Clinging to Power, Canada Style
by David Solway
And I will give children to be their princes, and babes shall rule over them.
And the people shall be oppressed.
-Isaiah, 3:4-5
There is a very real fear and presentiment across the land that the country is disintegrating, Many Canadians now feel, whether implicitly or overtly, that Canada is on the cusp, teetering on the verge of collapse and dissolution. The National Post reports that “A majority of Canadians looking at the country they see around them say everything seems to be broken. Concerned about rising costs, the state of health care, affordable housing, jobs and more, half of us are also angry about the way Canada is being run.” Similarly, an Ipsos poll found that 7 in 10 Canadians agree that “Canada is broken.” As Lee Harding writes in the Western Standard, our rulers “in our own capital city [are] full of self-aggrandizement, handing out contracts to their friends, serving foreign interests, burying us in public debt, and laying heavy taxes on people.” Sounds like it could be the U.S. under Biden and Harris.
Nine years and three terms of Liberal rule under the incompetent and scandal-ridden Marxist prime minister Justin Trudeau have led to a state of affairs in which, as one representative young woman lamented, “This country is falling apart. There’s no more freedom. Everyone is working just to survive and everyone is miserable.” Another concurs: “Every single system is flawed in Canada and it’s so sad, this used to be the best country in the world, now everything is backwards.” “Canada feels Like a house of cards waiting to collapse,” says the Jacobin, “Canada is in deep crisis. It’s unfashionable in centrist circles to say so, but it’s true. The country is literally on fire.” The Financial Post, for its part, defines Canada as “A leader among the so-called ‘breakdown nations,’” with the worst rate of growth among 50 developed economies.
In the words of Shark Tank and Dragons’ Den host Kevin O’Leary, who knows whereof he speaks, Trudeau “is the worst manager Canada has ever had. Total incompetency underneath him in the cabinet seats. Total incompetency in almost every mandate. Absolutely, the worst I’ve ever seen … This is a totally incompetent government from the top down. The worst managers in the country’s history.” Meanwhile, the handmaiden media is revising the historical ledger to memory-hole the Liberal Party’s execrable record as national stewards. All criticism of an increasingly Woke Liberal administration has accordingly had to be muted or banned.
Trudeau’s commitment to stifle freedom of speech has begun to alarm even a once complaisant public. The infamous Bill C-63 is clearly intended to criminalize unfettered speech, or what is conveniently called “hate speech,” by creating a censorship bureaucracy to enforce an as yet opaque set of regulations regarding the disposition of social media platforms as well as the expression of individual opinion. Massive fines and lengthy jail sentences, including life terms, are part of the legislative package.
Trudeau has also introduced a “Qualified Canadian Journalism Organization” licence, the purpose of which is to ban unfriendly or dissident journalism as “disinformation.” News and Opinion outlets critical of Trudeau and his administration would be refused access to interviews, funding, and research sources. Only state-funded media would be granted these privileges, which means the overwhelming majority of the country’s bought press agencies.
Now we learn that the federales are developing an online tool based on AI to “help” Canadians detect those convenient bugbears, “misinformation” and “disinformation.” A study from the University of East Anglia finds “robust evidence that ChatGPT presents a significant and systematic political bias toward the Democrats in the US, Lula in Brazil, and the Labour Party in the UK.” The purpose is clearly to shore up autocratic rule by deceiving the public, for example, “in order to counter disinformation…like the Jan. 6 Capitol breach, the Brexit referendum, and the COVID-19 pandemic.” In other words, the project is intended to confirm government disinformation concerning a breach that wasn’t a breach, a referendum that was legitimate, a pandemic response that was punitive and false, and anything else that an authoritarian government decides is or isn’t the case. What this will mean for Canada is nobody’s guess.
Then there is the vexed issue of immigration, both legal and illegal. Back in 2011, the so-called Century Initiative accentuated the apparent necessity for vastly increased immigration, in effect, a veritable deluge from third world countries and in particular Muslim nations. Trudeau was a backbencher at the time but took careful notes. He has followed through, and mass immigration has led to the reduction of wages, increasing unemployment among Canadian workers, and a housing crisis that has shattered the dream of homeownership for young families.