Canada’s Trudeau to make a difference: Analyst

Press TV has interviewed Anthony Hall, a professor of globalization at Lethbridge University, in Lethbridge, about the Canadian prime minister-elect, Justin Trudeau, vowing to withdraw his country’s CF-18 fighter jets from Syria and Iraq, where a US-led aerial campaign is purportedly hitting Daesh targets.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Looking at Trudeau’s comments, at least it seems there is a stark difference between him and of course the Harper government; but will he be able to deliver?

Hall: Well, he has great pressures on him from the military industrial complex, from the Israeli lobby to continue many of the positions of Canada; but he is going to make a difference.

And in the election campaign that just happened, the issue of Islamophobia came up in spades. Former Prime Minister... outgoing Prime Minister Harper tried to run a campaign using scare tactics, fear of terrorism, fear of Muslims, the niqab became a big issue, we actually had something called the barbaric cultural practices snitch line. There was really a scientific kind of propagandistic effort bringing in Lynton Crosby from Australia to use this hatred towards Muslims – something that has been developed over 14 years since 9/11 – to use this as a tactic to gain more power, to get a new mandate from Canadians; and that failed and Justin Trudeau did step up against that and stood for a Canadian identity, a diverse pluralistic identity where we embrace one another and he is to be commended for facing down that particular challenge.

Now we need some investigation.  He has identified the exploitation of terrorism and the way that Harper manipulated it. We have got to get to the truth now. If he is to identify that, we need an investigation into how Islamophobia has been built up through false flag terrorism, going right back to 9/11, all the false flag events, what is real, what is concocted, what is tort, what is finesse... We have to get beyond this stage of this boogeyman kind of politics and get down to some reality of what are the real threats and what has been concocted through propaganda tactics.

Press TV: Well, that is indeed a very long road ahead; but would you say that the first step will be a review of Bill C-51?

Hall: Well Bill C-51 was kind of the US Patriot Act after the Zehaf-Bibeau incident, the shooting incident in Ottawa; we got this very extravagant police state type of legislation. Trudeau did say he did vote for it and it was not a tension between the NDP and the liberals.

So, Canadians, you know... our work is not done. We are going to have to pressure the new government to live up to the sort of polemic, the higher ideals which Trudeau very well expresses. We cannot... he cannot realize that by instituting Bill C-51 in its present form.

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