A journalist was taken to task recently for calling Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau an inelegant name during a press conference. In response, Josh Sigurdson justified his behavior in a YouTube video:
"The state-run media got to ask [Trudeau] questions -- pre-screened ones, at that... How is it journalism to ask pre-selected questions of a politician? Restricting opposition, restricting free speech... pretending to stand for women while sending money to governments and dictatorships who stone women to death for driving and kill gays ... that is the definition of scumbag."
Although many might not have used that exact word to describe Trudeau, one might sympathize with the sentiment behind it.
As a Canadian citizen who was born in Iran and watched my country come under the Islamist regime of the Ayatollah Khomeini, it is not hard to spot a tyrant. It is not hard for Trudeau, either, apparently. Three years ago, as head of the opposition, he told a group of women in Toronto: "There is a level of admiration that I actually have for China, because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to turn their economy around on a dime..."
More recently, last November, Trudeau issued a statement about the death of Fidel Castro; he called the former Cuban dictator "remarkable" and a "larger than life leader who served his people."
 Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said three years go: "There is a level of admiration that I actually have for China, because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to turn their economy around on a dime." In November, he called Fidel Castro "remarkable" and a "larger than life leader who served his people." (Image source: U.S. Air Force) |
After taking over the leadership of the country, Trudeau not only withdrew Canada's participation from the U.S.-led bombing of ISIS strongholds in Iraq and Syria, but months later -- a day after the March 22, 2016 Brussels suicide bombings that left 32 innocent people dead -- he announced that Canada was "not at war with ISIS."
This April, Trudeau said that ISIS supporters have the right to defend their freedom, and was reported to have referred to Evangelical Christians as the "worst part of Canadian society." These remarks came despite the country's imams regularly call for the annihilation of Jews. Trudeau, in March, slammed a video posted to YouTube that offered a $1,000 reward for recordings of Muslim students at schools in a district of Ontario that were "spewing hate speech" during Friday prayer. "Canadians have understood that our differences are a source of strength, not a source of weakness," Trudeau said at a press conference, after the release of the video. Prime Minister Trudeau has been supportive of Muslim prayers in the secular school board, where prayers and students preaching and will be unsupervised.
Prime Minister Trudeau has also been trying to change the rules of the Commons to fit his schedule and strip the opposition of its power to hold him accountable, interim leader Rona Ambrose charged. Apparently he has been trying to limit the ability of the opposition to debate him in Parliament prior to the passage of proposed bills.
Even more disturbing is a technical loophole in the Canada Elections Act, now being brought to the fore by Trudeau's camp. The law allows foreign entities to make contributions to Canadian candidates. This means that players such as Iran or Saudi Arabia will be able to further their agendas through a particular politician, as long as they pump him with funds for six months and a day prior to his official bid for office.
With the entrance into the country of thousands of illegal immigrants and asylum-seekers with criminal records -- thanks to the increasingly dictatorial policies of Trudeau and his Liberal Party strongmen -- this legal loophole leaves Canada wide open to extreme political change, and not for the better.
Shabnam Assadollahi is an award-winning human rights advocate, public speaker, freelance writer and journalist.
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