“Grant’s Law” is inconvenient but what else would government do if it was not filling our lives with inconvenience? Surely one would not expect them to address such issues as poverty, affordable housing, homelessness, addiction or mental illness? No, that would require thought, hard work and leadership. It is so much easier to pander to the public with “Grant’s Law”, than to tackle pressing social issues.

The Liberal government pays lip service to capitalism and letting the markets decide – until it is politically convenient for legislation or to avoid enforcing the laws protecting workers. All the government had to do was use the existing labour standards to prevent employers from deducting the cost of stolen gas from employees or from firing them because they were intelligent enough to do the smart thing – nothing.

But enforcing labour standards in this instance would have set a precedent and the government could have found itself under pressure to enforce all the labour standards, areas such as farm workers. Or even worse, find their selves under pressure to deal with issues such as keeping employees as “part time” to avoid the rights and benefits that accrue to full time employees.

My sympathies may go out to Grant’s parents, but this law still exasperates me. Not because I resent being treated like a criminal and inconvenienced every time I purchase gasoline, but because at its core it is a law legislating about human stupidity.

With apologies to Mr. De Patie, rushing out to confront a criminal armed with a high powered weapon weighing hundreds of kilograms is not an intelligent action. And a car, despite the way the laws deal with drivers who kill people (drunk or sober drivers), is a lethal weapon. A criminal or an idiot armed with a car is as deadly lethal as if armed with an AK-47 and confronting them, whether armed with a car or AK-47, is less than intelligent behaviour that is likely to prove fatal.

What this law is about, besides inconveniencing and treating as criminals the pubic, is preventing people from behaving stupidly.

If government is going down that path, it better get right on legislation governing the use of ladders; since in North America nearly a person a day dies and there are 100,000 injures from falling from ladders. Legislation is obviously needed, even though research shows that 100% of ladder accidents might be eliminated with proper attention to the application of equipment.

If we are going to legislate about human stupidity where do we stop? After all, as Albert Einstein noted “Only two things are infinite, the Universe and Human Stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.”