Canada could have been heading for another election. On the night of June 4, the 45th Parliament had the opportunity to take down the government of Prime Minister Mark Carney. They had the votes, but they lacked the courage.

Following any throne speech, the government must pass a motion in Parliament that approves it. A throne speech motion is a confidence motion; meaning that if it doesn’t pass, the prime minister must resign and an election held because he does not have the confidence of the House of Commons, which represents the will of the people.

As we reported at the Trumpet, the throne speech outlined radical and dangerous policies of the Carney government, including joining Europe’s rearmament program, aggressively pivoting away from America, and claiming French culture is the foundation of Canada. But the Conservatives, New Democrats and Bloc Québécois only weakly protested a lack of detail in economic policy. They did not support the speech but for all the wrong reasons.

Even with these weak protests, they had the votes to bring down the government. But instead of seizing the opportunity, they gave Carney a free pass. According to iPolitics: “The amended Liberal motion responding to the throne speech was carried on division, meaning the votes of individual M.P.s [members of Parliament] were not tallied, but the parties collectively agreed that it would be passed.”

Since becoming prime minister, Carney has displayed contempt for Parliament and Canada’s democratic institutions. He has broken nearly every convention of Westminster democracy. Not only has he promised to continue Justin Trudeau’s dystopian agenda, he is promising historic changes to spending and foreign policy. Carney is attempting to enact these historic measures without oversight, debate or opposition from Parliament. Instead of fighting for its historic right to defend Canada from oppressive governments, this Parliament is silently and shamefully surrendering to tyranny.

The 45th Parliament of Canada is actually fulfilling Bible prophecy.

“For, behold, the Lord, the Lord of hosts, doth take away from Jerusalem and from Judah the stay and the staff, the whole stay of bread, and the whole stay of water, The mighty man, and the man of war, the judge, and the prophet, and the prudent, and the ancient, The captain of fifty, and the honourable man, and the counsellor, and the cunning artificer, and the eloquent orator. And I will give children to be their princes, and babes shall rule over them” (Isaiah 3:1-4).

God forecast that in these perilous days just before Jesus Christ’s Second Coming (2 Timothy 3:1), there would be a complete collapse of strong leadership. There would be no courageous leaders, no skilled statesmen, no wise judges, no eloquent speakers. Instead we would have weak, immature, childish rulers. That is the perfect description of Canada’s Parliament.

It is a sad truth that Parliament has always woefully lacked statecraft. Many of our mediocre national outcomes have been because of mediocre leaders. We have had only a handful of ambitious and skilled prime ministers; most of our effective leaders were not trying to build the country but transform it.

As we tip toward dictatorship, we have “children” in the House of Commons. This is reminiscent of the crisis in leadership Britain faced in the 1930s, as Sir Winston Churchill remarked at the dedication of a monument to the late T. E. Lawrence: “In these days, dangers and difficulties gather upon Britain and her Empire, and we are also conscious of a lack of outstanding figures with which to overcome them.”

The men and women of this Parliament will rue the day they failed to stop a lawless, corrupt, tyrannical government.

It is clear that the institutions of Canadian democracy are dying a slow and painful death. In Canada’s version of the Westminster system, Parliament is a multipurpose instrument that 1) reflects the will of the people, 2) provides the means for the executive branch to run the country, and 3) is the primary check and balance to the executive. Parliament was shaped over centuries of battling tyranny, and its rights were won by the sacrifices of our ancestors. Yet over the past 50 years, the rights of Parliament have slowly been surrendered.

Canada is supposed to operate on the principle of parliamentary supremacy, not executive supremacy or judicial supremacy. But today the executive and judicial branches have amassed an unconstitutional amount of power and authority.

This shift began during the premiership of Pierre Trudeau. The Charter of Rights and Freedom shifted power from Parliament to the Supreme Court of Canada (scc), without resolving the parliamentary supremacy question and without defining the limits of the scc. Now a radical-left scc can overrule Parliament and even tell Parliament what laws to make! But who appoints the members of the scc and federal courts? The governor in Council, also known as the prime minister.

The elder Trudeau, with the help of top civil servant Michael Pitfield, began to alter procedures in Parliament to give the ruling party more power and less accountability. They also began centralizing control in the prime minister’s office (pmo) away from the ministerial departments. This meant the civil service was in the pocket of the pmo. These actions gave the prime minister vast power without any legal or conventional restraints. (Canada’s Constitution does not precisely outline the limits of the executive branch—it relies on unwritten conventions.)

At the same time, Trudeau began introducing “Henry viii clauses” in legislation: making the statutes and law so vague and undefined that the precision would be decided by bureaucrats after being passed in Parliament.

All these trends have eroded Parliament’s rights and authority. Journalist and author Glenn Simpson remarked in 1995 that Canada was “the friendly dictatorship” because the prime minister has dictatorial powers but doesn’t use them. When Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act, it exposed the harsh, authoritarian nature of our government. Mark Carney is another example of when the dictatorship becomes unfriendly.

Following Parliament’s surrender on June 4, Carney unleashed a wave of tyrannical legislation.

• C-2, Strong Borders Act
  • Government can access confidential information without warrant
  • Government can monitor online communications without warrant
  • Mail can be opened if reasonable suspicion of illegality
  • Extremely constrictive rules on charities
• C-4, Making Life More Affordable for Canadians Act
  • Hidden provision to make federal political parties exempt from provincial privacy laws
• C-5, One Canadian Economy Act
  • Grants federal government more powers over natural resources and national projects

“One thing we know about Mr. Carney, then, is that he is not overly vexed about deficits. Neither does he seem particularly attached to principle,” wrote Andrew Coyne at the Globe and Mail. “Certainly that seems to be the gist of his early legislative agenda, with an admixture of cynicism and contempt for Parliament. The three major government bills introduced so far … are noteworthy, not only for their conservative tilt but for combining in one bill manifestly different pieces of legislation, with different objectives and different impacts: the dreaded ‘omnibus bills’ that Liberals used to oppose.” He continued:

As with the other bills, members of Parliament will be forced to vote on the whole package, up or down, as if it were one bill with a single purpose, rather than an ungainly mishmash of different pieces of legislation, some of which they might support but much of which they might oppose. In each case it amounts to an abuse of power, which no amount of urgent-sounding rhetoric (“the largest transformation of the Canadian economy since the Second World War”) can paper over.

The substance of the bills is in many places as objectionable as the process.

The method and content of this legislation is disturbing. Now it will come down to a battle in the committees. But Parliament does not inspire a great deal of confidence; it has not been able to stop this slide to dictatorship for 50 years.

Carney has appointed Michael Sabia as clerk to the Privy Council, the most powerful civil servant in the country. Sabia has extensive experience in the private and public sectors, and he is the perfect wingman for Carney. Sabia was a top-ranking civil servant in the Finance Ministry when Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act, and he helped freeze the bank accounts of Canadians. During the Emergencies Act Commission, he testified that he saw the truckers as domestic terrorists. He is married to Hilary Pearson, Liberal royalty, the granddaughter of late Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson. With Sabia in charge, the radicalization of the civil service will continue.

The outstanding characteristic of this Parliament is summed up in the last half of Isaiah 3:12: “… O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths.”

Through weakness, radicalism and cowardice, Canada has been led down the road to destruction. Over the past 50 years, Canada’s top lawmaking body has legalized lawlessness against the laws of God!

It can be difficult not to have disdain for the elected officials presiding over our national demise. But we have Isaiah 3 leaders because we are an Isaiah 3 nation.

Isaiah 3 is primarily a prophecy about family breakdown. The traditional family in Canada has been rapidly dismantled. In the March 2009 Trumpet issue, Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry wrote:

In Isaiah 3, the ancient prophet warned that family breakdown would be a defining feature in America and Britain before the return of Christ. … “And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbour …” [verse 5].

God said strong leaders, including strong fathers, would be a rarity, and that children and teenagers would rule the family and dominate the culture. Does that sound like society in America and Britain today?

“[T]he child shall behave himself proudly against the ancient, and the base against the honourable” (verse 5). Look around! Is there any doubt children and teenagers rule over the adults and dominate society and culture?

“As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths” (verse 12). It’s a lesson of history: A nation’s success or failure hinges on the strength or weakness of its families.

Broken families lead to a broken nation and to broken leadership. Isaiah 3 is a clear rebuke from God against the state of our nation!

While the Bible identifies our sins, it also reveals the solution. We must learn the lesson that we cannot trust in man, but we can always trust the living God (Jeremiah 17:5, 7). While man’s societies crumble, God is working to build an everlasting kingdom of peace and prosperity. At the heart of this message is family! God is a Family, and this spiritual family will raise perfect leaders who can help Jesus Christ lead the world into the real golden age! That is the vision behind the warning in Isaiah 3.

To learn more about this transcendent vision, read Isaiah’s End Time Vision.