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I remember when he was a phenomenon. Everyone was dying for him. Handsome, well-dressed and with progressive ideas, very worthy of these times. But we underestimated him. Justin Trudeau is very little of a democrat and quite a bit of a dictator.
Canada was not left out of the pandemic hysteria, which led the country to impose all the absurd measures of the liberal booklet. Whatever the World Health Organization said or whatever came out of the establishment of experts, who at first spoke as if they knew everything but it turned out that they never knew anything. The masks and the vaccine card and even the mass vaccination.
Because of all the absurd measures, which have been exposed as obsolete in their purpose to stop the virus, thousands of Canadian truck drivers took the initiative to raise their voices (or horns!) and demand freedom. They were joined by thousands of citizens, who stood in solidarity with the truckers whose jobs were taken away because they could not cross the border into the United States if they were not vaccinated.
And it is not that many are not vaccinated. In fact, the opposite is true. More than 90 percent of truck drivers in Canada are vaccinated. And in the U.S. more than 80 percent have at least one dose of the vaccine. So, it is clear: the so-called Freedom Convoy was never an anti-vaccine or anti-science movement. It is not about any of those trifles. It is, in the end, about freedom. For a vaccinated truck driver, it is unacceptable that a non-vaccinated truck driver is not allowed to work after having made a very personal and, of course, legitimate decision.
The Convoy has been surprising. A true peaceful revolution for freedom. Tens of thousands demonstrate every day, shouting “Freedom” and “down with restrictions”. Their sole purpose is for Canada to move away from the pandemic’s capricious paranoia and lift all measures that slice away civil liberties. What was Justin Trudeau’s response to the legitimate demand of Canadian citizens? He honored the conspiracy theory that he is supposedly the long-lost son of Fidel Castro and turned his government into a complete tyranny. Woke tyranny, because we must be fair and add the tagline.
This February 14, Trudeau invoked special powers to declare a state of emergency in Canada—something that had not happened since World War II—suspending the civil liberties of protesters. His purpose, as he has confessed, is to “restore order.” To do so, Trudeau has decided to cross the red line.
Canada’s deputy prime minister and finance minister, Chrystia Freeland, embraced Trudeau’s impulse and announced the first authoritarian measures under the state of emergency: corporate accounts of those in the protests will be frozen and their vehicle insurance will be suspended, Freeland said, in a statement to the press, alongside Trudeau.
Following the recent drift of the supposedly liberal government, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, one of the most prestigious and impartial organizations, denounced Trudeau’s latest decisions as a threat to democracy and an arbitrary invocation of the state of emergency.
“The federal government has not met the threshold necessary to invoke the Emergencies Act. This law creates a high and clear standard for good reason: the Act allows the government to bypass ordinary democratic processes. This standard has not been met,” the organization said in a statement.
“Governments regularly deal with difficult situations and do so using powers granted to them by democratically elected representatives. Emergency legislation should not be normalized. It threatens our democracy and our civil liberties,” added the Canadian Civil Liberties Association emphatically.
So, no doubt about it, Justin Trudeau’s government has a tyrant. Freezing the bank accounts of dissidents is quite Soviet. No doubt Maduro, Diaz-Canel or Xi Jinping are already taking note.
At some point, Trudeau pretended to profile himself as a symbol of that new generation of progressives, overly sensitive and childish. We were naive. In truth, he is a potential dictator. When it’s time to slice civil liberties, he doesn’t think about it.
A tyranny. But progressive. A woke tyranny. How chic. They freeze your bank account, repress you and take your job, but with a smile, a thumbs up and a little rainbow flag held in the other hand, next to a sign that screams “Welcome Refugees!.” Pathetic. Trudeau’s tyrannical pretension will be too much for him; he will be marginalized, like his generation of fragile politicians. As Dave Rubin said, “it’s the beginning of the end for a petty tyrant who came to power preaching diversity and rainbows.”
Orlando Avendaño is the co-editor-in-chief of El American. He is a Venezuelan journalist and has studies in the History of Venezuela. He is the author of the book Days of submission // Orlando Avendaño es el co-editor en Jefe de El American. Es periodista venezolano y cuenta con estudios en Historia de Venezuela. Es autor del libro Días de sumisión.