Press freedoms worsened in China during the pandemic — just like in Canada

The chilling parallels between Canada's and China’s COVID-19 response make sense as details of the Chinese Communist Party's interference in our democracy become abundantly clear.

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China and Canada took similar pandemic response paths. Both decimated basic human rights and freedoms, which makes sense as it has been discovered that the Chinese Communist Party has been attempting to undermine Canada’s governmental integrity for years.

The Globe and Mail recently detailed how press freedom worsened in China during the pandemic and the parallels between Canada’s response are chilling.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has been one of the worst periods for press freedom in China in decades, with tough restrictions on movement and a superpowered surveillance state making on-the-ground reporting more difficult than ever,” the opening paragraph reads.

Yet Canadians also faced an unfounded and unprecedented quashing of their freedom of movement.

This was exemplified through gathering restrictions, the use of states of emergency to prevent the previously constitutionally-protected right to protest, and medical apartheid being normalized in the media with different levels of COVID-related restrictions for COVID-19 vaccinated versus unvaccinated people.

There were many instances in which police interfered with Rebel News’ (RN) documenting of the above.

Examples included protests in Toronto, the Montreal police antagonizing the RN team and raiding the boat RN had booked to report on their thug-like behaviour, to the Freedom Convoy that took to the nation's capital in January and February of 2022 to protest government overreach during which our journalists were intimidated and even shot at.

“A bevy of state restrictions, ongoing digital surveillance, and the continued harassment of Chinese colleagues and sources means existing challenges to true freedom of the press in China remain,” said the group (which is the foreign correspondents club of China) in its annual press freedoms report.

Here in Canada, we have that, too.

The Public Health Agency of Canada, which is overseen by China-born chief medical officer of health Theresa Tam, whose pandemic response failures were so vast and great that we launched a campaign at FireTam.com, urging for her removal from this position, used surveillance and monitoring technology to gauge Canadians compliance with COVID restrictions throughout the pandemic.

It was under Tam’s leadership that the government agency secretly collected the private mobile data of Canadians to measure compliance with government-instituted mobility restrictions, which was a constitutionally protected right in the “before times.”

The agency used $200,000 dollars worth of taxpayer funds to purchase data from private telecommunications company Telus and then they hired the company BlueDot to further collect and analyze Canadians' private mobile data.

Through an order paper question in the House of Commons, Conservative MP Blaine Calkins got the Public Health Agency of Canada to further admit to having almost 400 secret COVID-19-related contracts worth nearly $20.6 billion dollars!

It would seem that Canadians are literally paying for their own totalitarian surveillance state enslavement to an agency that wants all of their data, and will even infringe on the privacy of its own citizens to get it, but simultaneously refuses to disclose hundreds of contracts to the public.

The disregarding of privacy from this shadowy agency is even more alarming as it focuses on behaviour modification science and the utilization of what is referred to as “nudges” to condition and shape your behaviour to comply with whatever the government wants you to do.

So many medical professionals, from doctors, scientists, and various experts in their fields of research, epidemiology, safety, virology, regulations, licensing, you name it. No dissident could come forward in the thick of the knee-jerk COVID response for fear of defaming, punishment, disciplinary action by regulators, or being smeared by peers.

The level of harassment that people like Dr. Byram Bridle faced when he expressed biodistribution concerns about the spike protein was unprecedented and is now being exposed as part of a $2.5 million dollar lawsuit against his alleged defamers.

This Globe & Mail article specifies that “many journalists said they experienced official interference and harassment,” and in Canada, if your viewpoint questions or otherwise goes against the mainstream narrative groupthink, then you don’t even necessarily need police to step in to stop your reporting.

The radicalized groupthink mob will do it for them, as seen by various reports that RN has done across North America, from squeaky dog toys and sirens being shoved into microphones, to being physically prevented from accessing events, to flags and signs being intentionally thrust in camera lenses to evade video recordings.

David Menzies was even physically assaulted by the RCMP while trying to point one simple question to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau late last year. Cameraman Lincoln caught it all.

This is because the government's media availability has become increasingly smaller and more secretive and increasingly difficult to access, as their power becomes bigger and more demanding, despite freedom of the press being a key component of a healthy democracy.

“Perhaps the most dramatic escalation has been the tendency to be followed by carloads of officials almost every time we report outside Beijing. Apart from harassing journalists, they intimidate and pressure those we are trying to interview,” the article continues.

Well that very thing happened just a few weeks ago to RN’s Quebec correspondents who were followed by police after trying to track down Trudeau’s media availability, and subsequently prevented access to the property to conduct their report.

Overall, the article highlights how press freedoms worsened in China during the pandemic – from journalists detained by police for covering protests, to harassment and obstruction – and the further threatening of sources resulting in them being too afraid to come forward and speak to media – all of that has become far too commonplace here in Canada, just the same.

And is it any surprise, now knowing that the Justin Trudeau Liberals have been a target for the Chinese Communist Party to infiltrate and meddle in Canada’s electoral process? They are threatening the very democracy that Trudeau says is so fragile.

It comes at a time when Canada, for the first time in over a decade, no longer ranks among one of the top 10 freest countries in the world.

Canadians face unprecedented and sweeping legislation like Bill C-18 and Bill C-11 that will grant government-run entities like the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission the authority to monitor, control and regulate not only the internet content that Canadians produce, but also that which they can access online, with steep financial penalties for any wrongdoings.

It’s becoming clear that we are not working toward restoring freedom but rather continuing to restrict it.

Is it any wonder that under Trudeau’s reign, where he himself says he adores China’s basic dictatorship, this country has slipped into communist-style erosion of freedoms as his government becomes compromised by the very regimes we once denounced?

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