Canada is a textbook case of the rot corroding Western liberal democracies where civil liberties are under siege

We live in interesting times. While Donald Trump is triggering a global trade war, pushing the world towards recession and causing historic geopolitical shifts, free speech and civil liberties are endangered in the West. Major Western democracies are retreating from fundamental values.

France has banned frontrunner Marine Le Pen, the populist right-wing leader, from running for 2027 Presidential polls through lawfare. Germany could ban right-wing politicians from running for office “to strengthen the resilience of democracy”. Romania has cancelled elections because the ‘wrong’ candidate won people’s mandate. Evidently, democracy must be killed for it to survive.

Nothing compares, however, to the brazen murder of democratic norms and principles under way in Canada. Tinpot tyrant Justin Trudeau has bowed out. His outfit, the ruling Liberal Party in Canada, is proudly taking forward the ‘tradition’. The Liberals have revoked MP Chandra Arya’s bid to run for party’s leadership that would have placed him in contention for replacing Trudeau as Canada’s next prime minister. The party also cancelled Arya’s nomination from Ottawa Nepean constituency over ‘alleged ties with India’.

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In an unprecedented situation, Canada now has a prime minister in Mark Carney who is holding office without getting elected. Elections are scheduled for April 28.

What was Arya’s crime that he has been barred from party leadership’s race? The Liberal Party, that took the disciplinary action, remains tightlipped. Canadian newspaper Globe and Mail, one of the many media outlets aligned to the ruling Liberals, quoted a “source with top-secret clearance” as saying that Arya has been red flagged by the Canadian spy agency for his “alleged close ties with India, including the Indian High Commission in Ottawa.”

This sounds ominous. Perhaps the Liberal lawmaker was involved in a cloak-and-dagger operation involving India and was secretly planning subversive activities against the country which he hoped to lead? Did his nefarious motives come to light?

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It turns out that Arya visited India last August and met prime minister Narendra Modi. That’s sacrilege. According to the Globe and Mail “source”, “Arya had not informed the government of that trip even though bilateral relations are in a deep freeze…”

Canadian paranoia over India has reached such ridiculous proportions that levelling of evidence-free allegations and casting baseless aspersions have become the norm, and the Canadian spy agencies are playing a stellar role from behind the scenes.

Trudeau, after accusing India from the floor of Canadian Parliament of engineering a hitjob on Khalistani extremist Hardeep Singh Nijjar, later admitted while testifying before a ‘foreign interference’ inquiry that his fantastic allegations were based on “intelligence, not hard evidentiary proof.”

A fresh series of slanders against India last month by Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) attracted habitual interest from Western media that ran screaming headlines on “Indian interference in Canadian elections”, but even a cursory look at the reports reveals the hollowness of these narratives. A Reuters report, for example, quotes Vanessa Lloyd, the deputy director of operations at CSIS, as saying “that government of India has the intent and capability to interfere in Canadian communities and democratic processes” while offering zero evidence to back the claim.

Arya has responded to the cancelling of his candidature by clarifying that “as a Member of Parliament, I have engaged with numerous diplomats and heads of government, both in Canada and internationally. Not once have I sought—nor been required to seek—permission from the government to do so. At no point did former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau or any cabinet minister raise concerns about my meetings or public statements.”

According to Arya, who is of Hindu faith, “the sole point of contention with the Liberal Party has been my outspoken advocacy on issues important to Hindu Canadians and my firm stance against Khalistani extremism.”

He may have a point.

Behind the Kafkaesque conduct of Canada’s ruling party lies the unfortunate reality that freedom of speech and expression in Canada is under siege, and Khalistani extremism is holding the Canadian state to ransom.

Arya’s case is not an isolated incident. It is one more signifier of Canada’s steady descent towards an illiberal, authoritarian police state that resembles totalitarian regimes in going after dissenters and protesters, while looking the other way in cases of egregious violation of law, flouting of diplomatic norms and even wanton violence when it is politically inconvenient to take action.

Ask the protesting truckers of Freedom Convoy in February 2022 who were bullied by the Canadian state into submission. Trudeau, then the prime minister, used all the dirty tricks in his autocratic toolbox to crush the dissenters – enacting the federal Emergencies Act for the first time in Canada’s history, threatening to impound the vehicles of the protesting truckers, snatching away their livelihood, freezing their bank accounts and going after the funders of the movement with gusto.

Trudeau’s declaration of public order emergency unleashed sweeping powers for the law enforcement who brought the blue-collar workers to heel, while the fork-tongued Canadian PM waxed eloquent on “values” and “principles”.

Tamara Lich and Chris Barber, two of the key organisers of the Freedom Convoy protests that rocked Canada in 2022 were found “guilty of mischief” last Friday by an Ontario court judge. Interestingly, justice Heather Perkins-McVey ruled that while the duo “routinely encouraged people to join or remain at the protest”, Lich and Barber were “not guilty of intimidation, counselling someone to commit intimidation, obstructing police and counselling someone to obstruct police.”

That’s the very definition of peaceful protest which is the bulwark of a liberal democracy that Canada claims to be. And yet consider what Trudeau, while declaring the emergency, had said at that time: “we cannot and will not allow illegal and dangerous activities to continue.”

For Trudeau, peaceful civil disobedience by truckers who were hit the hardest by the vaccine mandate was “illegal and dangerous”. Even as he was issuing draconian orders to crush the dissenters, Trudeau claimed: “We are not preventing people from exercising their right to protest legally.”

He could’ve written a book on the art of gaslighting.

Trudeau’s acts were so brazen and extreme that a federal court judge last year ruled that the promulgation of Emergencies Act to quell the protests was “unreasonable and unconstitutional”.

It is the same Trudeau who came out in support of the farmers’ protests in India, claiming that “Canada will always be there to defend the rights of peaceful protesters. We believe in the process of dialogue.” The chance to virtue-signal on an issue that is close to the Khalistani votebank was too good to miss, even if it meant needling India over an issue internal to it through an ill-informed remark.

This duplicity lies at the heart of Canadian politics that has become distorted due to the bipartisan consensus over pandering to Khalistani extremists, resulting in steep downturn in ties with India. The Khalistanis, some of whom are likely Canadian deep state assets, have understood that they can game the political system and seek disproportionate benefits in state support and discourse domination in achieving their agenda of Balkanising India.

Their political objective might not be met because India is a hard state when it comes to safeguarding its sovereignty and territorial integrity, but the Khalistani gangs have inadvertently exposed the shortcomings of Canadian democracy where extremism is normalized under the pretext of “free speech” and rule of law sacrificed at the altar of appeasement politics.

This bias has been institutionalized in such a way that an MP from the ruling party is cancelled for raising his voice against Khalistani violence while the extremists enjoy state protection because they are politically motivated and well-mobilized.

In response to India’s charge that freedom of speech cannot be used as a justification for endorsing secessionism and terrorism, and freedom of expression does not mean political space for threatening foreign diplomats, Trudeau had claimed “Canada has always taken violence and threats of violence extremely seriously. We have always taken serious action against terrorism and we always will.”

By now these lies have been exposed and well documented. As a thumb rule, Trudeau’s cops were found wanting whenever Khalistanis went on a rampage. The Hindu Maha Sabha temple in Brampton came under attack last year when Khalistani thugs beat up Hindu devotees with sticks. The goons didn’t spare even women and children. The Peel Regional police adopted the role of mute spectators. One cop was suspended for attending Khalistani demonstrations.

Worse followed in Surrey BC where cops took the side of the Khalistanis and assaulted the Hindu temple-goers, charging at devotees and landing punches. Three devotees were arrested who stood their ground against Khalistanis who had come to harass the worshippers. It was an act of stunning brazenness and perversion where the law enforcement, instead of protecting the hunters, aligned with the hunted.

It sent a clear message that Canadians of Hindu faith, caught in the spiralling vortex of worsening India-Canada ties, cannot expect equal treatment before law. The anti-India Khalistani elements, whose violent actions were being endorsed by the Canadian state, were being used as instruments to achieve foreign policy objectives.

These realities that Trudeau baked into Canadian politics aren’t going away anytime soon. A recent statement by Union junior minister for external affairs Kirti Vardhan Singh in Lok Sabha blames Canada for creating “an environment for illegal migration and organised criminal activities” and for interfering in India’s internal affairs. The MEA statement makes it clear that the downturn in bilateral ties is caused by Canada’s license to secessionist and extremist forces that target India.

Canada is a textbook case of an affliction affecting Western liberal democracies where a violent minority has figured out a way to bend the state to its will, aided by weak, devious politicians who prioritise votebank politics over the rule of law, all in the name of ‘principles’ and ‘values’.

The writer is Deputy Executive Editor, Firstpost. He tweets as @sreemoytalukdar. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.