The next paragraphs recount Part I of The Dictator and the Truckers to set the stage for the following sequel:
By late 2021, nearly nine out of every ten Canadians five years and older had been vaccinated against Covid-19. The remainder, genuinely fearful of adverse health effects that the short testing period could not reveal, chose to forego vaccination. Justin Trudeau, the nation’s Prime Minister, condemned those law-abiding Canadians as irresponsible and dangerous “anti-vaxxers” and forbade them from accessing public air or ground transportation.
In early 2022, declining case numbers and low fatalities motivated Canada’s provinces to signal the impending end of vaccine mandates. After enduring the pandemic for two years, the people greatly rejoiced. It was a time for healing the vaccination-status wounds that had divided friends, families, workplaces and organizations.
But instead of bringing him joy, the prospect of national harmony posed a problem for the divisive Prime Minister who had used vicious attacks on vaccine-fearing citizens to help win re-election and had subsequently shut down the nation’s Parliament, giving him the near-dictatorial powers he had coveted since expressing admiration for China’s “basic dictatorship” years before. He intensified his vilification of the unvaccinated, calling them “misogynists and racists.”
To strengthen his uncertain hold on power – he after all led a minority government that had won fewer votes than his main opponents – he needed to attack a more specific target. With the cunning of a jackal and the shamelessness of a hyena, he selected transport truckers – the same hard-working, dedicated Canadians of all races whom he had earlier praised for “working day and night to make sure our shelves are stocked.” Truckers who, before vaccines were even available, risked their health driving to the U.S. to bring back essential goods.
Trudeau now proclaimed that unvaccinated truckers crossing the border would be required to “quarantine” for two weeks, a condition that was impossible to meet for truckers whose jobs required them to keep their cargoes moving. After two years of safely serving their country, unvaccinated truckers and the many who stood in solidarity with them would now be thrown out of work. In late January 2022, massive “Freedom Convoys” of truckers and supportive Canadians from across the country converged on Ottawa.
The Sequel
The truckers’ foremost request was for a meeting with the Prime Minister to express their concerns. But having caused the convoy to form in the first place by throwing the truckers out of work, that was the last thing he wanted to do.
What apparently was on his mind was finding an excuse to use the federal Emergencies Act to give himself long-coveted authority to violate the fundamental individual rights that separate Canada from repressive dictatorships. A carefully crafted successor to the previous War Measures Act used in 1970 by the dictator’s father, the Emergencies Act specifies that it is to be used only in a crisis that “seriously threatens the ability of the Government of Canada to preserve the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of Canada.”
It’s hard to imagine how this petite and soft-spoken woman could ‘intimidate’ anyone, but Tamara Lich soon found herself handcuffed between two towering federal police officers and taken to solitary confinement in a dungeon-like cell with a tiny window 16 feet overhead. The next day a judge decided she was criminally responsible for organizing what was, in fact, a peaceful protest.
There’s no doubt the at-times boisterous protesters were an inconvenience to some locals. But how could these peacefully encamped truckers possibly be considered nation-threatening pariahs? That mattered not to aspiring Dictator Trudeau. In mid-February, he invoked the Emergencies Act.
Then came terrible scenes: massive numbers of helmeted police (many themselves unvaccinated, thanks to favourable deals negotiated by police unions) on foot and horseback, armed with batons and firearms loaded with rubber bullets, forcefully invading the encampments, seizing trucks and arresting their leaders. A photo of a fallen woman being trampled by a horse came to symbolize the callous violence of Canada’s once-hallowed law enforcement agencies.
The Emergencies Act also allowed government officials to seize funds donated electronically, totalling at least $10 million, by the thousands of citizens who supported the truckers’ quest to reclaim our country’s constitutional freedoms from the dictator’s grasp. Even more contemptibly, the donors’ bank accounts were frozen with the willing participation of Canada’s big banks, preventing them from paying rent, buying food or procuring other goods needed by their families.
Besides cracking down on the truckers and their financial supporters, the Prime Minister unleashed his apparatchiks to maliciously persecute a woman who had journeyed across the country to serve as organizer and spokesperson for the truckers. Tamara Lich, an Indigenous grandmother from Alberta, was arrested and charged with the indefinable crimes of “mischief, obstructing police, and counselling others to commit mischief and intimidation.” It’s hard to imagine how this petite and soft-spoken woman could “intimidate” anyone, but Lich soon found herself handcuffed between two towering federal police officers and taken to solitary confinement in a dungeon-like cell with a tiny window 16 feet overhead.
The next day a judge decided she was criminally responsible for organizing what was, in fact, a peaceful protest. Lich spent two weeks in jail and was then released on bail with orders not to communicate with anyone associated with the convoy. She was rearrested after attending a Freedom Rally where she was photographed near another person associated with the convoy. After serving another 30 days in prison, she was again released on bail after a different judge ruled that there had been no significant interaction.
As this B.C. Prosecution Service information sheet explains: “Persons who are charged with an offence are constitutionally entitled to be released from custody unless Crown counsel is able to justify their continued detention…including consideration of the background of the accused, and the risk to the public.” It is inconceivable that under Canada’s current bail system, Lich could be considered a public risk. Her constitutional rights to the presumption of innocence and to timely access to bail were clearly violated – and this seems to have been deliberate.
Meanwhile in Ontario, Randall McKenzie, a habitual offender charged with weapons violations and assaulting a police officer, was last June set free on bail. In contrast to the oppressive bail conditions imposed on the entirely non-violent and non-threatening Lich, and her immediate rearrest on the flimsiest of pretexts, McKenzie was released without major conditions other than periodically reporting to his parole officer. While out on bail, McKenzie then is alleged to have cut off his ankle monitor and committed a slew of additional crimes, culminating just after Christmas in the ambush and murder of Ontario Provincial Police Constable Greg Pierzchala.
Lich’s trial on her original “crimes” is set for later this year. There’s no doubt the Prime Minister’s henchmen want to teach her and all those who support her a lesson. Incredibly, the Crown prosecutor on her case has stated publicly that he will seek a prison sentence of ten years, something imposed only for very serious violent assaults by habitual criminals – if then.
A cornerstone of democracy – and one of the clearest points of distinction from dictatorship – is the prohibition of government interference in the judicial process. Tamara Lich’s treatment takes a jackhammer to that cornerstone, moving our country closer to Trudeau’s vision of a “basic dictatorship.”
By declaring the Emergencies Act, the Prime Minister succeeded in removing the truckers, freezing the funds donated to support them, preventing the donors from accessing their personal bank accounts and persecuting their leaders, obliterating the very freedoms they sacrificed so much to preserve.
The ‘elephant in the room’ unmentioned in any of those 2,000 pages on the Emergencies Act is that the Prime Minister had prompted the truckers’ protest by maliciously imposing vaccination mandates he knew would throw them out of work if they failed to comply. Thankfully, the judge’s ruling is only administrative and doesn’t bind Canada’s courts.
This lamentable episode in Canada’s history started with the imposition of vaccination mandates. But evidence has steadily emerged vindicating those who chose to remain unvaccinated due to the risk of adverse side effects. Unlike previous vaccines that were subjected to five-to-ten-year, multi-phase testing, the Covid-19 vaccines received U.S. “Emergency Use Authorization” after just a few weeks of testing.
Two years after introduction of these purported pharmaceutical wonders, vaccinated young athletes are suddenly dropping dead of heart failure from a condition called myocarditis. There has also been an increase in the frequency of pericarditis (heart inflammation). Other serious conditions reported are blood-clotting disorders, Bell’s Palsy, Guillainé-Barr Syndrome and anaphylaxis. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), a publicly available database, shows a cumulative total of 1,494,382 adverse events as of December 30, 2022 – including a shocking 36,849 deaths, 37,685 life-threatening events and 64,493 permanent disabilities – associated with receiving the Covid-19 vaccines.
Despite this U.S. experience and a recent statement by Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer, Theresa Tam, that Covid-19 has reached a “steady state,” provincial health authorities continue to urge multiple booster shots, claiming the health risks from contracting Covid-19 are higher than the so-called “rare” side effects. Most worrisome is the push to vaccinate children as young as five, with no way of determining the vulnerability of their young bodies to DNA-altering drugs.
That brings us back to Justin Trudeau’s vindictive and medically baseless attack on unvaccinated truckers that ignited the Truckers’ Convoy in the first place.
The Emergencies Act requires a judge be appointed to hold hearings and determine whether the “sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of Canada” were threatened when the Act was invoked, i.e., whether use of this repressive law was necessary and justified. After conducting extensive hearings and writing a 2,000-page report, the investigating judge “reluctantly” determined that it was. That comes as little surprise since the Act, perversely, specifies that the judge be selected by the Prime Minister – the very person who chose to impose it.
The “elephant in the room” unmentioned in any of those 2,000 pages is that the Prime Minister had prompted the truckers’ protest by maliciously imposing vaccination mandates he knew would throw them out of work if they failed to comply. Thankfully, the judge’s ruling is only administrative and doesn’t bind Canada’s courts.
Separate applications to the Federal Court of Canada have been filed by the Canadian Constitution Foundation and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, organizations whose mission is to defend the fundamental freedoms of Canadians. It will be those judges – and, perhaps ultimately, the nine justices of the Supreme Court of Canada – who will determine whether the Prime Minister’s declaration of the Emergencies Act met the legal conditions of a threat to the “sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of Canada.”
And whether the Prime Minister’s divisive, dictatorial agenda will prevail.
Gwyn Morgan is a retired business leader who was a director of five global corporations.
Source of main image: The Canadian Press/Adrian Wyld.
