PERILS OF DICTATORSHIP DRAWING CLOSER
As the time for the upcoming federal election draws near Canadians should be asking themselves some serious questions about how democratic this process will be. First and foremost we should be observing how much the party in power is going to dictate the proceedings and how much they will allow. This, by itself, should be alarming.
“Allow” is an important word since it points out the now increasingly obvious fact that the Liberal Party of Canada and prime minister Trudeau, in a dictatorial manner, have no intention whatsoever of allowing things to proceed in a truly democratic fashion.
The P.M.’s office has designated 10 media outlets, five of whom are in Quebec and 6 of which are notoriously liberal, a monopoly on interpreting the debates and processing the results. Like prime minister Trudeau’s “A List” of “dependable” media outlets many of which were on his 600 million dollar “bailout” list, and all of which screened out independent and radically divergent views, this smacks of censorship. Interfor, an organization that has designated itself part the “resistance” to Andrew Scheer ( how is this impartial or even accurate, since Mr. Scheer isn’t in power) is still in an advisory capacity.
In the end, all of this varies very little from those states in which government approved and run media ( a la Tass and Pravda in the U.S.S.R.) dictate what can be said with the government’s approval. Canada is a free and democratic nation isn’t it, or have I awoken to another reality?
What is even more frightening is the fact that the Liberal government has appointed a “Debate Commission” to decide how the debates will be run, who will be able to speak, and what the format of the debates will be. Max Bernier, though the leader of a fledgling national party that has now floated a full slate of candidates, thereby meeting that criteria, will not be able to take part.
Whatever you may think of Mr. Bernier, ( and his supporters are still statistically small) we have to question why he will not be able to speak. Remember the furor when it appeared that Elizabeth May was not going to be allowed to take part? It appears that the electoral process, the election, and the debates leading up to it will be partially controlled by the party in power. How does this resemble the Canada we grew up in? There are other states, most of them dictatorial, who draw closer parallels to the Canada of today and that is a tragic reality we should not ignore as October of 2019 approaches.
Perry Foster
Duncan