You Don’t Think It’s Really Fascism?

If it’s not from Germany, it’s just sparkling authoritarianism, right? 

More seriously, way back when I first started this blog (in 2004), I wrote a piece about whether or not we were in an emerging Dark Age. That was 2 years before Canada elected a CPC government for the first time, 12 years before the US elected Trump, and just around the time the so-called “Tea Party” faction of radicals in the GOP took hold and showed us what they were (nasty).  

A lot has happened in the intervening 18 years that brings us to today.  I’ve written about how this new Dark Age contains a “corporate feudalism” that is designed to chain people to corporate jobs in order to survive at all.  I have worried about the signs of authoritarianism emerging among our right wing politicians both here and in the US. I have watched as Social Conservatives have gained ever more sway in our politics, and I have been appalled. 

Then, a week or so ago, a draft decision from the US SCOTUS was leaked suggesting that the court was preparing to overturn Roe v. Wade. The implications of overturning Roe v. Wade are far reaching indeed. 

If you haven’t read this piece from Eudamonia & Co., you really need to. 

You might look and say “well, that’s not really going to happen in Canada because our Charter is quite different”, but that’s missing the point. Canada’s far right has been looking for ways to undermine the Charter for years - decades in fact, and they have been sharing ideas and tactics with their American counterparts, and some very dangerous approaches have been created in the US. 

I want to cast your memory back to the 2015 Federal Election campaign?  Remember the CPC announcing the “Barbaric Cultural Practices Hotline”? I don’t need to spend a bunch of time talking about how appallingly racist and stupid the idea was - voters made their opinions clear at the ballot box on that.  However, that was the trial balloon, it turns out for a far more evil type of legislation to be implemented - the “Citizen Bounty Hunter” laws now being implemented to attack abortion and transgender right in the US.  Those laws are incredibly corrosive, as they pit neighbours against each other. Suddenly, your neighbour going away for a few days becomes a matter that the nosy neighbour can use to attack you with in court.  “Did you travel to have an abortion?, or to take your child for trans affirming treatment?”. These laws are designed to marginalize and corner people. Make your neighbours your jailers, and - conveniently - to bankrupt you by dragging you into years-long legal battles filled with he said/she said allegations.

Do not think for a moment that these kinds of laws could not be implemented in Canada. They may not survive a Charter challenge, but by the time that challenge is complete (likely a decade or more in the future), the damage to society is already done. The history of Canada’s conservatives importing ever wackier legislative ideas from the US is not new. The idea of “conscience rights” was imported from US anti-abortion lobbying, and it rattles around in Canada’s legislative world.  

The Alberta UCP tried to pass a conscience rights bill in 2019, although they killed it when it quickly became a political liability. However, what was notable about the Alberta bill was the relative sophistication of it.  The MLA who tabled it was a political neophyte with no prior experience writing legislation, and yet somehow managed to table a very sophisticated (and dangerous) piece of legislation.  I’m fairly certain that bill was actually written by someone in one of the pro-life legal lobby - I suspect the JCCF, given Carpay’s cozy friendship with Jason Kenney, but that is entirely speculation on my part.

I fully expect that in the next few years, we will see conservative governments in Canada attempt to create “citizen bounty hunter” laws here on a variety of topics. It is a legal construct that our Charter does not appear to anticipate, and in fact it is a legal structure that rights law in general does not appear to anticipate, and it could be used to circumvent existing rights legislation by sliding it below the authority of the government to actually enforce it. (The damage “rat on your neighbour” laws will do to social cohesion is likely seen as a bonus by the legislators who push it).  

The whole point of this post is to bring to your attention the point that there is a lot of cross-border traffic among those who want to strip you of access to charter rights, justice and freedoms - and they are often the same people who howl loudly about “freedom”. Do not be fooled.