As soon as Erin O’Toole was named leader of the Canadian Conservative Party, the party’s platform made a sharp left turn. Suddently, O’Toole was front and center claiming the specious “CO2 causes global warming” scam had substance and the Conservatives were going to take up the cudgel to “fight climate change”. The new platform under O’Toole could fairly be described as “Trudeau light”. Canada is in trouble when both parties embrace left wing nonsense and just fight over who gets to be in power to lead Canada to economic destruction.
Any student of history or even political science (as if there was any science to politics) knows there are defining characteristics of left wing versus right wing. Of course, “left wing” originated from the practice that in France the Montagnard and Jacobins who opposed the Royal veto sat sat to the left of the chairman in parliament. The original Liberal parties in western democracies began by embracing liberty and personal freedoms. A lot has changed since liberalism saw the rise of the Liberal party in Canada and the Democrats in the United States with the only residue of the original values being the name.
Free democracies have evolved around simple and free market principles with the legal structure limiting freedoms through appropriate prohibitions to protect society and individuals from harm. The term “No person shall . . . " appears in 9,997 pieces of Canadian legislation. Freedom means freedom within limits. This was originally a defining characteristic of liberalism and Liberal parties in Canada, the United Kingdom and America. Not today.
Instead, today only the Conservative Party in Canada and the Republican Party in the United States support “freedom” subject to sensible limits. Where governments wanted to encourage citizens to act in a responsible way consistent with the public good, incentives were created to encourage that behaviour. The massive tax code in Canada (over 3,000 pages) and the similar tax legislation in the United States is rife with economic incentives. Persuasion was the intent. Even our criminal code does not compel citizens to be law abiding, but provides punishment for those who choose otherwise. The Criminal Code has a large section on what is prohibited but no section on what is mandated.
But the once bulwark of “freedom” - the Canadian Liberal and American Democrat parties in North America - have seen their liberal ideologies have move on from persuasion to compulsion. Now we see growing evidence of proposed and actual legislation that compels certain conduct rather than limiting it through prohibitions. Instead of a society where citizens are free to act as they choose subject to reasonable limitations or prohibitions, Trudeau’s Liberals want to compel Canadians to act in a way the Liberals deem appropriate. We see this shift towards and authoritarian form of government throughout Liberal-led Canada not only from the the Trudeau government but also from Provincial governments of all political stripes.
There is a world of difference between persuasion and compulsion. It is one thing to say it is an offence to drive a vehicle unless you are wearing a seatbelt and another to say you must wear a seat belt to drive a vehicle. Anyone who cannot see this difference is tone deaf or impaired.
For the first time in Canada’s history, a government has enacted legislation compelling certain speech, referring to Bill C-16 which became law under Trudeau. Now a Canadian can be criminally prosecuted for the words they choose when engaged in a discussion. That controversial bill is of little consequence to most Canadans since it is confined to what pronouns must be used when addressing a transgendered person, not an everyday experience for most people, and not much of a problem since most people are respectful of others and would address them as they wished to be addressed out of courtesy. One wonders why legislation was thought to be needed, and, if needed, why it was not framed as a prohibition against the use of words considered offensive rather than a compulsion to use words including those not yet part of the English or French language.
Canadian leaders routinely toss the Charter of Rights and Constitution into the trash bin with their penchant to “mandate” behaviour, enacting “lockdowns”, business closures; and, vaccines and going so far as to propose taxing people who refuse to take a drug they may neither want nor need. They have so vilified the unvaccinated they have persuaded many Canadians that a jail sentence should be imposed on people who exercise their freedom to remain unvaccinated. They seem to think it is effective to tell people what to do rather than encourage them to act responsibly, but it is not. At best it is expedient and more often than not it evokes a reaction to disobey. We value our freedom to choose. A choice to remain unvaccinated is a sensible one for a healthy person under age 40 to whom COVID poses low risk and who, if infected and recovered, will enjoy a much stronger immunity than available through vaccination (according to the latest research from the American Centre for Disease Control).
We see plenty of evidence of “woke” nonsense in other Countries as well. The decision by Australia to deport Novak Djokovic may be the first time in history a top athlete has been barred from competition for refusing to take a drug. Now we have governments prohibiting some drugs and mandating others. Ontario Chief Medical Officer Eileen de Villa was on The Agenda with Steve Paikin promoting the de-criminalization of illegal drug, not long after promoting policies to compel Ontarians to take mRNA vaccines. de Villa says making possession of illegal drugs will improve health outcomes. One wonders if our Chief Medical Officer thinks our Criminal Code ever acts as a deterrent to crime and whether making it legal to possess illicit drugs will see a reduction in their use or the carnage that follows. I have lost a daughter to heroin and cocaine and I think Ms. de Villa is spouting nonsense.
History teaches us hard lessons. Left wing fanatics today compare the Republican party to the Nazi regime in Germany claimng “white supremacists” are a threat to democracy and claim the Nazi regime was right wing. In parallel, left wing rags like the Washington Post (WAPO) say that Republicans needs to stop calling the Nazi’s “socialists”, concerned that the comparison was both inaccurate and would make socialism less attractive in America. Social programs are welcomed by all modern democracies and it is authoritarian rule that evokes rebellion.
The WAPO rhetoric could have easily come directly from Joseph Goebbels. He is famous for his statement that a great technique of propaganda was to “Accuse the other side of that which you are guilty.” Goebbels makes no bones about Nazi’s being “socialists”, saying: “We are not a charitable institution but a Party of revolutionary socialists.” The National Socialist Party of wartime Germany enacted many of the social program embraced by social justice warriors today - pensions, universal health care, marriage and child care benefits, and state provided infrastructure like roads and railways. There was nothing odious about the socialist programs under the Nazi’s, it was their authoritarian rule that turned them into monsters.
North Americans are forced to wade through left wing propaganda so deep it is too late to save your shoes and your trousers are threatened by the dogma (akin to dogshit). The techniques being used to rally support for socialism are tried and true and no new ground is being covered. At its heart is the belief that if you can make people afraid, they will willingly cede freedom for the protection you offer from the state. Climate change and COVID are just two of the mechanisms in play today, and while “climate change” is a specious threat, COVID is real but less of a threat than our leaders pretend, treating people who prefer not to undergo vaccination as scapegoats and vilifying them for their exercise of personal freedom that is a threat to no one else.
I am tired of hearing how unvaccinated people are a threat to their families, neighbours, and community. No one poses a COVID threat unless they are infected, whether vaccinated or not vaccinated, and those infected are equally capable of infecting others whether vaccinated or not according to research published in the prestigious journal "The Lancet”.
We are heading down a dangerous path. Canadians are being misinformed about climate, COVID, and many other things, and our political parties share so many platforms they are indistinguishable except for their views on freedom. Conservatives still rely on persuasion (although that seems to be tenuous under O’Toole) while Liberals prefer coercion.
We are caught in the middle and the very values that make Canada such a wonderful country are at stake. We need to send the current leaders packing and find real leaders who value the freedoms that distinguish Canada from totalitarian states.