Recognized worldwide as synonymous with quality of life, Canada often appears at the top of the lists of the best countries to live and work, for factors such as freedom, economic and political stability and access to healthcare. In recent times, however, the news about the country shows that progressivism may be leaving deep marks on the happy Canadian face.
The authoritarian postures of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have shown that even a traditionally free country like Canada can take paths that are not compatible with democracy. In February, to quell protests by truck drivers against the health passport requirement, the prime minister invoked the Emergencies Law, which allows him to suspend fundamental rights and govern with more powers. The only time this had happened before in the country was in 1970, with Justin Trudeau’s father, Pierre Trudeau.
The freedom to protest characterizes Western democracies, which have never taken a similar action against their citizens, except in the case of terrorism. Trudeau, however, used the Emergencies Act to deter dissent, ordering banks to stop “providing any financial services to people related to the protests”, including freezing accounts, canceling cards and seizing funds. Among the “suspects” the law places anyone who makes cash donations to support the protests.
The use of emergency powers to take money from political opponents is similar to China’s social credit policy, which can punish regime dissidents by depriving them of access to basic services. “Where is this going to end? What will stop influential politicians from violating freedoms using the same pretexts? The answer, of course, is ‘nothing’. And maybe this is the point: from now on, dissent against the leftist view can be criminalized.” Ben Shapiro.
Incentive to the suicide of the poor
Since last year, Canadian law has allowed citizens too poor to live to receive “medical care for dying,” a euphemism for assisted suicide.
Enacted in March 2021, Bill C-7 amended the Penal Code, repealing the requirement that “the natural death of a person is reasonably foreseeable for him to be eligible for medical assistance to die.” The legislation opens loopholes for cases such as a 51-year-old woman from Ontariowho opted for assisted death after trying public assistance for more than two years to obtain a home free of chemical agents that aggravated his chronic allergy.
Another woman, in Vancouver, was seeking assisted death because her income, affected by the effects of the pandemic, is no longer enough to afford a treatment that kept her chronic pain bearable. By next year, the legislation is expected to expand access to assisted suicide for people with mental illness, through a parliamentary review. There is also talk of making “mature minors” eligible for this type of procedure.
On May 10, Conservative Senator Donald Neil Plett, Senate opposition leader, mentioned cases of abusequestioning ruling leader Senator Marc Gold (non-party) about how promised “safeguards needed to protect society’s most vulnerable” failed in these situations.
“The stories you told are tragic and our hearts go out to the families who suffered. I still believe that the bill we passed struck a reasonable balance. I am also encouraged by the work of the Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying to seek improvements in the law. I am confident that we in the Senate and our colleagues elsewhere will continue to work to ensure that the law continues to strike the right balance,” Gold said.
Researcher Yuan Yi Zhu, from the University of Oxford, recalls in a article published by Spectator, that the annual net savings generated by the C-7 law are in the region of US$ 62 million. The data is from a Canadian Parliamentary Budget 2020 report. While health care for people with chronic illnesses is quite costly, each assisted suicide costs $2,327. “Despite the Canadian government’s insistence that assisted suicide is all about individual autonomy, it also has an eye on its tax advantages.”
Basically, concludes Yuan Yi Zhu, “Canadian law, in all its majesty, allows both the rich and the poor to kill themselves if they are too poor to continue living in dignity. In fact, the ever-generous Canadian state will even pay for their deaths. What you won’t do is spend money to allow them to live instead of killing each other.”
Abortion
Given the signal that the United States Supreme Court is about to overturn the case law of Roe v. Wade, Canada “invited” American women to have abortions on its territory. Canadian Minister of Families, Children and Social Development, Karina Gould, said the country can provide “pregnancy termination services” to US citizens. According to her, all the women would have to do is pay the cost of the procedure.
The minister also expressed fears that the possible repeal of abortion rights in the US could affect Canada. In this regard, Trudeau stated that the government is considering presenting a bill to guarantee the right to abortion in the country. “”Every woman in Canada has the right to a safe and legal abortion,” said the prime minister. The practice has been allowed since 1988, but there is no law that regulates the subject.
gender ideology
In 2017, the country passed the C-16 law, which places gender identity as part of the Human Rights Code and makes the refusal to use neutral pronouns a “hate crime” in the Penal Code. The penalty, which ranges from a fine to imprisonment, even includes “anti-prejudice training”, teaching the “right” way to act.
The debate gave notoriety to clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson, who in 2016 published a series of videos criticizing the legislation. He denounced government control of language, pointing to C-16 as a form of government imposition of an ideology. “The law violates the freedom of expression of citizens and it institutes gender ideology”, said, at the time, the professor at the University of Toronto.
Religiosity in decline
The population of Canada is also less and less religious, as shown by the study “Religiosity in Canada and its evolution from 1985 to 2019”, published by StatCan (the federal government department in charge of producing statistics on the Canadian population). Over the decades, both religious affiliation, attendance at activities and the importance given to spiritual beliefs have declined in the country.
In 2019, although 68% of Canadians claimed to have a religious affiliation, more than half of the population (53%) reported not having participated in activities related to the topic in the year prior to the survey. Despite this, 54% of respondents said they consider religious or spiritual beliefs to be somewhat or very important to their lives.
The drop in membership in some denominations is so frightening that the Anglican Church of Canada projects it will have no more members by the year 2040 if the decline in membership continues at its current pace. The conclusion is from Canadian Reverend Neil Elliot, an Anglican priest and lead author of a study commissioned by the denomination. In the 1960s, Canadian Anglicans numbered 1.3 million, a number that dropped to 360,000 in 2019. The drop is even more significant because Canada’s population has grown significantly over these decades.
Crisis among conservatives
The handling of the protests in February took a toll on the prime minister’s waning popularity. At the beginning of March, a search made by the company Nanos pointed out that the approval of Trudeau reached less than a third of the population (29.9%). Interim leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, Candice Bergen, comes in second in popular preference with 19.2%, while 17.1% said they would like a government led by Jagmeet Singh of the New Democratic Party. Before the Freedom Train, 31.4% of Canadians preferred Trudeau to other leaders.
Between 1867 and 1935, the Conservatives formed the largest political force in the country and, with the current name, ruled Canada from 2006 to 2015. But now, the Conservative Party itself “is facing a deep crisis of identity”. In parallel with the protests, in February, Erin O’Toole was removed from the party leadership, which he had held since August 2020. He had been criticized for his progressive positions, which include pro-abortion.
For columnist Dennis Prager, from the Daily Signal, the identity crisis – which affects Canada’s elites in a special way – comes from the fact that citizens identify themselves in opposition to North Americans. “Besides that [não serem norte-americanos], there are not many other elements of identity among Canadians. And when a nation doesn’t identify with basically nothing, bad things happen – because nothingness is often filled in or replaced by evil,” he warns.
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