Never in my entire life did I think that I would write about this. Each morning at school, when I proudly stood up, saluted the flag and sang O Canada, I was thinking “how lucky we are to live in a country so strong and free!” When our teacher told us that Canada was the most desired country in the entire world to move to, my chest swelled with pride. When our history teacher told us about some countries that were ruled by fascists and dictators, I couldn’t understand why. Later, the history teacher told us that at one time, those countries were a democracy where the very rich and powerful companies controlled the decisions of the country and the citizens were very poor. I still couldn’t understand why the people would choose to abandon democracy.
In some countries the people chose communism to get rid of a dictator. True communism is supposed to assure every citizen jobs, enough food to eat, and a place to live. But a leader is supposed to be chosen in a free election every few years. Some leaders get power hungry once they are in power and anyone who might be a threat to winning the next election finds themselves in prison, gets very mysteriously sick, or just disappears.
For many years, democracy has been under attack by a very sophisticated anti-democracy movement. The first that even imagined that this could happen was after the U.S. election was won by Donald Trump in 2016. An announcer of a news channel in the U.S. said this may be the last democratic election we will ever see in the U.S.. Before the American Civil War, Norman B. Judd (Democratic senator of Illinois) gave up being a democrat to help Abraham Lincoln (a Republican) become president of the U.S., because he believed that no man should own another man.
What would Abe say if he could see his country today? When we watched the attack on Capitol Hill, I could not believe that anything like that could happen. When we watched the Freedom Convoy arrive on Parliament Hill with some of the same protestors and trucks that were carrying upside down American flags and Swastikas, we knew that something was pre-planned. Then a trustworthy local citizen informed me that an anti-democracy group had quietly taken over the truckers convoy, were present on Capitol Hill, Parliament Hill, several crossings at the Canada-US borders, and had traction in most Canadian provinces.
When both Putin and Trump congratulated the Freedom Convoy for its protest, it became even easier to understand. With more surveillance cameras per square meter where the protesters were and the length of time that protesters were there, the police, CSIS, parliamentary security, or whoever else had access to the camera footage had time to identify every person, truck, or bouncy-castle that was there.
All Canadians should also take notice of the diverse tactics used by the U.S. and Russia to spread the small Canadian armed forces over areas like the Canadian north, Greenland, the Ukraine, our Canada-U.S. border and all our ports of entry into our country. Remember the old saying, “divide and conquer”? Also, we wonder who is encouraging some provinces in Canada to separate? Remember the saying: “united we stand, divided we fall”.
We now have a new weapon known as A.I. (artificial intelligence) which has little or no guardrails or controls to restrict or control the truth used to create stories either written or used as news casts. Farmers have known for years that big business, corporations, food traders, and grain traders have used their political lobbying power and deep pockets to encourage consumers, think tanks, and governments to eliminate grain boards, milk boards, and other farm organizations which try to inform consumers about how and why costs to produce food is arrived at. They convinced one former Prime Minister to eliminate the Canadian Wheat Board even though grain farmers have just completed an open vote to maintain it. In many countries that eliminated farm producer boards which use C.O.P. (cost of production) with complete transparency for consumer groups, food processors, retailers, and governments to inspect every cost before any raise of lowering of price at the farm, there has been an increase in consumer prices, reduction in farm gate prices, increases in farm bankruptcies, mental fatigue and suicides, while processor and retailers seem to be doing quite well. Please ask your political representatives and farmers tough questions and demand answers that you can understand. And think about every word that our wanna-be politicians tell you.
Chris Judd is a farmer in Clarendon on land that has been in his family for generations.
