Is Trudeau really to blame?

The photo was startling, at least to me: Jordan Peterson, Danielle Smith, Tucker Carlson and Conrad Black posing in connection with an event in Edmonton, I think. It accompanied an article written by Black titled something like: What happened to Jordan Peterson has serious Implications for all Canadians.

What happened to Peterson is that the governing body of professional psychologists in Ontario ruled that some of Peterson’s public pronouncements went beyond the bounds governing professional conduct and obligated him to take a media course if he wished to retain his license to practice.

Since then his case, propagated as a conspiracy to stifle free speech in Canada and championed by Conrad Black and Rex Murphy and others, has become another signpost on the supposed “road to perdition in Canada.”

The article was published by the Epoch Times, a periodical that purports to tell the unvarnished truth while predominantly printing news that can be tailored to its central theme, which is the promotion of a reactionary response to liberal values and legislation. Of late, it seems clearly to have decided to jump on the bandwagon with those demonizing the Prime Minister, a strategy that’s working but is unworthy of thinking persons in a democracy, in my opinion.

Firstly, the Peterson incident is not a case of stifling free speech. Black, Murphy and Peterson himself have aired that shibboleth repeatedly in public without repercussions. Their opinions, their speech are not hemmed in by Trudeau, or the Liberal Party, or the courts; that declaration is a flag waved to attract the disaffected, individuals who feel oppressed by circumstances, convincing them that “Trudeau’s to blame.”

Based on a comparative assessment of individual economic and personal freedom, Canada ranks high, alongside other liberal democracies. (The World's 10 Most Free Countries - WorldAtlas) It’s been liberal democracy that’s established and maintained a country where the balance of individual freedom and community cooperation has been able to thrive. We need only go back as far as the eras of Lester Pearson, Tommy Douglas, Pierre Elliot Trudeau to see how liberalism in Canada ensured access to medical care for every individual, took its place on the world stage by initiating peacekeeping forces, got the police and courts out of our bedrooms, gave status to millions by legislating official multiculturalism.

And when we look back on the COVID and climate change dilemmas down the road, assess how we under Liberal governance and later, Liberal/NDP cooperation, weathered the pandemic storm, we’ll conclude that we did the best that could be expected given the knowledge and resources available. At least, comparisons to the experiences of other countries all point that way. A Pew survey reported by the World Economic Forum[i] indicated that in Canada, 88% of citizens believed their country had done well in its response to the pandemic; in the USA, the approval of the country’s response to the pandemic was at 47%. The indecisiveness of the Trump administration at the critical time has been cited as a reason for US citizen dissatisfaction.

All this is important. Two Sundays ago, in an expat church in Mexico, a pastor lamented “what’s going on in Canada.” The anti-Trudeau rhetoric was blatant and overt in US news during the convoy protest/occupation in Ottawa. Conspiracy theories, crime news, intimations of threat spread easily and far; to see our fellow Canadians bargaining away our international reputation for political points at home is discouraging, especially when using false scenarios to do so. 

We are a great country, as great as countries anywhere have so far managed to become. Per capita crime rates are lower than ever, our healthcare system is faltering but will clearly recover, literacy and education standards are higher that ever, individual freedom of choice is remarkably unhindered, our politics are made responsive to public need by free and fair elections and although we’re not nearly there yet on environmental protection protocols, we’re working hard at it.

The word on political systems popularized by Winston Churchill continues to be insightful: Democracy is the worst form of government … except for all the others that have been tried from time to time. Let’s all weigh what we hear against the reality of our own experience. Trudeau is not to blame, dictatorship neither characterizes our government nor are we moving in that direction, personal freedoms are not being stifled, there are no such things as a leftist or “woke” conspiracies, the Chinese didn’t create COVID, the phasing out of fossil fuel energy sources is good for us in more ways than one. And as every adult knows, there never were monsters under the bed. Moldy cheese sandwiches and lost socks, maybe, but no monsters.

Conrad Black, Jordan Peterson, Danielle Smith, Tucker Carlson, please think further down the road when you speak; your words have an audience, you attract followers, choose the paths you advocate carefully.

 

 

 

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[i] These countries handled the COVID-19 pandemic well, says recent Pew survey | World Economic Forum (weforum.org) The WEF is itself the target of conspiracy theories that see it as manipulating world economic conditions for the benefit of its members, a theory which the Conservative Party of Canada is supporting as an election strategy.