If Trudeau orders the police to drag away the Freedom Convoy he’ll tear Canada apart. By Tara Henley, a former Canadian Broadcasting Corporation producer, writer and podcaster.
The use of the Emergencies Act has poured gasoline on what was already a raging fire.
I fear that Canadians are headed for the sort of volatile, drawn-out, intractable conflict that tears societies apart. The same type of ‘take no prisoners,’ merciless discourse that has transformed America into an endless political battlefield, where opponents can never agree and seemingly nothing is ever resolved. …
Trudeau’s Justice Minister David Lametti justified targeting the finances of supporters of the non-violent Freedom Convoy in Ottawa by equating them to terrorists and criminals.
There is debate on whether the Prime Minister has met the legal standard for invoking this act. Yesterday, Noa Mendelsohn Aviv, executive director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, told me that she believes he has not. She argued that its use bypasses the democratic process and threatens civil liberties. …
When Freedom Convoy protests blocked the Ambassador Bridge, linking Windsor, Ontario and Detroit, Ontario’s premier Doug Ford declared a state of emergency and police cleared the bridge without incident. There was no need to call in extreme measures. …
The bureaucratic left knows only the coercive method of government, not the voluntary persuasion of the market:
In the meantime, there is no escaping the fact that Justin Trudeau’s use of the Emergencies Act has profoundly inflamed tensions. He has demonized non-violent protest and encouraged Canadians to turn against one another.
These tensions will not be bottled up by simply dragging the protesters away. They will only fester if they are not addressed, and, so far, Trudeau has refused to listen. …
So polarizing, even among the virtuals:
As a journalist, I have never seen a news event this polarizing. And as a citizen, I have never seen my country this divided. …
In my immediate circle alone, one person told me they’ve had to stop talking about the truckers with loved ones in order to remain on speaking terms.
Families are being pulled apart, including the Premier of Ontario’s own. Ford said Monday at a news conference that ‘all of this has polarized us in a way that we could never have imagined.’ One of his daughters has publicly supported the protests. Our political class is also divided. …
Now who started this sequence of events?
Starting some months back, Justin Trudeau began using divisive language to describe Canadians who had chosen not to get vaccinated. He said that they were misogynists and racists and science-deniers; he warned that they take up space and wondered aloud if they should be tolerated. In recent weeks, he’s dismissed the truckers as a ‘fringe minority’ who ‘hold unacceptable views,’ and as ‘a few people shouting and waving swastikas.’ He has also denounced the ‘antisemitism, Islamophobia, anti-Black racism, homophobia, and transphobia’ on display.
There is little evidence to back up such allegations. To characterize all of the many people supporting these protests, cheering them on from the sides of highways, and attending mass demonstrations across the country as extremists is inaccurate at best and offensive at worst.
In a heated exchange in Parliament during question period yesterday, the Prime Minister doubled down on such rhetoric, responding to criticism from a Jewish Conservative member, Melissa Lantsman, by accusing her and her party of standing with people who wave swastikas.
Lantsman and the Conservatives demanded an apology. Trudeau refused to take it back.
Some in the media have also adopted Trudeau’s tone. This is not a protest, but an insurrection, a threat to democracy, sedition. This hysterical rhetoric has surfaced on Twitter, too, of course, with breathtaking displays of scorn from members of the press. …
The inability to tolerate, let alone explore and reflect, diversity of viewpoint is deeply troubling. …
The U.S. example has already demonstrated how counterproductive it is to deem part of the population ‘deplorables,’ as Hillary Clinton once labeled half of the supporters of presidential candidate Donald Trump. …
It’s never about the money, but it always is:
During the pandemic, Canada has become a less equal country. Billionaire wealth has increased a staggering 68 percent. Many, many people are struggling to make ends meet.
Public policy around COVID has shielded the laptop class and exposed the working-class, time and time again. As elites have worked comfortably from home, ordering takeout and amassing wealth, the working class has lost savings, housing, businesses, and childcare (with widespread school closures), and has gotten sick with the virus and lost more work, money, and security.
The resentment has been building and building, and now it’s hit a breaking point. …
We must pull back from the brink – starting with our Prime Minister.
Trudeau started it and broke, so he must now back down and apologize. Of course, by stupidly calling his political opponents racists etc etc he crossed the Rubicon and gave himself no wiggle room. But something has to give.
Mr Working-class-hero Trudeau is such a hypocrite. He supported farmers in India who blocked major highways to New Delhi for more than a year in 2021, saying at the time: “Canada will always be there to defend the right of peaceful protest.”
