If Justin Trudeau had merely removed trucks from blocking a bridge in protest of vaccine mandates, it would be no big deal. Protesters for various causes routinely get removed from blocking traffic.
But that’s not all Justin Trudeau did.
He suspended civil liberties in Canada, targeting peaceful protesters and anyone who supports them. Not because those supporters committed a crime, but because they supported the political opposition to Trudeau’s government.Trudeau ordered all financial institutions to freeze the assets of his political opposition without court order and with full immunity from liability, and no financial asset was spared.
“The names of both individuals and entities as well as crypto wallets have been shared by the RCMP with financial institutions and accounts have been frozen and more accounts will be frozen.”
Trudeau has weaponized and commanded the private sector to do the government’s bidding in crushing political dissent. The
Toronto Sun reported (emphasis in original):
One of the most far-reaching implications of the Emergencies Act is what it prescribes for the Canadian financial system. According to the government’s new Emergency Economic Measures Order, every single bank, credit union, investment broker and insurance provider in the country has been deputized to figure out if they have a blockader as a client, and to immediately freeze their accounts if so.
Under normal circumstances, private companies arbitrarily seizing the assets of their clients is a great way to get sued. But the order makes clear that “no civil proceedings lie against an entity for complying with this Order.”
As for who can be targeted by these measures, that’s pretty broad too. The official proclamation says it applies to anyone participating in a “public assembly that may reasonably be expected to lead to a breach of the peace.” The general idea was to turn the blockaded areas of Ottawa into a “no-go” zone where anyone within could be arrested or their accounts frozen, but the Emergencies Act could conceivably be applied to anyone else interfering with “critical infrastructure” or disrupting the “movement of persons.”
It’s why Attorney General David Lametti seemed to say on CTV Wednesday that anyone who donated to Freedom Convoy could potentially face seeing their accounts frozen by the federal government. The question from host Evan Solomon was “A lot of folks said, ‘I just don’t like your vaccine mandates and I donated to this … should I be worried that the bank can freeze my account?’” To this, Lametti replied, “If you are a member of a pro-Trump movement who is donating hundreds of thousands of dollars, and millions of dollars to this kind of thing, then you ought to be worried.”
The goal is not just to crush political dissent, it’s to crush the opposition’s spirit by depriving them of their livelihoods, ability to survive financially, and even taking their pets.
Fascism is an overused and elastic term that in our politics mostly is used against Republicans for anything liberals don’t like. Donald Trump calling people names on Twitter is not fascism. Justin Trudeau commanding private businesses unilaterally and without legal consequence to freeze the assets of his political opposition and their supporters is fascism.
Trudeau is dangerous not just because he’s abusing Canadians, but because he is providing the wish list for crackdowns by Democrats in the U.S.
We see it already. Big tech corporations do the Democrats’ bidding in silencing critics through deplatforming, censoring content from publication or social media sharing, deplatforming websites from hosting companies and, as in the case of Parler, from the cloud and app stores. Funding platforms like GoFundMe are pressured to suspend fundraising and deprive the beneficiary of the donations, and payment processors and banks are pressured to cut off deplorables. Removing the political opposition from the modern financial and technology systems is what Justin Trudeau is doing, and it’s the dream of the political progressives in the U.S.
It’s already happening here, though not with the brazenness of Trudeau. The Biden administration gives cover to and encourages every one of the actions listed in the preceding paragraph by declaring political opposition domestic terrorists (even parents at school boards), and by broadly blurring the distinction between policial dissent and terrorism. Social media platforms openly are solicited by the Biden administration to crack down on dissent.The situation here is not yet as dire as in Canada. And I still believe our courts and collective national will would not allow what is happening in Canada to happen here. But I also never thought the government would be empowered as it was, with scant judicial interference, in locking down the country for Covid, or that private citizens would become the government’s enforcers.
When fascism comes to America, it will look like Justin Trudeau’s Canada.
