Geoff Russ: The barbarization of Canada

Government at all levels must address its causes

Published Sep 11, 2024  •  Last updated 27 minutes ago  •  5 minute read

Ahmed Fouad Mostafa Eldidi, left, is seen in a courtroom sketch with his son, Mostafa Eldidi, as they appear via video for a court hearing in Newmarket, Ont., on Aug. 1. Photo by Alexandra Newbould/The Canadian Press

Last Wednesday, on a sunny Vancouver morning, the police found a 56-year old man lying on the steps of downtown’s Holy Rosary Cathedral. He was bleeding from the head and from the stump at the end of his left arm where his hand had been severed.  

Just around the corner, outside the renowned Queen Elizabeth Theatre, a 70-year old man lay dying in a pool of his own blood. The attacks all happened within minutes of each other. Police suspect they were perpetrated by the same person who had over 60 run-ins with law enforcement and a long history of mental illness.  

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Most Vancouverites were obviously horrified, but less were shocked. Random acts of violence now only surprise the city when they are fatal. This is life in an increasingly barbarized society, and we witness it everyday in real life or in the news.  

Since the start of the pandemic, random, unprovoked violence has become so common in Vancouver that people have become desensitized to it.  

Elderly and vulnerable people in Chinatown, adjacent from the Downtown Eastside’s infamous intersection of Main and Hastings, have become targets for these attacks. In the same neighbourhood, food delivery drivers have been stabbed almost to death in more random attacks.  

The Greater Vancouver Area’s main institution for those suffering from mental health issues was closed more than four decades ago, when the Downtown Eastside was still a rough, but not yet unliveable neighbourhood. Since then, the meeting of people suffering from ailments such as, but not limited to, schizophrenia with an ample supply of heroin and fentanyl has led to the situation we have today.  

On an almost daily basis, shop and bank windows are smashed by individuals high out of their minds before they nod off in front of the shards of broken glass. People driving along West Georgia Street in Vancouver’s financial district have seen their cars damaged in random attacks.  

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In the picturesque BC capital of Victoria, paramedics attending to emergencies on Pandora Avenue, where addiction and homelessness have taken a major toll, were swarmed and assaulted by random people, and now refuse to operate in that area without police protection.  

Many of the drugs helping to fuel these random attacks are supplied by the provincial NDP government, with their federal Liberal counterparts full endorsement.  

The data shows that addiction-related deaths in BC have only gone up since the introduction of the program. It is not working as an addictions strategy, and the results will again be available for all to see the next time someone’s limb is dismembered or life taken in a random attack.  

Canada’s Violent Crime Severity Index is at its highest point since 2007, and has consistently increased since 2015. As for Ontario, violence on the public transit in Toronto rose nearly 50 per cent in 2023. There were life-threatening stabbings on subways and children shot while waiting at the station.  

Thankfully, violence on the transit network did subside this year, but it has not stopped a 15-year old from being killed in a targeted shooting in Toronto on Labour Day, or three more teenagers from being shot up in the Edmonton suburb of St. Albert the same day.  

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Offenders are often arrested and released the same day, with over 40 per cent of car theft suspects in one Toronto police dragnet out on bail. Canada’s descent into barbarization has been noted in the foreign media, with the BBC running a story titled, “How Canada became a car theft capital of the world” back in July.  

Last week, a 20-year old man residing in Canada was arrested by the RCMP on a tip from the FBI. Muhammad Shahzeb Khan, a 20-year old Pakistani national living in Toronto, had planned to travel to New York City and murder as many Jews as he could in an attempt to carry out the largest terrorist attack committed there since 9/11.  

This foiled attempt follows a pattern of rapidly escalating acts of violence and threats aimed at Jews in North America since the start of the Israel-Hamas War last October. Jewish institutions were subjected to the threat of coordinated bombings, bullets were fired at a Jewish girls school in North York, and synagogues in Montreal and Vancouver were lit aflame.  

This savage behaviour is unfit for a country that belongs to the first world, but Canada’s barbarization began well-before these past two years. In London, Ontario in 2021, a white nationalist ran over a Muslim family who were out for a June walk, murdering four with his pick-up truck before being arrested.  

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In 2017 in Quebec City, a mosque was attacked by another gun wielding terrorist who murdered six people and injured 16 more.  

That same summer, churches across Canada were burned. While we don’t know the exact motivations, it seems to have amounted to nothing more than petty revenge for the historic abuses committed against Indigenous children at residential schools. Not even beloved local churches where Indigenous men and women were married were spared.  

Statues were ripped down and destroyed, with alleged “experts” in universities attempting to legitimize these illegal acts as some sort of deranged conduit for anger. In many instances, no charges were laid at all.  

Whether it be drug-infused murder, terrorism, or political arson, there will always be an idiot to be found at a university or NGO that will justify it with the mental gymnastics of subpar intelligence.   

There is no excuse for the barbarization of Canada, and refusing to crush that transformation in its tracks is a choice made by governments at all levels. There are no acceptable acts of violence against person or property in a society that claims to be lawful as Canada does, especially not in the name of political causes.  

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Canada is not the stage for hosting tribal warfare that should be left behind the moment someone clears Canadian customs, or a laboratory for failed drug policy experiments.  

A society where all of this is normalized is a barbaric one, not a civilized one, but that seems to be the preference of those who would prefer to do no nothing about it.  

If incumbent governments will not budge when it comes to doing what is right, then they deserve to be replaced by Canadians at the ballot box. Canadians deserve a government that will not think twice about enforcing peace, order, and good government.  

National Post

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