Rarely have I thought about the Government of Canada. Although one of my grandfathers was born in Canada, he moved to the US early in his life and he never spoke about his Canadian heritage. . My limited interactions with Canadians in the past led me to believe that Canadians enjoyed freedoms similar to Americans.
During the COVID-19 pandemic I was surprised to hear of forced quarantines and other processes and procedures being imposed on Canadian citizens which seriously limited their freedoms. When I heard that a “Freedom Convoy” had arrived in Ottawa to protest vaccine mandates, I was not surprised based on the extreme restrictions on freedom that the Canadian government had imposed on its citizens. What absolutely shocked me though was the first response of the Prime Minister of Canada (Justin Trudeau) to the convoy!!!! His first response was to call the members of the convoy names! And over the two weeks that the convoy was in Ottawa those names included racists, misogynists, Nazis , terrorists and extremists. Not surprisingly Trudeau previously told a Quebec television station, people who do not get vaccinated against COVID-19 are often racists, misogynists and extremists. But he said the people of Quebec are not the problem and questioned whether the rest of Canada needed to “tolerate” the unvaccinated. So strange since this is the same Justin Trudeau who can’t remember how many times he dressed up in black face or how many other ethnicities he has “misappropriated”!
So, what did he do after calling the truckers names? He took away the fuel for their trucks and fuel they were using for heat, in the dead of the Canadian winter. Funny he thought they could move their trucks, even if they wanted to, without fuel.
When that didn’t work Trudeau continued to call the trucker’s and their supporter’s names, even calling a government official supporting the convoy, who happened to be a Holocaust survivor, a Nazi. When she asked for an apology, he ignored her request and just did not give one. Treatment similar to what he was giving to the truckers.
Finally, rather than talking to the truckers or lifting mandates (like other countries are currently doing) Trudeau took the rare step of declaring a national public order emergency on Monday to end protests. It allows the authorities to move aggressively to restore public order, including banning public assembly and restricting travel to and from specific areas. Trudeau and members of his cabinet said the act would not be used to suspend “fundamental rights”. “We cannot and will not allow illegal and dangerous activities to continue,” the prime minister said in a speech to the nation, pointing to “serious challenges to law enforcement’s ability to effectively enforce the law.”
It has been half a century since emergency powers were last invoked in Canada. Mr. Trudeau’s father, Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, imposed them during a terrorism crisis in Quebec. Monday was the first time that the 1988 Emergencies Act has been used. The invocation of the Emergencies Act confers enormous, if temporary, power on the federal government. The Emergencies Act (French: Loi sur les mesures d’urgence) is a statute passed by the Parliament of Canada in 1988 which authorizes the federal government to take extraordinary temporary measures to respond to public welfare emergencies, public order emergencies, international emergencies and war emergencies. Trudeau and several of his cabinet ministers said the move would allow the government to take a variety of steps, including freezing bank accounts of protesters, to clear the blockade of about 400 trucks in Ottawa and smaller protests that have closed border points in Alberta and Manitoba. That’s not suspending “fundamental rights”?
While all this was going on money that was contributed to the Freedom Convoy through GoFundMe , approximately 15 million dollars ,was frozen. At first Go Fund Me said they would contribute the money to other charities of their choice but after complaints they said the money would be returned to the contributors. When another site GiveSendGo collected money for the Freedom Convoy the site was hacked and donor information publicized. Donors are being harassed and their assets and businesses etc are being threatened by other Canadians and the
Canadian Government. Not surprisingly since, according to Trudeau, supporters of the terrorist, racist, Nazi and misogynist truckers are in the same category!
SO WHY DOES ALL THIS MATTER. Because the head of what I thought was a civilized country, a parliamentary democracy, rather than speaking with a group of citizens protesting against a government policy, immediately called them names including racists, Nazis, misogynists and terrorists. Further steps included removing fuel, freezing funds, treats of loss of licenses and essentially threats of losing their ability to support themselves. Finally, a totalitarian government was imposed. As I am writing this, Canadians are forcibly being removed and put in jail. Justin Trudeau throughout this protest has behaved as a totalitarian ruler, refusing to even engage with the protestors!!! His behavior is similar to the behavior of the Nazis, described in the highlighted text below, taking supposedly legal actions, by invoking the Emergencies Act, to destroy those who disagree with him. How can Trudeau use Nazi tactics and call those who he is using the tactics on Nazis? Is he lying, incompetent, uneducated, or all of the above. His behavior rather leads me to believe that Trudeau would be more comfortable in a permanent totalitarian role. I hope that Canadians don’t let that happen.
Title
Confiscation of Jewish Property in Europe, 1933–1945, New Sources and Perspectives
Author
Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies USHMM 2003
Date
March 2003
Description
This consists of the proceedings of a symposium of the same name which took place at the USHMM’s Advanced Center for Holocaust Studies on 22 March 2001. The proceedings are available online and include important papers on a range of aspects, as set out below.
In their foreword, Paul Shapiro and Martin Dean underline the significance of the symposium which focused attention on new areas of research into the confiscation process:
“The aim of this symposium was to develop a more in-depth understanding of the mechanisms and effects of the confiscation of Jewish property throughout Nazi-dominated Europe. It is possible to examine this subject more closely than in the past, in part, because significant new archival collections have been opened to researchers in the past decade. These include government, private, and corporate archives in Eastern and Western Europe, as well as in the United States—documents that until recently were classified, or subject to restricted access, or in some cases simply forgotten.
These papers highlight a number of key aspects of the confiscation process. They focus on the seizure of private property such as bank accounts, securities, real estate, household items, and books, as distinct from the so-called Aryanization of businesses. Through a combination of special taxes, blocked accounts, and confiscatory decrees Jews were progressively robbed of their entire private means. Particularly impressive and equally disturbing is the robbers’ effort to ensure that property confiscation was carried out by “legal” means through a vast array of institutions and organizations set up for this purpose. The immensely bureaucratic nature of the confiscation process emerges from the vast archival trail that has survived. Arguments that no one knew about the Jews’ fate become untenable once it is clear how many people were involved in processing their property. “Legal” measures often masked theft, but blatant robbery and extortion through intimidation and physical assault were also commonplace.”