The Canadian Federal government has invoked the Emergencies Act for the first time ever, for what we were told only recently is a “fringe minority” of protestors.
Trudeau’s language has been carefully nationalistic and his style contained while discussing the protestors. He repeatedly makes appeals for the “safety” of all Canadians. His case sounds reasonable:
“Individuals are trying to blockade our economy, our democracy, and our fellow citizens’ daily lives,” he said. “It has to stop.”
But the pursuit of safety can become a danger when it leads an alarmed populace to acquiesce to increasingly strong-arm government.
The language used by Trudeau also subverts ideas that would typically appeal to liberals. He has declared the protestors to be “anti-vaxxers”, “racist” and “misogynist”. They are bad people, and therefore we should stand against them.
Unfortunately for Trudeau – although fortunately for the reputations of the freedom convoy truckers – the cat was out of the bag when we saw footage of protestors of all ethnicities, peacefully singing and dancing in the streets. Even Joël Lightbound, a member of Trudeau’s same party, has accused the prime minister of trying “to divide and to stigmatise” the unvaccinated.
I suspect Trudeau may even have welcome a little violence to justify a strong dispersement of this protest, but it has remained remarkably peaceable.
Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said that banks and financial institutions would be able to freeze the bank accounts of anyone linked with the protests without any need for a court order. The truckers’ insurance licenses can be revoked. The police will have new powers to fine and imprison protestors.
Freeland said they were broadening Canada’s “Terrorist Financing” rules to cover cryptocurrencies and crowdfunding platforms as part of the effort. Well, naturally. Imagine being able to bypass fiduciary totalitarianism – must put a stop to that!
This should be a huge wake up call to people. If western liberal democracies (in the case of Canada, I use this term more lightly than I would like at the moment) go down the route of programmable central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), governments will be able to swiftly switch off access to money, or specific products and services, if they do not like your behaviour. Here in the UK, the Treasury and the Bank of England are exploring a potential UK CBDC, and identity-based programmable money is under consideration. As I have already written, all that glitters is not gold. Add to this the subjective complexities of defining terrorism and the problem is self-evident.
Shutting down protest and blanket defunding a large group of protestors is a bad look for liberalism. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association said in a statement that the standard for invoking the Emergencies Act “has not been met”. The media will be dissecting whether this step was overreach for weeks to come. Those with a liberal heart know it is overreach now. If you support Trudeau’s action, you might as well support setting up a Chinese-style social credit system.
The battle lines are being redrawn. We are no longer engaged in a fight against a virus, but a fight for liberal values and against despotism.
On Monday, the Toronto Star called the Trudeau regime’s “decision to invoke the Emergencies Act (for the first time in Canadian history) an admission of failure…at all levels of government.”
Canada’s National Post reported that opposition parties slammed what they called his “proof of failure” to deal with activism by truckers.
“Premiers of Quebec, Saskatchewan, British Columbia, Alberta and Manitoba expressed opposition” to his draconian action.
Trudeau’s minority regime needs support from at least one opposition party to gain parliamentary approval of what no one should support.
Interim Conservative Party leader Candice Bergen called his usurpation of power “ham-fisted,” adding:
“Provinces are not in agreement with” his action.
He “wedge divide(d) and stigmatize(d) Canadians who he doesn’t agree with.”
“And by doing so, he creates so many barriers in terms of trying to solve this problem.”
Conservative Party leadership candidate Pierre Poilievre tried having things both ways by saying:
“I’ve always been against blockades and I still am now because I don’t believe you can gain your freedom by blocking someone else’s.”
“So yes to peaceful protests. No to blockades.”
Ontario premier Doug Ford expressed support for Trudeau’s tyrannical action.
Passage calls itself a publication that “offers left-wing perspectives on politics, economics, and culture from Canadian writers and thinkers.”
In response to the Trudeau regime’s usurpation of draconian powers, it called his action “a dangerous mistake,” adding:
It’s “undisputed proof that the state is using its heaviest hand to break their movement” to reverse justice denied.
“Canadians need to keep in mind that this crisis has been entirely invented by people in power.”
“The only (solution) is another collective attack on the civil liberties of Canadians? Are we actually supposed to believe this?”
The Toronto Sun denounced Trudeau for “go(ing) too far,” adding:
His “unjustified invoking of the Emergencies Act is deeply problematic and will have long-lasting consequences for the country.”
“The only real violence so far has been a vehicular ramming conducted against protesters, which sent four people to hospital.”
“You don’t hear much about that though. Trudeau never condemned it.”
“Instead, (he) called protesters every name in the book even though they are a diverse crowd in every sense of the word.”
His draconian actions show that he “wants more division and more hostility.”
Alberta’s Premier Jason Kenney slammed his Monday action, saying:
“We have all of the legal tools and operational resources required to maintain order.”
What Trudeau invoked on Monday will likely heighten tensions more than already.
Executive director of the Canadian Constitution Foundation, Joanna Baron, slammed his incompetence to deal with legitimate grievances.
NYT columnist Paul Krugman supports wealth, power and privileged interests exclusively at the expense of the general welfare he abhors.
His opposition to activism by Canadian truckers for restoration of lost freedoms didn’t surprise.
Instead of explaining what it’s all about, he called freedom-fighting “economic vandalism and intimidation (sic).”
He lied claiming that mass-protesters by Canadian truckers nationwide “isn’t a grassroots uprising (sic).”
Along with legions of supporters, people involved represent most all segments of society.
Not according to Krugman’s perversion of reality, falsely calling Canadian freedom fighters “right-wing extremists (sic).”
Downplaying their numbers to a few thousand, he ignored tens of thousands involved in Canada nationwide with widespread public support.
Saying the mission of freedom-fighting truckers is “all about… causing economic damage” is typical of how his columns consistently turn truth on its head.
The same goes for saying:
“The right is perfectly fine, indeed enthusiastic, about illegal actions and disorder as long as they serve right-wing ends.”
There’s nothing illegal about fighting for justice, for going all-out for restoration of lost freedoms, for opposing tyrannical rule.
The problem with Krugman and likeminded ideologues is that he and they support the latter at the expense of the former.
A website has claimed to have obtained a trove of personal data from Freedom Convoy donors, as the main fundraising platform for the backers of the Canadian anti-vaccine mandate truckers suffered an alleged hack and went offline on Monday.
The Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoS) whistleblower site announced it had been given 30 megabytes of information on the donors of the Christian fundraising site GiveSendGo, including names, email addresses, zip codes and IP addresses.
This data won’t be made available to the public, but will only be provided to “journalists and researchers” due to its sensitive personal nature, according to DDoS.
Meanwhile, GiveSendGo – which became the main crowdfunding hub for the protesters after the mainstream platform GoFundMe blocked donations to them on February 5 – remained unresponsive on Monday.
Those visiting the site were met with a message saying: “Application is under maintenance, we will be back very soon.”
Media reports said GiveSendGo had been breached overnight, with its front page replaced by a clip from Disney’s animated movie ‘Frozen’, suggesting that its operations and money have been frozen too.
The video also contained a manifesto, in which the hackers labeled the site’s donors “grifters and hatriots,” while accusing them of funding “the insurrection in Ottawa” and the Capitol riots in the US on January 6 last year.
The Freedom Convoy demonstrations began in late January over Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s demand for unvaccinated truckers to quarantine after coming back to Canada from the US.
The protest escalated quickly and saw roads and border crossings blocked across Canada, including the capital, Ottawa, with those taking part also decrying Covid-19 lockdowns and mask mandates, along with calling for Trudeau’s resignation.
Supporters of the cause allegedly gathered $8 million online to continue rallying, but a Canadian judge issued an injunction blocking the money for the Freedom Convoy over the weekend.
Late on Sunday, the Canada Border Services Agency said it had ejected the last remaining demonstrator from the border with the US in Windsor, Ontario, reopening North America’s busiest trade link after a six-day blockade.
The Canadian government has moved to extend its financial regulations to crowdfunding platforms and cryptocurrencies, under the Emergencies Act invoked Monday to crack down on “Freedom Convoy” trucker protests against Covid-19 mandates.
Under the emergency, which is due to last 30 days unless extended, all crowdfunding and crypto platforms must register with Canada’s financial intelligence agency FinTrac and report “large or suspicious” transactions, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said on Monday. This is an expansion of Canada’s existing money-laundering and terrorist financing rules, and the government will propose a law that would make these powers permanent, she added.
“We know that these platforms are being used to support illegal blockades and illegal activity which is damaging the Canadian economy,” said Freeland.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has declared trucker protests – from the “Freedom Convoy” parking in front of the parliament in Ottawa to the blockades at three border crossings with the US – to be illegal and authorized federal police to help provinces and local authorities dismantle them.
Canadian banks have also been instructed to freeze assets or “review their relationship” with anyone they suspect of being involved in such protests, without a court order. Companies whose trucks are being used in the “illegal” protests will have their accounts frozen and their insurance suspended, said Freeland.
The financial crackdown comes after Ottawa successfully pressured GoFundMe to freeze some CAN $10 million the trucker protest had raised, only to see the fundraiser move to GiveSendGo, a rival US platform. After GiveSendGo refused Canadian orders to freeze the funds, it was hacked and the trucker donor list was published online.
This is the first time Canada has invoked the Emergencies Act since it was passed in 1988, to replace the old martial law first enacted in 1914. The War Measures Act had been used during the two world wars to impose controls on the Canadian economy and imprison citizens of German, [Italian] and Japanese origin. It was most recently used in 1970 by Trudeau’s father Pierre, to crack down on Francophone separatists in Quebec who had kidnapped a lawmaker. Almost 500 people were arrested during the period now known as the October Crisis.
As the Canadian freedom convoy rolls on and continues to influence other protesters around the globe, Canadian media continues to push outright disinformation by suggesting that the Russian government is behind the movement.
When the convoy first came to prominence at the end of January, state broadcaster the Canadian Broadcasting Company began spreading completely unfounded claims that “Russian actors” were present among the Canadian truckers holding up major cities including Ottawa and Toronto, as well as border crossings.
The tenuous reasoning behind the theory is that Canada has expressed support for Ukraine during the country’s ongoing tensions with Russia.
Rather than admit that working class truckers are sick of enforced restrictions and vaccine mandates threatening their livelihoods, CBC floated the crackpot idea that Vladimir Putin is secretly behind the protests.
CBC continues to push the conspiracy theory, with correspondent Harry Forestell filing the following report Friday giving airtime to ‘New Brunswick cybersecurity expert’ David Shipley, who is adamant that the Russians are behind everything.
Shipley proclaimed “Who would have reason right now to cause as much chaos in Canada as possible? Well, at the top of that list is Russia.”
He continued, “We are actively engaged in a geopolitical battle about the future of the Ukraine. Our Foreign Affairs minister, our Prime Minister, others have been very vocal in our support for the Ukraine and it seems very likely that the tactics that we are seeing, the creation of the massive Facebook groups using fake identities or in the case now alleged by a U.S. media outlet, a stolen identity of a Missouri woman to create these groups and to foster this communication hundreds of thousands of people, this is the Russian internet research agency playbook writ large.”
Shipley has considered that possibly the truckers are Chinese agents too, but ultimately no, they’re Russian.
He declared “You have other enemies as well. You have China, you have other states but when I narrow down my list of suspects and I don’t have enough evidence to win in a court of law but I don’t need that right now, this smacks of the kind of move that Russia has made in the past, the United States, and is continuing to do around the world.”
When asked what the solution to this pressing Russian agent problem is, Shipley’s solution was to restrict and shut down the convoy’s social media presence.
You certainly don’t have enough evidence Mr Shipley because there isn’t any.
OTTAWA – The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms today filed a lawsuit in Federal Court seeking to strike down the federal government’s mandatory Covid-19 vaccine requirements for air travellers. The court action is on behalf of several Canadians from across Canada whose Charter rights and freedoms have been infringed.
On October 30, 2021, the federal government announced that anyone travelling by air, train, or ship, must be fully vaccinated. The travel vaccination mandate has prevented approximately 6 million unvaccinated Canadians (15% of Canada’s population) from travel within Canada and prevents them from flying out of Canada. Some of the Canadians involved in the lawsuit cannot travel to help sick loved ones, get to work, visit family and friends, take international vacations, and live ordinary lives.
The main applicant in the case is former Newfoundland Premier, The Honourable A. Brian Peckford. Mr. Peckford, pictured, is the only surviving drafter and signatory 40 years after the 1982 Constitution and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was enacted.
“It is becoming more obvious that being vaccinated does not stop people from getting Covid and does not stop them from spreading it”, says the former Premier. “The government has not shown that the policy makes flying safer—it simply discriminates”, he notes. “When I heard Prime Minister Trudeau call the unvaccinated ‘racists,’ ‘misogynists, ‘anti-science’ and ‘extremist’ and his musing ‘do we tolerate these people?’ it became clear he is sowing divisions and advancing his vendetta against a specific group of Canadians—this is completely against the democratic and Canadian values I love about this country”, adds Mr. Peckford.
“The federal travel ban has segregated me from other Canadians. It’s discriminatory, violates my Charter rights and that’s why I am fighting the travel ban,” explains Mr. Peckford.
The Justice Centre’s legal challenge cites violations of Charter rights including mobility, life, liberty and security of the person, privacy, and discrimination. The lawsuit also challenges whether the Minister of Transportation has the jurisdiction to use aviation safety powers to enforce public health measures.
In discussing effective border control measures at the start of the Covid-19 outbreak, Canada’s chief medical officer, Dr. Tam, said: “As you move further away from that epicentre, any other border measures are much less effective. Data on public health has shown that many of these are actually not effective at all… WHO advises against any kind of travel and trade restrictions, saying that they are inappropriate and could actually cause more harm than good in terms of our global effort to contain.” (Canada House of Commons, Standing Committee on Health Meeting, February 5, 2020)
The World Health Organization (“WHO”) continues to maintain that position and on January 19, 2022, urged all countries to: “Lift or ease international traffic bans as they do not provide added value and continue to contribute to the economic and social stress experienced by States Parties. The failure of travel restrictions introduced after the detection and reporting of Omicron variant to limit international spread of Omicron demonstrates the ineffectiveness of such measures over time.” The WHO repeated that countries should: “not require proof of vaccination against COVID-19 for international travel.” (World Health Organization, Statement on the tenth meeting of the International Health Regulations (2005) Emergency Committee regarding the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, January 19, 2022.)
“Despite the confirmed science that the vaccine does not stop people from getting or spreading the virus and the repeated warnings from the WHO, it’s clear the federal government is out of step and arbitrarily restricting Canadians fundamental rights and freedoms,” says Keith Wilson, Q.C., lead counsel for the legal challenge. “It is profoundly disturbing that a marginalized group in Canada—the unvaccinated—are essentially prohibited from leaving the country,” he adds.
“Canadians have been losing hope in the Charter and our courts. We are going to put the best arguments and evidence forward so that the court can clarify where governments overstep,” concludes Mr. Wilson.
The court will be asked to hear the case on an expedited basis given the serious infringement on Canadians’ mobility and other rights. Canada is the only country in the developed world that has banned Covid vaccine-free travellers from air travel.
The ongoing Truckers for Freedom convoy in Ottawa has triggered a shockwave that is reaching all around the world. Even as our authoritarian federal regime continues to double down on measures and threatens to use brute force tactics against peaceful protesters, many provinces are nervously beginning to lay out a timeline for ending mandates.
But there is something important missing from the conversation surrounding the end of mandates. If the mandates are simply dropped today without calling out the underlying legal and ethical fallacy that was used to justify them, government overreach will have become normalized. We will be left without the legal protections to stop them from doing this to us again after the truckers go home. All it will take to put us back in a cage is for the government to point at the next wave, the next virus variant, or the next non-Covid emergency. We will have normalized that our rights, our freedoms, our bodily autonomy, and even access to our lives are conditional privileges, subject to opinion polls and technocratic impulses, and that they can be withdrawn again at any time, “for our safety.”
Quebec Health Minister Christian Dubé admits that vaccine passports and mandatory masks have no end in sight, and will remain “tools” to ensure a return to “normal life” when another wave hits. pic.twitter.com/TXJnN4xJ8x
In March of 2020, in violation of the principles embedded in our constitutions, governments around the world convinced citizens to give their leaders and public institutions the authority to overrule individual rights in order to “flatten the curve.” That impulse went unchallenged under the false assumption that human rights violations could be justified as long as the benefits to the majority outweighed the costs to the minority. By accepting this excuse for overriding unconditional rights, we transformed ourselves into an authoritarian police state where “might makes right”. That is the moment when all the checks and balances in our scientific and democratic institutions stopped functioning.
Liberal democracy was built around the principle that individual rights must be unconditional. In other words, they are meant to supersede the authority of government. Consequently, individual rights (such as bodily autonomy) were meant to serve as checks and balances on government power. They were meant to provide a hard limit to what our government can do to us without our individual consent.
If the government cannot override your rights to bend you to its will, then it will be forced to try to convince you by talking with you. That forces government to be transparent and to engage in meaningful debate with critics. Your ability to say NO, and to have your choice respected, is the difference between a functioning liberal democracy and an authoritarian regime.
The natural instinct of fearful people is to control those around them. Unconditional rights force people to negotiate voluntary participation in collective solutions. Thus, unconditional rights prevent the formation of echo chambers and provide an important counter-weight to rein in uncontrolled panic. When no-one has the option to use the brute force of State power to force others to submit to what they think is “the right thing to do”, then the only path forward is to keep talking to everyone, including to “fringe minorities” with “unacceptable views”. When we allow rights to become conditional, it is virtually a certainty that during a crisis, panicked citizens and opportunistic politicians will give in to their worst impulses and trample those who disagree with them.
Unconditional individual rights prevent governments from taking unwilling citizens on crusades. They prevent scientific institutions from transforming themselves into unchallengeable “Ministries of Truth” that can double down on their mistakes to avoid accountability. They ensure that the checks and balances that make science and democracy work do not break down in the chaos of a crisis. In the heat of an emergency when policy decisions are often made on the fly, unconditional rights are often the only safeguards to protect minorities from panicked mobs and self-anointed kings.
If we allow our leaders to normalize the idea that rights can be switched off during emergencies or when political leaders decide that “the science is settled”, then we are giving the government terrifying and unlimited power over us. It gives those who control the levers of power the authority to turn off access to your life. That turns the competition for power into a zero-sum game: the winners become masters, the losers become serfs. It means you can no longer afford to allow the other side to win an election, at any cost, nor agree to a peaceful transfer of power, because if you lose the winning team becomes the master of your destiny. And so, a zero-sum game of brutal power politics is set in motion. Unconditional individual rights are the antidote to civil war. Liberal democracy collapses without them.
Withdrawing mandates because “the Omicron variant is mild” or because “the costs of continuing the measures outweigh the benefits” does not undo what has been normalized and legitimized. If the legitimacy of mandates is not overturned, you will not be going back to your normal life. It may superficially look similar to your life before Covid, but in reality you will be living in a Brave New World where governments temporarily grant privileges to those who conform with the government’s vision of how we should live. You will no longer be celebrating your differences, cultivating your individuality, or making your own free choices. Only conformity will enable you to exist. You will be living under a regime in which any new “crisis” can serve as justification to impose restrictions on those who don’t “get with the program” as long as mobs and technocrats think the restrictions are “reasonable”. You will no longer be the master of your own life. A golden cage is still a cage if someone else controls the lock on the door.
Politicians and public health authorities MUST be forced to acknowledge that mandates are a violation of civil liberties. The public MUST be confronted by the fact that liberal democracy ceases to exist without the unconditional (inalienable) safeguards of individual rights and freedoms. The public MUST recognize that science ceases to function when mandates can be used to cut off scientific debates. Our governments and our fellow citizens MUST be made to understand that unconditional rights are especially important during a crisis.
If the legal and ethical fallacies that were used to justify mandates are not called out as inexcusable violations of our constitutional rights, we will have inadvertently normalized the illiberal idea that, as long as someone in a lab coat says it’s okay, this can be done to us again, at any time, whether to fight the next wave of Covid, to take away freedoms to fight “climate change”, to seize assets to solve a government debt crisis, or simply to socially engineer outcomes according to whatever our leaders define as a “fairer and more equitable world”.
How we navigate the end of mandates determines whether we win our freedom or whether we allow our leaders to normalize a Brave New World with conditional rights that can be turned off again during the next “emergency”.
Thousands of Canadian truckers and supporters continue protesting against draconian Trudeau regime health and freedom-destroying mandates.
Ongoing since January 29 in Ottawa, they continued overnight Saturday for the 6th day along the Ambassador Bridge linking Windsor, Ontario to Detroit — defying a court order to disperse and state of emergency threats by Ontario premier Doug Ford.
Things are fluid and quick-changing.
After things eased somewhat along the Ambassador Bridge, other protesters arrived on the Canadian side to block free passage.
According to news reports, a face-off with police sent to clear the bridge included no physical confrontations as of Saturday evening.
Disruptions also affect border crossings from Coutts, Alberta to Montana and Surrey, British Columbia to Washington state.
Late Saturday, a Trudeau regime statement said “border crossings cannot, and will not, remain closed, and that all options are on the table.”
Vehicles continue to block the Ambassador Bridge, Toronto Star reporter Jacob Lorinc tweeting:
“Police moving up slowly, but very slowly. Lots of protesters here.”
“(V)ehicles are still blocking lanes that lead to the bridge. (It’s) closed.”
“Not clear when it will reopen.”
“No arrests made as far as I can tell.”
Al Jazeera reported that “(a) crowd exceeding 10,000 people made their way between the trucks towards (Ottawa’s) parliament building.”
On Saturday, “many vehicles” along the road from Montreal to Ottawa displayed “Freedom” signs.
CTV News said “(p)rotests continue across Canada.”
At the Ambassador Bridge, police and protesters remain in “standoff… with more protesters arriving throughout the” day on Saturday.
In Surrey, British Columbia, “multiple commercial trucks… broke through an RCMP barricade on the Pacific Highway while following protesters marching to the border Saturday afternoon.”
The main route to Blaine, Washington remained closed.
No violence, injuries or arrests were reported.
Resolution of what’s going on in Canada nationwide requires the Trudeau regime to rescind flu/covid mandates across the board.
Protests continue because he refuses to end what shouldn’t have been imposed in the first place.
One protester along the Ambassador Bridge expressed the sentiment of all others across Canada, saying:
“We’re sick and tired of mandates.”
Ending them is the only acceptable option.
In New Brunswick, an anti-mandates video by Canadian army major Stephen Chledowski went viral online, saying the following:
“I am calling on my military and cops comrades to now stand up and safeguard your loved ones against this government-forced medical tyranny.”
“For 2 years our elected government officials have been using the strategies of fear, coercion and financial, intimidation and physical altercation against us to attain compliance for specific repeated medical procedures.”
The Trudeau regime and provincial officials are using “bullying tactics of fear, intimidation, coercion and financial and physical violence.”
Like the US Constitution’s First Amendment affirmation of free expression, Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedom mandates it for all the nation’s people.
According to the rule of law in both countries, it cannot legally be denied to anyone.
So-called free expression limits on what Canadian military personnel may say publicly breach the law of the land.
Given how Canada operates extrajudicially on all things flu/covid related, Chledowski could face stiff disciplinary action for the “crime” of truth-telling about health and freedom-destroying mandates.
In December 2020, in full military attire, Officer Cadet Ladislas Kenderesi spoke out publicly against what he called “killer” jabs.
In response, he was charged with what CTV News called “a mutiny-related offense.”
As in the US and throughout the West, democracy in Canada is pure fantasy. It’s for the privileged few alone at the expense of most others.
The rule of law is what ruling regimes say it is, the real thing be damned when interfering with their draconian policies.
Health and freedom-destroying mandates revealed reality about how Canada is ill-governed.
The only option for protesters is staying the course for restoration of what Trudeau regime hardliners abolished in deference to wealth, power and privilege by harming the vast majority of Canadians — on the phony pretext of protecting them.
As with so many things that are happening at the moment, the attack on free speech is happening in multiple countries at the same time.
Firstly in the UK.
A draft Online Safety Bill was first presented to Parliament in May 2021 but has been strengthened in the last few weeks. Originally the draft Bill focussed on large web companies but the government has recently announced that more changes would be made and new criminal offences added.
One of these new offences would be spreading Covid-19 disinformation under a crime of sending a false communication. This offence would be committed if a person sends a communication they know to be false with the intention to cause non-trivial emotional, psychological or physical harm. The maximum sentence is 51 weeks.
The average person might think it is reasonable to imprison somebody for communicating something they know to be false with the intention to cause harm. However, what is “false” and what is “harm”? The last few years have shown us that these are now very subjective topics. Information that was true in 2019 became false in 2020 and is starting to be true again in 2022. A truth that is communicated to somebody who believes it to be false may cause them emotional or psychological harm. Intention is necessary for the crime to take place but if something is deemed to be false and deemed to cause harm then it could be argued that if the person who communicated the information, knew the information was on the “harmful list” then intention was there.
And who is deciding what information is false? The government? That almost sounds like a punchline to a joke. We’ll just end up with news articles such as the one below – Sponsored by the UK Government (see the text in blue).
The Bill was already censorial enough, making online companies remove content which was deemed to be harmful but not illegal. As we have seen in recent times, corporations’ misinformation policies have been arbitrary enough, which will only worsen with governments deciding what is true and what is false. Now, in a step one-removed from pre-crime, these companies will be made to proactively “prevent people being exposed in the first place”.
The government press release on the strengthening of this bill says that “to proactively tackle the priority offences, firms will need to make sure the features, functionalities and algorithms of their services are designed to prevent their users encountering them and minimise the length of time this content is available. This could be achieved by automated or human content moderation, banning illegal search terms, spotting suspicious users and having effective systems in place to prevent banned users opening new accounts”.
In almost Orwellian double-speak the press release says the Bill “will better protect people’s right to free expression online”. What this means is, it will better protect people’s free expression of government approved material. It continues by saying “it will have to be proven in court that a defendant sent a communication without any reasonable excuse and did so intending to cause serious distress or worse, with exemptions for communication which contributes to a matter of public interest”. So the government says something is a matter of public interest (e.g. vaccines) and suddenly intention doesn’t have to be proven.
Please sign this online petition to remove requirements that specifically target lawful speech from the Bill.
Next to the US.
At almost the same time, the US sent out a bulletin “Summary of Terrorism Threat to the U.S. Homeland”.
This states that “the United States remains in a heightened threat environment fueled by several factors, including an online environment filled with false or misleading narratives and conspiracy theories, and other forms of mis- dis- and mal-information (MDM) introduced and/or amplified by foreign and domestic threat actors. These threat actors seek to exacerbate societal friction to sow discord and undermine public trust in government institutions to encourage unrest, which could potentially inspire acts of violence”.
According to the bulletin, “the proliferation of false or misleading narratives, which sow discord or undermine public trust in U.S. government institutions” has “increased the volatility, unpredictability, and complexity of the threat environment”.
Key factors contributing to the current heightened threat environment include “widespread online proliferation of false or misleading narratives regarding unsubstantiated widespread election fraud and COVID-19”.
Furthermore, “as COVID-19 restrictions continue to decrease nationwide, increased access to commercial and government facilities and the rising number of mass gatherings could provide increased opportunities for individuals looking to commit acts of violence to do so, often with little or no warning. Meanwhile, COVID-19 mitigation measures—particularly COVID-19 vaccine and mask mandates—have been used by domestic violent extremists to justify violence since 2020 and could continue to inspire these extremists to target government, healthcare, and academic institutions that they associate with those measures”.
So in a step up from the UK’s response, the US is labelling individuals who produce any MDM as terrorists. Obviously, any language that incites violence is unacceptable but to confuse people encouraging unrest with those discussing whether Ivermectin could help save lives is completely unacceptable.
And finally in Canada.
Again, as if in lockstep, Justin Trudeau is trying to revive his controversial Internet legislation bill. Once known as Bill C-10, to fool those unintelligent Covid deniers, it has been changed to Bill C-11.
There are concerns that the legislation could be used to censor social media. The government have denied this but experts hold the opposite view. Who to believe, hmmm? The Toronto Sun reports that Trudeau is using the current national tensions as a smokescreen to let them slip in unpopular pieces of legislation. Never let a good crisis go to waste!
When we remove freedom of speech and censorship of controversial topics becomes common place, we turn into a dangerous society. Not only can authors be imprisoned for airing their views but, just as importantly, debate becomes restricted resulting in truths being hidden and novel and radical ideas supressed.
But if they can’t censor you, maybe they’ll just give you a morality pill so you don’t produce the stuff in the first place!
The Toronto-Dominion Bank (TD) has announced that it will not be handing over $1.4 million in donations to the Freedom Convoy, and is planning to surrender the money to the Ontario Superior Court of Justice instead.
Speaking to Canada’s CTV News on Friday, a representative for the top 10 North American financial institution revealed that “TD has asked the court to accept the funds, which were raised through crowdfunding and deposited into personal accounts at TD.” Approximately $1 million is the money raised for the Canadian truckers and not refunded by GoFundMe, and the other $0.4 million is made up of direct donations. The bank said it was applying to entrust the funds with the authorities in the hope that “they may be managed and distributed in accordance with the intentions of the donors, and/or to be returned to the donors who have requested refunds but whose entitlement to a refund cannot be determined by TD.”
Freedom Convoy lawyer Keith Wilson is vowing to put up a legal fight to “have the restrictions on the donated funds lifted as soon as possible.”
This is not the first time the Freedom Convoy has had its donations frozen, with GoFundMe announcing earlier this month that it would not hand over $9 million out of the $10 million raised for the movement. As justification for the move, the crowdfunding platform cited Canadian police reports of “violence and other unlawful activity” by the protesters. GoFundMe was initially planning to send the money to charities instead, but then decided to refund the donations.
The truckers switched to Christian fundraising platform GiveSendGo shortly afterwards. However, the Ontario Superior Court announced on Thursday that it would be freezing funds coming from GiveSendGo accounts. The court sided with Ontario’s attorney general, who claimed the money would be used to further a criminal act.
GiveSendGo responded by saying the Canadian court’s order does not apply to it, with money still being raised for the protesters.
With donations to the movement being seized on multiple occasions, the truckers are now turning to cryptocurrencies. According to a video posted by the truckers on Facebook, by Friday, they had already raised $913,000 in Bitcoin. The Ottawa police are apparently aware of the new fundraising strategy, mentioning it in documents filed in an Ontario court. The Canadian authorities are, however, yet to outline any steps to counter the move.
Freedom Convoy activists have been protesting in downtown Ottawa since January 29, as well as blocking a number of border crossings to the US. Their main complaint regards Covid vaccine mandates for truckers who cross the border – though their demands have expanded to include calls to ditch all Covid restrictions and for Justin Trudeau’s government to resign.
On Friday, Ontario Premier Doug Ford declared a state of emergency in the province, urging the protesters to “end these occupations and go home.”
End the mandates now. We will not be tricked into a violent outcome. We are peaceful protestors. Justice Hugh McLean acknowledges that we have a right to be here, to be heard and to protest, that is what we are here for. We are prepared to be arrested. We have our lawyers. We have no fear. We are here for our children.
By Kit Klarenberg · The Grayzone · February 6, 2026
Half a century after the public learned that boys at a Belfast group home were sexually assaulted by senior staff, a key question remains unanswered: was British intelligence implicated in the abuse conspiracy, and did Kincora serve as a ‘honeypot’ to entrap and blackmail powerful figures?
A vast trove of declassified files on Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual, political, and intelligence escapades released by the US Department of Justice has once again thrust disgraced former Prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor into the spotlight. With British police reportedly reviewing Andrew’s past sexual activities and links to Epstein, questions are growing about whether Britain’s spy agencies were aware of Andrew’s alleged escapades with minors.
If the darkest rumors turn out to be true, it will not be the first time a British royal had been embroiled in a child rape conspiracy with spy agency involvement. Back in 1980, a scandal erupted when the Kincora Boys’ Home in occupied Ireland was exposed as a secret brothel run by powerful pedophiles. Chief among the alleged perpetrators was Lord Mountbatten — Andrew’s great-uncle.
From the very beginning, hints began to appear that MI5/MI6 knew of the child abuse taking place Kincora, and could have even been running the group home as part of a dastardly intelligence plot. With Britain’s domestic and foreign spies engaged in a savage dirty war in Ireland, and both services running operatives in Republican and Unionist paramilitaries, Kincora would have provided an ideal means of recruiting and compromising potential assets. Official investigations have strongly insinuated British intelligence chiefs had a close bond with many individuals who ran the Boys’ Home.
In May 2025, veteran BBC journalist Chris Moore published a forensic account of the case titled Kincora: Britain’s Shame. Featuring four and a half decades of firsthand research by the author, its groundbreaking contents have been met with general silence by British mainstream media.
In the book, Moore argues persuasively that the Boys’ Home was just one component of a more extensive child abuse network extending across British-occupied Ireland and beyond — in which London’s spying apparatus was not only aware, but likely complicit. … continue
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The main applicant in the case is former Newfoundland Premier, The Honourable A. Brian Peckford. Mr. Peckford, pictured, is the only surviving drafter and signatory 40 years after the 1982 Constitution and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was enacted.
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