How the Canadian Left Waged Inception Against the Public

In Inception, Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is an extractor. With the use of specialized equipment, he can slip into the mind of another individual and steal their secrets.

With a little more work, he can even plant ideas within the minds of his subjects.

The Canadian left has managed just such a feat within the minds of Canadians. But unlike Cobb, who uses a sleep-induction/mind-link machine, the "specialized equipment" of the Canadian left is the state itself.

The Canadian left long ago stumbled upon a subtle means on inception -- quietly installing their agenda as public policy, then allowing the Canadian public to justify it to themselves after the fact.

They accomplished this through a combination of expansion in the size of government and the subversion of civil society in order to meet specific ideological ends.

Barry Cooper refers to this as the "embedded state" - state organs dedicated to increasing the reach and influence of government throughout Canadian life.

Through a variety of QUANGOs -- quasi-autonomous non governmental organizations -- the Canadian left has embedded their own ideology within this embedded state.

They've used Canada's Secretary of State -- a rarely-scrutinized office empowered to disperse funding to civil society organizations -- to accomplish this end.

This began during the Prime Ministerial tenure of Pierre Elliot Trudeau. As Prime Minister, Trudeau directed the Secretary of State to fund and, if necessary, create NGOs.

This had two consequences. It eliminated the need for sivil society organizations to appeal to private citizens for financial support, and allowed the government to make choices that would ideologically benefit the governing party.

A key example is the public funding of pro-abortion organizations while denying funding to their anti-abortion opponents.

The result has been a status quo on abortion where Canada has no abortion law whatsoever. Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada national director Joyce Arthur suggests that groups that plan to change this should not only be denied public funding, but should also be denied the ability to raise funds as charitable organizations, while pro-abortion organizations should be allowed these privileges because their goals are "not political" because they reflect the view of "mainstream Canadians".

But according to a recent poll on the topic of abortion, that mainstream may be much smaller than Arthur believes.

A recent poll concluded that only 21% of Canadians are even aware that Canada has no abortion law.

According to that poll, sampled Canadians believed:

-41% of Canadians believed that abortions are only available within the first trimester.

-15% of Canadians believed that abortions are only available within the first trimester if a woman's life is at risk, if she was raped, or if her unborn child will be born with serious complications.

-10% of Canadians believed that abortions are only permissable if a woman's life is at risk, if she was raped, or if her unborn child will be born with serious complications.

Only 27% of those polled favoured the status quo.

Conversely, Arthur believes that abortion should be formally legalized within Canadian law, but that no restrictions should be placed upon it. She declares that restrictions on abortion would be "unnecessary, cruel, and discriminatory".

Clearly, 73% of Canadians disagree with her -- which would mean that, according to Arthur's bizarre definition of "mainstream" Canada, only 27% of Canadians are within that mainstream.

When polled, Canadians do voice their support for the status quo. The problem is that they don't know what that status quo is.

Arthur further insists that anti-abortion groups cannot justify charitable status based on their educational efforts. She declares them to be deceptive; propaganda. Yet, it seems that the "educational" efforts of groups like the ARCC are a good deal more deceptive.

The National Action Committee on the Status of Women funded many pro-abortion groups who have helped foster this particular rhetorical environment.

It's no wonder that so many Canadians seem to think they share what are actually the ARCC's extremist views on abortion: groups nestled close to the core of Canada's embedded state have spent a long time convincing them that they do.

That the Canadian government has been providing funding to such organizations created an artificial sense of respectability for them -- and considering the iron-fistedly censorious nature of Arthur and the ARCC (they've been involved in efforts to ban anti-abortion groups from University campuses), any respectability afforded is purely artificial.

The Canadian left resorted to these tactics because they must not have known that they couldn't achieve their agenda without monopolizing support from the state.

After 40 years of this kind of subtle manipulation, it's no wonder that the left has managed to convince Canadians that they share their agenda -- even when they apparently aren't fully aware of what that agenda really is.

As Stephen Harper continues to tighten the screws on this kind of ideological self-indulgence, Canada's left will have to begin to find its own resources, and start forging its own reputation as opposed to piggy-backing their message on the back of the government.