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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.
Canadians cannot leave the country by air or rail if we are not vaccinated because we are not allowed on a plane or train. We cannot even take a plane or a train to another province if we are above twelve years old and not vaccinated.
As I write there is a court case in progress in B.C. that will determine the validity of vaccine mandates for Health Care Workers. Our heroes suddenly became villains and this is a most cruel way to treat our caregivers. These were the women, primarily, many of them recent immigrants, who donned layers of protective gear and faced a frightening pandemic with an unknown outcome. The did not cringe. They did not draw back. Yet our government is cringing from them and treating them like lepers.
At least the fact that a court case on behalf of the Health Care Workers is allowed is commendable. However, think of how disturbing it is that it has come to the point where we are surprised we can have our day in court: B.C. court allows case against Henry’s COVID-19 vaccination order to proceed
Everyone is getting covid, vaccinated or not. Vaccinated are dying of covid, as well as unvaccinated. This is not a vaccine, by definition. It is a shot.
Right now if you get covid, you are recommended (not required) to stay home for five days. Meanwhile, my 12 year old grandson who lives across the border will have to isolate for 14 days–even if he tests negative for covid before and during his stay–just because he is crossing a border. Canadian federal regulations. And note that he still can’t get on a plane after his 14 day isolation! So due to all this he will have to miss a family reunion and possibly his last chance to see his great grandmother. Let’s add that he has had covid and recovered, so he is forced to take a vaccine for a disease he already had. This is bordering on criminal.
The benefits of vaccinating children are not proven to be significant while the risk involved with vaccination is real. If it were my choice, I too would not vaccinate children and the primary reason is because it is taboo to mention vaccine injuries. We are being controlled. Compelled speech. Only say the party line, the politically correct thing. How much of our taxes have gone towards vaccine ads? Let’s not even begin to talk about money spent on tracing and testing. One must admit this is a business to keep going, lucrative as it is, especially now that the vaccine is not working and an antiviral treatment is selling fast.
Does any of this make sense? Meanwhile airports don’t have workers. Why? Federal mandates. My son and his wife missed their flight due to long security check lines and they were by far not the only ones. They had to shell out an extra $700 to reach their destination last month.
Does freezing the bank accounts of people who gave to the truckers make sense? My husband met someone at a Pierre Poilivre leadership rally who had their bank account frozen for one month because they gave a $25 donation to truckers. This is why people are coming to Poilivre’s rallies by the droves wherever he goes. Truckers, in their cabs, were not spreading covid. There was no need for a last minute call to mandate vaccines for truckers. The whole protest could have been avoided if our government had behaved in a reasonable manner. It’s time our Prime Minister stops holding Canadians hostage.
In Canada Prime Minister Trudeau and his New Democratic/Liberal Coalition are proposing a bill to give the government greater access and ability to censor Canadians on the internet. Prime Minister Trudeau claims the need to combat “misinformation.”
China and Russia are great models of speech censorship. However unlike Canada, the UK and the US, they are not democratic countries. In recent days all three countries have moved towards increasing online censorship. We know, of course, that Liberals/Democrats putting pressure on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube is nothing new. But now it appears to be necessary to go after smaller publications as well.
Governmental powers have discovered how easy it is to create legislation that gives them even more power. We have an example, this week, of the BC government giving itself power to expropriate not only land for Sky Train development but land for development next to Sky Train development. See New legislation to allow BC government to buy more land around SkyTrain for housing
The recent Canadian Liberal coalition with the New Democratic Party is a desperate attempt by the Liberals to retain power following the Emergencies Act fiasco which was implemented under false pretences by the Prime Minister in collusion with the government-funded media. We have yet to see any corroborated news report of actual violence. No weapons were found by the “national guard.” The City of Ottawa needlessly shut down businesses in the area. An anonymous resident of Ottawa reported, I am a local resident. I can confirm that the media put a very false spin on the entire situation. Bars getting out at 2am in the market is more disruptive than this protest ever was. Period!
Squashing a peaceful truckers’ gathering in Ottawa after a sudden vaccine mandate threatened the livelihood of 10% of truckers is simply inexcusable for a democratic country. We are supposedly free to choose our medical procedures in Canada. However, if we make a choice unapproved by the government then we will be verbally attacked in the media and by our Prime Minister, in a very public way, while in private we lose our incomes, businesses and homes. Does that not appear to be a form of coercion? Medical decisions are not to be made under duress of any kind.
BC is the last province to lift its vaccine mandate, on April 8, but federal government vaccine mandates for federal employees and truckers remain in place. This is without any medical support for the current efficacy of the vaccine to prevent infection. The jab should not be distinguished as a vaccine since it does nothing to prevent contracting the current virus.
This is not about health. It is purely political. And that is what is riling Canadians.
Our government is toying with the people because it can. Nobody can stop this. So it appears. All the opposition can do is talk. Either this or the wheels of change are moving painfully slowly.
Yesterday I had a fatalistic moment as I thought about the future of free speech and other democratic freedoms in Canada. Like Elon Musk, on the subject of potential abuse of Artificial Intelligence, I became less fearful. Musk admitted he had resigned himself to a fatalistic acceptance once he realized the powers that could regulate AI abuses were not listening and not inclined to take action. This is not good news. It is a characteristic of totalitarian regimes. People stop resisting because they think it is pointless. Those in power can then have their way with the people.
My battle is not with AI, although we will all suffer as a consequence of the inevitable abuses to come. My battle is with misinformation–the battle for truth over lies. Trudeau, Russia and China peddle in misinformation. As do CNN, MSNBC (who hired Jen Pasaki this week), The New York Times, The Washington Post and other outlets with a similar bias who are at this moment scheming to form an alliance to ‘collectively bargain with Big Tech platforms’ as to which information you and I are to see.
You can listen to Russell Brand discuss this topic on his April 5 documentary here. The Journalism and Competition and Preservation Act is a bill proposed in the US Senate, intended to create an alliance between Big Tech and Big Media. This merge is not so dissimilar from Trudeau’s merge of the Liberal Party with the NDP to retain power.
As Brand puts it, “…centralized power will have yet more ability to control the narratives that dominate our lives.” Brand points out that this will be at the expense of smaller outlets and independent content creators and asks, “Why would a democratically elected official do something that prohibits the free flow of information?”
The major media outlets point fingers as they repeat a talking point in unison, “The sharing of biased and false news has become all too common….” Apparently, having a bias, other than theirs, is no longer tolerated.
Trudeau, similarly, is working to censor free speech in Canada with the introduction of Bill C-11. The National Post’s First Reading article,The Liberals’ weird obsession with censoring the internet states, “Despite Liberal assurances that C-11 would avoid the “controversial” excesses of its predecessor (Bill C-10), this new bill was also broad enough that it could similarly impose government controls on the content of everything from podcasts to Facebook posts to YouTube channels. If passed, it would create a new position, the Digital Safety Commissioner of Canada, who would have the power to order 24-hour takedowns of a broad swath of “unauthorized” web content.”
We see the same thing happening in the UK. Today’s headline reads, UK censorship bill tasks Big Tech with deciding when something is “illegal” or “fraudulent” It refers to the introduction of the Online Safety Bill. A copy of the bill can be found here.
According to Reclaim The Net news , “The bill…gives these tech giants additional powers that aren’t granted to police and the courts, such as the power to set their own rules around how they’ll deal with harmful content.”
The article goes on to say, “By deputizing Big Tech, the Online Safety Bill also creates a dystopian censorship alliance between these powerful companies and the UK government. The government can dictate its censorship requirements directly to its Big Tech enforcers without the police gathering any evidence of an alleged offense and without prosecutors gaining a conviction in a court of law or even a court order.”
The sudden international escalation of censorship is astounding.
In a small counter-effort, Elon Musk purchased stocks in Twitter that made him a major share holder this week and gave him a seat on the Board. This followed a survey he recently conducted of two million people on Twitter, 70% of which believed Twitter does not adhere to principles of free speech.
In the meantime Big Media conglomerates team up to influence Big Tech. What is happening here?
I am reminded of the interesting developments around Gamestop. Check out this ThinkSpot podcaster. I am also reminded of the GoFundMe and GiveSendGo accounts started (and cancelled) for truckers. And then there is the recent targeting of the American Frontline Doctors website by Google with, “Reduced display features, lower rankings, or even removal from Google Search results.” What do all three have in common? Ordinary citizens communicating without gatekeepers.
I think what is happening here is really quite simple. There is information that must be concealed from the public. We have the clear example of the CDC with New York Post article, CDC withholding COVID data over fears of misinterpretation: The CDC has admitted it is withholding large portions of COVID-19 data — including on vaccine boosters — from the public because it fears the information could be misinterpreted.
We might not come to the right conclusions if we have all the information, is that right?
The headline reads: Senators overwhelmed by emails, calls pushing conspiracy theories about basic income legislation
I’d like to take a closer look at this article, written for the government-funded CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) by a skillful journalist named John Paul Tasker.
First of all, to Tasker, why the attack on people who don’t want Universal Basic Income? Can we not all have our individual opinion?
To call thousands of people you have never met conspiracy theorists and then go to the further extreme of labeling them as mentally unstable (a reference in the article that compares letter writers to people who go through manic and schizophrenic episodes) is really not appropriate. An individual assessment is required by a psychiatrist or psychologist before such a life-altering diagnosis. Otherwise it could be considered slander. I might add that groups of people are not mentally unstable just because they disagree with, or do not fully comprehend, the actions the government is taking.
If the government wants to do a “study” it is because the matter is being seriously considered. Studies generally lead in a certain direction. And let’s remember the cost of these studies generally runs in the millions of dollars. So, if the government is not considering a basic income then scrap the study. But, as with the truckers protest, we can now expect the government to become obstinate. Because the protesters have to be wrong.
Some people got wind of this and didn’t like it and found their voice. It’s so much more convenient if nobody makes a fuss about what the government is doing, but unfortunately actions of the government affect us all. And fortunately we have a voice. Or so we have thought was the meaning of democracy—representative rule by the people. The idea of representing the people is falling out of fashion, however, and along with it democracy.
What is really scary for the government and the CBC is finding out that a “fringe minority” might be a bit more than a fringe. So, as a mechanism of defence it become necessary to find a way to discredit those who disagree. Make them look like de-ranged crazies. This is a particular skill of the CBC–character assassination. Read the sub-heading: “Red Chamber grappling with a flood of messages claiming basic income is a plot by a shadowy global elite.” How could anyone possibly think that our government or global elites are “plotting” anything?
Of course basic income is not a plot. It is a plan. Am I right about that?
And then we have a photo, in the article, of COVID-19 protesters, dated back to December 20, 2020 with a caption stating “One protester holds a sign referring to the ‘Great Rest’ conspiracy theory.” This refers to the book written in 2020 by Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum, entitled, COVID-19: The Great Reset, in which he talks about COVID-19 presenting an “opportunity” for a global reset. We have heard from Premier Jason Kenney that every premier in Canada received the book. I don’t exactly see how this fact qualifies as a conspiracy theory. However it could validates some of the fears expressed.
The author seems to dig himself deeper and deeper into the mire and anther example is a reference to LifeSite news, a conservative, Catholic news site, which, according to the CBC must not be believed, but none-the-less states exactly what we can find on the World Economic Forum’s website: LifeSite, a social conservative, anti-abortion website, has published a post on the legislation, linking Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland with the WEF. The WEF website states at the end of a lengthy bio that Freeland is “a member of the Forum’s Board of Trustees.” Let’s just add that there are more sources for information besides the CBC.
I recently did an article on my discovery of the WEF as a result of hearing Prime Minister Trudeau’s half-brother Kyle Kemper tell that Klaus Schwab is proud to call Trudeau his protege. There is video footage to support this. It’s not a big leap from there to imagine that this group of global elites—for that is what they are—might want to influence governments world-wide. Especially when you hear Klaus Schwab brag about infiltrating governments with young leaders.
The Great Reset is described in Wikipedia and the book is available on Amazon.
And as to the assurance of Kim Pate, Ontario MP who introduced the bill, that there would “absolutely not” be any clawing back of existing EI or Pensions, well, it is difficult to be reassured when in BC we were told we would absolutely not have vaccine mandates.
OK, I know that some are taking this a step towards basic income further than might be warranted, but they are afraid. They are afraid because we have had some pretty scary things happen in Canada. Our freedoms have been trampled on. You might have your bank account frozen if you support those who disagree with the government. You might be given a court order that disallows you to speak against the government or its mandates. And if we were to become dependent on a basic income then the government might one day decide to withhold funds because of such a thing as not getting a vaccine. See: National Post: Unvaccinated workers who lose jobs ineligible for EI benefits, minister says.
Klaus Schwab is famously known for saying, “You will own nothing and be happy.” Who is he talking about? What is he implying? A socialist form of government, maybe? You may want to check out his father Eugen Wilhelm Schwab, and also Freeland’s maternal grandfather, Michael Chomiak both of whom have Nazi ties. The WEF is an essential part of the UN and it cannot be denied that the UN has already influenced our public education, our climate change policy and our aboriginal treaty rights for better or for worse. The latter is being tested in courts.
I want to add that we may indeed be near the point of requiring a “guaranteed livable basic income” due to astronomical rising inflation. But CERB has shown us that an income supplement can be a disincentive to work. It also puts more money into the hands of drug dealers and increases overdose fatalities.
We know that home ownership in parts of Canada is already out of reach for a dual income family. Meanwhile large corporations like Blackstone, with huge buying power, are snapping up homes at an unprecedented rate and turning them into rentals in North America. See here and here.
These people sending letters are not all “crazies.” Some are actually very well informed. It turns out that much of what is being expressed is based on facts that are significant, especially in light of recent events. They consider the government and some news organizations as not completely forthcoming with the truth, I might add.
I think there is a better way of addressing the issue than continuing to aggravate people. It is true that some have been “broken” by covid. A few are believing clear fallacies. The first step towards helping people is validating their fear. Do we want to help these people or further alienate them?
For the CBC to print an article like this is only going to fan the flames. I’m surprised they don’t see that, unless it is their intent. Their descriptive of the people who wrote the letters is not too far from the truth about the CBC as well, “They’re trapped in their own echo chamber and they start to believe that everything outside of it is corrupted.”
See the article below.
Senators overwhelmed by emails, calls pushing conspiracy theories about basic income legislation
Red Chamber grappling with a flood of messages claiming basic income is a plot by a shadowy global elite
John Paul Tasker · CBC News · Posted: Mar 31, 2022 1:19 PM ET | Last Updated: 7 hours ago
People participate in a demonstration in Montreal protesting measures implemented by the Quebec government to help stop the spread of COVID-19 on Dec. 20, 2020. One protester holds a sign referring to the ‘Great Reset’ conspiracy theory. (Graham Hughes/The Canadian Press)
Members of the Red Chamber have been hit by a wave of questionable correspondence from Canadians convinced that a pending Senate bill would take away their pensions and lead to some sort of totalitarian world government.
Tens of thousands of calls, emails and handwritten letters urging senators to oppose Bill S-233 have flooded into the Red Chamber. The emails — many of them based on outlandish conspiracy theories — have at times overloaded the Senate’s servers, bringing the normal workflow to a grinding halt.
Bill S-233 calls for the creation of a national “framework” to allow the federal government to begin studying a “guaranteed livable basic income” program in Canada.
If passed, the one-page bill, which was introduced by Ontario Sen. Kim Pate, would not establish a basic income program in Canada. It would simply compel the Department of Finance to study the concept and report its findings.
Under parliamentary rules, a senator cannot propose any new spending or tax increases through a Senate public bill like S-233. Moreover, bills of this sort — and non-government legislation more generally — rarely pass through both houses of Parliament into law. The federal Liberal government has also been cool to the idea of a basic income program.
Despite those facts, senators are grappling with a well-organized letter-writing campaign driven by people worried that the bill’s passage will somehow result in real harms, like an end to Old Age Security and Employment Insurance or the contributory Canada Pension Plan.
Some of the thousands of letter-writers also falsely claim that, if passed, the bill would limit future social welfare programs to people vaccinated against COVID-19, or that cigarette smokers will be barred from government assistance.
The bill would not make any changes to existing government programs and does not stipulate who would qualify if the government were to implement a basic income scheme.
Some of the concern about pensions and income support seems to stem from a tweet by Peter Taras, a former Ontario candidate for the People’s Party of Canada. He told his followers that, if Bill S-233 passes, “if you are not vaccinated you will not receive EI, CPP, OHS, Social Services or Pension that YOU PAID INTO.”
‘Fantastical and untrue’
That message has been retweeted more than 700 times.
Pate told CBC News that the tweet is “absolutely fantastical and untrue” and people like Taras are “spreading misinformation … that unnecessarily terrifies people by telling them their access to financial support and services upon which they rely would be terminated.”
She said it is “absolutely not” her intention to wind up any existing program.
Ontario Sen. Kim Pate in 2013. Pate said people have been spreading misinformation about her bill, S-233, which would prompt the government to study implementing a universal basic income program in Canada. (Colin Perkel/The Canadian Press)
“Bill S-233 would not claw back or reduce services or benefits meant to assist individuals with needs relating to their health, disability, retirement, etc.” she said.
“The bill proposes developing a framework for implementing guaranteed livable basic income, an income support program available to anyone living in poverty in Canada. In my humble opinion, it could form one component of a robust, responsive, and comprehensive economic, health and social safety net that includes housing, child care, education, pharma, dental and mental health care, as well as programs like pensions, disability supports and EI.”
Other letter-writers took an even darker view of Pate’s push to have the government study a basic income.
Alberta Sen. Paula Simons told CBC News she has personally received “thousands and thousands” of emails, letters and phone calls from people who say the bill is some sort of plot by nefarious actors to establish a “new world order” or a system of state surveillance.
Simons said she and other senators have had trouble navigating through their clogged inboxes. They’ve had to resort to other messaging platforms because their email accounts have become “functionally useless,” she said. The Alberta senator said her voicemail is always full because of the sheer volume of calls.
Fascists, Soros and cyborgs
Those contacting senators’ offices to oppose S-233 blame the purported conspiracy to destroy the Canadian way of life on a range of bad actors: fascists, socialists, the Masons, billionaires like Microsoft founder Bill Gates or investor George Soros, or World Economic Forum (WEF) head Klaus Schwab.
Others bizarrely maintain the legislation will lead to “transhumanism” — an alleged plot to turn people into cyborgs.
“This is CANADA . . . not North Korea, not Russia, you are employees of the people! NOT EMPLOYEES OF THE WEF OR THE WHO,” one correspondent told Simons in a recent email.
“Bill S-233 is just the beginning. We are losing our freedoms to a group of elites that want to depopulate and control mankind, enslave us to experimental transhumanism, and the removal of any Christian and Godly devotions,” said another.
“Nobody voted for Nazi Klaus Schwab. Nobody even knew he existed 2 years ago. He has NOTHING to do with Canada or any other country. Schwab holds a statue of Lenin in his office! This is NOT CANADA. We are NOT going BACK to NAZI GERMANY. Please see NUREMBERG CODE & TRIALS,” said one letter-writer, referring to the WEF founder who has been the subject of many conspiracy theories since the onset of COVID-19.
Alberta Independent Sen. Paula Simons gives an interview in a park in Victoria, B.C. on Nov. 30, 2021. (Mike McArthur/CBC)
On Tuesday, all senators got an email that claimed the adoption of a basic income program would lead to the forced sterilization of people of child-bearing age and the extermination of the elderly and the disabled.
Simons said an untold number of Canadians have been “manipulated and terrified” into believing “outrageous” conspiracy theories that are patently false.
“Since the trucker convoy ended we’ve been bombarded. There’s been just a really sudden, dramatic spike in letters and many of them are from people who are deep into a conspiracy theory spiral,” Simons said.
Politicians are used to getting messages and calls from people who are “unwell,” Simons said, but there’s something different about this campaign.
‘COVID has broken a lot of people’
She said the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting public health restrictions have wreaked havoc on mental health, priming people to believe claims circulating online.
“I really do think COVID has broken a lot of people. There is a real delusional paranoia that runs through some of this mail. They’re writing to me about how this is a eugenics plot, a Masonic plot and at some point you go, ‘OK, this is really upsetting that people are preying on people who are already vulnerable.’ This is a thing that happens when people go through manic or schizophrenic episodes.”
Beyond Taras, the failed People’s Party candidate, Simons said it’s not clear who’s behind the effort to convince people that S-233’s passage would have such sweeping consequences.
LifeSite, a social conservative, anti-abortion website, has published a post on the legislation, linking Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland with the WEF. That website also quoted former U.S. presidential candidate Ron Paul who has claimed that the WEF wants to introduce global socialism through a universal basic income.
Since the LifeSite post was published, Simons has heard from church and community groups that have sent in large batches of form letters.
The WEF, a non-governmental organization that hosts discussions between world and business leaders at an annual summit in Davos, Switzerland, does not dictate what will or will not become law in any country.
The ‘great reset’ lives on
But Amarnath Amarasingam, a professor at Queen’s University, and one of Canada’s leading researchers on conspiracy theories, said the WEF is at the centre of so many COVID-related conspiracies because, in 2020, some its leaders talked about a “great reset” after the health crisis — a chance to evaluate how the global economy is structured after grappling with such a devastating pandemic.
Amarasingam said some theorists see Davos as a place where evil elites “basically do their plotting and their criming.”
Protestors hold a banner reading “COVID-19 The Great Reset, Klaus Schwab” — referring to World Economic Forum chairman Schwab — during a demonstration against coronavirus-related restrictions in Amsterdam on May 2, 2021. (Peter Dejong/AP Photo)
“A lot of people think sinister elites manufactured the pandemic to bring about a ‘great reset,’ and make humans financially dependent on the government,” he said.
“There is a concern that the vaccines and a basic income are all woven into a grand plan to basically make us robots, cyborgs that will listen to anything these billionaire elites tell us to do. They think programs like a basic income will take away financial independence and that that’s part of a broader plot by evil-doers so that they can eventually have their way with us.”
Amarasingam said there’s nothing new about conspiracy theories but the pandemic has “pushed them into hyperdrive,” fuelling a movement of people willing to believe there’s a global movement to “enslave” humanity.
‘Closed ecosystems of thought’
A noted decline in people’s trust in government, the press, academics and experts and public health authorities has made the situation worse, he said, while the advent of alternative social media platforms like Telegram has made conspiratorial material readily available.
“These alternative platforms have seen insane growth. It’s created closed ecosystems of thought where people only trust what they hear from other people online. They’re trapped in their own echo chamber and they start to believe that everything outside of it is corrupted. There’s a growing proportion of people who just live in an alternative universe.”
Amarasingam said people in these online forums are largely unaware of how the government operates — or how a bill is passed through Parliament — and those knowledge gaps “are easily filled with fantasy.”
“It’s easy to see a sinister plot when you don’t actually understand how the government works. These people aren’t civics majors,” he said.
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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.
Tina Friesen 