It Isn't Trudeau

Justin Trudeau has had a lot of vilification lately, especially from the US side, as a tyrant and a dictator. I think he's a lightweight, but nowhere even near, say, Evita Perón, which is to say that as dictators go, he's AAA baseball.. It's not clear at all for now exactly what the state of emergency he's imposed on Canada entitles him to do, except that it's said the emergency can't override Canadian charter rights, which themselves are pretty vague. For instance,

In April 1982, Canada entrenched in its constitution a Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Section 7 of this new document provides that "everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice". The Canadian Bill of Rights (1960), and the British and American constitutions, safeguarded those fundamental rights through the phrase "due process of law" instead of "principles of fundamental justice".

As interpreted in US jurisprudence, "due process of law' implies

When a government harms a person without following the exact course of the law, this constitutes a due process violation, which offends the rule of law.

What we're seeing in Canada following the declaration of emergency is truckers having their trucks seized and bank accounts frozen without a charge and without a trial. The mayor of Ottawa is currently saying the trucks will be sold. As far as anyone can tell, no relevant legislature has ever passed a law against what the truckers did specifying such penalties. In the US, this would definitely be a due process violation; in Canada, this is much less certain.

Someone at some point will presumably argue that seizing the truckers' means of livelihood without a charge or a trial violates "principles of fundamental justice", but listening to Trudeau himself in Parliament yesterday suggests he, or indeed a Canadian judge, will simply argue that Canada has always been founded on principles of fundamental justice, and it's precisely the un-Canadian behavior of the truckers that's put them in their pickle. Learn to code, guys. In fact, learn to code in the US.

At the start of the US rebellion against the UK, Canada as it was constituted at the time was offered to chance to join, and it chose not to. Different place. Always has been. For that matter, the Laginas are finding this out on Oak Island in a very different context. I would not go to Canada except to pass through quickly on the way to Alaska.

But there's a bigger issue here. What's happening now in Canada is just a special case of the COVID moral panic in its late, or "morning after" phase. US, and indeed at least some European, institutions have shown more resilience, especially in the end phase of the panic. The truckers' protests have had far more impact on US mayors, legislators, and governors than they have in Canada itself. But the truckers' protests are just a special case of a general recovery of sanity in the world population, and they came even as some Canadian provinces belatedly realized it was time to loosen up.

The COVID crisis worldwide was interpreted by the ruling elites as a delicious opportunity to suspend constitutionial protections everywhere. I thought when this all got started that it would be a long legal and political process to claw them back. But a big factor that drove the original moral panic was also Donald Trump. It's intriguing that so late in the process, Prime Minister Trudeau is blaming Trump, Trumpists, and "foreign" money for the truckers. He's a bit late to that particular game. Whatever Trump's own future may be, that genie is out of the bottle -- it's just that Trudeau still needs to get used to it.

Trump has been gone for more than a year. The COVID panic is winding down. There's a distinct fin de siècle quality to the ongoing Canadian drama. But it isn't really Trudeau's fault or his doing.