Trudeau’s Secret Plan: What he’ll do to us if he wins again, by Ezra Levant
(Rebel News, 214 pp., Paperback $21.99)
a review by Colin Alexander
Except for those who fled Communist and Islamist tyrannies, few Canadians have any conception of how a free and democratic country can transition into a police state and tyranny. But Prime Mister Justin Trudeau’s non-resignation has somewhat superseded Ezra Levant’s book Trudeau’s Secret Plan. It should nonetheless awaken Canadians to the saying, The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
On January 6, the Federal Court of Appeal delivered a decision that may be said to show how Canada’s justice system is becoming as politicized and untrustworthy as that of Hitler’s Germany. (The great movie, Judgment at Nuremberg portrays that outcome.) The Appeal Court upheld a fine of $3,000 against Levant for promoting, during the 2020 election campaign, his book The Libranos: What the media won’t tell you about Justin Trudeau’s corruption.
In the decision, Justice Wyman Webb claimed that “The fact that Rebel News planned to launch the book to coincide with the election was relevant.”
Really?
The Elections Act says this: “[A]dvertising does not include the distribution of a book, or the promotion of the sale of a book … if the book was planned to be made available to the public regardless of whether there was to be an election.”
Consider comparable wording: “The lifeguard planned to be available regardless of whether anyone was to be swimming.” In plain English, the words “or not” are superfluous. The word “regardless” means the issue, either way, is not relevant.
This example, among many others, is illustrated in Levant’s book, in which he analyzes Bill C-63, frozen for now, with Parliament prorogued. Trudeau’s Bill C-63 would empower the unaccountable Human Rights Commission to jail you, possibly for life, for saying things someone does not like. Judges already twist the meaning of reasonableness for authoritarian ends—as arguably happened in Levant’s book promotion case. Now they could also twist the undefined word hate. Anyone identifying a hater could earn a bounty of $20,000. And your accuser’s name could remain secret! The Commission could fine you $50,000 and award unlimited costs against you. Bill C-63 allowed no defence of truth, fair comment, or the public interest. That’s despite the Supreme Court having often ruled that there’s no cause of action merely for being offended.
This wording in Trudeau’s Bill shows its full horror as Levant points out:
“Everyone who commits an offence under this Act or any other Act of Parliament, if the commission of the offence is motivated by hatred based on race, national or ethnic origin, language, colour, religion, sex, age, mental or physical disability, sexual orientation, or gender identity or expression, is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for life.”
Criticism of accepted narratives is subject to suppression regardless of the facts. It is like Holocaust-denial to quote passages from the complete Truth and Reconciliation Report saying some students were thankful for the education they received in Indian Residential Schools.
Having appointed judges who were supporters and contributors to the Liberal Party coffers, Trudeau already “owned” the judiciary—thus debauching the credibility of the entire justice system.
Thus, his declaration of the Emergencies Act in 2022 was one of many low points for Trudeau’s administration, as well as for the police. The Truckers’ Convoy’s protest on Parliament Hill was peaceful, although disruptive. Evidently, Trudeau wanted a confrontation to gratify his power complex. Arguably, there needed only to be a court injunction ordering dispersal. Claiming as they did to be law-abiding citizens, truckers obeyed the one forbidding the sounding of horns.
With a few worthy exceptions, there was no limit to the shabbiness of the judiciary. Chief Justice Richard Wagner blathered in Le Devoir: “What we have seen recently is the beginning of anarchy where some people have decided to take other citizens hostage, to take the law into their own hands, not to respect the workings of government.”
For this protest and issues relating to Covid restrictions, the justice system and unaccountable tribunals used “ordeal by process” to punish dissidents. For the minor charge of mischief, it imprisoned Convoy organizer Tamara Lich for 49 days pending trial—as compared with the release on remand for many violent criminals. After months of trial and almost three years later, Lich still awaits a verdict from the court.
Nomination of the half-Inuit Mary Simon as Governor General was Trudeau’s ultimate capture—Nunavut’s former Commissioner Peter Irniq told me, self-deprecatingly, because he was, in his own words, a Professional Eskimo!
The Governor General is the final check on government overreach. The office has the duty to sign legalisation into law and to issue proclamations like the one for the Emergencies Act, whether to order an election, and her office holds the authority to prorogue Parliament, or not.
The Crown’s representatives throughout the Commonwealth have had to use that power. In 1926, Canada’s Governor General, Lord Byng, refused to dissolve parliament and forced the government into an election. And BC’s Lieutenant Governor Judith Guichon refused a similar request in 2017. In 2019, England’s Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Boris Johnson’s proroguing parliament for his convenience was unlawful. There being no binding precedent yet for Canada, this issue is now going to Court.
In his 1974 book Freedom and Order Eugene Forsey the Canadian expert on parliamentary procedures at the time, said the reserve power is indeed, under our Constitution, an essential safeguard of democracy.
So, what happens when the government has that safeguard in its pocket?
As everyone knows, the most disastrous failure occurred in Germany in 1933. The ailing Chancellor Paul von Hindenburg affirmed the Enabling Act , passed by a correct but pressured parliamentary process. Importantly, this act gave Hitler the unrestricted power to go to war and to implement the Holocaust.
In 2015, Conservatives said Trudeau was “simply not ready” to be Prime Minister. Many typically perceptive commentators failed to see that he could never be ready. It is obvious now that there was never a business case for Trudeau.
Levant’s Rebel News, these books, and other independent media are necessary for Canada’s ostensibly free and democratic society to survive. They comfort the afflicted, the victims of government or corporate overreach, and afflict the comfortable, often with abrasiveness. Levant’s important book is, at times, abrasive, especially when holding bullies to account. The book is worth reading, and Rebel News is worth supporting.
Colin Alexander was publisher of the Yellowknife News of the North and the advisor on education for Ontario’s Royal Commission on the Northern Environment. His latest book is Justice on Trial: Jordan Peterson’s case and others show we need to fix a broken legal system; and Ballad of Sunny Ways: Popular traditional verse about living, loving and money.