A Grandma’s Guide to Personal Pronouns

Pronoun
(n.) A noun that has lost its amateur status.

The English language has (or had) two gender-specific subject pronouns: she and he – and the gender-neutral they.  (These become her, hers, herself; him, his, himself; them, their, theirs, themself when used as other parts of speech.)

Now, according to LGBTQ Nation, (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning) there are thirteen additional subject pronouns – and possibly more because people keep adding new ones. If that isn’t confusing enough, some people use a different set of pronouns (rolling pronouns) depending on how they identify that day.

It is trendy (virtue signalling in some cases, perhaps) for people to add their preferred third person pronouns (ce, co, cy, ey, he, hey, ne, qui, she, sie, tey, they, xe, xie, yo, ze, ve – etc) – either after their name in correspondence or orally if in person. While I respect their intent, it isn’t information I would need at the time, because if I was corresponding with that person, or speaking to them,  I would  use the pronoun you (your, yours).

While I certainly don’t want to be offensive, it is a virtual certainty that if I had to use the new preferred pronouns to refer to someone in a third person circumstance, I would fail.

When English Majors marry the Minister says:
I now pronouns you he and she.
– BIZARRO Comics –

I call everyone dude. Don’t get offended because it doesn’t fit with your gender pronouns. My dog is dude. My mom is dude. My brother is dude. Everyone is dude.
– whisper –

If you’re under 5’5″, your pronouns are
ima/little/tea/pot
If you are tall, your pronouns are
fee/fi/fo/fum
– c.sinclair tweet –

What’s a chocolate bars preferred gender pronoun?
Her/she

That’s an alien. I just saw an alien. Not just an alien ship. An alien being. I mean- just his claw- er… hand. But yeah.
Well, I say “his hand”, but maybe it’s her hand. Or some other pronoun I don’t have a word for. They might have seventeen biological sexes, for all I know. Or none. No one ever talks about the really hard parts of first contact with intelligent alien life: pronouns. I’m going to go with “he” for now, because it just seems rude to call a thinking being “it.”
Also, until I hear otherwise, his name is Rocky.”
― Andy Weir, Project Hail Mary –

The Cancellation of Dilbert

There are many instances where mass and social media misrepresent the news by deliberately excluding context, thus inflaming the public with their bias.

This is how the reaction to statements that were labelled by the media as ‘racist’ got the Comic ‘Dilbert’ cancelled.

The Spark: The Rasmussen Reports conducted a survey of American Adults on February 13-15, 2023. They asked if the people agreed or disagreed with the statement: “It’s OK to be white.” They also asked if the people agreed or disagreed with the statement: “Black people can be racist, too.” (‘It’s OK to be white’ is a statement that is deemed to be racist by some people.)

According to the Rasmussen Reports on Twitter, 53% of blacks agreed with the statement, “It’s OK to be white.” (72% of all polled agreed.) To the statement, “Black people can be racist, too”, 76% of Blacks agreed (79% of all polled agreed.)

The Fire: Scott Adams, creator of the syndicated cartoon ‘Dilbert’, is well known for his satire and use of hyperbole. He reported the results of the poll on his podcast – then, in what he later reiterated was hyperbole, he declared:  “If nearly half of all Blacks are not okay with white people—according to this poll, not according to me, according to this poll—that’s a hate group. I would say, based on the current way things are going, the best advice I would give to white people is to get the hell away from Black people. Just get the f*** away. Wherever you have to go, just get away. Because there’s no fixing this. This can’t be fixed.”

The Result: The five sentences (without the context of the rest of his video), were deemed racist by the media.  Adam’s cartoon strip, Dilbert, was cancelled by the syndicate that carried it (Andrews McMeel Universal). (Scott does not condemn the syndicate for that decision.) His book publishers have cancelled him too.

Scott Adams did not break any laws because in the United States of America,  speech that might offend, insult, or intimidate a person or group is protected by the First Amendment – an individuals right to Freedom of Speech.

Therefore, Mass and Social Media appointed themselves judge and jury and caused, by the process of Cancel Culture, the removal of a Comic Strip that had been entertaining the public for 33 years.

The Aftermath:
Those who want to hear Adams expanded explanation of why he said what he did can watch the following video. It is quite long but well worth viewing.  He explains why he thinks race relations have become worse and how he thinks they could be repaired: he suggests the single most important thing that has to be done to help blacks is education choice for youth (see Education Choice for All Students).

Be sure to watch the facial reactions of the black interviewer, Hotep Jesus. Hotep is the stage name of Bryan Sharpe, an African-American media personality, performance artist, marketer and author.

“The price of free speech is really high and there are only a few people willing to pay it, so I decided to pay it so that I can extend the conversation to something every body needs to hear… I’m opposed to any form of discrimination against individuals.
– Scott Adams,  Sharpe Conversations –

‘Speaking’ of the Speaker of the House

The U.S. House of Representatives finally elected the Speaker of the House after 4 days of deadlock and 15 votes. Prior to the final vote, the satirical website  Babylon Bee commented:
“In a shocking overnight vote held by the House of Representatives, the QAnon Shaman, aka “The Buffalo Guy” has received the majority of votes required to become Speaker of the House.”

Several months ago a ‘portrait’ of Buffalo Guy surfaced again on Twitter. (He was one of several thousand protesters who breached the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021).

Cartoonist Scott Adams, in a satirical tweet, remarked “The Jan6th Committee reminds America that we can never again allow a small band of unarmed protesters to conquer the largest military power in the history of human civilization by sauntering through the Capitol rotunda and taking selfies. We were so close to losing everything.”

When Thousands of People Refuse to Comply with Lawful Orders

In light of the 8700  George Floyd Protests in 2020,  (574 with violence and 624 with arson) there was concern about the potential for disturbance  at a rally at the Capitol on January 6. The Intelligence and Interagency Coordination Division (IICD) issued a Special Assessment on January 3, which acknowledged there would be extremist groups attending the rally; the groups would be armed; they would target Congress and the Joint Session Certification process; and there was a threat of disruptive actions or violence. The Report was shared on January 4th and 5th with multiple security agencies including the FBI and the DC National Guard.

They apparently underestimated the power of several thousand determined people, eighty seven or so who were carrying  baseball bats, fire extinguishers, wooden clubs, a spear, crutches, flagpoles, bear spray, mace, chemical irritants, stolen police shields, a wooden beam, a hockey stick, a stun gun, and knives. Two had hand guns. They overpowered 1200 officers in a confrontation that lasted about 4 hours.

Further reading:

A Comparison of Injuries, Damage, etc of the 2021 Capitol Riot and the 2020 George Floyd Riots
United States Capitol Police Report
After-Action Reports on the Riots of 2020
What Weapons Did Rioters Carry?

Thought Control and the Decline of Free Speech in Canada

Jordan Peterson Vs The Ontario College of Psychologists

“Dr. Jordan Peterson, the clinical psychologist, best-selling author, hugely popular lecturer, and professor emeritus at the University of Toronto, has announced through his social media posts that the College of Psychologists of Ontario has ordered him to undergo re-education therapy for his very public views, not on professional psychology and science, but mere politics. He is being threatened with the loss of his professional license if he does not submit to this outlandish demand that amounts to thought control.”
– Daily Citizen, Jan 5, 2023 –

Wake up, citizens: professionals are now required to hold their tongue if they believe anything politically verboten.
– Jordan Peterson – Twitter, January 8, 2023 –

Is this the Canadian Liberal/NDP government equivalent of Maoist Re-education?

The roots of re-education or deprogramming are found in Maoism. When China’s Mao Zedong gained power in 1949 he launched the first of his thought control campaigns. The two key elements of thought reform were the requirement that people: confess and renounce past and present ‘evil’; submit to re-education.

What Peterson said to offend a few individuals who read his comments or saw him on the internet: Jordan Peterson’s tweets that prompted complaints to psychologists’ college

The latest investigation against him, filed in March, is focused not only on Peterson’s tweets, but on his appearance on ‘The Joe Rogan Podcast’. How Peterson’s discussions on climate change and other issues raised on that podcast might relate to his professional standing is unclear. The implication here seems to be that only experts can discuss issues in the public domain…
Peterson earned his academic credentials fair and square. And what effect will it have on other clinicians if Peterson is silenced?
– The Spectator –

It should go without saying that in a free country, professionals should not lose their jobs and licenses because they express a political opinion contrary to the licensing body that’s mandated by the government… We’re seeing the idea that someone can lose their job, their status, their ability to study because they express something that is contrary to the government line, and I don’t believe that is the Canada we want.
– Pierre Poilievre, Leader of the Conservative Party of Canada –

Other Articles:
No, Jordan Peterson Isn’t On Trial, Freedom Of Speech Is

Jordan Peterson’s License Fiasco Highlights Why Government Licensing Should Be Abolished

Jordan Peterson: I will risk my license to escape social media re-education

My Kitchen, My Choice

The Gas Stove Story

The American public is being prepped for possible action by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission who say they are reviewing possible health hazards posed by gas stoves and will likely take action to regulate the appliances at some point in the future.

Oddly enough, Canada isn’t jumping on that bandwagon yet, but… early days…

Are Gas Stoves Really Responsible for 12.7% of Current Childhood Asthma Cases in the US?

Recently there have been stories about the risk of childhood asthma caused by natural gas stoves. It has been suggested that this news was one ‘trial balloon’ to influence public opinion on gas stoves.

Pushback about the validity of the Gruenwald Asthma-Gas Stove Research paper came from independent sources such as this:

… the Gruenwald et al paper seems to have some clear challenges that would typically preclude it from consideration in a policy-making process. Its underlying data is of low statistical power. Its conclusion is directly contradicted by more recent studies with significantly greater statistical power and it relies on a statistical tool that is considered invalid in situations with confounding variables yet it is being used to analyze an association that is absolutely rife with confounding variables.
– Blair King, Professional Chemist, Analysis January 12, 2023 –

How Much Pollution?

Stanford Researchers estimate, (based on a study of 53 California homes) that  methane leaking from natural gas-burning stoves inside an estimated 40 million U.S. homes has an annual climate impact comparable to the annual carbon dioxide emissions from about 500,000 gasoline powered cars.

This suggests one stove releases emissions equivalent to .0125 gasoline-powered cars.

To put this into perspective, The U.S. Department of Energy has calculated the annual well to wheels emissions for vehicles (they used an average driving distance of 11,579 miles per year.). An All Electric vehicle emits 2817 pounds of CO2 equivalent. A gasoline vehicle emits 12594 pounds of CO2 equivalent.

By extension then, a stove would emit 157 pounds a year, though that doesn’t include emissions from manufacture, etc. Put another way – each year a gas stove releases the equivalent emissions of driving a gasoline car about  144 miles.

In response to the possibility of any mandated ‘mitigation’ strategies, this comment appeared on Twitter a few days ago: “My kitchen, my choice”. I thought this variation of “My body, my choice”  was quite funny and apropos!

“…we currently live in a political climate that prioritizes grand symbolic gestures without regard to unintended consequences or even whether they will achieve their purported goal.
– Tristan Hopper, National Post: You want to ban me? A gas stove makes its case –

The Babylon Bee, a satirical news site, offered this story:  “Biden Calls for Two Weeks of Not Cooking on Gas Stoves to Flatten the Curve”.

Other Reading:

Steve Everley, Managing Director in FTI Consulting’s Energy & Natural Resources, Current Research

Time: The Best Stove for Your Health and the Environment
Gas-Stoving America
Do Gas Stoves Cause Childhood Asthma

Data Sources:
U.S. Department of Energy Emissions from Electric Vehicles
U.S. Department of Energy Alternative Fuels Data
Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment Climate and Health Impacts Natural Gas Stoves
Study on Natural Gas Stove Emissions in 53 Homes

How Twitter Censored Information

Elon Musk has purchased the social networking service Twitter. He says he believes “free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated…”

To achieve that free speech, Musk believes he has to ‘clean house’ in terms of staff numbers, staff bias (according to Twitter’s files, in 2018, 2020, and 2022, 96%, 98%, & 99% of Twitter staff’s political donations went to Democrats) and content restrictions that affect the free flow of ideas.

Musk also believes Twitter has to be transparent about how it functions, which includes an accounting of how it operated previous to his purchase.

That ‘historical’ accounting is being released in a series of ‘Twitter Files’ which are internal Twitter, Inc. documents (screenshots, emails, and chat logs)  that  CEO Elon Musk released to journalists for them to present to the public. Here are their reports, with their comments in quotation marks:

Part 1: How and Why Twitter Blocked the Hunter Biden Laptop Story
Part 7: The FBI & the Hunter Biden Laptop
“October 14, 2020, The New York Post runs its explosive story revealing the business dealings of President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter. Every single fact in it was accurate. And yet, within hours, Twitter and other social media companies censor the NY Post article, preventing it from spreading and, more importantly, undermining its credibility in the minds of many Americans.”

Part 2: Twitter’s Secret Blacklists “teams of Twitter employees build blacklists, prevent disfavored tweets from trending, and actively limit the visibility of entire accounts or even trending topics—all in secret, without informing users.”

Part 3: The Removal of Donald Trump October 2020-January 6th
Part 4: The Removal of Donald Trump: January 7
Part 5: The Removal of Trump from Twitter
On the morning of January 8, President Donald Trump  tweets twice:
6:46 am: “The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!”
7:44 am: “To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.”
Twitter executives (then banned) Trump, even though key staffers said that Trump had not incited violence—not even in a “coded” way.

Part 6: The FBI Subsidiary
“Federal intelligence and law enforcement reach into Twitter included the Department of Homeland Security, which partnered with security contractors and think tanks to pressure Twitter to moderate content.”
Part 8: How Twitter Quietly Aided the Pentagon’s Covert Online PsyOp Campaign

Part 9: How Twitter Rigged the Covid Debate
“But Twitter did suppress views—many from doctors and scientific experts—that conflicted with the official positions of the White House. As a result, legitimate findings and questions that would have expanded the public debate went missing.”

“Martin Kulldorff, Senior Scholar at Brownstone Institute, is an epidemiologist and biostatistician. He is Professor of Medicine at Harvard University (on leave) and a Fellow at the Academy of Science and Freedom. His research focuses on infectious disease outbreaks and the monitoring of vaccine and drug safety.”

More Information about the Misleading Information Policy
Twitter had a COVID-19  Misleading Information Policy (which has been removed) that stated you could not tweet that vaccines are untested, experimental or somehow unsafe or that specific groups or people are more or less prone to be infected or to develop adverse symptoms. That policy may have limited tweets about the incidence of  myocarditis, even though  “Based on passive surveillance reporting in the US, the risk of myocarditis after receiving mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines was increased across multiple age and sex strata and was highest after the second vaccination dose in adolescent males and young men. (Source JAMA, Jan 25, 2022). It also may have limited tweets about age and obesity even though: “More than 81% of COVID-19 deaths occur in people over age 65; Having obesity may triple the risk of hospitalization due to a COVID-19 infection.” (Source CDC)

“Trust, but Verify” – US President Ronald Regan
On December 28, 2022, Elon tweeted: “New Twitter policy is to follow the science, which necessarily includes reasoned questioning of the science.”

I see this as the next step in what Dr. Zubin Damania has been talking about for the past year or so:

This is now the prime challenge. First of all, you cannot villainize or demonize each side. You have to understand there’s going to be extremes that are crazy on both sides, but that the vast majority of people are trying to be good based on their moral matrix. So we have to, first of all, open dialogue between the sides that doesn’t involve, shaming and name calling and ad hominems and logical fallacies. We need to introspect and see our own moral matrix and bias so that we can go, okay, so when am I just feeding my own confirmation bias?… Then we need to have dialogue across these lines respectfully. And that’s what I call Alt-Middle.
– Dr. Zubin Damania –

We’ll See What Happens

Scam, Spam and Phishing
My recent post, 13th Anniversary of Blogging, was reblogged without my permission by someone who I think might be a phishing scammer (though I may be over-reacting.)

I contacted WordPress about this and asked them to take the reblogged post down. The Happiness Engineer (HE… or maybe HER) suggested I fill out a Copyright Infringement Complaint. I don’t see how that would do me any good because WordPress is the one that provides the reblog tool that lets people take your content.

I had left a comment on the site that had reblogged my post, asking them to take it down. The reply from the blogger was: “Pls am sorry and I will happy if you can guide me too on this WordPress blog to become famouse and get money there easily pls Mrs Amusive pls contact me on what’sapp +(234xxxxxxxxxx) so we can talk more pls”

So I  filed a complaint of scamming  – which was a lot faster and easier than a copyright infringement complaint. We’ll see what happens.

The Response to Elon Musk Buying Twitter

The big news in Social Media is that Twitter has been purchased by the richest man in the world, Elon Musk. His expressed reason for purchasing it is because he wants “civilization to have a common digital town square.” By common, Musk says the company would allow “all speech that the First Amendment protects”. Getting from ‘what Musk now owns’ to ‘what Musk wants it to be’ has been a bumpy ride so far (as opposed to the ride you get in one of his Teslas…)

This has created an uproar with people who want Twitter (or Facebook or YouTube) to decide what is misinformation or hate speech (for example) and do not agree with Musk’s opinion that better decision making comes from more open debate. We’ll see what happens.

Quiet Quitting

This is a new term to me. It means “doing the minimum requirements of one’s job and putting in no more time, effort, or enthusiasm than absolutely necessary.” I’ve read that this trend is popular with Gen Z who believe working will lead to on-the-job burnout if they do more than what they think they are being paid to do.

This has apparently led to Quiet Firing where the employer does the minimum required of them – which does not necessarily include giving raises, increased opportunities or promotions to employees who don’t do more than what is absolutely necessary… etc.

The Employer could, of course, escalate things to ‘UnQuiet Firing’. Apparently Musk has fired about half the Twitter work force. Speculation is that Amazon will lay off 10,000 employees and Zuckerberg is cutting 11,000 employees.  I suppose it is possible that some of those laid off were quiet quitters… We’ll see what happens.

 

Canadian Conservatism is on the Rise

Conservative politics are attracting young Canadians, according to recent polls.

A recent Abacus Data poll showed that 37 per cent of 18 to 29 year olds were prepared to back the Tories — a larger base of support than for either the Liberals or the NDP.
Abacus also found that a plurality of 18-44 voters are favouring the Conservatives for the first time. Previously, the category was reliably dominated by the Liberals.
– Tristin Hopper, National Post August 10, 2022 –

Pierre Poilievre, a candidate for the leadership of the Conservative Party,  is getting much of the credit for this trend. He is appealing to a young demographic that agree with his message of freedom. This includes his opposition to the federal governments vaccine mandates, which he says are unscientific and discriminatory. He is also highly critical of a news media that he says has protected Trudeau from responsibility for failed measures.

Millennials and Gen Zers consistently share with me that they face various pressures to conform to liberal orthodoxy. In school and on college and university campuses, students are being made to feel as though there is only one acceptable point of view on identity, patriotism, economics, community, family, faith, business, and the role of government in our lives. And that one acceptable point of view is unreasonably critical of Canada, bows down to wokeness, denies the positive benefits of capitalism, ignores any wisdom in our traditions or history, and values government programs over community and family relationships.
– Jamil Jivani, president of Canada Strong and Free Network (formerly the Manning Centre, National Post article, August 12, 2022 –

Count how many ways this denigrates a person and a political party.

Chris Selley posted this on Twitter – an Example of a ‘Cartoonist’ trying to make Canadian Conservatism look like it is a  ‘Far Right’ party and/or is affiliated with President Trump’s politics (neither of which is true).

Poilievre has disavowed social-conservatism, pledging his support for both same-sex marriage and women’s reproductive freedoms, and vowed never to raise either issue in Parliament.. He’s part of a sudden and welcome backlash within his party against Quebec’s Bill 21, but otherwise seems perfectly comfortable with asymmetrical federalism…
“’Woke’ voices on the edges of the left and ‘populist’ voices on the fringes of the right are sucking up all the oxygen in what passes for political debate in Canada,” Peterson writes on the CIC website. “These loud and fringe voices dominate Party politics, creating tribal divisions and fierce debates over issues mainly long-settled in the minds of most Canadians.”
– Chris Selley, National Post, July 27, 2022 –

Critics Respond to Trudeau’s Use of the Emergencies Act

In response to the Truckers Convoy and ensuing protests against vaccine mandates, Prime Minister Trudeau invoked Canada’s Emergencies Act on February 14, 2022. After considerable outcry, it was revoked on February 23, 2022. I suggested his use of the act made him look like a School yard bully: Bullying on the Political Playground.

Here are responses from a broad spectrum of analysts:

Andrew Scheer, former Leader of Canada’s Conservative Party, sounding more Prime Ministerial than Trudeau

Parliament is suspended! Before MPs even finish debating Trudeau’s massive power grab, the House of Commons gets shut down.
– Andrew Scheer, February 18, 2022 –

Wall Street Journal, an International newspaper

Modern liberals can hurtle from extravagant tolerance to suppression without batting an eye. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau dramatizes the tendency… Bank-account freezes weren’t necessary to clear the blockades. That required police only to arrest those blocking traffic and to requisition tow trucks (already authorized by Canada’s criminal code). The asset freezes serve not to end an emergency but to incapacitate and intimidate protesters after the fact… In December 2020 Mr. Trudeau chided India for its police response to farmers’ blockades of Delhi. “Let me remind you,” he said, “Canada will always be there to defend the right of peaceful protest.” Mr. Trudeau prattles on about rights half a world away but won’t respect them half a block from Parliament.
– Wall Street Journal Editorial Board –

Bill Maher, an American sociopolitical commentator, identifies as a liberal.
The Canada’s Toronto Sun political columnists, Lorrie Goldstein and Lorne Gunter, discuss why Bill Maher took aim at Justin Trudeau.

Joanna Williams is Head of Education and Culture at Policy Exchange in the UK

Where is the liberal outrage at Trudeau’s monstrously illiberal behaviour?
Imagine the uproar if, back in 2020, President Trump had frozen bank accounts belonging to key figures in the Black Lives Matter movement
– Joanna Williams, The Telegraph, 21 February, 2022

How the Emergencies Act was Created

I was present during the negotiations around the federal Emergencies Act in 1987. As one of two full-time lawyers at the Canadian Civil Liberties Association at the time, I witnessed firsthand how Alan Borovoy, the CCLA’s then-general counsel, managed to shape the contours of this scheme. And I saw how the end product was a carefully calibrated piece of legislation with checks at every turn.

It’s why I believe the Emergencies Act was not a legally suitable instrument for removing unwelcome occupiers on Ottawa’s streets.
– David Schneiderman, professor of law at the UofT, The Globe and Mail – It shouldn’t have been invoked in Ottawa –

David Sacks, cofounder and general partner at Craft Ventures.

Trudeau escalated things further by issuing a directive requiring financial institutions — including banks, credit unions, co-ops, loan companies, trusts, and even cryptocurrency wallets — to stop “providing any financial or related services” to anyone associated with the protests (a “designated person”).

Banks, according to this new order, have a “duty to determine” if one of their customers is a “designated person.” A “designated person” can refer to anyone who “directly or indirectly” participates in the protest, including donors who “provide property to facilitate” the protests through crowdfunding sites.

Because the donor data to the crowdfunding site GiveSendGo was hacked — and the leaked data shows that Canadians donated most of the $8 million raised — many thousands of law-abiding Canadians now face the prospect of financial retaliation and ruin merely for supporting an anti-government protest.

The fear of being ensnared in the dragnet will surely have a chilling effect on the commercial prospects of those suspected of “unacceptable views,” creating a caste of untouchables whom no one will dare to transact with or help.
– David Sacks, National Post, Trudeau creates caste of economic untouchables –

About Freezing Bank Accounts

As reports of frozen accounts linked to convoy donations continue to roll in, members of the Commons finance committee spent Tuesday afternoon questioning staff from the Canada Revenue Agency and the departments of Finance and Justice about the controversial emergency measures that allow police to lock bank accounts of those suspected of funding the illegal protests without first obtaining a court order.

“Just to be clear, a financial contribution either through a crowdsourced platform or directly, could result in their bank account being frozen?” Conservative MP Philip Lawrence asked Department of Finance Assistant Deputy Minister Isabelle Jacques.
“Yes,” she replied.
“They didn’t have to actively be involved in the protest, they didn’t have to be here in Ottawa at one of the blockades?” Lawrence asked.
“When you freeze someone’s bank account, you’re effectively removing them from society,” Lawrence said.

– National Post – Even small donation to Freedom Convoy after Feb. 15 enough to have donor’s bank accounts frozen, finance committee told –

Rex Murphy joins Dr. Peterson to discuss the most recent actions of Trudeau’s Government

Senator John N. Kennedy is a Louisiana Republican who champions the promotion and protection of human rights. (He is not related to John F. Kennedy.)

You say follow the science, Mr. Prime Minister. Let’s follow the science. We look around. We see the omicron variant, its virulence waning. Most of us have immunity. We are either natural or we are vaccinated. So, what, Mr. Prime Minister, is your road map for getting government off our backs and allowing us to get back to normal? …Instead of saying, ‘Fair question, let’s sit down and talk about it.’ His plan for convincing the truckers that they are wrong is by saying ‘you’re a bunch of stupid idiots’.
– Senator John Kennedy, February 15, 2022 –

The following quotes are from an article in the National Post by Raymond J. de Souza: Invoking the Emergencies Act is the logical conclusion of Trudeau’s government by decree.

How a Vote on the Emergencies Act Became a Government Confidency Vote

Canada’s Emergencies Act – Prime Minister Trudeau invoked it in order to squash the Trucker’s Convoy. The legitimacy of using it is questioned by people who remembered how often it has NOT been invoked in actions such as: CN Rail Blockade in 2020; G20 Toronto Summit Protest in 2010;  Occupy Canada in 2011-2012; Quebec Uprising in 2001.

There are checks and balances in the Emergencies Act, not the least of which are the procedural steps to ensure accountability. The government must table a motion in both the House and the Senate that asks for confirmation of the Declaration of an Emergency. Parliament then votes.

Except… Trudeau decided to turn the vote into a Confidence Vote. If the majority in the House decided that the Emergencies Act should end, then Trudeau intimated he would declare this was a vote of Non-Confidence in his government. The government would fall, and he would call another election. Of course, he did this in a press conference.

“I can’t imagine anyone voting against this bill as expressing anything other than a deep mistrust in the government’s ability to keep Canadians safe at an extraordinarily important time,” Trudeau said.
– CTV News, February 21, 2022

The Debate on the Declaration of an Emergency is reported in Hansard, Monday, February 21, 2022. It clearly shows that some Liberal and NDP members believed they had to vote the party line (a Yay vote), though they did not support the invocation of the Emergencies Act.

Trudeau was asked, repeatedly, to confirm his intention that a ‘Nay’ vote was a non-confidence vote. Trudeau did not do so. In fact, he left the House before debate was concluded. He voted remotely.

Here are excerpts of what was said:

Mr. Jean-Denis Garon (Mirabel, BQ):
Madam Speaker, the Prime Minister, the only Liberal member who has the right to speak freely, just turned what should have been a vote of conscience into a vote of confidence.
We can see from our discussions with the Liberal members that many of them are uncomfortable with these extreme measures now that the truckers are gone…
Madam Speaker, many NDP members have said that they are uncomfortable with the Emergencies Act and have even indicated that they might vote differently if there were no trucks left today.

Mr. Nathaniel Erskine-Smith (Beaches—East York, Lib.):
…I am skeptical that the strict legal test was met for the act’s invocation, and I am not convinced that the emergency measures should continue to exist beyond today.
I would vote accordingly but for the fact that it is now a confidence vote.

Mr. Joël Lightbound (Louis-Hébert, Lib.):
During the rail blockades put in place in early 2020 to support the demands of the the Wet’suwet’en, I never thought it would be appropriate to invoke the Emergencies Act. I look at the present situation in the same way…
… since 2015, the Liberal Party has had a moral contract whereby members must vote with the government on confidence votes, electoral commitments, and issues affecting Canadians’ fundamental rights protected by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Under this contract, all other votes are free votes…. If this evening’s vote were not a confidence vote, I would vote against it. However, at the very least, as we prepare to vote, I would like to have a clear and unequivocal indication as to whether this is truly a confidence vote.

Mr. Alexandre Boulerice (Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, NDP):
… I thought that confidence votes applied only to throne speeches, budgets and budget bills. In this case, however, there appears to be a new Liberal category called “whenever the Prime Minister feels like it”.

Mr. John Brassard:
… Earlier today, the Prime Minister signalled, as did a member of his back bench, that tonight’s vote is a confidence vote. Convention requires the Prime Minister to publicly declare a confidence vote of this nature as such…
My question for the government House leader is this: Is the vote tonight a confidence vote? If the vote is lost, will the Prime Minister plunge us into an election?

Reply from Hon. Mark Holland:  Leader of the Government in the House of Commons
Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the debate but it is time to vote.