Trudeau predictably reverts to type: authoritarian

When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau professed admiration for China’s “basic dictatorship” because it could “turn on a dime” in an emergency, we thought the man-boy had just stuck his tongue in the socket again and his handlers needed a bag of those white plastic child-proofing things. But then he said to cope with the COVID-19 crisis we should surrender our freedom to a man on horseback.

Monday night Global News revealed a Liberal emergency bill granting “extraordinary new powers to spend, borrow and tax without having to get the approval of opposition MPs until December 2021.” Why?

They could already spend, borrow and tax. Why should all the silly barons, clerics and commoners shut up and let King John run things his way?

Global called it “highly unusual” since “The Canadian Constitution enshrines taxation as a power of the parliamentary branch.” That silly old thing? And the public outcry forced them to back down. But what an idea for prime minister, cabinet and bureaucracy to embrace even briefly.

To be sure, many people are reverting to type in this crisis. Amnesty International said controlling illegal immigration was illegal. Climate alarmists hailed COVID-19 as a model for fighting global warming. The foreign minister phoned other foreign ministers to say they should phone each other. NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh demanded a “firing freeze.” And Trudeau said burn Magna Carta.

If it’s also typical that I want intelligent scrutiny of the state in an emergency, my type beats Trudeau’s. He always considered democratic procedures a permissible luxury in calm periods but a frivolous indulgence in crises when we need a real man leading us.

It’s an understandable reflex. Get with the program. Don’t you know there’s a war on? Dissent is treason. Burn the witch.

John Ivison called COVID-19 Trudeau’s make or

break moment, where stonefaced “resolve” in barking “enough is enough” might erase the genial doofus public image. Oh great. Napoleon to the rescue. Just what we need.

No. We need free societies’ habit of maintaining dissent in crises. Not always perfectly, to our subsequent shame. But as I noted in a recent Loonie Politics column, a very public munitions crisis toppled a British prime minister during the First World War and rightly. And if Trudeau makes a mess of this pandemic, he should be ousted. Exactly unlike Xi Jinping.

Indeed, the Chinese government’s performance on COVID-19 has been a revealing model of disastrous

WHAT AN IDEA FOR PRIME MINISTER, CABINET AND BUREAUCRACY TO EMBRACE EVEN BRIEFLY?

mendacity. They denied anything was happening, imprisoned critics and let the virus loose on the world while everyone from the World Health Organization to our health minister licked their jackboots. Now they’re lying about stopping it dead, and people still believe them. The New York Times told the U.S. to “repeat the success of countries like China … in containing the epidemic,” the same day the Epoch Times published leaked documents showing many new cases.

Communism is no model in normal times, and the last system you should emulate in a crisis. We need Magna Carta not the “Little Red Book” or the “Little Potato.” Starting with intelligent criticism of the idea that governments can save us all from the consequences of ceasing productive activity by creating wealth out of thin air.

Trudeau always believed it. Sure, he promised limited deficits for a brief period because his handlers told him otherwise he’d scare voters. But he never meant it. Now he talks of bestowing $100 billion or more on us like manna from heaven. But he’s really proposing confiscating $100 billion from some hardpressed Canadians to give to others even harder-pressed. Who’s going to pay for it and how in a weakened economy?

We also need pointed questions about sober medical voices telling us the pandemic isn’t as dangerous as it sounds, including German microbiologist Sucharit Bhakdi, and sober economic voices telling us the shutdown is more dangerous than it sounds, including William Watson in this newspaper Tuesday. (I’ve been in real self-quarantine for over a week. But only my body. Not my brain.)

Thank goodness for pointed questions on a third point: surrendering our ancient, time-tested right to self-government on a whim.

As I warned in Loonie Politics, predictable talk of putting partisanship behind us is misguided because the point of political divisions is to prevent government running roughshod over legitimate concerns. Politics is famously ugly. But the alternative to two or more sets of donkeys braying at one another is them all braying at us, which is not an improvement.

We just got a bitter taste of it. The opposition parties muted their childish rhetoric and were rewarded with a hard legislative elbow to the chest in Parliament.

Governments already have emergency powers and can already tax and spend. They just have to explain what they’re doing while doing it and justify it afterwards. And Trudeau didn’t want to.

Xi Jinping would sympathize. Thank goodness we didn’t.