The Wall Street Journal editorial board recently
took note that Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, seems to keep doing and saying things for the sole purpose of impressing Americans. “One of the oddities of Canadian politics is that its Liberal Party politicians so often sound like they’re running for office in the U.S.,” it reads.
Canadian politics is never too far removed from its U.S. equivalent, but there have indeed been an awful lot of Liberal actions in recent months that don’t really make any sense unless you consider the Liberals’ desire to score points with a U.S. audience (or a Canadian audience who watches too much CNN). For example …
CONSTANTLY PRETENDING THAT ABORTION IS UNDER THREAT
It’s hard to think of a Western country that has more thoroughly cowed its anti-abortion movement than Canada. There are no laws whatsoever governing abortion in Canada; a fact that makes us an outlier even among the abortion libertine nations of Europe. Despite this, the consistent public position of the Conservative Party of Canada ever since its 2004 founding has been that whatever their personal thoughts on the matter, they will never introduce legislation to disrupt the status quo.
Of the six people running for Conservative leader right now, five of them (including the two front-runners) have publicly promised not to touch abortion with a 10-metre pole. The Conservative leader in the last federal election said he was “pro-choice.” Even Canada’s leading far-right option, the People’s Party of Canada, has promised not to legislate abortion.
In the face of all this, Trudeau has consistently campaigned on the notion that Canadian abortion access is somehow at risk like it is in select U.S. states. The Liberals’ 2021 platform
said that “Conservatives want to roll back abortion access.” And when news leaked that the U.S. Supreme Court was poised to overturn the Roe v. Wade decision barring state-level bans on abortion, it only took a few hours for Trudeau to respond with a tweet that “every woman in Canada has a right to a safe and legal abortion.”
BANNING CANADIAN GUNS TO STOP AMERICAN MASS SHOOTINGS
Trudeau made
direct reference to a recent mass-shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, in his decision this week to “freeze” the sale or transfer of handguns. Not mentioned was that the shooting was actually committed with a long gun. Or that Uvalde is in the United States, and thus not subject to Canadian law. Or that the shooting would almost certainly have been prevented in Canada due to our existing latticework of laws, which are
actually pretty good at screening out mentally ill gun owners. Or that handgun shootings in Canada are
almost entirely committed with smuggled U.S. firearms that are already illegal.
A high-profile drive by U.S. progressives to counter mass shooting by banning the AR-15 rifle has also had a clear influence on Trudeau policy. The AR-15 was already a restricted firearm in Canada, but the Liberals issued a 2020 Order-in-Council prohibiting it and approximately 1,500 other long guns that
look like the AR-15, even if they might happen to differ dramatically in capability and rate of fire. Notably, that particular order was issued in response to a Nova Scotia mass shooting that was committed with smuggled U.S. firearms...
