Of Wolves and Sheep

It has been just over 48 hours since Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's public image took a major downturn. To recap, on the evening of a parliamentary vote, a skirmish broke out in which the PM left his seat, waded into a crowd of MPs in the House of Commons, took the Conservative party whip by the arm and escorted him to his seat. On the way, he accidentally bumped into an NDP MP and in his frustration told her to "get the f*** out of the way". She (the member) was visibly upset and had to leave the chamber.

Reaction was swift. NDP leader Tom Mulcair began yelling at Trudeau during the brief melee. The next day, Opposition leader Rona Ambrose rose in the House and calmly, cleanly and surgically skewered the PM for his actions. Social media posts about the incident haven't slowed down any. Supporters of the Conservatives in the last federal election are exacting revenge on their Liberal detractors during that campaign who pilloried then-PM Stephen Harper in post after post. Those same Liberal (and liberal) detractors are silent now on social media because they see the incivility of their leader (and perhaps their own) who vowed to bring civility back into government. It is now obvious that Trudeau's talk about change was just that, talk. His actions on the floor of the House two nights ago and his government's repeated attempts to silence the Opposition far exceed anything the Harper Conservatives did.

While all people are capable and guilty of hypocrisy, hypocrisy from those on the political and social left is particularly galling. Historically, they have often been the self-appointed champions of human rights but a quick look at Canadian history tells a different story. Eugenics is a word that is derived from the Greek word that means "well born". It first came into use in the late 1800s by a British aristocrat named Sir Francis Galton. It caught on in Canada, in Alberta, in the 1920s under the government of the United Farmers of Alberta, a party that drew much of its support from organized labour. The UFA ran the province from 1921-1935 and in 1928, it enacted the Alberta Sexual Sterilization Act that authorized the sterilization of persons of lower intelligence. Under the name "eugenics", this was a social experiment that sought to eliminate people with intellectual disabilities from the province's gene pool. They sought to sterilize people of low intelligence to keep them from having children who are the same.

What is also disturbing about this is who the proponents of eugenics were. They include J.S. Woodsworth, a founder of the CCF party, the forerunner of today's NDP; Tommy Douglas, a Baptist minister who became the CCF premier of Saskatchewan and later leader of the federal NDP (to be fair, Douglas later changed his mind on eugenics) and Nellie McClung, one of the "Famous Five" who launched the "Persons Case" in 1927 to get women to be "qualified persons" so they could vote. I find it incredible that these folks who are lionized in Canadian history held beliefs that amount to ethnic cleansing which had its most extreme form in Nazism. 

It's also funny how the language of today is similar to the language back then. The UFA also used the word "progressive" to describe its social policies. I wonder if they would accept institutionalized things like abortion, physician-assisted suicide, transgenderism and same-sex marriage. One can only speculate. The fact remains, however, that liberal socialist movements in Canada have, with some notable exceptions, stood for policies that are essentially harmful to human beings, all under the guise of human rights and the common good.

A side of Justin Trudeau's nature was revealed on Wednesday night in Ottawa, a side he led us to believe was not there. Also revealed was the nature of his government which, naturally, possesses the characteristics of the leader. They all now have an image problem that won't soon be solved. Sooner or later hidden things come out and with the perversions that are being institutionalized in today's society, I believe there is much more to come.