The Morning Briefing: Burning Churches, Speech Police... Canada Is Getting Creepier

Top O’ the Briefing

Oh, Canada

Happy Wednesday, dear Kruiser Morning Briefing friends. I’m trying to keep strangers away from my dinghy.

One of the more disturbing aspects of the Plague Year That Was had to have been the willingness of people to cede freedoms without question. American people. You know, people who are really supposed to love the freedom thing. We just had a big party about it last weekend.

Those freedoms were being handed over in the name of public health safety but we’ve seen people handing over rights for a while now. A prime example is the almost complete disappearance of free speech on college campuses. People are bankrupting themselves to participate in that.

There is a lot of disturbing stuff going on with our neighbors to the north that’s probably worth keeping an eye on. True, Canada isn’t the United States, but it’s still supposed to be a modern, free country.

Tyler wrote a couple of posts yesterday that highlighted some of the upsetting deterioration of Canadian society.

The first was about the torching of churches:

A year after Black Lives Matter and antifa riots ravaged cities across the United States, vandals and arsonists are targeting churches in Canada. The attacks follow news of more than 1,000 children placed in unmarked graves at Indian residential schools. Canada forced Native Americans (referred to as “First Nations” in Canada) to attend the boarding schools in an act that activists decry as a form of cultural genocide.

On June 21, arsonists targeted two Roman Catholic churches in tribal territory in British Columbia (B.C.): Sacred Heart Mission Church of Penticton, and St. Gregory Mission Church on Osoyoos land. On June 26, arsonists burned two more Catholic churches in B.C. to the ground. Authorities also found that St. Paul’s Anglican Church on Gitwangak First Nations land in B.C. had been set on fire on June 26, but firefighters extinguished the blaze, mostly saving the church, Catholic News Agency reported. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said all the fires were “suspicious” and local leaders attributed them to arson.

Yes, that’s happening in 2021.

Just as happened here in the U.S. last year, leaders in Canada embraced the violence that raged in the summer of 2020 because it all played into their warped social narrative. When elected officials are giving a wink and a nod to violence, it only follows that the violence will continue, if not escalate.

Tyler’s other post was about the rapidly deteriorating state of Canadian free speech:

Last month, Canada’s Liberal Party headed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau proposed legislation to criminalize “hate speech” online, punishable by a $50,000 (roughly $40,000 U.S.D.) paid to the government. A former Crown prosecutor and lawyer who has appeared at every level of court throughout Canada raised an alarm about the new bill, telling PJ Media that it would undermine Canadians’ rights and punish “independent thought.”

“Bill C-36 is calculated to punish legal independent thought and crush it out wherever it finds it using punitive fines and imprisonment,” Jay Cameron, litigation director at the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, told PJ Media. “Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault clearly aspires to be the director of the new Canadian Ministry of Truth, a modern Inquisition where every social media post is scrutinized by spying bureaucrats with the power to censor and punish Canadians until they submit.”

We’ve seen the use of nebulous “hate speech” laws as a way to issue broad attacks on free speech that doesn’t fit leftist orthodoxy. The hate speech definition is built to expand to fit whatever words or concepts progressives suddenly find offensive. Note: they’re offended by everything conservatives say.

In a society that truly values free speech, allowances are made for uncomfortable, offensive speech. Like hate speech. Free speech isn’t meant to be sterile, comfortable, or safe, it’s meant to be free.

The details of the proposed Canadian law are nightmarish:

Bill C-36 would enable citizens to bring legal claims against people who engage in “hate speech” online, and if a member or panel of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal finds the accused guilty, the tribunal can either order the accused to “cease the discriminatory practice” and take steps to prevent it from happening again; order the accused to pay compensation of up to $20,000 “to any victim personally identified in the communication that constituted the discriminatory practice”; or order the accused to “pay a penalty of not more than $50,000 to the Receiver General” if the tribunal “considers it appropriate” considering “the nature, circumstances, extent and gravity of the discriminatory practice.”

Canadian and American leftists have been in lockstep for a long time. This can’t be dismissed with a wave of the hand and saying, “Well, that’s Canada.” The liberal assault on free speech here has been escalating and certainly won’t be losing any steam while the Democrats have the keys to the kingdom.

Slippery slopes are getting even slipperier in the woke era. If we aren’t vigilant, they’ll be locking people up on both sides of the border for whatever they decide is hate speech that day.

I hope somebody writes to me while I’m in there.

Everything Isn’t Awful

Watch these elk splash around in pond to cool off in summer heat 😍 https://t.co/ZKqVUiPzjP pic.twitter.com/k1qD2Lqu4x

— Good Morning America (@GMA) July 6, 2021