An Unfathomable Power Grab

Federal Bill C-293

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By James Pew

Imagine that totalitarianism is controlled by a dial, not a switch. In a way, like a light connected to a dimmer, which is capable of tiny gradient increases of illumination beyond the eye's ability to detect. In essence, with a slow enough manipulation of the right dial, a room can go from dimly lit to fully lit without our noticing. While a two-way switch either turns the lights or the music on or off, totalitarianism does not unfold so abruptly, it encroaches gradually. However, to say it fades in without anyone noticing would not be quite right. 

The dial of totalitarianism is of a specific type. It is not a potentiometer, that smooth turning or sliding dial found on a dimmer, or an electric guitar, or the tuner of an old AM/FM radio. It is more like a stepped attenuator, like the volume knob on a vintage hi-fi stereo that clicks with each turn. Usually such a dial will have numbers or other markings placed around it letting us know what step or level it is set at. 

In a past life I was involved in a boutique pro-audio shop that developed microphone preamplifiers and other audio devices for professional recording studios (one of which was my old studio Euphonic Sound in Toronto). Our mic pres used stepped attenuators for their gain control (volume control for the lay people). However, we could not just use any crude stepped attenuator for this purpose. It had to be internally wired with make-before-break circuitry. This meant a specific series of mechanical parts would move as the dial was being turned, causing electrical contact to be made to a subsequent attenuation step, before contact was broken with the previous one. In other words, if the volume control was set to 6 and you wanted to increase it to 7, as you turned the dial, an internal connection would be made to step 7 before the connection with step 6 was un-made. If a stepped volume control does not have this feature, you will get audible annoying popping noises with each turn of the dial. Not cool.

Which brings me to my point, totalitarianism is like a crude stepped attenuator without that crucial make-before-break circuitry. And further, I speculate that this is the case by design. Yes, totalitarianism has been greatly amplified today. Whereas once it may have seemed somewhat gradual, today it pops loudly with each increase in volume, often hurting our ears. The cacophonous pops made by the dial of totalitarianism are like the emergencies that are meant to alarm us, and make us accept the increase in totalitarian volume. They are the climate disasters, the pandemics, the financial collapses, and all other such terrifying scenarios, the narratives of which are securely controlled by the dial turning global elites who seem not to care for the sovereignty of their home nations.

Have we become so desensitized to the pops, the catastrophes, the alarms, pandemics and general emergencies, that we no longer hear them? And why is there so little commentary on a private members bill (one of those bills we don’t need to concern ourselves with because they supposedly never get passed) that appears, at least by my reading, and a small handful of others, most notably Lisa Miron of the LawyerLisa Substack, to be among the most egregious and outrageous power grabs in the history of Canada. I'm referring to the little discussed Federal Bill C-293, the Pandemic Prevention and Preparedness Act, a private members bill that passed all three readings in the House of Commons and one reading so far in the Senate. 

Background on Bill C-293

On June 17, 2022, a relatively unknown Member of Parliament named Nathaniel Erskine-Smith tabled a private member’s Bill called Bill C-293, also known as the Pandemic Prevention and Preparedness Act. The Bill enacts a new statute and amends an old one.  The new requirements involve the Minister of Health and the establishment of an advisory committee to review the response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada with the goal of reducing the risks associated with future pandemics and inform a pandemic prevention and preparedness plan. The Minister of Health will consult with other ministers to establish this plan. 

The amendment concerns the Department of Health Act and stipulates that the Minister of Health must appoint a national pandemic prevention and preparedness coordinator from Public Health Agency of Canada officials to coordinate the activities under the Pandemic Prevention and Preparedness Act.

The problems with the Bill C-293

One of the biggest problems with the bill is the extreme broadness of the language employed. This bill is far too general in scope, and the presumed grant of power is draconian and unprecedented. The influence of foreign organizations and the ideology of global governance is an ever-present feature throughout the Act. An emergency, or “risk” of emergency, could possibly trigger a concentration of extraordinary powers in the Ministry of Health, but no term or limit to them has been defined. 

In the preamble of the Act we are told that “Parliament is committed to making efforts to prevent the risk of and prepare for future pandemics,” and that “a One Health approach,” which is described as a “multisectoral and multidisciplinary collaborative approach that focuses on the human, animal, plant and ecosystem health and welfare interface,” is “central to preventing the risk of future pandemics.” The One Health approach also requires “sustained collaboration among various ministers, all levels of government and Indigenous communities.”

The first thing we are told about the contents of the pandemic prevention and preparedness plan is that it will “set out a summary of mitigation strategies that the Minister of Health intends to implement in order to prevent the risk of and prepare for disease outbreaks that could lead to pandemics.” It does not appear as though an actual pandemic is required, just the risk of one, as determined by the Minister of Health, is enough to trigger the implementation of his “mitigation strategies.” However, even if a real pandemic was necessary before it was required of Canadians to hand over their civil liberties to the good Minister, things would still remain murky. For, as LawyerLisa points out on her Substack, the Act does not define what a pandemic is. 

Lisa also points out that “risk” concerning potential undefined pandemics is also undefined. What exactly constitutes such risk? Who are the risky ones? And where exactly are these risks taking place? The answers to these questions, which the Bill implies through its overly broad and general language, seems to be anything, everyone, and everywhere - exactly the way totalitarians like it.

Under a totalitarian regime there are no jurisdictions. The state controls everything. The state is the only jurisdiction. The excessive and omni-jurisdictional nature of this act, as expressed clearly in the language of the One Health approach – i.e. “multisectoral and multidisciplinary collaborative approach that focuses on the human, animal, plant and ecosystem health and welfare interface” – encompasses absolutely all material things under the sun both living and nonliving, and gives technocratic elites the power to determine when a sufficient risk is present in order for them to grant themselves totalitarian powers for an indefinite period of time. What could go wrong?

Section L of the Act tells us that “after consultation with the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, the Minister of Industry and provincial governments,” measures will be taken to “reduce the risks posed by antimicrobial resistance,” and “regulate commercial activities that can contribute to pandemic risk, including industrial animal agriculture,” and “promote commercial activities that can help reduce pandemic risk, including the production of alternative proteins,” and “phase out commercial activities that disproportionately contribute to pandemic risk, including activities that involve high-risk species.” 

In the above we see a blatant attack on farming. Especially meat producers, who apparently they wish to “phase out.” And when they say “alternative proteins,” what exactly does that mean? Because I, for one, will NEVER EAT INSECTS. But either way, if we still live in a liberal democracy with a free market, then there is no place for technocratic government ministers with extraordinary powers to be meddling in the process of industry or in the development of new products. 

I am not alone in this regard. A letter dated October 23, 2023, from a group of Canadian farming organizations, including the Canadian Cattle Association, and the Canadian Pork Council, addressed to the Standing Committee on Health in the House of Commons, expressed the farmers concern with the inclusion in the Act of “language promoting the production and use of alternative proteins and the regulation of animal agriculture, and the phase-out of high-risk species,” which they felt misunderstood and undermined their practices.  The farmers wrote, “the Bill has made the incorrect and unsupported assumption that animal agriculture in Canada is a cause of, or contributes to, the spread of disease, a notion we unequivocally reject and is not supported by evidence,” and that the Bill “does not take into consideration that the Canadian animal agriculture sector rigorously monitors animal health and wellness and operates under a high level of biosecurity and regulations. Canadian farmers closely monitor their animals and follow stringent biosecurity protocols and standards to protect their animals from disease.”

Could it be that even though Canadian meat farming may have an excruciatingly tiny potential role in any future pandemic that the Minister of Health will inform us about, the totalitarians want anyway to regulate and ultimately phase out meat farming simply because they feel it will contribute to a better One Health world? 

When one employs the type of multidisciplinary thinking indicative of a One Health approach, delusions of grandeur, with sweeping and infinitely broad machinations and prescriptions spill forth. The Canadian elites who believe in global governance and public policy aligned with the interests of the United Nations (UN) and World Economic Forum (WEF) and other such international organizations who advocate for global multidisciplinary coordination controlled by a central global authority, are the ones pushing all of this on Canadians who want none of it.

LawyerLisa has outlined her concerns with Bill-C293 and has written an open letter to Senators telling them to vote no. She has put together a convenient one-click option for Canadians to send letters to Senators telling them to vote no on Bill-C293 (I recommend Woke Watch Canada readers do that).

What is One Health?

The One Health concept has its roots in the interface between humans and animals. The term “One Medicine” was coined by American veterinarian trained in public health Calvin Schwabe, in a 1964 veterinary medical textbook. From this point on the idea set in that close study of the similarities between animal and human medicine, with greater collaboration between veterinarians and physicians, would help solve global health issues. This collaborative spirit evolved into the multi or transdisciplinary approach that would later be seen in the One Health approach.

By the 2000s the human/animal basis of the One Health concept had substantially expanded to a human/animal/environment model. This effectively established an important transdisciplinary link between public health and environmental issues, where things occurring in the ecosystem could quite possibly be claimed to cause public health emergencies, or just the risk of them. In the case of C-293, it is safe to assume a scenario of this sort would ultimately trigger totalitarian powers over all Canadians, inside and outside of Canada, for an indeterminate period.

In 2008, a consortium of international organizations picked up on the already decades of development of the One Health model. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), World Organization for Animal Health (OIE), and World Health Organization (WHO) collaborated with the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), United Nations System Influenza Coordination, and the World Bank to develop a framework entitled Contributing to One World, One Health-A Strategic Framework for Reducing Risks of Infectious Diseases at the Animal-Human-Ecosystems Interface. Within a couple of years, international meetings on One Health would be held regularly.

All of the overlapping domains and jurisdictions caused by the One Health model provide an endless array of opportunities for those who wish to exert totalitarian control over the rest of us. The confusion of jurisdiction, and the handing over of much of the function of governance to international bodies, is slowly destroying the sovereignty and national identity of Canada and most other Western nations. The globalists want to transform us from national to global citizens, where global citizenship is defined by responsibilities, not by the rights guaranteed to sovereign citizens of liberal democratic nations. Are we even aware of the dire implications concerning civil liberties that these models of global governance and such proposed transformations in the concept of citizenship entail? Because if we were, I would expect to see a mountain of criticism aimed at the outrageous and unfathomable power grab that is Bill C-293. But I don’t. WTF!?

Conclusion…(for now)

Whatever the reasons, whatever the motivations, Bill C-293 and the type of regulations, controls, and eventual transformations of the way we do things it, can only come about through the illiberal exercise of totalitarian power. If the global elites continue to set up the infrastructure for their One World systems we will find ourselves at volume ten totalitarianism. We will own nothing, and we will not be happy. Without even insects to feed our desperate hunger, we will freeze and starve to death in the dark.

On September 17th the Senate will read through Bill C-293 for a second time. Go to the One Click Link provided by LawyerLisa and tell Canadian Senators to vote no. 

Unfortunately, there is more. On September 22 and 23 the United Nations member states will gather in New York City at the UN headquarters for the historic Summit of the Future with the intention to sign the Pact for the Future. According to journalist Derrick Broze, at The Last American Vagabond, the Pact for the Future “is expected to radically accelerate the push towards the completion of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Agenda 2030.” Sovereign citizens will not remain so for long, if Agenda 2030, Sustainable Development Goals, and One Health models of global governance essentially grant totalitarian powers to elites willing to sell out their countries for it.

James Pew is the publisher of Woke Watch Canada, a contributing author of the best-selling book Grave Error: How the Media Misled Us (and the Truth about Residential Schools), and a contributing writer to several Canadian journals and independent media.

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Thanks for reading. For more from this author, read Transforming Children: Critical Theory Takes Over Canadian Schools

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