Quotulatiousness

October 11, 2025

Crossing the line between “justice” and “persecution”

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

At The Intrepid Viking, Roxanne Halverson notes just how determined the Canadian justice system was to inflict the most pre-trial punishment as possible on Tamara Lich and Chris Barber for their leadership role in the Freedom Convoy:

Tamara Lich and Chris Barber
Photos from The Intrepid Viking

The convoy leaders, Lich and Barber, […] finally learned their fate in an Ottawa courtroom on October 7th, 2025, almost four years since the trucks first rolled into the capital, and over two years since their trial began on September 5, 2023. Rather than the unwarranted and what can only be described as vindictive prison terms sought by the Crown, Justice Heather Perkins-McVey instead sentenced them both to conditional non-custodial sentences of 18 months. A decision, one can be sure, the Crown is not pleased with and one that is nothing short of humiliating given it falls farther short from the seven and eight year terms they argued for than they could have possibly imagined.

[…]

But Lich and Barber have indeed suffered. Both have been put through the legal grist mill of what now serves as Canada’s justice system since they day they were put into handcuffs and arrested on February 17/18, 2022. Barber was released on a bail bond of $100,000 after a night in jail with his wife acting as surety, meaning she would forfeit that amount if he breached his bail conditions. Under those conditions he was required to leave Ottawa within 24 hours of his release and depart Ontario in 72 hours, no longer support the Freedom Convoy and cease contact with fellow organizers. Breach of these conditions could also have landed him back in jail. His business and personal finances were also frozen for three months as part of the government’s illegal actions under the Emergencies Act. And now, to further try and impair and punish him financially the Crown prosecutors on this case are still attempting to seize and destroy his truck and livelihood, Big Red, which became a symbol of the Freedom Convoy. That matter is expected to be settled by Justice Perkins-McVey in court in November of 2025.

Lich, after her arrest spent a total of 49 days in jail before she was even convicted of any offence. Denied bail after her initial arrest in February, she spent 19 days in remand custody in an Ottawa jail because a judge deemed it was “necessary for the protection and safety of the public“. She was finally released on March 7, 2022 after an Ontario Superior Court Justice overturned the lower court’s outlandish ruling.

The vindictive nature of the first Crown prosecutor on their case, Moiz Karimjee, soon came to light when Lich was announced the winner of the George Jonas Freedom Award in May of 2022. He petitioned to have her bail revoked, arguing that being a recipient of the award was a breach of her bail conditions. Justice Kevin Phillips disagreed and amended provisions of her bail to allow her to attend the award dinner in Toronto, but still prohibited her from communicating with “certain” individuals at the dinner unless in the presence of legal counsel.

Karimjee, seemingly obsessed with seeing her back in jail, accused Lich of another alleged bail breach after she attended the award dinner when video evidence later surfaced of her having a brief congratulatory interaction with Tom Marazzo a Freedom Convoy organizer she was prohibited from interacting with. As a result, on June 27 Karimjee dispatched two Ottawa homicide detectives, yes homicide detectives, to her home in Medicine Hat to put the diminutive grandmother in shackles and fly her back to Ottawa and throw her back in jail. She was finally released following another bail hearing, in which Karimjee made every effort to keep her behind bars, but justice prevailed and she was released from custody on July 27, 2022.

Lich’s lawyer Lawrence Greenspon was highly critical of Karimjee’s actions stating, “This is the third time the crown has tried to incarcerate Ms. Lich, this time for a three-second interaction, and a photo. The prosecutorial response to this far exceeds the severity of the alleged breach“. Further remarking on the situation, Greenspon added, “Had there been a proper investigation before Tamara Lich was arrested, shackled, hauled halfway across the country and then kept in jail for 30 days, they would have realized that her then-counsel were present at the time and therefore these charges should never have been laid“.

And like Barber, and many other convoy protesters, Lich’s bank accounts were also frozen by the government under the Emergencies Act for a period of three weeks.

On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, Eve Chipiuk posted:

Read it and weep, snowflakes. The lies are exposed, the facts don’t lie, and people across the world can see the truth.

The question remains: when will you stop lying to yourself and others, and start thanking your fellow citizens for fighting for your freedom?

“Tamara Lich and Chris Barber, organizers of the most successful protest in Canadian history, kept their cool, kept the peace and brought national unity, patriotism and common sense back to Canada after the pandemic – this, despite the sustained efforts of the most aggressively controlling, divisive government the nation has ever had. They achieved this under intense pressure and at great personal cost.

They’re national heroes, and the persecution waged against them is destroying trust in the Canadian judicial system, though the judge involved does not seem to realize it. Justice Perkins-McVey said in court that if she discharged the defendants, it would “undermine confidence in the administration of justice”.

But it’s quite the opposite …

There was another ironic moment at the sentencing. The judge announced, “Politics has no place inside this courtroom” – yet the trial has been widely viewed as nothing more than the political vengeance of Doug Ford and the Ontario government.

If it weren’t for politics, Lich and Barber would never have been arrested, let alone put through jail time, solitary confinement, loss of employment, years of drawn-out, costly legal proceedings, onerous bail conditions and emotional strain …

This means the public is paying twice – once as taxpayers, with money intended to pursue real criminals wasted on a political vendetta – and once again, voluntarily, to support the brave people who stood up to ask for an end to lockdowns and vaccine mandates.

This is the same public that already gave $24 million to the truckers to help them go to Ottawa and protest vaccine mandates and lockdowns: $24 million that never reached them, because politicians colluded with fundraising sites and banks to freeze the money, debank the protestors and doxx the donors, all without a court order. No criminal charges have been laid in Canada, to this writer’s knowledge, against the perpetrators of these deeds, though they damaged national institutions far more than any protest ever could.

Justice Perkins-McVey is right to be concerned about confidence in the administration of justice. Many Canadians share her concern. Sadly, her handling of this case has done little to dispel their fears.”

October 9, 2025

Freedom Convoy 2022 – “… proving once again the Liberal mastery of combining high drama with low farce”

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

In the National Post, Michael Higgins states the obvious fact that Tamara Lich, Chris Barber, and the rest of the Freedom Convoy protesters were never insurrectionists. Trudeau had decided in advance that the convoy was a maple-flavoured January 6th attempt to overthrow the government — if not an attempt to re-stage the storming of the Winter Palace — and merely waited for the violence to break out and/or the Parliament buildings to be stormed. But nobody other than a few particularly glowy federal provocateurs was interested … because they were there to protest government policy not to start a revolution:

Marco Mendicino, the public safety minister of the day, portrayed them as extremists intent on overthrowing the government.

“This so-called ‘freedom convoy’ called for the overthrow of the government. They called for the Governor General to unilaterally remove the Prime Minister from office,” Mendicino told a Commons parliamentary committee.

Indeed, the Office of the Secretary to the Governor General was inundated with calls and emails by protesters demanding then prime minister Justin Trudeau be fired.

But since the Governor General can’t just decide to sack a prime minister, these email-writing anarchists were particularly inept as well as being constitutionally illiterate.

It was Shakespearean farce, but Liberals like Mendicino were happy to play politics and paint the convoy protesters as lawless subversives bent on destroying democracy.

Although, to be fair, Trudeau only said they were a “small fringe minority” with “unacceptable views” — more retrogrades than revolutionaries.

Meanwhile, Ottawa’s Keystone Kops had all the laws, rules and regulations needed to disband the convoy, they just lacked the leadership.

Days into the occupation, Ottawa Police Services chief, Peter Sloly, appeared to have thrown up his hands in resignation, stating, “There may not be a policing solution” to the crisis. Two weeks later, he quit.

In his report, the public inquiry commissioner Paul Rouleau would later criticize the “serious dysfunction within the OPS’s leadership”.

The government theatrics escalated with the imposition of the Emergencies Act, proving once again the Liberal mastery of combining high drama with low farce. Within days, police had cleared the convoy and several other blockades without incident.

This was less the power of the Emergencies Act and more to do with getting the police to just act.

July 27, 2025

“[T]he wonderful warm kind progressives, the Maple Leaf edition of “‘hate has no home here'”

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

Chris Bray looks at the kind of people who supported the lockdowns during the pandemic and heartily condemned those lesser folks whose careers and livelihoods were threatened and how they hope for examples to be made of the “leaders” of the Freedom Convoy back in 2022:

Let’s start with a comparison to the good people in Canada, the wonderful warm kind progressives, the Maple Leaf edition of “hate has no home here”. Cheri DiNovo is, let me put this very gently, an instantly recognizable social type, “one of Canada’s best-known and most ardent queer ministers and an Ontario politician who would help pass some of the province’s most integral LGBTQ2S+ policy”. You already know her by her facial expression:

slay, girlboss

As the leaders of the Freedom Convoy face sentencing in court, DiNovo has this to say about their monstrous cruelty:

The Freedom Convoy: white supremacist homophobes who harassed and brutalized LGBTQ+ people and immigrants and the disabled, lashing out in a stunning wave of public cruelty. It was like a NUREMBERG RALLY with trucks, obviously. Here, look at some of the monstrous acts of public brutality committed at this mass expression of hate and rage:

YOU KNOW WHO ELSE DANCED TOGETHER THINK ABOUT IT

Rupa Subramanya, a journalist who uses the old and mostly forgotten technique of talking to people, wandered the crowds in Ottawa (in her own neighborhood) and reported that Freedom Convoy protesters mostly talked about their desire to recover a sense of hope. Their grievances were clear, thoroughly explained, and entirely defensible. Here’s a sample paragraph, a discussion with one of the VICIOUS WHITE SUPREMACISTS:

    Kamal Pannu, 33, is a Sikh immigrant and trucker from Montreal. He doesn’t believe in vaccinations; he believes in natural immunity. He had joined the convoy because the Covid restrictions in the surrounding province of Quebec had become too much to bear. He said that he and his wife used to do their grocery shopping at Costco, until the government decreed that the unvaxxed would be barred from big-box stores. Since then, their monthly grocery bill had jumped by $200. “Before,” he said, “we didn’t look at the price of what we were buying. Now, we sometimes put items back because we don’t have that much money.”

See this clearly against Cheri DiNovo’s framing, and remember it:

The white supremacist protesters who hate immigrants; for example, Kamal Pannu, a Sikh immigrant and trucker.

In fact, Sikhs make up a substantial share of the trucking industry in Canada, and so had a significant presence at the Freedom Convoy:

See the WHITE SUPREMACISTS saying that they HATE IMMIGRANTS!?!?!? Because Cheri DiNovo does. She thinks categorically: good people who support the Liberal Party, Literally Adolf Hitler who doesn’t. She has no capacity for seeing the thing itself, as it was on the ground, in physical reality. Literally nothing, no evidence or substance of any kind, could ever have prevented her from saying that a protest against Justin Trudeau’s government was white supremacist and homophobic. She’s out of her fucking mind. She has no connection to any form of reality, at all, in any way, ever. She doesn’t see anything. She doesn’t know anything. She’s ignorant noise and infinite sanctimony, with a pair of legs to carry it around.

This is “left” politics in the Anglosphere. Symbol symbol symbol, you NAZI! It doesn’t connect. It’s all chanting and performance and status-signaling, and it never leaves the house. It left reality behind ten years ago, and now it’s out there sailing past Pluto. For adherents of the Manichean religion of wokeism, categorical thinking covers all bases. People who don’t get mRNA injections are misogynistic racist bigots, obviously.

Update: Fixed broken link.

I’m sure I would never have heard of Sean Feucht until they tried to silence him

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

It’s hard to believe how Canadian municipal and provincial authorities deal so gently with disruptive pro-Hamas protests that regularly threaten the lives and property of Canadian Jews compared with the positively authoritarian way they are reacting to “MAGA” Christian performer Sean Feucht‘s concerts:

May 29, 2025

The King of Canada

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

In the National Post, Colby Cosh tweaks the berries of the tiny number of dedicated Canadian republicans:

King Charles III and Queen Camilla, official portrait by Millie Pilkington.

The Post and other Canadian organs have been full of conscious praise for our unusual absentee monarchy lately, what with the King being in the capital to give the throne speech in person. But Canadian republicans must be hoping that our people will instinctively reject the spectacle, and at least see the genuine need for that blessing without which no sovereign state can hope to be taken seriously — a president.

There are rumblings about behind-the-scenes diplomatic tensions between Canada and the United Kingdom over the royal visit, rumblings which the Sunday Times (of London) put in print this weekend. The crux of the story is that Canada and the U.K. are not quite using the same playbook in dealing with the volatile and cutthroat Trump administration.

Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour government is applying lots of soft-soap, using Trump’s fondness for the British monarchy and its highly ornamented nature as a means of getting special treatment in trade negotiations. Meanwhile, Canada and its government hope to use the presence in Canada of Canada’s King as a subtle way of asserting independence, determination and strength as we bear the economic blows of Trumpian whim.

And — wait for it — the crazy part is, THOSE TWO KINGS ARE THE SAME EXACT DUDE. WHAAAT?

To a republican, this seems like a mystery concocted to obfuscate a logical weakness in the system. No doubt they see it just the same way an atheist looks at the centuries of early Christian debate over the Holy Trinity. It’s not exactly as though the U.K. and Canada are at war, or as though there is any overt disharmony between the two states. But the monarchists have to concede at least this much: when mutually sovereign countries have a shared head of state, you do in fact end up with the exotic possibility that George XIV of Canada might one day, in theory, have to issue a declaration of war on George XIV of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. This is baked into the improvised post-Imperial ontology of our government and of Britain’s.

This is why Canadian monarchists are so fussy about the independent constitutional footing on which the Canadian Crown rests. We do this, implicitly insisting that our system of government was reinvented in 1931, while at the same time arguing that the advantages of monarchy include antiquity, historical continuity and the preservation of a special bond between Commonwealth realms. Perhaps we are sneaky imperialist (or racist) hypocrites. Perhaps we just feel that those advantages are legitimate and important, and that the Statute of Westminster is an optimum compromise that preserves them while guaranteeing our sovereign freedom of action in the interplay of governments.

May 9, 2025

The growing problem of antisemitism in Canada

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

In The Free Press, Casey Babb considers the growing risks to Jews on the streets of Canadian cities after the October 2024 terror attack and resulting Israeli military reaction:

“Free Palestine/Anti-Israel protest” by Can Pac Swire is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 .

Late last year I sat down to breakfast in Ottawa, Ontario, with Dr. Einat Wilf, one of the world’s foremost experts on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She had come to Canada’s capital to speak about the war in Israel, what Palestinians really want, and the future of a possible two-state solution. Near the end of our chat, I asked if she had seen any of the “pro-Palestinian” rallies that had become a weekly occurrence in the city. “One of them went by my hotel last night,” Wilf said. “There’s a very dark energy to them. Serious pre-pogrom vibes.”

The word pogrom is the Yiddish word for “devastation” or “destruction”. What it refers to, historically, are the mob attacks that were a regular feature of life for Jews in the 19th and early 20th centuries — attacks that most often were passively or openly supported by the state.

Wilf chose it deliberately.

In the roughly six months since we sat down together, the situation in Ottawa and across the country has only worsened. Canada has become one of the most antisemitic countries in the Western world.

If you doubt that assertion, it’s important to note that’s how others have described it, too.

In a report released on May 6 by Israel’s Ministry for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism, it states that from October 7, 2023 through the end of 2024, antisemitism in Canada skyrocketed an astounding 670 percent. Further, between October 7, 2023 and October 7, 2024, there were 1,500 pro-Palestinian rallies in Toronto alone. That’s over four a day — every day — for a year straight.

While the outbreak of antisemitism throughout the West has been precipitous in virtually every country — the tenor, violence, and extremist nature of Jew-hatred in Canada has ratcheted up in a way few other places on Earth have experienced.

Consider the following — much of which has gotten scant media attention.

Targeting Jews in Their Backyards

  • In September 2024 protesters sympathetic to Hamas and the “resistance” jubilantly rallied outside a Jewish retirement facility in Ottawa where several Holocaust survivors live, and where 60 percent of the residents suffer from dementia. Chants of “Go back to Europe” and “We want bullets and missiles!” in Arabic could be heard from their bedrooms.
  • On Remembrance Day in 2024 at Sir Robert Borden public school in Ottawa, where there is a large Jewish student body, a Palestinian protest song was the only song played during an event to honor Canadian soldiers. When pressed on the choice of music, Principal Aaron Hobbs said it was chosen to add some diversity and inclusion to a day usually about “a white guy who has done something related to the military”.
  • There have been numerous instances where, in predominantly Jewish neighborhoods, protesters have dressed up like Palestinian terrorists, including the October 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar.
  • Hundreds of pro-Palestinian protests surrounded the Holocaust Museum in Montreal in March 2024, where they shouted, “Death to Israel” and “Death to the Jews”.
  • At a softball game for teenage girls between Canada and Israel as part of last year’s Canada Cup Women’s International Softball Championship in Surrey, British Columbia, protesters stood on the sidelines wearing keffiyehs, holding signs that read “Israel is a genocidal state”, with another equating Israel with Nazi Germany.
  • In April, a pro-Hamas rally was staged in Winnipeg, just steps from a Jewish community center where children attend school and day care.
  • During Israel’s official day of remembrance for fallen soldiers and victims of terrorism on April 29, protesters stood in front of Beth Emeth Bais Yehuda Synagogue in Toronto waving Palestinian flags. One man wore a sweater that read “Palestinian Holocaust: Never Again Is Now”.
  • Earlier this month in Montreal, protesters were filmed chanting “All the Zionists are racists” through megaphones at a school for students ages 4 to 16 with intellectual disabilities and autism-spectrum disorders.

These activities aren’t normal protests. They aren’t in front of the Israeli embassy in Ottawa or the Israeli consulate in Toronto. They aren’t directed toward a specific Israeli policy, law, regulation, or act, and they certainly make no mention of Hamas, Hezbollah, or any other terrorist organization that has brought immense death and destruction upon the Palestinians. These are belligerent acts of aggression designed to intimidate Canada’s Jewish community, to coerce them into silence, and ultimately, to extinguish their public presence.

May 2, 2025

Trump’s victory lap after getting his preferred PM elected in Canada

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

In the National Post, Tristin Hopper rounds up American reactions to the Liberal victory in the Monday election, as many Americans seem to agree that Carney’s win was at least partly their doing:

As the U.S. awoke to a renewed Liberal government on their northern border, Americans of all political persuasions embraced the view that they — for better or worse — had caused it.

“Carney owes his job to President Donald Trump,” was the Tuesday view of the Washington Post editorial board, declaring that the U.S. president had singlehandedly thwarted the election of a populist Conservative government in Canada.

The Centre for American Progress Action Fund — a left-wing Washington, D.C.-based think tank — framed Carney’s win as a model for how anti-Trump rhetoric can win elections.

“Prime Minister Carney’s success demonstrates that resistance to President Trump’s bullying has mass popular appeal,” read a statement.

Actor Billy Baldwin, a perennial backer of progressive causes, cheered Carney’s victory with a viral social media post declaring “Trump singlehandedly delivers the election for the liberals in Canada with his 51st state bullsh-t.”

Even Rolling Stone, which put Justin Trudeau on the magazine’s cover in 2017, opined that Canada’s newest Liberal government was effectively a Trump creation. “Donald Trump single-handedly elected a new Canadian Liberal Government that was down 25 points in January with his endless ’51st State’ bloviation,” wrote the publication.

Conservative podcaster Ben Shapiro broke down the Canadian election in an extended segment on his Tuesday show, framing it as a direct failure of Trump’s foreign policy.

“Let’s be real about this; the rhetorical attacks on Canada have not actually resulted in a net good for the United States,” said Shapiro. A perennial critic of Trump’s tariff policy, Shapiro said that the White House’s habit of “yelling at Canada” had helped install a “far left-leaning internationalist” hostile to U.S. interests.

“All of this started off as a joke, and I think President Trump is so committed to the bit at this point that he couldn’t get off the train,” said Shapiro, in reference to Trump’s repeated pledges to turn Canada into the “51st state”.

A Republican consultant quoted anonymously by Politico on Tuesday was of a similar view, saying the outcome in Canada was a “pretty specific result based on the tariffs and 51st state trolling.”

On his Substack, Paul Wells offers some advice to Mark Carney about his dealings with Pierre Poilievre at this awkward time for the Conservative leader:

Stornoway in the Rockcliffe Park area of Ottawa, Ontario. It has been the official residence of the leader of the Official Opposition in Parliament since 1950.

One danger for Mark Carney is that he will be taught how to be a terrible politician by terrible politicians. A low-stakes test case is at hand. In this as in all things, a decent guiding principle should be: Don’t be like your opponent, and don’t be like your predecessor.

The test at hand is the uncomfortable predicament of Pierre Poilievre, who used to be a Member of Parliament and may want to be one again. In the meantime he is still the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada.

Poilievre lost his seat in Carleton on Monday night. This is not entirely his fault. Liberal campaign teams from neighbouring ridings were invited to spend part of their time door-knocking in Poilievre’s riding. But candidates should try to win even when their opponents work hard to defeat them. I bet this thought has occurred to Poilievre since Monday.

The usual route to the Commons, for a leader who is not yet an MP, is to run in a by-election. Often new leaders find a sitting MP somewhere to vacate their seat and enable a by-election. Brian Mulroney ran in Central Nova in 1983, Jean Chrétien in Beauséjour in New Brunswick in 1990, Stephen Harper in Calgary Southwest in 2002.

Assume Poilievre can find some Conservative MP-elect willing to abandon a seat they just won so Poilievre can try his chance (again). How should Carney react?

It’s really a question in three parts. Should a by-election be held quickly or much later? Should the Liberals run a candidate? Should the Poilievre family keep living at Stornoway, the Opposition leader’s official residence, in the meantime?

I’m hearing from a lot of people who say Carney should wait as long as the law permits — up to a half year after a seat opens — before calling the by-election; that the Liberals should definitely run a candidate; and that Poilievre and his family should be evicted from their current fancy abode.

I spent part of Wednesday debating these questions with readers on Substack Notes. Most of the people offering this advice — let him twist, then hit him hard — pointed out that if Poilievre had a say about an adversary’s career plans, he would do everything in his power to make that adversary hurt.

I think it’s bad advice. It manages to be bad tactics and bad for the soul. The two considerations don’t always line up, but here they do.

Carney should call a by-election as soon as possible after a sitting MP resigns — 11 days after the notice of vacancy is received, the minimum permitted in law. If asked, he should prefer that the Poilievre family stay at Stornoway in the meantime. And while the third question is less clear, I’d argue that the Liberals should refrain from running a candidate in the by-election.

This plan would have Poilievre back in the Commons as soon as possible, with minimal risk and discomfort. He’ll be lucky to receive such generous treatment and, while I’m less confident than ever that I know how he thinks, what he should feel is gratitude. I suspect the feeling would confuse him.

December 19, 2024

Paul Wells – “I found myself telling La Presse, ‘”What the f—k?” has replaced “Hello” as the standard greeting in Ottawa since Monday'”

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

Paul Wells shares some thoughts on the unsettled waters of normally placid (if not catatonic) Ottawa in the wake of Chrystia Freeland’s dramatic resignation on Monday:

Image from Blazing Cat Fur

I want to write 5,000 words of narrative in the wake of Chrystia Freeland’s resignation, but we’re still in the middle of the story. Thoughts kind of pour out. I found myself telling La Presse, “‘What the f—k?’ has replaced ‘Hello’ as the standard greeting in Ottawa since Monday.” We’ll see whether they use that quote.

Here are some thoughts, from different angles. I don’t know whether Freeland’s resignation will blow over, the way Justin Trudeau’s last 20 messes did, because I don’t have a crystal ball, but I think Justin Trudeau hopes it’ll blow over. Because he always hopes it’ll blow over. I hear, as you do, rumours that the PM will resign.

[…]

I resist biography as an analytical tool. People outgrow their backgrounds all the time.

But just about everybody who follows politics has been wondering how Trudeau could fire his most loyal lieutenant by a Zoom call three days before he needed her to deliver a crucial fall economic statement. If the Globe‘s latest story is true, and he told her Mark Carney would take the job without knowing whether Carney will take the job, that’s even wilder. Who does that?

The short answer is, somebody who is used to getting his way. Then you look at Trudeau’s life and you think, why wouldn’t he expect to get his way?

The rich kid always knows the normies will cover for him. If he needs a ride, some kid with stars in his eyes will wave his keys and volunteer. If he’s hung over he can borrow the lecture notes. He shows up in racist makeup to yet another party — forcing every other person in the venue to decide how to respond — and once again nobody stands up to him or makes a fuss. Indeed, when the record of that behaviour threatens his political career decades later, there’ll be plenty of volunteers to criticize anyone who mentions the record, rather than criticizing the guy who acted like that.

He runs for the leadership of a national political party on a platform of “I’ll tell you what I stand for after I win”. He mentions carbon pricing precisely one time at his first national leaders’ debate. He dumps his electoral-reform promise at the first hurdle, and later, when asked about it, he blames the person who asks. He gaslights Canada’s first Indigenous attorney-general for months, but he is not particularly kinder to her replacement, who is ejected from Cabinet because, I don’t know, it’s Wednesday or whatever. He lets a 72-year-old man run for re-election and only after it’s over does he let the guy know he’s getting dumped from Cabinet.

He fires the Clerk of the Privy Council by news release while travelling.

In particular, if there’s anyone in the world he might have expected to tolerate the kind of high-handedness we’re hearing about Friday’s Zoom call, it’s Chrystia Freeland. Her eagerness to endorse him in the immediate aftermath of his latest cockup has been such a reliable feature of Canadian public life it’s devolved into a kind of shtick. SNC-Lavalin, 2019: “she has absolute confidence“. Blackface, six months later: “tremendous confidence“. WE Charity, 10 months after that: “The prime minister has my complete confidence“.

Perhaps only Jagmeet Singh has shown more confidence than Freeland, over the years, in Trudeau’s leadership. Given that record — and his own much longer record of taking advantage of others’ generosity — it’s not too much of a stretch to think that at some point he decided his deputy prime minister was just another easy mark.

Turns out that’s the kind of mistake he only needed to make once.

November 21, 2024

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

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

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

Arms of the Federal Court of Canada

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

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

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

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

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

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

November 19, 2024

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

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

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

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

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

[…]

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

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

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

[…]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

October 25, 2024

How a Soviet Clerk Took Down a Spy Network

Filed under: Cancon, History, Russia, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 24 Oct 2024

Igor Gouzenko, a Soviet cipher clerk in Canada, defected in 1945, bringing with him documents that revealed a massive Soviet espionage network in the West. His actions forced the world to confront Soviet infiltration, shifting global politics and igniting early Cold War tensions. This episode uncovers how one man’s bravery exposed a hidden war.
(more…)

April 25, 2024

“… good Lord, is [Chrystia Freeland] ever terrible at politics”

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

In The Line, Matt Gurney recounts Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland’s terrible response to a topical question from a reporter:


Screencap from a CPAC video of Chrystia Freeland speaking in October, 2022.

In fairness, noting that Freeland, she of the infamous Disney+ flop, is bad at politics is not an original observation. I confess that. But, still. Yikes! What the hell was that?!

I’m referring to Monday’s unfortunate gaffe. Freeland was in Montreal doing post-budget stuff with the small business minister, and after touring a business, took questions from reporters. Sarah Leavitt from the CBC asked a question related to a particularly vile eruption of overt antisemitism at a protest in Ottawa last weekend. A man leading the crowd in chants said “Our resistance attacks are proof that we are almost free … Oct. 7 is proof that we are almost free. Long live Oct. 7, long live the resistance, long live the intifada, long live every form of resistance.”

Oct. 7, of course, means the Hamas rape-and-murder pogrom of Oct. 7.

By the time Leavitt quizzed Freeland, the comments in Ottawa had already been widely disseminated and, critically, condemned. Among the condemners: Freeland’s boss, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. He’d commented via Twitter a day before Freeland faced Leavitt’s question. This ought to have been an extremely easy exchange for Freeland.

As it turns out, though, not so much, actually.

In the interests of transparency, let’s simply see in full both what Leavitt asked, and how Freeland replied.

The question was clear enough: “Over the weekend, protesters in Ottawa were heard chanting, among other things, ‘Long live October 7’ and ‘October 7 is proof that we are almost free’. Is this hate speech?”

[…]

Let’s walk through her answer, putting her reply into the discrete points she’s been trained to hit.

Phase One: Ass covering. “I wasn’t in Ottawa over the weekend. And I’m not aware of those specific reports. And so it would be just wrong of me to comment on something that I am not specifically aware of.”

Phase Two: Banal statement that favours no group in particular but mentions the key stakeholders. “What I will say is, today is a time in Canada, when antisemitism and Islamophobia are on the rise. When we have a lot … there are a lot of Canadians who are not feeling safe. In my own riding of University-Rosedale, the JCC, a really important centre for Jewish Canadians but also for all Canadians, has faced a lot of pressure. And I’ve been there to meet with people there. There’s also a mosque in my riding that faced pressure and attacks and I’ve met with the leaders there.”

Phase Three: Attempt to sound like you’re engaging with the actual question, even though you are not. “Hate speech is absolutely not acceptable. Glorifying … I mean, I can’t even say the word because it’s … you shouldn’t. It’s too terrible. And what happened on October 7 was a heinous terrorist attack. People were killed. People were raped. Women, men, children … totally unprovoked attack on civilians. That is not acceptable.”

Phase Four: Pivot back to approved talking points. “Canada recognizes Hamas as a terrorist entity and our government is very, very clear on that. We have also been really clear that there needs to be a ceasefire, that a humanitarian catastrophe is happening right now in Gaza, and Canada and Canadians are there to support the people, the suffering people, there, too.”

This is how the PM answers questions, too. It’s a pattern that, once seen, will never been unseen. The problem for Freeland is that the PM is better at it. He’s smoother and quicker on his feet. His evasive non-answers sound more natural, but have begun to get old in recent years, as foreign journalists are generally better at pointing out than Canadian ones. Freeland has never been comfortable doing talking-point politics, and has always sounded extremely unconvincing when she tries.

January 30, 2024

How did Justice Mosley manage to avoid mentioning the huge pachyderm in the room?

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

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:

“The Elephant in the Room” by BitBoy is licensed under CC BY 2.0 .

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.

January 25, 2024

By invoking the Emergencies Act, “the government unjustifiably violated Canadians’ constitutional rights”

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

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.

January 9, 2024

“[P]olitical violence is never ever acceptable in the United States political system”

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

Mark Steyn gets the message:

~I’m glad to see I wasn’t the only one who got a mordant laugh out of this line in Joe Biden’s Feast of the Insurrection sermon:

So “political violence is never ever acceptable in the United States political system. Never, never, never. It has no place in a democracy. None.”

An odd thing to say about a “political system” in which Lieutenant Michael Byrd was able to kill Ashli Babbitt in cold blood as his Capitol Police colleagues were able to do likewise to another defenceless woman, Mariam Carey. I would hope to be wrong, but I would be surprised if America gets through this year without more “political violence” — because one side seems to be fomenting it as a pretext for intensifying what Mr Kelly calls their “monopoly” on it.

That monopoly is part of a broader problem in the United States: the abolition of equality before the law. If you can avoid getting dispatched as swiftly as Ms Babbitt, you will nevertheless have what remains of your life ruined by detention without trial, solitary confinement, double-digit years of prison with no possibility of parole … Americans have gotten the message. Do you recall, after the Canadian truckers’ heroic Covid protests inspired the world, there was talk of a similar American Freedom Convoy?

Oh, you don’t remember? Me neither. That’s because it all fizzled out, as its proponents figured that the dirty stinkin’ rotten corrupt US Department of Justice would just treat it as January 6th on wheels.

~Of course, it didn’t work out too great for the Canadian truckers, either: Frozen bank accounts, protracted prosecution … Small potatoes by US DOJ standards, and Lieutenant Byrd wasn’t around to shoot them dead, but it has certainly been fierce and targeted by Canadian standards. Why? Because in Ottawa the “traffic disruption impacted residents’ lives in many ways”.

On the other hand, “pro-Palestinian” groups are currently disrupting traffic in Toronto. For over a week they’ve shut down the Avenue Road bridge over the 401. Why?

Well, it’s a key artery into Toronto’s and Canada’s most Jewish neighbourhood. But, relax: they’re not anti-Jew, they’re just anti-Zionist. After all, many of these Jews in Armour Heights and Bathurst Manor are out every night bombing Gaza daycare centres. It’s part of the same expansive definition of “pro-Palestinian” that has seen International Delicatessen Foods attacked because it has the same acronym as the Israeli Defence Force. But don’t worry, they’re not anti-Semites, just acro-Semites. If I were the famous Japanese tea master Takeno Jōō, I would hire additional security. But fortunately he died in 1555 …

Yet, as I said, it all comes down to equality before the law. The Canadian truckers handed out coffee and doughnuts to locals and are still in the dock two years on. Whereas on the blockaded Avenue Road overpass the Toronto Police deliver coffee and doughnuts to the pro-Hamas lads:

Roll up the Jews to win! In the old days, the German coppers pleaded that they were just obeying orders, but, as Kate MacMillan points out, the Toronto constables are just taking orders. Did you hear the way that fellow put it? “The police are now becoming our little messengers.”

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