. Police were given additional powers inside the security zone by a secret law passed by the Ontario government, which allowed them to arrest people for failing to produce identification. Police also told the public they had these powers around the perimeter of the zone, but later admitted they made this up.

Wouldn't it be great to flip the government the bird and declare yourself exempt from income taxes? That's exactly what a Canadian man tried to do. David Kevin Lindsay—who in 1996 declared himself not a person, as defined by the law—recently lost a lengthy court battle over his failure to pay income tax:

At the end of June, President Barack Obama and leaders of the world's seven most powerful economies, as well as finance ministers and central bank governors from 20 countries, will meet in Ontario, Canada, for the Group of Eight (G-8) and Group of Twenty (G-20) summits. In an effort to ensure that world leaders remain safe, Canada's so-called Conservative government will spend close to US$950 million on security for the summits, which will last a total of three days.

In the wake of the riots during the 1999 World Trade Organization Conference in Seattle and the September 11th terrorist attacks on New York City, it is not unreasonable to ensure that government officials remain safe. Yet this Canadian stimulus program for police officers dwarfs the $25 million allocated by Congress for security at the 2004 G-8 summit in Sea Island, Georgia, and the $12.4 million that was reportedly spent on security during last year's G-20 summit in Pittsburgh.

Of course, the frivolous government spending doesn't stop there. In total, the Canadian government is expected to spend over US$1.15 billion, including millions spent on a temporary indoor lake to make international journalists feel as if they are in cottage country, even though they'll be in a convention center in downtown Toronto:

The Western Standard has released a video of artist Lindy Vopnfjord performing his new song, which speaks out against the Canadian Human Rights Commission:

The Green Party of Alberta has been de-registered as a provincial political party by Elections Alberta:

Canadians are fed up with consecutive minority governments in the House of Commons, according a new poll conducted by Harris-Decima. The survey found that 64 per cent of respondents would prefer a majority government in the next election, up from 52 per cent a year ago. This is good news for the Liberals and Conservatives—the two parties that have a chance of winning the next election—and bad news for smaller parties, like the NDP, which could see a significant drop in support if enough Canadians choose to vote strategically in order to try and obtain a majority government.

It is not all good news for the Conservatives, however, as 44 per cent of respondents prefer a Liberal government (majority or minority) to another Conservative government (33 per cent). These numbers are a little skewed, since respondents were only given four options: Conservative majority or minority, or Liberal majority or minority. A similar study conducted by Angus Reid at the end of June found the Conservatives maintaining a slight lead with 32 per cent support, compared to 31 for the Liberals.

While I would not put too much stock in these numbers (considering the earliest the government could fall is the end of September, which is an eternity in politics) the numbers do show that Canadians are not happy with the consecutive minority governments that we've witnessed since 2004. And can you blame them? While 60 per cent of respondents said that these minority governments have accomplished about as much as they expected, they were also twice as likely to say they've accomplished less, rather than more, than expected.

In yet another flagrant attack on personal liberties in the province, the Alberta government announced a series of measures to remove armoured vehicles from the roads:

I sometimes get the feeling that Canadian politicians haven't quite figured out this minority government thing yet. Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff brought the country to the brink this week in an attempt to gain some last minutes concessions from Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

And why not? It's worked so well in the past. Our opposition parties started using this strategy—of extracting concessions from the government whenever a confidence vote is looming—after Jack Layton successfully pressured then Prime Minister Paul Martin into putting $4.6 billion worth of NDP demands into the budget. The NDP then ran on this success during the 2006 election, as it is the only thing the party has ever accomplished.

Harper was largely able to avoid this type of blackmail during his first term in office. He didn't take crap from the opposition and, for the most part, was able to run the country as though he had a majority. Yet, after last fall's coup attempt by the opposition parties, Harper realized that his minority government was in jeopardy of destabilizing, just weeks after the election. Ignatieff was able to use this apparent weakness to secure massive spending increases from what used to be a fiscally conservative government. This has since led to a projected $50 billion deficit, the largest in Canadian history. Are you starting to see a pattern here?