Another Trudeau... another emergency: Civilian internment camps?

 

The Trudeau government and the Queen's Privy Council have a low regard for representative government.

For those who doubt that Canada is in fact governed not by Parliament but by "administrative discretion" and the "secret consensus" of the Queen's Privy Council, the following events should help clear things up.

Yvon Pinard, the President of the Privy Council and the House of Commons leader for the Trudeau government, is quoted describing who really runs Canada and how in the April 3 Toronto Star.

Echoing the War Measures Act imposed during the 1970 October crisis in Quebec, when hundreds were arrested without charges, Pinard defended how the Emergency Planning Order, which went into effect without legislative authorization last spring, gives the Trudeau Cabinet power to impose sweeping measures in the event of what the Star calls "ill-defined war or peacetime emergencies."

According to the Star, "Under the new order, 11 cabinet ministers would have control over key sectors of the economy-transportation, production, energy, and manpower-in peacetime emergencies, and they would also be able to create civilian internment camps and censorship controls in the event of war or insurrection." Both the Conservative Party and the New Democratic Party have condemned the fact that no legislation sanctioning these measures have been submitted in the House of Commons. Pinard says that "because it's an administrative order relating to the internal functioning of government, legislation wasn't required." Under this' rubric, the Cabinet passed about 300 unlegislated orders-in-council over the past year.

The emerging tax revolt in Quebec and the growing separatist movement in western Canada are among the potential crisis triggers; there are indications that the Privy Council expects upheavals when Queen Elizabeth arrives in Ottawa on April 17.

Any "abnormal situation," as the order defines an emergency, including an economic crisis or labor unrest, may trigger the "discretionary authority" of the Trudeau government to impose a dictatorship, and this will be officially sanctioned by the new constitution the Queen is to present this month.  (more...)

Civilian internment camps?