“This is the man whom Canadians have thrice elected, which speaks for a country that—with the exception of a courageous and steadfast minority—no longer values its freedoms and traditions. Fear and ignorance triumph over patriotism and reason. Some might be inclined to argue that Canadians had little choice given there was no credible opposition and that vote-heavy Toronto, Montreal and Halifax effectively determine the outcomes of elections in this country. Nonetheless, Trudeau was always a popular favorite despite his autocratic nature and a clear tendency to abuse his office. Trudeau is working to remake Canada in his own tarnished image. He can do no other. That is who he is.”
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Samizdata quote of the dayFebruary 20th, 2022 |
 39 comments to Samizdata quote of the day |
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I do not believe that Mr Trudeau would get many votes now.
Yes the education system (both the government and most private schools) is controlled by the Collectivists – and so is the media (both government and corporate) – but I believe that most people, when confronted by such obvious evil, would reject it (at least in a secret ballot – where they could not be punished by their employer for having “reactionary” opinions).
The human soul (in the Aristotelian sense – agency, free will) does exist – surely most people can not still be convinced by the endless lies of the education system and the media?
Or am I just being a silly old man clinging to false hope.
It must be remembered that Mr Trudeau himself is nothing special – he is just a blatant example of a movement of evil that is sweeping the world. None of these ideas are his own – he is just doing what he has been taught to do, following “the agenda”, “the narrative”. It is just with Mr Trudeau (precisely because he is a hollow person) it is all horribly obvious.
Those who look at Canada now from the outside are, unless this ideology is driven back, looking at their own future – all over the Western world.
As an expat Canadian I despair for my homeland.
Paul Marks, I doubt if Trudeau will suffer much among the electorate for the reasons David Solway points out.
I have family and friends there and most just seem to go with the leftist flow wherever it leads.
Globalist WEF pulling Canadian strings?
Here’s something that might surprise (even here). A Canadian MP was brave/foolish enough to ask the question in parliament:
The speaker quickly shuts him down, dubiously claiming the audio and video were bad. But the question was clear enough. The video then switches from the Canadian parliament to an actual recording of Klaus Schwab boasting exactly that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LENRhxcwe8Y
And some notable Canadians (like Jordan Peterson) wonder WTF is happening
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRSyLI15ZCw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfDGAvQhd6o
Senator Kennedy’s (Louisiana)comment sums up Trudeau. If you’re going to be a smart ass, first you have to be smart, otherwise you’re just an ass.
Some Canadians. Trudeau lost both the popular vote and his parliamentary majority in the 2019 election. In the September 2021 election, his party set a record for the lowest vote share (32.6%) of a party that would go on to form a government, less than the Conservatives (just as they lost the popular vote to the Conservatives in 2019), but getting more seats. The political situation in Canada is ugly, but would be uglier still if Trudeau headed a majority seat and vote government.
But remember, what he lost in that election, he lost to parties and candidates who are more progressive, more leftist, than he and his party. It wasn’t as if conservatism almost made it back into power. Conservatism lost votes compared to the previous election.
Trudeau is Canada’s centrist placeholder.
bobby b (February 20, 2022 at 6:18 pm), your remark is all too true but still leaves short-term dangers for both Trudeau and wokeness. Canada’s system, like the UK’s, has a winner-takes-all quality. Trudeau got 160 seats from less than a third of the vote, with his left-wing rival getting 25 seats from just under 18% of it while the Quebec regional (like the SNP over here) does very well with 32 from under 8%.
My (un-researched, UK-comparison) guestimate is that Trudeau cannot be that far from tipping point, both as regards the Canadian Tories and as regards a repartition of the freedom-hating vote with the party to his left, which could cost him much while gaining his woker-than-thou rivals little.
That anything-but-assured outcome would not solve the long-term threat to freedom in Canada, but might leave a legacy of thinking it unwise to grab emergency powers lightly. One can hope. (One can also, with all too much cause, fear.)
Trudeau is young, rich, and beautiful, and I can’t help thinking that he might well be deciding that he’d rather be doing something else soon. These past few months can’t have been much fun for him. He’s not been a paragon of achievement for most of his life, and now he’s done the expected “follow in dad’s footsteps” stage.
I doubt he gets toppled. I think it more likely that he simply loses interest and moves on, fairly soon. There are women out there to bed, celebrities to hang with, money to spend . . .
And my guess is, much of his support moves over to the NDP, and specifically to Jagmeet Singh, which would move the government further to the left, which would be a better match for its polity.
I know many good patriotic libertarian-leaning Canadians, but even they have to admit that the numbers aren’t there for Canada to improve in the short term.
And . . . and . . . (sorry for the run-on comments):
The Canadian version of the Tories – the CPC – is completely unmanned right now. They had installed the rather ineffectual Erin O’Toole as leader, but he pretty much just quietly went along with Trudeau in many ways, and the party just voted him out. So now, the CPC will spend the next 6-9 months fighting over who will take over leadership. Aside from (temporarily appointed head of party) Ms. Bergen making press announcements, I think the CPC is going to be a nullity for some time.
(If you get into process, Matt Gurney (read him if you want to understand Canada) did an interview with an O’Toole staffer immediately after O’Toole’s toppling that I found sort of fascinating. https://www.tvo.org/article/anything-to-end-the-insanity-a-tory-insider-on-otooles-ouster )
Henry Cybulsky – you may be correct, I just do not know enough to argue the point.
But I hope, indeed I pray, that you are mistaken. I cling to the hope that the people of Canada will realise that this Collectivism is evil – and will reject it.
I cling to that hope – because the rest of the Western world is under the same attack by the education system and the state and Corporate media. If people in Canada do not reject this evil – there is little reason to suppose that other Western populations will be able to resist this Collectivist indoctrination.
It is possible that Trudeau is using UN troops in Canada:
https://truth11.com/2022/02/19/un-plane-in-north-bay-canada-are-un-troops-in-disguise-as-canadian-police-at-the-ottawa-protest/
As the first picture states, there are no name tags, no police insignia, not police uniforms and they can’t speak English …
It would be “interesting” if one of them was wounded or captured and made to ‘fess up.
bobby b
Genuine question: do you see Maxime Bernier and his People’s Party making any significant difference?
Don’t be – the Matt Gurney talking to O’Tooler was revealing (or so I thought, but of course, I may be over-analogising it to the UK situation). O’Toole sounds like the Canadian equivalent of the sort of Tory leader who regards Tory voters as ‘swivel-eyed loons’.
I don’t see why the Canadian Tories would be such idiots as to take 6-9 months to choose a new leader – our Tories over here can knife a leader and install a replacement a lot faster than that – but you doubtless know much more than I about the process over there.
Anyway, how the protest versus the emergency act plays out, and its consequences, are the more immediate issues.
I am aware that my perspective is biased by the fact that my experience of Canada is mostly limited to Alberta, and my experience of the US mostly limited to the Ivy League. (Indeed, Arizona might be the only Red State that i visited — although California and Colorado were still Red, i believe, when i first visited.)
Still, i cautiously share the optimism of Niall and Paul. One reason is that the “Progressive-Conservatives” have consistently failed to elect leaders who can talk to the middle+working classes the way that Reagan and Trump could/can. If Ms Bergen (or whoever) manages that, it could be a landslide.
I wish I could say that, yes, the PPC will grow. But I think it more likely that it will remain mostly a spoiler – a party that can effect parliamentary elections but never gain real power from them (aside from the obvious “we’ll roll with you in exchange for . . . ” bargaining.)
In a country in which Trudeau is a centrist, populist libertarians are always going to be fringe.
“I don’t see why the Canadian Tories would be such idiots as to take 6-9 months to choose a new leader – our Tories over here can knife a leader and install a replacement a lot faster than that . . . “
Somewhat applicable (and sort of humorous):
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/02/15/canada-erin-otoole-conservative-next-leader/
The CPC doesn’t have systems for choosing leadership. It has accidents.
If only winning elections would solve even just some of our problems!
If only.
You cannot have people educated by progressives to have the concept of freedom. This is the result of decades.
Interestingly, if you follow bobby b’s link on ‘process’ it turns out Canadians have been looking at the ‘conversion therapy’ business, about the same time as the UK. That’s a fairly obscure issue, really; that it cropped up in both places more or less simultaneously says it wasn’t a coincidence.
More evidence if anyone needed it that what’s driving policy – what the (supposedly democratic) politicians are responding to – is an internationalist agenda, not the voters.
lucklucky – I agree that this is the result of decades of “education” by the Collectivists, but many Canadians clearly do understand the concept of freedom.
Perhaps some basic spark (agency – free will) is INATE in human beings – deep down, to emerge unexpectedly.
We had better hope so – because the Collectivists do not just control most things in Canada, they control most things in most Western countries.
We have to hope that humans beings are not just blank sheets of paper upon which any evil can be written and repeated back – that there is something (something) in humans that can resist the indoctrination.
That when evil is openly presented (when it is out in the open) enough people can, with effort, reject it.
“Proof Paul – Proof?” – I have no proof, just the desperate hope of a silly old man.
The unprovoked attack on the Ottawa protestors reminds me of the “Days of Rage”. I was in Toronto, on a family vacation, and heard the nonstop vilification and demonization of Mayor Daly, by the Canadian media, and by relatives, all day, every day. The difference between these events is that the protestors, in Chicago, were not all peaceful and innocent; the CPD had withstood hours/days of provocation (rocks, feces…..). Consider this. The 1968 Democrat National Convention was to be the jewel in Mayor Daly’s crown, his reward and recognition as a Democrat Party kingmaker. Nevertheless, in the aftermath, he was consigned to the Democrat Party wilderness; he became a leper, the relative that nobody talks about, the embarrassment, who is kept hidden in the basement when company comes. Not defending Mayor Daly, wondering if history will repeat?
Well, the “temporary” part of that Emergencies Act (freezing the assets of protestors) didn’t last long…
https://twitter.com/ezralevant/status/1494852056145969155
You will own nothing and be happy.
All your monies are belong to us.
Exasperated – that Mayor Daley was a lifelong Democrat, who had delivered the 1960 election for Jack Kennedy, meant nothing to the media. No matter how interventionist he was – Mayor Daley was anti Communist, and being against the Communists meant that he was the Bad Guy. That was how biased the Canadian (and other) media was – even in 1968. But then by 1968 even the Vatican (Paul VI) was a friend of Saul Alinsky – the world had already gone mad.
Rudolph Hucker – yes I had heard this. This does seem to have been the international governance (Corporate State) plan all along – Covid just being used as an excuse. They may draw back for awhile – and then march forward again with their plan to create a “better world” (in their twisted “educated” estimate of what a “better world” would be).
It is rather depressing – I do not deny that.
Here is a question: where does this leave the Anglosphere, to use James C Bennett’s term? Some of the most draconian policies enacted over the Wuhan bug have been in Australia, Canada and New Zealand. All three nations appear to be led by the “woke”; it also appears that large segments of their electorates are fully on board with the sort of scenes we have seen on videos from Melbourne and Ottawa. In the UK we have had a slightly easier time of it but only, I suspect, because the hypocrisy of the Johnson government makes it hard to justify measures. The US, while not a Commonwealth country, is like these other countries what I thought of as broadly liberal (in the classical sense), operating under notions of law, with checks and balances, a noisy media and robust public debate. The US, in parts of the country such as Florida, Texas, the “bluegrass” states, parts of the northeast (New Hampshire) and some of the mountain/desert states is reasonably sane. It is not yet cowed (and of course, it is armed). But much of the English-speaking world (not sure about India or South Africa) is in a mess.
France, Germany and Italy have been variously poor over this whole affair. I have a relative in Milan who to all intents and purposes is still locked down. Switzerland is a bit freer and more normal; Dubai has been grown-up to some extent; Singapore is heavily restricted but you can get in and out. Hong Kong is shut down and is being squeezed to death.
My father (87) did his RAF navigator training in Prince Edward Island in eastern Canada, and loved it. Years later, he nearly transferred out of the RAF to the Royal Canadian Air Force. I have relatives in the Rockies area of the country and some of my distant ancestors emigrated to the wheat-growing plains. I wonder what, in a parallel universe, might have been.
But we cannot give up the fight. I have noticed some interesting objections to what Trudeau is doing. Even the New York Times, the poster child Big Media symbol of left-liberalism, has blasted his stance on the protests. So maybe something is turning. Maybe, just maybe, it is dawning on the less stupid parts of the political spectrum as to how ugly what Trudeau is doing.
Side observation: Canada, NZ, Australia, the UK and US are all in the “Five Eyes” alliance on sharing information, a pact that stems from WW2. I recall reading that NZ is so much in the pocket of Beijing these days that that might have to change. But hey, the PM of New Zealand is a “strong independent woman”, or some-such BS.
Good article on NZ, Canada and the response of “Anglosphere” nations here: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10511693/DAN-WOOTTON-Canada-shows-end-Covid-going-bring-long-overdue-reckoning.html
@Jonathan Pearce
Thank you for the link-it really cheered me up.
What I cannot understand about all this is the insanely high correlation between vaccine mandates, face-masquerades and such-like, and left-right political orientation.
I know everyone here can explain this to me, but it still seems odd.
I had a conversation with a typical (female, minority, lefty) academic today and was rendered speechless when I discovered that she was “vaccine hesitant”. I think she is the first I have spoken to in two years who goes against the grain of this extraordinary congruence.
Apologies if that seems a little OT but, of course, what we have in Canada (and NZ) at the mo, is the leftist elites using Covid to justify oppression of the libertarians (and the right). The reason they are winning is because of the near lock-step alignment of their supporters with the unhinged rhetoric.
Look on the bright side: If the War of 1812 had gone the other way, Trudeau might be President in place of Joe.
For British readers, imagine if Harold Wilson’s (hypothetical) last-born son (by some miracle born on Christmas Day 1971) had decided that he wanted to lead the Labour Party, and took over after Gordon Brown, re-invigorating Labour despite outflanking Corbyn to the Left and had won the 2015 General Election and stayed in power, because he looks nice.
Canada is in its calibration phase.
Trudeau took Canada 100 miles down the woke road to fascism.
Now, everyone will take a “sober step back” and examine what’s gone on. The NYT has started this themselves. Certain aspects of Trudeau’s rule will be termed excessive.
In the name of “fairness”, Canada will step back ten miles.
Everyone will heave a sigh of relief that sanity has prevailed, and ignore that Canada remains 90 miles down the woke road.
It’s a ratchet and not a slide, but only for public relations purposes.
I think the Anglosphere totalitariaism is the more dangerous in long term because they will no go as far as Soviet and Germanic ones.
Yeah bobby b. That is what will happen.
NZ is not led by the woke. And while our Covid restrictions to the exterior world are certainly strict, we have had no political measures.
There are intense protests here at the moment, and the Government has resisted doing a Trudeau. Jacinda doesn’t have his authoritarian streak, nor his narcissism either. This despite having a genuinely large majority. (Note, I’m no fan of her, or most of her policies. I just don’t diss her when she hasn’t done anything merely because I oppose her.)
We are behind the world in getting the big wave of infections, so we will be behind coming out. But remember we were operating normally for a year while everyone else was locking down and mandating all over the shop.
Some people take Anglosphere exceptionalism as a boast. It isn’t — it’s just an observed fact. And just as we have our own partiular virtues, we have our own particular way of being nasty, and our own particular way of being crazy. Right now we’re in one of our periodic bouts of mass craziness and hysteria. It’s just another expression of things like the witchcraft trials, or McCarthyism, or the popularity of the KKK and the Populists. It will burn itself out eventually, but not without having done lasting damage. I have seen some wondrous and good things happen in my lifetime, but right now we are experiencing the downside. Most tedious.
Johnathan Pearce.
As you know the left are officially in power in both New Zealand and Canada – the policies followed are what one would expect, and such things as the assault on Freedom of Speech and other basic Civil Liberties started in these countries long BEFORE Covid.
What I find more disturbing is the line of policy followed in countries where the left is NOT officially in charge. Yes the Labour Party in Australia were more extreme that the Liberal Party government (indeed the Labour State Government in Victoria went insane in their extreme totalitarianism) – but the Liberal Party Government was hardly good.
In the United Kingdom also – such things as the lockdowns (as late as the start of March 2020 Vallance and the other top officials were openly admitting that a lockdown would HARM NOT GOOD – but then they just joined the international parade of lockdown ism), and the On-Line-Harms Bill can not be honestly defended. True, the Labour Party and the Scottish National Party were even worse – but that should NOT be the standard that Conservatives measure themselves against.
“We are less bad than the other lot” is not a wonderful standard. Not inspiring at all.
The central failure is philosophical – the Liberal Party in Australia and many of my own fellow Conservatives here in the United Kingdom does not “do” philosophical principles, “we are pragmatic”, “we are flexible” is the cry – and that is not a good attitude to have for the preservation of basic liberties.
“Pragmatic” “flexible” people do not tend to stand up well to international pressure (Agenda 2030 – or anything really).
The sort of “reactionary” “rock ribbed” Republican that one sees in government in SOME (not all – SOME) States of the United States, are just about the only people who will stand up for liberty when the pressure is really intense.
And that makes the “Anglo Sphere” rather small.
Too small to survive?
I do not know.
The “flexible”, “pragmatic” attitudes of many corporations are not helpful either. Which is why (in answer to Mr Drummond’s question on another thread) the side I am on is the side of liberty – and I am, therefore, horrified by how so many big corporations have behaved in recent years (rushing off to Davos, backing totalitarian principles such the “DIE” agenda, and-so-on). This is why I am much less sympathetic to their legal (and yes – to their TAX) advantages, than I was when I was a younger man.
If you keep spitting on me, on the liberties I hold dear, then (eventually) I come to dislike you – and, yes, even want to do you harm (or, at least, not defend you when others come to do you harm). And it is most certainly not just me – a lot of people have got really irritated with how the corporations have behaved (and it started long before Covid). With their “Social Justice” and their DIE (Diversity, Inclusion, Equity) totalitarian agenda – and (now) their support for the WEF-UN Environmental and Social Governance (ESG) system – the Western version of the Chinese Social Credit system.
“But Paul – in private such people as Jeff Bezos do not believe a word of the totalitarian “Woke” stuff their corporations push”.
That does not make it better – it really does not.
If a man is shoving me in a gas chamber, it does not make it any better if he winks and says “I do not really believe all this nonsense the party says about you people – I am just doing my job. The company I work for got the government contract for this camp”. “Public-Private Partnership”, “Stakeholder Capitalism”, “Technocracy”, or whatever you want to call it.
I do not want to see the “Anglo Sphere” ending up like that.
If you do not believe in something – do not do it. Stop being “flexible”, stop being “pragmatic”.
It is too late to stop things when full totalitarianism is reached – Fritz Thyssen (“I Paid Hitler”) repented of what he had done TOO LATE and he ended up in a Death Camp himself.
The time to stop these developments is in the EARLY stages (long before it reaches extremes).
We are still (even in Canada) in the EARLY stages of the development of tyranny – the time to stop these things is NOW – BEFORE it reaches extremes.
It is not too late – we really are still in the EARLY stages of the development of tyranny in the modern world, it can be stopped.
As I have just pointed out on another thread….
Mr Putin is influenced by the philosopher Alexander Dugin – who, amongst other madness, supports the (utterly useless) cloth mask mandates, and the (incredibly harmful) Covid lockdowns, even AFTER the injections which are called, under the the new definition of the word, “vaccination”.
People keep this in mind people – Mr Putin is NOT an alternative to the mask wearing Woke nutters on Twitter boasting about their injection status.
Mr Trudeau is not the only tyrannical lunatic in the world. And it is much less difficult to get Mr Trudeau out of office than it is to get Mr Putin out of office.
The “argument” of Alexander Dugin?
“I have lost two elderly relatives”.
Very sad – but in no way a logical argument for any of the policies that he supports (if anything it is a point showing the policies do-not-work).
Alexander Dugin may be a “trained philosopher” but he seems sadly lacking in basic Aristotelian logic.
Last I looked, Trudeau’s retraction of the state of emergency was not visible at all on the BBC website. Of course, they could hardly treat the retraction of something they treated as a very small story in the first place as important – but not to mention it! The Daily Mail, despite having another story to cover, did manage to report it under a banner headline. Even the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation mentioned it.
The most plausible explanation of the retraction that I have yet seen is that some Canadian Liberal Party senators were about to break with him publicly over it.
On the one hand, Burke warns that:
Although these unnamed people are not just politicians but Canadian Liberals, it may be some genuine virtue contributed to their pressuring him.
However, I also wonder if the polls and MSM reporting that showed most Canadians ever so supportive of the act were manipulated and puffed to a degree that both they and Trudeau knew of – and so knew not to rely on.
A hopeful point Niall – I hope you are correct.
The Canadian Liberal party did not use to be controlled by raving lunatics such as Justin Trudeau – it is to be hoped there are still enough sane Liberal Members of Parliament to deter him.
We will see whether claims that “a staggering amount of money has fled Canadian banks” have content although “there isn’t one report in any corporate press about any of this” as yet.
That would have been more relevant to why Trudeau so swiftly called the emergency off than the (also unconfirmed, AFAIK) liberal senators.