While he will probably yield back absolute power after thirty days, as he says, Justin “Fidel” (see note) Trudeau is currently the dictator of Canada. Canadians possess civil liberties only on his sufferance. The “emergency” that led to his invocation of the Emergencies Act has so far involved no arson, looting or discernible violence (except for a Trudeau partisan who plowed his vehicle into a gathering of inoffensive protesters). In response, the government hasn’t (so far) shot anybody or thrown opponents into concentration camps. It has frozen their bank accounts, threatened their livelihoods and perhaps hacked GoSendGo, the crowdfunding site that was accepting donations to support the protesters. Pro-government media are disseminating stolen personal data about donors, and government sympathizers are urging that they be boycotted or worse.
It would be facile but useless to point out that progressives who are unfazed by these developments were outraged when Senator Tom Cotton penned an op-ed urging that the National Guard be mobilized against the riots that followed the death of George Floyd. The mere fact that those “mostly peaceful protests” destroyed billions of dollars of property and impoverished thousands of small businessmen didn’t, in progressive eyes, justify the use of force against them, because that was a virtuous protest against White Supremacy. The Canadian protests may have done no more than inconvenience shippers (not a small matter but scarcely outside the competence of ordinary law enforcement), but they were carried out by people who, because they opposed the actions of a virtuous government, must be, in Fidel Trudeau’s words, “people who wave swastikas” and “who wave the Confederate flag”.
What Americans need to think about now isn’t left-wing hypocrisy, which we will have with us always. The worrisome possibility is that the young Fidel’s dictatorship is no temporary aberration but will last as long as his putative father’s and that we will find ourselves with a three thousand mile border abutting a place where the rule of law is defunct. Millions of Americans have relatives, friends, real estate and investments in Canada. Those will be exposed to the whims of Ottawa. Are we prepared to take firm action against expropriations and “disappearances”, those staples of modern dictatorship, when they target out own citizens?
Then, too, dictators of similar ideological bent tend to stick together. Will Red China, Russia and Iran find hospitality north of our border? Will it be safe to maintain intelligence sharing relationships with the Trudeau regime? Will it be prudent to allow Canada to participate unreservedly in NATO, or will it have to be pushed into a corner à la Erdogan’s neo-Ottoman state?
Finally, how will we react if tyranny in Canada begets a torrent of refugees? Immigration politics is currently crude and emotionally driven on both the Left and the Right. An exodus from Canada would bring immigrants who differ markedly from those who arrive from the most impoverished regions of Latin America. That will be a challenge to those who regard immigrants as a barely mitigable evil and those who welcome them as harbingers of a “multicultural” America.
Probably, as I said at the outset, the dictatorship will be short-lived – this time. But until Trudeau is decisively defeated and his supporters ousted from positions of power, the Emergencies Act will hang like the proverbial sword over Canadian democracy, and it will be very difficult to resume the cordial relationship that we have enjoyed for the last two hundred years.
Note: No, I don’t think that Fidel Castro was Justin Trudeau’s real father, notwithstanding his mother’s flamboyant promiscuity and her son’s unfeigned admiration for the Cuban tyrant. Justin was born well before Trudeau mère met Fidel. Still, the physical and spiritual resemblance is uncanny.
Further Reading: Joe Warmington, “Police horses trample demonstrators at Freedom Convoy protest in Ottawa” (videos at the link):
The violence the Prime Minister has expressed concern about during the three-week protest in Ottawa didn’t unfold until Justin Trudeau’s Emergencies Act police army was sent in to disperse the crowd.
The three major incidents Friday, under a form of martial law, were grotesque.
Video of Toronto Police Mounted Unit officers charging into the crowd and at least one horse trampling multiple people – including an elderly woman with a walker – was disturbing.
But that was not the only troubling incident.
Another saw a protester behind a police line repeatedly being smashed with an officer’s rifle.
And convoy organizer Benjamin Dichter also told the Toronto Sun “one of drivers had his truck windows smashed by Ottawa Police (with) guns drawn and (he was) dragged out of his vehicle by force.”
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