Protesting the Protesters Who Protest the Protester
Protesting the Protesters who Protest the Protesters
Protesting truckers reached Ottawa, the kilometers-long size of their convoy surpassed only be the size and length of the vitriol and denial coming from politicians, media and pundits. How odd that last year these same truckers were the heroes, driving across the border in the time of Delta, keeping our stores stocked with all that we needed and wanted, while the government was largely shut down so as not to contract Covid. But we’re all in this together, they say. No one asked for passports then, even though there were travel bans to try to keep Covid out of Canada, and the U.S. numbers were frightening as compared to Canada’s.
Now, Delta has been replaced by Omicron, less deadly, and it has spread across Canada and the U.S. equally, it seems. What is the science that we are told to follow, that at this stage in the game, truck drivers returning to Canada from the U.S. must be vaccinated? Consider that a driver within the boundaries of Canada can contract the virus as easily as one in the U.S., so what is gained by this mandate? What is its purpose, if not to continuously extend the claws of government power? Canadian Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos has stated that he sees the day when vaccinations will be mandatory, but “we aren’t quite there yet.” This mandate for truckers is likely meant to be another milestone for him and the government, inching closer to that total, made- in- Canada mandate. However, it has erupted into open conflict. No matter what the truckers want, they are doomed to failure because the government cannot now back down. They no longer function as a democracy, but as a dictatorship, and too many of us cheer them on. And so the government’s calculated strawmen and mis-directional arguments litter the communication highways, more than any waste that might come from the caravan itself, in order to preserve their power grab.
The latest salvo began with the PM’s obscenely caustic and unstatesmanlike pronouncement that the protesting truckers are a fringe group with unacceptable views, and all the right-minded citizenry and media took their direction and ran with it. Truckers are “fringers”, risking our health; they have attracted extremists; they are dangerous and selfish; they need to dial down the rhetoric (says those who are cranking it up). With several thousand kilometers covered, there wasn’t one incident of violence whatsoever. And this “fringe” group attracted thousands of well wishers lining up as they rolled by. They are likely joined in spirit by the 10,000 health care workers who have thus far been laid off or fired this past year because of the mandates. At what point does a group attract enough members for it to no longer be ‘fringe”?
This kind of frontal attack is usually the result of fear; the truckers must have hit a nerve in Ottawa and the establishment who are fine keeping their jobs and every penny they earn, while closing stores -unscientifically- ruining people’s lives and health and adding a staggering debt load that will sink Canada if left unchecked.
But worse than the economic deficit is the deficit of Canadian rights and freedoms: curfews in Quebec, with police roaming the streets and arresting people who took a walk and were too far from their homes; raids on churches for having prayer sessions or operating soup kitchens; locking people in small rooms to die alone, all this while, in two years, not making any serious attempt to expand the viability of our health care system, which has been teetering on the edge for a decade. All known – no conspiracy theories there. But it is much easier to lock everyone down to flatten the curve, then do it again, and then again. And should people find the temerity to complain or object, the government lets loose the verbal goons to disparage them and to turn Canadians against one another: a country in which a majority want to fine or jail their fellow unvaccinated citizens has been skillfully led down this heartless, vindictive path.
Apparently, what is important is not your actual health status, but your vaccination status. And yes, the math shows by far that unvaccinated are much more likely to catch Covid. but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s safer to stand besides a healthy, unvaccinated person than a fully vaccinated person who has Covid. We have conflated vaccine status with actual health status.
The truckers’ freedom slogan should include the power grab by the PM in the early days to dismiss parliament for two years, essentially acquiring dictatorial powers. Failing that, he prorogued parliament for much of the time anyway, calling a useless election to attempt to gain the majority that would have permitted him to do so. When he says that the truckers have “unacceptable views,” we should all remember the Liberal government continues to introduce legislation giving them the power to determine what is unacceptable on the Internet as well as in the course of our daily lives. That is mind control through censorship. That is a major deficit of freedom.
No. I’m not an anti-vaxxer. I got each vaccine as quickly as I could, and I wear masks in public. But I did it out of fear of catching Covid, not from a sense of patriotic duty, which is now the abysmal narrative of all those who did likewise and now reframe their motive to cast themselves as patriotic and those who didn’t get the vaccine, “selfish.”
The latest push is not to permit unvaccinated people to enter LCBO stores and various other places. They are being scapegoated, made into a pariah class as the politicians ratchet up their quest for power And so the real issue is a Canada morphing into the kind of dictatorship that Trudeau seems to admire, while its citizens rush headlong to turn over the keys to their freedom to the government.
This phenomenon will not end with an end with the pandemic. The genie is out of the bottle and power is a hungry beast. There will be another issue, and the power brokers will likewise demand more submission, a further erosion of rights and the need for evermore control. Actually, it’s probably here already, if you want to guess. But that’s another story.