Is democracy in trouble?

Authoritarian rule by current democractically elected leaders suggest so

Steve Paikin hosted a session of The Agenda dealing with the rise of authoritarianism and posted some alarming data. Here is some U.K. data:

The situation may be getting worse in Canada. Here are some Canadian data from Paikin’s show:

Democracy is losing sway for some obvious reasons. During the pandemic, leaders in United Kingdom and Canada saw no reason to debate what steps to take and imposed draconian mandates including limits on assembly, enforcement of “mask mandates”, and (likely unconstitutional) efforts to compel Canadians to submit to vaccination with a largely untested drug while overtly suppressing existing pharmaceuticals shown to have some benefit in limiting COVID symptoms (Ivermectin, Hydroxychoroquine). Those leaders ignored the reality that COVID was only a serious threat to older and immunocompromises persons, but that didn’t stop them from issuing orders that cost people their livelihoods. When truckers organized a protest of vaccine mandates, the Trudeau government invoked the War Measures Act (euphemistically renamed the Emergency Act) and jailed people without habeus corpus, seized bank accounts, and prosecuted people for attending a peaceful protest.

In Paikin’s panel on The Agenda, some panelists commented that young people were losing confidence in democracy because governments were not taking forceful action on “climate change”. Reality is that “climate change” is rhetoric used by what used to be democratic governments to create alarm and justify imposing more restrictions on freedoms, enact carbon taxes, attack the fossil fuel industry, and use taxpayer money to subsidize costly, unreliable and ineffective “renewable” sources of electricity. Our kids have been so brainwashed they have lost the ability to apply critical thinking and instead manifest fear and to some extent despair. Paikin and his panelists seemed of one mind that “climate change” was a threat that humans could alter - utter nonsense but the brainwashing seems not limited to our youth.

Left wing governments today pretend to support democracy but prefer to compel citizens rather than persuade them to act responsibly. Individual freedoms have become casualties to the “common good” but only our leaders have a voice in whatcomprises the “common good”. No one should be surprised that our youth have lost confidence in our government, and reflect that as a loss of confidence in democracy as a system. It cannot be an effective system without free speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and the ability to travel throughout the country without artificial barriers. Trudeau has spent the past 8 years taking away those freedoms piece by piece, enacting compelled speech (use of certain pronouns), compelled medical treatment (vaccines), compelled limits on mobility (lockdowns and border restrictions), and government control (through funding) of mainstream media. He now wants to censor what can be said on social media.

Faith in democracy will only survive if democracy works for our citizens. It is clearly not working if the government can take away your livelihood by cancelling necessary pipelines, imposing arbitrary limits on mines and natural resources (all in the name of the “environment”, a buzzword for limiting harmless CO2 emissions) and now trying to mandate an end to use of vehicles powered by internal combustion engines, a direct attack on another vital Canadian industry.

Fortunately, some Premiers are standing up to this tyranny. Danielle Smith in Alberta pulls no punches in her efforts to handcuff Ottawa’s intrusion into Provincial jurisdiction, nor does Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe. Pierre Poilievre is taking direct aim at the Liberal nonsense coming out of Trudeau’s cabinet (most of whom are members of the World Economic Forum and apparently encouraging a connection between our pension funds and the WEF).

Canada needs to put an end to the Trudeau regime’s hold on power and return Canada to a land where individual freedom, small government and resource development build prosperity for Canadians and stop the slow-moving train wreck created by the Liberals from bringing Canada to its knees.