Canadian politicians are creating one bonfire after another of freedom and individual rights. COVID crackdowns established persecution precedents that politicians in some provinces refuse to allow to gather dust. Politicians are claiming the right to financially cripple anyone who makes a single misstep in violation of the latest idiotic decrees.

On August 5, Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston decreed a $25,000 fine for anyone walking in the woods or otherwise violating a new prohibition that covered both government and private lands. The prohibition will continue until October. Houston declared, “Most wildfires are caused by human activity, so to reduce the risk, we’re keeping people out of the woods until conditions improve. I’m asking everyone to do the right thing—don’t light that campfire, stay out of the woods and protect our people and communities.”

Canadian politicians are exploiting wildfires the same way that former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau exploited COVID to lockdown the entire nation. One critic on X/Twitter scoffed that “the province needs 10 weeks of no walking in the woods to flatten the curve”—paralleling the “two weeks to flatten the curve” crapola that initially sanctified the most onerous COVID restrictions. During the pandemic, Nova Scotia heavily fined citizens caught walking their dogs or exercising in park.

The government failed to document how the environmental peril situation this year was fundamentally different than in previous years. Author Peter Clark observed, “Fears of arson or climate hysteria appear to be behind bans on fishing & hiking in Nova Scotia’s forests. Canada’s forest fires have fallen almost half in the last 40 years & seem unrelated to weather or climate.” At the same time that Nova Scotian politicians are treating every resident and visitor like an arsonist, Canadian governments have let actual arsonists go free with legal wrist slaps.

Canadians are denouncing the new decree as “climate confinement”—an ominous development in a nation whose politicians have long swooned over the World Economic Forum. According to Travel and Tour News, “Even though the COVID-19 pandemic has officially ended, the consequences of restrictive policies are still being felt. With domestic travel restrictions now in place due to wildfire risks, many Canadians feel that their freedom to explore their country has been drastically reduced.”

“They’ve turned the great outdoors into the Forbidden Forest,” scoffed one critic. A photography website warned: “Photographing in the Woods in Nova Scotia Is Currently Illegal.” The government decrees provoked a firestorm of opposition:

“How does hiking in the woods with my dogs come across as a fire hazard?”

“Please tell me the difference between a trail and an unpaved road.”

“I’m confused. We’re banned from the woods? Half of us live in the woods.”

Nova Scotia established a snitch line so people could report neighbors or hooligans who strolled in the woods, and it quickly received thousands/tens of thousands of complaints.

Many opponents of the anti-hiking decree would support a government ban on campfires or other fires in areas at risk of wildfires. But defenders of the ban have gone stir crazy (maybe they have been inside too long?). They have claimed that “hikers could cause fires by dropping water bottles that might, in a remote theoretical scenario, focus sunlight like a magnifying glass.” Also, hiking in the woods might cause an asteroid to hit the earth, so better safe than sorry.

Canadian political mania has gone even further than in the progressive states south of the U.S.-Canadian border. Christine Van Geyn of the Canadian Constitution Foundation warns that “governments and institutions have embraced what’s been called safetyism: the belief that safety, especially from physical or emotional harm, should override all other values, including freedom, autonomy and open debate. When safety becomes the highest good, risk becomes intolerable, state control is normalized ‘for your own good,’ and dissent is cast as dangerous.”

But according to some Canadian political scorecards, the risk of wildfires apparently nullifies the risk of tyranny.  And since there will always be a risk of wildfires, tyranny will be a small price to pay for any purported risks politicians choose to suppress.

The pre-emptive repression of hikers and dog walkers is symptomatic of regimes that feel entitled to unlimited power. The same mindset is driving Canada’s persecution of the leaders of the COVID lockdown protests. According to Canada’s top prosecutors, the only thing worse than tyranny is “mischief.” And the worst possible “mischief” is objecting to tyranny.

The Canadian government is seeking an eight year prison sentence for one of the leaders of the COVID “Freedom Convoy” protest that riled Ottawa in early 2022. In April, a court ruled that Tamara Lich and Chris Barber were not guilty of obstructing police or intimidation during the demonstrations. But they were convicted of “mischief”—in part because the truckers in the forty mile convoy honked their horns to protest some of the most oppressive COVID mandates in the world.

After Trudeau dictated that all truck drivers who cross the U.S. border must get COVID vaccines, a protest quickly snowballed and landed in Canada’s capital. Trudeau responded by invoking the Emergencies Act, effectively dropping a legal nuclear bomb on his opponents. Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland announced that the government was “broadening the scope of Canada’s…terrorist-financing rules so that they cover Crowd Funding Platforms and the payment service providers they use.” The Trudeau government did not formally redefine horn honking as a terrorist offense but that didn’t impede their crackdown. Banks were authorized to freeze the personal accounts of anyone suspected of donating to the truckers. No court order was necessary to strip suspected COVID dissidents of their property. The government conscripted towing companies to cart away the trucks of the protestors.

Actually, the COVID vaccines were catastrophically failing to prevent infections at the same time Trudeau dropped an iron fist on anti-vax protestors. Almost 90% of Canadian adults had been vaccinated by the start of 2022 but COVID cases were soaring, setting records almost every week. Even though he was vaxxed and boosted, Trudeau himself came down with COVID during the trucker protest.

In January 2024, a Canadian federal judge ruled that Trudeau’s use of the Emergencies Act had been unreasonable, illegal, and unconstitutional. Trudeau’s regulations “criminalized the attendance of every single person at those protests regardless of their actions.”  The judge slammed “the absence of any objective standard” for freezing bank accounts. There was no “threat to the security of Canada” – regardless of Trudeau’s panic about so many Canadians scoffing at his decrees and his majesty. But the court decision provided no relief for any of the victims whose bank accounts were unjustifiably seized or whose freedom and privacy was shredded.

Unless it is overturned, the Nova Scotia ban on hiking, photographing, and dog walking will set a precedent that will ravage far more Canadian freedom. Such policies will create a toxic legal precedents that could prove far more disruptive in this nation than the occasional smoke from Canadian wildfires.