Politicians are learning all the wrong lessons from the pandemic

Commentary

It’s usually a good thing when a person leans out of experience. It causes damage in times of crisis, but it can also bring innovation and wisdom. We can get out of the fight against insight and be stronger against it.

But given the actions and words of our political leaders, I’m afraid they’re coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic because they’ve learned all the wrong lessons.

Coincidentally, the words from President Joe Biden’s administration and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau are surprisingly similar this week.

The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has just launched a new office for climate change and health inequalities. This wasn’t surprising, as it was in response to an executive order from President Biden last January. However, the terms used were interesting. HHS argued that it would use “lessons learned” from the COVID-19 pandemic to address climate change and health problems.

Meanwhile, on Monday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told many supporters: Go through them and create good opportunities for children. “

What I fear is that the lesson these political leaders are referring to is to see how easy and aggressive the public can renounce civil rights in the face of a health crisis. .. Authoritarian politicians now know that if an initiative can be packaged in response to a public health crisis, there is no need to worry about the individual rights of citizens in implementing it.

By referring to the “climate crisis” and linking it to health issues, politicians are preparing to continue implementing policies regardless of individual rights. They need to act in the guise of responding to an imminent crisis.

NS “Great reset” The concept is often dismissed as a conspiracy theory, but it is very realistic. We plan to use the global crisis to bring about major changes in political policy and government structure.Want to Reconstruct capitalism, And not good. Proponents of the Great Reset talk about the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity, not a crisis. Again, this is not a deeply hidden plot or secret. It’s all placed in plain text on the World Economic Forum website.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is a supporter of the World Economic Forum and he Worked on their annual meeting 2018. While giving a speech at the United Nations last November Trudeau said “This pandemic provided an opportunity for a reset, which is an opportunity to accelerate pre-pandemic efforts to rethink economic systems that actually address global challenges such as extreme poverty, inequality and climate change. is.”

We need to be very worried when ideologically driven politicians see the COVID-19 crisis as an opportunity rather than a disaster. When leaders view times of crisis as a means of pursuing fundamental change, they may find themselves inspired by being dragged out or causing emergencies. It’s certainly an easier way to get the public involved than a democratic exercise.

In difficult times like this, citizens need to keep their government under control. Constitutions and documents, such as the Canadian Rights Charter, were specially designed to protect individual rights from government overkill. Section 1 of the Canadian Charter states that our rights are subject to “reasonable restrictions” and allows the government to suspend individual rights. Our government felt it was reasonable to limit some of the rights of our Charter in the name of protecting us from COVID-19. The court and most of our citizens agreed.

As the government has learned how easy it is to suspend charter rights, non-principles and idealistically driven leaders create future emergencies to circumvent citizens’ rights again. I hear that everything from racism to firearm crime to climate change is called a health problem. That’s not a mistake. It sets the stage for state intervention that may bypass legislated protection of rights.

Some of the world’s scariest governments have emerged from difficult times. I saw it clearly right after the Great Depression. Citizens are too interested in simply going through to understand what their politicians are doing. We need to be vigilant at all times, and when we see world leaders calling a pandemic an opportunity, we need to stand up and pay attention. Opportunity for whom and at what cost?