KINSELLA: Election 2025 rife with treason accusations from both sides

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Traitor.

The Cambridge dictionary folks define it thusly: “A person who is not loyal or stops being loyal to their own country.”

Anyone who commits high treason is considered a traitor — and it’s a serious charge. It’s still there in Section 46 of our Criminal Code, in fact: Anyone who kills or tries to kill the King, anyone who “levies war against Canada,” anyone who assists an enemy at war with Canada? That’s treason.

The penalty for high treason is life in prison. Up until 1998, high treason could be punishable by death. Louis Riel, the leader of the Metis people, was wrongly executed for treason in 1885. Thomas Scott, a white opponent of Riel, was executed by firing squad in 1870. So was a Canadian citizen, Kanao Inouye, who was born in Kamloops, B.C., and hanged for treason in 1947 in Hong Kong while in British custody. His last words were: “Banzai!”

No one has gone fully “banzai” on their opponent in Election 2025, yet, but you can tell they’re getting close. The winged monkeys who support Pierre Poilievre and Mark Carney have been firing “treason” broadsides at each other for weeks. You know: Carney is a traitor because he worked abroad and allegedly sent Canadian jobs to the United States, while Poilievre is a traitor because he won’t get his security clearance and India (alleged the Globe and Mail on Tuesday) meddled to help him win his party’s leadership.

And, so, Conservative Leo Housakos has been “asking questions about Mark Carney’s loyalty,” as he puts it, online. “Real Change” posted on Twitter that Carney was guilty of treason for his association with the World Economic Forum, a “globalist technocratic forum.” Gotcha.

Said “The Shadow,” an apparent expert in the finer points of law: “By taking direction from an outside group or power, Mark Carney is guilty of TREASON under Commonwealth and Canadian law.” (The all-caps makes it law, in case you’re wondering.)

Team Carney is just as bad. “Matt 33-27-9” declares: “Pierre Poilievre is putting Canada’s National security at risk, and is therefore a chaos agent, colluding with a foreign power, which is Treason.” Catch the capitalization? That makes it way more real.

Someone named “Dawgietreats” opined: “Danielle Smith, the Albertan Premier, is blatantly committing treason in front of our eyes along with Pierre Poilievre by participating in foreign interference with Trump but Conservatives will still try to convince you that it’s in Canada best interest to vote for CPC.”

And so on, and so on. It’s been that kind of an election already.

So, too, say the folks at 996 Advisors, a Canadian firm that tracks reputation risk and data intelligence. And, based on their most-recent findings, there’s not a lot of intelligence to be found so far in Election 2025.

Someone called 996’s work “traitorous,” natch, so the firm dug into the phrase. In a study 996 first shared exclusively with the Sun, 996 wrote: “(There has been) a surge in various uses of the term ‘traitor,’ spiking in mid-2024 amid investigations on foreign interference — signalling a raw anger that’s rewiring our debates and, maybe, our ballots … The data shows a step-change in our use of this inherently aggressive and inflammatory terminology. Is this just election noise? Maybe not. The data shows ‘traitor’ isn’t fading.”

It sure ain’t. The use of the word “traitor” exploded on X (formerly Twitter) in Canada in the summer, being tossed around more than 100,000 times. The treasonous trend continued thereafter, and has been amplified by Donald Trump’s insistence that Canada become the 51st state. Anyone seen as soft on the 51st state issue — ask Wayne Gretzky or Danielle Smith — has been summarily charged with treason.

But so have Liberals. Writes 996: “Mark Carney faces flak for his alleged hand in Brookfield’s HQ shift, juggling multiple passports, and his globe-trotting career.” Hang him now! A firing squad is too good for him!

Justin Trudeau was associated with “traitor” more than any other Canadian politician, 996 found. Smith comes next, followed by Poilievre, then Carney, then the NDP’s Jagmeet Singh. And we mostly know where the super-charged language is coming from, they say.

Notes 996’s CEO Laurel Ostfield: “U.S.-style polarization has crept into Canada’s political language, triggered by genuine concerns of foreign meddling and threats to our sovereignty. Words you would not use in polite Canadian conversation are now the new normal when talking on social media.”

Impolite, yes. Punishable by hanging or firing squad? Well, not yet.

But the election is still in the first week. Give it a few days.

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