But we forgot the golden rule of all Canadian politics: The voter will demand all manner of lofty principles from his government, provided he never has to sacrifice or pay for it in any noticeable way whatsoever. Name any popular high-minded pursuit of government — from stream rehabilitation to famine relief — and it all comes crashing down tomorrow if you start making it an itemized charge on everyone’s utility bill.
Tristin Hopper, “‘Stick a fork in me; I’m done’: Inside the thoughts of the carbon tax”, National Post, 2023-11-11.
February 12, 2024
QotD: The Golden Rule of Canadian Politics
Comments Off on QotD: The Golden Rule of Canadian Politics
February 9, 2024
His Year: Julius Caesar (59 BC)
Historia Civilis
Published Jul 5, 2016
(more…)
Comments Off on His Year: Julius Caesar (59 BC)
February 6, 2024
On gender issues, “Progressives may even find themselves — dare we say? — on the wrong side of history”
In the portion of The Line‘s weekly dispatch that’s visible to freeloaders, the editors discover to their horror that they have to weigh in on the gender fracas:
So to be clear, we really don’t have any problem with Alberta restricting elective gender-related surgeries on minors under the age of 17. While we are rather concerned about the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones among minors, we also suspect that trying to ban these drugs for absolutely everyone under a certain age represents an overreach by the state.
Also, bluntly, we don’t think that in an ideal world, the state should be involving itself in most of this stuff at all. We want to exist in a country in which sports leagues, doctors, schools and teachers can be trusted to make sensible, evidence-based decisions on a case-by-case basis.
Take sports, for example: does a rec-league pickleball tournament need to have the same rules around trans participation as a competitive women’s rugby league? And do we really want any state regulation bulldozering over the people who are actually on the ground, and best understand the physical and cultural realities of that sport?
Or take puberty blockers.
Should we really be treating a 12-year-old who has displayed severe and crippling gender dysphoria since the age of three with the same treatment protocol as a depressed 14-year-old boy who comes into the gender clinic for the first time attached to a Munchausen-by-Proxy mom documenting every moment of her child’s transition for TikTok? Do we want politicians in Edmonton writing the precise rules that will be faithfully applied in both those situations?
Sigh.
We understand how we got here. Any discussion around trans issues is now highly insane; in a hyper-polarized, borderline hysterical moment, we actually can’t trust our institutions to possess the requisite reserve and dispassion needed to make credible and defensible decisions. These institutions are, or are perceived to be, too ideologically captured to be trustworthy.
For an example that just happened to cross our path today, take this quote from Dr. Simone Lebeuf, a pediatrician in Edmonton who specializes in gender-diverse youth. In it, she notes that restricting puberty blockers to children over the age of 15 effectively makes the treatment useless, as they would be administered at an age well past the onset of puberty.
“It’s done. The window has passed,” the doctor told City News. “And we really look at puberty blockers as an option for kids to have some space and time to make decisions about their future selves and who they might want to be as adults. Their puberty is not benign, it is not a nothing process to go through. The physical changes with puberty are permanent.”
Right off the bat, a statement like this ought to raise eyebrows, and not only because it’s a talking point we’ve already heard dozens of times on TikTok. This doctor — a physician who is actually treating children — is conflating the harms caused by artificially delaying a natural process with the apparent harms caused by the biological process itself. That logic is not sound. There is a clear difference between, say, permanent loss of sexual function and bone density caused by interfering in the natural course of puberty, and the harm of allowing a child’s body to grow an Adam’s apple despite that individual feeling like a woman.
Secondly, Dr. Lebeuf isn’t addressing the core concern with puberty blockers, above and beyond their physical side effects. The majority of children who present with gender dysphoria are not trans. Most of them turn out to be simply gay — a fact they discover via the process of growing up and sexually maturing. By delaying or denying a gender dysphoric child the opportunity to experience normal puberty, critics of these treatment protocols fear that a doctor may be preventing the very process by which gender dysphoria would resolve itself without medical intervention. Most — certainly not all, but most — gender dysphoric children would otherwise grow up to be at ease with their natal sex. But once kids start with the puberty blockers and then cross-sex hormones, this process of medical transitioning may be psychologically self reinforcing, pushing physically healthy minors into pursuing more and more unnecessary and invasive interventions with serious lifelong consequences.
In short, puberty blockers are not magic cures for gender dysphoria. They might be appropriate for some kids with lots of supports and monitoring. But they could be disastrous for others, and we have no foolproof way to know in advance which kids will fall into what camp.
This stuff is complicated, and it’s made more so because it’s difficult to study objectively in ideologically captured environments dominated by activists on all sides who muddy the waters with emotionally charged rhetoric, and confuse good science with bad. If you want to understand why people are turning to Danielle Smith instead of the Alberta Medical Association to address their fears, quotes like the one above are a prime example.
And, by the way, we include “The Media” writ large as having failed on this file. The lack of skepticism and neutrality that the media has demonstrated on even the most maximalist and unpopular positions on gender and sexuality has — to our mind — significantly contributed to the radical decline in its collective credibility.
Comments Off on On gender issues, “Progressives may even find themselves — dare we say? — on the wrong side of history”
February 5, 2024
Sitzkrieg on the southern border
Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds on the stand-off between Texas governor Greg Abbot and President Joe Biden over the flood of illegal immigrants coming across the US-Mexican border:
So the war over the border between Texas and the Biden Administration is now in the “Sitzkrieg” stage. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has essentially declared war on illegal immigration. He invoked Article I Section 10 of the United States Constitution, which forbids states from declaring war except when “actually invaded” (or in such imminent danger as to admit of no delay) and, by implication, allows them to declare war when that happens. He also invoked the Guarantee Clause of Article IV, which requires the federal government to protect the states against invasion.
Abbott’s legal argument is that since he’s being invaded, he’s entitled to respond, and since the federal government is defaulting on its obligations it has no business – it’s basically stopped from – complaining. There was a lot of huffing and puffing at the time, with members of Congress calling on President Biden to federalize the Texas National Guard and the like, but basically, nothing happened. The Supreme Court vacated an injunction forbidding the Border Patrol from cutting the barbed wire that Texas had installed along the border, but – contrary to many media reports – didn’t rule that what Texas had done was illegal, or order Texas to stop policing the border.
Now not much is going on. The big complaints about immigration are mostly coming from outside Texas, places like New York City where illegal immigrants beat police with impunity, being released without bail after being arrested. (The usual endgame for this sort of thing in other societies has been death squads, organized either by police or by police-adjacent groups, taking out those whom the legal system cannot or will not control; we’ll see what happens in New York City.)
But next month Texas’s law allowing the state to apprehend and effectively deport illegals will go into effect, and that’s when the sitzkrieg is likely to end. Following are my (very) preliminary thoughts.
To me what’s astonishing is how unpopular with everyone the immigration policies of the Administration – and a good chunk of the GOP – are. Open borders are unpopular with blacks, whites, rural and urban voters, and, really, just a vast bipartisan majority. But like “climate change”, another priority of the ruling class without matching popular support, the borders stay open.
Why? Because our ruling class seeks, in Bertolt Brecht’s famous phrase, “to dissolve the populace and elect another”. As Elon Musk tweeted:
Musk’s comments met with the usual outrage, but Democrats have pretty much touted this as the plan for years. Indeed, it goes back to Ruy Teixeira’s “Emerging Democratic Majority” strategy, though it’s been accelerated in recent years. (And Teixeira himself has retreated from that plan). Sure, naturalization takes years – though they may speed that up, as it’s just a matter of statute – and there have also been some moves to allow non-citizens to vote anyway. Think that’s unlikely? Maybe, but how many things are happening these days that seemed impossibly unlikely a few years ago? And it’s a long game; a bunch of Democratic voters in 5 or 6 years will suit them fine.
Comments Off on Sitzkrieg on the southern border
February 4, 2024
“[L]et’s face it head-on: you’re a social and political outlier, a dangerous extremist”
You, yes you are exactly the kind of dangerous extremist that mature and sensible journalists at all the right media outlets have been warning us about for years:
You’re very weird.
In fact, let’s face it head-on: you’re a social and political outlier, a dangerous extremist. Your views put you firmly on the fringe, and that fringe is becoming a real problem. For example, the Premier of Alberta, Danielle Smith, has just embraced a bunch of radical fringe policies about parent notification and consent regarding schools and transgender children, simultaneously limiting the ability of young children to have their bodies medically altered to match their declared gender — and some pretty disturbing people are supporting this crazy stuff. Look how appalled normal Canadians are by these extremist maneuvers to keep parents involved in the lives of LGBT children:
See the whole poll here, if you can stand the disgust from seeing extremist material, or see a detailed report on a poll of Californians that offers similar results.
Fortunately, the responsible mainstream leaders of the Liberal Party and NDP are standing strong with the 14% in the majority who want parents out of the lives of transgender children, rejecting the fringe views of the 78% who live at the extremist edges.
At the same time, the New York Times has just published a remarkable opinion piece on the growing concern among longtime transgender advocates, including transgendered clinicians, about the casual and rushed process by which American pediatric gender clinics are pushing children into gender transition. The essay centers on detransitioners, trans youth who change their minds and accept their biological sex.
This being the New York Times, the author is compelled to mention the true danger: “The real threat to transgender people comes from Republicans who wish to deny them rights and protections.” Ahh, but watch what comes next:
But the doctrinal rigidity of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party is disappointing, frustrating and counterproductive.
“I was always a liberal Democrat,” one woman whose son desisted after social transition and hormone therapy told me. “Now I feel politically homeless.”
She noted that the Biden administration has “unequivocally” supported gender-affirming care for minors, in cases in which it deems it “medically appropriate and necessary.” Rachel Levine, the assistant secretary for health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, told NPR in 2022 that “there is no argument among medical professionals — pediatricians, pediatric endocrinologists, adolescent medicine physicians, adolescent psychiatrists, psychologists, et cetera — about the value and the importance of gender-affirming care.”
Democrats are doctrinally rigid, and a top health official in the Biden administration says proudly that there is no debate. See, everyone believes the same thing, except mean Republicans, but that’s also now understood to be a sign of excessive ideological rigidity. Then the same piece in the Times also says a whole bunch of things like this:
Studies show that around eight in 10 cases of childhood gender dysphoria resolve themselves by puberty and 30 percent of people on hormone therapy discontinue its use within four years, though the effects, including infertility, are often irreversible.
I’ve removed the links from the quoted paragraphs, because they don’t work well after cutting and pasting, but you can find them all at the link to the non-paywalled opinion piece.
Well, I guess the secret’s out:
Comments Off on “[L]et’s face it head-on: you’re a social and political outlier, a dangerous extremist”
QotD: American railroads and the Interstate Commerce Commission
Randy Holcombe, Liberty in Peril: Democracy and Power in American History, (2019).
Comments Off on QotD: American railroads and the Interstate Commerce Commission
February 3, 2024
The climate alarmists long ago gave up honest scientific reporting
Tom Knighton says he used to fully buy in to the climate alarmist message, but eventually realized the fix had been in for years, especially when it came to the predictive ability of all the climate change models … as in, their total lack of predictive ability:
When Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth came out, I watched it. I was terrified by the world being described, and since I was still pretty liberal and sort of an environmentalist, I took it all to heart.
Over time, as my personal politics shifted, I still had concerns regarding climate change. After all, it is what it is, right?
Until I came to look deeper into the issue and the one thing that shattered my belief in the whole concept: The fact that not a single climate model has ever panned out as predicted despite pretty much none of the draconian measures we’re told we need in order to avert disaster ever coming to fruition.
Science is supposed to be predictive. If it can’t predict something in its models, then scientists need to back up and figure out what the problem is. Instead, they seemingly just keep doubling down.
[…]
Let’s be clear here, the idea of taking measurements in heat islands is freshman year stuff. There’s absolutely no way they’re unaware the effect that’s having on their readings, even as most of their instruments are subject to heat bias.
In other words, I can’t accept this is a good faith error.
No, I believe this to be malicious.
Climatology isn’t exactly a field of science that would ever be considered sexy. Before all the climate alarmism, research grants were likely few and far between. People weren’t overly worried about the climate because it simply ways.
Then scientists started screaming that we were all doomed. The end is nigh, they told us, screaming at the top of their lung and acting just shy of wearing a sandwich board in Times Square.
With that came money and prestige.
Suddenly, climatologist could get recognition and write bestselling books. They could get grants from everyone and their brother to fund their research. The thing is, they had to keep up the charade. People had to believe that we were going to die if we didn’t do something.
Maybe they actually want the draconian measures they suggest, measures that pretty much amount to going back to living in mud huts, but with solar- and wind-created electricity so we won’t need to burn wood to survive.
Or something.
February 1, 2024
Newfoundland – “We used to be a country”
In The Line, James McLeod outlines a difficult period for the Dominion of Newfoundland which ended up narrowly voting to join Canada rather than resume self-rule that they’d had up to 1934 when the Newfoundland House of Assembly abolished itself:
Great Riot of 1932 in front of the legislature, the Colonial Building, in Newfoundland.
Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador (Reference PANL A2-160), via Wikimedia Commons.
Before 1933, Newfoundland was proudly a dominion within the British empire. Under the Statute of Westminster, Newfoundland had the same legal status as Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and the Irish Free State.
Newfoundland was its own country. But it was a country in rough shape.
A year before the Amulree Report was published, a mob of about 10,000 people had gathered outside the Colonial Building in St. John’s. Families were living in destitution on six-cents-a-day government dole, and the government’s finance minister had just resigned and accused Prime Minister Richard Squires of personally lining his pockets with government funds.
The mob turned into a riot, which ultimately barged into the government building. Notably, the rioters briefly paused to observe a respectful silence when a brass band began playing “God Save The King”, but then they went back to rioting.
Squires fled on foot and went into hiding, and then emerged to call an election, which he lost in a landslide. During the campaign, one of his longtime allies, the prominent leader of the Fishermen’s Protective Union, openly wished for fascism.
“What is required for Newfoundland and what is most essential for the present conditions is a Mussolini,” said William Coaker.
Months later, with a new government, Newfoundland was on the verge of defaulting on its debt, and the British stepped in.
The vastly oversimplified version is that the British government was concerned that a member of the British Commonwealth defaulting on its debt could have major implications for the whole empire. So the British government bailed out Newfoundland, on the condition that a commission would be struck to investigate the island’s political and economic affairs. Lord Amulree, a British politician, was appointed as chair.
A year later, with the Dominion still teetering on the verge of bankruptcy, the Amulree Report was delivered. It contained this passage, with my emphasis added: “That it was essential that the country should be given a rest from politics for a period of years was indeed recognised by the great majority of the witnesses who appeared before us, many of whom had themselves played a prominent part in the political and public life of the Island.”
Amulree considered the possibility of some sort of national unity government, but could not get past the conclusion that, “Even if a National Government could be established on a basis which led to a suspension of political rivalry, the underlying influences which do so much to clog the wheels of administration and to divert attention from the true interests of the country would continue to form an insuperable handicap to the rehabilitation of the Island.”
In 1934, the Newfoundland House of Assembly voted itself out of existence. It was replaced by a “Commission of Government” which was just six unelected men, appointed by the British. Fifteen years later, Newfoundlanders narrowly voted to join Canada, although to this day conspiracy theories still linger about how democratic the referendum really was.
I am not a Newfoundlander, and I’m hesitant to make any sweeping statements about how Newfoundlanders relate to their own history. But for a decade, I worked as a journalist in St. John’s, covering politics and public affairs. The collapse of democratic self-rule in the 1930s still looms large in the collective identity of the province.
January 30, 2024
How did Justice Mosley manage to avoid mentioning the huge pachyderm in the room?
Donna LaFramboise on the amazing ability of people in power here in Canada to avoid noticing or acknowledging the most salient facts of a situation:
In the recent court ruling against Justin Trudeau’s use of the Emergencies Act, the elephant in the room was once again ignored.
Justice Richard Mosley is well aware that the Act is intended to be “a tool of last resort.” He says so twice in his decision, on pages 78 and 86. He also does a conscientious job of describing the arguments each side presented during various stages of the court battle.
Yet there is no indication, not even the slightest hint, that the bloody obvious received five minutes of the court’s attention: No government can claim to have exhausted all other avenues if it hasn’t even had a conversation with protesters.
It doesn’t matter who is doing the protesting, or what their cause happens to be. If you haven’t arranged a meeting, if you haven’t sat down and listened to people’s concerns, if you haven’t even tried to negotiate a resolution, it is not OK to reach for a last resort, nuclear option. That is beyond unreasonable. It is absurd.
In India, between November 2020 and November 2021, farmers protested three new pieces of agricultural legislation that were eventually repealed. Justin Trudeau publicly criticized the Indian government during that time. So let us compare and contrast.
According to the Indian Express, farmers unions called for a march to Delhi, the national capital, on November 26th and 27th. Delhi police said protesters wouldn’t be permitted to enter the city due to COVID restrictions, but the farmers came anyway. Water cannon and tear gas were used against them, but they eventually arrived in the north-west part of the capital.
On November 28th a cabinet minister “offered to hold talks with the farmers as soon as they vacate Delhi borders”. The farmers didn’t budge. The first round of talks with government took place, nonetheless, on December 3rd — a week after the Delhi protest began. Two days later, more talks took place. By December 30th, six rounds of negotiations had taken place.
In Canada, the government treated the truckers like mangy dogs rather than citizens. Not a single cabinet minister pursued dialogue. Not a single representative of the federal government met with the truckers between the time they began arriving in Ottawa on January 28th, 2022 and when police violently shut down the protest on February 18th and 19th. Get lost, peasants! was the government’s official position.
Comments Off on How did Justice Mosley manage to avoid mentioning the huge pachyderm in the room?
January 27, 2024
Flashpoint: Texas
Theophilus Chilton wonders if you’re ready for a full-blown Constitutional crisis:
I’m sure that by now, we’re all aware of what is continuing to take place down in Texas. Far from backing down in his standoff with FedGov over the seizure of Shelby Park in Eagle Pass and subsequent expulsion of federal agents, Gov. Abbott has directed the state’s National Guard to continue interdicting illegal immigrants. Indeed, in response to the recent SCOTUS decision allowing the Feds to dismantle the razor wire Texas installed, they’ve simply installed more, in direct defiance of the wishes of the Regime. The Regime has now responded by giving Abbott and Texas an ultimatum — restore control of the park to the Federal government by the afternoon of January 26, or … well … something. Whether the governor ultimately continues to tell the Feds to get bent remains to be seen, but so far the trend is looking pretty good.
Of course, it helps that — for once — Republicans across the country have actually found a little courage to support doing what’s right. As of writing this, the Republican governors of 25 other states have all issued statements of support for Texas’ position. Hence, there are now an outright majority of states whose executives (who control their various National and State Guards) are publicly backing Texan efforts to secure our border. Many of these governors have explicitly cited the Biden administration’s continued abandonment of the federal government’s constitutional duty to protect the several states from invasion and the constitutional right of the states to act in their own defence as sovereign entities in their own right.
Needless to say, this is a constitutional crisis that would not have been conceivable even twenty years ago (well, except for this one movie that seems to have been amazingly prescient). Since 1865, the doctrine of absolute federal supremacy has been in force and the balance of power between the state and national governments has inexorably trended in Washington, DC’s favour. Occasional spurts of opposition to the contrary, most of the previous incipient talk by states about “reining in the federal government” generally proved to be all words and no action. On a few things (e.g. marijuana legalisation), the Regime allowed states to “oppose” federal policy if these were policies that the Regime wanted to change anywise but couldn’t “officially” at the federal level. But on anything that was a true Regime priority, FedGov brooked no dissent. So it is now, but the calculus has changed. What would have been impossible in 2003 is now on the verge of happening in 2023.
This all highlights the fundamental illegitimacy of our current federal government. There is no moral or legal case to be made to justify the actions of the Biden administration. The federal Constitution both enjoins the federal government to protect the states from foreign invasion (which being overrun with millions of foreigners breaking our laws most certainly counts as) and also grants the states the right to protect their own borders and sovereignty. Instead of doing this, the Biden administration has been purposefully inviting hordes of migrants to enter this country. Indeed, this is being encouraged in contravention to statutory federal law as well. Further, if Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is correct (and he almost assuredly is), the administration has even been partnering with criminal cartels to smuggle illegals into this country. All in all, there is absolutely no justification to be credibly made for the Regime’s actions and anyone who supports them are in opposition to the Constitution, the laws, and the people of this land.
Despite the fevered ravings of various progressive “Christians” on social media, the moral argument for allowing the Regime to throw the gates open is nonsense. Indeed, the whole attempt to craft a “biblical” argument for open borders is simple-minded and ignorant of the relevant scriptural and historical context. Simply put, the Bible’s approach to “the stranger” falls into line with common ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean modes of hospitality that were meant to “tame” the foreigner and integrate him into a society, thus preventing him from causing disruption to that society. If that couldn’t be accomplished, then the “inhospitable foreigner” was either to be expelled or eliminated. Needless to say, this applied only to individuals or small family groups — large masses of foreigners attempting to enter an ancient country would have been rightly recognised as an invasion and dealt with accordingly.
However, the illegitimacy of the current Regime and its actions alone can’t explain why the Republicans have closed ranks so precipitously. After all, Republican politicians are not exactly known for their intestinal fortitude when faced with opposition of any kind. Yet, even Northeastern moderate squishes like New Hampshire’s Chris Sununu have signed onto supporting Texas in this. Something changed that has caused the GOP, almost as a whole, to support this, either openly or tacitly.
January 26, 2024
Canada’s sooper-sekrit warship program
David Pugliese on the cone of silence the federal government seems to have pulled down over the Canadian Surface Combatant shipbuilding program as it steadily escalates in total cost to the taxpayer:
An artist’s rendition of BAE’s Type 26 Global Combat Ship, which was selected as the Canadian Surface Combatant design in 2019, the most recent “largest single expenditure in Canadian government history” (as all major weapon systems purchases tend to be).
(BAE Systems, via Flickr)
National Defence has brought in a new and unprecedented shroud of secrecy around a controversial warship project now estimated to cost taxpayers more than $80 billion.
After withholding documents for almost three years, the Department of National Defence has released nearly 1,700 pages of records that were supposed to outline specific costs and work done so far on the Canadian Surface Combatant program.
But all the details of what taxpayers have so far spent and what type of work has been done by Irving Shipbuilding for that money have been censored from the records.
“I pretty much got nearly 1,700 blank pages,” Ken Rubin said of the access to information request he filed to National Defence in April 2021 about the warship program. “I have never seen this level of secrecy or lack of accountability over a project that is costing so much.”
Rubin, an investigative researcher who has used the access law to obtain federal documents for decades, said there was not a single cost figure contained in any of the 1,700 pages. One page noted that Irving was required to perform 19 specific tasks, but all details were censored. Others pages listed numerous amendments made to the CSC program, but all details were blacked out. Information about the annual profit Irving has made so far on the CSC project is censored.
Irving declined to provide comment, referring this newspaper to National Defence.
Defence Minister Bill Blair’s office sent this newspaper a statement noting the “minister believes strongly in openness and transparency, and expects the Department of National Defence to respect the rights of Canadian citizens, permanent residents and persons or corporations present in Canada, to access records of government institutions that are subject to the Access to Information Act“.
National Defence noted in a statement that, since some of the records involved Irving Shipbuilding, government officials consulted with the firm to determine if the records contained proprietary information of the firm. Irving objected to the release of information, the department added.
But Rubin pointed out that National Defence was not required to follow Irving’s orders on what records could be released to the public. The amount of tax dollars spent on the surface combatant and how that money was being spent shouldn’t be secret, he added.
In addition, National Defence originally claimed in a statement to this newspaper that the long delay in providing the documents was because Rubin had asked for 20 years of records. But, when challenged on that claim, the department acknowledged it wasn’t true. It did not, however, provide an explanation why it had provided false information to this newspaper.
The Canadian Surface Combatant project will involve the construction of 15 warships for the Royal Canadian Navy at Irving on the east coast.
Comments Off on Canada’s sooper-sekrit warship program
January 25, 2024
By invoking the Emergencies Act, “the government unjustifiably violated Canadians’ constitutional rights”
Andrew Lawton reports on the Federal Court decision that ruled against Justin Trudeau’s invocation of the Emergencies Act to break up the Freedom Convoy protests in 2022:
For those whose bank accounts the government froze, those who remain on trial for trumped up charges, and those who were pepper sprayed, tear gassed, or zip tied while protesting for freedom, this week’s news might be too little to late.
Even so, the aforementioned people have all been vindicated.
The Federal Court ruled Tuesday that Justin Trudeau’s invocation of the Emergencies Act – both the decision to apply it and the measures he used it to impose – were illegal.
In other words, there was no “national emergency” rising to the wartime levels intended by the act. And even if there had been, the government unjustifiably violated Canadians’ constitutional rights.
The decision was handed down, coincidentally, on the two year anniversary of the Freedom Convoy’s launch from Delta, B.C.
When Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act, he assured Canadians that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms would be respected. His evidence was thin: the guarantee that Charter rights would be protected was seemingly predicated only on the fact that the law says Charter rights must be protected. I’d call it circular logic but even “logic” seems a bit of a stretch.
As I remarked then, if you have to pinky swear to Canadians that you’re upholding their rights, you aren’t. A well-respected judge on the Federal Court now agrees.
While the Freedom Convoy was an unprecedented demonstration (globally, not just by Canadian standards), Trudeau’s response put Canada on the map in all the wrong ways. It was condemned the world over, even by the Chinese Communist Party and Iran’s former president. Not that I put too much stock in what they think, but when you go too far for even the dictators, you should probably reassess.
The crackdown illuminated the authoritarian impulse in Canada’s “sunny ways” government. The convoy was a response to Covid restrictions, but also an increasingly divisive and vindictive approach to politics by Trudeau that vilified people based on their vaccine status and ultimately their political views.
Unfortunately for Trudeau, his denigration of convoy supporters as a “fringe minority” with “unacceptable views” ended up being taken up as a badge of honour and reclaimed by the very fringe he tried so hard to marginalize.
The court ruling is not a full exoneration of the Freedom Convoy. It’s still possible that Tamara Lich and Chris Barber could be found guilty on their mischief charges. It’s also possible that convoy organizers could lose the lawsuit filed on behalf of Ottawa residents. The decision isn’t a declaration that the convoy was a purely lawful protest, but it does say there was no “threat to the security of Canada” as per the CSIS Act, which Trudeau has spent nearly two years pretending there was.
Comments Off on By invoking the Emergencies Act, “the government unjustifiably violated Canadians’ constitutional rights”
January 21, 2024
QotD: The life-cycle of bureaucracies
Gentle reader must understand that I am not speaking only of “guvmint”, but of bureaucracy, at large. The thing is not necessarily a government department. Any big corporation will quickly show symptoms. The only difference between “public” and “private” is in longevity. A private bureaucracy will kill its host, but thanks to the power of taxation, a public bureaucracy can be long sustained. It is also backed by law and police action, which even today is more effective than mere pointless rules and regulations. The latter, however, are more nimble in expansion, and prepare the ground for law — the full spiritual stasis.
David Warren, “Austrian schoolboy”, Essays in Idleness, 2019-09-17.
Comments Off on QotD: The life-cycle of bureaucracies
January 19, 2024
Canada “as a white supremacist genocidal settler state” also somehow has an immigration problem
In The Line, Jen Gerson documents what she characterizes as a collapse of the pro-immigration consensus that has been a major part of Canadian political affairs for generations:
A billboard in Toronto in 2019, showing Maxime Bernier and an official-looking PPC message.
Photo from The Province.
Canada created a durable and lasting consensus on immigration by leaning on a shared national mythology: that from a colonial past, we forged a principled multicultural nation in which people from around the world are able to honour their heritage and traditions while building a prosperous and successful life for themselves and their descendants. This narrative requires that all of us — regardless of our divergent ideologies or religious views — cohere around a shared set of post-enlightenment principles: the equality of man, the rule of law, tolerance, and the rest. We take this highly abstract concept of nationhood so for granted that we’ve forgotten how historically rare it is.
This is not to say Canada ever imagined itself to have an unblemished history, but rather that this is a nation that saw itself as a fundamentally good and noble project, and therefore some place worth immigrating to, and a culture worth integrating with.
The last nine years of Liberal government have undermined that vision. Under the Trudeau Liberals, instead what we have been regularly subjected to Canada as a white supremacist genocidal settler state. And, hey, to what extent that historical reckoning is good or necessary is not for me to say: but if “Canada is bad, actually” is the starting position, by what delusion do any of us presume to perpetuate it?
A post-modern nation state that has no sense of itself, and no belief in its own inherent value, is not an experiment worth continuing, now is it? How do we expect to welcome and integrate 500,000 new Canadians annually into a corrupt national project? If “Canadian” isn’t something worth being, why should anyone sublimate their ethnic or religious grievances into this vicious national identity?
I think this is the tension that lies at the heart of this growing unease around immigration, and it’s going to be the most difficult one for the Conservatives to navigate. There will be those within the party that follow this thread directly into white grievance and conspiracies like great replacement theory, the xenophobic fear that “elites” are trying to demographically and culturally replace white people through mass migration.
I think that theory is insane, to be clear, but I’m also noticing it wend its way into politics in weird and destructive ways.
A small example: before the holidays, certain conservative social media circles were put into a state of high uproar over the construction of a 55-foot statue of the Hindu deity Hanuman on a private temple complex in Brampton.
Initially, I was baffled and confused and even a bit amused by the upset. After all, this wasn’t a publicly funded monument. It was on private property, and isn’t respect for private property a sacrosanct value for conservatives? This wasn’t rational.
The controversy was only explicable when we examine the emotional subtext of the complaints: that there was something deeply menacing about Hanuman to these people. They saw him overlooking the suburbs of Brampton with a colonial intent. (Irony abounds!) One of the most telling tweets came from one angry individual who said something to the effect: “They tore down our John A. Macdonald statues, but, sure, Hanuman is great.”
To this gentleman: the fine devout Hindus of Brampton did not tear down your John A. Macdonald statues — and I highly doubt they would any pick bones with historic or civic monuments.
We, Canadians, tore down our own statues (or allowed them to be torn down) as part of an internal process of historical reckoning. Again, immigrants are not doing anything to Canada. They are Canada, and as such, they share in this country’s problems, which are largely self created.
January 15, 2024
An alternative recruiting strategy for the US military
Theophilus Chilton suggests there’s a deeper plan for the US federal government’s blatant encouragement of mass illegal immigration across the US-Mexican border, and if true it might indicate that things are about to “get spicy”:
It genuinely is a mystery …
This move by Texas [using state resources to enforce federal border control against the will of the federal government] represents a ratcheting up of our collapse phase trend towards decentralisation. At least for now (and let’s hope Abbott has the fortitude to follow through), a state is openly defying FedGov in a non-Regime approved way that would have been unthinkable even twenty years ago. Even if FedGov wins this standoff, it presages more and more movement in that direction. The Regime is bleeding power and everyone knows it, even if they can’t afford to let on to that fact. Either way, the Regime is going to have to stop this quickly before other states start getting ideas. If they can’t, their already tarnished reputation will take a further massive hit.
So in light of this news, we saw something else on Thursday that ought to be of interest. A very odd bill has been proposed in the House of Representatives by two Democratic representatives – a bill that would ban “private military activity“. On its face this seems strange since every state in the union already does this. However, the bill, as written, is so vague that it could be interpreted to outlaw organised range shooting activities or even paintball games as “combat training”. This bill reeks of desperation because the Regime knows that its path to collapse is further along than a lot of people think and they know that “private military activity” is a very real possibility. The Regime has been accelerating to the point of no return and is trying to stifle any potential serious opposition.
Opposition to what? Well, that’s a good question. Let’s put some pieces together.
It’s no secret that the US military is facing a serious recruiting shortfall. Obviously, the current Regime has little use for the American military as it has traditionally been constituted. This is shown by the absolutely disrespectful way in which our troops are routinely treated by their own government and chain of command. Especially driving this recruitment deficiency is the huge drop in enlistment by the military’s traditional recruiting stock – rural and suburban White men from the South, the Midwest, and the Mountain West. In other words, exactly the kind of people being demonised by the new military with its DIE initiatives, rainbow flags, and trooned officer corps.
So who is going to fill the ranks? Fortuitously, we seem to have a huge flow of military aged males from all over the world crossing our border for whom the Regime has been rolling out the figurative red carpet. These are guys who probably have a lot of time on their hands. Wouldn’t it be a swell idea if we inducted all these guys into the military to make up for the lack of Heritage American interest? Indeed, history repeatedly shows that unpopular regimes typically do exactly this. They start to rely on foreign mercenary forces for a number of purposes.
Certainly, as GAE struggles to keep its steam, there may be a need to send Guatemalans and Nigerians into various Middle Eastern sandboxes to take shrapnel that Americans won’t take. After all, there will still be the vain and desperate attempts to shore up American globohomo empire in that (and other) regions. But historical, one of the main uses of foreign troops has been to try to keep your own potentially rebellious natives in line. Foreign troops have no real connexion with those whom they are suppressing and thus are willing to follow almost any orders that their paymasters give them.
However, unlike many first world countries that are under the Regime’s heel, the USA has a large body of well-armed citizens, many of whom have military training and combat experience. These guys – plus any other patriotic citizens they may be willing to help train – probably won’t take too kindly to being suppressed by foreign hirelings, something that will quickly make a lot of people’s patience run out. Say, wouldn’t it be a shame if all of these armed, trained and trainable people started organising to protect their homes, families, states, and country?
Despite all of the bravado from left-wing
Comments Off on An alternative recruiting strategy for the US military
