Trudeau and the Re-colonisation of Canada

The monarchical fawning in the international press over the young Trudeau and his decided plunge into Canadian federal politics is a Hollywood embarrassment (see Robert Fulford's "Pity Me, I'm Famous" to understand why the attention is wholly undeserved). As C.S. Lewis put it, the people, having been deprived of their spiritual nature, are busy gobbling poison. This is what happens when our taproot to Eden gets cut.

As it so happens, Trudeau's towering father, the late Pierre Elliot Trudeau, prime minister of Canada for nearly all of 1968-84, did much of the cutting. His crowning achievement twenty-five years ago was patriating the Constitution from Britain with a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, thereby depriving the fair dominion of its constitutionally organic and historical nature.

William Gairdner explains:

"Prior to the founding of Canada under the British North America Act of 1867, all those in the British colonies of the New World lived under English parliamentary law and their court proceedings were judged according to common-law precedent. Law made by parliamentarians was the highest law of the land. But even before deciding on new statutes, English parliamentarians would usually make passionate appeal to common law because in the public mind such precedents were considered a precious historical inheritance from what G.K. Chesterton called “the democracy of the dead.” Which is to say, a priceless gift of moral and legislative wisdom from our ancestors, near and far.

In the rising democratic spirit of the times, however, these Canadians-to-be once or twice revolted against British rule to achieve what they called “responsible government.” By this revolutionary slogan they meant they wanted those who made their laws to answer to them, the people. They were finished with colonial governors bossing them around who were responsible only to the English Parliament in London, or to the Privy Council some 6,000 miles away, for neither entity had any obligation to answer to those over whom they ruled. The BNA Act of 1867 changed all that, and Canada finally got responsible government. The new Canadians would now grow their own British-style parliamentary tradition and common-law inheritance (with the exception of Quebec, which would use French Code law in addition), and would at last have political masters responsible to them alone. They would at last be able to hire and fire their own law-makers..."

Read the rest of Chastising the Charter