198: Polite Authoritarianism

Why Canada’s democracy is being dismantled—politely, legally, and with minimal resistance

You don’t need a strongman to have a dictatorship. You just need laws that make resistance impossible.

Canada prides itself on being a democracy defined by civility, consensus, and constitutional order. But in 2025, those very virtues are being used to quietly strip away the foundations of that democracy. Not with jackboots, but with legislation. Not with coups, but with clauses. Not with Trump—but with his legal legacy, politely rebranded for the north.

Two pieces of legislation, Ontario’s Bill C-5 and the federal Bill C-2, reveal the new authoritarianism creeping into Canadian politics. One targets protest. The other targets migration. But both share a deeper goal: suppressing those who threaten the extractive economy that underpins Canadian power.

At the heart of this agenda are Indigenous nations, whose sovereignty, land rights, and sustained resistance represent the most significant challenge to the Canadian state. The criminalization of protest is not an accident—it is a strategy. The border crackdown is not about security—it’s about resource control.

This is polite authoritarianism—where repression is quietly legislated, where colonialism is administered by technocrats, and where democracy is betrayed by the very laws meant to uphold it.

Bill C-5: Silencing the Land Defenders

Ontario’s Bill C-5 expands police powers to remove and arrest protesters near so-called “critical infrastructure.” While the government claims it’s about protecting hospitals and transportation networks, the bill is really aimed at the most consistent and courageous opposition to state authority in Canada: Indigenous land defenders.

From Wet’suwet’en to 1492 Land Back Lane, Indigenous nations have asserted their sovereignty through peaceful, direct action. They’ve blocked roads, railways, pipelines—not out of malice, but to protect their territories from destructive industrial incursions.

Bill C-5 reframes these acts of self-determination as threats to public safety. It doesn’t just target tactics—it targets people. It expands the power of police to act preemptively, using ambiguous legal language to suppress dissent before it even happens.

This isn’t law and order. It’s legal warfare against Indigenous sovereignty.

Bill C-2: Border Control as Resource Management

At the federal level, Bill C-2 intensifies Canada's role in immigration enforcement, increasing surveillance, accelerating deportations, and further militarizing the border.

But the deeper function of C-2 is to manage the flow of labour in an extractive economy that depends on both displacement and control. The same state that criminalizes Indigenous title to land also seeks to control who can live and work on that land. It’s all part of the same settler-colonial logic: secure the territory, manage the bodies, maximize the profits.

Indigenous nations have long warned that climate collapse, migration, and resource extraction are converging into a permanent crisis—and the Canadian state is responding not with justice or repair, but with repression.

From Competitive to Colonial Authoritarianism

Political scientists call it competitive authoritarianism: a system where elections still occur, but the regime erodes democratic legitimacy by silencing dissent and consolidating power. In Canada, we must add a layer: colonial authoritarianism, where the legitimacy of the state has always been contested by Indigenous nations—and where the modern legal system continues to suppress that resistance.

Bill C-5 doesn’t just criminalize protest—it protects settler access to land and infrastructure.
Bill C-2 doesn’t just police borders—it reasserts control over who can challenge the economy’s racialized foundations.

As public trust erodes and social conflict escalates, the state turns not to dialogue, but to law. Not to justice, but to enforcement.

That’s the danger of polite authoritarianism: it appears rational, necessary, even responsible. It presents itself as protecting the peace—while quietly eliminating the possibility of justice.

And once this legal infrastructure is in place, it doesn’t go away. Future governments, more openly aligned with corporate or authoritarian agendas, will inherit it. They’ll use it. They’ll expand it. And they’ll do so with the full legal backing of laws passed in the name of democracy.

The Canadian state is not preparing to resist Trumpism. It is preemptively institutionalizing it.

Indigenous nations have always known that the law does not guarantee justice. Now, the rest of us are learning that lesson—too late, and at great cost.

Bill C-5 and Bill C-2 are not isolated technocratic adjustments. They are pillars in a legal regime built to suppress resistance and consolidate control. Not through spectacle. Not through violence. But through legislation. Through silence. Through smiles.