The next step in narrowing Canadians’ rights may be justified by a government survey that eliminated the views of anyone opposed to the government’s attempts to squelch freedom of expression.
They did so by inserting a screening question that disqualified anyone who didn’t agree that the government should crack down on speech of which it disapproves—including via legislation patrolling and scrubbing the pages of newspapers.
Sarkonak obtained emails showing public servants noted that early survey responses were heavily opposed to proposals to create new laws or change existing laws to “add people or groups who fund, help, or take part in white supremacist activities to a formal list of white supremacist groups.” Also on the survey’s checklist was a proposal to create an “Anti-Racism law” to ensure that social media and traditional media (examples: television or newspapers) ”follow standards that reject hate.”
Seventy-five to 80 percent of initial responses were from what public servants described as “non-allies.” In other words, regular Canadians, some of whom may have become aware of the survey after Quillette’s Jonathan Kay, who has a large social media following, tweeted about it. The remaining 20–25 percent—the allies—came overwhelmingly from Government of Canada IP addresses.
In other words, public servants dutifully supported the public servants trying to massage the views of the public they are supposed to serve.
And so, while the survey homepage continued to state that all Canadians were being asked for their opinions, the boffins inserted the question that “saved us (staff) well over 500 cases that should not have been included. … So it is helping us a lot,” according to Sarkonak’s report.
That comment came from an email sent in the second week of April following the move to “correct” the survey’s outcome by muting people who see things differently. By the time the survey closed May 8, more than 20,000 Canadians had participated in what appears to have been a process designed to produce a predetermined outcome. In other words, along the lines of how they handle these things in North Korea and not at all consistent with the principles underpinning a modern, liberal democracy. Hyperbole? I wish it were so.
This Liberal government is obsessed with creating menacing solutions to problems that are at best overstated and at worst pure figments of radical imaginations.
It introduced the Online Streaming Act to rein in companies such as Netflix despite the fact that in the decade following the debut of it and other online video stores, Canada experienced 80 percent growth in its film and television industry as demand for product erupted. For instance, the post-apocalyptic series “The Last of Us” will debut this week on Crave. Filmed in Alberta, it is the largest production in Canadian history and poured more than $200 million into the creative economy there. But the government felt it had to intervene on this and similar investments because it didn’t control it.
And now, using newly expanded definitions of hate and white supremacy—terms so loosely applied these days they were famously misused by notorious anti-Semite Laith Marouf in his government-funded media training contract to attack “Zionists”—they are preparing to control the radical re-education of Canadians.
There is something deeply troubling about governments that manufacture evidence to suppress basic rights. And as has become smack-in-the-face obvious, Trudeau’s government is not going to use your parents’ definition of vile Nazi racist hate or hideous KKK-style supremacy to do so.
Nope, if you listen to the voices on the far left—as Trudeau does—hate and white supremacy are everywhere. These days there’s a supremacist under every bed, a hater in every closet. Your neighbour might even be one. Maybe there should be a snitch line.
As members of the military recently heard during an indoctrination, er, education session:
It remains to be seen whether Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez will use his so-called survey to support his upcoming disinfection of Canadian minds. But what you can take to the bank is that any new laws won’t apply to the disinformation emanating from either the Prime Minister’s Office or its “allies.”
And as for the bureaucrats who fudged the facts about how Canadians really feel, let’s just say they’ve put a whole new spin on the public service’s once noble promise to speak truth to power.
