Trudeau caves! = We ARE winning (part 2)

Ed. here. Earlier this week Walt wrote that he was "watching and waiting." The waiting is over, with big news overnight about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the quasi-defeat of Just In Trudeau, the dictator of Canada. We'll start with that the less important of the two, and pass on news from our agent in Ukraine later today.

To understand what happened in the world's second-coldest capital city yesterday, you need to understand the workings of Canada's parliament. Like that of the USA, the federal legislature is bi-cameral. There is an elected lower house, the House of Commons, analogous to the House of Representatives. And there is an upper house, the Senate. Unlike in America, Canadian senators are appointed by the government of the day, to serve until struck by lightning or age 75, which ever comes first.

In times past, this meant that Liberals were in the majority in the Canuck Senate most of the time, because the "Natural Governing Party" was in power, most of the time. But when he became leader of the Gliberal Party, M Trudeau decreed that henceforth, Liberal senators would not be Liberals any more, i.e. not members of the Liberal caucus, so they could think and vote in a non-partisan manner, for the good of the country.

Not only that, he said, all his new appointees would be "independent", with no party affiliation. Canadians were not surprised when all of them turned out to be, if not "Big-L Liberals", then "small-L liberals"... and great admirers of the new emperor who put them into their cushy seats in the Red Chamber. (No kidding. That's what it's called, not without reason.)

Fast forward to February 2022. Truckers and supporters of the Freedom Convoy are occupying Parliament Hill and its surrounds making it difficult for the Karens and Kens to get to Starbucks to sip their lattes. After dismissing the protesters as a "small fringe minority" of "racists, neo-Nazis, transphobes, white supremacists" yada yada yada, and refusing to meet with them or even listen to their grievances, Blackie McBlackface invokes the Emergencies Act, a 1988 statute designed to give the government the power to deal with an insurrection.

The Emergencies Act allows the government to call in the armed forces, but Gerald Butts (the puppeteer who pulls the emperor's strings) didn't like the optics of that, so the Liberal party line was that it gave the police "enhanced powers", which were on full display last weekend as an old lady was trampled by a mounted police horse. See WWW passim.

The police already had all the power they needed to enforce existing laws if any were being broken. For the most part, the protesters had done nothing beyond agressive snow-shovelling. At the Ambassador Bridge which connects Detroit and Windsor ON, police had already cleared the blockade without need their "enhanced powers"... and without pepper-spraying anybody.

The real teeth of the Emergencies Act, it turned out, were in the provisions allowing the government to freeze or seize (read: steal) the bank accounts of anyone who donated to crowd-funding sites for the support of the convoy. Embarrassingly for the Liberals, the hacked list of donors included members of the Toronto Police and Ontario Provincial Police, as well as members of the armed forces.

The Emergencies Act requires that its use by approved by Parliament as soon as possible, so on the 17th, as police were donning their camos and riot gear, "debate" began in the House of Commons, only to be suspended on the 18th, when the Mounties and other cops started advancing on the protesters. Mustn't let the MPs see the shit-hammer falling!

The "debate" -- mostly lies and name-calling by the Liberals who knew they couldn't lose in the House of Commons, since the farther-left NDP had already declared its support -- droned on through Saturday and Sunday and most of Monday, with a vote scheduled for 2000 on the 21st.

This is when things started to get interesting. Mere hours before the vote, Mr Socks declared that even though the police were "making progress", there was still a serious "threat to democracy", so it would be necessary to leave the Emergencies Act in place for an indefinite period. 

But wait, there was more. Having heard rumours that some Liberals and knee-dippers who had misgivings about the Emergencies Act (especially the seizure of nearly 100 bank accounts) might develop the "diplomatic flu" and not be there for the vote, Emperor Trudeau II declared the vote a "matter of confidence", meaning that if the Commons did not approve his power grab, he and the government would resign, forcing yet another election. Cazart!

Sure enough, when push came to shove on Monday night, all the Liberal MPs, all the "New" Democrats, and the Greens' Ellizabeth May -- "Ms May? Party of one?" -- voted to approve. The Conservatives and Bloc Québécois nayed to no avail. Final score: Pro-tyranny 185 - anti-tyranny 151. Tyranny wins.

But hold on... The Commons' approval of Trudeau's shameful over-reach still needed rubber-stamping by the usually supine Senate. So the "debate" moved to the Red Chamber, where approval of the Liberals' high-handed tactics suddenly appeared to be no sure thing. 

The Conservative senators declared themselves opposed, the senators once known as Liberals demurred, and the "independent caucus" raised a lot of difficult questions, such as: With the "occupation" of Ottawa now ended, was it really necessary for the Emergencies Act to continue in force? 

On Tuesday, Mr Socks -- flanked by Minister of Gender Equity and Finance Chrystia Freeland (the one pushing for the seizure of bank accounts), "Justice" Minister David Lametti, Public Safety Minister Marco Mendacious, and poor old ex-cop Bill Blair, Minister of Emergency Preparedness" -- said that while the "immediate emergency situation is over", the issue itself "won't go away." Why, he had heard that truckers were camped on private property outside Ottawa, just waiting for the state of emergency to be ended so they could re-enter the capital!

That was Tuesday. Yesterday afternoon, in the greatest face-saving statement since "I never had sex with that girl", the Prime Minister of All Canuckistan said he is ending the use of the Emergencies Act "because the federal government has been assured that police have sufficient tools to deal with any further challenges." Which is exactly what the opposition had been saying all along.

M Trudeau also said an enquiry, mandated by the never-before-used legislation, will begin within 60 days. Reports on the invocation of the act and the triggering of sweeping police powers will later be tabled in the House of Commons. So the point is now moot and a vote in the Senate will not be necessary. Everything's OK. Nothing to see here, folks...

From my corner of the forest, that smells like victory. But then, as the Chinese say "Shan gao, huangdi yuan" -- "The mountains are high, and the emperor is far away." I note with interest that convoys (yes, plural) of freedom riders, some displaying Canadian flags and other "symbols of hate", are now closing on Washington DC. Stay tuned!

Footnote: Comment from A.E. Neuman in the Groan & Wail: "So, no wheels of mass destruction after all." LMAO