Denial only works when everyone plays along.  In 2013, elite Canada played a tremendous game of denial about the significance of the so-called "charter of values" proposed by Quebec premier Pauline Marois, which sought to deny state services and government jobs to citizens wearing "ostentatiously religious" headgear; ie: Muslim women with headscarves.

Because Marois was a separatist, she made an easy villain to unite against.  English Canadian journalists and politicians, from Jason Kenney to the Toronto Star editorial board, thundered with righteous anger about this bigoted, hateful idea from a monstrous traitor.  When Premier Marois ran for re-election the following year, those same voices declared the vote a de facto "referendum" on her cruel charter, and casting a ballot for her opponent, Liberal leader Philippe Couillard, the obligation of all right-thinking Quebeckers.  When Couillard won a solid majority, it was deemed proof "the better angels of Quebeckers' nature prevailed," in the words of the Globe and Mail's Jeffrey Simpson.

It was a popular storyline, because it perpetuated a number of interlocking myths many powerful people in this country desperately want to believe: that Canadians are a univocally down with multiculturalism, that Quebeckers are good Canadians, and that the only bad things that happen in Quebec politics are the work of dastardly separatists (who all Good Quebeckers oppose anyway).

Today, four years later, these comforting myths lie in ruin.  Premier Couillard, who never actually claimed to be much of a multiculturalist, has now gone further than Marois, and passed a ban on state services and government jobs for Muslim women who cover their faces.  The new law is extraordinarily popular, boasting the backing of over 80% of Quebeckers.  Indeed, we're told the only reason the provincial opposition parties voted against it was because it didn't go far enough.

In other words, it's fairly clear that Quebeckers simply do not want niqab-wearing Muslim women to enjoy full standing in their society.  They want them to be ostracized and excluded as punishment for their regressive religious beliefs and traditions, which are deemed to have no place in 21^st century Quebec.  This is an opinion that transcends party, ideology, language — basically every variable.

It only gets worse from there, at least from the perspective of the denialists.

Now that there exists an all-party consensus in the province against the niqab, Ottawa politicians and national pundits cannot frame their opposition to the new legislation with any sort of euphemism or distraction.  They are no longer opposing a naughty separatist government for whom an obviously more palatable alternative exists — they are opposing the administration of a premier who has been explicitly framed as the province's "good guy," and head of a federalist party the Canadian establishment has been universally endorsing for decades.  It's thus extraordinarily difficult to offer any opposition to Premier Couillard's bill that doesn't come off as a knock against Quebec itself, and an insult to the sincere beliefs of over two-thirds of its residents.  Prime Minister Trudeau has been uncharacteristically cautious in his words as of late, offering only equivocating opposition to a popular bill in a province whose votes he desperately wants — a cowardice which has hardly gone unnoticed in Anglo Canada.  Jagmeet Singh has been more forceful, though at this point he doesn't have much to lose, given it's increasingly taken for granted that a pro-abortion, pro-LGBT politician who happens to wear a turban is himself too "ostentatiously religious" for Quebec to tolerate.

But the worst may be yet to come.  Teeth are surely chattering over the possibility a pollster could soon reveal that banning veil-clad women from public spaces is an idea popular with Canadians outside Quebec, too.  In 2013, Angus Reid found 33% of Ontarians — more than those who voted for Tim Hudak in the last election — supported the considerably more radical proposition of "outlawing religious clothing and symbols such as hijabs, turbans and skullcaps from being worn by the public seeking government services."  Banning government employees from wearing such things got the support of 40% — a greater share of the public than elected Kathleen Wynne.

In theory, the man with the most to gain from all this is Andrew Scheer.  His party is supported and run by the most Islam-skeptical segment of the Canadian population, and for a party perennially obsessed with winning Quebec votes, endorsing the niqab ban would offer an obvious inroad to a province that has otherwise been cold to Tory overtures.  Yet Conservatives remain deeply traumatized by their 2015 loss, and the mainstream media narrative that it was directly attributable to the Harper government's policy (which now seems decidedly quaint) of requiring immigrant Muslim women to be unveiled when they take the oath of citizenship.  The notion that the party must avoid getting near anything that sniffs of immigrant skepticism for fear of reenforcing racist stereotypes is a piece of conventional wisdom unlikely to be challenged by a cautious leader like Scheer, whose "provincial issue" rhetoric has only been mildly more stand-offish than Trudeau's.

No one truly likes the niqab.  If any of our top politicians or journalists could wave a wand and permanently exile it from our borders, they surely would.  Yet because we no longer engage with Islam as Islam — which is to say, a peculiar belief system whose practices often exceed the limits of what a democratic society is prepared to tolerate in the name of religious freedom — but rather a metaphor for more sacred matters of race, inclusivity, and tolerance, we find our politics bereft of national leadership on one of the existential challenges of modern diversity.  Amid this vacuum, Quebec's chauvinistic lack of deference to multicultural tropes has resulted in the development of blunt solutions to Islam's excesses.  It's an entrenched Canadian culture clash now impossible to deny.

Written by J.J. McCullough

In his work Simulacra and Simulation, French philosopher Jean Baudrillard posited that there is very little that is actually real about reality.  What we live in is a simulation comprised of degraded copies of an original, bereft of meaning, and where, despite all this, people will loudly defend this reality as being truly real because they have no basis for comparison.  The deception is all they know.

If Baudrillard's words resonate with you, it might be because you remember the Matrix films (which were inspired by his writings), or it may be because you have recently (or not so recently) noticed that our federal government is not a government at all, but some warped approximation thereof.

How else could we have a Finance Minister whose financial knowledge is apparently so lacking that he fails to put his assets in a blind trust?

Or a Minister of Revenue who directed the CRA not to tax employee discounts and then claimed she did no such thing?

Or a Heritage Minister who claims a deal with Netflix will save Cancon?

A Minister of Defence who claims he was the architect of a mission when he was nothing of the sort?

A Minister of International Affairs who claims to be speaking for Canada's interests when it comes to NAFTA when all evidence seems to indicate that she is trolling the Americans with demands she knows they won't agree to?

How about a Prime Minister who styles himself an international man of globalist progressivist mystery and sees nothing wrong with wishing Hindu-Canadians a "Diwali Mubarak"?

These are not Ministers.  They are people pretending to be Ministers.

Or, assuming it were possible to ignore the various paper thin ministerial disguises our heads of government are wearing as many Canadian voters do we can see how they pervert the meaning of words until they become useless.  Words like "tax fairness," "feminism," "consultation," "small deficit," and "transparency".

The Trudeau government says it is "feminist", yet spends $2.5M on a lawsuit to keep moms from claiming sick benefits.

The government says it is "transparent", yet delays the process of reforming the law regarding Access to Information requests.

The government engages in pro forma "consultations" in which they hear people talk and then go on doing precisely what they want on issues from Aboriginal reconciliation to electoral reform.

If you see them for what they are, however a government simulation rather than an actual government you realize that expecting them to actually live up to their obligations is absurd.  They certainly consider it absurd, because no matter what sort of infraction you try to call them on, they offer some ridiculous explanation and continue as though nothing happened.

But why does Baudrillard's characterization of life as simulacrum work especially well for Canada?  Don't governments, especially progressive ones the world over, pull the wool over their citizens' eyes in this way?

Well, yes.  But in all those other places, the people there still have some distorted concept of the original they are supposed to be copying.  In Canada, no one has ever taken the trouble to create something uniquely Canadian.  There never was a Canadian original to simulate.

And so Canadians, despite the overwhelming weight of evidence suggesting that Justin and his coterie have no more actual governance or leadership skills than any of us would after binge watching The West Wing, remain unwilling to really disturb the status quo.

The Prime Minister made this point quite succinctly when he told a journalist that she should direct all her Bill Morneau-related questions towards him instead of to Morneau himself.  He knows that no matter what kind of notions of "journalistic integrity" may be floating about in her silly little head, she still wants "the opportunity to chat with the Prime Minister".

He, not her, will decide what Canadian journalism will look like and what kind of answers Canadians will content themselves with.  He, and his Liberal pals, will continue to make the rules up as they go along without getting too worried about any consequences because after all, this is just a simulation.  It's nothing like the real thing.

Written by Josh Lieblein

During the last election campaign Justin Trudeau pledged to repeal a Harper 2014 amendment to the Citizenship Act that allowed the government to strip citizenship from Canadian dual nationals convicted of terrorism or espionage.  Along with other hackneyed lines such as "Because it's 2015" and "Sunny ways", Trudeau defended convicted traitors of their right to keep their Canadian citizenship by decreeing "A Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian."

It seemed odd that Trudeau was campaigning on taking a steadfast stance on protecting convicted terrorists' right to their Canadian citizenship after committing treasonous acts against our nation, but the bizarre position taken by Trudeau somehow passed with little follow-up scrutiny by the press because it fit into his Liberals' promise of a new government giving tolerance and compassion to all—including an increased number of Syrian refugees as well as our plotters of domestic massacres.

Now enter the Maryam Monsef birthplace controversy a year later when Trudeau—now in power—has delivered on his promise to stop the revocation of dual national traitors' Canadian citizenship.  When the story first broke about how Monsef's mother had fudged her refugee and citizenship documents by writing down a fraudulent birthplace in them, the public response was incredibly divisive.

Some journalists and everyday Canadians pointed out that hundreds of Canadians have lost their citizenship for similar minor offences of misrepresentation on immigration documents.  A few Conservative opponents exploited the issue by pointing out how there could be "serious consequences" for Monsef.  Others pointed out the unfairness and double-standard of there being no repercussions for the cabinet minister while other Canadians caught with fraudulent documents continue to be deported.

Many others, in the counterargument camp, claimed it was an overblown tempest in a teacup because refugees are often displaced people and a fraudulent birthplace seems like an irrelevant and trivial technicality to punish someone over.  Gerald Butts, Trudeau's principal adviser, dismissed the story when he tweeted, "The Globe and Mail endorses a homegrown Canadian birther movement. Breathtaking."  Others in the media, like Tabatha Southey and her piece "Birtherism comes to Canada with the Maryam Monsef 'scandal'", parroted the idea Canadians giving stock to the Monsef controversy were nothing more than Canadian "birthers" as disgraceful as Trump and his ilk, never mind the fact that there are no parallels between the Monsef's proven birthplace discrepancy and Obama's birthplace wild conspiracy theory.

To Butts, Southey and ilk, anyone questioning or reporting Monsef's story was either a compassionless political opportunist or a bigoted xenophobe—or likely both.  They also expected Canadians to take Monsef at her word when she said she didn't know she was born in Iran until The Globe and Mail scoop broke.  Yet, earlier this year, Robert Fife—the reporter who broke the story—asked Monsef on CTV's Question Period if she was born in Afghanistan and she answered ambiguously, "I believe I was."  It is also strange that other members of the Peterborough community claim to have known about the fraudulent birthplace documents before the story broke, but Monsef herself was left in the dark all this time.  Her claim of ignorance looks even more shaky when after the story broke she said she "mostly" learned about it from The Globe and Mail piece.

Tragically and infinitely more important, what has been lost in this trumped-up partisan rhetoric from both sides is the government is continuing to strip everyday Canadians of their citizenship for similar trivial reasons as that of Monsef's case.  Canadian immigrants—in many cases productive Canadian citizens for many years—are having their citizenship revoked, without a hearing, for minor errors or inaccuracies in their immigration documents.  In some cases, Canadians have been stripped of their citizenship because—just like in Maryam Monsef's predicament—of no fault of their own their parents misrepresented some of their personal information to the government.

In an article from The Globe and Mail last week—"Liberals will not grant a moratorium on citizenship revocation"—the government announced it will not take swift action in helping Canadians being deported over minor falsifications like Monsef's:

"Laura Track, a lawyer with the [British Columbia Civil Liberties Association and the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers], said her team was blown away by the government's response.

'We're incredibly disappointed to learn that the government simply wants to press forward with stripping citizenship from Canadians under a process that it has acknowledged is unfair,' Ms. Track said."

In another Globe and Mail article from last week, Immigration Minister John McCallum had said the government would look into putting a moratorium on deporting all of these Canadians without hearings.  Yet McCallum was unaware that he needed to act by the following day to the Federal Court application in order to halt the often unfair government process of stripping hundreds of Canadians of their citizenship.

One would think this would be a priority for a government that claims to have compassion for all, but instead and ironically the CBC reported that Trudeau's Liberal government has been revoking citizenship at a much higher rate than Harper's government.

To top it off, the PM is on record endorsing the revocation process: "Revocation of citizenship can and should happen in situations of becoming a Canadian citizen under false pretenses.  Indeed, when people have lied on their applications, those applications get rescinded, even years later."

So here is the million-dollar question: if Trudeau believes in "sunny ways" and "a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian", then why does he allow the revocation of Canadians' citizenship for trivial falsifications in immigration documents—unless it is his own cabinet minister—but believes dual national traitors threatening and planning to kill Canadians should always keep theirs?

Written by Graeme C. Gordon