Canada seems to take on a darker authoritarian hue every week as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau continues to impose his woke, left-wing ideology on a country that once thought he was an insouciant and somehow innocuous politician.
But in the last years Trudeau has pursued the politics of dystopia as he pushes euthanasia, abortion and gender ideology.
And the carbon tax.
Canadians have had enough of Trudeau’s carbon tax.
But ominously, it appears that Trudeau is increasingly intolerant of people who protest that tax.
This week as protests against the ever escalating levy erupted across Canada, the RCMP came out to intimidate the peaceful protests in full riot gear.
You would think this was President Joe Biden’s FBI arresting some hapless January 5 demonstrator who happened to take the escorted tour through Capitol Hill! It’s just as absurd. And just as frightening. Trudeau has already shown just how willing he is to use the full force of the state and every police force available to shut down opposition to his policies. When he used the Emergencies Act to eviscerate the Freedom Convoy protest against Covid mandates, the cops mowed down protesters like the tall prairie grass and if the physical imposition wasn’t enough, he had your bank account frozen just to ensure his “Liberal” government meant business. He’s at it again with the carbon tax, despite seven out of 10 premiers and almost 70 percent of the population telling him that they want this to end. He’s already said that he doesn’t care if he’s unpopular – it’s not his “job to be popular” – and he is very unpopular with 70 percent of Canadians who say the country “is broken.” What worries many of us is whether Trudeau will use emergency measures again – but this time to postpone indefinitely the next federal election planned for October 2025. On Apr. 1 Trudeau hiked the carbon tax by a further 23 percent. It now accounts for about 20 cents for every litre of fuel purchased at the pump and it is also applied at a rate of $15 per ton to all home heating fuel – with the exception of Liberal voters in Atlantic Canada who were granted a temporary exemption after nervous Liberal Members of Parliament begged Trudeau to help them get re-elected. I covered the Ottawa carbon tax protest that was part of a cross-Canada demonstration against a tax that not only increases the price of gas and home heating fuel but the cost of purchasing a multitude of goods and services that are affected in any way by the higher prices for energy: like transporting food to the grocery stores. The carbon tax is supposed to arrest climate change by inducing people to use fewer fossil fuels. Whether you believe lower fossil fuel use will actually affect climate change or not, the tax has not lowered Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions because people still overwhelmingly use gas-powered cars to drive to work and use fossil fuels to heat their homes in the winter. The cruelest joke is that Canada only produces 1.5 percent of those emissions. So everyone could vacate their houses and relinquish their vehicles and move into caves tomorrow and it would have a negligible effect on the global carbon footprint. So this has nothing to do with “fighting climate change,” the mantra that Trudeau remembers to invoke anytime he or his policies are questioned. It’s all about an environmental extremist agenda that seeks to control Canadians; seeks to control how much or how little they can heat their homes; seeks to control whether they can use their cars to travel. Of course, if Trudeau, the World Economic Forum (WEF) acolyte who has been effusively praised by its chairman Klaus Schwab, has his way, we will all be living in 15 minute cities. There is hope on the horizon and it comes in the form of Conservative Party of Canada leader Pierre Poilievre. Poilievre has been criss-crossing the country with “Axe the Tax” rallies that are drawing huge crowds. I attended the rally in Ottawa on March 24. Poilievre spent much of his time speaking about the carbon tax of course but he drew rousing ovations when he talked about prohibiting any members of a future Conservative government from fraternizing with the WEF. He also promised to respect parental rights and he has already said that he believes a woman’s locker room should be reserved for biological women. But Poilievre went further on this day and actually started talking like the political leader who inspired me as a young boy, President Ronald Reagan. When Reagan ran for re-election in 1984, his campaign ran an ad titled “It’s Morning Again in America.” Click here to watch it. It is one of the greatest political ads ever concocted and perhaps the most inspiring. I can’t say for certain whether Poilievre has ever seen the ad or if he was consciously trying to emulate the sweet optimism that Reagan always proffered, but this is what he said: “As much as the prime minister tries to divide one from the other and tries to turn us against each other and forget our past, it’s easy to forget all that we had, and how ... good it was and how much better it can be,” he said. “So let me paint the picture for you of children, of children living safely, playing safely in their streets as they walk off to school, their parents no longer worried about the dangers of crime in their neighborhood. Of seniors driving home from the grocery store with groceries in their trunk and change in their pocket. Of soldiers, of soldiers strapping on the finest of equipment and having the best technology. Of a small business owned by a couple closing down the business after one more successful day of cash in the till, of happy employees and of a safe storefront they don’t have to worry will be broken into.” Inspiring words, especially when one considers what is perhaps the greatest threat on the horizon to Canadian democracy, Bill C-63, or the Online Harms Act. Trudeau is fond of saying that “diversity is our strength” in Canada and this bill attacks a diverse number of free speech issues while pretending to “protect all people in Canada from hatred.” The legislation would create a definition of “hatred,” increase existing penalties for “hate propaganda offenses” and promulgate a unique Criminal Code entry for a “hate crime offense” while offering new “remedies” for violating online hate speech within the Canadian Human Rights Act. We’re talking life imprisonment for committing a hate crimes offense. You think that’s excessive? How about the portion of the bill that would have people arrested for thought crimes? The provision enables anyone to initiate action against someone he or she believes may commit a “hate propaganda offense or hate crime.” Some American commentators think this latter offense has been fabricated by overly-anxious conservative critics or is perhaps a parody of the bill. Trudeau may have become a caricature of the overreaching woke politician but this legislation is real. Trudeau may be a clown who can’t stop making a fool of himself but his policies are seriously febrile. With Trudeau intent on keeping his carbon tax and pursuing his radical agenda, Canadians can only hope for a successful non-confidence vote in the House of Commons or that the next federal election won’t be canceled due to a crisis entirely fueled by Trudeau’s hubris.
