Canada’s Dilemma

by David Solway

Canada is in serious trouble. To arrive at that conclusion, all one need do is pay attention. In evident violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms embedded in the Constitution, essential to a functioning democracy, Canada was one of the few countries in the world determined to coerce vaccine mandates and impose possibly illegal travel apps and quarantine protocols. These measures have been paused, but the government obviously maintains the right to re-impose them at a moment’s notice. “The process and app remain in place.”

Undeterred in his march toward despotic rule, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is poised to introduce a digital currency, which will give the government financial control of banking and discretionary spending at the expense of private citizens and consumers. He is simultaneously engaged in implementing a Digital Identity Program, associated with the World Economic Forum’s Known Traveler Digital Identity initiative, on the way toward establishing a Social Credit State which Trudeau blazons as “the most advanced digital jurisdiction in the world.” Canada is now a satrap of the World Economic Forum in Davos that believes in global governance, wealth redistribution, and costly and dysfunctional environmental and climate edicts at the cost of national solvency.

The net-zero carbon emission legislation is part of the same plan, as is the virtual outsourcing of national health responsibility to the World Health Organization (WHO) — the bunch that Florida Republicans regard as a terrorist group. The Online Streaming Act Bill C-11, perhaps the most restrictive of its kind in the West, would permit the government to regulate the individual’s videos, podcasts, personal content, and various online feeds. Former CRTC commissioner Timothy Denton describes the measure as a “power grab over human communication.”

Compounding the issue, Trudeau’s (dis)information czar Jean-Christophe Boucher is threatening to take legal action against independent news outlets like RebelNews and others, including the leader of the People’s Party of Canada Maxime Bernier, accusing critics of Trudeau as Russian agents “promoting a specific mistrust of Liberal government, and especially of Prime Minister Trudeau.” This is beyond madness — no category for “beyond madness” has yet been invented, though it is surely needed.

Meanwhile, Trudeau has effectively shut down the country’s oil and gas industry, putting Canada at the mercy of foreign suppliers — the epitome of economic madness. Of course, everything hinges on forging a compliant, fearful, and rigidly controlled population, a relatively easy task in a politically apathetic and uninformed country like Canada.

Demagoguery, corruption, and ethics breaches are the name of the game, as witnessed in the Aga Khan caper, the WE scandal, the SNC-Lavalin affair, and now the creation of the Canada Infrastructure Bank, whose purpose is ostensibly to provide financing for community projects. Interestingly, it is partnered with BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager. The apparent conflict of interest entailed by the relationship, favoring investment profits over community benefits, is highly disturbing. Campaign for Accountability (CfA) Executive Director Daniel Stevens is suspicious. He writes: “BlackRock stands to benefit substantially from the Canada Infrastructure Bank. Unsurprisingly, BlackRock worked behind the scenes to get the Bank up and running and staffed with friendly executives.”

Trudeau has installed a cabinet of liars, hypocrites, and reprobates and enlisted an unprincipled “coterie of unelected advisors,” reminding me in so doing of “The Vicious Man” in The Characters of Theophrastus: “It’s the vicious man’s way to constitute himself the patron of all worthless scamps.” Brian Lilley provides a short list of cabinet members who “should be fired ASAP,” but a cabinet purge will result merely in a shuffle of newly-minted scamps, changing nothing. Trudeau is their “patron,” and they are merely his lesser clones. All power ultimately devolves on him. As Donald Savoie writes in his magisterial Democracy in Canada: The Disintegration of Our Institutions, Trudeau has “made it obvious that he is primus and sees no pares.” The scamps are there for show.

This is only skimming off the top of a fetid political organization now steering the country toward its dissolution as a representative democracy. Such instances could be multiplied ad infinitum. Justin Trudeau may be an intellectual mediocrity and a national embarrassment — see him singing “Bohemian Rhapsody” while visiting London for Queen Elizabeth’s funeral — but he is perfectly adept at operational maneuvering. His expedient coalition with the “socialist” NDP in order to stave off an early election is par for the course — an NDP, be it said, that sides with the unions and not with the workers whom the unions have largely betrayed.

For this country to survive, several significant policy decisions would be indispensable, including the elimination so far as reasonably possible of endemic corruption and institutional nepotism, the severance of the entente with the Davos camarilla of oligarchs and technocrats intent on resetting the country as a corporate fiefdom, the restoration of the rule of law, and the revival of Canada’s vital energy and agricultural sectors.

Even then, more remains to be done, in particular revisiting the manifestly unfair electoral structure whereby the Prairie Provinces, whose oil and wheat account for a major share of the nation’s prosperity, are deprived of numerical parity in Parliament and Senate. At present, they are egregiously under-represented, thanks to the “creative accounting” of the Constitutional Representation Formula, drastically reducing the Prairie voice in Confederation.

Two questions, a veritable dilemma, now present themselves.

The first question is whether a new Conservative government under the leadership of Pierre Poilievre, who on September 10 won the Party’s leadership race on the first ballot, can accomplish so formidable a rehabilitative task, at least in part, as of election year 2025, if not before. His issuing of a tax challenge to Trudeau is an encouraging sign — Canadians pay 43% of their income on taxes. He has also pledged to proscribe ministers who are connected to the World Economic Forum, which is music to skeptical ears. Columnist Rex Murphy lauds “his leadership campaign [which] displayed both focus and energy.” Tom Finnerty over at The Pipeline notes Poilievre’s courage, vivacity and policy smarts, claiming that his “political brand should give Conservative voters some reason for hope.”

Poilievre, however, seems to believe in shibboleths like the “climate change” boondoggle. His exclusion of pro-life, pro-family, pro-faith Leslyn Lewis from his leadership team does not bode well, nor does his appointment of the ineffective and disgraced former Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer as House Opposition Leader. Former First Minister and Charter signatory Brian Peckford was not impressed with the victory address, pointing out that Poilievre uttered not a word about the thousands of injuries and deaths from the unconstitutional COVID-19 lockdowns, mandates, and vaccines, or the violation of the Charter under an overreaching administrative state. “We need a system change,” Peckford concludes, “not a personal one.” But perhaps one needs to be modest in one’s hopes. Speaking irrespectively, just about anyone outside the Liberal Party — the denizens of Psalm 53:3 — would be an improvement on Trudeau.

The second question is whether with Trudeau and the aforementioned Liberal/NDP woke coalition continuing at the helm we will still have a recognizable country in three years’ time.

One recalls with a certain nostalgia the speech delivered by a patriot in Sara Jeannette Duncan’s 1904 novel, The Imperialist, a Canadian classic. Canada is “destined to move with sure steps and steady mind to greater growth and higher place among the nations than any of us can now imagine.” The irony of the passage is painful to acknowledge. Barring a new election and a revitalized Conservative Party, the country may be beyond redemption. It’s pretty well soon or never.