[erosion of freedom] going strong in canada

It seems that the totalitarian push is in full swing over in Canada as well. My friend at Halls of Macadamia put me onto Ezra Levant who is a major obstacle to the curtailment of liberties over there and he is currently embroiled in this:

What an embarrassment Lynch and her CHRC have become to this government -- and to all Canadians.

Here's the story -- it's pretty simple. Lynch and I were both invited on Clark's show to talk about the CHRC's memo issued to Parliament this week. The CHRC is demanding that they be allowed to continue their censorship, and in fact arguing that Canada's police should be more active in laying censorship charges, too. I wrote about the substance of it yesterday.

Lynch's spin is that she wants to "start a debate" about censorship -- how Orwellian is that? Well, CTV was happy to provide a forum for such a debate. But CTV made the honest mistake of thinking Lynch actually meant it. They didn't realize that the CHRC's idea of a debate is Lynch lecturing, and Canadians listening obediently.

When Lynch heard it would be me against whom she would have to debate, she tried to veto my appearance.

This 'wanting to start a debate' is precisely how the Scottish Arts Council was pressurized by Julia Middleton's henchmen, of CP infamy. This is how the PCists go about it.

Unfortunately, Ezra misunderstood the intent of my question about the Governor General and Canadian values. What I was referring to was that the way she was appointed also had question marks against it about the process, what sort of person gets the nod these days and for what reasons.

Russia

I'm perhaps in a better position than some to speak of these soviet principles coming into our society. Regular readers know of my twelve years in Russia. Essentially, there was, in soviet times, a climate of 'turn your neighbour in' and a legal mechanism of 'denunciation'.

There were two instances in particular I recall. Firstly, back in 1996, when official 'ratting' was largely dying out, a woman came back for a consultation to the place I lived and the owner of the house immediately went at her and pushed the woman out the door, which she then slammed behind.

When she'd calmed down, the owner told me that that woman's mother had 'denounced' her some years earlier. I didn't understand this 'denounce' business until it was explained that it was not only legal but encouraged by the authorities.

The second incident was one of my own. Completely p---ed off by the wall-shattering noise next door, I spoke to some neighbours about what we could do and they immediately shrank back from what they thought I was asking. They thought I meant to turn the wall-shatterers in. Actually, I wanted us all to knock on the door and put our point of view [I spoke little Russian then].

Years later, it was explained to me that the 'black ravens', black cars with state officials, used to come at midnight and take people away. This died out in the 90s and yet old memories died hard. If you look at the average Russian today, he's almost certain to be libertarian in outlook.

Britain and Canada

You might like to read this article about snitches and turning neighbours in:

So to simplify. A whistleblower is a snitch who snitches on bad people and a snitch is a whistleblower who snitches on good people. Makes perfect sense ... There are more snitches in the UK than you could imagine. It’s a socialist pastime. Snitches are bad. There are a lot more snitches than whistleblowers by a massive factor.

Britain [and Canada] are heading this way now but with no benchmark to measure by, the average citizen of these countries can't really accept the full import of what is happening by salami tactics.