From the Daily Caller News Foundation 

By Jason Hopkins

Canadian officials are bracing for a possible migrant influx into their country because of President-elect Donald Trump’s election victory in the U.S., marking a major pivot in policy compared to Trump’s first White House term.

Canada’s Liberal Party-led government appears to be taking a much more hawkish approach to illegal immigration and the possibility of a surge in asylum seekers, according to the New York Times. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) — the country’s law enforcement arm that patrols the border — is preparing to beef up its immigration enforcement capabilities by hiring more staff, adding more vehicles and creating more processing facilities.

RCMP would use the extra vehicles to help patrol the U.S.-Canada border and utilize newly-established facilities to detain and process arriving migrants, according to the New York Times.

The preparations up north come as Trump — who just won election to a second, non-consecutive term to the White House — has vowed to conduct the largest deportation operation in the country’s history. He is set to re-occupy the Oval Office in January, where he will get to work on his hardline immigration enforcement agenda.

Canadian officials have spoken about the possibility of a migrant surge into their country early on since Trump’s victory.

“We started planning because we knew that there were a lot of people in the United States who will fear to be deported, and if that happens, they won’t wait for the Trump administration to seize power, it’s more likely that they will attempt to cross into Canada from now in the next few weeks until he takes on power,” RCMP spokesperson Sgt. Charles Poirier said on CTV News earlier in November.

Trudeau’s government did not have the same response to Trump’s first-term crackdown on illegal migrants.

“To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength #WelcomeToCanada,” the Canadian prime minister posted on social media on Jan. 28, 2017, just days after Trump was sworn into office.

However, in the years since Trudeau made these public overtures, the Canadian government has recognized the need to change course. The change in policy is largely reflective of less tolerance in the country for mass migration, public opinion surveys have shown.

“To be clear: all newcomers are valued in Canada,” Marc Miller, Canada’s immigration minister, said during a September speech in Ottawa before announcing the rollout of immigration enforcement measures. “But we also need to recognize that this can impact communities, such as the increases in unemployment amongst youth and newcomers.”

“We are introducing changes to further recalibrate international student, foreign worker and permanent resident volumes. That work has already started,” Miller continued.

In addition to beefing up its border infrastructure, Canadian officials also plan to make use out of an international agreement that will allow them to send asylum seekers back into the U.S., according to the New York Times. The “safe third country” agreement — which the Trump administration heavily enforced onto Mexico at that time — designates both the U.S. and Canada as safe countries for asylum requestors, meaning a migrant that arrived in the U.S. must first seek asylum there before attempting to do so in Canada.

“We expect that agreement to continue to be fully enforced,” Miller told reporters earlier.

The RCMP did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

From the Brownstone Institute

By Philip Davies 

You might think these are quite rare but not a bit of it; 13,200 of these were recorded in the last 12 months, and that’s around 36 a day, and they go on your record and sometimes mean you end up with no job. They also have new laws planned to control misinformation and disinformation, something not just confined to the UK. Similar laws are planned for Ireland, Australia, Canada, and the EU.

I’m envious. The US has something the UK doesn’t have, namely a First Amendment. Yes I know there are those who wish the US didn’t have it either, including, I understand, John Kerry and that woman who still thinks she beat Trump the first time around. Kerry kind of wishes that the First Amendment wasn’t quite so obstructive to his plans. But from where I stand, you should be thankful for it.

Not only does the UK not have a First Amendment, it doesn’t have a constitution either, and that makes for worrying times right now. Free speech has little currency with Gen Z and the way it looks, even less with the new UK Labour government. Even Elon Musk, who takes a surprising interest in our little country, has recently declared the UK a police state.

It’s not surprising. Take for instance the case of Alison Pearson, who had the police knocking on her door this Remembrance Sunday. They had come to warn her they were investigating a tweet she had posted a whole year ago which someone had complained about. They were investigating whether it constituted a Non-Crime Hate Incident or NCHI. Yes, you heard me right, a ‘non-crime’ hate incident and no, this is not something out of Orwell, it’s straight out of the College of Policing’s playbook.

If you haven’t heard of them, you can thank your First Amendment. In the UK you can get a police record for something you posted on X that someone else didn’t like and you haven’t even committed a crime. NCHIs are a way they have of getting around the law in the same way John Kerry would like to get around the First Amendment, except it’s real where I live.

Alison Pearson is a reporter for the Daily Telegraph, but that doesn’t mean she can write what she likes. When she asked the police what the tweet was which was objected to, she was told they couldn’t tell her that. When she asked who the complainant was, they said they couldn’t tell her that either. They added, that she shouldn’t call them a complainant, they were officially the victim. That’s what due process is like when you don’t have a First Amendment or a constitution. Victims of NCHI in the UK are decided without a trial or a defense. They asked, very politely, if Pearson would like to come voluntarily to the police station for a friendly interview. If she didn’t want to come voluntarily, they would put her on a wanted list and she would eventually be arrested. Nice choice.

It’s true that there has been a public ruckus over this particular case, but the police are unapologetic and have doubled down. Stung into action by unwanted publicity, they are now saying they have raised the matter from an NCHI to an actual crime investigation. Which means they think she can be arrested and put in prison for expressing her opinion on X. And of course they are right. In the UK that’s where we are right now. Pearson tried to point out the irony of two police officers turning up on her door to complain about her free speech on Remembrance Day of all days, when we recall the thousands who died to keep this a free country, but irony is lost on those who have no memory of what totalitarianism means.

The way things are looking I would say things can only get worse. The new Labour government has made it clear that it wants to beef up the reporting of NCHIs and make them an effective tool for clamping down on hurtful speech. You might think these are quite rare but not a bit of it; 13,200 of these were recorded in the last 12 months, and that’s around 36 a day, and they go on your record and sometimes mean you end up with no job. They also have new laws planned to control misinformation and disinformation, something not just confined to the UK. Similar laws are planned for Ireland, Australia, Canada, and the EU. Germany in particular is keen to remove all misinformation from the internet, I understand.

Whenever I see the word ‘misinformation’ these days I automatically translate it in my head to what it really means, which is ‘dissent.’ Western countries, former champions of free speech, the bedrock of liberty and individual choice, en masse it seems, now want to outlaw dissent. What is coordinating this attack on free expression, I don’t know, but it’s real and it’s upon us. We are slowly being intellectually suffocated into not expressing any opinion that others might find objectionable or that might contradict what the government said. If you had told me that would happen in my lifetime, I would have called you a liar.

I live in the UK, the home of the Bill of Rights and the Magna Carta, and the mother of parliamentary democracy. I was proud that we produced men like John Milton, John Stuart Mill, and Thomas Paine, that we understood the importance of the Areopagitica, the Rights of Man, and incorporated On Liberty into our social thinking. But those days seem long gone when police knock on your door to arrest you for an X post.

So I’m glad someone somewhere has a First Amendment even if we don’t. It may be your last defense in that republic of yours, if you can keep it.

Author

Philip Davies

Philip Davies is Visiting Fellow at Bournemouth University, UK. He gained a PhD in Quantum Mechanics at the University of London and has been an academic for over 30 years teaching Masters students how to think for themselves. He is now retired and has the luxury of thinking for himself. He fills in his spare time with a small YouTube channel where he interviews amazing academics and indulges in writing books and articles.