One scarcely knows where to begin in documenting the errors, scandals, and misadventures of Justin Trudeau’s Liberal regime. The problem is, one scarcely knows where to end. The outrages just keep on coming.
Trudeau has come in for much caustic criticism of late, as a growing number of ordinary citizens and the independent media have expressed their justified suspicion and resentment of an overbearing and increasingly despotic administration. The issues at stake are features, not bugs. The list of noxious measures, lapses, and deeds that tarnish Trudeau’s record include:
Deserving separate mention for the magnitude of their effect are Trudeau’s two most recent legislative atrocities.
Bill C-367 proposes to arrest Christians for quoting portions of the Bible in public, to charge pastors with a “hate crime” when they preach against certain sins, and to close churches if government does not approve of the liturgy. This despite the fact that Canada’s motto, “a mari usque ad mare,” is cited from Psalm 72:8, which says that Christ shall have dominion “from sea to sea.” As LifeSite News reports, the Bill “will silence believers who oppose the woke ideology that is overrunning our country” and enable the ongoing persecution of Christians. It appears we are back circa 303 AD, when the emperors Diocletian, Maximian, Galerius and Constantius issued a series of edicts rescinding Christians’ legal rights and demanding that they comply with the pagan rites of the Empire. Emperor Trudeau Minimus seems to be of the same mind.
Bill C-367 is followed by Bill C-63, the so-called Online Harms Act, updated from its predecessor Bill C-36 and S-210, and which is equally or perhaps even more diabolical. Ostensibly framed to protect children from online pornography, it also includes fines of up to $70,000 levied on individuals for online hate speech and between $10 million to $25 million for any offending online platform. A new stand-alone hate offence would be added to the criminal code allowing for penalties of up to life imprisonment for hate crimes, subject to the interpretation of the Government and Canada’s Human Rights Tribunals. Such interpretation, warns University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist “is not subject to any legal or technical rules of evidence.” Rather, “balance of probabilities,” a notoriously flexible criterion of judgment, is the guiding principle.
The true focus is obviously not on preventing actual harms — this is a feel-good pretext to grease the passage of the Bill into law — but on snuffing anticipated and unformulated thought crimes and ultimately on silencing or canceling dissidents whose contestation might imperil the Liberal’s re-election prospects and the embedding of its totalitarian agenda. We note that Greenpeace activist, former Heritage Minister and currently Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Steven Guilbeault, argued that disparaging posts about government institutions should be made illegal and that user-generated content should be stringently regulated.
The Canadian Constitution Foundation points out that the Act “would limit constitutionally-protected expression in many alarming ways.” It would create a process whereby anonymous complaints alleging “hate speech” would be adjudicated, a sure-fire way of silencing a political opponent; whereby in certain cases warrantless entry would be permitted; whereby words could lead to life imprisonment, and judges could “put prior restraints on people who they believe on reasonable grounds may commit speech crimes in the future.” In the words of Justice Centre lawyer Marty Moore, “Far more draconian than being arrested for something you say, is being imprisoned for something someone else is afraid you’ll say.”
The problem, of course, is the definition of “reasonable grounds,” “speech crimes,” and “hate.” The answer is: whatever the Government and the Social Justice Commissioners say they are. According to the new “online harms” censorship legislation, “hate speech” is so vaguely and subjectively defined, so elastic a concept, it can mean anything the authorities want it to mean. And we can be sure that it will.
As noted, Bill C-63 purportedly seeks to address and denounce hate propaganda and provide recourse to victims of “hate,” proposing amendments to the Criminal Code and the Canadian Human Rights Act. Ezra Levant at Rebel News observes, “Three new bureaucracies will be created as part of the new criminal code and new human rights code provisions, including a digital safety commission, a digital safety ombudsman and a digital safety office.” This sounds like the official litigating and policing offices that proliferated during the French Revolution. We recall that the Committee of Public Safety, which controlled the Revolutionary Tribunal, passed the Law of Suspects, according to which anyone suspected of resisting or criticizing the Revolution could be summarily arrested without proof of criminal behavior. If Trudeau has his way and such Jacobin legislation currently before the House is passed, Robespierre and Danton will be smiling in their graves.
The Canadian Justice Centre for Constitutional Rights and Freedoms puts the matter tersely and correctly: “Canadians’ online expression should not be censored unless it violates the Criminal Code [as it stands]. No Canadian should face an anonymous human rights complaint for what they have said. No Canadian should be hauled before a court or punished merely because somebody “fears” they will say something hateful. No Canadian should face life imprisonment for their expression.”
As President of the Justice Centre, John Carpay, explains, “The Online Harms Act would give the Canadian Human Rights Commission new powers to prosecute and punish offensive but non-criminal speech by Canadians if, in the subjective opinion of unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats, they deem someone’s statement to be ‘hateful.’” Run afoul of the Liberal government’s chameleon definition of hate, which includes what can be interpreted as calls to genocide, and you will not get a juridical slap on the wrist or be forced to issue an apology or make fiscal amends. You may find yourself serving a life sentence.
This is the social and political travesty we are facing in our now chlorotic democracy. If Christians will find themselves back in Rome’s fourth century, ordinary citizens will find themselves back in Germany’s 1930s and 40s. A veritable tyranny is in the offing. Levant is of the same persuasion: “Canada is now the most dangerous place in the world for freedom of speech. Four bills. Falling like dominos. C-11, C-18, C-36, and the Online Harms Act. Each one building…a censorship regime whose only comparison is places like North Korea.”
Once C-367 and C-63 are yarked into law, and if the Trudeau government survives the next election, Levant’s fears will have been realized. This is no exaggeration. Canadian prosperity will become a thing of the past. Freedom of expression will have become a fossil remain. Dissent will have become a criminal offense. A passive and myopic citizenry, a parliament in name only, a corrupt and partisan judiciary, and a tyrannical Gauleiter of a national leader will have put paid to one of the most fortunate countries in the world. “That’s how the world ends,” wrote poet T.S. Eliot, “not with a bang but a whimper.” If we do not vigorously protest now, we will whimper later. We should not delude ourselves. It can happen here. Whether we know it or not, under the reign of the Canadian autocrat, we are on Hayek’s road to serfdom.