By Andrew Lanrik for the Council of European Canadians
It ain’t looking that great for Canada.
Nearly ten years after Justin Trudeau invoked Sir Wilfrid Laurier’s ‘sunny ways’ approach in his 2015 victory speech, we have a deluge of trouble on the horizon.
According to a recent RCMP report entitled ‘Whole-Of-Government Five-Year Trends For Canada’, our country’s forecast is rife with a series destabilising circumstances. From the hangover from COVID-19 and supply-chain issues to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and climate change, all are ingredients to an already indigestible brew that is estimated to further deteriorate our already declining conditions.
The report, itself, is heavily redacted and thus we are not privy to precisely what the RCMP is concerned with nor how they are likely to shift their law enforcement strategies to address potential disruptions. Nevertheless, the report states that ‘[re]cent experience has raised the important question of how adaptable and ready RCMP Federal Policing is to new and unexpected crises.’ (By ‘recent experience’, I think the RCMP is likely referring to the Freedom Convoy and its legal fallout.) That said, the general tenor of the report does paint a bleak picture for Canada’s short-term prospects.
According to the report, ‘[t]he geopolitical, economic, social, technological and environmental shifts presented here are complex and continue to evolve. They can disrupt or redefine law enforcement work and operations in unexpected ways.’
Ah, yes. Those ‘unexpected’ disruptions. What exactly could those be?
The RCMP lists a series of hot button topics:
- Effects of Climate Devastation
- Arctic and Multi-National Territorial Expansion
- Natural Resource Scarcity
- Popular Resentment
- Erosion of Trust
- Paranoid Populism
- Big Data and the Internet of Things
- Artificial Intelligence and Deepfakes of Important and/or Famous People
- Quantum Computing, and;
- Blockchain and Cryptocurrency
To my mind, most of these issues – though important – are not all that unexpected; least of which are Topics 1-3 which are all climate change related.
Climate change has been a topic of debate and deliberation for decades and territorial expansion into the Arctic as a result has also been a concern for Canadian politicians and military for decades. While these issues are important, and do pose issues for our governments, I don’t wish to expound on them for our present purposes.
Topics 7-10 are likely the most unexpected. As these new computing technologies continue to propagate and seep into more of our daily lives, there will likely be commotions of all sorts – big and small, profound and trivial. There will be increased fakeness in our media diets which will, in turn, lead to an increased sickness in our view of the world. By way of analogy, just as overly processed foods increasingly dominate our diets at the expense of our nutrition, so too can AI and other technologies replace pro-social behaviour and institutions with digital surrogates.
These inter-related items having to do with technologies that are outstripping our abilities or even desire to discern the real from the fake, also lead to problems for our managerial class.
The Big Data concern means that the very tools our technological society has deemed necessary for day-to-day life are also major points of vulnerability against ne’er-do-wells and malicious geo-political actors. So-called ‘Smart Devices’ – from government phones to home security systems – can be hacked, and personal data therein can be scraped or stolen; sold to high bidders or used for blackmail. Blockchain and cryptocurrencies make transactions harder to track and manage and thus makes financial punishment of one’s enemies harder to achieve.
Finally, Deepfake technologies can propagate fake and convincing reproductions of world leaders ‘saying’ things that are not real, and thus adds a new frontier for the ‘dis-information’ campaigns our leaders are so concerned about. As stated in the report, ‘[l]aw enforcement should expect continuing social and political polarization fueled by misinformation campaigns and an increasing mistrust for all democratic institutions.’
‘All democratic institutions’? Oh my…
This leads to the final group of items: Topics 4-6: the rise of popular resentment, the erosion of trust, and paranoid populism.
These points are overtly political and are predictable, precisely because they are the understandable reactions to decades of terrible political policies.
The report states that while populist demagogues have been ‘[c]apitalizing on the rise of political polarization and conspiracy theories’ by tailoring ‘their messages to appeal to extremist movements’, there has also been a rise in authoritarian movements in many ‘liberal-democratic nations’.
This is pretty cute when considering that one of the more heavily redacted sections of this report is the ‘Erosion of Trust’ portion.
It is one thing to merely accrue a list of things to be concerned about, but what are we to make of the RCMP’s list? There is a paragraph, in particular, that is worth mulling over. It reads:
Law enforcement should anticipate that criminals will leverage technological innovations to gain profit and influence. Law enforcement should also continue to contribute to policy change relating to the privacy of personal information, artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things (IoT), quantum computing, digital ledger technology, and more.
As shown, the RCMP is but a piece of the larger regime, and thus we cannot look at this report and the RCMP’s concerns in isolation. For example, I cannot help but keep the Liberal’s Bill C-63 (The Online Harms Act) in mind when I read this redacted report.
With that in mind, this paragraph from the RCMP is rather striking for several reasons.
Firstly, given the context of Bill C-63, what constitutes a ‘criminal’ in Canada, especially one who bumps up against the internet and technological innovations, can be rather broad. Would this involve the sharing of spicy memes over an encrypted messaging service? How about anonymously broadcasting videos savagely criticising mass migration whilst taking cryptocurrency donations? What about posting stickers or organising protests to gain influence to challenge LGBT, Zionist, or multicultural hegemony? We saw bank accounts frozen during the Freedom Convoy for similar reasons, and one cannot expect such malicious government behaviour to stop there.
Secondly, the RCMP states that ‘[l]aw enforcement should also continue to contribute to policy change’ relating to privacy, AI, quantum computing, etc. This implies that there is a disparity between the risk assessments for the above threats and the adequacy of the available resources that are intended to deal with them. I think this is partially why Bill C-63 was initiated: to enforce responsibility upon the Big Tech companies to effectively decrypt their own encryption for government agencies via so-called ‘hate crime’ legislation.
These two issues – the expansion of ‘threats’ and the lack of state resources – is compounded by the ongoing recruitment crises in the RCMP, local law enforcement, and the military.
Now, I’m sure that standards can be further lowered for recruitment and/or more enticements can be given to would-be recruits, but who would those recruits be? We know that White men are increasingly isolated from law enforcement and military roles – decades of anti-White and anti-male propaganda will do that. But what we see is that immigrant populations can be tapped into. And tapped into they have, as in 2022 the Department of National Defence stated that more than half of military applicants were permanent residents. (Granted, the recruitment levels are so low that the number of non-citizen applicants will be doubly low, but the point stands). The RCMP, also, has dipped its toe into the waters of international hiring by creating DICE, the Diverse and Inclusive Pre-Cadet Experience program, which allows immigrants to apply for the RCMP cadet initiative once they become permanent residents – bypassing the standard three-year wait requirement.
So, being policed by foreigners in our own country could very well be in the cards.
Finally, I’d want to focus a little more on the statement that ‘law enforcement should continue to contribute to policy change’. While it is the case that law enforcement does inform certain policy changes, I cannot help but think that consultation will not likely include input from the communities the RCMP and law enforcement intend to govern and manage. The laws that will come into existence will target and execute, and there will be no pretense of ‘community engagement’. There certainly hasn’t been any such engagement with regards to Bill C-63.
What am I getting at?
Well, when policies are developed to deal with indigenous communities, for instance, the relevant indigenous communities contribute to the policy development and strategic planning of the programs. Even if the whole enterprise is symbolic, ceremonial, or a charade, policy makers and community stakeholders still go through the rigmarole of making things look like their communicative and mutually beneficial.
This will not happen with White people and our communities. Instead, we will have our managing class functionaries engaging in a conspiracy against the public: mass migration will continue apace; migrants will be sent to more and more communities that are unable to cope with the numbers, let alone accept them, tempers will flare, and, with luck, resistance will arise – though that resistance will be deemed criminal.
We see foreshadowing in France, Ireland, England, America, and Australia among other nations.
The report warns that Canadians may revolt once they figure out just how bad things are.
While I don’t wish for blood, I cannot help but think that a sign of a revolt would be a good thing. At least there would be a moral fervour in the Canadian people that would fuel a disgust and disdain for what has been done to them and this country for the passed decade.
I don’t think that a revolt is in the cards, though. The average Canadian is either a first or second generation foreigner, elderly, or given into resignation and doesn’t want to rock the boat.
So what can be done?
Increasingly, as things are getting worse, recent immigrants to Canada are reporting desires to return to their homelands – and more and more are actually leaving Canada. So, aside from engaging in all the usual political stuff – and perhaps some of that not-so-usual political stuff – we should be working on building strong local communities capable of waiting this out.
This country was built by the hardy and unbroken, through rain or shine. They cleared the brush and now we must tend to the weeds.