Patrick Meagher
Editor
The great Canadian truck convoy flooded Ottawa with several thousand trucks and tens of thousands of supporters on its first day in the city. It had raised more than $10 million on a Gofundme page in one week. It galvanized and raised the spirits of millions of Canadians. One supporter on Parliament Hill almost cried saying, “I haven’t felt this good in two years.”
It didn’t take long for the convoy to have an explosive effect. Five days after their horns began blaring on Parliament Hill the convoy brought down the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada and people began to realize its strength. Erin O’Toole was criticized for not getting out in front of this national movement. His fellow MPs saw this as the last straw and voted O’Toole out.
Others see the hard-working truckers, and now the many farmers who have joined them, as their last hope for the country. The first weekend was festive and loud. Supporters brought hundreds of home-made signs. Many read, “Thank you truckers.”
By the end of the weekend, mainstream news had accused the truckers of many crimes and all of them were huge distortions from reality. But the worst of it was the trash talking that started at the top. Sounding like a petulant teenager, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau waded so deeply into the gutter that he actually said that the demonstrators were spreading “hateful rhetoric” and accused them of stealing from the homeless. No one who was there believes that.
I have been down there everyday and there is so much food that one trucker’s biggest worry is weight gain. Supporters are grilling pancakes, burgers and hotdogs and handing out chilli, wraps, cupcakes, cookies, chocolate bars and apples. There’s coffee, bottled water and Gatorade. Truckers are even being offered free beer. Walk by at noon on any day and it feels like you’re at a massive picnic. The prime minister’s office is at the epicentre of the truck convoy. If he showed up for work he might notice.
Trudeau also accused the demonstrators of brandishing “swastikas.” The freedom convoy has drawn smiling enthusiastic Canadians and their children and even their pets. There is music and dancing. Sure, there could have been one anti-convoy activist with an unacceptable symbol but painting everyone with the same brush is repulsive. There was one guy with a confederate flag being followed by a CBC camera. He was the only one fully masked and he was called out by those around him and left. He was likely paid. Paid agitators are now common at events opposed by the extreme left.
One person danced on the steps at the memorial of the unknown soldier and was told to get down. But that was enough for the prime minister and news media to douse hate on the thousands of courteous freedom-loving patriotic Canadians pouring into the downtown core to express their gratitude.
Truckers quickly stepped in the next day and created a barricade around the monument with flowers. Strange, how every Canada Day, party goers urinate all around the same monument but they’re called revellers. Strange too that in 2020, Black Lives Matter defaced and pulled down statues of historical significance for eight months and they were called “mostly peaceful.”
The bullshit appeared to reach a crescendo when a CBC commentator suggested that the Russians could be behind the freedom convoy. I’m not sure how you top that one. It is also revolting to see Liberal MPs in the House of Commons blatantly distort what is really happening on the ground.
But as the old saying still goes, when you run out of arguments call your enemy names.
Trudeau isn’t the only leader who looks so shockingly bad. By day three, the protest caught Ontario Premier Doug Ford in such a ridiculous entanglement that he had only himself to blame for looking the fool. Ford told truckers to leave Ottawa because it was now a Monday and the downtown businesses would suffer if they weren’t allowed to open. What hypocrisy. He locked down the province off and on for two years. There are no workers in downtown Ottawa anymore because the civil servants are working from home and many of the restaurants and small businesses were wiped out months ago thanks to his restrictions.
Demonstrations are springing up across the country and more people are getting involved because this is now bigger than the vaccine mandates. People are sick of the lockdown policies that didn’t work and there are numerous studies to prove it. It’s crazy that Trudeau thinks a vaccine mandate was necessary for truckers who self-isolate for a living. He provoked a national protest over something that a grade school student can figure out is plain dumb.
The COVID restrictions have caused the biggest crisis in this country since the Second World War and Trudeau, O’Toole, Ford and others are on the wrong side of this issue. The pandemic is over and people want their lives back.
Digging in his heals on a cause so demonstrably false, Trudeau plainly reveals that he serves an ideology, not the people.
There is another difference between the truckers and Trudeau. The truckers will be regarded as heroes whether they win or lose. Trudeau, win or lose, thanks to his obstinate rhetoric, will still be the loser.
