Canada's Freedom Convoy Embodies Fatigue with Pandemic AuthoritarianismCOVID-19 policies eroded liberty and many people want it back.
By J.D. Tuccille
February 14, 2022
Canada appears to be governed as you would expect of Wisconsin if California's snotty political class were exiled to Madison. This puts generally nice, compliant people under the rule of an especially self-regarding and contemptuous gang. But some Canadians have been driven to revolt against that ruling class's pandemic policies in the form of the trucker-led Freedom Convoy. So powerful are the shock waves of this unprecedented uprising that they crossed the border and flipped the positions Americans of the left and right take on the legitimacy of political protest and suppression of the same. More importantly, the movement cautions the political class everywhere against pushing people too far.
As the Freedom Convoy arrived to fill the streets of Ottawa, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau focused, as politicians often do, on those few protesters who inevitably engage in bad behavior.
"We won't give in to those who fly racist flags. We won't cave to those who engage in vandalism….There is no place in our country for threats, violence or hatred," Trudeau huffed.
Others tried to wave away the sentiments of convoy participants.
"To the extent that the convoy is anti-vax and anti-science, it is on the margins of Canadian society," Professor Andrew McDougall, assistant professor of political science at the University of Toronto, told The New York Times. "It is not the beginning of a movement but the most extreme manifestation we have seen of frustration about pandemic restrictions."
But "to the extent" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. People who actually talked to protesters found a range of opinions, not especially hateful, and all related to fatigue with intrusive pandemic policies.
"I have spoken to close to 100 protesters, truckers and other folks, and not one of them sounded like an insurrectionist, white supremacist, racist or misogynist," Ottawa-based Rupa Subramanya wrote February 10 for Bari Weiss's Common Sense. "Ostensibly, the truckers are against a new rule mandating that, when they re-enter Canada from the United States, they have to be vaccinated. But that's not really it.…so it's about something else. Or many things: a sense that things will never go back to normal, a sense that they are being ganged up on by the government, the media, Big Tech, Big Pharma."
That "sense that they are being ganged up on" has a credible basis. While Canada's pandemic response varies at the provincial level just as most of the American response is determined by states, Canada has generally been more restrictive than its neighbor. You'll hear that those policies are relatively popular, and polls say they are—except among those who hate them.
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Source:
https://reason.com/2022/02/14/canadas-freedom-convoy-embodies-fatigue-with-pandemic-authoritarianism/
