A recent Macleans poll revealed 7 out of 10 Canadians are “overwhelmingly satisfied” with the Trudeau government’s response to the coronavirus.
True North’s Leo Knight sure isn’t satisfied with the government. Are you?
Leo takes a look at the cold hard facts to demonstrate just how poorly the government reacted to the coronavirus.
Remember when this was a free country? We were free to make our own decisions, our own choices about the life we would live. This is no longer the case.
In the space of two short months, our government has taken over control of our lives. They have placed the heavy heel of an authoritarian government on the throat of this country and are spending money at a faster rate than any the government since the Second World War.
How have we let this happen?
In September of 1939, after Canada declared war on Germany, my father and his four brothers all enlisted in the military. Their father fought in the trenches in France in the First World War. They all served and remarkably, they all returned relatively unscathed – not entirely, but relatively. They understood that freedom was important and they were prepared to do their bit to fight for it.
Freedom is not an abstract concept, it is an absolute. Anything less is totalitarianism. And that is where Canada is fast heading.
Unbelievable.
At no time in my life could I have ever foreseen this for Canada. We were always a more polite version of the U.S. We grew up to be industrious. We looked after our neighbours and our families and we didn’t rely on the government to look after us. We looked after our own.
Seemingly, that has all changed.
We are now confined to our homes. Those of us who still have a job can’t go to work to earn a living. Those of us who run small businesses are in peril of losing everything they have worked for.
Many essential service workers are still working, but these are largely government workers – police, firefighters and medical staff are all paid by some level of government. And to top it off – governments of all levels have no money. Government can only spend money because they confiscate it from the taxpayer.
But more accurately, government only exists because of the money it confiscates from the private sector. Our country needs a vibrant private sector to survive. Yet, the Trudeau government has largely shut down the private sector while spending money it doesn’t have.
And to top it all off – this week, the Trudeau government issued an Order in Council ostensibly banning 1500 firearms.
This is nuts.
Legal firearm owners are not the problem in this country. Gang bangers, organized crime and illegal guns are the problem. Smuggled weapons largely coming in from the United States.
The Liberal government is doing this in the wake of a senseless shooting rampage in Nova Scotia yet the shooter was not a legal firearm owner. Every weapon he had was illegal. All but one were from the U.S. The remaining one weapon he has is believed to have been stolen in Canada.
To use this as the impetus for the massive government overreach is obscene.
In the process of all of this, Justin Trudeau has effectively shut down the House of Commons.
Using an Order in Council to do this, doing an end run around Parliament to achieve their ideological aims just magnifies the obscenity.
I am beyond offended.
I want my country back.
I want my freedom back.
The very future of Canada is at stake. We all need to speak out against this outrageous behaviour by this government.
We need to get this country back to normal. And it needs to happen quick.
The now tiresome mantra that “we’re all in this together” can only take us so far. It’s true in the sense that we’re all abiding by some form of government mandated physical distancing, eager to beat back the virus.
But where it falls apart is in how different people are experiencing the consequences differently. For some, this whole experience is a mild inconvenience. For others, they are about to lose everything and they may never get it back.
Most Canadians have now been homebound for the past six weeks — unable to go to work, earn a livelihood, send the kids to school, attend religious services, or even enjoy the great outdoors.
At risk of being fined or arrested, Canadians haven’t been able to celebrate milestones with loved ones, see their friends, travel, participate in recreational sports or do any household shopping aside from at the grocery store.
The coronavirus lockdown measures have been unprecedented and extreme.
Even during times of great danger and uncertainty in the past — during the world wars, past pandemics, the threat of nuclear war and after life-altering terrorist attacks — our leaders resisted imposing such strict and heavy-handed measures.
Past leaders insisted that citizens keep calm and carry on — even when their lives were at risk.
“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts,” said Franklin Delano Roosevelt during his famous inaugural presidential address in 1933. FDR knew that panic was counterproductive to the goal of peace and stability.
This time around, our leaders have taken the opposite approach.
Politicians and their friends in the media deliberately created a frenzy around the risks of coronavirus. The World Health Organization greatly inflated the mortality rate, journalists shifted the 24/7 news cycle to stories exclusively about coronavirus death and suffering, and politicians of all stripes issued strict orders to stay at home.
Without any public consultation about balancing civil liberties with public safety, and without a deeper conversation on the ramifications of unprecedented government restrictions on our rights and freedoms, our leaders allowed fear to set the agenda.
What about the important balance of defending public safety while also upholding civil liberties?
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau once talked a good game about maintaining this balance, insisting that his Liberals were the party of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.He has repeatedly emphasized the balance between safety and liberty, for instance, when justifying his government’s lax approach towards combatting terrorism.
“Canada is a country that values its freedoms, its basic charter rights, and all Canadians expect their governments to do two things: to keep Canadians safe and to defend and uphold the values and rights that all Canadians hold dear,” Trudeau told us when he was asked why jihadist Aaron Driver was able to build bombs and record propaganda videos despite a court order in 2016.
In 2017, when defending his decision to award convicted terrorist Omar Khadr with $10.5 million and an official apology, Trudeau insisted that “the Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects all Canadians, every one of us, even when it’s uncomfortable.”
Over the past six weeks, has Trudeau been asked once by the consortium of hand-picked journalists who attend his daily press briefings to reflect on the balance of safety and freedom?
Has Trudeau been made to explain why upholding the rights of terrorists was sacrosanct, but defending those same rights for all Canadians is not a priority today?
The Trudeau government’s rationale for the lockdowns has been “protecting the health and safety of Canadians.” Why hasn’t a journalist pressed Trudeau on the importance of protecting the Charter of Rights and Freedoms?
One of Trudeau’s favourite platitudes, after all, is that “the Liberal Party is the party of the charter and we stand up and defend personal rights.”
Our charter rights — including the right to peaceful assembly and free association, the right to enter and leave Canada, the right to travel to any province, the right to pursue a livelihood, the right to a trial and to be tried within a reasonable time, and the right to life, liberty and security of the person — are supposed to be universal and inalienable.
Under Trudeau’s Liberal government, it turns out, our charter rights are conditional and can be rescinded at any time.
We are still only in the middle stages of the coronavirus lockdown and we’ve already seen many of our rights taken away by the government.
During the lockdown and even when things return to normal, we need to be mindful of what our rights are, what rights the government needs to uphold and how we can protect our rights.
True North’s Sam Eskenasi discusses.
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The coronavirus lockdown measures have been unprecedented and extreme.
Even during times of great danger and uncertainty in the past, our leaders resisted imposing such strict and heavy-handed measures. But this time around, our leaders have taken the opposite approach.
True North’s founder Candice Malcolm says under Trudeau’s Liberal government, our charter rights are conditional and can be rescinded at any time.
Uyghur-rights advocates are calling on the Canadian government to consider Huawei’s complicity in human rights abuses in China when making their decision on the company’s involvement in Canada’s 5G network.
Advocates from the World Uyghur Congress (WUC), Lawyers for Uyghur Rights and the International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China (ETAC) have all expressed concerns that Huawei’s 5G involvement in Canada can be used to further oppress Uyghurs at home and abroad.
Zumretay Arking, who is the Program & Advocacy Manager of the World Uyghur Congress told True North that Huawei is involved in China’s mass detention and abuse of the Uyghur peoples in numerous ways, including providing Chinese authorities with surveillance equipment, technical support and benefiting from forced labour.
Arking also pointed to China’s detention of two Canadians as a response to the arrest of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou as evidence that the decision “should not be taken lightly.”
“Given the evidence that Huawei plays an integral part of the massive surveillance state in East Turkistan and the constant harassment the Uyghurs in Canada witness, this leaves us with legitimate concerns about Huawei’s 5G technology being used to target even more the Uyghurs in Canada,” said Arking.
A 2019 report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) revealed the extent of Huawei’s involvement in the forcible detention of an estimated 1.5 million Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region.
“Huawei is providing Xinjiang’s police with technical expertise, support and digital services to ensure ‘Xinjiang’s social stability and long-term security’,” wrote the report.
Huawei along with other Chinese tech giants have been complicit “in perpetrating or enabling human rights abuses” in the region claims ASPI.
Renowned human rights lawyer and member of ETAC’s Canadian committee Dr. David Matas said that the implementation of Huawei 5G technology would endanger Canada’s Uyghur diaspora to the threat of the Chinese government surveillance.
“In China, even in a nominally free enterprise system, there is no company which is truly independent from the Communist Party, and that includes Huawei. No company, including Huawei, is free to do what they want or say what they want,” Matas told True North.
“There are people employed on the ground in many countries dedicated to this effort. I am more familiar with spying against Falun Gong than spying against Uyghurs. But the pattern followed to target Falun Gong would have also been followed to target Uyghurs.”
According to Matas, the Chinese Communist Party uses technology for a wide variety of purposes to “advance its own agenda,” such as hacking, intellectual property theft, propagating false narratives, spying and illegal organ transplants.
“A company that has been linked with gross human rights violations against the Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other Turkic ethnic groups shouldn’t be given such an important role within the Canadian infrastructure,” said Arking.
“Inviting a company that works closely with one of the most authoritarian regimes would be inviting these repressive policies and allow it to be embedded in the backbone of Canada’s future communication infrastructure and network.”
In the UK, members with the WUC and ETAC have launched a legal bid calling on Boris Johnson’s government to reverse its decision to allow the company access to non-sensitive portions of the country’s 5G network.
UK human rights lawyer and the chair of Lawyers for Uyghur Rights Michael Polak is representing clients from both Uyghur groups in their petition to undo the decision.
According to Polak, partnering with Huawei to develop 5G would greatly harm Canada’s reputation as a defender of human rights worldwide.
“It would do a huge amount of damage to the reputation of Canada, as a country which respects human rights on the international stage, for the Canadian Government to ignore Huawei’s role in atrocities as set out above as well as the existence of Uyghur slave labour in their supply chain,” Polak told True North.
“The Canadian Government cannot pretend that they do not know of this information about Huawei as it has been widely reported in easily accessible evidence. Therefore, if the Canadian Government does decide to allow Huawei to contract to provide Canada’s 5G infrastructure, they are saying loudly and clearly that they do not care about the atrocities carried out against the Uyghur and other Turkic people. It will then be for the Canadian people to decide whether they are content with their Government’s decision.”
As revealed in an exclusive True North report, the Canadian government has been paying attention to the UK government’s internal debate on Huawei.
Despite a dissenting faction within the Johnson government who wanted to reverse course on Huawei, the UK passed legislation by which would grant the company access to 35% of the network by a margin in March.
According to Arking, the WUC has repeatedly urged the Canadian government to not include Huawei onto Canada’s 5G infrastructure.
“The WUC has continuously raised this issue with Ottawa and the parliamentarians. We also raise this during all our meetings with Canadian missions, especially at the UN. We urged the Canadian government to take into account the reprisals faced by the Uyghur community in Canada, as well as urging Canada to not include Huawei in the Canadian communication infrastructure network.”
True North asked Public Safety Canada whether the concerns of Uyghur advocates and the safety of the Uyghur diaspore are being taken into consideration as it weighs a decision on Huawei but did not receive a reply to the inquiry.
The new documentary produced by left-wing populist Michael Moore, Planet of the Humans, has been the source of significant attacks from radical environmentalist activists this week – including Green Party Leader Elizabeth May and Trudeau strategist Gerald Butts.
Moore exposed what has long been known – that the “green energy” lobby are ultimately hypocrites, profiting off developments that are worse for the environment than existing fossil fuel development while falsely claiming they are being “carbon neutral” and “sustainable.”
Moore was previously seen as a hero to many of these environmental radicals but now he is ultimately doing a good thing by helping expose their hypocrisy. In fact, many supporters of Canadian oil and gas have been making similar points for years – demand for energy is not going away, and with the failure of so-called “clean” substitutes, Canada’s fossil fuel industry is currently producing the most efficient source of energy to meet this demand.
However, one thing that this new documentary gets completely wrong is that the answer to apparent environmental concerns is to address global “overpopulation”, including insinuating the need to implement population control policies. Such an authoritarian, heavy-handed approach is not only flawed, but would result in serious undesirable consequences for our society.
First, the evidence is mixed on whether a reduction in population would even meaningfully reduce global carbon emission. For example, couples who choose not to have children are more likely to have additional wealth than their counterparts with children. Those with additional wealth are more likely to engage in higher-carbon intensive consumption – such as the choice to take more vacations requiring air travel rather than needing to stay home with children.
Secondly, the global population is already at risk of declining. As outlined in Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson’s latest book, Empty Planet, there is a real likelihood that the global population will in fact soon begin to decline due to low fertility rates. This will introduce a number of new problems, both economically and socially. Worker shortages will weaken the economy and reduce production, and an aging population has the potential to create a huge strain on our healthcare system that we will not be able to fix with a shrinking tax base.
But most importantly, population control policies produce serious undesirable consequences for society. The most extreme examples of this can be seen in China, where their infamous “One Child Policy” – in place for 36 years from 1979-2015 – mandated that most parents in China were legally allowed to only have one child as a form of population planning.
In addition to violating a long-recognized human right for parents to determine freely their number of children, the “One Child Policy” led to stark increases in infanticide, child abandonment and sex-selective abortions. Sex-selective abortions are already a recognized problem in some Canadian communities – predominately amongst those of cultural backgrounds that favour male children.
Overall, we should be cautious in parroting Michael Moore’s talking points from Planet of the Humans without a disclaimer that his proposed solution is one we should not follow. Policies enforcing strict population control risks violating human rights, wreck the economy and – at worse – encourage infanticide and immoral sex-selective abortion practices.
The enemy of your enemy should not be your friend.
The federal government only had a fraction of the personal protective equipment needed to handle a pandemic in their emergency stockpile prior to the coronavirus.
According to the Globe and Mail, the Public Health Agency of Canada did not have any targets for equipment or knowledge about provincial stockpiles despite part of their mandate being pandemic preparedness.
By February 12, as the virus was already beginning to spread throughout the world, the emergency stockpile consisted of only 540 ventilators, 94,000 surgical masks, 400,000 face shields, 100,000 N95 masks and two million gloves.
University of Toronto associate professor Alison Thompson called the lack of preparedness by the federal government “really ridiculous.”
“It’s a bit shocking. They were caught off guard by this, which is really ridiculous,” Thompson told the Globe and Mail.
Critics have accused the Liberal government of being woefully unprepared to handle a pandemic of such proportions.
Approximately 2 million N95 masks and 440,000 medical gloves were thrown into the trash from an emergency stockpile in Regina passing their recommended use date.
Instead of refilling the stockpile, the federal government decided to shut down the facility permanently.
According to Executive Director of the Public Health Association Ian Culbert, the federal government’s handling of the emergency stockpile is the “largest failure” to date in the coronavirus response.
“I would say the national emergency stockpile is probably the largest failure as far as our response goes to date,” Culbert told the Commons health committee.
Culbert also called the Liberal government’s decision to hand over 16 tonnes of PPE to China “probably not” the best decision.
“In hindsight, was it the best decision? Probably not. But I think it was made in goodwill with the best information available at the time,” said Culbert.
While some Chinese language media in Canada actually report to the Chinese Communist government, such as the Xinhua News Agency, the Epoch Times does not. It’s run by Chinese dissidents, some of whom have previously been arrested or imprisoned for their activism, typically related to the Falun Gong movement.
That the paper has an editorial position that is opposed to the Chinese Communist party leadership in Beijing is undeniable, but to malign it as racist and conspiracy-theorist is just ignorance of the facts.
