Quotulatiousness

November 21, 2024

“If the Federal Court of Appeal greenlights that standard for freedom of peaceful assembly … then governments would have the power to ban virtually every large protest”

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

In The Line, Josh Dehaas explains why Justice Mosley’s Federal Court decision earlier in 2024 didn’t go far enough to protect Canadians’ rights, specifically their right to assemble in large numbers where the government claims to think that things might get violent:

Arms of the Federal Court of Canada

Earlier this year, Justice Mosley of the Federal Court of Canada ruled that the invocation of the Emergencies Act in response to the Freedom Convoy protests was illegal.

There was a lot to like in that ruling, not least of which because it agreed with the official position of my organization, the Canadian Constitution Foundation.

First, Mosley agreed that the definitions of “national emergency” and “threats to the security of Canada” weren’t met by the federal government, thus invalidating their use of the Emergencies Act. Second, the Justice agreed that freezing bank accounts without a warrant violated the Charter right against unreasonable searches. Third, he agreed that the regulations that banned travelling to, participating in, and funding certain assemblies under threat of up to five years in prison violated freedom of expression.

But not all of Mosley’s ruling was commendable, from our point of view. What we didn’t like was a finding that the same regulations that violated expression because they banned a person from “merely going onto Parliament Hill waving a placard” regardless of whether that person had blockaded or breached the peace, didn’t also violate the Charter guarantee of freedom of peaceful assembly. How could that be? The CCF is asking the Federal Court of Appeal to overturn that finding when it hears the government’s appeal, most likely in early 2025.

This week, we got the government’s stunning and frankly, disturbing, response to that very point of contention. We expected the government to argue that the limitations to individuals’ rights to peaceful assembly were reasonable, given the need to deal with the protest writ large. That wasn’t their only claim.

Instead, the government pulled out an entirely novel line of reasoning, arguing that the Charter doesn’t protect assemblies if they might turn violent or breach the peace. If the Federal Court of Appeal greenlights that standard for freedom of peaceful assembly — establishing a new precedent on when Charter freedoms can be subject to limits — then governments would have the power to ban virtually every large protest. The federal government’s view that assemblies are not Charter-protected and can be blocked in advance if someone in the crowd might reasonably be expected to breach the peace cannot stand if we’re to have any meaningful right to peaceful assembly at all.

Canadian defence priorities – don’t listen to what they say, watch what they spend the money on

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Military — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

The Hub provides an edited transcript of what retired Lieutenant General Andrew Leslie (and former Liberal whip in the Commons) said to the Standing Committee on National Defence earlier this month, which shows very clearly where national defence ranks in Justin Trudeau’s world:

My intent is to offer some criticism of the status quo so that we can learn and then perhaps some sort of question period to get into some solutions. Essentially, in my opinion, “Strong, Secure, Engaged“, the precursor to the current defence policy, delivered nothing substantive in terms of modern military equipment, which saw Canada, in fact, become weaker, more insecure, and essentially absent from the deployable stables of troops required for either United Nation missions, or, of course, NATO.

The 2024 defence policy update of “Our North, Strong and Free” is no better, unfortunately, in that it promises some urgently needed equipment years from now, but nothing today. Indeed, the 2024 defence spend will be less than that of 2023. Of course, we’re well aware of what just happened down [in the] United States. Both Republicans and Democrats are united and increasingly vocal about telling Canada how disappointed, frustrated and fed up they are with Canada’s failure to defend itself and their allies, with a special mention on the Arctic.

Meanwhile, as we know, and I was involved in the last NAFTA renegotiations, that’s coming due at a time when a variety of key players down south have articulated clearly the base of 3 percent [of GDP spending on defence] looms on the horizon, and how defence, security, trade, and border security are all intertwined. At this time of crisis internationally, with what’s happening in the Middle East, in Ukraine, Canada’s military readiness is at its lowest level in 50 years. Canada spent last year, in 2023, more money on consultants and professional services than it did on the Army, Navy, and Air Force combined — which quite frankly, is madness.

The Army has over 50 percent of its vehicle fleets, which are awaiting spare parts and technicians. The Navy is struggling mightily — bless them — to keep elderly warships, a handful of them at sea, specifically in the Indo-Pacific, and they’re desperately short of trained sailors. The Air Force has been unable to participate in significant NATO deterrent exercises, either up north or over the oceans, in conjunction with our friends and allies, because they don’t have the pilots, the spare parts, or the money to fly the aircraft.

In the Arctic, which is many times larger than Europe, Canada has fewer than 300 military support staff who are not a deterrent — they’re essentially unarmed. Some of them are part-time, bless them, and about 1,600 Ski-Doos equipped with rifles, and Canadian Rangers who are not combatants. Their role is to observe and report.

The bottom line is that Canada has no permanently assigned combat elements to deter potential presence by the Russians or the Chinese, who are showing up in our waters with increasing frequency. But other people do. Russia specifically has between 25,000 to 35,000 combat troops deployed in their Arctic with huge amounts of operational equipment — air, land and sea. The United States, bless them, has 22,000 full-time military and part-time military professionals with more equipment than the entirety of the Canadian Forces in terms of combat delivery. So really, thank you America for defending our Arctic.

We are facing unprecedented dangers and challenges, and quite frankly, I see no sense of urgency to change, to modify, to re-guide the efforts of the government towards supporting and assisting in the Canadian Forces.

Some facts. We have less than 35 military personnel deployed on UN missions; in 2003, we had close to 2,500. We are the only NATO nation whose level of military operational readiness is going down when everyone else is skyrocketing up. We have the longest and least efficient procurement system in NATO; indeed, in any nation that I can find. We are the only nation in NATO that does not have a costed plan to get to 2 percent of GDP, which was first agreed to by the minister of defence in 2008 and reiterated in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and I could go on. We are the only NATO nation whose defence minister has publicly admitted that he could not convince his fellow cabinet members of the importance of NATO defence spending, and the 2 percent GDP. And, as mentioned already, we’re the only NATO nation whose defence budget decreased this year.

Emphasis mine.

November 20, 2024

Disturbing facts about missing indigenous women in Canada

Filed under: Cancon — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Karli Lewis at Woke Watch Canada:

Exhibition poster of Nina Vatolina’s Fascism – The Most Evil Enemy of Women. Everyone to the Struggle Against Fascism!, 1941. Vatolina’s poster was published five weeks after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, and was used as socialist propaganda.

Some facts to keep in mind upon the invasion of red dresses and alphabetical hashtags sweeping your newsfeed:

  • Indigenous women make up 10% of the women currently missing in Canada. That means that 90% of women missing are non-indigenous. And we can’t even know for sure if they are biological women or men identifying as women as current missing persons data accounts for “gender identity” rather than sex. So who knows how many of that 10% of “missing and murdered women” are actually men.

    • Recent motions within Canadian parliament have been made to call the 10% a “national genocide”. How can we call 10% a genocide without acknowledging the other 90% as being an even larger genocide? I’d be interested in hearing these activist politicians’ response. It is a pity no side of the House dare pose such questions.

  • StatsCan tell us that 22% of the adults missing right now are “non-white”. That would mean that 78% of the adults currently missing in Canada are white. Yet it’s difficult to find data specifying race, when it comes to non-indigenous populations. Instead, you go to look up “missing women by race” and find numerous headlines about “missing white woman syndrome.” You know why it might seem like there is something as absurd as “missing white woman syndrome”? Because the majority of women missing are white.
  • The majority of missing people (57%) are identified as males (even though, again, we can’t even know for sure if they are biological males or females identifying as males)
  • Similiar to caucasian women, the majority of indigenous women are murdered by a family member or spouse. I feel like too many people carry this false notion that indigenous women are in danger of going missing or getting murdered by someone who isn’t indigenous. I get it; it’s the way this coercive narrative has been framed. But can we please stop acting like we’re suddenly scared of every white guy that happens to drive by on the Rez? The number of these men who’ve turned out to be simple Amazon delivery drivers is getting ridiculous.
  • When taking key socioeconomic factors into consideration, like homelessness, history of child abuse, sexual assault, mental health, drug use and trust in neighbours, indigenous people were NOT at a higher risk of victimization than other populations.
  • A study from BC found that more than 75% of missing indigenous women were working as prostitutes at the time of disappearance.

On one hand, it’s good that people are being made aware of the dangers of trafficking, and would like to prevent any uptick in this troubling trend.

On the other hand, we should just want ALL women, no matter their race, to be safe. If you’re a decent person who isn’t a full blown racist, you should probably at least try to refrain from using terms like “missing white woman syndrome” whenever you see a woman missing on the news.

November 19, 2024

“Sometimes, a bouncy castle is just a bouncy castle”

Filed under: Cancon, Liberty, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

From Donna Laframboise at Thank You, Truckers!, part of the story of the bouncy castles during the Freedom Convoy protests in Ottawa in 2022:

A t-shirt shows some of Bianca’s post-Convoy branding.

More than two years after the trucker protest ended, Bianca says the COVID era was clarifying. “It opened my mind to what we need to do — and what we don’t need to do.” In her view, childhoods are precious and fleeting. Society should have gone to greater lengths, she feels, to insulate children from pandemic panic and fear. “The kids don’t need that. They just need to be kids.”

[…]

Other than a brief conversation with TVA — a Quebec French-language television station — Bianca says no one from the media spoke to her.

How do we explain this profound lack of curiosity? A young mother inflated bouncy castles that were wholly impossible to miss. Mere steps from the National Press Building. Two weekends in a row. (Smaller inflatables sometimes put in an appearance mid-week.)

Several journalists commented on the bouncy castles. But no one reported Bianca’s story. No one tried to understand.

[…]

Many people instantly grasped the outsized, symbolic significance of the inflatables. “I will never get tired of seeing videos with the bouncy castles in them,” one person tweeted. “It just crumbles the false narrative …”

But “the mainstream media told us the trucker rally was all hate and violence,” someone else pointed out facetiously, while another chimed in: “Those fringe extremists ruining Canada with their happiness and joy.”

If the flag of Canada is ever changed, still another added, the maple leaf should be replaced with a red bouncy castle.

“I absolutely love the tactic” (italics here and below by me), someone else tweeted. “It’s peaceful, family oriented, and gives the Politicians the finger at the same time. Mayor Watson was near tears on CTV today.”

Many people — both sympathetic and hostile to the protest — talked about the bouncy castles as if they were part of a pre-determined plan, dreamt up by a mastermind. According to one individual, the “bouncy castle is probably one of the greatest strategic moves against any government lusting for violence in the history of war strategies“.

Another described the inflatables as “one of the finest information warfare tactics I’ve seen to date”. In the opinion of someone else, “The bouncy castles are the unsung heroes of the protest. The government doesn’t dare send in the tanks or snipers while children are playing in bouncy castles. The optics would be horrific.”

Thomas Juneau, a University of Ottawa professor who specializes in Middle Eastern politics, confidently told the world: “Just to be clear, the bouncy castle was an info op, and more than a few gullible commentators fell for it”. In the universe inhabited by our pompous professor, no evidence is actually required. According to someone else, the presence of bouncy castles pointed to “a sophistication of terrorists”.

On the Monday following the first bouncy castle weekend, someone said the inflatables had disappeared because the “bouncy castle guy” had to report to work. Ten days later, someone else claimed the bouncy castle (singular) had exited the stage because those responsible “are hoping to get their deposit back on it so they can afford the bus fare back to Alberta”.

But the facts in this matter are straightforward. The Freedom Convoy story is about ordinary people who did extraordinary things. Bianca of the Bouncy Castles was one of those people. A mom who cared about the kids. A resident of Quebec who lived three hours distant. An event planner who knows how to make things happen.

There’s nothing covert or complicated here. Sometimes, a bouncy castle is just a bouncy castle.

November 18, 2024

“The Great Canadian Lie is the claim that we’ve ‘always been multicultural'”

Filed under: Books, Britain, Cancon, Government, History — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Fortissax thinks that the rest of Canada has lessons to be learned from Quebec:

If you are a Canadian born at any point in the Post-WWII era, you have been subjected to varying degrees of liberal “Cultural Mosaic” propaganda. This narrative exploits the historic presence of three British Isles ethnic groups (which had already been intermixing for millennia) and the predominantly Norman French settlers to justify the unprecedented mass migration of people from the Third World into Canada. This process only began in earnest in the 1990s before accelerating rapidly in the 2010s.

The Great Canadian Lie is the claim that we’ve “always been multicultural”, as though the extremely small and inconsequential presence of “Black Loyalists” or the historically hostile Indigenous groups (making up only 1% of the population at Canada’s founding in 1867) played any serious role in shaping the Canadian nation, its identity, institutions, or culture. Inspired by Dr. Ricardo Duchesne’s book Canada in Decay: Mass Immigration, Diversity, and the Ethnocide of Euro-Canadians (2017), which chronicled the emergence of two ethnic groups uniquely born of the New World, I delved into the 2021 Census data collected by the Canadian government to explore the ethnic breakdown of White Canadians in greater detail

The evidence is clear. In 2021, just four years ago, 72.7% of the entire Canadian population was not just White, but Anglo-Canadian and French-Canadian, representing an overwhelming presence compared to visible minorities and other White ethnic groups, such as the small populations of Germans and Ukrainians.

In the space last night, I highlighted this historical fact and explained to the audience the ethnogenesis of the Anglo-Canadian and its significance. While we all recognize that the Québécois are a homogeneous group descended predominantly from Norman French settlers — such as the Filles du Roi and Samuel de Champlain’s 1608 expedition, which established Quebec City with a single-minded purpose — the Anglo-Canadian story also deserves similar recognition for its role in shaping Canada’s identity.

But what is less known is that Anglo-Canadians are just as ethnically homogeneous as the Québécois, from Nova Scotia to British Columbia. Anglo-Canadian identity emerged from Loyalist Americans in the 1750s, beginning with the New England Planters in Nova Scotia — “continentals” with a culture distinct from both England and the emergent Americans. After the American Revolutionary War, they marched north with indomitable purpose, like Aeneas and the Trojans, to rebuild their Dominion. Author Carl Berger, in his influential work The Sense of Power: Studies in the Ideas of Canadian Imperialism, demonstrates that the descendants of Loyalists were the one ethnic group that nurtured “an indigenous British Canadian feeling.” The following passage from Berger’s work is worth citing:

    The centennial arrival of the loyalists in Ontario coincided with the fiftieth anniversary of the incorporation of the City of Toronto and, during a week filled with various exhibitions, July 3 was set aside as “Loyalist Day”. On the morning of that day the platform erected at the Horticultural Pavilion was crowded with civic and ecclesiastical dignitaries and on one wall hung the old flag presented in 1813 to the York Militia by the ladies of the county. Between stirring orations on the significance of the loyalist legacy, injunctions to remain faithful to their principles, and tirades against the ancient foe, patriotic anthems were sung and nationalist poetry recited. “Rule Britannia” and “If England to Herself Be True” were rendered “in splendid style” and evoked “great enthusiasm”. “A Loyalist Song”, “Loyalist Days”, and “The Maple Leaf Forever”, were all beautifully sung

The 60,000 Loyalist Americans, who arrived in two significant waves, were soon bolstered by mass settlement from the British Isles. However, British settlers assimilated into the Loyalist American culture rather than imposing a British identity on the new Canadians. The first major wave of British settlers after the Loyalists primarily consisted of the Irish. Before Confederation in 1867, approximately 850,000 Irish immigrants settled in Canada. Between 1790 and 1815, an estimated 6,000 to 10,000 settlers, mainly from the Scottish Highlands and Ireland, also made their way to Canada.

Another large-scale migration occurred between 1815 and 1867, bringing approximately 1 million settlers from Britain to Canada, specifically to Ontario, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick. New Brunswick was carved out from the larger province of Nova Scotia to make room for the influx of Loyalists. During this time, settlers from England, Scotland, and Ireland intermingled and assimilated into the growing Anglo-Canadian culture. Scottish immigrants, who constituted 10–15% of this wave, primarily spoke Gaelic upon arrival but adopted English as they integrated.

All settlers from the British Isles spoke English (small numbers spoke Gaelic in case of Scots), were ethnically and culturally similar, and had much more in common with each other than with their continental European counterparts.

Settlement would slow down in the years immediately preceding Confederation in 1867 but surged again during the period between 1896 and 1914, with an estimated 1.25 million settlers yet again from Britain moving to Canada as part of internal migration within the British Empire. These settlers predominantly also [went] to Ontario and the Maritimes, further forging the Anglo-Canadian identity.

A common misconception among Canadians is that Canada “was a colony” of Britain, subordinate to, or a “vassal state”. This is wrong. Canadians were the British, in North America. There were no restrictions on what Canadians could or could not do in their own Dominion. From the first wave of Loyalists onward, Canadians were regularly involved in politics and governance, actively participating in shaping the nation.

Like the ethnogenesis of the English, which saw Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Frisians converge into a new people and ethnicity (the Anglo-Saxons), Anglo-Canadians are a combination of 1.9 million English, 850,000 Irish (from both Northern and Southern Ireland), and 200,000 Scots, converging with 60,000 Loyalist Americans from the 13 Colonies. These distinct yet similar ethnic groups no longer exist as separate peoples in Canada. Anglo-Canadians are the fusion of the entire British Isles. The Arms of Canada, the favourite symbol of Canadian nationalists today, represents this new ethnic group with the inclusion of the French:

Arms of England, Scotland, Ireland and France in that order.

It’s no coincidence that, once rediscovered, the Arms of Canada exploded in popularity as the emblem of Canadian nationalists. Unlike more controversial symbols that appeal to pan-White racial unity, such as the Sonnenrad or Celtic cross, the Arms of Canada resonate as a distinctly Canadian icon, deeply rooted in the nation’s true heritage and history — a heritage that cannot be bought, sold, or traded away. This is an immutable bloodline stretching into the ancient past. If culture is downstream from race, and deeper still, ethnicity, then Canadian culture, values, and identity are fundamentally tied not just its race, but its ethnic composition. The ethnos defines the ethos. Canadians are not as receptive to the abstract idea of White nationalism for the same reason Europeans aren’t — because they possess a cohesive ethnic identity, unlike most White Americans.

November 17, 2024

Contrasting origin stories – the 13 Colonies versus the “Peaceful Dominion”

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, History, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

At Postcards From Barsoom, John Carter outlines some of the perceived (and real) differences in the origin stories of the United States and Canada and how they’ve shaped the respective nations’ self-images:

The US had plans to invade Canada that were updated as recently as the 1930s (“War Plan Crimson”, a subset of the larger “War Plan Red” for conflict with the British Empire). Canada also had a plan for conflict with the US, although it fell far short of a full-blooded invasion to conquer the US, designated as “Defence Scheme No. 1”, developed in the early 1920s.

In perennial contrast to its tumultuous southern neighbour, Canada has the reputation of being an extremely boring country.

America’s seeds were planted by grim Puritans seeking a blank slate on which to inscribe the New Jerusalem, and by aristocratic cavaliers who wanted to live the good life while their slaves worked the plantations growing cash crops for the European drug trade. The seeds of America’s hat were planted by fur traders gathering raw materials for funny hats.

America was born in the bloody historical rupture of the Revolutionary War, casting off the yoke of monarchical tyranny in an idealistic struggle for liberty. Canada gained its independence by politely asking mummy dearest if it could be its own country, now, pretty please with some maple syrup on top.

America was split apart in a Civil War that shook the continent, drowning it in an ocean of blood over the question of whether the liberties on which it was founded ought to be extended as a matter of basic principle to the negro. Canada has never had a civil war, just a perennial, passive-aggressive verbal squabble over Quebec sovereignty.1

America’s western expansion was known for its ungovernable violence – cowboys, cattle rustlers, gunslingers, and Indian wars. Canada’s was careful, systematic, and peaceful – disciplined mounties, stout Ukrainian peasants, and equitable Indian treaties.

Once its conquest of the Western frontier was wrapped up, America burst onto the world stage as a vigorous imperial power, snatching islands from the Spanish Empire, crushing Japan and Germany beneath the spurred heel of its cowboy boot, and staring down the Soviet Union in the world’s longest high-stakes game of Texas Hold’Em. Canada, ever dutiful, did some stuff because the British asked nicely, and then they went home to play hockey.

America gave the world jazz music, rock and roll, and hip-hop; Canada contributed Celine Dion and Stan Rogers. America has Hollywood; Canada, the National Film Board and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. America dressed the world in blue jeans and leather jackets; Canadians, flannel and toques. America fattened the people with McDonald’s; Canada burnt their tongues with Tim Horton’s, eh.2

The national stereotypes and mythologies of the preceding paragraphs aren’t deceptive, per se. Stereotypes are always based in reality; national mythologies, as with any successful mythology, need to be true at some level in order to resonate with the nations that they’re intended to knit together. Of course, national mythologies usually leave a few things out, emphasizing or exaggerating some elements at the expense of others in the interests of telling a good story. Revisionists, malcontents, and subversives love to pick at the little blind spots and inconsistencies that result in order to spin their own anti-narratives, intended as a rule to dissolve rather than fortify national cohesion and will. Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States is a good example of this kind of thing, as is Nikole Hannah-Jones’ tendentious 1619 Project.

Probably the most immediately obvious difference between Americans and Canadians is that Americans don’t suffer from a permanent identity crisis. Demographic dilution due to decades of mass immigration notwithstanding, Americans by and large know who they are, implicitly, without having to flagellate themselves with endless introspective navel-gazing about what it means to be an American. The result of this is that most American media isn’t self-consciously “American”; there are exceptions, of course, such as the occasional patriotic war movie, but for the most part the stories Americans tell are just stories about people who happen to be American doing things that happen to be set in America. Except when the characters aren’t American at all, as in a historical epic set in ancient Rome, or aren’t set in America, as in a science fiction or fantasy movie. That basic American self-assurance in their identity means that Americans effortlessly possess the confidence to tell stories that aren’t about America or Americans at all, as a result of which Hollywood quietly swallowed the entire history of the human species … making it all American.

As Rammstein lamented, We’re All Living in Amerika …

Since we’re all living in Amerika, the basic background assumptions of political and cultural reality that we all operate in are American to their very core. Democracy is good, because reasons, and therefore even de facto dictators hold sham elections in order to pretend that they are “presidents” or “prime ministers” and not czars, emperors, kings, or warlords. Insofar as other countries compete with America, it’s by trying to be more American than the Americans: respecting human rights more; having freer markets; making Hollywood movies better than Hollywood can make them; playing heavy metal louder than boys from Houston can play it. It’s America’s world, and we’re all just along for the ride.

America’s hat, by contrast, is absolutely culturally paralyzed by its own self-consciousness … as a paradoxical result of which, its consciousness of itself has been almost obliterated.

Canada’s origin – the origin of Anglo-Canada, that is – was with the United Empire Loyalists who migrated into the harsh country of Upper Canada in the aftermath of the Revolutionary War. As their name implies, they defined themselves by their near-feudal loyalty to the British Crown. Where America was inspired by Enlightenment liberalism, Canada was founded on the basis of tradition and reaction – Canada explicitly rejected liberalism, offering the promise of “peace, order, and good government” in contrast to the American dream of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”.

    1. Quebec very nearly left the country in a narrow 1995 referendum in which 49.5% of the province’s population voted to separate. It is widely believed in Anglo Canada that had the rest of the country been able to vote on the issue, Quebec would be its own country now.

    2. Well actually a Brazilian investment firm has Timmies, but anyhow.

November 16, 2024

You say you want a referendum …

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

In the above-the-paywall portion of his latest column, Paul Wells discusses the chances that we’re going to go into another maple-flavoured Groundhog Day marathon separation referendum in Quebec:

I’ve been thinking this for a while, but I haven’t written it down. We may be only a couple of years away from a national-unity crisis.

And the dwindling number of people with a working memory of the last crisis have retained instincts that will be useless if there’s another one. Any future Quebec sovereignty referendum campaign would be unrecognizably different from the first two, more chaotic and inherently unpredictable.

I’ve been doing some public speaking in Quebec lately, and it’s pretty clear from the Q&A sessions that even many francophone Quebecers haven’t thought through the ways in which a future sovereignty referendum might play out. So it’s time to start contemplating ghosts of Christmas yet to come.

The Trudeau Liberals aren’t the only political party in Canada that’s fallen and can’t get up. It’s looking grim for Quebec’s governing Coalition Avenir Québec too: Wednesday’s monthly Léger poll was the worst for Quebec’s governing party in eight years. Premier François Legault, who sailed to re-election in 2022 on the general impression that he had a unique sightline into the heart of the average Quebecer, has lumbered from crisis to crisis ever since. It’s rough when a leader whose intuition is his brand loses his touch.

What might make all of this a national story is the identity of the challenger who’s settling into Poilievre-esque polling dominance: Paul Saint-Pierre Plamondon, the young leader of the Parti Québécois. Yes, that Parti Québécois.

Plamondon can be a charming and agile political performer. His PQ is at 35% in the latest Léger, up three points from last month. Legault’s CAQ is at 24%, down three points. Liberals and the urban lefty francophone Québec Solidaire are under 20%. Checking the last Qc125 projection, we see these numbers suggest a solid PQ majority for the first time since — wow, since Lucien Bouchard’s only victory as PQ leader in 1998.

A new PQ leader would have the option — would, in fact, be under harsh pressure from his party members — to call a referendum on Quebec’s secession from Canada. Younger readers may be surprised to learn this has happened before, in 1980 and again in 1995. Forests have been felled and ink lakes drained to tell the tale of how those two campaigns went. Short version: Quebec’s still in Canada.

Support for sovereignty is at a relatively low 37% in the Léger poll, and it hasn’t risen in pace with the PQ’s increasing popularity. That makes it possible, perhaps even likely, that Saint-Pierre Plamondon could join a list of PQ leaders who’ve become premier but didn’t hold referendums — a list that includes Pierre Marc Johnson, Bouchard, Bernard Landry and Pauline Marois.

But the instruction manual for politics in the 21st century is a single page, on which is written, DON’T ASSUME THE BEST. On my list of no-referendum PQ premiers above, I note that Johnson, Bouchard and Landry simply inherited power from their predecessors. Marois had only a minority of seats in the National Assembly.

Based on a small sample — René Léveque, elected 1976, referendum 1980; Jacques Parizeau, elected 1994, referendum 1995 — we can propose this hypothesis: when the PQ takes power with a majority government after a long period in opposition, it holds a secession referendum.

Support for sovereignty was around 40% when Parizeau called the 1995 referendum. It climbed to nearly 50%.

So here’s a plausible future. A federal election a year from now produces a majority Conservative government led by Pierre Poilievre as prime minister. A Quebec election a year later, in 2026, produces a majority PQ government led by PSPP. He calls a referendum a year later on a relatively clear question.

Let’s consider the challenges for those who’d like Canada to continue with Quebec in it. The first one is obvious. The rest, based on my recent conversations in Quebec, apparently really aren’t.

As has been noted many, many times … if any of the referenda had been extended to the whole country, Quebec would have been an independent nation since 1995, if not 1980. To non-Quebec residents, it sometimes seems as if the federal government is actually an organization devoted to placating Quebec’s loud demands, rather than governing for all Canadians.

November 13, 2024

“The term ‘Maple MAGA’ is a derogatory slur used by Canadian liberals”

Filed under: Cancon, History, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

I have to admit I was only vaguely aware of the “Maple MAGA Mafia” identified by Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Christia Freeland, so I’m glad Fortissax is here to provide some background for me:

An insignificant yet loud minority among right-wing Canadian populists on Xitter are calling themselves “Maple MAGA”, with some expressing a reasonable desire for Canada to restore itself with a “MAGA ideology”. The term “Maple MAGA” is a derogatory slur used by Canadian liberals, coined by Chrystia Freeland, Deputy Prime Minister — Wicked Witch of the North — and is not intended as a term of endearment. The more extreme accounts are even calling for the outright annexation of Canada by the United States, which all Canadians should oppose if they value their dignity and self-respect. I’d invoke the memory of our Fathers of Confederation, the innovation behind the Avro Arrow (once the world’s most advanced bomber interceptor), possessing the fourth largest navy in the world after WWII, Samuel de Champlain’s great expedition and exploits, the Filles du Roi, and the Loyalist Americans who, like Aeneas leading the Trojans after the fall of Troy in the Iliad, marched north to Canada after the Revolutionary War to found a new civilization. Yet, if they already knew or identified with our glorious past, they wouldn’t be so quick to support an even greater loss of independence and sovereignty to the almighty American empire.

Make no mistake, I admire and appreciate the United States, if that wasn’t clear. There are no people more similar to the Canadian people in the world than Americans. They are Canada’s largest trading partner. Both countries were born of Albion’s Seed, sharing the North American frontier experience, and forming a family of five great Anglo nations spread on four continents, once united under a single imperial government, and now vassals of its successor. Had the United States not elected Donald J. Trump, it would have continued down a path unopposed, as bad or worse than Canada under the liberal party. There is a very real opportunity for this American Caesar to reverse much of the socioeconomic and cultural damage wrought upon it by enemies foreign and domestic. Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, now X, once the bias was removed quickly became a right-wing dominant forum where truths long-feared would embolden many, everywhere to speak their minds. Elon fulfilled the ancient internet prophecy that all public forums with no censorship become right wing, simply because of the objective truths.

Elon didn’t turn it right-wing, he simply removed the government censorship of the DEI cultist board, and their allied state goons in the intelligence agencies from suppressing stories and information from reaching the American public, and the world. The Counter-Elite, a loose alliance of the Paypal Mafia, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk and MAGA populists, in America are a force of nominal good, a positive for right-wing dissidents around the world fighting their own existential struggles against local managerial regimes. If Trump and the cast of would-be heroes succeeds, the United States will enter an era of unprecedented recovery for the forseaable future—though it’s not a magic bullet for the civilizational decline as recently written about by fellow Substacker Dave Green, aka The Distributist.

The United States was Canada’s first, and arguably still its greatest, existential threat — ironically, mostly through no fault of its own, but rather due to its Jupiterian gravity beside little Canada. Canada may be the second-largest country on the planet after the Russian Federation, but it’s a small nation, with only an estimated 28 million ethnic Canadians, 90% of whom live within 200 kilometres of the U.S. border, as much of the country is an inhospitable wasteland of spruce bog and rock, almost impossible to settle due to permafrost. The habitable areas are extremely hot in summer, or extremely cold in winter. Canadians have often looked southward at the Titan with a sense of fatalism. Many intellectuals and journalists over the centuries have wondered when, if, how, and where Canada would meet what felt like its “inevitable” dissolution into the hands of the Yankees. Despite these fears, that dissolution never came.

Yet whispers of provinces seceding — making the “great escape” from the failing post-national economic zone Canada has become to join the booming, recovering United States — are on the lips of some Canadians. If not outright secession, than abandoning the monarchy, establishing a constitutional republic modelled off of the United States of America, copying the constitution, and pathetically copying its culture. I believe the majority of right-wing Canadians would favour constitutional reform to enshrine our own equivalent of legally protected freedom of speech and the right to bear arms. These are ancient English traditions of the “Yeoman” or Free Man, with roots visible in free speech and weapon-carrying practices across the ancient Germanic world. They are by no means exclusive to the United States. Canada and England had considerably relaxed gun laws until recent decades, and changes like these wouldn’t require us to sacrifice our sovereignty to the U.S.

November 12, 2024

Canada in the news … for all the wrong reasons

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Law, Liberty, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In the National Post, Tristin Hopper explains why your non-Canadian friends may be finding their opinions on the dysfunctional Dominion getting more and more sour in recent years:

… within just the last few years, multiple foreign outlets have profiled Canada for the singular purpose of asking what happened to it, and worrying if Canada’s ills will soon be their own. What’s more, these articles are not limited to a single topic; so much is going sideways in Canada right now that everything from our assisted-suicide regime to our economy to our internet legislation is attracting overseas notice like never before.

Below, a cursory guide to some of them. If you’re noticing that your non-Canadian friends suddenly have a darker picture of your home country than they used to, here’s a clue as to why.

“Justin Trudeau is killing Canada’s liberal dream”

Ever since the 2019 federal election, The Economist‘s coverage of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has usually followed a general theme of noting that the bloom is off the rose of his photogenic ascendancy to power in 2015. But in a trio of articles published last month, the publication laid into the Canadian leader as an icon of what not to do.

Justin Trudeau is killing Canada’s liberal dream, published on Oct. 14. Canada’s Trudeau trap, published on Oct. 17. And then, just for good measure, Justin Trudeau is paying for solar panels in the cold, dark Arctic.

[…]

“Canada Is Disintegrating”

The Telegraph in the U.K. ran an entire series of essays last week on the topic of Canada taking it to the limit on progressive laws covering everything from drugs to national identity.

[…]

“Canada’s Extremist Attack on Free Speech”

The June tabling of the Online Harms Act prompted a wave of foreign coverage unlike few pieces of Canadian legislation. Although virtually every non-U.S. country has legislated controls on extreme speech, the Online Harms Act went noticeably farther than its peer countries in two respects: It prescribes a life sentence for the speech crime of “advocating or promoting genocide”, and it authorizes pre-emptive custody for anyone suspected of committing hate speech in future.

November 11, 2024

The Angel of Victory: Canada’s Processing of The Great War (Vancouver, BC)

Filed under: Cancon, History, Military, Railways, WW1 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Valour Canada
Published Jan 9, 2024

This video, by Hania Templeton, discusses the historical context, significance, and current meaning of The Angel of Victory in Vancouver, BC. Hania’s work received first place in Valour Canada’s 2023 History & Heritage Scholarship (VCHHS) contest.

To learn more about this annually awarded #scholarship, including the rules and regulations for eligible entrants, please visit https://valourcanada.ca/education/vch…

November 9, 2024

Bill C-413 “is aimed at preventing her fellow Canadians from saying anything positive about Indian residential schools”

Filed under: Cancon, History, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Nina Green suggests that Bill C-413’s sponsor might be the first person in Canada to face criminal charges in that piece of legislation if her private member’s bill gets Royal Assent:

On 31 October 2024 Member of Parliament Leah Gazan called a press conference to lobby for Bill C-413, her private member’s bill designed to criminalize her fellow citizens for disagreeing with her views.

Gazan led off the press conference with this statement:

    Good morning, everybody. I’m Leah Gazan, and I’m the Member of Parliament from Winnipeg Centre, and we’re here to discuss support of Bill C-413 to amend the Criminal Code to include the willful promotion of hate against Indigenous peoples by condoning, downplaying, justifying the residential schools.

To evoke an emotional response, Gazan used the word “violence” a dozen times during her press conference, falsely equating speech with violence, although violence by definition involves physical force.

Gazan’s bill is obviously not aimed at preventing physical violence against Indigenous people. It is aimed at preventing her fellow Canadians from saying anything positive about Indian residential schools.

Earlier, on 27 September 2024, Gazan made the bill personal, telling CTV News that “my family has been impacted by residential school”, implying that she had been motivated to introduce her bill because of the serious harm residential schools had inflicted on her own family.

In fact, the exact opposite is true. Residential schools had a positive effect on Leah Gazan’s family.

On her father’s side, Gazan is Jewish, and her maternal grandfather was Chinese. Thus her only possible connection to Indian residential schools is through her maternal grandmother, Adeline LeCaine, the daughter of Leah Gazan’s great-grandfather, John LeCaine (1890-1964).

What we learn about John LeCaine turns out to be surprising. He was the son of a white North West Mounted Police officer, William Edward Archibald LeCain (1859-1915), and Emma Loves War, whose Lakota Sioux family sought refuge in Canada with Chief Sitting Bull and 5000 of his people after the massacre of Custer and his men at the Battle of the Little Big Horn. […]

Since he had a white father and an American Indian mother, John LeCaine was, in the terminology of the day, a half-breed, and ineligible to attend a residential school since federally-funded Indian residential schools were reserved for status Indians under the Indian Act. However an exception was made, and both John LeCaine and his sister Alice LeCaine (1888-1976) were admitted to the Regina Industrial School. John LeCaine attended for seven years, from 1899 to 1906 when he was 9 to 16 years of age. While there he learned to read and write English proficiently, and mastered agricultural and carpentry skills which equipped him to apply, like white settlers at the time, for a homestead, which he proved up in 1913. In 1914 he wrote to the Department of the Interior asking for a ruling on whether his two half-brothers — who were full-blooded Sioux — could also apply for homesteads.

The proficiency in English he acquired at the Regina Industrial School enabled John LeCaine to became a writer and a historian of the Lakota people. In later years he mapped the places he and his stepfather, Okute Sica, had visited on a journey to the Frenchman River in 1910, and wrote a collection of stories told to him by Sioux Elders, Reflections of the Sioux World, as well as other articles, including some published in the Oblate journal, The Indian Record.

November 8, 2024

An alternative path to meeting Canada’s 2% of GDP defence-spending aspirations

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government, Military — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

I’m not convinced that Brian Graff is correct here, but it’s certainly a bit of unusually out-of-the-box thinking on Canada’s defence shortcomings:

Canada has sent a few tanks over to Ukraine, as well as other supplies and financial aid. We will have to replenish these things, and this might be an opportunity to expand Canada’s capacity to make and export military arms and equipment. Maybe our defense policy and spending has been wrongheaded. Since we have so few troops, are unlikely to need to defend our own soil, and are far from any country likely to be in conflict, we may be able to meet our 2% target with some innovative thinking.

Since the Second World War, the US has described itself as the “arsenal of democracy”, a phrase which Franklin Roosevelt used in 1940 when the US was supporting Britain (and Canada) by sending arms, most notably through the “Lend Lease” program that sent ships and equipment to Britain, technically on loan.

Maybe a bigger part of Canada’s own defence policy should be to make and stockpile arms, equipment, and supplies to send to our allies or friends in times of need. Such equipment need not be “state of the art” like F-35 fighter jets. Canada could also expand production of parts for equipment assembled in other NATO countries – particularly for spare parts we need for ourselves.

We need not limit this to new equipment. Canada could also promote companies that refurbish older equipment to be stockpiled or resold. And of course, Canada could determine which countries benefit from our stockpiles of military equipment. We could ensure that this equipment is not acquired by countries with regimes we oppose, and we would have the leeway to give or sell only to the “right” side of a conflict, possibly with strings attached.

Take our Leopard 2 tanks that were built in Germany. We have given some to Ukraine. We have unfortunately scrapped even older Leopard 1 tanks, that could have been refurbished or modified to serve as platforms for other uses. Canada should probably give the rest of our tanks to Ukraine, then get into the business of buying older Abrams tanks from the US to refurbish as replacements or for re-export.

Israel is a good example of a nation that builds up its military capacity with secondhand tanks and other equipment, and is now a major exporter of military equipment that it developed at least in part for its own defence.

The trend in US equipment has been to build state of the art equipment, and buy smaller quantities of it. But the conflict in Ukraine has shown that even when fighting a country with advanced military technology like Russia, using some older equipment combined with innovative new designs has been successful for both sides. Along with the introduction of drones, the Russians have modified older bombs to become guided bombs that are accurate and far cheaper than building new missiles.

November 4, 2024

Ujjal Dosanjh blames Justin Trudeau for the rise of Sikh extremism in Canada

Filed under: Cancon, India, Media, Politics, Religion — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

The Liberal Party normally manages to avoid having any internal differences come to public attention, so having a former Liberal cabinet minister come out and directly criticize Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is rather noteworthy:

Ujjal Dosanjh speaking at the 12th Pravasi Bharatiya Divas – Engaging Diaspora Connecting Across Generation, in New Delhi on January 08, 2014.
Photo by the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs (GODL-India) via Wikimedia Commons.

“A silent majority of the Sikhs do not want to have anything to do with Khalistan. They just don’t speak out because they’re afraid of violence and violent repercussions,” reports Ujjal Dosanjh, as a Sikh living in Vancouver, B.C.

The call for a separate Sikh homeland in Punjab, India — to be called Khalistan — has been brewing since the 1930s, when British rule in India was nearing its end. Although the movement now has marginal support in India, it has taken wings in Canada and escalated into the present derailing of relations between two friendly Commonwealth democracies, India and Canada.

Unlike many of his Sikh peers in Canada, Ujjal — a former NDP premier of British Columbia and a former federal cabinet minister under Liberal prime minister Paul Martin — isn’t afraid to speak out. He’s been extremely vocal, especially since 1985; that’s when the bombing of Air India Flight 182 by Khalistani extremists, killing 329 people, brought the separatist movement to Canada.

Ujjal, now 78, has faced death threats from extremists but remains unwavering in his determination to convince fellow Canadians that the overwhelming majority of the nearly 800,000 Sikhs in Canada do not support the Khalistani movement. “I’d say less than five per cent, less than five per cent,” he emphasizes.

[…]

While accountability for this violence is an imperative, the purpose of my conversation with Uijal is not to sift through the evidence and intelligence. What I want to understand is how we got to this place where Canada’s Sikh population, the largest Sikh diaspora in the world, has in effect been co-opted by the Khalistanis to the point where this obscure separatist movement has become a Canadian problem.

Without hesitation, Ujjal points to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

For two reasons, Ujjal blames Trudeau: “One, he’s never really understood the vast majority of Sikhs are quite secular in their outlook, despite the fact that they go to the temple,” he says. And the second reason: “Khalistanis are not a majority, and the fact nobody speaks against them is out of fear”. Through intimidation, Ujjal elaborates, Khalistani supporters control many of the temples in Canada. And it’s Trudeau’s fault, he asserts, “that Canadians now equate Khalistanis with Sikhs, as if we are all Khalistanis if we’re Sikhs”.

November 2, 2024

Maxime Bernier on Canada’s immigration crisis

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

This article has been posted at the Telegraph in the UK and mailed out by the PPC here in Canada, so I guess it’s okay to share it here:

Newsflash: Canada is in the process of falling apart.

No, it’s not because Quebec is once again threatening to hold a referendum on separation, although this may happen again in the coming years.

Our country is experiencing a series of crises because of the deliberate policy of mass immigration instigated by Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government soon after its election in 2015.

Last year, Canada’s population increased by almost 1.3 million people, or 3.2 per cent. This was the fastest annual population growth rate since the post-war years. The difference however is that this was not caused by a baby boom, since 97 per cent of the growth was due to international migration, mostly from Asia and Africa.

This includes not only immigrants per se – or “permanent residents” – but also so-called temporary foreign workers, foreign students, and asylum seekers. Although supposed to be temporary, the last categories have in fact become pathways to seek permanent residency.

Because of this, housing in Canada has now become completely unaffordable. Young couples who want to have children just cannot afford to buy a home with a nice backyard where they can raise them any more, with the result that our birth rate has dropped dramatically.

Our hospitals, social services, and infrastructures are being overburdened by this massive demographic tsunami.

Immigration is often justified by its supposed positive impact on the economy. But productivity and wages have been stagnant for a decade in Canada, as cheap immigrant labour is favoured by employers over capital investment and automation.

Canadian politics has been mired for months in scandals over foreign interference, in particular China and India. India has been the largest source of immigrants to Canada for several years. Last week, Canada and India expelled diplomats over allegations by the Trudeau government that Indian diplomats have been involved in attacks against Khalistani militants in our country, including the murder last year of one that India considers a terrorist.

Because of mass immigration, Canadian politics is more and more focused not on actual Canadian issues, but on ethnic, religious, and foreign issues and wars, with establishment politicians spending an extraordinary amount of time courting the votes of minority ethnic groups in suburban marginal ridings.

The third most important national party, the New Democratic Party that has kept the Trudeau minority government in power, is headed by Jagmeet Singh. A Sikh by background, he initially declined to condemn Talwinder Singh Parmar, the mastermind responsible for the 1985 bombing of an Air India plane in which hundreds of Canadians were killed. However Singh did change his stance when a Canadian inquiry concluded that Parmar was definitely behind the outrage.

For his part, the leader of the Conservative Party and very likely our next prime minister, Pierre Poilievre, is known for donning national or religious dress as he panders to members of various communities.

In 2018, as a then Conservative Member of Parliament, I posted a series of tweets that denounced what I called Trudeau’s “cult of diversity” which, I contended, would lead to the Balkanisation of Canadian society, and potentially to violence.

Almost daily scenes of Muslims attacking Jewish institutions, Sikhs burning the Indian flag, and Ethiopian factions fighting each other in the streets of our cities, have proven me right.

Publicly attacking these woke dogmas wasn’t allowed at the time in Canada though, and it provoked a huge outcry. Even my leader and colleagues in the Conservative Party denounced me, which led me to resign and launch a populist right-wing party which is broadly the Canadian equivalent of Nigel Farage’s Reform Party.

If you believe that more diversity is always good and always enriches your society, then it’s logical and inevitable that you will end up importing lots of people with incompatible values and attitudes from around the world, including religious fanatics and even terrorists, who can’t possibly integrate in a country with a European, secular Christian heritage.

That’s what we’ve been doing for years, and that’s why everything that historically made Canada what it was is rapidly being destroyed. I know there has been a similar trend in the UK and other European countries, but Canada went way further down this road.

Canada’s demise started when what was already a very diverse country (with Indigenous, French and British founding peoples, and many different regional cultures) fell for this radical version of multiculturalism instead of tempering it with a focus on shared values and attitudes, pride in our history, and in the achievements of Western civilisation.

Now, not only are our democratic institutions, our economy, and our social peace and cohesion, falling apart, but so are our very identity and reason to exist as a country.

All these trends are so overwhelming that, unable to deny the reality any more, the Trudeau government finally announced last week that they would be gradually lowering their immigration targets in the coming years instead of continuing to increase them.

Although this is a massive U-turn for this government, it is far from being a sufficient reduction, and a lot more will need to be done to repair the damage. Otherwise, I don’t believe Canada will survive the 21st century.

The mirage of Trudeau’s mediagenic gun control efforts

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Weapons — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

To hear the Prime Minister talk about his gun control strategy, it’s been a stunning success. Many police chiefs’ responses thoroughly denounce this as, at best, self-serving spin:

As police unions pillory federal gun bans for doing nothing to address skyrocketing gun crime, an Ontario police department revealed this week that virtually all its crime guns are now illegal imports from the United States.

“Approximately 90 per cent of (the) firearms that we seize are directly traced back to the U.S. And I can say in reality the remaining 10 per cent are likely also from the U.S.,” Peel Regional Police Chief Nishan Duraiappah said at a Monday press conference. The 10 per cent referred to guns that have been modified or had their serial numbers removed, making them harder to trace.

Duraiappah was announcing the results of Project Sledgehammer, the breakup of a gun smuggling ring that included the seizure of a shipment of so-called “giggle switches” — black market devices that can turn a regular handgun into an automatic machine pistol.

But during the press conference, police revealed that both gun crime — and the number of illegal guns in the community — is unlike anything they’ve ever seen.

The Peel Regional Police cover an area immediately to the west of Toronto that includes Mississauga and Brampton. Duraiappah said that only 10 years ago, if a criminal in the Peel Region wanted an illegal gun, “it was doable, but it required a lot of work.”

Now, Peel Police are seizing an illegal gun about once every 30 hours — an 87 per cent increase over the year prior. Illegal guns are now so ubiquitous that they often show up in unrelated investigations, such as an impaired driver having one in his glove compartment.

“The availability of firearms has just saturated the community,” said Duraiappah.

This has all occurred in tandem with a nationwide spike in gun crime, including fatal shootings.

Earlier this year, Statistics Canada published 2022 data showing that “firearm-related violent crime” was at the highest rate recorded since they started tracking it in 2009.

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