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Australian senator compares Trudeau’s treatment of Freedom Convoy protesters to Communist China

Published

1 year ago

6 minute read

From LifeSiteNews

By Clare Marie Merkowsky

‘This push towards a digital ID future is another step toward a Chinese Communist Party-style social credit system, which will force you to support the current thing at the risk of total cancellation,’ Senator Alex Antic said

An Australian senator compared Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s handling of the Freedom Convoy with Communist China.

During a November 13 meeting in the Australian Senate, Senator Alex Antic used the freezing of Canadians’ bank accounts during the 2022 Freedom Convoy as an example of the dangers of digital currency, comparing Trudeau’s actions with China’s social credit system.

“I’ve been warning about digital ID for some time, and it wasn’t so long ago that, like many of these issues which turn out to be correct, it was considered to be nothing but a conspiracy theory,” he said.

“We saw how that worked a couple of years ago with the financial cancellation of the Canadian truckers when they were protesting COVID lockdowns and restrictions,” Antic appealed. “The advancement of technology is inevitable, but this push towards a digital ID future is another step towards a Chinese Communist Party-style social credit system, which will force you to support the current thing at the risk of total cancellation.”

The Trudeau government’s similarities to China’s Communist government have become increasingly evident to both Canadians and other countries. Indeed, Trudeau himself admitted that he has a “level of admiration” for China’s “basic dictatorship.”

His imitation of China’s credit score system was revealed during the 2022 Freedom Convoy protest in Ottawa with thousands of Canadians calling for an end to COVID mandates by camping outside Parliament.

In response, Trudeau’s government enacted the EA on February 14, 2022, to shut down the popular movement. Trudeau revoked the EA on February 23 after the protesters had been cleared out. At the time, seven of Canada’s 10 provinces opposed the use of the EA by Trudeau.

Under the EA, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland froze the bank accounts of Canadians who donated to the 2022 Freedom Convoy, which protested vaccine mandates and COVID regulations.

As articulated by LifeSiteNews correspondent David James, this type of financial crackdown is precisely why many fear the move toward an entirely digital, cashless society.

“It confirms what many have been warning about for some time: that one of the core elements of the so-called Great Reset is to enslave populations by surveilling and controlling their transactions,” he continued. “China has already implemented its version of digital tyranny with its Social Credit System, which it will combine with its Central Bank Digital Currency [CBDC]. Now Trudeau and Freeland have drawn back the curtain in Canada to reveal their version of digital despotism.”

Antic’s use of Canada as an example comes as governments around the world are pushing digital currency despite warnings that it will lead to a social credit system.

“Last week, the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union reached a final agreement on a law to create the European Digital Identity, or eID, the EU’s first fully digital identification system,” Antic announced.

“This law will provide Europeans with a digital wallet containing digital versions of their ID cards — their drivers licences, their academic certificates, their medical records, their bank account information and so on,” he explained. “The next major step in the EU will be to create a digital euro and a central bank digital currency, which is currently being developed by the European Central Bank.”

“I’ve been warning about digital ID for some time, and it wasn’t so long ago that, like many of these issues which turn out to be correct, it was considered to be nothing but a conspiracy theory,” he added.

Currently, Australia is moving toward introducing digital currency with consultation on the bill having recently closed.

“You can see how it’s going to happen: We’ll get a digital currency and, once those steps are in place, a digital snare trap will have been created,” Antic warned. “We must reject a digital ID future, and time is running out for people in this place to understand that they are playing with fire.”

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Worst kept secret—red tape strangling Canada’s economy

Published on February 22, 2025

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From the Fraser Institute

By Matthew Lau

In the past nine years, business investment in Canada has fallen while increasing more than 30 per cent in the U.S. on a real per-person basis. Workers in Canada now receive barely half as much new capital per worker than in the U.S.

According to a new Statistics Canada report, government regulation has grown over the years and it’s hurting Canada’s economy. The report, which uses a regulatory burden measure devised by KPMG and Transport Canada, shows government regulatory requirements increased 2.1 per cent annually from 2006 to 2021, with the effect of reducing the business sector’s GDP, employment, labour productivity and investment.

Specifically, the growth in regulation over these years cut business-sector investment by an estimated nine per cent and “reduced business start-ups and business dynamism,” cut GDP in the business sector by 1.7 percentage points, cut employment growth by 1.3 percentage points, and labour productivity by 0.4 percentage points.

While the report only covered regulatory growth through 2021, in the past four years an avalanche of new regulations has made the already existing problem of overregulation worse.

The Trudeau government in particular has intensified its regulatory assault on the extraction sector with a greenhouse gas emissions cap, new fuel regulations and new methane emissions regulations. In the last few years, federal diktats and expansions of bureaucratic control have swept the auto industry, child care, supermarkets and many other sectors.

Again, the negative results are evident. Over the past nine years, Canada’s cumulative real growth in per-person GDP (an indicator of incomes and living standards) has been a paltry 1.7 per cent and trending downward, compared to 18.6 per cent and trending upward in the United States. Put differently, if the Canadian economy had tracked with the U.S. economy over the past nine years, average incomes in Canada would be much higher today.

Also in the past nine years, business investment in Canada has fallen while increasing more than 30 per cent in the U.S. on a real per-person basis. Workers in Canada now receive barely half as much new capital per worker than in the U.S., and only about two-thirds as much new capital (on average) as workers in other developed countries.

Consequently, Canada is mired in an economic growth crisis—a fact that even the Trudeau government does not deny. “We have more work to do,” said Anita Anand, then-president of the Treasury Board, last August, “to examine the causes of low productivity levels.” The Statistics Canada report, if nothing else, confirms what economists and the business community already knew—the regulatory burden is much of the problem.

Of course, regulation is not the only factor hurting Canada’s economy. Higher federal carbon taxes, higher payroll taxes and higher top marginal income tax rates are also weakening Canada’s productivity, GDP, business investment and entrepreneurship.

Finally, while the Statistics Canada report shows significant economic costs of regulation, the authors note that their estimate of the effect of regulatory accumulation on GDP is “much smaller” than the effect estimated in an American study published several years ago in the Review of Economic Dynamics. In other words, the negative effects of regulation in Canada may be even higher than StatsCan suggests.

Whether Statistics Canada has underestimated the economic costs of regulation or not, one thing is clear: reducing regulation and reversing the policy course of recent years would help get Canada out of its current economic rut. The country is effectively in a recession even if, as a result of rapid population growth fuelled by record levels of immigration, the GDP statistics do not meet the technical definition of a recession.

With dismal GDP and business investment numbers, a turnaround—both in policy and outcomes—can’t come quickly enough for Canadians.

Matthew Lau

Adjunct Scholar, Fraser Institute
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Business

‘Out and out fraud’: DOGE questions $2 billion Biden grant to left-wing ‘green energy’ nonprofit`

Published on February 22, 2025

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From LifeSiteNews

By Calvin Freiburger

The EPA under the Biden administration awarded $2 billion to a ‘green energy’ group that appears to have been little more than a means to enrich left-wing activists.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the Biden administration awarded $2 billion to a “green energy” nonprofit that appears to have been little more than a means to enrich left-wing activists such as former Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams.

Founded in 2023 as a coalition of nonprofits, corporations, unions, municipalities, and other groups, Power Forward Communities (PFC) bills itself as “the first national program to finance home energy efficiency upgrades at scale, saving Americans thousands of dollars on their utility bills every year.” It says it “will help homeowners, developers, and renters swap outdated, inefficient appliances with more efficient and modernized options, saving money for years ahead and ensuring our kids can grow up with cleaner, pollutant-free air.”

The organization’s website boasts more than 300 member organizations across 46 states but does not detail actual activities. It does have job postings for three open positions and a form for people to sign up for more information.

The Washington Free Beacon reported that the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project, along with new EPA administrator Lee Zeldin, are raising questions about the $2 billion grant PFC received from the Biden EPA’s National Clean Investment Fund (NCIF), ostensibly for the “affordable decarbonization of homes and apartments throughout the country, with a particular focus on low-income and disadvantaged communities.”

PFC’s announcement of the grant is the organization’s only press release to date and is alarming given that the organization had somehow reported only $100 in revenue at the end of 2023.

“I made a commitment to members of Congress and to the American people to be a good steward of tax dollars and I’ve wasted no time in keeping my word,” Zeldin said. “When we learned about the Biden administration’s scheme to quickly park $20 billion outside the agency, we suspected that some organizations were created out of thin air just to take advantage of this.” Zeldin previously announced the Biden EPA had deposited the $20 billion in a Citibank account, apparently to make it harder for the next administration to retrieve and review it.

“As we continue to learn more about where some of this money went, it is even more apparent how far-reaching and widely accepted this waste and abuse has been,” he added. “It’s extremely concerning that an organization that reported just $100 in revenue in 2023 was chosen to receive $2 billion. That’s 20 million times the organization’s reported revenue.”

Daniel Turner, executive director of energy advocacy group Power the Future, told the Beacon that in his opinion “for an organization that has no experience in this, that was literally just established, and had $100 in the bank to receive a $2 billion grant — it doesn’t just fly in the face of common sense, it’s out and out fraud.”

Prominent among PFC’s insiders is Abrams, the former Georgia House minority leader best known for persistent false claims about having the state’s gubernatorial election stolen from her in 2018. Abrams founded two of PFC’s partner organizations (Southern Economic Advancement Project and Fair Count) and serves as lead counsel for a third group (Rewiring America) in the coalition. A longtime advocate of left-wing environmental policies, Abrams is also a member of the national advisory board for advocacy group Climate Power.

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