Even given the practical, ethical, and intellectual collapse of Canada’s governing institutions, the “Online Harms Act,” a.k.a. Bill C-63, is an outrageous assault on free speech and due process, even allowing pre-emptive incarceration for what you might be going to say. What an opportunity for PM-in-waiting Pierre Poilievre to stand on principle. Um, Pierre? Are you there?
Canadians tend to underestimate the extent and nature of the mess because of an ingrained conviction that we are moderate, sensible people. However radical or inept public policy gets, we must somehow be safe in the moderate middle. We may not buy vainglorious chattering-class rhetoric about our health-care system being the envy of the world, but we don’t suspect that it might be unaffordable, ineffective, and unfair because it is far left. Ditto our crumbling military, ruinous spending and borrowing, lack of accountability, etc.
Well, duh. And sometimes troubled times require stating truths so obvious they’re trite, like the state should not seize bank accounts over legal contributions to a protest that offended the prime minister’s august gaze. But Poilievre’s criticism was so vague he might not have read the bill first. As indeed he had not.
Poilievre is a political Rorschach blot. You can see a libertarian, a social conservative, a moderate, or Liberal lite. Whatever. Just vote for us.
Wait, you cry again. Trudeau’s polling numbers are disastrous and that harsh right-wing Pierre Poilievre will clean up the mess in Brian Mulroney’s “pink slips and running shoes” spirit, or Mike Harris’s “Common Sense Revolution.” And OK, he growls. But will he bite?
Will he dispute man-made climate change? He’s against the carbon tax, sure. But he’ll fight the dragon using “technology” which sounds cool and means nothing. The internal combustion engine is technology.
He condemns the Liberals’ neglect of defence. But would he double spending? And as I noted last week, he would have supported the Liberals’ bloated, ruinous budget if government didn’t get even bigger, it built homes not bureaucracy (cute but worse than meaningless), and it scrapped the carbon tax just on farmers.
A painful irony here is that Pierre Trudeau, who did as much as anyone to set us on the path to ruin, a smug civil libertarian who vastly expanded the powers of the state with respect to the individual, would have been outraged at C-63 including its “minority report” provision. Just imagine his acid wit dissecting the defence a person might offer to a judge’s suspicion they might later spew hate. But Poilievre? He has an election to win by being firm but flexible.
Another irony here is that Poilievre is happy to lead any parade already en route and massive, whereas Justin Trudeau is a conviction politician taking Canada in radical directions that lack public support. But he seems to think we’re too apathetic and the opposition too unfocused to stop him.
Is he right? Or will Poilievre rally to his own principles?
