Mid-week Muse-ing

Crazed in Crazyland

Canada is Crazyland

Some mornings it doesn’t pay to get out of bed because you’ll end up feeling quite crazy and depressed. This is one of those days. After duly dragging myself to the couch, there to sip black coffee and imbibe the morning news, I concluded that I am now living in a country so dystopian even Orwell or D.K. Dick failed to imagine it.

Oh, you want proof? No problem, my friend.

Let us count the ways. First up is the Online Harms bill, which is getting a fair share of amazed attention even in Britain where they have passed similar laws but failed to match our rigorous standards of making people shut up. We’re much better than they are at writing laws that will make it possible for someone, anyone, to come along and accuse me of fomenting and communication ‘hate speech’ which they will adjudicate with a brand spanking new bunch of bureaucrats who have been trained in separating mere ‘dislike’ (allowed) from ‘detest’ (verboten). And yes, this goes for everything that I’ve ever written. Best to scroll through it and delete all the problematic bits, right? Oh, and there is no limit as to how many times your no doubt anonymous accusers can dish up your dirty thoughts; they can literally do it dozens of times and, wait for it, if they succeed, you must pay a fine of $20,000 to the ‘offended’ party. Even someone like Jordan Peterson could face bankruptcy. And if you fail to pay up, you go to jail. That, dear reader, is what Trudeau and his ‘liberal government’ has ushered in. And we cannot stop him because the next election is more than a year hence. Oh, Canada!

Speaking of ill conceived laws, did I mention that BC has the distinction of decriminalizing drugs like heroin and fentanyl? Yes, thanks to our woke premier, David Eby, the nurses in our government-run hospitals have been instructed to allow drug-addled inmates to take whatever drug they are addicted to and furthermore, to show them how to get that drug into their intravenous drip. I know, it’s hard to believe. Everyone knows that drug addicts are lovely people and we must not make them feel bad even when they well, misbehave a bit. Even harder to believe is that other bureaucrats in the system claim this outcome was never the intention behind this drug law and that imbibing heroin in the hospital is not really legal, after all. The problem has been debated in our legislature to no avail; meanwhile, the nurses are told to ‘go away for five minutes’ if a patient/drug addict gets difficult, and then return. Presumably by that time, the whole problem will have magically disappeared along with the drug addicted patient …

As a result, I have decided never to be admitted to hospital, ever. It’s a crazy place full of addicts, dangerous infections and desperate staff. So that’s the health care part. We knew it was broken when we were told that at least one million (!) patients in BC cannot find a family doctor, but welcoming drugs addicts into your hospital rooms, that is another level. This system is not just broken; it’s being willfully smashed.

I wish that were all, but there’s more. This particular story of self-harm and dysfunction is distinctly Canadian but it is also part of a larger trend in the West, which is about self-hatred, ‘colonial’ guilt and other Woke’isms. We’re taking all of that very seriously around here. So seriously that today, we have literally handed back an entire, quite sizeable chunk of land, to the Aboriginal tribe, the Haida, who lived there before we arrived. I’m referring to Haida Gwaii, which before we became guilty white privileged persons, was known as the Queen Charlotte Islands. It’s a jewel, a mystical place of great beauty and natural diversity sitting just north of Vancouver Island off the central coast of British Columbia. According to the CBC, our ‘national broadcaster’, when we returned the title to the Haida, it was a moment to celebrate, one for the ages. It was indeed, but not for the reasons they deem important.

What they failed to mention is that If you happen to own land there, and you want to do something with it, perhaps build a fishing lodge or maybe some houses, or just a little place for yourself, you should be advised that you are no longer the legal title holder, known in law as the Fee Simple. Until today, British Columbia ownership law was regulated and if you had paid, it pretty well guaranteed ownership. Today, In Haida Gwaii, that is no longer the case. Instead, you have the assurance that the Aboriginal council that administers the islands, will be reasonable and consult with you over any decision regarding your land. However, should they discover that your land is part of an ancient sacred site, you may have to stop using it. From the aboriginal point of view, that is indeed ‘reasonable’. But what it means in law, is that you have no recourse. While everyone is busy singing the praises of this ‘long overdue’ development, the lawyers who in the end always get the last word, take a more pessimistic view. According to Les Leyne, writing in the local Times Colonist this morning:

The law firm specializing in Aboriginal Issues, Cassells LLP, called it a ‘great unknown’…

It’s a contract, not a treaty, and impact on private land could have legal consequences. despite assurances. “The province has fashioned a version of Aboriginal title which is unknown in law…” “Aboriginal title cannot coexist with a fee-simple interest (or private ownership).” Because aboriginal land is held in common.

All private land owners on HG will need consent from the Haida Nation, regardless of the assurances they will be protected. Those assurances are ‘meaningless’, the firm said.

And here is what Jason Alsop, president of the Council of the Haida Nation that is about to take over the authority of the few thousand people on the islands, said:

“It’s our home. We’re not going anywhere. Other people have the choice . They can stay or go.”

I’m one of those ‘other people’. If there was ever a poor choice of words to signal how things will turn out in the end, this has to be it. I don’t live on HG, but who is to say that the entirety of Vancouver Island isn’t going to fall, just like HG, under the no doubt well-intentioned government of the various aboriginal tribes that live on it? White guilt will make sure of it. Fortunately by the time this comes to pass, I will be long dead. Or so I hope.

In the meantime, I’m so done with Crazyland. Being old and poor, I can’t translate that into moving somewhere else not quite as crazy as we are. Spain looks tempting, though it too suffers from the outrageous slings and arrows of a woke government. No, my emigration will be mental and emotional, inner emigration practiced widely under the Nazis by the undesirables, like the Jews before they got hauled off to the camps. On the surface, my life will look quite normal, even lovely. But it’s a sham. My people, the white people, are on the run, demoralized and yes, crazy. Crazed. Broken. There’s an ill wind blowing and I feel cold and quite crazy.