“Criminalizing Dissent”

Governments are relying increasingly on controlling public “narratives” and vilifying dissent.

The heavy perils we face today include centralized governments micromanaging society, the growing prospect of global war, the growing prospect of forced surrender, and the replacement of reasoned debate and free speech with state-sanctioned “narratives” and censorship: totalitarian governance seems not far behind. This is a new kind of war against civilians for control of their minds.

The torrents engulfing us appear to be potentially catastrophic. In a few short years, the world has endured the COVID-19 pandemic, forced government lockdowns, extreme economic volatility, commodity shortages, and the World Economic Forum’s attempts to exploit this cascade of crises as an excuse to usher in a structural “Great Reset” in which global food and energy consumption can be strictly regulated according to the “climate change” goals of an unelected cabal. Governments are relying increasingly on controlling public “narratives” and vilifying dissent.

A majority of Canadians now oppose the federal government’s use of the Emergencies Act in February to counteract the Freedom Convoy protests, according to a recent poll.

Mainstreet Research polled over 1,260 Canadians over the age of 18 between Dec. 6 and Dec. 8 on their political views. One question asked, “Has your mind changed on whether the prime minister was right/wrong to invoke the Act?”

The Ottawa Police Service (OPS) and its former chief had no choice but to allow thousands of trucks to flood the city’s downtown during the initial stages of last winter’s convoy protest in the capital, and feared stopping them risked making a bad situation worse.

That’s according to closing submissions published Tuesday by the Public Order Emergency Commission, which is probing the federal government’s decision on Feb. 14 to invoke the Emergencies Act to end the occupation of Ottawa and similar blockades elsewhere.

This whole exercise was just a pantomime of democracy. Nothing can or will come of it beyond a reinforced knowledge that Justin Trudeau is the worst PM Canada has ever known and our ruling class is equally despicable.

After six weeks of testimony in Ottawa at the Public Order Emergency Commission, the federal government has failed to make its case that using the extraordinary powers in the Emergencies Act was justified.

The Emergencies Act is the successor to the War Measures Act. It is gives tremendous power to the prime minister and cabinet, including the power to create new criminal law by executive order. These are powers that must have a high threshold and which we all should be wary of in a liberal democracy.

Parliamentary staffers for the Liberal government expressed skepticism regarding Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s claim that the Freedom Convoy received “disturbing amounts” of foreign funding, according to internal emails.

The emails, which were submitted to the Public Order Emergency Commission and first reported on by Blacklock’s Reporter, detailed the political aides’ discussion around a media inquiry from the Wall Street Journal asking for clarification on the prime minister’s claims.

An Ontario court has rejected a request from two “Freedom Convoy” organizers to release $200,000 of frozen funds to pay for lawyers to defend a lawsuit launched on behalf of Ottawa residents and businesses.

B.J. Dichter and Chris Garrah are among a long list of defendants named in the potential class-action lawsuit filed in February, seeking damages for “civil nuisance” caused by truck horns, diesel fumes and other disruptions to residents and local businesses during the protest in January and February.

A week after testifying before the Emergencies Act inquiry, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Dec. 2 he expects police will take the appropriate measures to prevent a repeat of the Freedom Convoy as planning for a new iteration is under way.

“I think we have learned a lot, and I think police corps across the country have learned a lot about what happened last February,” Trudeau said during a press conference in Richmond, B.C.

Lawyers for “Freedom Convoy” organizers have won their bid to get access to unredacted versions of 20 documents at the Public Order Emergency Commission.

Lawyer Brendan Miller applied to have the public inquiry release information in government documents that it had blacked-out, arguing the information should not be protected by parliamentary privilege.

The Public Order Emergency Commission, which is led by Justice Paul Rouleau, has heard how the protests fractured supply chains, made a mockery of the capital city’s police and dented Canada’s international reputation. Amid all the revelatory details, Justice Rouleau has said that his focus remains squarely on the federal government’s decision to give itself the power to rule by executive order.

Despite the government’s extensive disclosures, it has not lifted the veil of solicitor-client privilege. The legal opinion that the government relied on to invoke the act remains hidden from the commission, the public and from the Parliament that retroactively voted on the use of the act.

The federal government is already preparing to deal with a new convoy protest being planned for February, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s national security adviser told a parliamentary committee Thursday evening.

Testifying before a special committee of MPs and senators set up to study the government’s use of the Emergencies Act to shut down the protest that paralyzed downtown Ottawa and blocked several border crossings last winter, Jody Thomas said officials are aware a second convoy protest is in the works and her colleague Mike MacDonald, assistant secretary to the cabinet for security and intelligence, has already begun to prepare.

Emails released through a public inquiry suggest federal Liberal political aides were scrambling earlier this year to figure out the extent to which members of the Canadian Armed Forces were supporting the self-described “Freedom Convoy” protests that had gridlocked downtown Ottawa.

The internal communications are among thousands of documents submitted to the Public Order Emergency Commission, which is looking at the Liberal government’s decision to invoke the Emergencies Act to end the demonstrations in February.

How’s this for hypocrisy?

At a time when celebrities, tech barons, and the White House are laying low about the gargantuan anti-COVID lockdown protests spreading throughout China, Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, is loudly virtue-signalling …