Who knew Canada had its own version of Cuban-style oppression?
Agovernment has reported “790 people indicted for acts of vandalism against authorities, people and assets, as well as serious disturbances of order” relating to recent street protests.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s actions against the Freedom Convoy that recently plagued the Canadian capital, Ottawa?
Close, but no cigar. “Cigar” is right. That was a snippet from a January statement by Fidel Castro’s despotic heirs on charges arising out of Cuba’s brutal put-down of uprisings last summer.
However, Trudeau’s government, not to be outdone by communist Cuba, has “arrested 191 people, bringing a total of 389 charges against 103 of them,” according to Fortune magazine.
Trudeau’s tyranny has rivaled his Communist counterparts: Police “deployed pepper spray and stun grenades to disperse crowds” and “towed away over 70 vehicles.” Not to mention literally riding roughshod into gatherings, beating peaceful protesters and confiscating food, fuel and video equipment of innocent civilians.
Moreover, according to CNN, the Canadian government, at Trudeau’s direction, “froze 206 financial products, including bank and corporate accounts; disclosed the information of 56 entities associated with vehicles, individuals and companies; shared 253 bitcoin addresses with virtual currency exchanges; and froze a payment-processing account valued at $3.8 million.”
The authority claimed for this quasi-Cuban assault on liberties? Canada’s Emergencies Act. As Trudeau’s justice minister acknowledged, employing this previously unused collection of powers was “extending the same kinds of principles and procedures” used against “terrorist financing” and “money laundering.”
How did our neighbor to the North’s prime minister get away with deploying laws intended to crack down on al Qaida or the Taliban against everyday citizens?
Simple. His nation lacks our tradition of restricting limitations on freedom.
It’s no coincidence that almost every protection in the Bill of Rights is stated in the negative:
“Congress shall make no law … prohibiting the free exercise (of religion); or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble.”
“The right of the people to be secure … against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.”
“… nor shall any person be … compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process.”
Yes, Canada boasts a
Bill of Rights and a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, to boot. But both were granted by the government only in the second half of the 20th century, after a long history of deprivations of liberty — not installed by the nation’s founders as ordained by God, as in America. Our traditions, instead, recognize the source of our individual liberties is not government and that all persons are endowed with natural or unalienable rights.
Government-given rights can be removed by that same government; in some instances, the rights of Canadians’ can be overridden by Parliament.
Consider how, at his inauguration as California governor, Ronald Reagan famously averred that freedom is always only one generation away from extinction (one can now add one thin national border or so-called “emergency” away). The Gipper also asserted that “those in world history who have known freedom and then lost it have never known it again,” citing with eerie foresight how “temporary authority” is used to seek “control even of the means of production.”
What’s to stop Canada’s government, having exercised virtually unlimited control over communication, finance, transportation and assembly without challenge, from repeating that gambit? To coin a phrase Trudeau’s Cuban fellow travelers would appreciate, nada.
Which circles us back once again to the “Free State of Florida.” True, we’ve seen troubling parallels stateside to Trudeau’s misadventures, in blue-state governments’ outrageous pandemic overreaches.
But another check and balance that scarcely afforded Canadians a strong federalist tradition has empowered Constitutionrespecting state executives like Gov. Ron DeSantis to protect our rights to earn a living, run a business and freely move about. Plus, oppose pseudo-governmental efforts by social media and other elites to “cancel” those with nonconforming (read, “mainstream”) views and force “woke” theories and practices onto children and the populace at large.
For those who look at Cuba and say it can’t happen here in America, as the same people would say it can’t happen in Canada either. But it just did happen in Canada.
Leaders like DeSantis and other governors have been vigilant in protecting our individual liberties and have rejected the use of government power to infringe upon our natural, unalienable rights. The Constitution remains a powerful protector of such rights with a basic premise to big authoritarian government — just say No.
Let’s pray America follows the freedom-loving lead of Florida as opposed to those of our neighbors, both south and now the north. Oh, Canada.