OPINIONFILDEBRANDT: Trudeau’s Act of War

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau met with his cabinet Sunday night to discuss invoking the War Measures Act, renamed the Emergencies Act in 1988. According to reports from multiple media outlets in Ottawa, Trudeau told his caucus Monday that he now intends to do so.

This would put Canada under a state of martial law used only three times in Canada’s history: the First World War, the Second World War, and the FLQ terrorism crisis.

The Emergencies (War Measures) Act is an extraordinarily authoritarian piece of legislation, meant to combat violent enemies in an active state of war with Canada.

Trudeau is now expected to declare martial law over a peaceful protest in which the only violent acts committed to date have been by police (on government orders), and pro-lockdown counter-protestors who back the power of the state.

The protestors and blockaders are breaking some laws (parking, noise, ect), but they are correct in pointing out that the real law breakers here are the federal and provincial governments, which have violated the most fundamental law of Canada: the constitution. Canada’s ineffectual courts have proven that in any real dispute between the power of the state and the rights of the individual, they’ve got the government’s back.

Reasonable people can disagree over whether the protestors’ cause is right or not, and they can disagree over whether their tactics are sound or not. Either way, it is a matter for arms-length civilian law enforcement agencies to handle, not politicians, and not the Armed Forces.

Ending the Trucker Spring peacefully requires goodwill on both sides, and a willingness to deescalate the situation. A sign of this was seen over the weekend when the truckers struck a deal with Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson to vacate the protesters from residential areas. Watson is a well-known Liberal partisan with little sympathy toward the truckers, but he was smart enough to know that talk — not violence — is how we end this.

The state has abdicated its legitimacy in any violent approach to ending this. When Occupy Wall Street protestors camped on public property for months on end, they were allowed to do so. When IdleNoMore and anti-pipeline protestors blockaded rail lines and bridges, the police did nothing. But when truckers and farmers do so — demanding only a return of their fundamental freedoms — they are vilified by the government-funded media as “racists”, “terrorists”, and agents of Russia.

Any claim by the government-funded media and the state that these protestors have no right to be there is abrogated by their previous acceptance and even support for other causes doing just the same thing.

Instead of dealing with the truckers as peacefully and understandingly as leftist protests that camped in public spaces, Trudeau has decided to declare martial law.

The Emergencies Act defines a national emergency as an “urgent and critical situation” that “seriously endangers the lives, health or safety of Canadians and is of such proportions or nature as to exceed the capacity or authority of a province to deal with it.” It grants the federal government the power to “take special temporary measures that may not be appropriate in normal times” do deal with an “urgent and critical situation.”

Within seven days, the government must receive a “motion for confirmation” from Parliament. NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh has indicated that he is likely to give Trudeau the votes he needs to do this.

The act is intentionally vaguely worded. It has few specific powers listed in it, leaving its decrees to the prime minister’s cabinet to make.

We must caution ourselves against hyperbole in situations like this, but it is difficult to understate the severity of Trudeau’s actions here.

The Prime Minister of Canada has for all intents and purposes, declared war against what he deems to be a domestic enemy insurgency.

How can and must we respond to this? In short, we must make ourselves ungovernable. We must openly and brazenly defy the orders of the state at every opportunity that does not involve violence, property damage, or harm to others. In other words, civil disobedience.

For our own part, the Western Standard has two missions right now. Firstly, our news division will continue to report and do its job professionally, fairly, and as objectively as possible, regardless of our personal convictions.

Secondly, the Western Standard — as one of the last remaining free press institutions in Canada — will take every opportunity to break unjust laws. The decrees coming from Ottawa have not yet been published, but we will examine them when they are, and openly violate every single one of them that does no harm to others.

If there are limitations on what we can say or publish: we will say it or publish it. If it says we cannot donate money to a cause, we will donate money to that cause. We will break every single order under martial law that we deem appropriate and just to break.

Citizens should take to the streets, and break every unjust order under martial law so long as they continue to be peaceful.

And the provinces must assert their sovereignty. In particular, Alberta and Saskatchewan — so long treated as second class colonies by the capital — must declare that the Emergencies (War Measures) Act is null and void within our territorial borders. They must order all police forces within our borders to cease any cooperation whatsoever with federal authorities, and make clear to military commanders that any aggression from the Armed Forces will not be tolerated. Despite their own acts of authoritarianism over the last two years, the premiers of Alberta and Saskatchewan have an opportunity to redeem themselves by declaring our lands off-limits to federal thuggery.

Canadians — led by Westerners — have started a global, non-violent resistance movement against the authoritarians. For Trudeau, the embarrassment that quiet, compliant Canada could be the birthplace of this movement is too much for him to bear. As power slips from his grip, he wants his own “Just watch me moment” to prove that he is a big man like his father, and he is willing to use violence to get it.

We will not give it to him.