Clinging to Power, Canada Style

And I will give children to be their princes, and babes shall rule over them.

And the people shall be oppressed.

-Isaiah, 3:4-5 

 There is a very real fear and presentiment across the land that the country is disintegrating, Many Canadians now feel, whether implicitly or overtly, that Canada is on the cusp, teetering on the verge of collapse and dissolution. The National Post reports that “A majority of Canadians looking at the country they see around them say everything seems to be broken. Concerned about rising costs, the state of health care, affordable housing, jobs and more, half of us are also angry about the way Canada is being run.” Similarly, an Ipsos poll found that 7 in 10 Canadians agree that “Canada is broken.” As Lee Harding writes in the Western Standard, our rulers “in our own capital city [are] full of self-aggrandizement, handing out contracts to their friends, serving foreign interests, burying us in public debt, and laying heavy taxes on people.” Sounds like it could be the U.S. under Biden and Harris.

Nine years and three terms of Liberal rule under the incompetent and scandal-ridden Marxist prime minister Justin Trudeau have led to a state of affairs in which, as one representative young woman lamented, “This country is falling apart. There’s no more freedom. Everyone is working just to survive and everyone is miserable.” Another concurs: “Every single system is flawed in Canada and it’s so sad, this used to be the best country in the world, now everything is backwards.” “Canada feels Like a house of cards waiting to collapse,” says the Jacobin, “Canada is in deep crisis. It's unfashionable in centrist circles to say so, but it's true. The country is literally on fire.” The Financial Post, for its part, defines Canada as “A leader among the so-called ‘breakdown nations,’” with the worst rate of growth among 50 developed economies. 

In the words of Shark Tank and Dragons’ Den host Kevin O’Leary, who knows whereof he speaks, Trudeau “is the worst manager Canada has ever had. Total incompetency underneath him in the cabinet seats. Total incompetency in almost every mandate. Absolutely, the worst I’ve ever seen … This is a totally incompetent government from the top down. The worst managers in the country’s history.” Meanwhile, the handmaiden media is revising the historical ledger to memory-hole the Liberal Party’s execrable record as national stewards. All criticism of an increasingly Woke Liberal administration has accordingly had to be muted or banned.

Trudeau’s commitment to stifle freedom of speech has begun to alarm even a once complaisant public. The infamous Bill C-63 is clearly intended to criminalize unfettered speech, or what is conveniently called “hate speech,” by creating a censorship bureaucracy to enforce an as yet opaque set of regulations regarding the disposition of social media platforms as well as the expression of individual opinion. Massive fines and lengthy jail sentences, including life terms, are part of the legislative package. 

Trudeau has also introduced a “Qualified Canadian Journalism Organization” licence, the purpose of which is to ban unfriendly or dissident journalism as “disinformation.” News and Opinion outlets critical of Trudeau and his administration would be refused access to interviews, funding, and research sources. Only state-funded media would be granted these privileges, which means the overwhelming majority of the country’s bought press agencies. 

Now we learn that the federales are developing an online tool based on AI to “help” Canadians detect those convenient bugbears, “misinformation” and “disinformation.” A study from the University of East Anglia finds “robust evidence that ChatGPT presents a significant and systematic political bias toward the Democrats in the US, Lula in Brazil, and the Labour Party in the UK.” The purpose is clearly to shore up autocratic rule by deceiving the public, for example, “in order to counter disinformation…like the Jan. 6 Capitol breach, the Brexit referendum, and the COVID-19 pandemic.” In other words, the project is intended to confirm government disinformation concerning a breach that wasn’t a breach, a referendum that was legitimate, a pandemic response that was punitive and false, and anything else that an authoritarian government decides is or isn’t the case. What this will mean for Canada is nobody’s guess.

Then there is the vexed issue of immigration, both legal and illegal. Back in 2011, the so-called Century Initiative accentuated the apparent necessity for vastly increased immigration, in effect, a veritable deluge from third world countries and in particular Muslim nations. Trudeau was a backbencher at the time but took careful notes. He has followed through, and mass immigration has led to the reduction of wages, increasing unemployment among Canadian workers, and a housing crisis that has shattered the dream of homeownership for young families. 

To roil the waters even further, Trudeau has now issued visas to over 3000 Gazans, raising the prospect of surging antisemitism and terrorist violence while contributing to the housing problem. It’s obvious that these people have no business being here and that Trudeau has no business inviting them. Regrettably, this is perhaps one area where Canadians deserve the government they have. Unlike in the U.S. where over three-quarters of respondents regard Hamas as a terrorist organization, an Angus Reid poll in Canada reveals that Canadians “lean toward believing the government has sided too much with Israel.” Canada is already rife with Muslim agitation, especially targeting its Jewish population, though everyone is potentially at risk. A current reference point is provided by the endemic violence in the U.K. and the EU, where the “immigration rate has been so rapid that it is virtually unsurvivable.” To welcome more of the same is the height of political myopia or personal depravity—or both.

Be that as it may, a Bank of Canada Report for July 2024 cites immigration as responsible for driving up housing prices, rents, unemployment—not enough jobs for too many people—and, of course, inflation, making it clear that the housing crisis flows directly from Trudeau’s fiscal and immigration policies. True to form, Trudeau is shifting blame from his own dysfunctional government to the “older generation” who apparently own “too much house.” One solution being proposed by a group called Generation Squeeze in tandem with Trudeau is an annual surtax of 0.2% to 0.5% on all homes over $1 million and 1% for homes worth $2 million, further inflating the tax load.

There is no sign of anything improving. With the reckless abandon of a spoiled child in a candy store, Trudeau continues to play fast and loose with the country’s finances. The national debt is stratospheric and the debt ceiling is being hiked to an unsustainable $2.1 trillion. The Federal deficit is $40 billion annually and rising, a crippling burden for a country of 38 million souls and fewer than 23 million taxpayers. Trudeau has pledged another $500 million to the Ukraine war effort while the Canadian military is stripped bare and ordinary citizens can scarcely afford the basic necessities. 

Add to this Trudeau’s exorbitant carbon tax, costing Canadian families, businesses, and farmers a prohibitive tranche of their incomes, and slated to rise exponentially to conform with the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development—a tax which in any case has had an infinitesimal impact on greenhouse gas emissions. “Our country is broke,” says Conservative leader and likely future prime minister Pierre Poilievre. “I'm inheriting a dumpster fire when it comes to the budget.” Trudeau should never have been allowed anywhere near Parliament Hill.

With respect to Trudeau’s EV mandate banning the sale of new gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles by 2035, Alberta Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation Kris Sims shows demonstrably that the power supply will remain grossly inadequate and that “the cost will kill us.” The mandatory “Trudeau Trolly” is unaffordable by hundreds of billion dollars billed to a failing domestic economy in which  “record numbers of working families across Canada are visiting food banks and about half of Canadians are within $200 every month of not being able to make the minimum payments on their bills.”

And of course, the Trudeau bunch of bureaucrats, flunkies and stooges is plagued by an unending skein of scandals. Commenting on yet another of these recurrent boondoggles, MP Michael Cooper puts it plainly: this is “a government that over the past nine years has resulted in a culture of corruption that starts at the top, starts with the prime minister, that has made its way through all aspects of this government.” Adding injury to injury, “Federal documents detailing $24.5 billion in payments to COVID-19 contractors were deleted July 9 from Government of Canada publicly accessible web pages.” Billions of dollars just gone with the wind. “The Liberals have run Canada into the ground,” writes columnist Linda Slobodian, “transforming this nation into something almost unrecognizable. It’ll take nothing short of a miracle to find our way back.”

The dirge goes on across an entire demographic, with the exception of a privileged class of lawyers, CEOs, academics, and politicians. A rising poverty index and the unprecedented encroachment by the central government into the lives of its citizens has become intolerable to many. People have become tired of being demeaned as “cold, cruel, and small,” Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland’s scornful portrait of defiant or skeptical citizens, especially if they lean Conservative. My own anecdotal experience is replete with people who have given up on Canada, who are leaving for expatriate residence in Costa Rica, Mexico, Panama, the Dominican Republic, Florida, Texas, and Tennessee. Some even prefer Xi Jinping’s China to Justin Trudeau’s Canada. My perception is corroborated by an Angus Reid poll that found fully 42% of Canadians are considering moving to another country. If this trend is not reversed, Canada as we know it will eventually cease to be recognizable.  

As we’ve seen, distrust of this reprobate prime minister and his scorched earth policies is growing by the day. The only way in which he can win re-election is via his chosen instruments: deception, corruption, bribery, censorship, and media disinformation. Moreover, the fact that the federal government has increased the number of government-dependent public service employees by over 40 percent will enhance Trudeau’s electoral prospects. They know where their bread is buttered.

In terms of Canada’s reputation, it is difficult to work up any degree of pride for its standing in the world. Canada’s weakness on the global stage, its diplomatic subservience to China, and the spectacle of a Prime Minister who is an international embarrassment—his speech to the 2024 NATO Summit consisted of “his virtue-signally word salad” delivered “to a near-empty room”—together daub another black mark on Trudeau’s Canada. It is hard to regard so degenerate a prime minister with anything but revulsion.

What was once a Hudson’s Bay blanket is now a patchwork quilt. It is long past time for Trudeau to hang up his cleated ambitions and taste the pleasures—or is it rigors—of private life. But it probably won’t happen. University of Calgary professor Barry Cooper has it down pat. Win or lose, Trudeau will likely stay on as Liberal leader since returning to teaching French or snowboarding to teenage girls—Trudeau’s former employment—had lost its charm. Remaining in the limelight, jetting around the world at taxpayer expense, bathing in platitudes of media adulation, and being fawned on by celebrities “beats shuffling off into retirement and watching the sun go down,” says Cooper, as it seemingly has for Canada.