Parksville prefers common sense to government idiocy

One out of ten Canadians would rather not get vaccinated against anything, including Covid-19, even if it becomes mandatory, says an official (and obviously government-sponsored) public opinion poll.

The pollsters have clearly missed the Vancouver Island city of Parksville, B.C.

The local Common Law Assembly decided on Aug. 24 thus: “In an historic act of direct democracy last night, the Oceanside Common Law Assembly (OCLA) passed a Public Safety Bylaw that prohibits COVID restrictions and mandatory distancing, masking, quarantines, and vaccinations anywhere in the communities of Parksville and Qualicum Beach on Canada’s west coast.

“As of today, anyone who tries to impose COVID regulations on the people of these communities can face fines and imprisonments by OCLA and its Common Law Court.”

Lest anyone begins making fun of the entire project, let it be known that more than 40 Common Law Assemblies have formed across Canada in the last five years. Many of them have joined the newly-formed Republic of Kanata. The Assemblies’ stated goal is simple: they see themselves as the front-line defence of Canadians who are resisting what the Assemblies call, and not without reason, “the corporate police state.”

The face of the Republic

Kevin D. Annett is a Canadian writer and a former minister of the United Church of Canada. Author of three books about Canadian aboriginals – Love and Death in the Valley, Hidden from History: The Canadian Holocaust and Unrepentant: Disrobing the Emperor, he wrote about what he calls Canadian genocide in his Ph.D. thesis. The powers-that-be blocked it, and Annett used it as source material for a video instead. His Unrepentant, posted on the world-wide web in 2007, reached about half of a million hits within the first year of publication.

Annett has been challenging the official figure of 4,000 Indian children dying because of what he describes as the genocidal policies of the racist white establishment. His calculations bring the total to anywhere between 50 and 100 thousand victims.

Annett is especially critical of what used to be known as Indian residential schools. According to him, they practised a policy of germ warfare, beatings, and intimidation, enabling an unofficial policy of extermination against native children who were taken against their will from their parents.

Then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper offered an apology on behalf of Canada. Harper’s government also created the Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission, in order to uncover the truth about the schools. Annett has been calling it a damage limitation exercise.

Except: Prime Minister Harper was the first Canadian politician in power who had reacted to the accusations rather than dismissing them out of hand.

Annett earned his Bachelor’s degree in anthropology and his Master’s degree in political science from University of British Columbia in the 1980s. He went on and earned his Master of Divinity from the Vancouver School of Theology in 1990. Ordained by British Columbia Conference of the United Church of Canada, he served in churches in rural Manitoba, then at the Fred Victor Mission in Toronto, an outreach street-ministry of The United Church of Canada, prior to being appointed minister to St. Andrew’s United Church in Port Alberni, British Columbia in 1992.

Irrelevant whether you agree with Annett on the topic of the residential schools that is so dear to his heart, he has become a natural leader for those who value their freedom.

The objective

We no longer live in democracy as it was invented millennia ago in ancient Greece. Not only in Canada, says Kevin Annett, but all over the world those who are elected to represent and defend our ideals have become power-hungry ideologists.

Nothing in the name of the people and for the people, everything in their names, and for them.

In a recent and wide-ranging interview with Ontario’s ThatChannel.com, Annett explains his vision. Basically, the less government, the better off we all are (with the exception of the politicians and their bureaucrats, who would be out of their jobs very quickly).

Annett is of the considered view that there is no especially overwhelming reason for Canada to remain part of British crown holdings. Whatever historical ties there may have been, the idea that Canada’s laws, voted upon and agreed to by Canada’s House of Commons and Canada’s Senate, have to receive Royal Assent to become binding, borders on the ridiculous. Canada’s Governor General acts in somebody else’s name, and that someone else resides across the sea of salty water.

Not only that: the title of that somebody else includes the noble designation Defender of the Faith. Whose faith prevails in Great Britain these days, for crying out loud?

Not that this anti-monarchic view is new. But the idea of the Republic of Kanata itself is quite new. For Canada, at least.

It is a new society that is “growing up within the shell of the old,” the group’s website says. It adds: “Citizens are united within a new jurisdiction in local Republican Assemblies that replace the existing Canadian government structures. The Assemblies are legislative bodies where all people can introduce, debate and enact laws in their own communities. These laws are then enforced by Common Law Courts and Sheriffs elected by and answerable to the People.

“This process of returning power to the people will span years but it begins today when twelve or more men and women sign a Charter to establish a local Republican Assembly.”

The group in Parksville and Qualicum now consists of 221 people, according to their own website. Compared to the more than 12,500 people living there, it may sound and look like a minority.

It IS a minority, all right.

Except: Preston Manning’s Reform Party started in a private conversation in the basement of Ted Byfield’s house in Edmonton. Byfield was the founder of the news magazine called Alberta Report. Manning would lead the Reform Party to certain respectability (forming Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition in the House of Commons).

One of the Reform Party goals: direct democracy.

Sound familiar?

The Reform Party would become Canadian Alliance and, after merging with the then-Progressive Conservatives, it would form the Conservative Party and government for two terms.

It proved, as if proof was needed, that the most important developments in the history of humankind would start with the minority of one single person among thousands, millions, even. That lonely person had an idea whose time had come.

And that’s precisely what seems to be emerging in the Jewel of Vancouver Island.

And not only there: the antipodes, a.k.a. the Aussies, seem to have arrived at similar conclusions. Their group is called Common Law Courts of Australia, and it’s good to know Canada is not alone.