If at first you don't succeed.. .. After seeing the growing sentiment against online bullying crystallized in the tragic cases of Amanda Todd and Rehtaeh Parsons, this week we saw the federal Conservatives introduce a bill aimed at protecting Canadians from what can be life-ruining bullying online.
The bill, if passed, gives police powers to seize computers and smartphones in cyberbullying investigations and imposes a prison term of up to five years for sharing "intimate photos" of another person without their permission.
But packed in with those laudable and timely updates to our legislation is a whack of things that don't have anything to do with protecting Canadians from cyberbullying.
Much of it is leftovers from Bill C-30, the bill then-public safety minister Vic Toews declared Canadians must either support or "stand with child pornographers," even though it largely amounted to domestic spying.
After an outpouring of opposition from civil libertarians, the legal community and regular Canadians as well as a clear warning the bill would never survive a charter challenge, the Tories did something they despise doing. They admitted they were wrong and scrapped the bill.
But now it's back, using bullied teens as a human shield to deflect criticism that it oversteps the boundaries Canadians feel comfortable with when it comes to government intrusion into their private lives.
Let's not forget irony: this is the government that scrapped the longform census on the grounds it was too personal and invasive.
