I have moved my writing over to Substack. My latest two articles are How I was Impacted by the Emergencies Act in Canada and The Long Conversation of the Truckers.
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There’s been a lot of ruckus in the past days over words that should not have been spoken to Chrystia Freeland during her visit to Alberta, however, no investigation has been made into what might have caused a verbal backlash and the obvious frustration.
I’m not familiar with the people involved and I’m not making excuses for them, but I’ve been watching as the anger and fear in Canada has increased. It is not without reason. The CBC coverage by Christian Paas-Lang of the incident is a clear example of exactly the reasons I am talking about.
The headline states, Chrystia Freeland latest target of public threats, intimidation against women in Canadian politics. The article makes us believe this was about Chyrstia Freeland being a woman and about women, especially black women journalists being targeted. Further, the implication here is that this attack was made by misogynists and racists. Where have we heard those familiar words before? It’s difficult to believe, but this was what Trudeau called people associated with the Freedom Convoy, not so long ago.
Let’s be clear about something. The person targeted was a very specific woman in power in the Canadian liberal government, namely the deputy Prime Minister of Canada. Prime Minister Trudeau has been targeted, frequently, himself, in recent months since he refused to meet with the trucker’s convoy, and refused to enable them to go back to their jobs. Whatever the reason, imagine an entity in power making it impossible for people to earn a living (not to mention the bank accounts he froze). However, calling attention to his race or gender could scarcely be fitting.
There is an open wound in Canada and it will not go away until there is either an apology and about-face from our Prime Minister or a change in government.
Day by day people see more of what they have been seeing for the past few years and it makes them angry. The Prime Minister of Canada is able to get away with name calling and dismissing Canadians who are in pain as a result of his unnecessary and illogical actions. There is an open wound in Canada and it will not go away until there is either an apology and about-face from our Prime Minister, or a change in government.
This week a video aired in Canada of Jordan Peterson interviewing Dr. Leslyn Lewis, one of five candidates running for the leadership of the Conservative Party, Canada’s official opposition party. Lewis shared that when she ran for the party leadership in 2020 the Canadian media ignored her and gave Kamala Harris, an American, 800 times the coverage Lewis received around the same time. Leslyn Lewis is a black woman and also shared that she does not receive media coverage in Canada because the media sees her party as a “white, racist” party. Is there anything to be angry about here?
Trudeau tried to tarnish the truckers by tying them to any sketchy association, even calling repeated attention to the presence of a single Nazi flag within the vicinity of the truckers. It turns out that Chystia Freeland has a family heritage of working for Nazis, as does Klaus Schwab, the leader and founder of the World Economic Forum. I found this information freely available online. To many Canadian the WEF represents a loss of national sovereignty and Chyrstia Freeland is on the board of the WEF. Might that be a reason to be disturbed?
I think we can assume this was not a random attack on a woman, and what we are seeing is not attacks on black journalists, specifically, at all. People in Canada, like the protesters, feel they have lost their representation in the media. The above-mentioned article appears to be a rallying cry for further dismissing and shutting down concerned Canadians by calling on the government to enact stringent legislation throttling free speech. In other words, spelled out more plainly, find a means to silence opposition. More than anything, unhappy people need someone to listen to them. They want to know someone cares. After the truckers convoy Canadians increasingly feel that nobody in Ottawa is willing to listen.
Trudeau’s response to the episode was that this was, “unacceptable and this kind of cowardly behaviour threatens and undermines our democracy and our values of openness and respect.” How can Trudeau speak of values after his unacceptable response to Canadians, as a leader of Canada, name calling and labeling people as racists and misogynists? His contemptuous treatment of the Freedom Convoy is seen by Canadians as exactly the kind of cowardly behavior he is condemning. He needs a reminder that this is still a democracy, meaning people are represented by elected government leaders and actually have a say in what happens in this country. However, we have seen little, if any, representation in the Liberal-NDP coalition government we now have. The MPs are only representing the wishes of our Prime Minister and that is a problem.
The verbal attacks on journalists are not because they are female or women of color or of a minority group. The CBC made two retractions regarding the truckers and still, today, this government-funded news organization fuels resentment against the Freedom Convoy protesters and any others who might have an inclination to see the Canadian flag as a symbol of freedom.
Yes, Chrystia Freeland represents a direction many in Canada do not want to take. It is no conspiracy theory that she is among the global elites who fly to Davos on their private jets and conspire how to rule the world. Canadians do not want a world health system where all of our medical information is no longer private. We do not want digital ID and a few of the other great proposals these wealthy global leaders are arrogantly presenting. We can see where this is leading. We do not want to lose our sovereignty and freedoms.
The world is reverberating with Schwab’s claim, “You will own nothing and be happy.” Does he really think that we don’t have any questions about who will own what we no longer own? Another gem out of the WEF is that there will be a temporary, painful period of transition but this is simply the cost of progress. In this case we don’t have any question about who will be impacted. I did, however, come up with a question this week. How many farmers did Bill Gates displace with his farmland acquisitions?
If you want to know more of what Canadians are resisting, you can get your Kindle copy of Klaus Schwab’s COVID-19: The Great Reset at Amazon for $7.63. That’s U.S. funds. Closer to $11.00 CDN. Jason Kenney, Premier of our province of Alberta, reported that he received a free copy, courtesy of Klaus Schwab, and so did others in positions of political authority in Canada. However, we ordinary citizens will have to buy our own copy. It’s probably worth it, though, because we need to wake up and determine what kind of action to take. Name calling will not accomplish what we need to see happen in our country, but it does have the effect of drawing attention.
Here is an update on September 16 from the author of The Freedom Convoy.
I want to read the news but I can’t. It’s behind a paywall.
I want to read a left leaning newspaper, The Globe and Mail, and a paper labeled as right wing, The Epoch Times. But I can’t read either because they are behind a paywall. I don’t think it is right to restrict those who cannot afford a subscription. That may not be me, but it may be a vast number who are living at the poverty level.
I could sacrifice and I could justify getting subscriptions, while living what is defined as just above the poverty level in Canada, but I think of the many others who may not have such a carefully crafted budget and who may not be able to keep the credit man at bay.
Lower income means a lower standard of living but when this effects knowing what is going on in the world, I think this is of concern. The trouble with poverty is that it can affect access to information in other ways, and reduce possibility of advancement. For instance, if you cannot afford college tuition then you can’t get a higher education and if you cannot get a higher education then you stand less chance of lifting yourself out of poverty. Today, however, education itself will cause poverty as tuitions escalate. A friend who finally received her Masters Degree stated she is now $60,000 in debt and that is low by comparison to others I’ve heard of.
But back to the topic. Is there not a way to allow everyone to simply access a newspaper, any newspaper? Sometimes the two newspapers I mentioned offer special subscription deals, but once they have your credit card information it can be difficult to “unsubscribe” after the offer runs up. With The Globe and Mail this has been an ongoing problem that many have complained about. You can subscribe online but you cannot unsubscribe without making a phone call. We have all experienced the hassle it is to get a real person who knows what they are doing on the other end of the line. I must add that it is demoralizing to go through this process, repeatedly, but that is a topic for another day.
With all the focus on misinformation and disinformation, are we finally supposed to content ourselves with no information?
The Elon Musk and Twitter saga keeps me entertained these days. From the initial outrage that a billionaire would dare buy a media company (not that this is unusual)…to the threats of lawsuits…to Twitter’s board’s insistence that Musk must indeed buy Twitter now…do you get the sense that somebody knows how to play this game?
Musk has put his purchase of Twitter on hold until he gets accurate information on bots on Twitter. For anyone who doesn’t know what bots are, well, they are “robots” essentially. In other words, not real people. The way I see it, someone might create 20 “fake” accounts, bots in other words, and then spam Twitter. What is the impact and why would anyone do this? The result is that it looks like some people have way more followers than they actually do, and that some ideas are much more popular or disliked than is the actual case. Why would anyone want to do this? You might be able to come up with a few reasons.
I’ve noted that certain more right wing figures, like for instance Tim Pool and Stephen Crowder, reported on their YouTube channel that within days of Elon Musk requesting information from Twitter about bots, they suddenly had a significant increase in Twitter followers, to the tune of tens of thousands. I’m pretty sure Twitter didn’t create more bots to follow them, because that is not what you do when you are trying to sell a business. Investors don’t want to learn there are more bots, maybe not even that there are bots. Is it possible that Twitter suddenly reinstated accounts it had closed? I don’t know. This would offset bot numbers, I would think, making it look like there was a lower percentage of bots. I’m just following a trail of information breadcrumbs as I try to understand this.
Twitter bosses and employees had a literal melt-down when Elon Musk began to pursue the purchase of Twitter and it’s not difficult to figure out why. Twitter has a lot of power. After all, it de-platformed a sitting president of the USA. To be forced to hand over this power to a billionaire, whose political views might not agree with theirs, well…you can imagine. You can also imagine that the decision to boot Trump off Twitter was not made in a Twitter vacuum. A lot of pressure was put on Twitter and other social media to influence the election in favor of Democrats. As this opinion piece says, “Controlling this public square of political debate has been of immense benefit to Democrats, the media, globalists, and the government bureaucracy.”
Here is a sample of what is going on, taken from a May 16 article by the New York Post, entitled, Elon Musk says Twitter claims ‘bot check’ broke NDA
Elon Musk on Saturday tweeted that Twitter’s legal team accused him of violating a nondisclosure agreement by revealing that the sample size for the social media platform’s checks on automated users was just 100 accounts.
“Twitter legal just called to complain that I violated their NDA by revealing the bot check sample size is 100!” the Tesla CEO tweeted. “This actually happened.”
Shares of Twitter were down by nearly 10% in pre-market trading on Monday.
Musk Musk on Friday tweeted that his $44-billion cash deal to take the company private was “temporarily on hold” while he awaited data on the proportion of its fake accounts.
He said his team would test “a random sample of 100 followers” on Twitter to identify the bots.
When a user asked Musk to “elaborate on process of filtering bot accounts,” he replied: “I picked 100 as the sample size number, because that is what Twitter uses to calculate <5% fake/spam/duplicate.”
I chuckled.
With power potentially shifting it is becoming necessary to shore up media control. CNN found a quote by Tom Wheeler who wrote on Tech Tank at the Brookings Institution where he is a visiting fellow, “The idea that a handful of platforms can continue to make their own behavioral rules even when those decisions harm the public interest is no longer sustainable.”
Until now, the Trump ousters at Twitter have been fairly successful in making decision they consider to be in the “public interest.” But with power slipping out of their hands they are doubling down on efforts to control “misinformation.”
Even Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is now obsessed with controlling information, in the style of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Here is another link. Did you know that Ukraine is the first country, according to Wikipedia, to have a Jewish head of state and head of government? I find this interesting because the countries supporting Ukraine against Russia have shown some ambivalence towards Israel, particularly when the American embassy was moved to Jerusalem as recently as 2018, under Trump’s presidency. I know this has nothing to do with bots, but it does have a lot to do with who is influencing who. This one remains a mystery as it doesn’t quite fit the mold, particularly since Ukraine has typically been a Nazi safe haven.
A Yahoo News report states that in addition to shutting down his opposition in parliament, Zelenskyy is “combining all national TV channels, the program content of which consists mainly of information and/or information-analytical programs, [into] a single information platform of strategic communication” to be called “United News.” This is in order to combat Russian misinformation and “tell the truth about the war.”
It amazes me that when the Freedom Convoy of truckers arrived in Ottawa to protest newly implemented vaccine mandates targeting truckers, Prime Minister Trudeau immediately falsely presumed and reported that the Convoy was funded by Russians. He tried to convince Canadians we had an insurrection on our hands, funded by foreigners, and froze the bank accounts of those who donated to truckers who lost their livelihoods as a result of the mandate.
Maybe Trudeau didn’t get the memo that there was no truth to the Russia collusion campaign Hillary Clinton instigated against President Trump. It does make you wonder what will happen if these people muscle their way into information control.
The most recent report on Twitter bots is that bots now represent in the neighbourhood of 20% of Twitter accounts. Oh, dear.
Two very different versions exist of the 2020 U.S. election. As a neighbouring Canadian I have taken an interest and tried to understand what actually happened. The whole saga is enthralling. It makes one wonder if a different story would have emerged if Elon Musk had bought Twitter two years ago.
I am deeply impressed by the reveal of a February 4, 2020 New York Times article, The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election, disclosing in detail the strategy behind the U.S. election win. It is a breathtaking account of election engineering which is nothing short of profound.
Compare this with the Front Page Mag opinion article entitled, Yes It Was a Stolen Election, published on December 23, 2020 which tells what it was like to be on the receiving end of the election protection machine. This article is complete with 93 links to sources. Fascinating reading, both articles.
The New York Times documentary makes the claim that this magnificent effort was all about “protecting the election process.” This front doesn’t hold to the end of the article. It soon becomes apparent that the intent was to ensure an election win. Interestingly, many fell for the narrative, including some Trump supporters and religious leaders who got on board with “election protection.” Duping people into cooperation by telling them this is about preventing election fraud is clever indeed.
Here is an excerpt explaining what was accomplished in the name of protecting the election process. Note I have inserted a numerical outline and bold highlights.
Their work touched every aspect of the election. I. They got states to change voting systems and laws and II. helped secure hundreds of millions in public and private funding. III. They fended off voter-suppression lawsuits, IV. recruited armies of poll workers and V. got millions of people to vote by mail for the first time. VI. They successfully pressured social media companies to take a harder line against disinformation and VII. used data-driven strategies to fight viral smears. VIII. They executed national public-awareness campaigns that helped Americans understand how the vote count would unfold over days or weeks, IX. preventing Trump’s conspiracy theories and false claims of victory from getting more traction. X. After Election Day, they monitored every pressure point to ensure that Trump could not overturn the result. “The untold story of the election is the thousands of people of both parties who accomplished the triumph of American democracy at its very foundation,” says Norm Eisen, a prominent lawyer and former Obama Administration official who recruited Republicans and Democrats to the board of the Voter Protection Program.
The article is long and gives a very detailed account of how the election was won. It also reveals how 400 protest groups, ready to hit the streets, were told to stand down. They were only necessary to protest election fraud if for some reason Trump managed a win.
The article begins this way.
A weird thing happened right after the Nov. 3 election: nothing.
The nation was braced for chaos. Liberal groups had vowed to take to the streets, planning hundreds of protests across the country. Right-wing militias were girding for battle. In a poll before Election Day, 75% of Americans voiced concern about violence.
Mike Podhorzer is credited with being behind the election success. Although his primary objective is presented as election protection, he did serve as senior adviser to the president of the largest union federation in the U.S. where he was reputed to have used the latest methods, in particular data analysis, “to help favoured candidates win elections.”
Podhorzer organized a “well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information.” Ian Bassin, co-founder of Protect Democracy, ‘a nonpartisan rule-of-law advocacy group’, reported that, “Every attempt to interfere with the proper outcome of the election was defeated.”
Among the private philanthropy groups that stepped in to help was The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative that contributed $300 million and agreed to curb election misinformation online. To help prevent ‘election meltdown’ Podhorzer reached out to “members of the labor movement; the institutional left, like Planned Parenthood and Greenpeace; resistance groups like Indivisible and MoveOn; progressive data geeks and strategists, representatives of donors and foundations, state-level grassroots organizers, racial-justice activists and others.”
It looks like there were some tense moments in the effort to gain cooperation, as indicated by the report, “In November 2019, Mark Zuckerberg invited nine civil rights leaders to dinner at his home, where they warned him about the danger of the election-related falsehoods that were already spreading unchecked. “It took pushing, urging, conversations, brainstorming, all of that to get to a place where we ended up with more rigorous rules and enforcement,” says Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, who attended the dinner and also met with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and others.”
All of this was designed to ensure that any claim made by Trump regarding election impropriety would be ignored and regarded as false allegations. In a March 3 confidential memo by Podhorzer on the topic of threats to the 2020 Election, he stated “Trump has made it clear that this will not be a fair election, and that he will reject anything but his own re-election as ‘fake’ and rigged.”
This was a set-up. It took advantage of two things, weakness in the electoral system, and Trump’s mistrust of those running it, and combined them to a spectacular end. Trump would be the villain no matter the outcome. Either he would be a poor loser who claimed the election was stolen or he would be the one who stole the election. In the case that the efforts to secure a Biden win failed, people were ready to hit the streets and create chaos. Buildings were boarded up in advance.
“We knew exactly what Trump was going to do: he was going to try to use the fact that Democrats voted by mail and Republicans voted in person to make it look like he was ahead, claim victory, say the mail-in votes were fraudulent and try to get them thrown out,” says Protect Democracy’s Bassin. Setting public expectations ahead of time helped undercut those lies.
According to the article, Podhorzer’s game plan was five-fold: winning the vote was only the first step to winning the election. After that came winning the count, winning the certification, winning the Electoral College and winning the transition.
Rarely have I been as fascinated by an article or a strategy as I was by this disclosure of how the election was won. Read the Front Page Mag article I alluded to earlier, for comparison. Here is a sample of data reported in the article.
What happened in Georgia
In Georgia, illegal ballots were cast by, or in the name of: more than 2,500 felons; 66,247 underage voters; 2,423 unregistered voters; 4,926 individuals who had failed to register prior to the state’s voter-registration deadline; 395 individuals who voted in two states; 20,311 voters who had moved out of state and thus were no longer eligible to vote in Georgia; 40,279 people who had moved across county lines in Georgia without re-registering in their new county of residence; 30,000 to 40,000 people whose absentee ballots lacked a valid, verifiable signature; and at least 1,043 individuals whose voter registrations claimed postal facilities as their home address and disguised their box numbers as “apartment” numbers.[29] Almost all of the people in this latter category were absentee voters who cast their ballots early….
A vote update in Georgia at 1:34 AM on November 4 added 136,155 votes for Biden and 29,115 votes for Trump.[34]
Read both articles with an open mind and draw your own conclusions.
We are accustomed to seeing the greater buying power and control on the side that is known as The Left–Democrats in U.S. and Liberals in Canada, but today we are witnessing an interesting phenomenon. Elon Musk has made an offer to buy Twitter, and he is not particularly left-leaning.
According to the Leftist news outlets, Elon Musk can’t buy Twitter because that would be the end of civilization as we know it. To show how serious they are about this, they’ve already labelled him as a racist.
The clear danger here is that Musk might allow people to hear both sides–right and left.
Some shudder to think of the implications of such a “hostile” takeover. A past president of the United States–God forbid–might once again be given a voice. Four years was enough. Twitter made sure of that.
So Elon Musk can’t buy Twitter: Elon Musk makes $43 billion cash takeover offer for Twitter
The public simply cannot be exposed to this kind of “misinformation.”
People are gullible and ignorant. They cannot be trusted to filter through and analyze information so it must be withheld by those who know what is best for us–The Leftist leaning media giants.
This was the gist of the message given, recently, to parliamentarians by health officials in Canada: members of Parliament cannot be privy to all the covid-related information because it might be “misunderstood,” even if three sitting MP’s are doctors.
This kind of take-down just can’t happen.
Tamara Lich, who was imprisoned on a charge ‘to counsel to commit mischief’, has been released from prison on bail this week but her lawyer describes her bail conditions as worse than jail. Her bail conditions “would make Putin envious,” Keith Wilson states. “She is not allowed to criticize the government. She is not allowed to criticize or speak against covid-19 restrictions or do anything in support of the Freedom movement. She is not allowed to be on social media. She is not allowed to directly or indirectly communicate or support with anyone in those things.” Even Putin’s strongest critic can do more from his prison cell than she can, Willson says.
Watch the Western Standard interview of Tamara’s lawyer, Keith Wilson, who spent nineteen days on the ground in Ottawa during the protests, working on behalf of the truckers to free GoFundMe funds. Wilson is on contract with the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedom. He is also currently representing Brian Peckford in his challenge of the constitutionality of the government of Canada’s travel mandates. Brian Peckford helped draft the Canadian Constitution and Charter of Rights in 1982 so he is arguably the best living authority on the rights of Canadians as set out in our Constitution.
Tamara Lich’s lawyer describes her as the “average concerned, honest Canadian,” and adds that she was was never going to put anyone at risk, so her treatment is entirely unwarranted. When she set up the GoFundMe, Lich anticipated raising a few thousand dollars but ended up receiving an overwhelming show of support with the total donations exceeding ten million dollars. This was very nearly matched, later, on GiveSendGo, after GoFundMe was shut down under pressure from the government of Canada. Americans took note that they could be the next victims, as this article reveals. GoFundMe’s claimed to shut down the funding for the truckers because of “reports of violence and other unlawful activity,” yet these reports remain unsubstantiated. Meanwhile, as has been pointed out, actual violent protests in the U.S. were never in violation of GoFundMe policy. All of the targeted shutting down of accounts happens from one end of the political spectrum.
The level of misrepresentation of what happened in Ottawa is startling. For example it is a blatant lie that the RCMP contacted people before their bank accounts were frozen. People who donated as little as $20 to the truckers ended up discovering their accounts were frozen, meaning they couldn’t pay for their mortgage, their gas, their food, their daycare. It is incredulous that this happened in Canada and the whole world is shocked. Cory Morgan says it well in the interview, “The blanket punitive approach that this government has taken on this has been horrific.”
Wilson’s analysis of the past weeks is that the government of Canada, meaning the Prime Minister and his support team, just could not accept that a large number of Canadians disagreed with what the government has been doing and that Canadians are deeply troubled by government over-reach. Trudeau found this so threatening that he threw everything in his arsenal at the convoy, including invoking the Emergencies Act.
The donations to GoFundMe and GiveSendGo represented an undeniable opinion poll and were were evidence of the Canadian support behind what the truckers wanted–the removal of vaccine mandates and travel restrictions.
A literal witch hunt ensued, tracking down anyone remotely supportive of the Freedom Convoy. Gerald Butts, a former highly influential staff member of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, shared hacked donor information from GiveSendGo publicly on Twitter. There ought to be legal repercussions for that. Even the lawyer, Keith Wilson felt he might be victimized by the government. We are in a serious place when legal representation is threatened.
The announcement by Deputy Prime Minister, Chyristia Freeland, that the government would be going after donors to the Freedom Convoy meant the possible targeting of roughly 200,000 people with average donations around $35, according to Wilson. I am thinking that these donors each represent a lot of Canadians who did not donate. The Prime Minister really should take note. The donations to GoFundMe and GiveSendGo represented an undeniable opinion poll and were were evidence of the Canadian support behind what the truckers wanted–the removal of vaccine mandates and travel restrictions. The significance of this is not lost, even if the truckers never receive any of the money.
The interview of Tamara Lich’s lawyer, Keith Wilson, appears to have less than 2000 views on Youtube. I think every Canadian citizen owes it to themselves to watch this and become aware of the gravity of the situation in which we find ourselves and the direction we are headed as a country.
It was pressure from the banking sector that caused Trudeau to wake up and reconsider going forward with the Emergencies Act after he had already intimidated Liberal and NDP members of parliament into voting for invoking the act only two days earlier. They must feel like they have been played. Remember, too, that the Prime Minister slighted politicians by announcing his invoking of the act to the media before presenting it to parliament and he then enforced the act before any vote whatsoever.
When people began to withdraw their money from banks, the banking conglomerates, legitimately, began to become nervous. Yes, there were bank runs, and understandably so. Bankers saw they were losing the confidence of the public. In their case, and Trudeau’s, money talks.
The Emergencies Act still had to pass a vote in the senate but it never came to that. However, the senators’ debate on the matter began and we can be thankful for the thoughtful remarks. I encourage every Canadian to listen to a sampling of the speeches of the senators as part of their civic duty. Two particularly impressive speeches are the ones by Donald Neil Plett and Denise Batters.
Key to all of this, as Wilson says, is the “sort of narrative that the government created and is acting out on it, despite the evidence of what really happened on the ground.” Wilson believes we must have a public inquiry.
In the meantime, Lich’s bail conditions are going to be appealed to address her restrictions on travel and mobility, her right of association and her right to freedom of expression.
At this date Tamara Lich, the convoy organizer who started the GoFundMe, is still in jail awaiting the verdict of her second bail hearing.
Does this sound like a woman who should be in prison?
Here is a link to a video she made when she realized she would likely be going to jail. Her charge is mischief and counseling to commit mischief. I have followed the convoy from the beginning and have not seen anything deserving of jail time.
Below is a February 18, 2022 article published in the Toronto Sun. It is one of the few examples we have of a simple reporting of events without the name calling, insinuations and speculated associations we are so weary of hearing about from our biased press sources. As I have said before, if journalists and news organizations simply presented the truckers as they were, without adding their own spin, then they would be accused of being on the side of the protesters and subjected to a similar fate. This is how our society works now. Bouncy castles pushed Trudeau over the edge in his witch hunt. One little fact that is omitted from the article is that Prime Minister Trudeau revealed his decision to instate the Emergencies Act to the press before he presented it to parliament. Yes, our democracy is taking a beating.
EDITORIAL: Canadian democracy is taking a beating
Author of the article: Postmedia News
Publishing date:Feb 18, 2022
The actions of the Canadian Liberal government over the past few days have been troubling. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is slowly dismantling our democracy in real time.
Ever since the Emergencies Act was invoked by Trudeau a few days ago, we have witnessed a shock and awe campaign of extreme measures. This has taken people by surprise.
Legal experts, opposition politicians, the media, the public – they’ve hardly had time to fully grasp what’s happening let alone digest it enough to mount the opposition that’s needed.
As an example, it wasn’t until Thursday afternoon that both the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and Canadian Constitution Foundation announced they were commencing legal actions against the Trudeau government for what they describe as the PM’s unlawful implementation of the Act.
That was a full three days after Trudeau first announced he was taking the unprecedented step. Then, hours before the legal challenges were announced, Deputy PM Chrystia Freeland had already stated banks were seizing the accounts of people associated with the convoy — without any legal checks and balances and without court orders.
A justification for these financial measures, we now know, was the government’s reliance on a CBC “analysis” of the hacked information of who donated to the protest’s GiveSendGo account.
On Friday morning, the Speaker of the House of Commons made the decision to shut down Parliament for the day and tell MPs to keep away from government buildings, supposedly because of police action. This was supposed to be a day when opposition politicians were allowed to debate and critique the use of the Act.
Then, the Ottawa Police Service warned the media that they were to keep away while police arrested protesters, telling them it was better to wait until a formal press conference, after it all happened.
But why shouldn’t reporters observe?
The federal government has still not answered the fundamental question of why it needed to invoke the Emergencies Act, infringing on the rights of every citizen in Canada, to deal with a protest in Ottawa that should have been dealt with by a competent city council and police service, under existing laws.
Our democracy has been taking a beating. It’s been a dark period for Canada.
The two things truckers asked for, they didn’t get–vaccine mandates lifted and travel restrictions lifted. But they didn’t come away with nothing. Quite to the contrary. They came away with their eyes opened.
It can be very distressing when you expect one thing and get something entirely different.
Truckers drove to Ottawa in anticipation. You had a very real need. You knew who could address that need.
The problem is that only Prime Minster Trudeau could address the felt need of the truckers. There was no one else to go to, so you went directly to him, at great cost to yourselves.
The relationship between citizens and the government and our Prime Minister is not exactly a parent/child relationship but there are similarities. There is a similarity in that we have an authoritative presence in government and we, the people, experience a measure of dependency and susceptability to the whims of this authority.
In the case of the truckers, you wanted an audience with “dad.” But he turned his back on you. He did not even come out and say “No.” You had what you perceived to be a very reasonable request. Your “dad” verbally abused you, insulted you, belittled you and essentially trashed you before others. That is not a good feeling. It leaves you floundering with all kinds of internal dissonance.
The dissonance is there because what happened is very difficult to reconcile in your heart and mind and mostly this is due to the high regard you had for leadership. Your leaders have fallen from the pedestal on which you held them.
In the case of abuse, and that is clearly what happened here, there is the tendency of the victim to excuse the perpetrator. We want to hold onto our ideal. We need to hold onto our ideal. Because not to do so turns the world we imagined upside down.
We may even go so far as to deny reality in order to preserve the ideal.
Many Canadians have embraced a vision of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as a man of decency with respect for the ordinary citizens of Canada. We thought we held a precious place in his heart. Not only was he deaf to the voices of the truckers, but he slandered those who relied on his good judgment and had no where else to turn with their need.
Essentially, truckers, you felt like you were calling out your “parent.” Parents make mistakes. Some are ready to admit them and humbly ask for forgiveness. Some are not. Some will never apologize to their children. They see themselves in another protected category and this is very unfortunate because the necessary coming together cannot happen. A beautiful and trusting relationship cannot happen without being attentive to, and exploring, each other’s views.
I’m trying to unpack what happened because I find it uncomfortable and even distressing to be in a place of tension where actual experience suddenly does not match my long-held and cherished vision of Canada.
Truckers determined to have a peaceful protest. You did everything possible to convince Canada that you were going to remain peaceful. I truly cannot imagine a more peaceful truckers’ protest. One evidence of this was how you cared for the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Ironically this monument symbolizes those for whom there was never resolve because they did not return from battle, either dead or alive, and their remains were never found.
Truckers showed kindness and fed the homeless. When people’s generosity towards you overflowed to the point where you had food left over, you donated to food banks. You showed yourselves to be generous and caring and fun-loving. You cleared sidewalks and picked up garbage left by others. Crime in the area dropped by 90%. But of course this was not how you were represented in the legacy media.
We rely on media for accurate documentation. Not only did the Prime Minister refuse to speak to you, relegating you to a class of citizens that he deemed too despicable to address, the media used talking points over and over again to try and smear your peaceful protest before the public. Both succeeded in maligning the protest to the degree that some neighbours felt justified in villainizing you as well. You suddenly found yourself experiencing a completely different world, one you never anticipated, one very unfamiliar to you, one where people were cruel and unjust and lied and turned others against those who never did them wrong.
The City of Ottawa, under the direction of the mayor, deployed a huge and unwarranted police presence. However, you welcomed the police because you had nothing to fear by their presence since you were following the law. You were respectful and friendly towards the officers who in turn treated you with dignity, more dignity than the Prime Minister demonstrated. The police were on the scene, daily, as witnesses, and can attest to your high character.
The media jumped on the visual of groups of police officers patrolling downtown Ottawa. They could turn this optic in their favor. Their goal, as we can see in hindsight, was to paint the most alarming picture possible of the protests and to incite a reaction. They attempted to create a story that would later justify the “crushing of an uprising.”
Many of the truckers did not hold to a conspiracy theory before they came to Ottawa, but what they witnessed made it clear there was a conspiracy between Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the media. They conspired to turn the truckers into villains in the eyes of the public. This they did.
Not everyone believed what they saw in print and came to Ottawa to find out what was going on for themselves. Others watched independent commentators online who were committed to documenting what was happening, of their own choice and at their own expense.
When the City of Ottawa asked you to stop honking horns, you stopped. Admittedly, you knew the horn honking would agitate some residents. Even peaceful protests cause disruptions. You were trying to get Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s attention. This was a means of making him aware of your presence, and making the community, and indeed the world, aware of the fact that you came to Ottawa with a purpose. You wanted to be heard.
Stop the vaccine mandates. Stop the ArriveCan app. Let Canadians be free, once again, to work in their chosen professions, and to travel.
From the beginning I have found it unconscionable that Canadians lost their jobs because they chose not to get the vaccine. If you cannot work, you cannot buy food and feed your family. Our government knows that if you cannot work, you cannot own a home. You lose your dignity and sense of purpose.
For some people it is impossible to get the vaccine, either for conscience sake or for medical reasons. Let’s not under value the significance of personal conviction and consent. Mandates remove the possibility of volition and consent by enforcing intolerable consequences.
Prime Minister Trudeau colluded with the press and it is becoming apparent that there was collusion with pharmaceutical companies who have a lot to gain from ongoing vaccination requirements, regardless of efficacy. It is unrealistic to expect 100% cooperation from the public. It is also totalitarian to have this kind of top-down legislation. The measures taken to force people into compliance are harsh and oppressive.
I am reminded of a little known historical tragedy that happened in Ukraine between 1932-1933 known as the Holodomor or “Great Famine.” Oppressive government mandates issued by Joseph Stalin limited travel and food production and distribution. Farmers were forced to give up their land under new government collectivization efforts. Peasants who resisted forfeiting their land were misrepresented as enemies of the public and violently suppressed by the government and cooperating neighbours during this period of Soviet Industrialization. As a result of the measures an estimated 7 million people in the Ukraine died unnecessarily of starvation.
As shocking as this account may be, it serves to remind us that government leaders are fallible. They are capable of making decisions that lack compassion and that disregard the rights of their citizens, namely the right to dignity and sustenance.
The cognitive dissonance felt by truckers began when they lost their jobs due to the vaccine mandate. This is true of health care workers as well. Peculiarly, these past “heroes” became targets of our government. At time when we lived in much greater fear of the dangers of covid-19, these people could not isolate and work from home, as the Prime Minister did. Daily they exposed themselves to risk and disease because of their commitment to providing care and delivering the goods on which Canadians depended.
The only thing that will resolve the dissonance is to stare, fearless and unflinching, directly at the brutal facts, without excuse or rationalization. This means moving away from denial. Experientially it is similar to feelings of grief after a great loss like a death. In stages of grief, people who move past denial find themselves angry. Anger is an acceptable response, not to be feared, but it must taper off. Anger depletes a person of energy and is typically followed by a season of depression. At this point it is helpful to find counsel or look for consolation in encouraging slogans, symbols or rituals. Finally we move into a place of acceptance, reluctant as we may be. I say acceptance, not in the sense of resignation, but rather facing the truth of how life is altered and summoning the courage to move forward.
We’ve now reached a fork in the road in Canada. Either we will rebuild our democracy, or the alternative will happen. We can only imagine what that might look like.
Admittedly, there is a part of us that wants to say, “It’s not as bad as I think.” But maybe it is. Maybe what you are thinking and feeling is exactly right. Our desperate longing for good in this world can get in our way. Our child-like innocence and blind trust can cause us to walk, unseeing, into a pit. As the saying goes, “It’s time to call a spade a spade.” Trust serves us well when others are trustworthy.
The trust of Canadians is tragically broken and that is the saddest outfall of the protest. But it was unavoidable and necessary for Canadians to come to this point of acknowledgement. Our government, its tactics, and its attitude towards the people has been exposed. We were living with a false perception of reality that may have been an illusion even in the more distant past. Things have deteriorated to the point that there is no longer any hiding.
I am hopeful that we can return to the Canada where there was trust in our government. Rebuilding trust will be a very long and arduous journey.
Yes, Canada is in a very fragile place. We must act with great care, going forward. The world is watching with expectation. Not all are cheering us on. Some are looking for a tragic end. Some are eyeing Canada calculatingly, hoping for opportunity.
Let’s not despair. All is not lost. Every day new voices are speaking up for dignity, truth, freedom and democracy.
Truckers have had their eyes opened. The images of force in downtown Ottawa as a result of the employment of the Emergencies Act will forever be burned in our memories as testimony to what we did not think could happen in Canada. Peaceful protest turned violent by our government.
There is another side of the coin we must consider as well.
Truckers, you were an imposing presence on Parliament Hill, virtually immovable, and definitely heard. Your peaceful protest attracted a lot of sympathy across Canada and this was undeniably threatening to our government.
Yes, you were a threat. A threat by your goodness and by your reasonableness. You represented justice. You represented fairness. You represented a sensibility understood by the common man. In the face of false accusations, in the face of loss of property, in the face of loss of freedom to work, you have this to hold onto. You did not violate your conscience.
You had no intention to overthrow the government but this was the charge cast against you, unrelentingly, by the Prime Minister and the press. The constant talk of weapons, the arrests that had noting to do with protesters, the defacing of monuments by vandals, which was attributed to truckers. You saw it all. You responded in a calm, respectful manner. You held the higher ground, and the Prime Minister knew it. Our representatives in government witnessed it as they went to work, and attested to the fact that they never felt more safe in downtown Ottawa, that is, until the day when the Emergencies Act was weaponized against innocent citizens.
In these times I turn to my faith for guidance and strength. Jesus knew what was in the heart of man. He was not under any illusions and he knows today. It was this knowledge that gave him courage, no matter the outcome.
We can have the same confidence and assurance when we are on the side of goodness. That does not mean that suffering is avoidable.
This battle for freedom to work, travel and live peacefully alongside our neighbours will continue around the world and it is truth and justice that will set us free. Let’s keep our eyes open and give thanks for every evidence of provision and each step forward in victory. Continue to sing “God keep our land, glorious and free….Oh Canada we stand on guard for thee” and to pray, “Thy kingdom come. They will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Hold the line.
Trudeau may have revoked the Emergencies Act this week, under local and international pressure, but only after all the damage was done in his “crackdown” on truckers. Below is an article, in full, from this website, describing what the truckers face now: Nearly 40 Trucking Businesses Involved in Canada’s Freedom Convoy Protests Have Been Shut Down. The truckers have been vilified in the news in Canada and particularly by our Prime Minister. Prime Minister Trudeau has done everything he could to tarnish their name and to malign their motives. It is truly shameful. In Canada we feel we no longer have a democracy due to the draconian measures Trudeau has taken against the Freedom Convoy of truckers. Their big ask? To be able to work and freely cross the border. What did they get? Permanent shut-down. I have no words.
By Katabella Roberts
The Ontario Ministry of Transportation (MTO) confirmed that it shut down nearly 40 businesses during its crackdown on Freedom Convoy protesters opposing COVID-19 mandates and restrictions.
In an email to Global News on Feb. 23, Dakota Brasier, a spokesperson for Minister of Transportation Caroline Mulroney, said the ministry had issued 12 seizure orders to Ontario-based large truck operators which suspended them from being allowed to operate within Canada.
The ministry also issued an order to seize all plates registered to them, Brasier said.
Outside of Ontario, the ministry also issued 27 seizure orders to out-of-province large truck operators, which stopped them from operating any commercial motor vehicles in Ontario, Brasier said.
The MTO would not reveal the name of the businesses that were issued with the seizure orders when asked to comment by Truck News.
“In an effort to preserve future police investigations into the illegal occupation in Ottawa, the ministry will not release the names of affected businesses at this time,” a ministry spokesperson told the publication when asked.
The Epoch Times has contacted an Ontario Ministry of Transportation spokesperson for comment.
The confirmation from MTO regarding businesses being shut down came just hours after Ontario Premier Doug Ford lifted the province’s state of emergency.
Ford declared the emergency on Feb. 11 to address the impact of the ongoing protests against COVID-19 mandates and restrictions by trucker conveys who arrived in Ottawa on Jan. 29.
However, Ford’s office said in a statement on Feb. 23 that the “emergency tools” provided to law enforcement would still remain in place for now, “as police continue to address ongoing activity on the ground.”
“We remain grateful to all front-line officers and first responders that contributed to peacefully resolving the situation in Ottawa, Windsor, and in other parts of the province,” the statement said.
Also on Wednesday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that he was revoking the use of the Emergencies Act, which he originally invoked on Feb. 14 to deal with the protests and blockades, stating that the situation is no longer an emergency.
Trudeau defended utilizing the act in the first place after he faced fierce criticism from opponents, including Canadian politician Mark Strahl, who claimed that the act had resulted in a single mom with a minimum wage job having her bank account frozen after donating $50 to the Freedom Convoy.
Invocation of the act granted the federal government powers to freeze protesters’ and supporters’ bank accounts without a court order.
![GettyImages-1238211565-600x400 Nearly 40 Trucking Businesses Involved in Canada’s Freedom Convoy Protests Have Been Shut Down Business Featured Top Stories World [your]NEWS](https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2022/02/05/GettyImages-1238211565-1200x800.jpg "GettyImages-1238211565-600x400 Nearly 40 Trucking Businesses Involved in Canada’s Freedom Convoy Protests Have Been Shut Down Business Featured Top Stories World [your]NEWS")
Trudeau said invoking the act initially was “the responsible and necessary thing to do” and that there was evidence that individuals wanted to “undermine and even harm Canada’s democracy.”
However, prior to the Emergencies Act being invoked, Ambassador Bridge, the busiest Canada-U.S. border crossing which transports products between the two countries, had already reopened.
Meanwhile, blockades at the border crossings in B.C. and Alberta had also ended shortly after Feb. 14, and the biggest protest still ongoing was in Ottawa, yet the government insisted it was still necessary to use the act because there was an ongoing threat that new protests or blockades might pop up again.
After Trudeau’s announcement, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) said that it was reaching out to financial institutions to unfreeze accounts.
“As of February 21, 2022, the RCMP has gone back to financial institutions with some updated information about certain entities whose status may have changed pertaining to the illegal protest activity,” RCMP said in a statement.
“This new information can be assessed alongside all other information to help inform decisions to unfreeze certain accounts.”
In total, RCMP had frozen at least 206 accounts due to support of the Freedom Convoy, totaling $7.8 million, according to Isabelle Jacques, assistant deputy minister of finance.
Tina Friesen 