Canada Is Headed in Direction of Suppressive Regimes That New Arrivals Fled: Poilievre

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre speaks to reporters during a press conference in Toronto on March 22, 2024. Shahrzad Ghanei/The Epoch Times

Many new Canadians are concerned that under the Liberal government Canada is increasingly heading in the direction of the suppressive countries they escaped from, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre says.  

Mr. Poilievre responded to a question during a March 22 Toronto press conference about immigrants escaping socialist and communist countries like China, searching for freedom in Canada but facing censorship here. The situation “is not an accident,” he said.

“Trudeau said he admires China’s basic communist dictatorship,” Mr. Poilievre said. “He said he admires Fidel Castro. He shares the same ideology as those regimes, and he’s trying to impose it through censorship and other top-down radical agendas.”

The Conservative leader said his “common-sense plan is to support freedom. I’m going to repeal censorship. I will close the foreign police stations that are on our soil. And we will protect our domestic population from foreign interference.”

Some observers have remarked that Canada has increasingly adopted far-left ideologies in recent years.

The late William Gairdner, a best-selling author and academic, wrote in a 2022 commentary, “But events of recent decades, and especially of the past few years, lead me to state cautiously that free and liberal democracy is dead in Canada, for we have definitively crossed the line between soft socialism, and soft totalitarianism.”

The Epoch Times reached out to the Prime Minister’s Office for comment but didn’t hear back immediately.

Issues of Concern

The Conservatives have raised concerns about the Liberal government’s response to foreign interference from China. This includes its inaction toward addressing the alleged secret Chinese police stations operating in Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal. Despite the issue being brought to light by human rights NGO Safeguard Defenders in September 2022, no arrests have been made in the 18 months that followed.

Months after extensive media coverage and increasing public pressure, Ottawa launched a public inquiry to investigate China’s alleged interference in the country’s 2019 and 2021 general elections. However, the commission was criticized for limiting Opposition parties’ participation and failing to protect witnesses from individuals accused of connections to the Chinese regime.

At least two diaspora groups, representing ethnic and religious minorities persecuted by the Beijing communist authorities, have called for boycotting the public inquiry due to its lack of safety measures, which they say leaves participants vulnerable to potential reprisals.

The Liberal government’s push to regulate online speech, including the recent Online Harms Act (Bill C-63), has sparked concern about diminishing freedom of speech in Canada. The bill, addressing “online harms” such as sexual exploitation, bullying, and “hateful conduct,” introduces a new hate crime category with penalties of up to life imprisonment. While Mr. Trudeau highlighted the bill’s aim of child protection, Mr. Poilievre criticized it as additional censorship legislation.

Mr. Poilievre addressed other social concerns during the March 22 press conference, including the Liberal government’s decriminalization of hard drugs.

“Trudeau wants to decriminalize hard drugs. He’s already done it, partnering with Vancouver to decriminalize crack, heroin, and other hard drugs. Now, he aims to do the same thing in Toronto with [Mayor] Olivia Chow,” he said. “Decriminalizing crack, heroin, and other hard drugs is a complete disaster. Additionally, he’s funding taxpayer-funded opioids, which are falsely labelled as safe injection sites. They’re not safe.”

He said Canadians “don’t need more tent cities, more drug use centres. What we need is to take all that money and put it into treatment and recovery to get people off drugs. I will ban hard drugs and I will enforce those bans. I will also stop the drugs from coming in at our borders and our ports.”

Health Canada granted B.C. an exemption in May 2022 from the federal Controlled Drug and Substances Act, making it the first province to temporarily decriminalize adult possession of hard drugs of less than 2.5 grams. The exemption is effective from Jan. 31, 2023, to Jan. 31, 2026. Toronto is seeking a similar exemption from Health Canada, but it aims to expand its application to all age groups.