Who knows the difference between tyranny and freedom?

The answer: UKRAINIANS. Hundreds of thousands are being displaced, threatened and
their government close to over throw. Close your eyes for a moment and think, imagine, feel
the emotions of a mother in the dark, clutching her child tightly, as bombs drop around you,
alone with no hope in hell because a despot threatens the World with a nuclear catastrophe.
It is just you, alone, listening to the tanks of an invading army to take away your freedoms.
This is not a flashback to the thirties with brown shirts coming to knock on your door. it’s
now, it’s today.

I seem to be getting angry these days. The isolation has exposed the grumpy guy’s split
personality. In my personal life I have biases like yours. As a Judge, I wear objectivity robes
and special glasses that filter out personal beliefs. They allow me to recognize bias and work
to suppress them. You need to know that I returned the equipment when I retired. Originally,
I intended to write about growing up in Long Branch, my parent’s fish and chips store, the
thriving lakeshore communities with five movie theatres, and so on. I started to, but I became
so disturbed with disrespect and misrepresentation of our Charter by some protesters
demanding its protection while ignoring what it says, calling Trudeau a tyrant, a dictator,
comparing him to Putin. They know not what these words mean. Ask any Ukrainian. They
know! I felt compelled to clarify the debate.

Let’s talk rights and our privileges. In Canada, we have a Charter. We have elections. We
can choose the party and their policies. The NDP and Liberals formed a majority supporting
‘mandates.’ We have an opposition. If they gain sufficient Parliamentary support, they can
call an election or form a new government. To avoid chaos and provide certainty, we have
elections but only at certain intervals or conditions–non confidence votes. The Emergency
Act was a non-confidence type of vote which was passed by a majority. If one feels their
rights are breached, we have the Charter. The Charter guarantees your rights and freedoms
SUBJECTED to such unreasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified
in a free and democratic society. The spirit is Canadian, one of compromise and
accommodation. If you see yourself a victim you use our independent Courts for redress.
They are very pro-Charter, Harper thought too much so.

I sympathize with the followers, not their leaders. They were like the Russian soldiers. They
thought their cause was to free the Ukrainians from an oppressive government. They were
offering a Russian autocracy, In Canada they chanted “I am fighting for your freedom”. But
what were their leaders offering. Read the Manifesto. It was similar to Putin’s claim —
telling me our system of Justice is wrong. It was like Trump telling Vice-President Pence,
in our case the Governor General, how to take over my Parliament.

The followers employed ‘willful blindness,’ the source of the millions of dollars donated. Significant amounts came
from United States and White Nationalists whose goal is to ignite a supremacists’s revolution.
They ignore the words of our Charter and the idea of accommodation. They manipulated
information by showing the jumpy castles and treats while ignoring the slogans, swearing,
name calling, T-shirt slogans, Confederate and Nazi symbols They were caught up in the
party but ignored their need to role model; to use the moment as a teaching event. How
many took their children to the Supreme Court building and explain this is how we settle
disputes in Canada? Did they say to the young ones, you can’t get your way by holding your
breath, that we should compromise and share? Did they tell the children that the bad symbols
were not Canada’s friends.

The protesters forgot that in Canada there are more peaceful alternatives. In the Ukraine
there is no such choice. The best the protesters offered was an autocracy, a rule by a few,
according to the Manifesto. Some threatened to do or die. Their philosophy would be Their
Rights, not yours. I think our Charter is better. The solution sounded very similar to what
the Russians were offering – my way or else.

I linked the Ukrainians to the protests because I think there is a mutual solution – a
compromise. It benefits us all. The Truckers have collected millions of frozen dollars. Some
came from simple honest sympathizers and much from the extreme right. Truckers, show
good faith, take several million and hire a team of lawyers. Use the Courts to balance our
Freedoms. Donate the remainder of the monies and help real Freedom Fighters, fighting for
their lives.

Judge Lloyd Budzinski retired after 28 years and was a former Crown Attorney, Defence Counsel
and Ontario’s Assistant Deputy Minister of Criminal Law. He was Chief Prosecutor in the trial of
ex-RCMP officer Patrick Michael Kelly, found guilty of murder for throwing his wife from a 17th
floor balcony in March 1981. He can be reached at lbudzinski@talkjustice.info