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Have Home Owners with Mortgages been Sucker Punched?

4/12/2023

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​A good friend has  told me that her mortgage has come up for renewal and her monthly payments are going to almost double.  The impact, not just for herself but for the tenant in her basement apartment who is not in a position to pay increased rent, will be enormous.




My friend is not alone in this predicament.  This is happening across the country, although it is rarely talked about in the media.

How and why has this happened?   Who is to blame?    Is it the fault, as some suggest, of homeowners for not anticipating a rate hike and buying above their means.  I don’t think so.     

Owning your own home is  part of the Canadian dream.   For most of us   it's  one of the primary goals in life.  Canadians want secure tenure – the knowledge that a landlord can’t arbitrarily raise the rent or evict them to open an Airbnb.

Yet between 2011 and 2023 home ownership fell by 2.5 per cent in Canada.  Today only 66.5% of Canadian residences are owner occupied. To put that in perspective, 48 countries presently have home ownership rates higher than Canada.

The recent decrease in home ownership is particularly surprising given that, with the obvious exception of the last year, interest rates  have for over a decade been on average the lowest in 50 years.  You would have thought that  would have led to a lot more Canadians choosing to become home owners.   It hasn't,  which I think, says a lot about the financial insecurity so many young Canadians have been experiencing in this era of precarious, contractual work.  The decline in home ownership was most sharp (averaging 7.5%) in those under  the age of 34. 

But what about those who could afford to save the downpayment and buy a house?  What choices were they making? 

At present,  fifty-one percent of new borrowers have chosen variable mortgages for which  the rate is not locked in, but changes according to prime or overnight changes at the Bank of Canada.  Looking at the chart below compiled from Ratehub  data you can see why they made that decision.  
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First, the differences in monthly payments between the different categories  are huge. Secondly, the risks really have not seemed great as interest rates remained stable between 2010 and 2021.  These people did not see themselves as being reckless.

But then came the sucker punch.  Since 2022, following the direction of the  Federal Reserve in the US,  the Bank of Canada has raised its overnight interest rate eight times. The rationale is  that these actions were needed to fight growing inflation.  Higher interest rates would limit people's borrowing.  In turn, that would lead to less spending which means demand would go down and prices would fall.  

Actually, that's a weak and phony argument.  Inflation didn't rise because we, the consumers, were buying more things.   The real problems lay elsewhere.  Among them  were high oil prices and supply chain problems, with many of the shortages  and subsequent mark ups in price stemming from supposed COVID related snarl-ups.  Then there was the alleged price gauging by large corporations who used the camouflage of shortages to raise prices and increase their profits. 

Both the Federal Reserve and the Bank of Canada know that, of course.  They also know, based on the experience of the 2008 bank meltdown, that, if interest rates stay high,  many homeowners  will end up in default over the next three years when they come to renew their mortgages. 

As to who will end up buying up these repossessed properties, one has to wonder if the history of the 2008 mortgage collapse is going to repeat itself.  Do we have a corporate landlord class gleefully waiting for the axe to fall on homeowners so that they can buy up property at bargain basement prices?   

But perhaps I'm just being pessimistic. Perhaps we have a caring federal government that will somehow come to the rescue of the tens of thousands of homeowners who are in danger of foreclosure.

​What do you think?


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Government and the Big Banks:  Who serves who?

3/25/2023

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Every year as I sit preparing my income tax submission I find myself asking the same  question.  Why am I allowed a 50% reduction on capital gains? 

Think about it.  Those who earn their money by working have to pay full taxes.  By contrast, those who passively make money through investments only have to pay half as much tax.  Shouldn’t it be the other way around?  

Canada’s  current capital gains tax preferences cost  the government $35 billion annually – with high-income families accruing most of the benefit. It’s estimated that 82 per cent of all gains go to families in the top 10 per cent of the Canadian income distribution (those with incomes of more than $196,000).  Moreover, 57 per cent are received by families in the top one per cent (those with incomes of more than $511,000). 

In the United States it’s a similar story.  The richest one percent of Americans reported an estimated 75 percent of all long-term capital gains in 2019, with the richest 0.1 percent—people with annual incomes exceeding $3.8 million—bringing in more than half of all gains.

So, given that the rich and super rich obviously don’t need this tax break why do they continue to get it? Does our government not know that  for every $100 of wealth created in the last 10 years in Canada $34 has gone to the richest 1 per cent while only $5 to the bottom 50 per cent? 

Apparently addressing growing inequality is trumped by the argument that tax breaks stimulate the economy.  How?  Tax incentives encourage people to invest more, we are told.   That, in turn,   leads to greater corporate investments  in research and development and to the jobs that go with that.  Ultimately everybody across the economy is supposed to benefit.    

Except that it doesn’t work that way, at least not anymore.  Investment money seldom trickles down into the Main Street real economy.  Instead, the stock market has, according to billionaire Warren Buffet, effectively been turned into “a gambling parlor’ in which large corporations have essentially become “market chips” for daily speculation.   

Take as an example  derivatives, which are basically side bets  between two parties that some underlying investment (stocks, currencies, interest rates, etc.) will go up or down. The gross market value of outstanding derivatives – summing positive and negative values - was $18.3 trillion at end of June 2022, a 47% increase within six months. To put that in perspective, the GDP of Canada is 1.9 trillion dollars. 

How do we begin to rein all this in?  One seemingly simple idea is to put a modest  “Robin Hood” tax of a mere .5 percent on the purchase of bonds, currencies, futures, etc.  The billions raised would be spent on public services.    It’s an approach supported by over 350 economists worldwide,  as well as by well known politicians, religious leaders, hundreds of charitable organizations and even some well known billionaires.

The idea, which is an expansion of the Tobin Tax on currency trades proposed in the 1970s, has been around for well over a decade. But, like the Tobin Tax, it has gone nowhere.  Why is that? 

You know the answer.  Wall Street  and the Big Banks of the world don’t want it and their influence over governments is enormous.  Think back to what happened in the 2008 banking crisis.  The Obama government had a choice. It could  rescue homeowners unable to make their mortgage payments  and about to lose their homes because of interest rate hikes or it could bail out the banks.  Obama chose the banks, effectively abandoning millions of homeowners.  Black American communities which had been specifically targeted for those sub prime mortgages were the hardest hit. 

So what happened to the nine million houses repossessed by the banks in America?  A large proportion were bought up at rock bottom prices by venture capitalist, Wall Street kingpins, hedge fund magnates and asset managers.   The US homeownership rate steadily fell from 69% pre crash to 64.2% in 2018. To put that in perspective, in big bad Russia the home ownership rate is 89%. In “communist” Cuba it’s 90%.

What happened  next in the investment world was predictable.  With little to no remorse, the banking executives  gave themselves bonuses  and then persuaded government to embark upon a quantitative easing policy.   This spewed out enormous amounts of money to them at low interest rates, thereby allowing them to continue unchecked with their derivative trading through short sales, credit default swaps, leverage, mortgage backed securities, etc.  

For an explanation of how the above instruments work out,  check out this video we made back in 2012.  Very little has changed since then.    
 
What does this have to do with the current banking crisis?

The short, superficial  answer to that question is not much. Recent bank collapses are largely the result of an insane interest rate policy over the last year on the part of Central Banks led by the US Federal Reserve.  That will be the subject of our next blog posting. 

But the central point of this posting is that we have an inherently unstable investment banking system lurking in the background which could collapse like a house of cards if things become unstable elsewhere in the system.  It's led by greedy, irresponsible elites who serve the interests of their own class rather than the greater good.

That governments since the 1990s have been letting bankers undermine and neglect their mandate to serve the real economy says something  alarming about the strength of our democratic governance, does it not?  Things have to change. 

Introducing a Robin Hood Tax or eliminating the tax reductions on capital gains won't make a huge difference  but it's a start.  These initiatives  would be part of much broader reforms. 

​I think we need another Occupy Wall Street revolt.  

Marilyn Reid

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Check out the abundance of Fake News surrounding the  Truckers' Convoy

3/1/2023

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Now that a year has passed since the Truckers’ Freedom convoy took their protest against vaccine mandates to Ottawa it’s perhaps time to reflect on the extremism that surrounded that event.  The COVERT ACTION Institute, a not for profit charitable organization, incorporated in the state of New York, has this week published a blockbuster article that does just that. 


But note.  The extremism they identify is not that of the protestors.  It’s the extremism of our government's and media's response – a response that was filled with misinformation and disinformation. We’ve republished their article below.  It’s a long, meticulously researched exposé with arguments that become more and more compelling the further down you read.  This will challenge your perspective on what went on in Ottawa.  


    Commission Reveals that Trudeau Government Lied About             Nature of Truckers Protests in Ottawa Last February
               to Justify Invocation of Emergencies Act                                                                                                      By  Ray McGinnis



Anti-vaccine mandate protesters were falsely accused of being rapists, white                    supremacists and violence-prone by a liberal prime minister who
                                      endangers Canadian freedoms.                                                                                                

A year ago Canadian mainstream media and politicians described an unruly mob headed for Ottawa. 

On January 26, 2022, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told Canadians there was a “fringe minority” with “unacceptable views” coming to Ottawa in a “so-called freedom convoy.”[1] 

A few protesters arrived in Ottawa on January 28, with the majority coming the next day

On Valentine’s Day, Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act to crush the protest. Bank accounts of hundreds of protesters were frozen. After the police crackdown on protesters, Bill Blair, the Minister of Emergency Preparedness, said it was “textbook” police action: “It restored my pride in my profession.” 
Blair continued, “what I witnessed [was]…an entirely professional proportional, measured response. They moved slowly, methodically, respectfully….I’ve never seen it done better than what I witnessed here in the City of Ottawa as they…peacefully as possible, brought this to a resolution.”

On February 22 the Liberal-NDP coalition ratified the invocation of the Emergencies Act. But a day later the Act was rescinded. The Emergencies Act legislation of 1988 required that, on the occasion of its use, an inquiry must be held to determine if it was justified. 

Justin Trudeau announcing he would invoke the Emergencies Act in February 2022. What Sparked the Protest? Truck drivers had been designated essential service workers transporting groceries, hospital supplies, factory parts and other critical goods. In March 2021, Trudeau had called them “heroes.” But in November 2021, the government announced that the truck driver exemption from vaccination would end, requiring proof of vaccination in order to cross the Canada-USA border. The Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Canadian Manufacturing Coalition, Canadian Trucking Alliance and Private Motor Truck Council of Canada were among those urging the government to reverse policy.

The Private Motor Truck Council of Canada (PMTC) warned that “over 31 thousand cross-border truckers will leave the industry.” The Canadian Trucking Alliance had similar estimates of drivers who would exit the industry. The PMTC estimated that, if the government postponed its regulation until at least April 15, 2022, only “22,800 drivers would exit the cross-border industry if given the extra time” to decide whether to get vaccinated.[2]

The government did not produce any statistics proving truck drivers, who travel alone in their trucks, were a source of Covid-19 infection in Canada. One could infer, by the government’s hard line, there was a solid basis for fearing truck drivers were spreading Covid-19 when crossing the international border, though not when they traveled interprovincially. 

When asked in January 2022 by the House of Commons Health Committee, “Neither Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos nor Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam were able to provide any data about COVID-19 and truck drivers.” [3] It was not enough for the Public Health Agency of Canada to advise all truck drivers who were ill with any symptoms to stay home. It was not enough to simply require truck drivers to take a PCR rapid test before a trip across the border, allowing drivers who tested negative to proceed. It did not matter that truck drivers were not interacting with retirees or seniors in assisted-living facilities, those most vulnerable. Or that the overall infection fatality rate for Covid-19 was about 0.25% with 99.75% of the population who got Covid surviving.[3]
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The new border restrictions for truck drivers at the USA-Canada and USA-Mexico border were outliers. In Africa, Europe, South America, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, truck drivers were deemed essential service workers. Concerned about supply chains and economic well-being, other nations gave truck drivers the same exemptions that were suddenly denied them at Canada-U.S. border points. 

As truck drivers headed from the British Columbia coast on January 23, 2022, a media narrative instantly emerged. It depicted protesters headed for Ottawa as the worst of the worst. On January 25, a CTV headline screamed: “‘So many angry people’: Experts say online conversation around trucker convoy veering into dangerous territory.” CTV interviewed Kurt Phillips, founder of Anti-Racist Canada, who warned that he had “seen people online calling the trucker convoy Canada’s version of the U.S. Capitol insurrection on January 6, 2021, for the truckers to ram their trucks into Parliament, and people encouraging the hanging of politicians.”[4]

The Convoy was next framed as an inspiration of Russian President Vladimir Putin. “Russian actors” had instigated the convoy. On January 28, CBC reporter Nil Köksal mused, “Given Canada’s support of Ukraine in this current crisis with Russia…there is a concern that Russian actors could be continuing to fuel things as this protest grows, perhaps even instigating it from the outside.” The CBC quietly retracted the statement on February 4th.[5]

On January 29, CTV journalist Mackenzie Gray posted a photo of an individual carrying a Confederate flag. Gray tweeted above the photo, “We’ve got our first [C]onfederate flag of the day here on Parliament Hill.” Florida Governor Ron Desantis’s press secretary, Christina Pushaw, responded on Twitter to Gray’s tweet, observing “You claim to be a journalist, so why don’t you interview him? You can ask him who he is—and why he is flying a Confederate flag. If you just post a picture like this with no context, it looks like you’re implying the entire convoy are racists. How do you know he isn’t a plant?”[6]

The Toronto Star reported “The appearance of a Nazi flag at the ‘Freedom Convoy’ in Ottawa drew widespread condemnation from across the political spectrum. Opponents of the protest said it was proof of white supremacist sympathies lurking beneath the movement’s surface, while supporters said it was unfair to paint the entire convoy as hateful because of a few bad actors.”[7]

On January 29, it was reported that a woman was yelling “freedom,” and dancing on the tomb of the unknown soldier. The National Observer asked the Chief of the Canadian Defense Staff, General Wayne Eyre, for a comment. He responded, “I am sickened to see protesters dance on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and desecrate the National War Memorial. Generations of Canadians have fought and died for our rights, including free speech, but not this. Those involved should hang their heads in shame.”[8]

On the morning of February 6, Matias Muñoz alleged two arsonists came to an apartment building lobby in downtown Ottawa at 5:00 a.m. Muñoz tweeted: “One of them taped the door handles so no one could get out.” This apparently included the arsonists. According to the story, a tenant, who saw the arsonists lighting a fire in the lobby, asked if they were truckers. And then decided to go to bed without calling 911. Which is what you would do if you knew you were in a building that was on fire. Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson held an emergency meeting of city council condemning the “malicious intent” of the convoy protesters. “Yesterday we learned of a horrific story that clearly demonstrates the malicious intent of the protesters occupying our city.”[9]

Convoy protesters were also accused of being terrorists. Ottawa City Councillor Diane Deans referred to the protest as part of a “nationwide insurrection,” and the protesters themselves as “terrorists” and “mercenaries.”[10] A repeated talking point was that the protesters intended to orchestrate their own version of the events of January 6, 2021, in Washington, D.C., here on Parliament Hill. Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, Justin Trudeau and others in the Liberal cabinet inferred a plot to overthrow the government was in motion. 

In early February, Bernie Farber, chair of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, decried an anti-Semitic flyer alleged to be the work of Ottawa protesters titled “Every Single Aspect of the COVID Agenda Is Jewish.” It turned out the offending flyer was from a photo taken in Miami, Florida, two weeks before the Ottawa protest began. 

In addition, the truckers were painted as delinquent parents whose children should be taken away from them. “I can only say that there have been ongoing reports regarding child welfare concerns, and that we consider all information received to determine the best response,” said a spokesperson for the Ottawa Children’s Aid Society. After the Emergencies Act was invoked on February 14, bringing children to the demonstrations was prohibited. If a child were in the cab of a truck, it would result in a potential fine of $5,000 or up to five years in prison. Ottawa police said roughly 25% of the vehicles in the blockades had children in them.[11]

In an opinion piece to The Globe and Mail, former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada Beverley McLachlin wrote “The Ottawa truck convoy has revealed the ugly side of freedom.” McLachlin wondered “what does this vaunted ‘freedom’ mean? The answer is, everything and nothing. Everything: the right not to wear masks in public places; the right not to be vaccinated; the right to hold Ottawa’s downtown residents and businesses hostage; the right to malign public officials and call for the Prime Minister’s death; the right to shout epithets at people of colour.” To date, no protesters connected to the Freedom Convoy have been charged, or face pending legal action, in relation to uttering death threats against Justin Trudeau.[12]

There were also suggestions in the media that protesters threatened to bomb the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario.[13] 

Politicians lined up to rebuke a protest they described as “illegal.” Yet, on February 7, 2022, Ontario Superior Court Justice Hugh McLean ruled the protest was legal. He wrote, “the defendants and other persons remain at liberty to engage in a peaceful, lawful and safe protest.” McLean also issued an injunction against honking of horns, with which residents and businesses understandably took issue. 

Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino stated that “threats of rape” by truckers in Ottawa was one of the catalysts for the Liberal government invoking the Emergencies Act.[14]  He also alleged protester trucks in Ottawa contained weapons. 

For a majority of Canadians following the mainstream news, the Prime Minister had fended off an insurrection. White supremacists, misogynists, and homophobes had been sent packing. Nonetheless, the nation would have to go through the perfunctory exercise of determining if there was anything to tweak regarding the Liberals’ invocation.

Passed in 1988 to replace the War Measures Act, the Emergencies Act legislation states there are unique circumstances by which the act can be invoked. These are that “The emergency must be a ‘national emergency,’ which means an ‘urgent and critical situation of a temporary nature’ that either ‘(a) seriously endangers the lives, health or safety of Canadians and is of such proportions or nature as to exceed the capacity or authority of a province to deal with it, or (b) seriously threatens the ability of the Government of Canada to preserve the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of Canada and that cannot be effectively dealt with under any other law of Canada.’” 

In late April 2022, Justin Trudeau appointed Chief Justice Paul Rouleau to head the Public Order Emergency Commission (POEC). By the time Rouleau was appointed to head the POEC, articles had already appeared in the press calling into question the media narrative about the Freedom Convoy. Indo-Canadian reporter Rupa Subramanya wrote several articles and was interviewed about her experience speaking with the protesters.

Subramanya explained, “I wanted to go there and make up my own mind. The reality of these protesters, the truckers, starting from Day One, is very different from the received narrative that was already in place—propaganda—because that is really what it amounted to. These people were a cross-section of Canadians. They were mostly working-class. I encountered people of colour. I saw new immigrants. I saw children. I saw women. I saw the old, the young. Franco-Canadians, Anglo-Canadians. A lot of camaraderie. I spent three weeks at the protest every day, several times a day. I didn’t encounter a single racist, white supremacist, or even a misogynist. These were some of the warmest, friendliest, people I’ve ever met in my life [after] two decades here in Canada. It was quite unusual that my perspective, as a person of colour who went into the protests, was so different from the mainstream coverage. There was this total disconnect between what was being said and what I personally experienced.”

The Ottawa Police Service (OPS) held a press conference on February 8 stating that no protester was under suspicion for the attempted arson of a residential building in downtown Ottawa. The OPS subsequently charged two Ottawa-area men with the arson in March 2022.[15]

On March 24, 2022, Interim Ottawa Police Service Chief Steve Bell confirmed there were no weapons in protesters’ vehicles in Ottawa. These and other allegations about the protesters were discredited in the months following the protests. Protesters had not called in bomb threats against hospitals, threatened or committed rape. The woman who danced on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier turned out to be from Quebec and was not involved with the Ottawa protests, despite the good luck of the media to catch her “freedom” yells with the cameras rolling. And video of protesters being beaten with rifles, kicked by police, and trampled by horses, put the lie to Bill Blair’s pride in the “textbook” police action to crush the protest in Ottawa. 

But, these news reports challenging the initial headlines dribbled out over weeks and months, and were under-reported. The majority of Canadians were still reeling and felt threatened, disgusted and agitated by the news reports about the Freedom Convoy protesters. Watching the nightly news, the specter of seditionist, violent, racist, white supremacist truckers trying to topple the sitting government set in stone an emotional scar that has yet to heal. For protesters, and those who supported them, however, the news coverage confirmed a slanted mainstream media bias resembling textbook propaganda.

Sensing the historic importance of this unfolding story, I flew from Vancouver to Ottawa to attend hearings one week in mid-November 2022.

It was revealed that earlier on the day the Emergencies Act was invoked, the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) issued an internal intelligence briefing memo. Titled “Operational Intelligence Report,” it summarized the Ottawa protest, stating, “The mood today was again calm, festive, and family oriented. Speakers were again telling people to walk away from agitators and thanked the police for remaining calm. Many of the speakers were promoting love and peaceful protest, some even taking quotes from the Bible. Speakers were also wishing everyone a happy Valentine’s.” The memo noted there were “children on Wellington Street playing hockey.”

Superintendent Patrick Morris, “the foremost authority in the Province of Ontario regarding Intelligence” with the OPP, testified before the POEC. He said of the protest, “the lack of violent crime was shocking….If there was an actual threat, then there would have been an investigation, and if it was an actual threat, I assume the Ottawa Police Service would have laid a charge for uttering threats.” Morris agreed it was “hard to lay a charge” “or even to ascertain if it’s an actual threat if you can’t identify the individual.”

Regarding the media coverage and statements by politicians about the protest, Morris stated “I was concerned by the politicization and I was concerned by hyperbole and I was concerned by the affixing of labels without evidence to individuals’ movements et cetera.” In a letter entered as evidence at the Commission, TDF lawyer Alan Honner quoted Morris’s letter where it states, “But now the public discourse is dominated by political figures and the media, and the commentary is providing a very different picture from what law enforcement collectively gathered. It is painting a different picture. It speaks to extremism. It offers parallels to terrorism. It speaks of sedition.”

Morris elaborated in his testimony that his letter reflected his concern about “comments made publicly, by public figures and in the media that I believed were not premised in fact….I was leading the criminal intelligence collection of information and the production of criminal intelligence in relation to these events. So, I believed I was in a unique situation to understand what was transpiring. So, when I read accounts that the State of Russia had something to do with it; Or that this was the result of American influence, either financially or ideologically; Or that Donald Trump was behind it; Or that it was un-Canadian; Or that the people participating were un-Canadian and that they were not Canadian views and they were extremists; I found it to be problematic, because what I ascertained from my role…I did not see validation for those assertions….I did not see information that substantiated what was being said publicly and via the media. And I found that the subjective assertions sensationalized…and exacerbated conflict….So the labelling was problematic to me.”

Morris further stated in a letter, “I do not know where the political figures are acquiring information or intelligence on the extent of extremist involvement.” He was emphatic, “I want to be clear on this. We produced no intelligence to indicate these individuals would be armed. There has been a lot of hyperbole around that.” During his testimony, Supt. Morris confirmed that at no point did he receive any reliable intelligence that there was any risk to national security due to the Freedom Convoy protests.” In cross-examination with Freedom Convoy lawyer Brendan Miller, Supt. Morris confirmed that at no time did any violence against property take place. No arson, no destruction, no vandalism, no bombing.[16]

Ontario Provincial Police Superintendent Carson Pardy, testifying on October 21, 2022, stated that the media depiction of the protest in Ottawa was “problematic. The narrative about what was happening in Ottawa was being controlled and was one-sided. There were a lot of good things happening. We heard about the bouncy castles and there were prayer meetings in the morning…. This is a family event. Bring your kids. There’s a bouncy castle. We can have fun.” Pardy found media rhetoric about protesters being extremists “problematic…because I’ve been involved in events from the past, G-summits…where we had a lot of extremist views. There was fringes of it…that were not a major concern….The profile of the protester at this event was unlike none that I’ve seen in my 36-year career. We had everything from grandparents. You know, my first day on this assignment, I was shown a picture of two officers that had worked for me in the past, who were retiring, who were in the crowd with the protesters. We saw children. We saw a lot of crestfallen police officers, military, nurses. So it wasn’t your normal group of people that you’re dealing with.” 

 Margaret Hope Braun, a mother of two from Peterborough, Ontario, was at the protest on Valentine’s Day. During her testimony before the Commission, she recalled: “I witnessed hundreds of roses being offered to the police officers. There was a lot of love. There was a lot of trying to heal the divide…being created between us and the police.…[T]he streets of Ottawa were covered in roses that day.” 

OPS, OPP, RCMP, Canada Border Service Agency and CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service) were pointing away from ideologically motivated violent extremist (IMVE) threats. CSIS reported on the afternoon of February 14, “Downtown Ottawa…was actually quite festive—not threatening to a passerby.” CSIS entered as evidence before the Commission that they “had no concern with IMVEs in Ottawa.” 

In the aftermath of the Valentine’s Day invocation of the Emergencies Act, Supt. Morris reported on February 22 the Freedom Convoy protest was “not comprised of ideologically motivated violent extremists. The actual leaders are not violent extremists with histories of violent criminal acts.”

Former Ottawa Police Chief Peter Sloly testified before the POEC. He confirmed it was “correct” that at no time before Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act on February 14, 2022, did the OPS issue any form of formal notice to the protesters that they had been designated an unlawful assembly and must disperse. The protests were not a criminal matter under section 63 of the Criminal Code. There was no declaration that the Ottawa protests constituted a riot. 

OPP Commissioner Thomas Carrique, with a certificate from the University of St. Andrews in Terrorism Studies, also testified. He agreed that, “based on all OPP intelligence and the intelligence provided by the RCMP and federal intelligence agencies to the OPP…there was no credible threat to the security of Canada.” 

Carrique confirmed it “would be my understanding” that in order to invoke the Emergencies Act, there needs to be a “credible threat.” He agreed that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms protected citizens’ rights to assemble and protest. He agreed that this includes protesting government policies. Carrique also concurred that the trucks that were arriving in Ottawa in late January 2022 “did so at the direction of police officers.”[17]

If the protest in Ottawa had become unlawful, as determined by the OPS or OPP, the Riot Act could have been enforced and the protest declared a riot. Arrests would have ensued, all under the existing laws of the Criminal Code. But prior to the invocation of the Emergencies Act, not a single charge of unlawful assembly was laid against any protester in Ottawa.

Serge Arpin, Chief of Staff to the Mayor of the City of Ottawa, testified that, by noon on February 14, 2022, 102 protest vehicles had been moved out of a four-block by five-block area in downtown Ottawa. Most of these had left the city. 

The protesters were on schedule to remove 75% of the vehicles from downtown Ottawa, and leave the city by February 16. With so many vehicles scheduled to leave Ottawa voluntarily, the need for tow-truck drivers would be moot. Remaining protest vehicles were to be confined to Wellington Street along Parliament Hill, taking up their complaint with the Trudeau government. [18]

Under testimony, Kim Ayotte, General Manager of Emergency and Protective Services with the City of Ottawa, confirmed that the movement of vehicles onto Wellington Street “got stopped by police.” 

Movement out of Ottawa, or over to Wellington Street, was not blocked or abandoned by the protesters. It was the police who blocked the movement of protest vehicles. Freedom Convoy lawyer Brendan Miller pointed out, “the difficulty in moving individuals to Wellington Street after the agreement was announced…was only stopped because the police wouldn’t let them on to Wellington and because the police then also stopped them from leaving the streets they were parked on…”[19]

The government’s justification for invoking the act was not based on any of the tests of the Emergencies Act being met. CSIS Director David Vigneault admitted the four criteria for declaring a public order emergency were not met.
1)    Was there espionage? “No,” said Vigneault.
2)    Was there foreign interference, sabotage? “No,” said Vigneault.
3)  Was there any serious violence associated with the protests? “No actual serious violence,” said Vigneault.
4)    Was there a plot to overthrow the government? “No. Didn’t even investigate. It was so nonexistent,” said Vigneault.[20]

RCMP officer emails reflected a lack of urgency. “It would be a stretch to say the trucks barricading the streets and the air horns blaring at whatever decibels for however many days constitute the ‘use of force.’”[21]

“There was no serious violence in Ottawa”Jody Thomas, the National Security Adviser to the Prime Minister, was appointed on January 11, 2022. A month later she advised Justin Trudeau to declare a national emergency. Canadian Civil Liberties Association lawyer Cara Zeibel asked Thomas at the POEC, “you understand that currently the definition of a Public Order Emergency in the Emergencies Act is tied exclusively and exhaustively to the definition in the CSIS Act?” Thomas testified, “The Federal Government legal opinion is different, and there will be legal arguments to that end.” 

Lawyer for the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, Rob Kittredge, took Jody Thomas through the CSIS Act tests for declaring an emergency. She confirmed there was no espionage, no sabotage, no foreign interference.

But what about serious violence? Thomas replied by swapping the word “serious” for “continual.” Said Thomas, “There was continual violence in the streets of Ottawa…” Kittredge asked her to be specific about what she meant by “continual violence.” Thomas identified “harassment, people being followed, people being intimidated, the noise, the pollution…”[22] Yet, incidents of harassment, stalking and physical intimidation are matters police address every day across the nation upon receiving a complaint.

I spoke on the phone with Freedom Convoy protest leader Tom Marazzo. Expanding on his testimony before the POEC, Marazzo told me he was continually in contact with the OPS Police Liaison Teams (PLTs) during the protests in Ottawa. He told me the PLTs would alert him if there was anyone blocking an emergency lane. Protest leaders, police and City of Ottawa officials all agreed that these needed to be cleared. 

Yet, on one occasion it turned out an emergency lane in downtown Ottawa was being blocked by the City of Ottawa’s own equipment vehicles. Marazzo confirmed that any protesters intimidating or harassing Ottawa citizens would be counterproductive to the aims of the protest. But the PLTs never brought to any protest leaders’ attention even one instance of a protester intimidating or harassing local residents. The disconnect between the rhetoric of protesters being violent and what was happening on the ground was problematic.

Eventually, Jody Thomas conceded, “No, not serious violence.” In a February 21, 2022, email, RCMP Deputy Commissioner Brian Brennan wrote “There was no serious violence in Ottawa, the main reason for the Emergencies Act.” 

Expanding the Definition of ThreatConsidering the lack of serious violence, Jody Thomas quickly reframed matters. She stated, “A Public Order Emergency is broader as defined in the CSIS Act.” She elaborated: “There’s a range of threats that need to be considered when you’re talking about this country, economic security; The threat of IMVE; The rhetoric of threats against public figures; The inability to conduct a livelihood in the City of Ottawa—as an example, the Coutts border blockade…; The threat to public institutions and the undermining of the confidence in public institutions.”

Thomas identified “economic security” as a national security threat. Yet, in contrast with the border point blockades in February 2022, the Liberal government dealt with the 2020 protests differently. From January to mid-March 2020, First Nations protesters variously blocked construction of a BC pipeline, disrupted BC Ferry sailings, shut down CN Rail freight and VIA Rail passenger service for over a month, blockaded an Ontario highway and more. Through eleven weeks of economic disruptions, Prime Minister Trudeau maintained the importance of engaging in dialogue with protesters to resolve matters.[23]

The Coutts, Alberta, border blockade and arrests of persons in possession of weapons were handled by the RCMP under existing Canadian law. However, the “threat to national security” was becoming fungible, an elastic term the government could shape for its own purposes in order to invoke the Emergencies Act at will. 

The Liberals, on a legal opinion to expand the definition of threat, invoked the Emergencies Act. Asked about the basis for the legal opinion, Justice Minister David Lametti, testified, “For reasons of solicitor-client privilege [he] could not describe the various kinds of legal analysis relied upon by cabinet.” Justice Rouleau told Lametti that, by taking this position, the government is asking Canadians to “just assume (it) acted in good faith,” to just “trust us.” Asked if he agreed “that Section 2 of the CSIS Act has a different meaning…a different scope based in its reference in the Emergencies Act,” Lametti responded “I will neither confirm nor deny that.”

In addition to David Lametti and Jody Thomas, another person who recommended that the Prime Minister invoke the Emergencies Act was Janice Charette. Named Interim Clerk of the Privy Council in March 2021, Charette was confirmed in her role in May 2022, three months after the Ottawa protests. She has a B.A. in Commerce and served in a number of capacities as Deputy Minister of Human Resources, as well as for Immigration and Health Canada. However, Charette had no background in national security. She said under oath, “I’m not an expert in any of these domains. My assessment from a layman’s point of view was it [the protest] was not legal.” Charette’s assertion contradicted Ontario court rulings on February 7, and again on February 16, 2022 that the protest was legal. 

“A meaning can have different meanings at the end”Ms. Charette fretted that the government “didn’t really have a full 360-degree view” of the protest. She urged her Incident Response Group to “really think outside the box.” Yet, this did not include meeting with some of the protest leaders. Since early February, protest leaders sought a meeting with senior Public Health Agency of Canada staff and politicians. Still, the government declined to meet with protest leaders, even to gain a more expansive view of the facts on the ground.[24]

Deputy Clerk of the Privy Council, and Associate Secretary to the Cabinet, Nathalie Drouin, explained one of the reasons the Prime Minister was advised to invoke the Emergencies Act. “[We] couldn’t wait to invoke the Emergencies Act because then it would have been a national security threat.” By waiting any longer, Drouin explained, “we would have been in a situation where the threat would have materialized.” By underscoring her panicked reasoning, Drouin made clear no threat to national security had actually materialized. Asked about the definition of “threat” in the Emergencies Act, Drouin stated a “meaning can have different meanings at the end.”[25]

Drouin took part in Justin Trudeau’s February 14, 2022, phone calls with the First Ministers of the Canadian provinces and territories. It was clear to her that a majority of provincial premiers opposed the looming federal government decision. Drouin summed up that viewpoint, “that there is a risk that invoking the Emergencies Act can inflamate [sic] the situation.”

Vulnerable to ChallengeJanice Charette was shown a memo where she commented on the legal advice the government was relying on as a basis to invoke the Emergencies Act. She stated, “In our view, this fits within the statutory parameters of the Emergencies Act, but this conclusion may be vulnerable to challenge.” The Emergencies Act states that it is to be a measure “of last resort” when all other options under the laws of the land are exhausted. 

Yet, not all other options had been exhausted. By February 14, OPS, OPP and RCMP did not view the protest as unlawful. Had it been deemed unlawful, the Riot Act could have been used to declare the protest a riot. As well, the OPS had signed off on a detailed 73-page plan with the RCMP and OPP to de-escalate the protest. Under testimony, Prime Minister Trudeau referred to it as a “so-called plan.” When shown the plan during his testimony, Trudeau stated he had never seen the plan. Nonetheless, he asserted he had “no confidence” in the plan.[26]

During Charette’s cross-examination by Canadian Constitutional Foundation lawyer Sujit Choudhry, she confirmed that CSIS Director Vigneault was not asked to speak during the February 13 Liberal cabinet meeting regarding the need to invoke the Emergencies Act. Choudhry said to Charette, “I would like to put this point to you.…[I]n a constitutional democracy, to prevent the abuse of executive powers by an elected government, it is imperative that the views of a professional non-partisan and expert security services be front and center and that they not just be a factor, but that they be at the core of whether a government decides to invoke emergency powers.”[27]

Nathalie Drouin jumped in, responding to Choudhry’s point by stressing other threats to the nation: “We saw kids, you know, being used as [human] shields.” Children were sitting with their parents in their trucks to keep warm. Children were making snow sculptures, playing in bouncy castles and playing hockey. 

When pressed under cross-examination to substantiate allegations of rape committed by Ottawa protesters, Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino said, “The absence of a criminal charge doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.” Freedom Convoy lawyer Eva Chipiuk tweeted in reference to a riot in Vancouver on June 15, 2011, after the Vancouver Canucks lost to the Boston Bruins, “Compare 1 night of Stanley Cup rioting where 268 people were charged with a total of 814 charges to 3 weeks of Freedom Convoy and 11 charges, ZERO hate crimes, and we don’t know how many of those were protesters because @OttawaPolice did not provide those details.” 

Preceding the Liberal cabinet retreat on January 24, 2022, Alexander Cohen, Director of Communications to the Minister of Public Safety, and Mary-Liz Power, Issues and Policy Advisor in the Prime Minister’s Office, were sending texts to each other. Their text messages discussed the best ways to exploit a narrative to frame the protest traveling to Ottawa as a “January 6-style insurrection” and as “extremists.” 

Vaccine Mandates and Canadian Charter RightsJustice Rouleau was petitioned to have the Right Honorable Brian Peckford testify. Peckford was one of the speakers at the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa, and the last living person who signed the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which was enshrined in 1982. 

The protesters were not only challenging the rationale for the vaccine mandates in Canada, but the infringements on Canada’s charter. This included the right of all Canadian citizens to mobility. Quoting Section 6 of the Charter, Peckford said to the protesters, “Every citizen of Canada has the right to enter, remain in and leave Canada.” As stated in all Canadian passports, “The Minister of Foreign Affairs requests…all those whom it may concern to allow the bearer [of the passport] to pass freely, without delay or hindrance, and to afford the bearer such assistance and protection as may be necessary.” But the Commission was not interested in having such an eminent person involved with the protest give testimony. 

Testifying before the POEC, Prime Minister Trudeau stated, “We have a robust, functioning democracy and public protests are an important part of making sure…Canadians are getting messages out there and highlighting how they feel about various issues. But using protests to demand changes to public policy is something that I think is worrisome.”[28] As someone who previously voted for Justin Trudeau in a federal election, I find his apprehension of the right to public assembly and free speech worrisome. 

Trudeau is saying Canadians have the right to protest. But if those protests are used to demand changes in government policy, the current Canadian government will tell those protesters that they have crossed a line. It seems the prime minister thinks of democracy as something that citizens engage by keeping their heads down, watching what they say, and not publicly questioning government action. The invocation of the Emergencies Act by Justin Trudeau on February 14, 2022, was political theater. 

It was not a last resort. It was a choice made by a government that would not countenance public debate about the basis for its continued pandemic measures. And by January 2022, by expanding pandemic measures, Canada was now an outlier. Where dialogue was the solution to address eleven weeks of national protest in early 2020, Trudeau closed the door to any possibility of discussion with protesters in January 2022 before they arrived. Documents entered as evidence before the POEC suggest the Liberals were restless to invoke the Emergencies Act many days prior to February 14, 2022. When asked under oath at the inquiry “when did the Emergencies Act come into play as a possibility?” Trudeau replied “from the very beginning.”

Under cross-examination by Freedom Convoy lawyer Brendan Miller, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland conceded that the regulation to force cross-border truckers to get vaccinated was to compel “as many Canadians to get vaccinated.” This was the real purpose.

Another indicator of the trajectory Canada is on is the matter of Dr. Jordan Peterson. Back in mid-February 2022, on social media, Peterson questioned the wisdom of interim Ottawa police Chief Steve Bell. At the time, Bell was threatening protesting parents in Ottawa with having their children removed. Peterson commented, “‘Children removed’ how exactly? Why, exactly? By whom, exactly? Sent to where, exactly? And for how long, exactly? Think this through, Canadians. This is a bad decision.” For this, and a handful of other political opinions unrelated to his work, it was announced on January 3, 2023, that Dr. Peterson faces a mandatory six-month re-education by the Ontario College of Psychologists. Otherwise, he will lose his license to practice.[29] The message to all Canadians when exercising free speech? Stifle your dissenting political opinions.

Did the Liberal Cabinet Break the Law?In early February 2023, Attorney General David Lametti lost a key Federal Court ruling on his use of emergency powers against the Freedom Convoy. Justice Richard Mosley ordered internal emails, contradicting Liberal cabinet claims of a national crisis, must be admitted into evidence in a court case with the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. Mosley found “Evidence of the cabinet proceedings that led to the decision to invoke the Emergencies Act was not disclosed despite repeated requests.” He concluded the internal emails were “essential to the just and proper determination” of whether cabinet broke the law.[30]

Over the decades, progressive and “classic Liberal” voters in Canada—like myself—have looked over our shoulders nervously at attempts by conservative governments to reign in democratic freedoms. Thirty years after the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was adopted into the Canadian Constitution, Justin Trudeau warned citizens to “listen very carefully to those who choose to divide, or play up fears and insecurities as a way of advancing a political agenda.” Ironically, Trudeau’s present Liberal government in Ottawa offers up a sobering lesson. An autocratic trajectory can also be instigated by political parties in the middle of the political spectrum, as well as on the “left.” This is no time for Canadians to be complacent.

Citizens in other countries should pay attention. What other governments might now feel emboldened by Trudeau’s actions, opt to freeze their citizens’ bank accounts?

Note: Justice Paul Rouleau, a former executive assistant to Liberal Prime Minister John Turner, released his Report on February 17. He concluded, “reluctantly,” that the Trudeau Government was correct in its decision to invoke the Emergency Act. Rouleau explained “I do not come to this conclusion easily as I do not consider the factual basis for it to be overwhelming. Reasonable and informed people could reach a different conclusion than the one I arrived at.” Rouleau recommends the tests named in the existing Emergencies Act for declaring a state of emergency—espionage, sabotage, serious acts of violence, plots to overthrow the government, foreign influence—be omitted. He recommends that perceived threats be the measure for invoking the Emergencies Act in the future. His report will be considered by the Trudeau cabinet as it crafts revisions to existing legislation.

  1. Rachel Gilmore, “‘Fringe minority’ in truck convoy with ‘unacceptable views’ don’t represent Canadians: Trudeau,” Global News, January 26, 2022.
    https://globalnews.ca/news/8539610/trucker-convoy-covid-vaccine-mandates-ottawa/ ↑
  2. Kevin Heppner, “Thousands of truckers prepared to walk due to vaccine mandates, warn Canadian trucking groups,” Real Agriculture, Altona, AB, December 13, 2021. https://www.realagriculture.com/2021/12/thousands-of-truckers-prepared-to-walk-due-to-vaccine-mandates-warn-canadian-trucking-groups/ ↑
  3. According to Health Canada, as of January 26, 2023, there were 4,560,962 cases of Covid-19 in Canada with 50,629 total deaths from Covid-19, that is, 1.11% or almost five times what this article states. https://health-infobase.canada.ca/covid-19/ ↑
  4. Ben Cousins, “‘So many angry people’: Experts say online conversation around trucker convoy veering into dangerous territory,” CTV, January 25, 2022. https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/so-many-angry-people-experts-say-online-conversation-around-trucker-convoy-veering-into-dangerous-territory-1.5754580 ↑
  5. “CBC issues clarification over claim Kremlin behind truckers’ protest,” Toronto Sun, February 4, 2022.https://torontosun.com/news/national/cbc-issues-clarification-over-claim-kremlin-behind-truckers-protest ↑
  6. Christina Pushaw, Twitter, January 29, 11:20 a.m. https://twitter.com/ChristinaPushaw/status/1487506015709011972?ref_src=twsrc^tfw|twcamp^tweetembed|twterm^1487506015709011972|twgr^|twcon^s1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ftnc.news%2F2022%2F01%2F30%2Fthe-canadian-legacy-medias-ten-worst-spins-on-the-truckersforfreedom-convoy%2F ↑
  7. Omar Mosleh, “Why banning hateful symbols like the swastika is nearly impossible,” Toronto Star, February 7, 2022. https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2022/02/07/nazi-flag-at-freedom-convoy-sparks-bill-to-ban-hateful-symbols-but-enforcement-is-seen-as-tricky.html ↑
  8. Nicole Thompson, “Anti-vaxxers danced on Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and desecrated National War Memorial,” National Observer, January 29, 2022.
    https://www.nationalobserver.com/2022/01/29/news/anti-vaxxers-danced-tomb-unknown-soldier-and-desecrated-national-war-memorial  ↑
  9. Ottawa police arson unit investigates fire lit in downtown apartment lobby,” CBC, February 7, 2022.  https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/ottawa-police-arson-investigation-fire-apartment-lobby-1.6342347  ↑
  10. Rupa Subramanya, “Ottawa City Councillor Diane Deans has upped the ante.” https://twitter.com/rupasubramanya/status/1582432989027258369 ↑
  11. Amanda Connolly and Ahmar Khan, “Ottawa police issue new warning amid convoy blockade: ‘leave the area now,’” Global News, February 16, 2022 https://globalnews.ca/news/8624024/ottawa-convoy-blockade-police-action/https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/ottawa-police-arson-investigation-fire-apartment-lobby-1.6342347  ↑
  12. Beverley McLachlin “The Ottawa truck convoy has revealed the ugly side of freedom,” Globe and Mail, February 22, 2022. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-the-ottawa-truck-convoy-has-revealed-the-ugly-side-of-freedom/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter ↑
  13. Rupa Subramanya, “Justin Trudeau’s case against the Freedom Convoy falls on its face: How are our elected officials who purvey what can only be called misinformation be held to account?” National Post, October 21, 2022. 
    https://nationalpost.com/opinion/rupa-subramanya-justin-trudeaus-case-against-the-freedom-convoy-falls-on-its-face  ↑
  14. Liz Braun, “Conservative politicians question sexual assault threat from truckers,” Toronto Sun, February 28, 2022. https://torontosun.com/news/national/conservative-politicians-question-sexual-assault-threat-from-truckers  ↑
  15. Craig Lord, “Ottawa man charged in February apartment arson, police dismiss convoy connection,” Global News, March 21, 2022.  https://globalnews.ca/news/8698744/ottawa-arson-freedom-convoy-arrest/  ↑
  16. “Supt. Patrick Morris, Sworn,” Public Order Emergency Commission, Ottawa, October 19, 2022, pp. 184-305. https://publicorderemergencycommission.ca/files/documents/Transcripts/POEC-Public-Hearings-Volume-5-October-19-2022.pdf  ↑
  17. “Comm. Thomas Carrique, Sworn,” Public Order Emergency Commission, Ottawa, October 27, 2022, pp. 229-245,  https://publicorderemergencycommission.ca/files/documents/Transcripts/POEC-Public-Hearings-Volume-11-October-27-2022.pdf ↑
  18. “Mr. Serge Arpin, Sworn,” Public Order Emergency Commission, Ottawa, October 17, 2022, pp. 194-329.
    https://publicorderemergencycommission.ca/files/documents/Transcripts/POEC-Public-Hearings-Volume-3-October-17-2022.pdf ↑
  19. “Mr. Kim Ayotte, Sworn,” Public Order Emergency Commission, Ottawa, October 18, 2022, pp. 208-277. https://publicorderemergencycommission.ca/files/documents/Transcripts/POEC-Public-Hearings-Volume-4-October-18-2022.pdf ↑
  20. “CSIS Director David Vigneault, Sworn,” Public Order Emergency Commission, Ottawa, November 21, 2022, pp. 1-162. 
    https://publicorderemergencycommission.ca/files/documents/Transcripts/POEC-Public-Hearings-Volume-27-November-21-2022.pdf  ↑
  21. “Emails Ridicule Mark Carney,” Blacklock’s Reporter, December 12, 2022. https://www.blacklocks.ca/emails-ridicule-mark-carney/  ↑
  22. “Ms. Jody Thomas, Sworn,” Public Order Emergency Commission, Ottawa, November 17, 2022, pp. 172-323. 
    https://publicorderemergencycommission.ca/files/documents/Transcripts/POEC-Public-Hearings-Volume-25-November-17-2022.pdf  ↑
  23. John Paul Tasker, “Trudeau calls for ‘dialogue’ as blockade cripples rail network, while Scheer says clear out protesters,” CBC, February 14, 2020.
    https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/transport-minister-dialogue-blockade-1.5463960  ↑
  24. “Ms. Janice Charette, Sworn, Ms. Nathalie Drouin, Affirmed,” Public Order Emergency Commission, Ottawa, November 17, 2022, pp. 105-309. https://publicorderemergencycommission.ca/files/documents/Transcripts/POEC-Public-Hearings-Volume-26-November-18-2022.pdf.  ↑
  25. “Ms. Janice Charette, Sworn, Ms. Nathalie Drouin, Affirmed,” Public Order Emergency Commission, Ottawa, November 17, 2022, pp. 105-309. https://publicorderemergencycommission.ca/files/documents/Transcripts/POEC-Public-Hearings-Volume-26-November-18-2022.pdf.  ↑
  26. “Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Affirmed,” Public Order Emergency Commission, Ottawa, November 25, 2022, pp. 83-84 (also pp. 3-192). https://publicorderemergencycommission.ca/files/documents/Transcripts/POEC-Public-Hearings-Volume-31-November-25-2022.pdf ↑
  27. “Ms. Janice Charette, Sworn, Ms. Nathalie Drouin, Affirmed,” Public Order Emergency Commission, Ottawa, November 17, 2022, pp. 242-255. https://publicorderemergencycommission.ca/files/documents/Transcripts/POEC-Public-Hearings-Volume-26-November-18-2022.pdf.  ↑
  28. “Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Affirmed,” Public Order Emergency Commission, Ottawa, November 25, 2022, pp.3-77, during examination by POEC Commission lawyer Ms. Shantona Chaudhury. https://publicorderemergencycommission.ca/files/documents/Transcripts/POEC-Public-Hearings-Volume-31-November-25-2022.pdf ↑
  29. Editorial, “The Orwellian re-education of Jordan Peterson,” Toronto Sun, January 6, 2023. https://torontosun.com/opinion/editorials/editorial-the-orwellian-re-education-of-jordan-peterson  ↑
  30. “Can’t Hide Emails: Fed Judge,” Blacklock’s Reporter, February 2, 2023. https://www.blacklocks.ca/cant-hide-emails-fed-judge/   ↑





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Are left-wing attitudes fostering the growth of the Right in Canada?

1/25/2023

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Once upon a time, 50 years or more ago,  a clear distinction between Left and Right  may have existed. Not any more, I fear -  not since the Left in Canada got taken over by the Middle Class.   Consider this month's editorial in the mailed out version of the CCPA Monitor, a left-of-centre magazine that I have always respected and supported.

​Here's how their second paragraph read. 

      "Nearly two years, a group of far-right activists launched the most
       successful crowdfunding campaign in Canadian history in order to lead
       a caravan of thousands of people to the nation's capital demanding that
       all public health restrictions be lifted, COVID be damned.  The so-called
       "freedom convoy" occupied Ottawa for over a month -- creating a social
       crisis that culminated in the convoy's eviction by the police following the
       federal invocation of the Emergencies Act."
 
The editorial goes on to lament "the disinformation"  that led to one in three Canadians   supporting  the Convoy and its demands. To resolve that kind of "problem”  in  future, the author suggests that Big Tech could be given the capacity, in coordination with government, to purge "disinformation agents and the far-right extremists" they produce from their platforms.  

Really!  Does that not  sound to you  as if the 'solution' itself might be tilting towards a threat to our democracy.   What happened to that supposed left-wing  commitment to “freedom, equality, fraternity and rights?”

As for the Emergencies Act that brought an end to the occupation,  the editorial makes no mention of it.    That doesn’t surprise me. In a cursory search of 43 alternative left-wing media sites,  I found only one magazine (Passage)  that expressed concerns about the Act.  The vast majority of publications apparently didn't feel that the introduction of an Act that could allow government to rule by decree was important enough to comment on.  

Fourteen of the sites did, however, choose to write about the right-wing element in the  Freedom Convoy and how this could lead to a resurgence of the right in Canada.

​The irony is that they may well be correct, but not for the reasons  they give.  I would suggest that it is left-wing attitudes, not right- wing activities,  that are actually pushing people to the right.   

As an example, take a look again at the above paragraph from this month's Monitor and consider how this might go down with the one third of Canadians that  supported the Convoy movement - a movement that was largely working class in its roots and participation. 

Notice the biased slant in the information presented. 

No mention was made that "the most successful crowdfunding campaign in Canadian history" was  quickly blocked (and still is largely blocked)  with truckers getting very little to no money. 

Nor did the Monitor bother to clarify that there was  very little justification for continuing the vaccine passports and mandates that the Freedom Convoy wanted abolished. That’s because by  the time of the protest  it was known and acknowledged  that the vaccinated could spread the virus just as easily as the unvaccinated.   "COVID be damned."  implies something very different to the reader.

And, of course, no mention is made of the fact  that  the whole ordeal  might not have lasted more than a couple of days  if the Liberal Government had agreed to the not unreasonable request from the truckers to meet with their team of medical and constitutional experts to discuss their concerns.  Our prime minister  refused to even send an intern to talk with with the Convoy organizers.

My working class friends  view the Monitor article as typical of   the perspective of  a smug  laptop class whose individuals  have  ridden out the pandemic closures, salaries intact, from the comfort of their homes. They argue it shows  how little sympathy that class really has for those who lost their livelihood  during the pandemic.  

What are the consequences of this class divide?  I suspect that both the Liberals and  NDP will lose votes  among Blue Collar Workers in the next election and  I predict a solid Conservative win, maybe even a return to Harper style  politics.  The Right may seldom walk the walk of "freedom, equality and fraternity"  but they've certainly shown the ability to talk that talk in their sympathetic reaction to the Convoy’s participants.  Very clever of them.

And very short-sighted, borderline stupid,  on the part of the new Middle Class Left.   

In conclusion, in fairness to the CCPA, when I wrote to them expressing my dismay at the attitude in the editorial, I immediately got a reply from  the director of the national office suggesting we talk further about this.  I 've since noted that the editorial is very different in their on-line version.  

So what would I say in that conversation?  For sure I would acknowledge all the good analytical  work the CCPA think tank has been doing for years on growing inequality.  That’s unequivocal.

But that doesn’t change the  tone of the editorial.  Like so many of the  articles I've found in other left-wing media sources,  the editorial implicitly suggests that Freedom Convoy participants and their supporters were misinformed sheep, naively influenced by disinformation from right-wing conspirators.   There is no consideration given to the protestors’ point of view. 

So, is there a winner here?  Actually, I suspect our elites are just delighted with the way things are evolving.  The growing animosity between not just classes,  but different identity groups, conveniently deflects attention from the huge upward transferal of wealth and power since the pandemic began. We’re so distracted by judgmental squabbles  among ourselves that we are simply not seeing the big picture.

Is there a solution?   I think we in the new Middle Class Left might want to start by considering how exclusionary we might have become in our thinking. Is economist  Thomas Piketty actually right in calling us the Brahmin Left?  Maybe.  On a personal level I’ve been surprised to note that the higher the educational level of my friends and fellow social justice contacts, the less willing they have been to, not just consider, but even listen to minority opinions.   I would never have anticipated that.    

What ever happened to the Occupy Movement’s inclusionary vision of “We are the 99%”?

Marilyn Reid 

Recommended reading:  The Freedom Convoy:  The inside story of three weeks that shook the world.
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The New Abnormal:  Are we shifting towards a technocratic, biomedical security state?

1/5/2023

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Sometimes an interview comes along that just blows you away with its insights. 

That’s how I felt when listening to Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, a former University of California  professor of psychiatry and human behavior, who was fired from his post for refusing to take the vaccine. 

To be clear, this is not an interview arguing against the COVID vaccines.   Instead, the focus  is on the mandates and where our seeming acceptance of them may eventually lead us. 

Dr Kheriaty  raises  ethical questions for both physicians and academics about  how acquiescence to medical mandates  can threaten both the Hippocratic Oath and the Nuremberg Code.  But he also poses important questions for the rest of us to consider.    It’s one of the best explanations I’ve heard of how new genetic based coding technologies,  coupled with government gag-orders and social controls,  pose dangers for our democratic freedom.    

As a long time “leftie” I lament that this kind of discussion is rarely found on left-wing media sites.  Why is that, do you think?

You can find Dr. Kheriaty's interview with Jan Jekielek, senior editor of The Epoch Times, here.  Consider also  reading his  book, The New Abnormal: The Rise of the Biomedical Security State..

Marilyn Reid
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The Real Reason we don't have Postal Banking in Rural Canada

12/5/2022

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It's estimated that 61% of communities  in BC,  65% in Nova Scotia and 84% in  Newfoundland and Labrador don’t have a bank or credit union.  On the other hand, many of these towns have a post office that could have banking status.  Given these demographics, wouldn't you think that the advantages of introducing  a postal banking system in Canada should be obvious to government?  

Apparently not.   Our politicians have  consistently denied   its implementation  over the years, in spite of repeated requests  by municipalities, First Nation communities, unions and  community groups. 

Why is that?  Maybe it's time to talk about the power and influence the Big Banks hold in the Canadian political scene.

The Big Banks' position on Postal Banking

Would it surprise you to hear that the Canadian Bankers Association is opposed to postal banking?  One of their principal arguments is  that the need isn’t there.     Access to banking branches in Canada, they say,   is more accessible than ever.

Except that it’s not.   The number of commercial bank branches per 100,000  Canadian adults actually decreased from 25 in 2008 to 20 in 2018.

A second  argument used against postal banking has been that Canadians can access their banking from virtually anywhere through electronic banking. 

That assertion doesn’t take into consideration poor and intermittent service.    In 2020 rural download speeds were still nearly 12 times slower than those of urban Canadians. Moreover, Internet service tends to be more expensive in rural areas.  The banks are assuming everybody can afford it.

Of course, there is a much simpler explanation as to why our Big Banks are opposed to a postal banking system.     The banks are aware that if postal banking takes off in rural Canada it might be imported into the cities.  That could  cut into bank profits.  
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Now you  might feel  some sympathy with that concern if the banks were struggling.  But quite the opposite is true.    Did you know that in 2021 three out of the top five profit making corporations in Canada were banks? Did you know that the profits of the five major Canadian banks went up by $10 billion during our COVID ordeal,  reaching more than $53 billion in 2021? 

An argument can be made  that  these banks are so profitable because they are being treated extremely well by the Canadian government. A 2015 Toronto Star study found that Canadian banks paid the lowest tax rates in the G7 and less than half that  the average rate of all non-financial firms in our country.  Let’s not forget also that Canada’s banks received a $114 billion bailout after the 2008 financial crisis. 

Given the privileges accorded to them by Government it's hard not to conclude that  the position taken by the Canadian Bankers Association smacks of excessive self interest.  

Whose interests does Government really serve?

Most Canadians don't know that Canada actually had a postal banking system for the first 100 years of our nation.  Nor do they know that in the  first decade of this century Canada  Post was seriously considering postal banking.  In fact there was a four year study done which apparently pointed out its benefits, but went nowhere.  And guess what? When the Canadian Union of Postal Workers later asked for a copy of the report more than 700 of the report’s 811 pages were redacted. 

Canada Post subsequently commissioned another study, this time  by the  right-wing think tank, the Conference Board of Canada. Not surprisingly, it concluded that the Post Office should not compete with banks. Comprehensive studies advocating a postal banking system by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives  and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers have been largely ignored by the Canadian government. 

In 2016 a House of Commons committee recommended against postal banking, saying the postal service should instead "focus on its core competencies." A federal review of Canada Post in 2018 did not even mention the issue and a 2018 private members bill by the NDP in favour of postal banking was voted down by the two major parties. 

The most the government was able to come up  with was a 2020 promise  to allocate  $500,000 to a committee that would look at how rural post offices  could offer services such as money transfers or cashing government cheques.   Ultimately, the  "solution", was to introduce a    pilot project with the TD Bank Group that would allow the TD to grant loans up to $30,000 through designated postal outlets. To be clear, there is no place for chequing and savings accounts,  mortgages, loans to small businesses, investments, etc. in this public private partnership agreement with the bank.   

Government's watered down, token version of postal banking simply sidesteps the following.  

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Postal banking should be a no-brainer given Canada's demography. So, how do we explain Government's willful  myopia with respect to the banking needs of rural Canadians?  Could it be  a symptom of a greater problem?
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Is economist Michael Hudson  right in his assertion that in Canada "the financial sector, the banks, are pretty much running the country"?   When you consider  the way our federal "whip system" has neutered the ability of MPs to oppose party policy (something discussed in a previous blog posting), he just might have a point. 

​The  cozy relationship between Government and the banks is definitely not the way things used to be.   In fact, Canada once had one of the most progressive banking systems in the world.    But we weren't vigilant and we lost it.

Why?  I think we've been  too easily persuaded that when it comes to money matters Big Finance knows what's best for us.  ​It doesn't, and as the whole postal banking saga points out, our Big Banks  will probably always put their own interests above those of communities. Sadly, Government seems to be comfortable with this. 

That should worry us.   

Marilyn Reid
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Ukraine:  Do we want news or propaganda?

11/21/2022

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A few months ago in the community in which I live, a local church, one which I admire for its strong sense of community and social activism, put up a sign outside the church stating “We stand with Ukraine.”   That led to  some reflection on my part.

What disturbs me about the slogan is the image it portrays of a united Ukraine.  Did the church  know that the country has been in a state of civil war since 2014, I wondered?  Exactly which Ukrainians were they standing with? 

In the endless  media portrayal presented to us of a righteous and courageous Ukrainian government fighting an unprovoked and unjustified invasion by Russia, the plight of the people of Eastern Ukraine is rarely spoken about.  No one seems to notice that civilian deaths and destruction have  so far  overwhelmingly  taken place in the Russian speaking part of the country. For the first eight months of the war there was little to no fighting in western Ukraine.  

The “We stand with Ukraine.” slogan Is ubiquitous across the media - which is why I was so pleased to discover  “Don’t ‘Stand with Ukraine.’  Push for Peace instead.”  It’s  the title of a recent article in Passage, a moderately left leaning alternative media site.  This is the first time I’ve seen a Canadian publication challenge the official narrative spewed out to us endlessly by government, our television sets and most media on-line sites.  It’s a timely article, coming just after the Canadian government’s announcement that we will be sending  a further $500 million more in military aid to Ukraine.  We’ve already sent $600 million.

How much of  Ukraine media coverage is  propaganda?

Have you noticed how much the narrative we read or hear on mainstream media has been personalized to depict good vs evil?    Google the words evil and Putin and check out the number of articles using words like murderous, deranged, kleptocratic, tyrant, etc. to describe him.    At the very least, this is a massive insult to the Russian people who have repeatedly elected him president and whose support he still has after nine months of a very painful war. 

Then there are the interviews, inevitably with "experts" who somehow almost always have a perspective that fits the paradigm of an unprovoked aggression.  When was the last time you heard someone actually explain why the people of Donetsk and Luhansk felt so betrayed by the Kiev government that they declared themselves autonomous republics? Rarely does the media allude to the civil war that has been tearing Ukraine apart since 2014.  

Instead, the media prefers a simplistic explanation  for the invasion.  A power hungry Russia is there to recapture territory lost after the fall of the USSR.  We never question why Russia, the largest country in the world, would  want to annex a nation burdened by  fascist and Neo-Nazi influences, power hungry oligarchs, racism, corruption  and a dislike and distrust of anything Russian amongst a sizeable part of the population.  

​But then we never hear about that on mainstream media, do we?

Let's talk about that civil war.

The Ukrainian civil war began after the February 14th,  2014 revolution or coup (depending on your information source) that ousted then President Yanukovych. 

The first legislative act of the new government was to rescind the status of Russian as one of the two official languages of the country, in spite of the fact that approximately  30% of Ukrainians claim Russian as their native tongue.  This was later  followed by banning Russian as the language of instruction in public schools. 

To put that in perspective, what do you think the response  of Quebecers would be if these restrictions were imposed on them?  I suspect, very much the same as that of Donetsk and Luhansk.   

In May, 2014, Donetsk and Luhansk  held referendums on separation and subsequently declared themselves autonomous (but not independent) republics. This was not to be allowed. Government forces attacked the region and that led to civil war and the direct death of 14,000 civilians over the next eight year.  81% of the casualities, according to a United Nations report, were Russian speaking.

Halfhearted attempts by Germany and France to broker a settlement through the Minsk Agreements  failed as it became more and more clear that Zelensky was not interested, or not allowed, to enter into serious  negotiations.  In late 2021 there was a government buildup of  forces  along the border with the two republics.   Clearly the war was heating up. 

The ultimate trigger for the Russian invasion was the intensification of Ukrainian artillery shelling of the Russian speaking Donbas region starting on the 16th of February. This led to the Russian government finally recognizing the two republics and signing with them an agreement of cooperation, friendship and help.  On the 24th of February Russian troops arrived in the republics.  

Is the war in Ukraine a proxy war?

In a previous blog I suggested that Ukrainians might be the victims of a proxy war.  By that I meant a war covertly planned and instigated by NATO countries to destabilize Russia without NATO having to get militarily involved itself.   I speculated that Ukraine, with its existing tensions between the two linguistic/cultural groups, might have been seen as the perfect battleground.

Whether that was the case or not, it's clear by  the massive amount of armaments that have continued to flow into Ukraine that NATO countries have been in no hurry to see this war end.    Why is that?

For seven months the Russians confined their battles to pushing back government forces in the Russian speaking zone of Ukraine.  During that period Putin  repeatedly called for negotiations and made his bottom line clear.  Ukraine was to be demilitarized, meaning no more attacks on Russian speaking areas of the country, and  NATO was to withdraw its offer of membership to Ukraine. That included no NATO military in the country and an end to the multiple western financed biolabs in the country.  Currently there  are 46 of them.  

To put the latter condition in perspective, how do  you think the United States would react if Mexico were to allow Russian troops or biolabs in the country?

What's next for Ukraine?

On September 30th, following  the referendums on joining Russia in Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson regions on joining Russia, the Zalensky government officially decreed its refusal to negotiate with Putin.  

Since that decision,   Putin  has been under pressure from a significant part of the Russian public who, fed up with a war they see no end to, question why Russia has not attacked Western Ukraine.   That pressure has led to a shift in strategy with the  Russian army  now targeting electrical infrastructure throughout the country.  That means a very hard winter for western Ukrainians.  Expect a huge surge of refugees into Europe.  

Anybody who thinks Ukraine is going to be able to put itself back together again when this war finally ends is naïve.  This is a broken country,  now bitterly divided between Ukrainian speakers in the west who see themselves as primarily European, and Russian speakers in the east who view themselves as proudly Slavic.    Before 2014, the two groups  could apparently live together in, perhaps shaky, but reasonable harmony. Not now, I suspect – not after so much bloodshed.

What's so discouraging in this war that could escalate into a nuclear disaster is that the public has not  been given both sides of this conflict.  Even more alarming, we don't seem to realize that we haven't been given both sides.  

Have we somehow in western democracies become a population programmed to see things in stark black and white terms, with good guys and bad guys  -  and  us, of course, always on the side of the righteous? There are alarming signs of that.

​That's not the route towards peace.  

Marilyn Reid  
 
For those who are looking for a different perspective  on Ukraine, from what you get on mainstream media, I recommend  The Postil Magazine - Uniting Wisdom with the Soul:  Vivida Vis Animi.
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Are we the Cancer Cells of our Planet?

10/18/2022

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​On Oct. 13th, 2021, Star Trek star William Shatner became, at 90 years old, the oldest living person to travel into space – a guest on Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space shuttle.    Here is what he, so eloquently and poignantly, had to say about the experience.





"I had thought that going into space would be the ultimate catharsis of that connection I had been looking for between all living things—that being up there would be the next beautiful step to understanding the harmony of the universe. In the film “Contact,” when Jodie Foster’s character goes to space and looks out into the heavens, she lets out an astonished whisper, “They should’ve sent a poet.” I had a different experience, because I discovered that the beauty isn’t out there, it’s down here, with all of us. Leaving that behind made my connection to our tiny planet even more profound.

It was among the strongest feelings of grief I have ever encountered. The contrast between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Earth below filled me with overwhelming sadness. Every day, we are confronted with the knowledge of further destruction of Earth at our hands: the extinction of animal species, of flora and fauna . . . things that took five billion years to evolve, and suddenly we will never see them again because of the interference of mankind. It filled me with dread. My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration; instead, it felt like a funeral."

The scientific evidence that this world is being destroyed bit by bit is irrefutable.

According to the WWF and Zoological Society of London’s (ZSL) biennial  Living Planet Report, the abundance of birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles is in freefall, having declined on average by more than two-thirds between 1970 and 2018. 

As for the destruction of our soil, a 2017 UN report found that a third of the planet’s land is severely degraded and that fertile soil is being lost at the rate of 24bn tons a year.  

Then there’s our water.  Studies estimate there are now 51 trillion pieces of plastic in the world's oceans. Not one square mile of surface ocean anywhere on earth is free of plastic pollution.  

Why aren't we fixing all this? 

If Shatner is right and we’re the source of this destruction, why are we making so little progress in addressing these crises? 

Could one problem be that both governments and the private sector media seem to be   focusing  almost entirely on climate change phenomena, on floods, famines, and fires?  A consequence is that  polluters that don't fit into that paradigm seem to be getting  off scot free.  

Big Agro isn’t scaling back the use of poisonous pesticides and fertilizers.  Plastic remains everywhere. 5G wireless technology  has been introduced with  no radiation “safety” limits for trees, plants, birds and bees. The armaments industry is thriving.  The list could go on and on.  

However, we should be careful about simply blaming the very real crises we face on irresponsible and out of control corporations. Let's not forget that at the head of all of these industries are real people, CEOs, Boards of Directors, major investors.  

There is strong evidence to conclude that we have a massively selfish and greedy, wealthy class whose priority is to accumulate more and more, no matter what the consequences.
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  • The world’s 2,153 billionaires now have more wealth than the 4.6 billion people who make up 60 percent of the planet’s population.
  • In 1978  top CEOs made  31 times that of a typical  worker.  Today they make 351 times that amount.    
  • During the pandemic the billionaires of the world gained 3.9 trillion dollars.  During the same period workers around the world lost 3.7 trillion dollars.  

This wealth grab has been facilitated by the growing corporate capture of government decision making,  and not just in the developing world. 

As an example of our own culpability, did you know that 80% of the world's mining companies have their headquarters in Canada? They've chosen to register in Canada, not because of our mines and minerals.  It's our trade agreements that attract them - trade agreements with carefully written investor-state clauses that prevent partner countries from effectively regulating Canadian mining companies.

I don't think this is the way ordinary people want democracy to work.  Yet most of us show little interest in monitoring the democratic process, preferring to leave it to others to sort things out. 

But is there a price to be paid in taking democratic governance for granted? 

Has our species  become the cancer cells of our planet?

What we know about cancer cells is that they grow indiscriminately, without regard for the welfare of the body at large.  Behind them is an army of precancerous cells that may or may not attack their host.  

Have our elites, the 1%,  become  like cancer cells - always seeking more from our planet, no matter what the cost? 

If so, what about the rest of us in the developed world - the 99%?  Are we, like those ambivalent, precancerous cells, predisposed to joining the elites if we can?  Or are we more like sheep, content to believe that technology or some sort of messianic figure will rescue us and our planet?  

Cancer cells, if not fought, eventually kill their host.  They then, with nothing to feed on, die themselves.  

Surely, we are not so stupid as to let that happen to us?
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Are they billionaires or oligarchs?

9/11/2022

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is 

                                           
                                      Oligarch

       A very rich business leader with           a great deal of  political influence





​Did you know that only two Russians made the  Forbes 2022 list of the world’s hundred richest individuals?   By contrast, there were 37 American names there. 

Yet, if you Google “oligarchs” you will find a gallery of photos almost entirely depicting wealthy Russians.   These billionaires, according to much of the mainstream media, are the bad guys that have shaped and supported  Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.   

But what about North America’s billionaire class?  Are the super-rich here simply magnificently talented business people and philanthropists with little interest in shaping political decisions?   Or are they also  oligarchs who, along with their European counterparts, have been complicit in the proxy war in the Ukraine that many believe NATO has deliberately promoted and fostered?

The evidence suggests that America's billionaires are not detached bystanders and have considerable ability to shape government direction.   That ability was massively reinforced  after  the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court,  Citizens United  vs Federal Election Commission decision.  It was a ruling that gave corporations the constitutional right to spend unlimited amounts of money during electoral campaigns.  Basically, the Court ruled it’s fine for American “democracy” to be controlled by dollars, instead of by voters.

Did this open the doors to oligarchical governance?  Former US president, Jimmy Carter clearly thought so.

"Now it (America) is just an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery being the essence of  getting the nominations for president or being elected president.  And the same thing applies to governors, and U.S. Senators and Congress  members.  So now we’ve just seen a  subversion of our political system as a payoff to major  contributors who want and  expect  and sometimes get favours for themselves after  the election is over.”  

The effect of the Supreme Courth decision was dramatic.  US dark money expendit­ures increased from less than $5 million in 2006 to more than $300 million in the (post Citizens United) 2012 elec­tion cycle.  Why was that?  Could it be that the wealthy few, their names hidden behind political action committees, saw clearly the opportunity to  influence,  shape and push government policies and decisions? 

Are politics so different in Canada?

Nothing approaching the Citizens United decision has, as yet, damaged Canada’s electoral process.   It would be a mistake, however, to assume that we don’t have our own version of behind the scenes, oligarchical government. 

Back in 2020, Memorial University professor, Alex Marland, published Whipped, Party Discipline in Canada, a meticulously researched book on party discipline in the Canadian parliamentary system.  After 131 in-depth interviews with current and former Canadian politicians and political staff, Marland came to the following conclusions about the power of our party whip system. 
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  1. Most of Canada’s elected representatives have become peripheral actors with minimal opportunity to influence or oppose the party line.
  2. Instead power and policy decisions are concentrated in executive offices.
  3. Partisanship infuses not just  executive offices, but also public administration.
  4. Caucus meetings, where traditionally party members debate together policies, are now largely training sessions in things like media management.

​Some believe that Canada has the most rigid party discipline and whip system of any liberal democracy.  If that's true, shouldn't the underlying question be: If there is minimal MP participation in the decision making process, who ultimately decides  policies and directions in parliament?  While Marland, himself,  doesn’t address this,  I strongly suspect  it’s not just Justin Trudeau and his cabinet ministers. 

Did you know that  more than half of  Trudeau cabinet members were actually trained at the World Economic Forum's  Global Leaders for Tomorrow school?  That this number is so large  is  particularly significant given that  in 2017 Klaus Schwab, the executive chairman of the WEF, actually boasted of the WEF's penetration and influence on Canada's  federal cabinet.   

Even the Financial Post, hardly a media outlet given to promoting conspiracy theories, has sounded alarm bells about this cozy relationship.  

“The WEF infiltration of Ottawa has never been a secret…... But it is far from being  common knowledge among voters that the ideological model behind the Liberal policy machine, the steering mechanism that guides decisions and policies, is  subversive and  authoritarian."                                                                                                                                                                   Terrance Corcoran  

Is it possible that the Liberal government's strong connections with the WEF explains why the Trudeau government, supported by the NDP, chose to enact the Emergency Measures Act against a group of noisy, but essentially peaceful, truckers and their supporters?  Was that over-the-top response a test case to see how easily Canadians would react to the loss of their civil liberties?  If so, the oligarchs and corporate CEOs at this year's May meeting of the WEF in Davos must have been delighted with the passivity of our response as citizens.

​And that is worrying.  I fear we are taking  our democracy for granted.  We are assuming that there is no termite-like, deep state penetration of our government, and that our democratic institutions are working  for the benefit of ordinary people.  

But let's not underestimate the possibility that the oligarchs may have very different plans for us.

Marilyn Reid


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What's so wrong about the rich getting richer?

8/19/2022

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“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s  my class, the rich  class,    that’s making war,  and we’re                         winning.”
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​So said billionaire, Warren Buffett, well over a decade ago. It was an interesting warning, perhaps a forecast of what was to come.  
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Buffett's statement implied that it isn't simply greed that drives our rich and super-rich  to make ever more money.  

Australian writer, Caitlin Johnstone, would agree, arguing that the motivations of our elites are more devious.  Here's what she had to say in her most recent blog 


           If  Everyone Is King Then No One Is 
​                                         by Caitlin Johnstone               (Aug 19, 2022)

The concept of "wealth hoarding" has gained traction in the wake of the Occupy movement and the Bernie Sanders presidential campaigns, the idea being that billionaires are amassing treasure like mythical dragons in the same way someone with a hoarding disorder amasses newspapers or clothes. 

It's an understandable way of looking at the problem. The capitalist class is indeed grabbing up a greater and greater percentage of the wealth that's being generated by the working class, and it just doesn't make sense that someone would need billions of dollars when you can only drive one car at a time, wear one pair of pants at a time, eat one meal at a time, etc.

For normal people, the idea of wealth is associated with security, so once your family's needs are met and their future is secure it's hard to understand the impulse to keep amassing wealth far beyond that point without it being driven by some kind of compulsive neurosis. The fact that they pour so much money and energy into manipulating political systems to ensure they aren't forced by taxation to share more of their wealth with the public makes them look even more like compulsive hoarders.

But this notion of vast wealth as a hoarding behavior misses the mark. And no, it isn't because billionaires are awesome beneficent job creators whose wealth is being used by banks to grant people loans for homes and businesses and making the world a wonderful place to live. 

It doesn't work to think of the very rich as wealth hoarders because what they are doing has very little in common with the behavior of a compulsive hoarder. A compulsive hoarder gains nothing from their behavior, which generally ends up being self-destructive and socially alienating. It costs them everything, and gives them nothing. Their behavior is born of neurosis, and is entirely irrational.

The so-called wealth hoarders are not amassing wealth at the expense of others out of neurosis, and the motives driving their behavior are perfectly rational. They're just a lot more depraved and a lot more uncomfortable to think about.

The ruling class continually extracts wealth from the public not so that they can become wealthier than they already are, but to keep the public from having that wealth. They're not worried that they'll be unable to support their needs in the future if they don't extract another billion dollars, they just understand that the wealthier everyone else gets, the less their own wealth matters. They're not wealth-hoarding, they're wealth-obstructing.

Wealth is a zero-sum game, as is its good friend power. The more power everyone else has, the less power our current rulers would have over us. This is why so much energy goes into ensuring that votes have as little effect as possible on the operations of the state and making sure everything stays the same no matter what the public wants.

Imagine if ordinary people started having as much influence over the direction human civilization will take as war profiteers, oil tycoons, globalized wage slavers and Silicon Valley plutocrats. Imagine if the working class had enough disposable income to begin funding grassroots political campaigns, building their own media networks, or even funding think tanks and NGOs to advance their own interests like plutocrats do today. Imagine if everyone could afford to work less and relax more, and finally start learning about what's really going on in the world. 

Wealth is meaningless if everyone is wealthy. Power is meaningless if everyone has power. The kings of our day have a vested interest in keeping everyone poor and powerless, because if everyone is king, then no one is king.

This is why our status quo systems work the way they work, and this is why you see a convergence of interests from such groups as corporate plutocrats, plutocrat-owned politicians and media, the arms industry, and military and intelligence agencies. These groups all have a vested interest in preserving the status quo and the ability to put that agenda in place, so they've fallen into a natural, de facto alliance with each other toward that end. 

It's why we've seen a historic upward transfer of wealth during the Covid pandemic, with billionaires raking in trillions while ordinary people struggle with unemployment and soaring prices. And it's why that transfer of wealth has been happening for decades since long before Covid. In a system where money is power and power is relative, a ruling class naturally emerges which needs to suppress the wealth and power of its subjects in order to continue to rule.

Rulers do not historically give up their rule voluntarily, so we can expect this continual pattern of wealth obstruction via wealth extraction to continue until people get tired of being kept poor and powerless by those who benefit from their poverty and disempowerment and use the strength of their numbers to force the emergence of a more equitable system.

We can also expect our rulers to do everything in their power to prevent this from happening, including propagandizing the public into accepting the status quo and believing that anything better is impossible.

Drastic change in the not-too-distant future does seem to be inevitable, though, if only because we're headed toward environmental collapse or nuclear winter if we don't rise to the revolutionary occasion first. Humanity's self-destructive patterning is in a race with our better angels, and right now it's anybody's race.
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Some things to consider before deciding whether to vaccinate our children against COVID

7/30/2022

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A perspective on COVID vaccines            for children you won't see on                        mainstream media


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Since approving the Moderna Spikevax  for infants, Health Canada has made a point of assuring parents that “the benefits of this vaccine for children between 6 months and 5 years of age outweigh the potential risks.”  But, what if our medical experts are overly optimistic about the benefits and too dismissive of the risks? 

Does the science support the COVID vaccines for children?

Last week an article by American investigative  journalist, Mary Beth Pfeiffer appeared in TrialSite News.   Urging parents to think twice before vaccinating their children, Pfeiffer made the following points.

The vaccine benefits for children are low. In support of this assertion, Pfeiffer cited articles in the British Medical Journal, the Lancet and the BMJ Journal of Medical Ethics, claiming that children have a very low risk of  a severe COVID response.   She also noted statistics showing that hospitalization rates for COVID in young children are far lower than what has  traditionally been seen for influenza in this group. 

The oversight of vaccines has failed. Here, Pfeiffer looks at the small number of children  in the Pfizer and Moderna COVID trials and the biased use of data.  She notes also that independent scientific studies have  demonstrated that, particularly among children, the efficacity of the vaccine to protect against COVID decreases rapidly.  This seems to suggest that a regular regime of booster shots may become the new normal. Is this really what we want?

The risk is likely greater than the benefits.  Pfeiffer makes the point that both health officials and research studies have often focused  too much on COVID, while either ignoring or glossing over adverse vaccine reactions. 

Examples of this short-sighted approach include the reluctance of the  Centre for Disease Control (CDC) to examine the possibility that unexpected and sudden health problems, including death, in the months following vaccination might be linked to the vaccine itself.  According to Pfeiffer, only one US government official study has been done on this issue and it had a very small sample.  Moreover, participants have disagreed with the conclusions, accusing the study of minimizing and denying their continuing symptoms.

Then, there is the issue of underrepresentation of adverse reactions in the data base, linked primarily to  the difficulties and inconveniences of actually reporting them  to health authorities. Pfeiffer also notes the suppression of scientific papers that look at vaccine reactions. 

Perhaps all of this explains why the CDC tried  to stall the  release of Pfizer COVID 19 vaccine  data for 75 years. Fortunately, that attempt failed thanks to a successful legal challenge by the group Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency. The subsequent release of Pfizer documents has revealed more than 1,200 different side effects of  varying severity noted during the trials.  How many of those have a direct causal relationship to the vaccine is unknown.  Nor do we know how long the various effects last.

What about increased mortality rates?

We know that COVID has caused many, many deaths.  However, the elephant in the room that the medical establishment doesn’t seem to want to talk about is the deaths that might actually have been caused by the vaccine.  

A recently published  analysis by The Expose of official figures published through the UK’s Office for National Statistics calculates that between January 2021 and January 2022, deaths from all causes per 100,000 among double vaccinated 18-39-year-olds were on average 91% higher than deaths per 100,000 among unvaccinated 18-39-year-olds

According to the Expose it gets worse for children.  A similar analysis of British data by the same organization concluded that double vaccinated English children (11-15)  were 15 times more likely to die of any cause than their unvaccinated peers.  The figures were even higher for the triple vaccinated. 

The increase in all cause mortality rates independent of COVID over the last year and a half  is not unique to England.  Excess death patterns for the general population  have also been reported in Scotland, New Zealand and Australia.

It would be incorrect to attribute the increase in the death rate entirely to COVID in these countries.  For example, According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), 44,331 deaths had occurred in Australia by the 27th of March 2022, which is 6,609 more deaths than the historical average, equating to an 18% rise in deaths. However,  just 2,903 deaths were associated with Covid-19, equating to just 6% of all deaths.
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If these statistics are correct, a worrying question becomes:  Could  a portion of the increased deaths be a consequence of the vaccine?
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So, let me conclude by asking two questions.

Given all the evidence showing that children have minimal health risks from COVID, why are governments and health authorities pushing parents to vaccinate their young children?  And why are they underplaying the potential adverse reactions that might be attributed to the vaccines?

Like Mary Beth Pfeiffer, I would urge parents to think long and hard before vaccinating their children. Do the homework.  Read the research from around the world.   

A good place to start might be to download this free e-book, just today released by Robert Kennedy Junior of Children's Health Defense.  With a bibliography of 303 sources you will find a lot of research and real life data that challeng, not just the prevailing government position that the vaccines prevent hospitalization and death, but also that the side effects are insignificant.    

Haven't we been told repeatedly to "Follow the Science."

Marilyn Reid

Postscript

August 5th    -  



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Lots to consider when vaccinating your kids for COVID

7/23/2022

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Here's our letter, published in The  Telegram yesterday.




Last week Health Canada approved the Moderna Spikevax vaccine for children aged six months to five years. 

“I think it’s great.” NL Premier Andrew Furey  told reporters on Thursday.  “This is yet just another cohort where we have the chance to lead the world.” 

He was referring, of course, to the fact that our province already has the highest vaccination rate in the country. According to Statistics Canada data, 99.49 percent of eligible NL residents have received one dose of the vaccine, 95.16 percent  two doses and 55.58 percent the booster shot.  

And now the vaccine is to be administered to infants.  But should it be? 

There are some strong dissenting arguments from epidemiology experts that families might want to consider before taking this route.   They include:  Children don’t need them.  They don’t work.  They have not been proven safe.

The problem is that it’s hard to find information backing up these perspectives anywhere on mainstream media.  You really have to know where to look.  Here in Canada one source is the Canadian Covid Care Alliance (CCCA). 

The CCCA is, in their own words, “an association that includes over 600 independent Canadian doctors, scientists, and health care practitioners who are committed to providing quality, balanced, evidence-based information to the Canadian public about COVID-19 so that hospitalizations can be reduced, lives saved,  and our country safely restored to normal.”  Their perspective on vaccination for infants can be found at:  https://www.canadiancovidcarealliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/CCCA-Stop-the-Shot-Video-Presentation-July-15-2022.pdf

This is not a group that opposes vaccination in general, but they do have strong concerns about the COVID vaccines.  The evidence they present has probably not been seen by the vast majority of Canadians. Most of us  have chosen to accept, without digging deeper,  the official narrative that the vaccines are the only way forward in ridding ourselves of COVID.

That’s a fair enough choice when you are making a decision that only affects your own personal welfare. But the burden of responsibility is so much greater when we are talking about children. 

I would urge all parents (and grandparents) to thoroughly investigate and consider both sides in the debate before deciding whether or not to choose or support the vaccination option for their children and grand-children.     

This is an extremely important decision to have to make.

Marilyn Reid




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Do We Increasingly Prefer Dogma to Diagnosis?

6/16/2022

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"When all think alike, then no                    one is thinking"
                                        Walter Lippmann




  • ​“Climate change” can only be overcome if we stop using fossil fuels and develop green energy.  Anyone who disagrees is a climate denier or climate sceptic – and a conspiracy theorist.
  • Racism in the Western world is systemic and can only be overcome when all white people acknowledge they are racists and privileged.  Anyone who disagrees is a racist.
  • Anyone who disagrees with government-approved “science” about COVID-19 is a science denier and a conspiracy theorist.
  • Russia is guilty of an unprovoked invasion of the Ukraine.  Anyone who disputes this is an enemy of the “Ukrainian people” and a Putin stooge.”

So begins  Australian philosopher, Wayne Cristaudo’s essay “Prime Facts, Closed Minds and the Russian-Ukraine Conflict”.  Cristaudo asserts that the Western  political and ruling classes have increasingly come to insist that,  for the survival of the planet, or democracy, or world peace,   the masses must subscribe to a package of "truths".  Discussion and debate have been banished.  Groupthink is in.  

Is he right?  We, at Democracy Alert, believe it’s a position worth considering.

Ideology as Truth

Cristaudo argues that  the  tool  for achieving total conformity of speech, thought and action is   ideology – the acceptance of a priori  and unassailable prime principles or ideas which dictate how facts are to be interpreted.  He believes that our ideas about how the world works “have been reduced to an ethico-political position which is so definitive, so absolute, that it can brook no dissent.”  Political and societal issues now come with a truth status that must be locked in.   “Anyone who publicly objects to any of them is  considered to be spreading misinformation or disinformation."

Cristaudo concludes that the simplistic, black and white, good versus evil  way in which we view the Ukraine war is "a symptom of the West's loss of mind."  

Fear and Science as Tools

​Dutch philosopher, Christian W.K.M. Alting Von Geusau,  goes one step further.  In his essay,  Totalitarianism and the Five Stages of Dehumanization, he  suggests  that we are actually sliding down a slippery slope towards totalitarianism - a system of control that ultimately tolerates no individual freedom or independent thought. 

Like Hanna Arandt before him, Alting Von Geusau asserts that the growth of totalitarianism  is greatly facilitated by a destabilizing or fear provoking crisis – something like our COVID pandemic.  But, its success also depends on authority figures presenting  a clear solution. Science, he argues plays an important role in the solution, except, that only one scientific perspective is to be allowed.    

Alting Von Geusau cites the following as evidence that during the pandemic we began a noticeable slide  towards totalitarianism: vaccines as the only solution, endless lockdowns, vaccine passports, suppression of scientific data and debate, censorship and the public shaming of critical voices, 

We would add, specific to Canada, our Prime Minister's  use of words like  racist and  misogynist to describe the unvaccinated, the freezing of donations to the Truckers' Convoy, and the totally unnecessary  invocation of the Emergency Act as a prelude to shutting down their protest.

Citizens or Subjects?

The concerns raised by both Cristaudo and Von Geusau  are  not as radical as you might think.  Twenty seven years ago,  in his seminal work “The Unconscious Civilization”, Canadian philosopher, John Ralston Saul, warned of the way  that our democratic society was being hijacked by what he called corporatism, a form of groupthink, with an emphasis on ideological adherence.

Saul argued that serious decisions were being made less and less through democratic participation and discussion of different points of view.  Instead, they were increasingly the result of behind closed doors negotiations among  elite groups  who had the ability to wield power and shape public opinion.  

The public's role was to acquiesce to the elite's world view  - a world  view whose articulation by political leaders would be reinforced by academic experts.  The mantra that "Only the specialist really knows what's right." meant that doubt was not to be permitted. 

Saul predicted that ultimately, if unchecked, this hijacking of participatory democracy by political and economic elites, backed up by cherry picked academic experts,  would lead to “passivity and conformity in those areas that matter and nonconformism in those that don't."

In short, we were in danger of becoming subjects, not citizens. 

The Way Forward

Implicit in all the above arguments is the suggestion  that at some basic level people prefer to accept prevailing dogma rather than take the time to fully diagnose an issue. Given the dangers that poses for democratic governance, how do we change that? 

Cristaudo argues that the  way forward must include a return to the Socratic method of reasoned argumentation and public discourse  before taking a stance on any issue.    A first step would be  “to establish whether those who claim to have knowledge know what they are talking about.” 

But, that’s easier said than done given the corporate capture of media, including, here in Canada, the CBC.  Even on  the Internet it is becoming increasingly difficult and time consuming to find perspectives that counter the dominant opinion.  Plus, it's so much easier emotionally to go with the flow.

To conclude, behaving like a subject instead of a  participating citizen might conceivably  be fine if we could guarantee enlightened leadership in the ilk of Plato’s philosopher-kings.   

But isn’t it more likely that, if the current trend  continues, the passivity and conformity that Cristaudo, Von Geusau, Saul and Lipmann  lament  will lead us, facilitated by surveillance capitalism, towards a dystopia more in line with Brave New World or 1984 - or The Great Reset.  

That's our concern at Democracy Alert

Marilyn Reid​
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What do the Ontario election results tell us about our democracy?

6/7/2022

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Did you know that in the recent Ontario election:

  • the Conservative Party got seven times as many votes as the Green Party but 83 times as many seats?
  • the New Democrats received less votes than the Liberals but got four times as many seats?
  • the Conservatives have a very strong majority government, with twice as many seats as all the other parties combined, in spite of only two out of every five voters voting Conservative?
  • only 43% of eligible voters chose to cast a ballot?                                                                           
What does this say about our electoral system here in Canada?

First, it’s pretty obvious that it produces seriously unbalanced results.   The most disadvantaged are minority parties, in this case the Greens, who will never get a truly representative voice in government. Their supporters are simply too spread out across the province.

Secondly, as long as there is only one party on the right, in this case the Conservatives, they will have an advantage.  That’s because those who don’t see themselves as having conservative values increasingly will split their vote between the two other dominant parties, the NDP and the Liberals. 

Thirdly, as the NDP  continues to move more and more towards  the centre, it’s very possible that working class voters will move over to the Conservatives.  That phenomenon has already happened in Europe and the United States and many feel that the NDP’s anti-trucker performance during the Convoy protest will  accelerate that shift here.  

All of the above suggest that it is in the interest of, not just  the Green Party and the NDP, but also the Liberals to push for some sort of proportional representation system.  Will it happen?  Probably not.  It’s doubtful that the big money backers of the Liberal party will go along with it.  They, of course, don’t care what party gets in as long as they can control its leadership.  Proportional representation, with its tendency towards coalition governments, sometimes among multiple parties, makes that control more difficult.   

However,  the disproportionate way our current electoral system can favour one party,  and the powers that back it, is not our  biggest concern at Democracy Alert.  It’s that 43% voter turnout that is most worrying. 

One explanation often heard is that people with minority political views in their constituency don’t bother to vote because they feel their vote  will largely be a waste of time and effort.   That could certainly apply to Green supporters everywhere.    

But what if the bigger reason for the low voter turnout is political apathy – a belief that democracy will just continue to roll along smoothly  without citizen participation?
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At this moment in our history, as transnational institutions exert  more and more control over national policies,  and as the rich get richer and more powerful,  this is not the time to go limp on democracy.  
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Is there a Hidden Agenda in the War in Ukraine?

5/22/2022

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What if if there are more bad guys in the Ukraine conflict than we think.  And what if the really big ones pulling the strings are hidden? 





It’s become increasingly clear that both the US and many EU countries, as well as Britain, want the war in Ukraine to continue.  There’s been very little meaningful push for a negotiated solution, in spite of  the carnage that is taking place. 

Instead, the emphasis has been on getting more and more weapons into Ukraine.
That may please  American armament manufacturers but it's  hard to see how Europe benefits from the conflict. 

Almost 40% of European  gas imports are imported from Russia via pipelines through Ukraine and the Baltic Sea. 25% of their oil imports also come from Russia, mostly via tankers.   If these arrangements are  disrupted or canceled many European countries will have to pay a lot more for energy imports.  That could severely damage their industries.

Moreover, if the current war intensifies it could explode into their own territory.  Why would they want to risk that? 

Is it possible  that the big reason for the war has very little to do with Ukraine itself?  Could the real motive be an attempt by NATO countries to "fix"  the increasing vulnerability of the present global financial empire, which is almost entirely dominated by   the US, Britain and the Europe? 

That vulnerability exists for two reasons. 

The first is growing de-dollarization seen in organizations like the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China)  New Development Bank (NDB) and the  Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU).  These initiatives  could, if they catch on,   challenge the dominance of  both the American dollar and the Euro as the  go-to reserve currencies for international exchanges. The very real fear in Western financial towers is that the Global South  will move in favour of these new systems.    

Hence Russia, as one of the major investors in the NDB and EEU,  must be destabilized.  What better way to do that than to tie the county up in a costly and exhausting war?  And where better to provoke that war than Ukraine with its tensions between the Ukrainian speaking west of the country and the Russian speaking east? 

Perhaps that  explains why 40% of members in  the Ukrainian militia groups that have fomented so much violence in Eastern Ukraine over the last few years have apparently been foreign mercenaries.  One has to wonder  who has been footing the bill for that, since it's  hard to imagine the Ukrainian government being able to afford that expenditure.  Ukraine is the poorest country in Europe with a gross national income per capita  of $3,540 US (2020 statistics, Atlas method).

Secondly,  the  destabilization of Russia needs to happen soon, since the massively overinflated stock markets of the Western World are due for a “correction”, one that might be even more dramatic than the 2008 financial crisis.   Financial elites understand that If the stock markets start to plunge  and interest rates continue to rise that could be a trigger for Third World countries to actually default on their debts and simply abandon the current system,  but only if they have an alternative  to go to.

These Asian alternatives,  which entail replacing the dollar with a basket of  currencies from different countries, would be a seismic shift if they were to be embraced. Some say it would be the end of the American and European global dominance.  There’s no way that that’s not going to be heavily resisted.   

Could it be possible then,  that  the real puppet masters pushing the Ukraine war are Western financial elites, well hidden from view?   It is not a hypothesis you will hear or see in our media.  There we are given a simplistic story of a small nation, courageously led by a heroic leader standing up to an evil villain. It’s a narrative designed to tug  at our heart and our sense of compassion. 

But, do you really believe NATO governments, who have never shown any remorse at the death and destruction their incursions  have caused in Libya, Syria and Iraq, would suddenly feel moved to risk nuclear war to protect Ukrainians? 

Or is Ukraine just a pawn in a geopolitical financial power struggle, one that could massively backfire on the West?  And have the Ukrainian people been conned or coerced into accepting a war that could drag on for a long time and ultimately end very badly for them? 

Perhaps we should be asking more questions - and expecting more from our media. 

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Why the Bank of Canada needs to be reformed and how we could do it.

5/14/2022

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The recent verbal skirmish between  Conservative leadership contestant, Pierre Poilievre, and PM Justin Trudeau,  over the role of the Bank of Canada was more interesting for what it didn’t allude to than what it did.

 

                   “The Bank of Canada Governor has allowed himself to become the ATM machine of this                                government…. Money printing government deficits have caused more dollars                                                   chasing fewer   goods, driving higher prices.”   Pierre Poilievre

                     ‘The independence of the Bank of Canada from the government of the day is a really                                          important principle that ensures the stability and the good reputation of                                                           Canada in  international economic circles.”  PM Justin Trudeau

Let’s start with Poilievre’s  accusation that the inflation we are seeing in our stores is caused by the Bank of Canada's enthusiastic creation of money to fund government spending.  That's not really true.

Most government funding that is not raised through taxes comes from  the  government's issuance of interest bearing treasury bills and bonds.  Currently only 10% of these are purchased by the Bank of Canada.  The remaining 90% are sold to financial institutions.  The money raised in this way is in the form of government debt owed to these institutions.  During the pandemic Canada took on a large debt load to finance CERB payments, a decision that made sense to most Canadians.

So if the Bank of Canada isn't printing huge amounts of money and dishing it out to government through the purchase of new treasury bills, does that mean our Central Bank  isn't a source of inflation.  Yes and No.  I don't think Poilievre is correct in blaming the Bank of Canada for the price hike of goods.  But the explosion in property values and share prices can definitely be linked to Bank of Canada policies.   

It has to do with Quantitative Easing.

Quantitative Easing:  Who benefits? Who is neglected?

When COVID hit, our Central Bank began using the money it can create out of thin air to buy treasury bills and bonds, but not directly from government.  Instead, the great majority of the purchases were in the secondary market -  from commercial banks and other financial institutions that  had purchased these assets at an earlier date.  The strategy is called Quantitative Easing (QE).  

The rationale for QE has been that these financial institutions will then use the money they have received through selling their bonds to the Bank of Canada to create additional  loans directed at the business sector  That will  stimulate the economy and create jobs. Sounds good!
 
Except, that is not what commercial banks have been doing.  Instead, they have preferred to loan money to  to investors who buy real estate, stocks,  bonds and other financial instruments.  Those who benefit are rarely  citizens, workers  or local businesses,  but rather the 1 to 10 percent of the population who can afford to speculate in this kind of way.  

In other words, while the Bank of Canada's QE initiatives may be guilty of causing inflation  in property and shares, they have, arguably, had very little to do with price rises in the ordinary things we consume.  Certainly, at present, these hikes have much more to do with shortages caused by supply chain problems.  

For a clearer description of how Quantitative Easing works check out Jim Stanford's article in The Monitor. ​

Whose interests does the Bank of Canada serve?

Let’s turn now to our Prime Minister’s assertion that the Bank of Canada needs to be independent from government.  One has to ask the question: Where has that independence led Central Banks? 

Those in control of Central Banks in Europe and North America have known for years that the money they were injecting into the banking sector  through QE's buyback of treasury bills and bonds was not trickling down to the main street economy.  Yet they have continued with what is, in reality, a very harmful practice.   Why is that?  Could it be that the independence of Central Banks  from government that Trudeau so values, has led to them being joined at the hip with self-serving private sector  bankers on Wall Street, Bay Street, the City of London, etc.?  Why would the phenomenon be any different in Canada?  

Last October the Bank of Canada announced that it would end its experiment with Quantitative Easing.  Perhaps, leadership there finally had some qualms about the staggering rise in real estate prices, precipitated by all that money competing for Toronto properties. 

But does that mean that Quantitative Easing is necessarily a bad thing?  Not at all.  It very much depends on how it is used.

A Quantitative Easing approach that serves the people

What if the money created by the Bank of Canada was  not used principally to buy bonds from the private sector?  What if, instead of only 10%, a sizeable part of it  was directly loaned to the government of Canada to be used to stimulate infrastructure development and the jobs that go with that?  That’s not a farfetched idea.  In fact, Canada did exactly that for 35 years. 

In 1938 the Bank of Canada, until then a private sector bank, was nationalized by the liberal government under Prime Minister McKenzie King.  The next year, the Bank began buying treasury bills and bonds directly from the Canadian government. What that meant, in essence, was that the Canadian government  was borrowing money from itself and paying itself interest, instead of doing so through private sector financial institutions.  

That money was used initially to fund the war effort.  Post war, it was infrastructure projects including the TransCanada Highway, the St Lawrence Seaway, multiple universities across the country, and, of course, the many infrastructure projects that were initiated here in our province once we joined confederation.  It was an amazing period with multiple employment opportunities for those of us lucky enough to come of age during that period. 

Then, in 1974 the Canadian government abruptly ceased to borrow money through our Central Bank and began, instead, to issue bonds and treasury bills to be bought by private financial institutions.  Look what happened to our debt load once that started.  
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Most Canadians are unaware of just how  golden the postwar period was for ordinary people.  But our prime minister shouldn’t be.  It was under the government of his father, Pierre Trudeau,   that the Bank of Canada,  no doubt under pressure from the international bankers who absolutely hated Canada’s unique experiment, suddenly  ceased loaning money to government,  

Will the King government’s QE model  ever be resurrected?  Apparently not with our current pool of political parties. It’s as if that golden era has been expunged from the history of parliamentarians. There’s never any discussion or reference to it.  

But there should be.  And my generation,  Baby Boomers who benefited so easily from past QE policies, should be pushing for it.  

Pierre Poilievre is right to demand reform of the Bank of Canada.  He's right to want to ban the Bank's introduction of a digital currency. But like economists in the Modern Monetary Theory movement,  I would disagree with his enthusiasm for  constricting the money creation powers of the bank in the name of controlling inflation.    

The problem is not the excessive creation of money.  It's where the money has been going.  It's how that money has been used to enrich the already rich and powerful, while, meanwhile, the job and housing opportunities for  so many of our young people continue to shrink, in spite of their multiple degrees or levels of training.  

We need to fix that inequity, but an independent Bank of Canada is never going to do that on its own.   It needs a push.

What we really need are political leaders with the vision and insights of the McKenzie King era - leaders that would be  committed to the development of local infrastructure and the jobs that would go with that. 

And  if we can find these leaders we need to support them.

Marilyn Reid




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Good Guys and Bad Guys in the Ukrainian War:  Part 2

4/16/2022

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We believe at Democracy Alert that, in times of crisis, it is essential to listen to the point of view of all sides.  Sadly, that is not happening with the Ukraine crisis. 

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​As the war deepens in Ukraine it has been heartening to see how many Newfoundlanders and Labradorians have donated to help refugees flooding into surrounding countries.  For those of us who can afford to do so, this is an opportunity to try to help ease the terrible trauma these people  must be enduring.  They are innocent victims in a war not of their choosing - a war clearly wanted by vested interests. But who are these vested interests?  Are the Russians really the only bad guys ?  
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Media portrayals of the war in Ukraine consistently paint a very black  picture of an "evil" Putin  with his army of invaders killing innocent civilians.  It’s a simplistic strategy designed to emotionally polarize our response to the situation by keeping  us hooked on drama and personal tragedy.

Rarely do we hear any mention on TV of the reasons given by Putin for the Russian army’s presence in the country.  Nor does the media narrative include  the role or motives of other parties, specifically the way the U.S. and NATO may have deliberately created the conditions that would precipitate a war.  And Google searches generally don’t help.  Unless you are aware of sites that might paint a different picture of the conflict, you will be hard pressed to find alternative interpretations of  what’s going on in Ukraine.

But are you curious?   Here are two authors whose interpretation of the crisis differs dramatically from what we are seeing on TV.  ​The articles outlining their  perspectives are well worth the read.  
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 The Military Situation in the Ukraine is a translation of an article of his that appeared in the March edition of the Centre Francais de Recherche sur le Renseignement.  Here Baud details the history and circumstances around :
  • The referendums on self-determination in the Donbas republics of  Donetsk and Lugansk, followed by the Ukrainian government's decision to abolish the Kivalov-Kolesnichenko law of 2012 that made Russian one of the official languages of Ukraine.
  • The failure to implement the Minsk Agreements and the resulting violent repression of Russian speaking regions of Ukraine post 2014 by extreme-right paramilitary militias.
  • Russia's rationale in demanding the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine.
  • Why the humanitarian corridors have not worked well.​
  • And  much more.
On April 11th Baud published a second article updating the military situation.  In it he explains why it never was a Russian objective to capture Kiev.  

One day later, in a podcast with Aaron Mate on Pushback, Baud  gives further clarification of  the events that  led to the Russian decision to launch an offensive in the Ukraine.  The smoking gun, he asserts, was the decision and the decree issued by Volodymyr Zelenskyy in March 2021 to recapture the Crimea by force. The trigger, ultimately,  was the intensification of Ukrainian artillery shelling of the Russian speaking Donbas region starting on the 16 February. (The Russian response began on February 24.)  

Baud's conclusion throughout is that the war has been deliberately encouraged and instrumentalized by the US and Europe with the goal to weaken Russia.  


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Greenwald's article on the Ukraine war begins with the alarming claim that "On a virtually daily basis, any off-key news agency, independent platform or individual citizen is liable to be banished from the Internet."  Why?  Their crime, he asserts, is not disinformation, but skepticism about the US/NATO propaganda campaign.  By contrast, he asserts that "One can spread as many lies and as much disinformation as one wants provided that it is designed to advance the NATO agenda in Ukraine."  (In support of this assertion, there is some evidence to suggest that the attacks on the  the Kramatorsk train station  and the Bucha massacre might have been, as Russia maintains, false flag operations.   But, who knows?)

Greenwald goes on to question why there is so much urgency and emphasis placed  on silencing the small pockets of dissenting voices about the war in Ukraine?  Who profits from this war?   At the top of Greenwald's answer list  is the US and its military industrial complex.    

So how do we reconcile these positions with what we are hearing daily on our news channels?

What is becoming clear to those of us trying to keep an open mind in following recent events  is that Ukraine is a country with  deep political, economic and ethnic contradictions.

Politically, Ukraine is a democracy, but one with an extreme-right contingent of vigilantes who are willing to use intimidation and  violence to advance their agendas.  The most infamous is the neonazi Azov Battalion, a militia group whose headquarters have, since 2014, been in the Russian speaking city of Mariupol.  Azov brutality has been documented and condemned by the United Nations yet it continues to be supported by governments and oligarchs. 

As for the oligarchs, their power in Ukraine is extraordinary. They simply dominate the economic and political life of the country.   

Ukraine is also, unfortunately, a deeply corrupt country, ranking  122 on the world corruption index .

All of this makes  Ukraine's democracy open to manipulation  by powerful players with vested interests (both inside and outside the country) who may have little concern for the welfare of ordinary Ukrainians.  

Then there is the ethnic issue.  30% of the Ukrainian population speak Russian as their first language, and as the map above shows, most are located in the southern and eastern part of Ukraine.  Apparently, less than one percent of the population of Mariupol, the city currently under siege by the Russians, regularly speak Ukrainian at home. 

It is the Russian speaking regions of the country that have seen the greatest destruction of ordinary people's lives.  Why? Because this is where the bulk of the Ukrainian army and assisting militias were stationed prior to the Russian invasion. The Russians would argue that the deployment of Ukrainian troops in that area was a deliberate preparation for expanded attacks on the republics of the Donbas and possibly even the Crimea.  

But here is the shocker.  According to Jacques Baud,  40% (numbering around 102,000 men) of  Ukrainian forces  are composed of foreign mercenaries, including "fanatical and brutal individuals" who have for years perpetrated crimes against civilians. Baud claims that many of these foreign mercenaries  have been armed, financed and trained by NATO countries, notably, the United States, Great Britain, France and Canada.  With respect to Canada, one has to wonder  how many, among  the 33,000 Ukrainian military personnel our government has trained  for the Ukrainian government since 2015, have actually been mercenaries.  

Does the fostering of mercenaries by NATO countries  suggest that Ukraine might be a mere sub-plot in Cold War 2?   It certainly supports Greenwald's assertion that  " the only goal that the U.S. and its NATO allies have when it comes to the war in Ukraine is to keep it dragging on for as long as possible." 

That brings me back to the role of the media.  I get it that countries at war will want to censor or block any narratives contrary to government's position.  That certainly was true on all sides in World War 2.  But Canada is not at war.  In a democracy that is not under attack it is important to look at both sides.  That hasn't been happening  in our country and we need to ask why the corporate  media has chosen to follow in lock-step consensus the official NATO position. 

You may find the opinions presented here upsetting and uncomfortable.  But we are a people that have always taken pride in our tolerance of other perspectives.  In a world where rich, powerful elites are taking more and more control over our lives, and slyly shaping  the way we think,  we need to stay open to perspectives that don't match what the these groups want us to believe. 

And that I say in solidarity with ordinary Ukrainians, good people caught so unfairly and mercilessly as pawns in the ambitions of powerful, selfish, ideologically blinkered geopolitical players. 

The Russians aren't the only bad guys here.  

Marilyn Reid

For direct Russian quotes on the Russian government's rationale for deploying troops in the Ukraine see the following links.
  1. from the Russian ambassador to the U.S.:    www.moonofalabama.org/2022/04/sane-voices-explaining-the-reasons-for-and-dangers-behind-the-war-in-ukraine.html​

  2. from a high level Russian presidential advisor: ww.corriere.it/economia/aziende/22_aprile_08/we-are-at-war-with-the-west-the-european-security-order-is-illegitimate-c6b9fa5a-b6b7-11ec-b39d-8a197cc9b19a.shtml
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Has the Middle Class's lack of support for the Truckers' Freedom Convoy been unfair?

3/14/2022

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In her introduction to an article in the National Post on the Freedom Convoy, columnist, Rupra Supramaya, asserts that Canada’s “Two Solitudes” no longer represent the divide between French and English Canadians. The divide now is between the working and middle classes. She goes on to say that it’s a divide that appeared to have  broken out into “class warfare” when the Freedom Convoy went to Ottawa last month.

Does Supramaya’s use of the term “class warfare” seem extreme? Perhaps not, when you consider how quickly the Ottawa protest story morphed into an assault on the character of the truckers.

Government's position

On reflection, it’s hardly surprising that the Liberal government chose never to meet with Convoy representatives to discuss the truckers’ concerns. How do you argue in favour of a vaccine passport that discriminates against unvaccinated service workers, given that the research now unequivocally shows that the vaccinated can spread COVID just as easily as the unvaccinated? As for the claim that the unvaccinated are clogging up the hospitals, recent data from both Canada and the UK  indicate that that too is inaccurate.

Knowing that, Government  needed a different story, and Justin Trudeau was up to the task. Our prime minister gave quite the performance in portraying the truckers as racists. It was a caricature that rapidly became a dominant theme in the media.

Then there were the innuendos that foreign agents (i.e. the Kremlin) were behind the movement. The Russia threat has since been retracted by the CBC along with the claim that one third of the donations to GoFundMe were foreign.  It turns out the figure was more like 12%.

As for Government's insinuations that the Convoy organizers  represent a danger to democracy, take a look at their profiles. Right wing some of them may be, but I don’t see any capacity there to organize a coup d’état. 

The Middle Class Perspective

But, this blog posting is not about government’s response to the Convoy. Instead, it’s about the enthusiasm with which middle class, civil society groups and those on the left embraced the government story.  Think Jagmeet Singh and the NDP. Think the unions, the alternative press and a lot of NGOs.  These groups all have one thing in common. Their financial base, whether it be through fees or donations, is largely derived from middle class contributions. 

What the middle class conveniently forgets is that we have endured the pandemic in very different ways than the working class. First and foremost, we’ve been able to sit out the most difficult parts at home, either because we were already retired or because we were able to do our job digitally. For many in the working class, particularly those in the service sector, it’s been a radically different, and much more difficult, experience.

Remember the early days of the pandemic when the fear was that COVID might be as serious as the Spanish Flu or worse. It was the supermarket and delivery workers that kept the food circulating, the health care workers in retirement and care home that took care of our elderly at significant risk to themselves. Many, if not most, of these jobs were low paying, but these workers did it for the greater good and we were all grateful.

Fast forward two years. All of this seems to have been forgotten. The rapidity with which Canadians embraced  the portrayal of Convoy participants as racists  was amazing. To be clear, I’m not denying that there may have been some racist elements in the Ottawa protest. It is the nature of protests that opportunistic fringe elements choose to participate. But to suggest that racism was at the heart and core of the movement is frighteningly simplistic.

Fortunately, not everybody has bought into  our prime minister’s version of the protest movement.   Indeed, it’s been most interesting to look at those that didn’t.  They include:

  • many church groups, who both through GiveSendGo funding initiatives and active participation in the protest indicated their support.  Are we to conclude that these groups are either racist or misguided?
 
  • different ethnic and racial groups who right from the start were a part of the protest. I strongly recommend watching this short three-minute video where some of them speak.
 
  • a few intrepid individuals of political and media fame, who almost always came,  not from the left of the political spectrum, but from the right.  Here in Newfoundland and Labrador that would include Brian Peckford, Rex Murphy and Ches Crosby.
 
So, is this the beginning of class warfare as Rupra Supramaya suggests?    Let me end with a quote from  her article in the National Post.
 
“The protests and the government’s crackdown have shattered myths about Canada, whose elite have a self-image of the country as egalitarian and caring, in contrast to the supposed social Darwinism that characterizes the United States.  Class divisions, hidden beneath the surface, have come to the fore, revealing class privilege, which often goes unrecognized by those who enjoy it, in a way not seen in recent times.  It was routine to see politicians and even journalists denigrate the truckers and protesters as “those people” who sought to “occupy” the nation’s capital, without any acknowledgement that these were fellow Canadians exercising their right of peaceful protest and civil disobedience in the seat of government power, which had so affected their lives in a profoundly existential sense.  Rather, the protesters were dismissed as rednecks from the fringes of society whose presence in the capital upset an established social order.”
 
If that seems a harsh assessment of our society consider that a web based media poll found that nearly two-thirds of Canadians who responded believe the Convoy truckers are a “small minority” who are “selfishly thinking only of themselves”.  
​
Is there not irony here?

Marilyn Reid
 


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Good Guys and Bad Guys in the  War in Ukraine

2/27/2022

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The thing about wars is that we are conditioned to see them in terms of good guys and bad guys.  Russia has invaded  Ukraine.  Ergo, the Russians must be the villains. 

But why did Russia invade  Ukraine?  Is it because Putin is a megalomaniacal despot?   0r are his reasons based on grievances that reached a breaking point? 



Here are two sites that give a different portrayal of Russia’s rationale from what you are hearing in the mainstream media.  

​The first site, from the Off-Guardian, gives an historical perspective of Ukraine’s relationship with Russia.  It also details the Kremlin's concerns about the growing militarization of Ukraine.        off-guardian.org/2022/02/25/whats-really-going-on-in-ukraine/

The second site is a translation of the speech given last Thursday by Vladimar Putin to the Russian people, justifying what is going on in Ukraine at the moment.  Be prepared for a style that is very different from what you might hear from Joe Biden or Justin Trudeau.  This is a long, step by step, historical explanation of why Putin considers, not Ukraine, but America and NATO to be the real threat to Russia.   sputniknews.com/20220224/putin-authorizes-special-operation-in-donbass-1093318890.html

Does the promotion of these two postings mean that Democracy Alert supports Russia in this conflict?  Absolutely not.  

But we can  see why Russia might be  uneasy with the presence of the NATO military "exercises" they insist are taking place on Ukrainian territory.  We're pretty sure the US would not allow similar incursions by the Russians or Chinese in Cuba or Venezuela.  

So let’s go back to our allusion to the good guys and bad  guys in this conflict.  The good guys, in our opinion, are the vast majority of Ukrainian citizens who are helpless pawns in this power play among  superplayers on the international scene. 

Yes, one of the bad guys is Russia, but is it really the only one? 

Might not  the impression, given  by mainstream media, that the behind the scenes dealings of the Americans and NATO in Ukraine over the past few years  have been entirely benevolent and in the interests of ordinary Ukrainians,  be either  short-sighted or slanted?  And if so, why is that?

The reasons for the Ukraine war could be a lot more complicated and devious than we are led to believe.  



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Rex Murphy's Take on the Freedom Convoy and Democracy

2/21/2022

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Below is a must watch video for those of you who have become  increasingly uncomfortable with government's and the media's portrayal of the truckers' Freedom Convoy protest and the Emergencies Act that it has provoked.   It's of Rex Murphy being interviewed by  Jordan Peterson, a professor emeritus of University of Toronto with a large YouTube following. 

In the three days since  the dialogue was published, the video has already been watched by over 1,100,000  people and garnered 71,000 likes.  You may not agree with all that you hear as both speakers come from the right of the political spectrum on some  issues that may be important to you. 

But this is an interview that asks and discusses the hard questions.   Well done, Rex!

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Are Canadian hospitals really filled with unvaccinated COVID patients?

2/20/2022

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Those who defend the Vaccine Passport system generally make two arguments.  One is that the unvaccinated are more contagious than the vaccinated. Past blog1 postings have identified the considerable amount of research that now debunks this assertion.  

The second argument is that our hospitals are overwhelmed by unvaccinated COVID patients.  But is that true?  


Apparently not.   

The Canadian COVID Care Alliance, a not-for-profit, movement of independent Canadian scientists and doctors,  has published  statistics comparing the in-hospital rates for Ontario COVID patients by vaccination status.   Their recent report showed the following:  

Unvaccinated rate:                      17.35 cases per 100,00 unvaccinated patients  (282 cases in hospital)
                                                                               
Partially vaccinated rate:         14.67 cases per 100,000 "pv" population  (83 cases in hospital)                                
Fully vaccinated rate:                 15.22 cases per 100,000  "fv" population  (1237 cases in hospital)

The CCCA concludes that: "There does not appear to be any significant evidence to support the claim that the SARS-COV-2 pandemic is due to any one group. Vaccinated, partially vaccinated and unvaccinated are all getting infected and hospitalized at about the same rate."

Ontario's statistics do not represent an  aberration or one-off experience.   Instead, their  statistics are very much in-line with what is happening elsewhere.  
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                                                  Published in The Expose, Feb. 15th, Feb 14th and Feb 11th
The Trudeau government has to be aware of these numbers, yet it has refused to  meet with the truckers in the Freedom Convoy, preferring to portray them as far-right, racist extremists.  Why is that?

What's really going on here?

Marilyn Reid


1 Studies that show the vaccinated can spread the virus as easily as the unvaccinated.
1.   The Lancet Infectious Diseases October 202112 — Fully “vaccinated” individuals who develop breakthrough infections have a peak viral load similar to that of unvaccinated people, and efficiently transmit the infection to unvaccinated and “vaccinated” alike in household settings.
2.     The Lancet Preprint13 — Fully “vaccinated” Vietnamese health care workers who contracted breakthrough SARS-CoV-2 Delta infections had viral loads that were 251 times higher than those found in cases infected with earlier strains. So, the shots do not appear to protect against infection with the Delta strain.
3.  A July 31, 2021, medRxiv preprint by Riemersma et. al.14 found no difference in viral loads between unvaccinated people and those “fully vaccinated” who developed breakthrough infections. They also found the Delta variant was capable of “partial escape from polyclonal and monoclonal antibodies.”
4. Eurosurveillance rapid communication, July 202115 — An outbreak of the Delta variant in a hospital in Finland suggested the shots did little to prevent the spread of infection, even among the “vaccinated,” and despite routine use of face masks and other protective equipment. 
5.  Eurosurveillance rapid communication, September 202116 — An upsurge of Delta variant infections in Israel, at a time when more than 55% of the population were “fully vaccinated,” also showed the COVID shots were ineffective against this variant. The infection spread even to those who were fully jabbed AND wore surgical masks.
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Two Videos that might change your Perspective about the Truckers' Freedom Convoy

2/9/2022

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See Video links in Paragraphs 5 & 6.





Truckers from Newfoundland and Labrador  are participating in the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa - a movement that started out initially protesting against the federal government's imposition of a vaccine passport on truckers reentering the country from the United States.  It has since evolved into a  protest against  the mandates that require people be vaccinated in order to work. 

The truckers  argue that workers should have the freedom to decide  for themselves whether they want to be vaccinated or not.  They maintain that discrimination against the unvaccinated  makes no sense given that, according to the science (1), the vaccinated can spread the COVID virus just as easily as the unvaccinated.  

That truckers from across the country would take on a journey of that length and that expense implies that they feel strongly about their cause.  Yet we rarely get an unbiased viewpoint of what has driven them to take this extraordinary step, or what they are actually doing on the streets of Ottawa.  

Below  are links to  two videos that, perhaps, will  help widen or clarify whatever perspective you might have. 

The first, by Jean-Francois Girard, is  a short, three minute  depiction of what's going on in Ottawa, as shown from the perspective of both the PM and on the ground participants.  Scroll halfway down the page of the following link to find it.  

www.globalresearch.ca/video-ottawa-freedom-convoy-protesters-honest-respectful-citizens- not-justin-trudeau-says/5769697

The second is a thirty minute press conference given by the leaders of the truckers’ movement.  In it they explain why they are in Ottawa and how they foresee things evolving.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6fBFdLGUZw

Ask yourself as you view these videos if you really think these people are selfish, misguided individuals led astray by misogynists, racists and far right extremists.  That’s what the Trudeau government would have you believe. 

Or, is it possible that they just might be principled people who, at great inconvenience to themselves, want to persuade parliamentarians and municipal leaders that the vaccine passport system is not just unjust, but, in their opinion,  unsupported by the science. 

The Freedom Truckers are asking the government to sit down and talk to their representatives, along with  the scientists and doctors that have joined them.  So far, the Trudeau government has refused. 

...........................................................................................................................................................................

1 Studies that show the vaccinated can spread the virus as easily as the unvaccinated.
1.   The Lancet Infectious Diseases October 202112 — Fully “vaccinated” individuals who develop breakthrough infections have a peak viral load similar to that of unvaccinated people, and efficiently transmit the infection to unvaccinated and “vaccinated” alike in household settings.
2.     The Lancet Preprint13 — Fully “vaccinated” Vietnamese health care workers who contracted breakthrough SARS-CoV-2 Delta infections had viral loads that were 251 times higher than those found in cases infected with earlier strains. So, the shots do not appear to protect against infection with the Delta strain.
3.  A July 31, 2021, medRxiv preprint by Riemersma et. al.14 found no difference in viral loads between unvaccinated people and those “fully vaccinated” who developed breakthrough infections. They also found the Delta variant was capable of “partial escape from polyclonal and monoclonal antibodies.”
4. Eurosurveillance rapid communication, July 202115 — An outbreak of the Delta variant in a hospital in Finland suggested the shots did little to prevent the spread of infection, even among the “vaccinated,” and despite routine use of face masks and other protective equipment. 
5.  Eurosurveillance rapid communication, September 202116 — An upsurge of Delta variant infections in Israel, at a time when more than 55% of the population were “fully vaccinated,” also showed the COVID shots were ineffective against this variant. The infection spread even to those who were fully jabbed AND wore surgical masks.

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I’m a Canadian of Color, a Professor, and I Support the Truckers

2/1/2022

3 Comments

 
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For those of us who believe that public engagement and discussion are essential in a healthy democracy, the last two years of our COVID ordeal have been deeply discouraging.  Why? Simply put, there seems to be little desire amongst Canadians who willingly took the vaccines to listen to the concerns others may have about parts of the COVID narrative. Nowhere has this seemed more evident than amongst our intellectual class. It has been quite the surprise. 

This posting is by an academic who has tried to speak out. 

...........................................................................................................................................................................

I’m a Canadian of Color, a Professor, and I Support the Truckers
                


Cornelius Christian is an associate professor of economics at Brock University.
This January 31st article  was published by the Brownstone Institute.




The trucker convoy is a racist movement composed of white high-school dropouts who deface statues and abuse war memorials. This is what Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Canada’s liberal elite believe, and nearly precisely what he said in an address to the nation. 

I am a counter-example to their claim: a first-generation Canadian of minority status and an economics professor, I have nothing but admiration for the truckers and their cause. Indeed many in my community support the truckers, at least twenty percent of whom are South Asian. There is also support from black and indigenous Canadians. This is nothing to do with race. This is everything to do with freedom of choice. 

In August of 2021, my university implemented a vaccination mandate — get vaccinated, or lose your job. Requests for medical and religious exemptions were swiftly denied (with the very rare exemption granted to cover the university’s rear-end, legally speaking).

On principle, I decided against revealing my private medical data and respectfully told my union and employer, providing them with options for remote work or in-person instruction. As a result of my decision, and despite being tenured with excellent research and teaching evaluations, my university intends to fire me, and my union suggests that I am a danger to the community. 

My story is not unique: several capable professors are in my position. However, our colleagues in academia, instead of defending us, retreated into their offices and kept their heads down. My department chair, whom I considered a friend, flatly refused to advocate on my behalf. Only two sessional instructors privately offered me their support. Nothing good happened. 

However, when truckers — most of whom are vaccinated — faced a cross-border mandate, they stood with their brothers against government overreach and in favor of freedom of choice. They are asking for the immediate end to all COVID-related mandates and restrictions. Most Canadians agree with them. At this point, such measures are farcical. 

In any movement with thousands of people, there will always be a few hooligans. The Black Lives Matter protests, which Justin Trudeau supported, had their fair share of looting and rioting from a minority of supporters. However, this does not in itself discredit BLM’s claims, which must be examined independently of a few violent episodes. The trucker demonstrations, for their part, have been free of violence so far.

Trudeau’s claim that protesters were waving swastikas and dancing on war memorials is irresponsible. The isolated individuals who did this have not been identified, and we do not even know whether they were with the truckers, or merely taking advantage of a large gathering in order to broadcast fringe views. At this stage, it is unwise to speculate, since appeals to race will only divide Canadians. 

If we are going to play this game, then the true racists are Trudeau and his ilk, including the provincial premiers and university leaders who enforce vaccine passports, lockdowns, and mandates. Indigenous Canadians and minorities are more likely to refuse COVID-19 vaccines. 

Those of us from former colonies, such as myself, find it disturbing that the Canadian government now restricts freedom of movement and access to jobs for vaccine-free citizens — just like the British Raj did to Indians in India. If you are a minority who dares to disagree with the new ‘scientific’ wisdom, then you are cast aside by the very people who claim to stand for social justice. This is not the Canada I grew up in. 

The Canada I know is the Canada of the truckers: a country of hard-working men and women from diverse cultures, sacrificing themselves for the betterment of their families and communities. The truckers’ convoy represents a victory of common sense over nonsensical intellectual posturing. The choice to get a vaccine should always be a free one, and there should never be coercion such as the threat of job loss or travel restrictions. Canadians are patient and friendly people, but their long fuse has burned short, and when they get angry, their leaders had better listen. 

At this point, three items must be pursued. First, politicians must urgently enter into negotiations with the truckers. The truckers should not leave until all of their demands are met: Prime Minister Trudeau has gone into hiding, suggesting that the truckers have the bargaining edge.

Second, public health officials, business leaders, and others who carried out vaccine mandates need to publicly apologize and resign.

Finally, we need airtight legislation to ensure that a pandemic is never again exploited for political power and control. 

In his book Crisis and Leviathan, economic historian Robert Higgs shows that governments use national crises, whether real or imagined, to expand their control over citizens. The COVID-19 pandemic may go down in history as one of the worst examples of this. SARS-COV-2 undeniably killed people, particularly the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions. 

However, the public health response also killed and injured many, with drug overdoses, suicides, and missed surgeries being only the tip of the iceberg. The trucker convoy offers a rare yet narrow opportunity for us to defeat petty tyrants, and to return to common sense.

​....................................................................

According to a recent Angus Reid poll, a majority (54%) of Canadians now say they want all restrictions to end – an increase of 15-points since early January.
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Some things to consider about our Vaccine Passports

1/20/2022

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The founding premise of  Democracy Alert is that throughout the 21st century democratic governance has been steadily eroded in subtle termite-like ways, undetected by most people.  The result has been growing inequality and a sense of powerlessness.  That’s been felt hardest by those who came of age after the year 2000. 




Former  NL Premier Brian Peckford, the last surviving signatory to Canada's 1982 Constitution,  asserts that COVID has pushed this erosion into a blatant assault on the principles embedded in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.   I agree.   
​
One of the methods used has been the introduction of  the Vaccine Passport system,  now imposed across the country for travel, for work and for many services. All of these restrictions on the unvaccinated have  been done with very little debate in our parliaments on the health, economic and democratic implications  of such a move.

The Questionable Health Benefits of Vaccine Passports

A significant number of clinical studies in respected journals have now concluded  that the vaccinated  carry the same viral load in their nasal passages as the unvaccinated.1 What that obviously means is that the vaccinated can just as easily transmit COVID as the unvaccinated. 

Surely governments must be aware of these studies.  Yet they continue to want to isolate the unvaccinated, presumably with the goal of forcing these implicitly naughty, selfish, irresponsible people to get the ever-growing number of vaccines we’re all supposed to take to rid ourselves of this quasi pandemic. 

The stress load and the loneliness of those who dare to remain unvaccinated are overwhelming in many cases.  Hit hardest are those who don’t have the financial security of a pension or a job that can be done from home. 

Economic winners and losers in our Vaccine Passport system

Clearly, it is the working class unvaccinated, many of whom work in the service and retail sector or resource development, that are suffering the most with the imposition of the vaccine passport.  White collar, middle class jobs that can be done remotely tend to be less affected. 

Small businesses have also suffered.  A 2022 Statista survey reports that 66% of US small business owners reported that COVID has negatively affected them with more than one in five stating that the effect has been large.

Bank of Canada statistics suggest the same in our country.​
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Meanwhile the share price of large companies on the stock market has boomed and Oxfam reports that the ten richest billionaires have doubled their fortunes during the pandemic. A new billionaire is apparently created every 26 hours. 

This is not okay.  There is something radically wrong with a pandemic that enriches the super-rich to this extent.  At the very least it makes you wonder who governments have been taking advice from over the last two years – and why. 
 
Is the COVID Passport an assault on the Charter of Rights and Freedoms?

Former NL Premier Brian Peckford  believes so.  He argues that the rights to work, travel, receive equal treatment under the law, and freedoms of worship and assembly  have been unjustifiably trampled  on, given that COVID has only a  .01 mortality rate in Canada among  those with positive PCR tests.  
​
I would suggest that it goes even deeper than that.     According to a December article in the National Post, the Canadian government, through the Public Health Agency of Canada accessed location data from 33 million mobile devices to monitor people’s movement during  the lockdown. 

Think about it.  Do we really want government to know where we go?  Have we  too casually sacrificed our privacy for the illusion of health safety?

Conspiracy theorists go further and argue that the Vaccine Passport is actually a trial run for a coming digital passport system that will include all our financial transactions.  If that sounds far-fetched, you might want to consider that there is already a precedent in place. 

 In 2021 China’s Central Bank began to issue a new digital currency to its citizens using apps on smart phones. The replacement of cash by this digital currency potentially allows the Chinese government to watch over all transactions made, to tax at will, to require the money be used only for certain products or in certain regions, and to cancel the ability to make all transactions if citizens don’t comply.  

 As Canadians we should take note.  The hot topic in central banks worldwide  today is the introduction of a similar digitalized currency accessed through cell phones.  Issued by central banks like the Bank of Canada or the Federal Reserve in the US, such a  system would not just get rid of private sector competitors like Bitcoin, but ultimately cash itself. 

If this happens, we will be giving government the potential to execute vast and long lasting surveillance powers over us.  Our easy acceptance of the Vaccine Passport  attached to our cell phones has already somewhat normalized that concept for us. 
 
Conclusion

Driven, as we have been over the last two year by our fear of COVID, many people have not questioned what the long-term implications might be of the pandemic measures taken by government.  The assumption is  that things will get back to normal once we rid ourselves of COVID.

I'd like to be optimistic and believe that this could happen.   it’s reassuring to read that some governments, notably the UK,  are pulling back from the COVID passports and lockdowns.  The scientific evidence against their effectiveness is just too strong to continue.   

But even if Canada follows suit, does it mean that the painful chasm that has developed between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated will end?  Does it mean that the “anti-vaxxers” will actually be given space in the media to articulate their concerns, not just about the passport system but other parts of the COVID narrative.  

Or will we choose to learn nothing from this ordeal?

 In the age of the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset plans for humanity, now is not the time to be complacent.

Marilyn Reid

......................................................................


1  Studies comparing the nasal viral loads of those with and without COVID vaccines 

1.  SARS-CoV-2 Omicron VOC Transmission in Danish Households,  
2.  The Lancet Infectious Diseases 
3.  The Lancet Preprint13 
4.  medRxiv preprint by Riemersma et. al.14 
5.  Eurosurveillance rapid communication, ​
6.  Eurosurveillance rapid communication, 

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Signals that our First-Past-the-Post system is no longer working

10/12/2021

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Our Letter to the Telegram:  October 9th.

​The last seven federal elections in Canada have produced five short-term, minority governments. 

Moreover, in the 2019 and 2021 elections the Liberals received fewer votes than the Conservatives but still formed the government because they won more seats. 



 
Under a proportional representation (PR) system, where the percentage of seats a party receives matches their share of the vote, the latter would not necessarily have happened.

Instead, since neither party had the required 50% of votes for a majority government, the “winning” party would be the one most able to form a partnership with other parties to pass legislation.  This implies a whole new way of governing. 

Working cooperatively, usually in coalition with other parties, is central to proportional representation systems.  And contrary to what PR critics claim, these coalition governments are remarkably stable and lasting. 

As an example, since Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish voters chose proportional representation to elect their new parliaments or assemblies back in 1997, there have been five elections in Scotland, six in Northern Ireland and six in Wales.  Contrast that with the nine elections Canada has held during that period. 

Surveys indicate that Canadians like the concept of proportionality. It appeals to our sense of fairness that, under a PR system, NDP, Green or PPC supporters would not be wasting their time voting for a candidate that has no chance of winning the riding seat. Why? Because their votes would still be counted to determine how many seats their party would win nationally -  something that doesn’t happen under our first-past-the-post (FPTP) system. 

 PR also makes it less likely entire regions of the country will be represented by just one party.

Yet Proportional Representation has been rejected in referendums in B.C., P.E.I. and Ontario.  Why?  We suspect it has to do with its implementation.   FPTP may be unfair to minority opinions in ridings, but the manner in which the seats are allocated is much easier to understand.

Still, confusion about the implementation of PR seats wasn’t an obstacle for Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish voters, accustomed as they were to voting in EU parliamentary elections. They knew proportional representation worked. Choosing it was a no-brainer. 

Canadians, by contrast, have little exposure to PR. Moreover, our two major parties remain firmly attached to our first-past-the-post system. And why wouldn’t they be?  FPTP systems perpetuate dominance by two parties.

However, FPTP can no longer be relied on to produce majority governments.  That’s a game changer, although we somehow doubt the Liberal Party is going to shift its position on PR.  After all, they are the principal beneficiaries of strategic voting where NDP and Green supporters vote Liberal in order to prevent a Conservative riding victory. 
​
The Conservatives, on the other hand, should be noticing, not just their disadvantaged position, but that “conservative” parties are holding their own in Europe.

Might it be in their interest to actually support a Made in Canada proportional representation system – one uniquely designed to meet the diverse needs of our country with its strong rural component?
 
Marilyn Reid and Barry Darby 
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