Justin Trudeau: Canada’s National Disaster

Very few countries have been spared the COVID-19 catastrophe. Thanks to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s late and inadequate response to the threat, Canada’s number of infected grows daily. Much like Obama’s delayed response to the H1N1 pandemic of 2009, no decisive action was taken to combat the coronavirus until this week, two and a half months after it was blatantly obvious we had a highly contagious new virus loose in the world. As of this writing, our borders have finally been closed to non-Canadian citizens—but with exceptions: permanent residents, diplomats, air crews, and U.S. citizens. “Family members of Canadian citizens and permanent residents will also be allowed to come home,” said Trudeau.

One can readily see where the loophole is that vitiates Trudeau’s pronouncements. The Vancouver Sun reports that over 40 percent of Metro Vancouver residents are of Asian heritage, of whom approximately half are of Chinese origin. They are free until further restrictions to travel from China to Canada. There are cheap, direct flights from Beijing and Hong Kong to Vancouver, Canada’s western portal to the orient. Clearly, Vancouver, where my wife and I have recently moved, is waiting to explode with the disease, as did Milan, which hosts the largest Chinese community in Italy—the administrative region of northern Lombardy was the source of the Italian infection.

As Time reports on the Italian situation, “The first case of local transmission was a 38-year-old man who is believed to have become infected after meeting regularly with someone who had recently been to China…His wife subsequently tested positive as did someone who came into contact with the man while engaging in recreational activities.” Patients include “a Chinese couple from Wuhan and an Italian citizen who was recently repatriated from Wuhan.” None of this is surprising.

Vancouver may well be a city on the way to becoming Milan, and the province of British Columbia a Lombardy in the wings. Just today, as I write, 83 new cases have been reported. Trudeau, a virtue-signaler from the egg, will not move a finger if it offends the Canadian left and exposes him to the false charge of racism. Travel from China should be immediately prohibited for all our sakes—and indeed, should have been banned months ago, as did Trump as far back as January. There is no question of sinophobia here, despite the profusion of Chinese bots protesting the term “China virus” and the political correctness of the collaborating left, but merely of an initiative to save Canadian lives, regardless of race or creed or gender. Nonetheless, Chinese, as well as non-Chinese citizens and residents traveling from China, are currently exempt from the ban.

But there is more to the issue than the Chinese connection. Illegal migrants continue to pour across the Quebec border at the infamous Roxham Road crossing. As the CBC informs us, we are witnessing “families and single travelers from Pakistan, Turkey, Yemen, Lebanon, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Eritrea, as well as a Palestinian family…Some arrived with what appeared to be fresh baggage tags from overseas flights into New York. Others had made their way north from Mexico, South and Central America.” We can only guess at the nature and extent of the infectious diseases that are crossing the border with them, including the coronavirus. Trudeau’s all-are-welcome syndrome only serves to disguise his lack of political sobriety, insight, and mental acumen.

Obviously, from the standpoint of our progressivist prime minister, it would be an act of outright bigotry and discrimination to shut the crossing to the needy and deprived streaming illegally into the country—after all, as he likes to parrot that ludicrous bromide, “diversity is Canada’s strength.” Whatever Canadian citizens may suffer from the congestion—sickness, overcrowded hospitals, vandalism, a strain on the economy—is of little consequence. Like a sanctuary state, we are the world’s asylum. Apparently, we owe our compassionate prime minister a vote of gratitude for his farsighted tenderheartedness.

In any event, the good news is that the pandemic will eventually peak, decline and disappear. The bad news is that Justin Trudeau will still be with us.

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David Solway’s latest book is Notes from a Derelict Culture, Black House Publishing, 2019, London. A CD of his original songs, Partial to Cain, appeared in 2019.