TRUDEAU IS WATCHING

Once a liberal democracy, Canada is now an authoritarian state

TWO decades ago, when I was 4 years old, my parents immigrated to Canada from India in search of greater freedoms, autonomy and economic opportunities. They’re core Canadian values — enshrined in our national anthem, which gloriously heralds “The True North strong and free.”

However, the past two years have seen a near complete erosion of the foundational liberal values that have attracted millions of immigrants like myself to this country.

Under the once-righteous guise of COVID safety and online protections, the Canadian government has taken its power to extreme levels once only imaginable — let alone permissible — in a dissent-stifling authoritarian state.

The control has extended to nearly every element of Canadian society, but nowhere more so than in our everyday personal lives. Take my own case contending with Canada’s COVID bureaucracy a few months back.

I was returning to Canada from the US when multiple Air Canada employees refused to let me on the plane. Although I had a negative COVID test, the government was suddenly requiring even returning citizens to be vaccinated (unvaccinated foreigners were already barred from entering).

Since the most documented adverse effect associated with COVID vaccination — heart inflammation — is concentrated in young men ages 1525, I chose not to get vaccinated. I am 21 years old, have already recovered from COVID and have no comorbidities. I’m at low risk from serious COVID illness, which is why I remain unvaccinated. But this can make air travel difficult — especially in Canada.

Minutes before my boarding gate was closed, a sympathetic Air Canada staffer “begged” his manager to let me board the plane. “I just gave you a massive favor. No one else would do this,” he said as I finally made my way down the jetway.

In the Canada of Justin Trudeau’s making, you must now go to extreme measures simply to be allowed to return to your own nation. And for what?

COVID is just the beginning of the Canadian madness. The internationally recognized trucker protests earlier this year were the most flagrant display of political control ever witnessed within the ranks of the Canadian government. After trying to dismiss the truckers as a “fringe minority” of “swastika wavers,” Trudeau manufactured a National Emergency in order to justify truly outrageous tactics. Not only did