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Humiliation, compensation, extortion, capitulation.

That’s kind of how Canada’s relationship with Quebec goes, sometimes. It has four steps, usually.

One, a separatist or crypto-separatist Quebec government falsely insists that Quebec has been “humiliated” in some way. Language, culture, religious symbols, whatever.

Two, they demand compensation — be it financial or constitutional. Never mind that the French language is stronger than it has ever been. Never mind that Quebec’s economy has been outpacing many other provinces for years.

Three, if facing resistance, the nation-wreckers move to the extortion phase. They issue the constitutional or fiscal equivalent of a ransom note. Do what we want, or Confederation is going to get a shiv between the ribs.

And then — unless the government is led by Jean Chretien (proudly, my former boss) or Pierre Trudeau (improbably, Justin Trudeau’s father) — Canada capitulates. It gives in to the phony humiliations, and the extortion. It folds like a cheap suit.

Being a millionaire, Justin Trudeau doesn’t wear cheap suits. But he sure knows how to fold like one. When the choice is discretion or valour, Justin will always choose the former. He will always look for the coward’s way out.

Thus, the latest installment in the ritual humiliation/compensation/extortion/capitulation rinse cycle. Quebec’s crypto-separatist government wants to change the Constitution to recognize Quebec as “a nation,” and crush the piddling anglophone minority in Quebec. Justin Trudeau’s response?

Bien sur! Allez-y!

“Of course! Go ahead!” That’s what we heard this week from the Trudeau Party — because it sure as hell isn’t the party of Chretien or Trudeau Senior, anymore. Said the timid stripling who claims to be prime minister for all of Canada: “We agree with the Quebec government that more must be done to protect the French language.”

In French only, natch.

As my Sun colleague Brian Lilley reported, Trudeau was responding to questions about Bill 96, a 100-page legislative götterdämmerung cooked up by the regime of Quebec Premier Francois Legault. Legault demanded that Canada’s national government stay out of the way. And Trudeau this week agreed.

Full disclosure: Me and my family are Quebec refugees, kind of. The 1951 Convention on refugees defines refugees as “someone who is unable or unwilling” to return to their place of origin because they fear being discriminated against “for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion.”

We’re all English-speaking Irish Catholics, and all of us, on both sides, were born in Montreal. And all of us — save and except one aunt and two cousins, who courageously refuse to be driven out — have left since the commencement of hostilities in the mid-’70s. When the anglophone minority started being actively discriminated against. For being anglophone.

We’re part of the English-speaking diaspora, now. My branch of the family landed in Calgary and became Albertans. Because Alberta doesn’t care where you come from. (And neither did Chretien, which is why I quit the law to work for him.)

How, you might ask, did all this happen? What changed?

It wasn’t Quebec’s government. With the exception of the blessed Jean Charest era, Quebec’s government has always embraced the strategy of humiliation, compensation, extortion and capitulation. It works for them.

What’s changed is this: Canada is led by a weak and easily intimidated Justin Trudeau, one who presides over a minority government during a pandemic. What better time to extort? Who better to threaten?

Humiliation, compensation, extortion, capitulation: It’s back.

And Canada, as we know it, is going to be even less of a country as a result.

— Warren Kinsella was special assistant to Jean Chretien

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I didn’t feel faint.  I looked down.

“Your next dose is scheduled,” it said.

That’s what the official Ontario Ministry of Health sheet said. The nice woman at the Shopper’s Drug Mart on Lakeshore Drive in Toronto handed it to me, and told me to stick around for fifteen minutes in case I felt faint or something.

I stuck around.  I looked at the sheet again. 

I’d just gotten my first dose of what was described as “AstraZeneca Covid-19 Non-rep VV.”  The sheet didn’t say when I’d be getting a second dose of vaccine.  But it said I’d be getting my “next dose” of what the nice woman said was AstraZeneca.

That was back in March.  Because I’m an old fart now, I was one of the first lucky enough to get  AstraZeneca vaccine.  After that, more than two million of my fellow citizens got AstraZeneca, too.  Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was one of them.

This week, Ontario and several provinces pulled the plug on giving Canadians a first or second dose of AstraZeneca.  The stated reason is blood clots.  You might, might – might – get them.

Never mind the fact that, in the United Kingdom – in Britain, Scotland and Northern Ireland, to be precise – Covid cases have dropped dramatically.  Never mind the fact that, on one day this week, in fact, they had no Covid deaths whatsoever.  And all they have given their people is AstraZeneca.

But never mind all that.

Here is Canada, millions got one dose of AstraZeneca, and were told they’d get a second dose of AstraZeneca.

Right now, they’re being told they won’t get it.  Right now, they’re even being told they might get the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines.  Is it a good idea to mix vaccines?  Will it be effective? Will it have nasty side-effects? We don’t know for sure.

What we do know, however, is a hoary old concept called “informed consent.” It’s been around for a while.  It’s the law of the land, and has been long accepted as such by the Supreme Court of Canada, no less. 

The Merriam-Webster people say informed consent is agreement “by a patient to participation in a medical experiment after achieving an understanding of what is involved.”

You don’t have to be a Supreme Court judge or an epidemiologist to understand the problem we’ve got, now.  In this case, it’s more than two million Canadians agreeing to get the second AstraZeneca vaccine, and then being told they may not get it.  Or that they may get something else entirely.

Did they consent to that?  Did they consent to what the Government of Canada’s own Chief Science Officer called, in slightly different context, a “population-level experiment?”

Full disclosure: I’ve worked, for years, with some amazing lawyers on class action lawsuits.  Those class actions mostly dealt with governments making bad decisions – decisions which adversely affected the health of citizens.  We ultimately won those lawsuits.

You see where this is going, here.  The Trudeau government has made a circus of the vaccine rollouts.  They tried to get vaccines from China, where two of our citizens are being held contrary to international law. Then, they didn’t get enough vaccines.  Then, they got vaccines too late. Then, they told us AstraZeneca was totally safe, and now they’re saying it might not be.

The result? Provincial governments are being forced to roll the dice with the health and well-being of Canadians.  And “informed consent” – which is at the very centre of our entire healthcare system – is being shredded.  More than two million Canadians gave consent for something to happen, and now it seems something else is happening.

Feeling faint yet? 

You should be.

[Kinsella is former Chief of Staff to a federal Liberal Minister of Health.]

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Pro tip, Trudeau Liberals: When you have a Constitution, heed it.

And if you have legal experts to check out your legislation, use ’em. They’ll help keep you out of trouble.

And in recent days, on the free speech front, Justin Trudeau and one of his ministers have had plenty of trouble. All self-made.

We tender as evidence Bill C-10. The bill updates the Broadcasting Act, which hasn’t changed in two decades. That’s arguably good.

But the changes contained in Bill C-10 could give unelected federal bureaucrats the power to censor the content you, Dear Reader, upload to the internet. That’s inarguably bad.

Now, during the pandemic, it’s pretty hard for anything to get noticed (ask Erin O’Toole). But C-10 did. There was a huge hue and cry, hither and yon. Canadians, on all sides of the ideological spectrum, were livid.

So the Trudeau party hastily reversed itself, and sent their censorship bill off for a Charter review. Could it still come back as bad as before? It could.

Since the establishment of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982, Canadian courts have developed tried-and-true approaches to determining whether a law is constitutional. So let’s do a quick review of C-10, shall we?

First off, we need to determine if C-10 violates a section of the Charter. Simply put, it does: Section 2(b).

Here’s what Section 2(b) says: “Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms: Freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication.”

“Everyone” means everyone. That’s you. A “fundamental freedom” is the most basic right — and, some would say, the most important in a democracy. Because they’re the things that make us a democracy.

Does the “expression” referred to in Section 2(b) cover the stuff you post on social media, or your blog, or whatever? It surely does. In one of the earliest Charter Section 2 cases, the Supreme Court of Canada said that expression is “any activity or communication that conveys or attempts to convey meaning.”

“Any.” That covers your granny’s cat pictures, but also your 2,000-word critique of Trudeau’s vaccine rollout (which, as your granny would agree, has been pitiful). So Bill C-10 is caught by the Charter’s free speech provision. And it fails.

But is it therefore dead? Not yet, folks. The Trudeau government, which has thousands of justice department lawyers to do its bidding, can argue that the breach of Section 2(b) is “reasonable.”

That’s Section 1: To be reasonable, a limit on a Charter right needs to be “prescribed by law” and “demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.”

So, is Bill C-10 prescribed by law? Well, it will be, if the Trudeau cabal get their way. They have the power to pass the law, and they’ll do so with the gutless acquiescence of the NDP and the Bloc Quebecois.

But is it “demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society?” No. No way.

No other country in the world is proposing to regulate the internet in this way — save and except China or Iran. Nor is the bill what lawyers call “proportional” — no other country is using a sledgehammer to kill a flea, as C-10 does. Is the impairment of basic rights minimal, here? No, sir. C-10 would throttle the principal way in which we all communicate with each other during this endless pandemic.

On every front, in every way, Bill C-10 is wildly unconstitutional. It violates our most sacred law — the Constitution of our country.

So here’s more free legal advice, Trudeau Liberals: With C-10, you are in a deep, deep hole.

And when in a hole, stop digging.

— Warren Kinsella is a lawyer and an adjunct professor at the University of Calgary’s Faculty of Law

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The flag of the neo-Nazi, white supremacist Canadian Nationalist Party is raised at Maxime Bernier’s anti-lockdown rally in Saskatchewan on the weekend. Bernier and the leader of the CNP spoke in September 2018 about immigration and political cooperation.

Bernier is suing me for saying he is a racist.

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It’s not censorship.

It’s not censorship to want to use the law to prohibit, and punish, those who make and distribute child pornography.

It’s not censorship to object to hate propaganda, or to sanction those who promote genocide against those they hate.

It’s not censorship to believe that we shouldn’t make it easy for lunatics to access detailed instructions online about how to make bombs or chemical weapons.

It’s not censorship, it’s showing good judgment. In a civil society, it’s the obligation we owe each other. It keeps us safe, among other things.

But Justin Trudeau’s Bill C-10 isn’t about censoring things that we all agree are harmful, it’s about censoring you, and what you say online — in a tweet, a Facebook post, on a blog. It’s about limiting your ability to express yourself in a democracy.

It’s a constitutional abomination. It needs to be stopped.

So why haven’t the Opposition parties stopped it?

The Opposition, as on most days during the pandemic, are completely irrelevant. They didn’t see the political opportunity presented by C-10 until a few days ago.

The Bloc Quebecois are all for the Bill, naturally. No surprise there. They come from a province that has a long history of controlling political speech. It’s in their DNA.

The NDP, meanwhile, is for it too. The New Democrats like to persuade themselves that C-10 will control “hate speech,” but that’s just a lie they tell themselves to justify their ongoing role as Trudeau’s Parliamentary eunuchs. They’re irrelevant, numerically and philosophically.

The Conservatives, naturally, never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. They didn’t see the outrage that is C-10 until their grassroots demanded that they wake up.

That’s the Opposition. They don’t matter, much. Not yet. But what about the government? That’s what this writer doesn’t get.

Now, as readers of this newspaper know, Justin Trudeau is a deeply dishonest man. He is the most inauthentic politician in generations, and that’s saying something.

But.

But he knows he lacks his father’s intellectual depth — or Stephen Harper or Jean Chretien’s strategic skill. What he does possess, in abundance however, is a finely-honed sense of self-preservation. He’d kill his dog to win. (Anyone seen the dog, recently, BTW?)

So why would he do something like C-10 on the eve of an election — likely if not in June then in October? Why would he do that? Why would he risk losing over this? Because he could.

It’s not a piece of legislation. It’s a political suicide note. It’s self-immolating madness.

That’s what some of us just don’t get: you could run an entire national election campaign on C-10 because the Internet is the only thing that connects pandemic-bound people to the world right now.

The Internet – and its bastard children Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok – are the only way many of us can connect with each other during this pandemic without end.

And Trudeau wants to be seen as censoring that? Has he lost his mind?

Now, never discount the possibility that powerful people make powerfully stupid choices, I always say. But this? This is historically stupid. It is epically stupid.

It is stupid on steroids.

The Conservatives, who have been on a downward trajectory in the Erin O’Toole era, have been handed a way to actually win the election. Personally, I doubt they’re intelligent enough to recognize it. And the Liberal Party, as it turns out, isn’t intelligent enough to figure that out, either.

But – improbably and unexpectedly, things just got interesting.

Because this is really, truly censorship.

— Warren Kinsella is a lawyer and adjunct professor at the University of Calgary Faculty of Law

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15 years ago right now, I was arriving in Yorkville in Toronto to open the doors of the Daisy Group for the very first time. I hadn’t slept all night.

I was simultaneously terrified and exhilarated. Terrified, because a group of young people were counting on me to make the business a success. Exhilarated, because I would finally become my own boss.

Fifteen years later, we’re still here. I’ve employed dozens and dozens of amazing people over the years – people who have gone on to everything from running for public office to winning a full scholarship at Oxford University.

We’ve advised Premiers and Prime Ministers and governments and unions and businesses and associations and individuals. We’ve helped people through crises and lawsuits and every conceivable type of challenge. And we have had some amazing clients – and many we have represented pro bono, because we believed in their cause.

The best thing that ever happened to me is becoming a Dad – and growing up with the family I had. But the next best thing was arriving in Yorkville, early one morning in May 2006, to unlock the doors to the Daisy Group.

Happy birthday, Daisy. I wouldn’t be here without you.

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