We need to talk about Marco Mendicino
Canada's Minister of 'Public Safety' is less a parliamentarian than the government's own weapon to be wielded for purposes of overreach. That mission can no longer go unnoticed.
“How many tanks are you asking for?” Marco Mendicino put to Attorney General David Lametti on February 2nd, 2021, via what he surely believed at the time would remain private text messages, as Freedom Convoy protests bombarded downtown Ottawa, with fireworks, honking, and impromptu French-Canadian music festivals that posed a clear threat to national security.
The minister claims they were just joking, that even in a text chain shrouded in red mist — that lacked both levity and maturity — that it was all just a spot of fun.
Canada isn’t supposed to be the kind of nation where politicians lean on the military to quash democratic protests. Our actual-liberal sensibilities have never looked fondly on the nations who engage in such banana republic behaviours.
Until now, that is. Oh, and we just learned that the military was indeed being prepared to step in.
Many, rightfully, haven’t been able to let that go — this envoy from Substack among them. Whether it was entitling the previous edition of the newsletter “Tanks for the memories,” or attempting to reach out to the minister privately on social media for clarification on his remarks — although, in fairness to his silence, there are interns to shield you from such things, and I did open with “Dear Minister Tiananmen-dicino” — I haven’t exactly been tryin’ real hard to be the shepherd.
But even for something as big and dumb as an elected official and former crown prosecutor (!) throwing a hissy-fit over text message for soldiers with guns, in our cities, in Canada, we did not make this up, the Liberals and their friends in legacy media had proven themselves to be as effective as ever in guiding that authoritarian ‘faux pas’ down the memory-hole.
But something funny happened on the way back from the Emergencies Act forum: Mendicino was tasked with selling another undemocratic lemon to the public, and it’s such an audacious lie, even by his standards, that no self-respecting Canadian can afford to turn a blind eye to Canada’s worst parliamentarian. At least, not anymore.
Marco Mendicino is lying about the impacts and the aims of Bill C-21.
That’s hardly a surprise, of course, he has lied about plenty of things: his recollection of Emergencies Act events, convoy arsons, third-hand accounts of unheard and unseen protest violence that happened to a friend of a friend of his, ‘disinformation’…
And he’s certainly lied about Liberal gun control efforts during his brief stint managing the ‘Public Safety’ file — especially after Bill Blair and Brenda Lucki left him with a closet filled with skeletons, and potentially criminal instances of government interference into policing matters. Next to mRNA vaccines or a woman’s right to choose, there has been no issue that Liberals have been more successful in importing and exploiting than that of the average CBC viewers’ understanding of Canadian gun ownership.
Down in the polls? There’s performative gun legislation for that, which, as ever, does nothing to stem the tide of gang violence in Canadian cities.
Has your department been caught interfering into the investigation of the worst mass shooting in Canadian history, that took place with smuggled guns from the United States? Take it out on law-abiding sport-shooters and hunters; esteemed members of the Trudeau Foundation have their supporting columns ready and willing to go, your Director of Comms sent out the trial balloons last week.
Yet even by these exceedingly low standards, this latest Liberal effort (or lack thereof) has been a doozy.
Under the guise of again targeting “assault style firearms,” which were already illegal in Canada, the Liberals are once more casting far too wide a net that either a) deliberately targets grandpa’s hunting rifle or b) they’re so poorly versed on the subject matter, they don’t know the difference between the M4 they once used in Call of Duty, and a single-shot hunting rifle like the Ruger No. 1.
It’s hard to be left with any answer other than: c) all of the above.
The ban doesn’t just encompass that .22 rifle you learned to shoot with at summer camp (read: not an “assault weapon”) but even those used for skeet shooting and bird hunting:
Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino announced he had “no intention whatsoever” of banning hunting rifles or long guns.
The problem is, Mendicino’s claims aren’t true at all. Even a cursory look at the list quickly reveals that it’s chock full of purpose-built hunting arms, many of which have likely never been near a battlefield or crime scene in the last 100 years. While prior Trudeau government gun bans at least attempted to only select firearms that had “assault-style” aesthetics, this new list proposes to criminalize hundreds of rifles and shotguns that are low-powered, slow to fire and only ever designed to shoot birds, deer or skeet.
Even when cornered on an outright lie, the minister defaults to “don’t believe the hype” or that tried and true “Conservative fearmongering.”
Remember: this also the man who has been tasked with Canada’s dumpster fire of a ‘disinformation’ file, and not two weeks ago the representative from Eglinton-Lawrence extended an invitation to representatives of the G7 “to develop new programs and tools to stem the spread of disinformation.”
Mendicino said democracies also need to engage with social media firms and big tech to better understand how information is presented and make sure "that they are, as much as possible, adhering to the terms and conditions of their own user agreements," calling it a long-standing challenge.
In the wake of yesterday’s semi-explosive ‘Twitter Files,’ which if nothing else have now presented the public with concrete proof that governments and their lobbyists hold sway over the direction of social media giants, and won’t hesitate in attempting to use that backdoor to influence, say, coverage of a U.S. election, any self-respecting Canadian should find it alarming that Justin Trudeau’s principal heavy and enforcer of “broader interpretations of the law” has also been tasked with expanding the scope of a censorious Liberal regime who are already coming for non-legacy publishers, creators, and viewers through the odious and undemocratic Bills C-11 and C-18.
Marco Mendicino claims he was just joking about tanks on Canadian streets; just as he claims the Emergencies Act was required despite the Ambassador Bridge and the Coutts border blockade being cleared without unprecedented war-time powers; just as he claims his government’s latest farcical gun legislation doesn’t target law-abiding Canadian gun owners, hunters, and sport-shooters.
Canada’s Minister of Public Safety wants you to take him at his word, but when the only truths to be found point to the makings of some half-hearted protection racket, how can anyone be expected to do so, when we know that it means so little?
And when faced with such overwhelming dishonesty, and further abuse of the office, what else can a member of the electorate do but sound the alarm, and call it in?
Only, what happens when it’s Mendicino who picks up on the other end of the line?
He is the scummiest Liberal I have ever known. And that’s saying a lot.