Shining Light On Scurrilous Stories: Who Is Really Undermining Canadian Democracy?
Canada is a very pleasant country, if you don’t mind being cold for long periods, and in The Economist’s 2017 Democracy Index is described approvingly as ranking sixth of the 167 countries examined. It “scores highly in the electoral process and the functioning of government categories, and also for civil liberties. Freedom of expression and religious and cultural tolerance are championed…”
Regrettably, there has been recent movement towards disapproval of freedom of expression, largely because of a campaign against Russia, which seems strange, because Russia poses no threat whatever to Canada. Certainly there is a Canadian battle group deployed in Latvia in accordance with the Pentagon-NATO policy of ‘Enhanced Forward Presence’ which involves stationing warships, combat aircraft and troops to confront Russia as close as possible to its borders, but this is just one of the public relations fandangos aimed at justifying NATO’s continuing existence.
On May 2 Reuters reported the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s findings that “while global military spending rose one percent to $1,739 billion last year, Russia’s fell 20 percent in real terms to $66.3 billion.” Reuters also noted that “President Vladimir Putin has also called for higher living standards and higher spending on social infrastructure, such as healthcare and education,” which is hardly the leitmotif of a someone intent on military expansion and domination.
But Canada’s anti-Russia crusade is perversely individual rather than objectively logical, which brings us to the country’s foreign minister Ms Chrystia Freeland, who appears to have a personal axe to grind in regard to Russia and Eastern Europe.
It is intriguing that Canada’s Prime Minister, Mr Justin Trudeau, has chosen to vilify Russia on the grounds of allegedly supporting the media in revealing that Ms Freeland’s grandfather, a Ukrainian, worked for Nazi occupation forces in Eastern Europe during the Second World War.
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