Quotulatiousness

November 17, 2025

The US Supreme Court considers whether Trump’s tariffs are legal

Filed under: Government, Law, Liberty, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Thanks to the staggering incompetence (and/or deliberate provocation for domestic political advantage) of the Carney government’s dealings with President Donald Trump, the current case before the Supreme Court is of significant interest to those of us on the north side of the US-Canadian border. On his Substack, David Friedman discusses the issues before the court:

There are three things wrong with Trump’s tariffs. The first is that they cannot be expected to provide the benefits claimed, can be expected to make both the US and its trading partners poorer; the arguments offered for them depend on not understanding the economics of trade. For an explanation of why that is true, see an earlier post.

The fact that the tariffs make us poorer may be the most important thing wrong with them but it is irrelevant to the Supreme Court; nothing in the Constitution requires the president to do his job well. The questions relevant to the Court are whether what Trump is doing was authorized by past Congressional legislation and whether it was constitutional for Congress to authorize it.

What Counts As An Emergency?

Tariffs are under the authority of Congress, not the president.1 Trump’s justification for setting them himself is congressional legislation, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

    (a) Any authority granted to the President by section 1702 of this title may be exercised to deal with any unusual and extraordinary threat, which has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States, to the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States, if the President declares a national emergency with respect to such threat.

    (b) The authorities granted to the President by section 1702 of this title may only be exercised to deal with an unusual and extraordinary threat with respect to which a national emergency has been declared for purposes of this chapter and may not be exercised for any other purpose. (IEEPA, 50 U.S. Code § 1701, emphasis mine)

Trump declared that his Worldwide Reciprocal Tariffs were intended to deal with the US trade deficit.2 Whether the deficit is a threat and whether tariffs are a good way to deal with it are questions for economists3 but whether it is unusual is relevant to judges, since if it is not the IEEPA does not apply.

[…]

The Court on Trial

Delegating to the president the power to impose tariffs, a power explicitly given to Congress in the Constitution, is a major question. Under doctrine proclaimed by this court that means that the legislation claimed to delegate that power must be read narrowly. On a narrow reading, on anything but a very broad reading, the legislation fails to apply to President Trump’s tariffs for two independent reasons:

    It only grants power in an emergency, which under the language of the Act neither the trade deficit nor the illegal drug problem is; the deficit has existed since 1970, the War on Drugs was proclaimed in 1971.

    The powers granted to the president in the Act do not include the power to impose tariffs.

If the six conservative justices believe in the principles they claim, the administration will lose the case 9-0.

  1. The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises … To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations … (U.S Constitution, Article I, Section 8).
  2. “I found that conditions reflected in large and persistent annual U.S. goods trade deficits constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and economy of the United States that has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States. I declared a national emergency with respect to that threat, and to deal with that threat, I imposed additional ad valorem duties that I deemed necessary and appropriate.” (Executive Order July 31, 2025).
  3. The answers are no and no.

October 9, 2025

Britain is only a few steps further than Canada in the war on free speech

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

In The Line, Peter Menzies looks at the worsening situation for freedom of speech and freedom of expression in Britain, noting that what’s happening over in Blighty is our immediate future with current Liberal bills before Parliament to give government bureaucrats more power to silence us:

Everyone may know, for instance, that Kimmel got suspended by ABC for a week following statements made in the wake of the assassination of Charlie Kirk. But not a lot of people consuming Canadian media know that in the U.K., comedians weren’t just getting one-week suspensions. Nope. Last month they were getting arrested.

Right-wing icon Katie Hopkins, best known for her Batshit Bonkers Britain clips and Silly Cow tour, hadn’t been charged at the time of writing, but was arrested and, as they say in Blighty, “interviewed under caution”. Previously, Graham Linehan was arrested upon his return from the United States by five armed police officers at Heathrow Airport. At issue were posts he had made on X in April.

“If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space,” one Linehan post declared, “he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls.”

Currently on bail, Linehan returns to court on Oct. 29. The charges are harassment, criminal damage and suspicion of inciting hatred.

The merits of the cases can be debated, but my point today is that when it comes to digital policy and policing you, and the internet, Canadians and their media should be paying a lot more attention to the U.K.

Because it is there that the true illiberalism of modern Western so-called liberalism is most menacingly embraced. Even prior to the U.K.’s Online Safety Act coming into effect, pre-existing British legislation had been used to, for instance, convict six retired police officers for making comments “deemed to be offensive” within their private WhatsApp chat group. Following the Southport mass stabbing murders of little girls, at least two women with no prior history with police were given prison sentences — one for 15 months for a Facebook post calling for a mosque to be blown up, another 31 months for a tweet calling for hotels full of migrants to be burned. While their comments were certainly worthy of vigorous condemnation, the intervention of the state into private, closed conversations and the involvement of police, courts and the penal system has taken matters in the U.K. to a level inconsistent with liberal traditions.

Now that the Online Safety Act has supplemented those laws, hundreds of people have been arrested and dozens so far convicted for social media posts. The government calls the act a “new set of laws that protect children and adults online” in much the same way Justin Trudeau explained Canada’s own Online Harms Act. It’s all about “safety”.

Online Harms may have died when Parliament was prorogued last winter, but a successor is anticipated and, given Prime Minister Mark Carney’s obvious Anglophilia, it’s easy to speculate — fear is a better word — that he is taking inspiration from the Brits. After all, up until a few months ago, he was one of them.

Fighting back in the U.K. is, among others, Lord Toby Young, the Conservative peer, associate editor of The Spectator and founder of the Free Speech Union, which now has a Canadian branch featuring, among others, journalist Jonathan Kay. Young has protested that criminalizing disinformation hands governments the power to determine truth. Nevertheless, while Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has muttered that maybe the police have more important things to do, he shows — despite the meteoric rise in the polls of Nigel Farage’s Reform Party — no inclination to order a digital retreat.

In fact, Starmer just doubled down with the introduction of legislation imposing mandatory digital IDs. A petition opposing it and the potential to enable mass surveillance and state control has already gathered close to three million signatures.

There’s a good chance the Canadian Free Speech Union will be similarly engaged in the years ahead. The Trudeau government’s instincts when it came to digital legislation were not as extreme as Britain’s. And there are very real differences in the legal structure of free-speech rights in Canada and the U.K. — we have the Charter, and the British don’t. So our laws would be enacted and enforced differently here than they can be the the U.K.

October 1, 2025

“Sean Fraser, the current minister of justice and attorney general, has made two major mistakes of late”

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Liberty, Politics, Religion — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:45

If you’re at all interested in Canadian affairs, you should subscribe to The Line … even a free subscription will definitely provide you with some excellent non-propagandistic coverage of what is happening in the dysfunctional dominion. For instance, last weekend’s weekly post from the editors included this segment about Sean Fraser, who is perhaps the worst of Mark Carney’s cabinet (and that takes some doing):

Sean Fraser, as Minister of Immigration, Refugees & Citizenship, during day one of Collision 2023 at Enercare Centre in Toronto, Canada.
Photo by Vaughn Ridley via Wikimedia Commons

We at The Line contend that Sean Fraser, the current minister of justice and attorney general, has made two major mistakes of late.

The first was in deciding not to rescind his decision to spend more time with his friends and family when it became clear that Justin Trudeau was no longer an anchor on his electoral chances. After failing to fix Canada’s housing problem and proving himself integral to blowing apart a pan-partisan consensus on immigration that was once the envy of the world, the man had a real opportunity to leave office on a high note. But, no.

Instead, after hitching his bloated baggage to Mark Carney’s trunk, Fraser decided that Canada needed more of him.

And so, as justice minister, instead of addressing petty stuff like, oh, bail reform, or fixing prisons, or getting crime under control, he turned his attention to … Section 33 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The notwithstanding clause.

You may recall that Quebec’s contentious Bill 21 — which prohibits public-service employees in positions of authority, and teachers, from wearing religious symbols while on the job — is currently before the Supreme Court of Canada. Despite numerous mixed rulings on the law, Quebec moved forward with its stance on secularism by invoking Section 33, which allows parliaments to temporarily override judicial rulings.

Section 33 was placed in the Charter for precisely this kind of situation; one in which the courts and parliament disagree about governance. As we still live in a democracy, and are still nominally governed by representatives we elect, the clause was always a bit of a compromise gesture intended to preserve parliamentary supremacy after granting the courts broad powers to basically reinterpret law according to an expansive and ever-expanding understanding of both their jurisdiction, and of the concept of “rights” writ large.

Section 33, nonetheless, has maintained a heavy odour about it, which has generally limited its application, especially outside Quebec. Among the Sean Fraser set, and the largely Liberal collection of lawyers who will insist that the Supreme Court isn’t remotely political, and how dare we entertain the thought, Section 33 was only ever intended as a symbolic right.

But as the definitely-not-political Supreme Court has edged ever deeper into the territory of override and governance, so too have provincial parliaments responded with a very not-symbolic application of the clause.

We do think there’s some blame to be placed at everyone’s door, here. But we also never really took much issue with Section 33. That’s because, at heart, we at The Line believe in, well, democracy. We believe that the people we elect should be able to decide our laws; and we believe that while the Supreme Court of Canada serves as an important check on Parliamentary power, that power doesn’t and should never override the will of the people.

And that’s basically where we part ways with Fraser and many of his — dare we say it? — Laurentian Consensus ilk. Because the unstated critique of the use of Section 33 is basically always the same: these people dislike the application of the clause because they think politics is icky, and that politicians fundamentally cannot be trusted.

In other words, these people don’t actually want a democracy.

They want a technocracy. One in which the smartest and ablest individuals (as defined by them, of course) are the ones who actually get to set the rules and guardrails for society writ large. One in which parliament really is as theatrical, symbolic and pointless as it often regards itself.

There’s an obvious illogical inconsistency here — Fraser and his colleagues are politicians. We aren’t sure if this desire to go out and limit the ability of he and his fellow parliamentarians to do the best jobs they can for the citizens reflects mere self-loathing, or a particular brand of Liberal blindspot, one that leads them to believe that they alone among politicians are exempt from anything as crass political considerations and/or motivations. Those moral failures are apparently for the other guys. But in any case, we have an elected official making the case that unelected courts should have the ability to override legislators, and that the legislators should have no recourse. However Fraser rationalizes this to himself, it’s where we are.

We think the people who have issues with Section 33 are generally not being honest with themselves in that regard; we also think that their instinctual aversion to politics (or their exemption of themselves from it) tends to make them naive. If you vest all the real power of governance in a “non-partisan” Supreme Court, what you’ll get is not a dispassionate government, but rather a heavily politicized Supreme Court. We need only look at what has happened in the U.S. over the past 30 years to see how that pans out in the long run.

Look, we at The Line don’t like Bill 21. It’s a bad law. It needlessly tramples on minority rights. But there’s a very obvious way to get that law repealed that doesn’t involve flirting with a full-blown constitutional crisis in the midst of, you know, all of the other crises going on right now.

Elect a government that will repeal that law.

That’s what democracies do.

To me, one of the most puzzling things about the Carney government’s recent actions is the overall incoherence of them. They are going ahead with one of the worst policies inherited from the Trudeau years with the “gun buyback” program that the minister responsible has openly admitted is almost completely a sop to voters in Quebec. Okay, that makes cynical sense as the Liberal vote is about as “efficient” as it possibly can be so losing just a few seats in Quebec would make it impossible for the Liberals to get re-elected. Fine. Scummy as hell, but fine. Yet the challenge to Section 33 is guaranteed to piss off far more Quebec voters — and stir up controversy across the country to boot — and you’re going to stage a pitched battle against pretty much all the provinces before the Supreme Court? Are you sure about that?

September 20, 2025

Feds move to neuter the “notwithstanding clause” to frustrate Alberta

Filed under: Cancon, Government, History, Law, Liberty, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

To be honest, I wasn’t a fan of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms when it was forced down our throats in 1982, on the basis that if Pierre Trudeau thought it was a good idea then it must be the opposite. All these years later, although I’m still not a huge fan, I support the provinces who now need to combat Mark Carney’s minority Liberal government’s attempt to use the Supreme Court to limit or eliminate the provinces’ use of the notwithstanding clause:

You might be hearing a lot about the notwithstanding clause these days and wondering what is going on. The fact is, the Carney government is trying to change the constitution via a Supreme Court case on Bill 21 – a heinous bill in my opinion – but not an excuse to scrap or weaken the notwithstanding clause.

We’ve been here before with this debate before and I’m still of the same position, leave the clause alone.

It was in 2018 that Ontario Premier Doug Ford was looking to use the notwithstanding clause to shrink the size of Toronto city council. He should never have had to do this, but a lower court ruled that Ford’s actions were unconstitutional.

Which is really weird because the constitution is clear, municipalities are creations of the province. A provincial government can merge municipal governments, they can even abolish them if they wish.

Eventually, a higher court overturned the very politically driven decision against Ford, but for a time, he seemed to need the notwithstanding clause, otherwise known as section 33 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

I’ll never understand why some claim the notwithstanding clause is against the Charter when it is part of the Charter.

On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, Sean Speer notes the Liberals seem to be taken by surprise at the negative reactions to their plans:

I suspect that non-conservatives are a bit surprised by the magnitude of the reaction to the Carney government’s factum on the notwithstanding clause. That’s mainly because I think liberals and progressives don’t quite understand how much the past decade or two of judicial activism has come to animate Canadian conservatism. Even as a somewhat moderate conservatism, I admit to being radicalized on these issues.

The Carter decision on MAID was a key moment in this evolution. Not necessarily because of the issue per se — though a lot of us oppose it. But mainly because it was such a naked example of judicial lawmaking. The clearest case that it’s just power and politics all the way down.

After having ruled that there was no right to physician-assisted death in the Charter, just over twenty years later the Supreme Court unanimously decided there was indeed such a right.

There had been no constitutional amendment in the meantime. Parliament had considered the issue and carefully and consistently voted against it. And yet nine judges decided that the right should exist and so they created one.

If the judiciary isn’t merely protecting constitutionally-prescribed rights but manufacturing them based on the political preferences of judges themselves—if it’s in effect just politics from the bench — then we might as well have the politicians who we’ve duly elected to be making these decisions for us.

Before Carter I would have said that I was broadly supportive of S.33 as part of our constitutional order but today it’s much bigger part of my core political identity as the only check we have on judicial politicking.

The Carney government’s factum then isn’t just objectionable because it threatens to constrain the notwithstanding clause but precisely because it invites the Supreme Court to once again alter the constitution in its own image.

Brian Peckford, the last surviving signatory to the patriation of the Constitution in 1982:

Tragically, it is not surprising that we see this further emasculation of our 1982 Constitution.

It has been ongoing almost since its inception. Witness the 1985 Court Opinion twisting the meaning of the opening words: “the Supremacy of God”.

And the constant distortions ever since, accelerated during the false covid crisis.

This is The Tyranny of The Judiciary —The Destruction Of Parliamentary Democracy!

How important is Section 32 — the notwithstanding clause?

There would be no Constitution Act 1982 — no Charter of Rights and Freedoms without Section 32.

When PM Trudeau Sr. tried to unilaterally Patriate the Constitution and failed miserably because of the Provinces’ opposition before the Courts, he validated the suspicion most Premiers had about the Federal Government and its intentions during that time. The ability of the Provinces to continue democratically to initiate specific exemptions was crucial to solidify the federal nature of this country.

The Supreme Court was right in Sept 1981 in denying the Federal Government such sweeping powers.

None of the 10 First Ministers who signed the Patriation Agreement intended for this Section to be amended in any other way except by the Amending Formula that was achieved for the first time in our history in that Agreement.

The Federal Justice Minister’s action to ask the court is wrong — totally against the intent of those who authored the Patriation Agreement and defies and denigrates one of major accomplishments of 1982, The Amending Formula, a crucial part of the earlier 1981 Agreement, the foundation document, “The Patriation Agreement”.

The Canadian Press carries this:

    OTTAWA — The federal government’s request to Canada’s top court for limits on the notwithstanding clause isn’t only about Quebec’s secularism law, Justice Minister Sean Fraser said on Thursday.

    In a media statement, Fraser said he hopes the Supreme Court’s eventual decision “will shape how both federal and provincial governments may use the notwithstanding clause for years to come”.

Excuse me, Mr Fraser, this is the job, the solemn responsibility, for Canada’s Elected First Ministers and Their elected Parliaments not the Judiciary. Making law is the job of the elected, interpreting law the role of the Judiciary.

This brazen action of the Federal Government would enlarge the Judiciary power to make law — it deciding the powers of The Governments of this Nation.

Ironic in the extreme it is to ponder that Canada sought for decades to find an amending formula — self criticizing itself for not having a legitimate avenue for Constitutional Change.

Now that it has such an avenue instead of using it, it cowardly asks The Court?

Should not a majority of the Provinces have to agree — that’s what the Supreme Court said in 1981?

Hence, the Supreme Court, consistent with it predecessor views of 1981 should refrain from hearing the matter, and inform the Governments that it is they who have the power through the legitimate constitutional process present in the Constitution to make such significant change ie the powers of the Governments, adhering to Section 38, the Amending Formula.

September 16, 2025

QotD: The Dictatorship in the late Roman Republic

Filed under: Europe, Government, History, Quotations — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

… I’d also argue that the office [of Dictator as created by Sulla and then by Caesar] didn’t work for the goals of either of the men that recreated it.

For Sulla, the purpose of using the dictatorship was to offer his reforms to the Republic some degree of legitimacy (otherwise why not just force them through purely by violence without even the fig leaf of law). Sulla was a reactionary who quite clearly believed in the Republic and seems to have been honestly and sincerely attempting to fix it; he was also a brutal, cruel and inhuman man who solved all of his problems with a mix of violence and treachery. While we can’t read Sulla’s mind on why he chose this particular form, it seems likely the aim here was to wash his reforms in the patina of something traditional-sounding in order to give them legitimacy so that they’d be longer lasting, so that Sulla’s own memory might be a bit less tarnished and to make it harder for a crisis like this to occur again.

And it failed at all three potential goals.

When it comes to the legitimacy of Sulla’s reforms and the memory that congealed around Sulla himself, it is clear that he was politically toxic even among many more conservative Romans. A younger Cicero was already using Sulla’s memory to tarnish anyone associated with him in 80, casting Chrysogonus, Sulla’s freedman, as the villain of the Pro Roscio Amerino, delivered in that year. In the sources written in the following decades at best Sulla is a touchy subject best avoided; when he is discussed, it is as a villain. Our later sources on Sulla are uniform in seeing his dictatorship as lawless. Moreover, his own reforms were picked apart by his former lieutenants, with key provisions being repealed before he was even dead (in 78 BC so that’s not a long time).

Finally, of course, far from securing the Republic, Sulla’s dictatorship provided the example and opened the door for more mayhem. Crucially, Sulla had not fixed the army problem and in fact had made it worse. You may recall one benefit of the short dictatorship is that no dictator – indeed, no consul or praetor either – would be in office long enough to secure the loyalty of his army against the state. But in the second and early first century that system had broken down. Gaius Marius had been in continuous military command from 107 to 100. Moreover, the expansion of Rome’s territory demanded more military commands than there were offices and so the Romans had begun selecting proconsuls and propraetors (along with the consuls and praetors) to fill those posts. Thus Sulla was (as a result of the Social War in Italy) a legate in 90, a propraetor in 89, and consul in 88 and so had been in command for three consecutive years (albeit the first as a legate) when he decided to turn his army – which had just, under his command, besieged the rebel stronghold of Nola – against Rome in 88, precisely because his political enemies in Rome had revoked his proconsular command for 87 (by roughing up the voters, to be clear). And then Sulla has that same army under his command as a proconsul from 87 to 83, so by the time he marches on Rome the second time with the intent to mass slaughter his enemies, his soldiers have had more than half a decade under his command to develop that ironclad loyalty (and of course a confidence that if Sulla didn’t win, their service to him might suddenly look like a crime against the Republic).

Sulla actually made this problem worse, because one of the things he legislated by fiat as dictator was that the consuls were now to always stay in Italy (in theory to guard Rome, but guard it with what, Sulla never seems to have considered). That, along with Sulla having butchered quite a lot of the actual experienced and talented military men in the Senate, left a Senate increasingly reliant on special commands doled out to a handful of commanders for long periods, leading (through Pompey‘s unusual career, holding commands in more years than not between 76 and 62) to Julius Caesar being in unbroken command of a large army in Gaul from 58 to 50, by which point that army was sufficiently loyal that it could be turned against the Republic, which of course Caesar does in 49.

For Caesar, the dictatorship seems to have been purely a tool to try to legitimate his own permanent control over the Roman state. Caesar is, from 49 to 44, only in Rome for a few months at a time and so it isn’t surprising that at first he goes to the expedient of just having his appointment renewed. But it is remarkable that his move to dictator perpetuo comes immediately after the “trial balloon” of making Caesar a Hellenistic-style king (complete with a diadem, the clear visual marker of Hellenistic-style kingship) had failed badly and publicly (Plut. Caes. 61). Perhaps recognizing that so clearly foreign an institution would be a non-starter in Rome – unpopular even among the general populace who normally loved Caesar – he instead went for a more Roman-sounding institution, something with at least a pretense of tradition to it.

And if the goal was to provide himself with some legitimacy, the effort clearly catastrophically backfired. The optics of the dictatorship were, at this point, awful; as noted, the only real example anyone had to work with was Sulla, and everyone hated Sulla. Many of Caesar’s own senatorial supporters had probably been hoping, given Caesar’s repeatedly renewed dictatorship, that he would eventually at least resign out of the office (as Sulla had done), allowing the machinery of the Republic – the elections, office holding and the direction of the Senate – to return. Declaring that he was dictator forever, rather than cementing his legitimacy clearly galvanized the conspiracy to have him assassinated, which they did in just two months.

It is striking that no one after Caesar, even in the chaotic power-struggle that ensued, no one attempted to revive the dictatorship, or use it as a model to institutionalize their power, or employ its iconography or symbolism in any way. Instead, Antony, who had himself been Caesar’s magister equitum, proposed and passed a law in 44 – right after Caesar’s death – to abolish the dictatorship, make it illegal to nominate a dictator, or for any Roman to accept the office, on pain of death (App. BCiv, 3.25, Dio 44.51.2). By all accounts, the law was broadly popular. As a legitimacy-building tool, the dictatorship had been worse than useless.

So what might we offer as a final verdict on the dictatorship? As a short-term crisis office used during the early and middle republic, a tool appropriate to a small state that had highly fragmented power in its institutions to maintain internal stability, the dictatorship was very successful, though that very success made it increasingly less necessary and important as Rome’s power grew. The customary dictatorship withered away in part because of that success: a Mediterranean-spanning empire had no need of emergency officials, when its military crises occurred at great distance and could generally be resolved by just sending a new regular commander with a larger army. By contrast, the irregular dictatorship was a complete failure, both for the men that held it and for the republic it destroyed.

The real problem wasn’t the office of dictator, but the apparatus that surrounded it: the short duration of military commands, the effectiveness and depth of the Roman aristocracy (crucially undermined by Sulla and Marius) and – less discussed here but still crucial in understanding the collapse of the Republic – the willingness of the Roman elite to compromise in order to maintain social cohesion. Without those guardrails, the dictatorship became dangerous, but without them any office becomes dangerous. Sulla and Caesar, after all, both marched on Rome not as dictators, but as consuls and proconsuls. It is the guardrails, not the office, that matter.

Bret Devereaux, “Collections: The Roman Dictatorship: How Did It Work? Did It Work?”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, 2022-03-18.

August 24, 2025

The Supreme Court of British Columbia has detonated a legal mine under all of Canada’s established property titles

Filed under: Cancon, History, Law, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Conrad Black discusses just how much the Supreme Court of British Columbia’s decision on First Nations land claims in BC will undermine established property rights across the entire country:

A map shows the Cowichan title lands outlined in black. (B.C. Supreme Court) Photo by B.C. Supreme Court

The decision earlier this month by the Supreme Court of British Columbia that the Cowichan tribes hold title over federal, city, and private land in Richmond B.C. that enjoys a higher legal status than the fee simple ownership of the current proprietors is outrageous but may have some positive consequences. The decades and $7 billion that have been spent or pledged for what is called the “reconciliation” process, has finally hit a stone wall. The almost universal desire to be fair to Indigenous people and where appropriate to compensate them for inequitable treatment, has finally collided with the entrenched economic rights and interests of every owner of real property in Canada, including those of Indigenous ancestry.

Inexplicable latitude has been granted to the thickening population of crusaders for indigenous rights. Even the NDP government of British Columbia, which has been pathologically addicted to prostrating itself at the feet of anyone or anything purporting to champion any definition of the Indigenous interest, was reduced to monosyllabic waffling by the court decision brought down by Justice Barbara Young. Premier David Eby’s office declared an ambition to continue seeking a negotiated resolution of the conflict between Aboriginal rights and common law rights of affected property owners, (including the municipal, provincial, and federal governments-of $100 billion of property in Richmond B.C. that is directly affected by the decision).

This is an understandable ambition, but in the circumstances, his government might have pressed the negotiations over the six years that this case has been litigated. Our judiciary has been addicted to truckling to almost any Indigenous claim, on the restricted occasions when the federal and provincial governments have even had the temerity to conduct a defense against them. Now the taxpayers’ negotiating position has been tanked by this ludicrous decision, which is being appealed.

If courts with authority for the whole country were to come to similar judgments, and we cannot doubt that activists will continue to push on an open door and quite rightly take all they can get, then every property title deed in the country is compromised, including the Houses of Parliament. There were only approximately 200,000 native people in all of what is now Canada when the French and British explorers and settlers came here starting at the end of the 15th century. Yet the implication of this ruling is that they legitimately owned all of Canada and that in the patchwork of numbered treaties and other agreements following absorption of the politically organized parts of Canada into the British Empire at the end of the Seven Years War in 1763, ancient and undocumented Aboriginal rights took precedence over any subsequent real estate law allocations of property rights under the common or civil law systems that gradually spread across Canada.

Given the activist preferences of courts across the country, we can expect to see similar cases pop up everywhere, as First Nations sensibly try to strike while the iron is hot and lay claim to as much of the real estate of Canada as the courts will let them … which might well be the entire land mass plus fishing rights.

August 19, 2025

Bad laws in Canada must be challenged in court

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

At Rigid Thinking, Damian Penny says — and I wholeheartedly agree — that it’s a good thing for laws to be challenged in the courts, but especially when it’s called an “emergency”:

[Retired Canadian veteran Jeff] Evely, with the help of some conservative/libertarian-ish legal organizations, plans to challenge the woods ban in court as a violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This is not a popular position here in Nova Scotia (in online discussions, the phrases “Maple MAGA” and the venerable “American-style” come up a lot) and I am not sure he’ll be successful.

But, honestly, I give him credit for trying. In fact, I’d argue his Charter challenge is win-win for everyone in Nova Scotia, whether one supports, opposes or remains indifferent to the policy.

That’s not despite the pressing emergency posed by the forest fire threat, but because of it.

When we’re faced with a crisis, that’s precisely when governments are tempted to seize as much power and authority as possible – and, more importantly, when the public is more inclined to go along with it.

Hence, Trudeau I imposing War Measures Act provisions during the 1970 October crisis, the PATRIOT Act debate after 9/11, COVID-19 restrictions during the pandemic, Trudeau II using the Emergencies Act when the “Freedom Convoy” set up shop in downtown Ottawa, and now Premier Houston (whom I support, despite some misgivings about this issue) using sweeping measures to tramp down the forest fire risk.

And sometimes such powers are justified under the circumstances. Even self-professed libertarians will admit as such when the emergency is something they’re personally worried about, and when a leader from the “good” team is in power.1

But they aren’t always justified. And governments definitely can’t be trusted to handle such power responsibly the longer the “emergency” goes on.

  1. The rise of Trump has allowed many “libertarians” to reveal themselves as authoritarians, but that’s for another post.

August 13, 2025

“[A]ll those land acknowledgments weren’t just symbolic: they [were] advance notice”

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

In The Free Press, Rupa Subramanya discusses the — in my opinion, insane — court ruling in British Columbia that invalidated existing land titles in part of the Vancouver area, handing the titles to the properties over to the Cowichan First Nation:

A B.C. Supreme Court judge has granted several First Nations a portion of a 1,846-acre land claim on Lulu Island. B.C. Supreme Court

It turns out that all those land acknowledgments weren’t just symbolic. They may have been advance notice.

When Canada adopted its constitution in 1982, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau slipped in a ticking time bomb: an explicit recognition of indigenous land rights without constitutional protection for property rights for other Canadians. That constitutional clause has fueled decades of lawsuits from First Nations — Canada’s indigenous people — asserting claims to huge portions of their ancestral territories.

Last Thursday, the British Columbia Supreme Court ruled that the Cowichan Nation holds “Aboriginal title” to about 1,846 acres of land on the south shore of Lulu Island in Richmond, and constitutionally protected rights to fish in the south arm of the Fraser River.

This 275,000-word judgment doesn’t just affect government-owned lands. It also includes private property now owned by third parties. So if you’re a Canadian who is a property owner in British Columbia and not indigenous, your claim on what you think you own has just been superseded by indigenous claims, called a “senior” claim in legalese. Down the road, your land or house could be expropriated by the federal government and turned over to an indigenous group that claims ownership.

That has already happened in Ontario, where three northern Ontario First Nations claimed in a lawsuit last month that a 14-acre public park in Kenora called Anicinabe Park is actually unceded territory and should be returned.

“In constitutional terms, aboriginal rights trump private property rights,” Bruce Pardy, a professor of constitutional law at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, told me. He pointed to last November’s ruling by a New Brunswick judge that the court might be in position to order the government to seize private property and turn it over to an indigenous group making a claim on it.

As Prime Minister Mark Carney tries to fast-track major infrastructure projects — roads, bridges, pipelines, power plants, and more — all part of his plan to boost Canada’s global competitiveness and reduce reliance on the U.S., some of those ambitions might be snarled by indigenous land claims that take years to resolve. The British Columbia case began in 2019 and is considered to be the longest trial in Canadian history.

The day before the Cowichan Nation ruling in British Columbia, a Yukon First Nation announced that it would oppose all new mining claims on its traditional territory while a regional land-use plan is developed. Yukon First Nations leaders said that new claims are “unwelcome” and “unlawful”, and that they plan to challenge the mining industry to protect the land from further industrial activity.

Stefan Labbé in BIV last week:

A B.C. court has handed the Cowichan Tribes and other First Nations title over a chunk of federal and city land in Richmond that for centuries was used as a winter fishing village, before colonial administrators evicted the people who lived there.

The landmark Aug. 7 ruling was handed down after more than 500 days of litigation before the B.C. Supreme Court.

It gives the Cowichan Tribes, the Stz’uminus First Nation, Penelakut Tribe, Halalt First Nation — as well as the Lyackson First Nation in a supporting role — Aboriginal title over the Tribes’ historic Tl’uqtinus village on the southeast side of Lulu Island.

The ruling also gives the First Nations fishing rights at the mouth of the Fraser River.

In a joint statement, the First Nation plaintiffs said: “We raise our hands to the generations of leaders” who fought for the return of the Tl’uqtinus village lands and their fishing rights in the Fraser River.

B.C. Supreme Court Justice Barbara Young suspended her decision for 18 months “to allow for an orderly transition of the lands” in keeping with the principle of reconciliation.

“Now that this multi-year journey has concluded, it is my sincere hope that the parties have the answers they need to return to negotiations and reconcile the outstanding issues,” she wrote.

Jamie Sarkonak in the National Post wrote on Monday:

This case of “land back” in action (Cowichan Tribes v. Canada) casts a shadow over the country’s property system. It jeopardizes the default means of owning land in Canada — the estate in fee simple, where owners have exclusive rights to sell land — wherever Aboriginal title is found to exist.

Aboriginal title is the right of an Indigenous group to use, control and reap benefits from the land. It’s granted to claimant groups that can prove they are descended from the sole occupants of an area at the time the British asserted sovereignty. Unlike regular fee simple ownership, it’s enshrined in Section 35 of the 1982 Constitution and impossible to sell to anyone but the Crown.

The Cowichan claim covered the site of their summer village near the mouth of the Fraser River, where they had established continuous, exclusive seasonal occupancy dating back to European contact in the 1790s.

In 1846, the British Crown asserted sovereignty over that land and the rest of what would become B.C. The following years would see property being surveyed and auctioned off to public and private buyers — but not the Cowichan summer village. Instead, it was set aside in 1860 and continued to be used as a settlement for the group. Colonial officials considered the possibility of making it into a reserve, and took initial steps to do so. After B.C. joined Canada in 1871, however, the summer village was carved into parcels and sold over the years until 1914. Purchasers included private parties (including “well-placed men” in the colony) and even the municipality itself; some of the land purchased privately would eventually be sold back to the Crown. Today, about half of these lots are held by public bodies, with the other half falling under private ownership.

A map shows the Cowichan title lands outlined in black. (B.C. Supreme Court) Photo by B.C. Supreme Court

The question before the B.C. Supreme Court was whether the taking of those village lands was legal to begin with. Justice Barbara Young (a Harper appointee, by the way) concluded it was not.

August 10, 2025

Nova Scotia rediscovers the joys of dictatorial power

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

Clearly hankering for those glorious days when Canadians cowered in their homes due to the government’s public health diktats, Nova Scotia has now banned almost all outdoor activities in wooded areas across the province:

Image from Junk Economics

Nova Scotia’s Premier has decided that walking in the woods — yes, walking — is now so dangerous it carries a $25,000 fine.

Not for lighting a campfire. Not for running your ATV through dry brush. Not for tossing a cigarette. Just walking. In a province where there are currently four active wildfires … all under control.

This is not about preventing wildfires. This is about the politics of safety — and how governments turn fear into obedience.

I was born in Halifax, and my family’s roots run deep in Nova Scotia — deeper than the roads and towns that stand there now. Generations of my parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents — along with uncles, aunts, and cousins — are buried in its soil. My family weathered centuries of storms, wars, and political upheavals there, carving out a life from raw wilderness. This isn’t some detached policy rant from a distance. It’s personal. And it’s infuriating to watch a government use “safety” as a smokescreen for inaction, punishing people for living their lives while leaving the real problem unsolved.

The Problem They Didn’t Solve

In 2023, Nova Scotia suffered its worst wildfire season in history. At the time, the province had four Airbus H125 helicopters to fight fires.

In 2025, after all the smoke cleared and the “lessons learned” speeches were made, Nova Scotia … still has four Airbus H125 helicopters. Newer paint jobs, slightly upgraded safety features, same firefighting capacity. No fixed-wing aircraft. No surge ability. No major investment in manpower or pre-positioned crews.

The province didn’t fix the problem. They just hit refresh on the equipment list.

[…]

The Legal Overreach

The ban covers 89% of provincial land (Crown land) plus private forested land. Even if you own it, you can’t invite your mother over to walk her dog in your woods.

Section 7 of the Charter protects liberty, and the Forests Act was never intended to give cabinet the power to impose a province-wide walking ban. That’s legislative overreach wrapped in administrative convenience.

And the $25,000 fine? Grossly disproportionate — and in practice, quietly plea-bargained down because it’s more for optics than enforcement. A scarecrow penalty to make the Premier look tough on camera.

The Snitch Line and the COVID Flashback

Just like pandemic tip lines, Nova Scotia has invited citizens to report on each other for the crime of going for a picnic.

It’s hard to overstate how corrosive this is: encouraging suspicion, legitimising neighbour-against-neighbour policing, and normalising the idea that the government can criminalise any movement it decides is risky.

Of course, the commentariat is having a wonderful time of it:

And what may be the first issued fine under the provincial ban went to Jeff Evely:

July 21, 2025

Was Juan Perón a Fascist? The Cold War Origins of Peronism – W2W 037

Filed under: Americas, Economics, History, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

TimeGhost History
Published 20 Jul 2025

Was Juan Perón really a fascist, a socialist, or something entirely different? In this episode of War 2 War, we explore the rise of Peronism in post–World War II Argentina and how Perón tried to position his country between the superpowers of the Cold War.

Through labour reforms, nationalist rhetoric, media control, and brutal repression of dissent, Juan and Eva Perón created a powerful populist regime that borrowed ideas from both fascism and socialism, while claiming to reject both. From Argentina’s “Third Way” to its complicated ties with the US, USSR, and even Nazi fugitives, we examine the ideology, contradictions, and legacy of Peronist rule.

Was Peronism a unique form of authoritarian populism, or just another face of fascism?

Join us as we uncover the foundations of Argentina’s Cold War identity and the true political nature of Juan Perón.
(more…)

July 17, 2025

A renewed push to ban AfD from contesting elections in Germany

Filed under: Germany, Government, Law, Liberty, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

eugyppius updates us on the state of play as the various smaller parties in Germany try to ban Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) which had risen from fringe status to being the most popular political party after the last federal election:

I’m far from a sensationalist, and I’ve repeatedly discounted the likelihood of an AfD ban – not least because the German establishment and the left in particular have good reasons to keep the AfD around. Lately, however, I’ve begun to appreciate that there are deeper, systemic forces working against the AfD in this case. These forces are beyond anybody’s control and if nobody does anything, they may well end in political catastrophe that is much bigger than any single party.

Since the end of the Merkel era, the German left has become thematically scattered, and so they have retreated to the only coordinating issue the German left has ever had, which is hating the right. As climatism started to fade, the social welfare state exceeded its limits and mass migration went sour, AfD bashing became the sole unifying principle for much of the SPD, Die Linke and the Greens. Hating the right is particularly important because it keeps leftist politicians and their activist class on the same page. Without a crusade against the right, a great chasm opens between the antifa thugs who want to smash the state and destroy capitalism on the one hand and the schoolmarm leftoid establishment functionaries in the Bundestag who want to mandate gender-neutral language for the civil service on the other hand. What is more, the firewall against the AfD splits the right and keeps the shrinking left in government. It is a win-win for leftoids everywhere.

Recent events, however, show why things cannot continue as they are now indefinitely. Over time, our Constitutional Court will begin to fill with leftist justices supported by the left parties, who like the rest of the left will also want to ban the AfD. Brosius-Gersdorf and Kaufhold are omens here. Right now the system is held in perfect balance; the left talks a big game about wanting to stamp out the AfD, but they can always justify their hesitation by saying the outcome of ban proceedings is too uncertain. When the necessary judicial majority for an AfD ban is finally secured in Karlsruhe, everything changes. At that point, there will be no excuse for not proceeding with a ban. The activists and the NGOs will take to the streets if their political masters in Berlin don’t begin the process. The CDU will be brought around by media smear campaigns and antifa intimidation.

Keep in mind that this is not about the AfD, but about imperatives within the left itself. No amount of moderation, polite messaging or triangulation on the part of the AfD can get the left to stop or pursue other goals. Unless some exogenous force introduces a new unifying obsession for the left parties and their activists, they will never stop gnawing on this particular chew toy.

Practically, this probably means that the AfD has an expiration date. If they can’t get into government at the federal level and if nothing else changes, they will find themselves facing ban proceedings before a court stacked with leftists who hate them in the next 10 or 15 years. The federal elections in 2029 seem like the last opportunity to normalise the AfD before this final escalation.

People in the CDU need to realise how serious this is, because their fate hangs in the balance as much as the fate of the populist opposition to the right of them. It is absolutely necessary that they break the firewall and enter some kind of arrangement with the AfD before it is too late. It doesn’t matter how much the press freaks out. It doesn’t matter how many violent antifa thugs take to the streets. It doesn’t matter how many party headquarters the leftists invade and vandalise. The firewall will fail in one direction or the other, and if it fails with an AfD ban, we are all in very deep shit.

June 30, 2025

DOGE couldn’t address the structural problems with the US government

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Government, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

At the Foundation for Economic Education, Mohamed Moutii looks at the reasons DOGE was unable to come close to achieving the lofty goals it was launched with:

DOGE’s biggest failure was its inability to deliver its promised sweeping transformation. From the start, its $2 trillion savings target was unrealistic. Cutting nearly 30% from a $7 trillion budget was never feasible, especially with politically untouchable programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Defense off the table.

Musk’s claim that eliminating waste alone could close the gap didn’t hold up. While most budget experts support cutting inefficiencies, they agree that waste isn’t the main driver of the fiscal crisis. Even slashing all discretionary spending would save only $1.7 trillion. The real pressure comes from mandatory programs, which account for nearly two-thirds of the budget, leaving only a quarter of spending truly up for debate.

As reality set in, Musk’s savings claims shrank from $2 trillion to just $150 billion. While DOGE cites $170 billion saved, independent estimates suggest closer to $63 billion, less than 1% of federal spending, with many claims either inflated or unverifiable. Some savings were credited to long-canceled contracts. Though headline-grabbing layoffs and cuts were made, they were often botched, forcing agencies to rehire staff or reverse course. Meanwhile, federal spending rose by $166 billion, erasing any gains. Trump’s fiscal agenda worsens the outlook with the first-ever $1 trillion defense budget, sweeping tax cuts, and protected entitlements — all while annual deficits approach $2 trillion.

Yet DOGE’s failures ran deeper than mere fiscal naiveté. What began as Musk’s role as a “special government employee” quickly expanded into an unchecked exercise of executive power, raising constitutional alarms. His team reportedly accessed classified data, redirected funds, and sidelined entire agencies — actions taken without Senate confirmation, potentially in violation of the Appointments Clause of the Constitution. Legal pushback swiftly followed, with fourteen states suing Trump and Musk over the constitutionality of Musk’s White House-granted authority.

Meanwhile, glaring conflicts of interest became impossible to ignore. Musk’s companies — X, SpaceX, and Tesla — hold $38 billion in federal contracts, loans, tax breaks, and subsidies while facing over 30 federal investigations. His push to dismantle regulatory agencies like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) — while X launches the “X Money Account“, a mobile payment service subject to CFPB oversight — only deepened concerns. Musk was legally obligated to separate his business dealings from government decisions. One major result has been the impact on Musk’s reputation. Once hailed as a visionary for his promotion of electric cars, he is now viewed unfavorably by many former fans.

June 27, 2025

Germany’s Constitution, Erotica, and a Pastor’s Dignity – Rise of Hitler 19, July 1931

Filed under: Germany, History — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 26 Jun 2025

A rogue preacher breaks into the Reichstag and steals silverware, banned erotica, and the 1848 German Constitution. As Germany’s banks collapse and panic spreads, the press is captivated by the strange tale of Walter Wohlgemuth: pastor, thief, and accidental symbol of a republic in crisis.
(more…)

June 4, 2025

Arch-statist Mark Carney believes that Canadians “must earn their freedom everyday”

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

At The Intrepid Viking, Roxanne Halverson examines what Prime Minister Mark Carney means when he tosses off comments like “Freedom is something you earn everyday”:

CBC’s David Cochrane interviewing Prime Minister Mark Carney in Ottawa.

It is surprising and disconcerting that so few pundits, commentators or even members of the Conservative Party, and for that matter are, not taking issue with a recent statement from our new Prime Minister in which he asserted, when talking about Canadians, that, “Freedom is something you earn everyday“.

Has anyone asked Mark Carney, this globalist World Economic Forum (WEF) acolyte, who is now Canada’s Prime Minister, what he meant when he made that statement? He made it during an interview with David Cochrane on CBC’s Power and Politics following on King Charles delivering the throne speech. He made the statement while talking about the great “crisis” Canada is and how his government has to get moving on major projects and our economy and solving the housing calamity. Of course he forget to mention that these problems are due to the policies of the previous Liberal government, for whom he was the financial advisor. He also does not explain that why, in the middle of such a crisis, his government has decided to take the summer off and not release of budget of any type, any time soon, but that’s another story.

Now, back to his claim that Canadians “must earn their freedom everyday”. Of course, Cochrane, being one of Carney’s main fanboys at CBC, didn’t probe any deeper to ask him what he meant by that statement. But it is a strange statement coming from the Prime Minister of a country where its constitution essentially says that individual freedom is a God given right. And given that Carney, with his recent visit to Rome to see the new pope, has made it clear that he is a devout practising Catholic, his belief in the Almighty is obviously not an issue. So again, what did he mean by that remark? Strange again, because just six weeks ago, before he was the Prime Minister, Carney posted the following statement on X.

    The Charter of Rights and Freedoms is the embodiment of our principles and our aspirations as Canadians. It must be protected — not wielded for political gain. Forty-three years on, the Charter remains strong — and it’s on all of us to defend it.

This apparently was in response to Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s assertion that he would use the notwithstanding clause to override a judicial ruling against imposing consecutive life sentences on murderers, rather than concurrent sentences.

So given that, it would seem that Mr. Carney believes our rights regarding freedom are enshrined in the Charter. Carney, in his interview with Cochrane also maintained that Canada was still “the true north strong and free”. So then which is it when it comes to freedom from his perspective? Is it enshrined in the Charter, are we the true north “strong and free”, or must freedom be earned, and in what way?

May 31, 2025

“U.S. libertarians [are] the best friends Canada doesn’t know it has”

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government, Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In the National Post, Colby Cosh sings the praises of American libertarians for their work in trying to dismantle some of Donald Trump’s dubiously Constitutional extensions of presidential power:

The James L. Watson Court of International Trade Building at 1 Federal Plaza in Lower Manhattan, New York City.
Photo by Americasroof via Wikimedia Commons.

The U.S. Court of International Trade (CIT) issued a decision Wednesday that annuls various salvos of surprise economic tariffs, including ones on Canada, that have been enacted by President Donald Trump since his inauguration in January. I won’t lie to you: I had the same initial reaction to this consequential news that you probably did, which was “Hooray!” and then “Huh, there’s a U.S. Court of International Trade?”

This court is surely unfamiliar even to most Americans, no doubt because much of its work involves settling issues like “Do hockey pants count as ‘garments’ or ‘sports equipment’ under customs law?” Nevertheless, the CIT does have exclusive jurisdiction over civil actions involving U.S. trade law. It’s just that no president has ever before rewritten the tariff schedule of the republic in the half-mad fashion of a child taking crayons to a fresh-painted wall.

The American Constitution, from day one, has unambiguously assigned the right to set international tariffs to Congress. Congress is allowed to delegate its powers to the president and his agents for limited or temporary purposes, but it can’t abandon those powers to him altogether. Defining this legal frontier is what the CIT was asked to do, and their demarcation of it will now swim upward through higher appellate courts (its decision has been put on hold in the meantime).

The lawsuit was actually two parallel suits raising overlapping objections to the tariffs. One was brought forward by 12 U.S. states, and the other was filed by a group of tariff-exposed American businesses, including manufacturers of bikes, electronics kits and fishing equipment. The latter set of plaintiffs was roped together by the usual posse of heroic libertarians and legal originalists, including George Mason University law prof Ilya Somin.

About 24 hours after Trump originally announced the “Liberation Day” worldwide tariffs, Somin quickly blogged about how insanely unconstitutional the whole idea was, and concluded his article essentially by saying “I’m darn well gonna do something about this nonsense”. I don’t mean to suggest he deserves primary credit; I only intend to call attention, once again, to U.S. libertarians being the best friends Canada doesn’t know it has.

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