This week, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the light-hearted and unpopular elected leader of a country with a 93% vaccination rate for those over 60 and an 84% total vaccination rate, announced that he would invoke the Emergency Measures Act to crack down on the Freedom Convoy – a group of protesters opposed to government vaccination mandates for truck drivers. Trudeau announced breathlessly that the invocation of the law was in fact “reasonable and proportionate”. His public security minister, Marco Mendicino, said the actions were necessary thanks to “bullying, harassment and expressions of hatred.”
Why the government would need to invoke emergency powers to move certain trucks remains incomprehensible; after all, the police had just removed the trucks from the Ambassador Bridge, reopening this trade artery with the United States. Meanwhile, provinces across Canada have already begun easing their COVID-19 restrictions, from vaccine passports to face coverings. There is no emergency here that would justify the use of Emergencies Act – as the BBC even noted, “It is not yet clear what scenario Mr. Trudeau would rely on to justify the use of emergency law – (relevant threats have not) been clearly present in Ontario.”
Nonetheless, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland explained that the government would expand laws designed to stop the financing of terrorism to now encompass the suppression of political dissent: “Financial service providers will be able to immediately freeze or suspend an account without a court order. By doing so, they will be protected against civil liability for acts done in good faith. In plain English, this means that the Government of Canada has now allowed banks to freeze accounts that donate money to political causes the government does not like.
The move to unbank disadvantaged political actors has already gained momentum – in January 2021, PayPal blocked a Christian crowdfunding site from using its services; the following month, Paypal announced it would work with the left-leaning Southern Poverty Law Center to find users to get started. As one of the original creators of Paypal, David Sacks, wrote, “When your name lands on a do-not-buy list created by a consortium of private fintech companies, who can you turn to?” In Canada, it’s worse than that: unbanking has become government sponsored.
And if Trudeau is able to invoke emergency powers to unbank his political opponents — people he has called racist simply for opposing his vaccination mandates — where, precisely, does that end? does he? What would prevent powerful political actors from violating freedoms under the same pretext?
The answer, of course, is nothing. And that is perhaps the point: from now on, dissent against leftist perspectives can be criminalized. Be careful what you say – your bank account is at stake.
Over the past century, the political left made a promise: if given increasingly centralized power, it would protect its citizens, especially in times of emergency. That promise has always been a lie, but the pandemic has exploded in a particularly blatant way. This left the left with two options: abandon this article of faith, an idea central to their whole worldview; or to persecute heretics. Trudeau, unsurprisingly, chose the latter. Emergency powers will be needed until the people enthusiastically accept that their superiors in government must govern them.
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