The Government of British Columbia Canada Has Legislated Totalitarianism

GlobalResearch.ca | David Skripac

The once free province of British Columbia, Canada, has been transformed into a totalitarian state run by the ruling New Democratic Party (NDP) under the leadership of Premier David Eby.

Since being sworn in as the Premier of B.C. on November 18, 2022, David Eby and his regime have succeeded in stripping all British Columbian citizens of the rights that are stipulated both in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and in international human rights law. This statement is not an exaggeration. If anything, it’s an understatement.

In its obviously intentional assault on parliamentary democracy, the Eby regime has used three deadly weapons.

Before describing the nature of these weapons, a brief explanation of Canadian political parlance is in order. The phrase “with the assent” refers to the formal approval required for a bill to become law. This process involves the provincial Lieutenant Governor, who acts on behalf of the Crown, signifying approval after a bill has been passed by the provincial legislature. The assent transforms the bill into an act of the provincial parliament, making it part of the law of the province.

The first assault was initiated with the assent of Bill 36, known as the Health Professions and Occupations Act (HPOA), on November 24, 2022.

The second assault was made with the assent of Bill 31, known as the Emergency and Disaster Management Act (EDMA), on November 8, 2023.

The third and final assault was accomplished with the assent of Bill 21, also known as the Legal Professions Act (LPA), on May 16, 2024.

These three bills, now enacted into law in the province, enable government officials and administrative authorities to ignore existing laws (provincial and federal), exercise unlimited power, and ensure that no group or individual can challenge their authority.

Let’s take a closer look at each act separately so that we can get a better understanding of what has happened.

Health Professions and Occupations Act (HPOA)

At first glance, the Health Professions and Occupations Act reads like a benign regulation that aims to create a modernized regulatory framework for health colleges so they can better serve the public interest. Unfortunately, as is often the case, the devil is in the details.

Here is a breakdown of the key points of the HPOA:

• The bill is formulated around the recommendations made in a significant report researched in 2018 and published in April 2019 by the UK’s Harry Cayton, an expert in the field of health profession regulation. Mr. Cayton is the former chief executive of the United Kingdom’s Professional Standards Authority and is currently an advisor to the World Health Organization (WHO).
• Perhaps the largest bill ever presented to the British Columbia Legislative Assembly, the HPOA contains 645 sections and more than 276 pages. It replaces the previous Health Professions Act, which, by contrast, had a mere 54 sections and just over 83 pages.
• It was hastily passed on November 24, 2022, when the NDP used closure to force a vote by the Legislative Assembly. At that point, only one-third of the 645 sections had been reviewed by Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs).
• It has never been subject to notice, consultation, transparency, access to information, debate, or consensus, all required in a democracy. Neither health care workers nor MLAs nor the constituents they serve were ever consulted or given an opportunity to debate the bill.
• It imposes severe penalties for non-compliance and dissent.
• It impairs or destroys the right of thousands of health care workers in the province to provide—and the right of 5 million B.C. residents to receive—personalized, ethical, consent-based health care.
• It places political appointees in charge of the governance of health care workers and of lawmaking and of all aspects of health services including licensing, seizure of health records, definition of ethical standards, and punishments for non-compliance.
• It prohibits giving medical advice or opinions—both in private and in public—that are not in line with opinions sanctioned by the authorities.
• It criminalizes freedom of expression and authorizes the violation of other essential liberties, such as the right to privacy, the right of informed consent to (or rejection of) medical treatment, the right to due process, and access to legal remedies for violations.
• It authorizes the adoption of laws or rules made by any public or private body, including international organizations like the WHO or the World Economic Forum (WEF). None of these parties need comply with the rights prescribed in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms or by international human rights law.
• It in many ways mirrors the proposed amendments being made to the International Health Regulations (IHR), which is being designed to impose a global system of control over all aspects of health (read: a global medical “police state “ ). For instance, both the IHR and the HPOA utilise terms like “public health emergencies,” “mandate,” and “restricted travel.”
• It enables unelected and unaccountable appointees to mandate vaccination as a condition of licensing and employment. (Perhaps as a condition for travel, too? And as a condition for attending school and for accessing medical care?)
• It creates involuntary markets for pharmaceutical products by mandating vaccination for “any transmissible disease.”
• It authorizes appointees to suspend, without notice, a license to practice, even before a complaint against a health care practitioner has been investigated or determined to be legitimate.
• It enables the British Columbia Minister of Health to authorize unelected appointees to change the meaning of words.

Emergency and Disaster Management Act (EDMA)

A look at the Emergency and Disaster Management Act suffices to show that it, too, reads like an amiable piece of regulation designed to modernize B.C.’s emergency management legislation—that is, until we read the fine print.

Here is a breakdown of this dystopian act:

• Under the EDMA, any event that B.C.’s Minister of Emergency Management and Climate Readiness [henceforth referred to as “the minister”] and the minister’s delegated appointees consider an “emergency” can trigger the execution of nightmarish and unlimited powers. An emergency “prescribed” by them can include a mass protest, a natural disaster (hurricane, flooding, earthquake, fire, etc.), an explosion, security threats, or even the “suspected presence” of an alleged virus.
• The minister or delegates can take “special measures” against anyone who creates an emergency simply by openly disagreeing with or objecting to current government policy on any subject. So, for example, these unelected appointees can declare an emergency if someone publicly criticizes or in any way objects to the climate crisis narrative.
• The minister can appropriate any personal possessions from a citizen who creates what is deemed by the authorities to be an emergency. (Private property rights are out the window—abolished!).
• The minister no longer needs a warrant to enter a person’s private property.
• The minister “may prohibit travel to or from any area” and the continuance (called “carry on”) of a business.
• “The provincial administrator may exercise additional prescribed powers.” This clause is particularly frightening because of the latitude it provides any would-be despot.

Legal Professions Act (LPA)

Finally, let’s look at the Legal Professions Act. At first glance, the LPA, like its two sister bills, seems a rather benign piece of legislation. Its apparent intent is to create a single regulatory body for lawyers, notaries, and paralegals in the province of B.C. But closer scrutiny reveals that behind the government’s public claims about Bill 21 is a much darker, more sinister purpose.

In fact, days before the bill’s assent, lawyers from across the nation of Canada, such as those representing Lawyers’ Rights Watch Canada (LRWC), were outraged by what they had discovered in the details of the LPA.

Here are some of the key takeaway points of the LPA that everyone should be made aware of:

• Like the HPOA, the LPA was developed and passed without the usual notice, disclosure, debate, and consent required of lawmakers in a democracy.  For democratic lawmaking to be effective, there must be full, informed, transparent consultation between elected representatives and the citizens most affected by pending legislation during all phases of its development. However, none of these steps were taken. Instead, the provisions of this bill were shrouded in secrecy until it was tabled in the Legislative Assembly. Astonishingly, only nine percent of its 317 sections had been read by all the MLAs before it was taken off the table and hastily approved.
• The act is designed to abolish lawyers’ self-regulation and eliminate their right to freedom of association by removing B.C.’s 14,000 lawyers from membership in their democratically elected governance organization, the Law Society of BC (LSBC). The LSBC has been replaced with a “single regulatory authority” over lawyers, notaries, and paralegals. This new regulatory authority consists of an organization whose 17 elected members constitute its board of directors. Of the 17, only five can be lawyers. The remaining 12 members of the board cannot be lawyers. Instead, they will be members appointed by government officials who are acting on behalf of government interests.
• Like the present-day Chinese Communist Party and other current and former communist countries, B.C. has discarded lawyers’ right to be independent of state control. If a functioning parliamentary democracy is to survive, there must be a separation of powers between the three branches of government—executive, legislative, and judicial. These three branches must be able to act independently of one another at all times. In the province of B.C., because of these legislative actions, the executive and the judicial branches have now overlapped. Therefore, lawyers in the province are no longer able to provide legal representation to individuals free from state interference. They are no longer able to act as an effective safeguard against unconstitutional laws, against violations of an individual client’s rights, and against the abuse of power by state authorities.
• The act replaces the 1998 Legal Professions Act. Unlike the 1998 LPA, the new act makes no mention of the duty of the legal profession to protect the “rights and freedoms of all persons.” Such a purposeful omission is dangerous to all British Columbians. They are now subject to totalitarian control of their lives.

In summary, the government of British Columbia has in the span of just two years essentially replaced existing laws, which protected the rights and civil liberties of the people, with new laws designed to subjugate its citizens under centralized authoritarian rule. Eby’s regime is no longer serving the interests of the B.C. populace. Instead, it is actively seeking to impose totalitarian legislation on the very voters who elected him as their leader.

Are these three acts set to become the template for health care and legal regulation and reform through the rest of Canada? If so, we must warn Canadians living in other provinces and our neighbours in the US that creeping communist totalitarianism may be coming their way if they are not vigilant.

Image: Source [Edited]

Original Article: https://www.globalresearch.ca/british-columbia-legislated-totalitarianism/5884940