By Mary Anastasia O’Grady, Wall Street Journal, February 13, 2022
When Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau declared last month that truckers protesting his Covid-19 vaccine mandates in Ottawa hold “unacceptable views,” he accentuated the real reason the drivers decided they had no choice but to go to the streets. Their government, headed by the Liberal Party, has become decidedly illiberal.
O’Grady writes: “Intolerance is ugly. But for Mr. Trudeau, who proudly backs Black Lives Matter, it’s OK in this case because it’s the politically correct variety: He’s denouncing the opinions of a bunch of yahoos.”
She notes that “Canadians who oppose big government increasingly find they are living under a woke, progressive majoritarianism that believes it owns the truth. Dissidents,” she says “are hounded out of the public square and even the prime minister cancels contrarians without batting an eye.”
O’Grady cites an opinion piece by Rights Probe executive director, Bruce Pardy, that highlights the hypocrisy of government claims Covid-19 restrictions do not limit freedom. See “During Covid, the Charter has been useless.”
Speaking to Pardy by phone, O’Grady relays the following warning:
“The instincts of small-c conservatives are to protect institutions. But they don’t realize that those institutions are gone. They still have faith in a system of governance already compromised.”