They’ve Won

 

Whether we want to admit it or not, the truckers and their supporters have won.  We, the rest of the country, have lost.  I’m, off course, referring to the protest in Ottawa, Windsor and Coutts and now spreading around the world.  As we are about to enter the third weekend of the protest, we seem to have given up on any attempt to end these demonstrations which, given some of the demands of the protesters, can rightfully be called an insurrection. The protesters have won the media attention, the social media and the discussion since nobody seems to be challenging them.

Politicians at all levels claim there is nothing they can do, except of course the premiers of Alberta and Saskatchewan who have given in the protesters’ demands to end vaccine restrictions.  Police forces say they can do nothing (public safety of course although who’s safety I’m not too sure about).  Nobody will call in the military (it’s not Canadian, you know). Surely Military Police personnel, who are qualified as peace officers, could help bolster what the Ottawa Police Chief says are insufficient resources. And do you think that one of the Army’s tank recovery vehicles, which can move a 60-ton Leopard tank, could move a transport truck?

Some commentators have stated that this protest is nothing like the events of January 6^th, 2021.  Actually, they’re worse.  Quick action by the authorities in Washington quelled that event in one day and they have followed up with charges, arrests, and convictions.  Canada has let this drag on three weeks with no action in sight. What if we had responded quickly and decisively that first weekend in Ottawa?  It has been done in Canada . . . in 1970 during the Quebec crisis when the present Prime Minister’s own father took decisive action and probably saved Quebec and the rest of Canada from much more trouble.

And now it has become international, but only in democratic countries.  Dictatorships know how they would deal with this situation.  And we’ve picked up a lot of famous, or infamous, supporters.  There are the Canadian Conservative politicians such as Pierre Poilievre who seems to hope that this will propel him into the leadership of his party.  Although even he has backed off a bit in the last couple of days asking the protesters to please go home.  As if?

And of course, there is Donald Trump, the world’s best-known ship-disturber.  He is just rubbing his hands with glee hoping Canada collapses no doubt and having another excuse to insult Justin Trudeau.  Imagine if he had still been in power in Washington.

They call it the freedom convoy.  What is the freedom they seek?  Nobody’s freedom has been taken away.  No one demands that anyone gets a vaccine.  There are no legal requirements to get a vaccine.  However, as with any decision, there are consequences.  You are not, and never have been, free to do harm to others either by terrorizing a city or spreading the virus.  You are not free to cross the US border without limitations if you are not vaccinated and unwilling to undergo a quarantine. Even the US will not let you in now.  The protesters want freedom without responsibility.  “I want what I want, but I am not willing to give anything in return” could well be their motto.

“Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.”
  - George Bernard Shaw

These people are being inconvenienced not oppressed.

“Inconvenience and oppression are not one in the same.”

Patti Christie (in response to my last blog)

However, as I stated above, no matter how you view it, the protesters have won, and that is not good for Canada or any other country infected.

Protests

 

I’m certainly happy I don’t live in Ottawa today.  There is a protest going on downtown there as you all probably know.  As with most protests, there does not seem to be any consensus about what the actual message from the protest really is.  In support of the truckers in Ottawa there are also protests across the country, also seemingly with mixed messages.  In my new city of Peterborough, Ontario, I saw a group of protesters downtown on Saturday.  Actually, it looked like two protests, one across the street from the other.  On one side of the street, I saw about 20 protesters holding signs which read “Save our Children” (from what was never stated) and on the other side was another 20 seeming to be in support of the truckers in Ottawa. 

Of course, protests are nothing new. They are probably as old as the beginning of the organization of humans.  Children protesting against their elders cannot be a new phenomenon.  There were protests in ancient Greece and Rome.  Some of them got down-right bloody and some even resulted in civil wars.  But most of them were very local.  Why? No rapid communication.  It was hard to organize a spontaneous demonstration when it took a week to travel from one side of a country to the other. 

Every civil war starts as a protest.  Very few protests achieve their stated purpose. Even protests that seem to achieve their purpose such as deposing a leader usually ends up with a leadership that the protesters did not want.  How many protests begin with a cry for democracy and end up with a brutal dictatorship?  Just ask many of the countries in Africa and Middle East.  Even the infamous 6^th of January 2021 protest in Washington failed, spectacularly.

Now we have instant communications.  No sooner had the truckers in British Columbia announced their intentions to form a convoy to Ottawa than truckers from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick decided to join them.   And every step of the way was covered by the media.  I bet Wat Tyler (a leader of the Peasants Revolt in England in 1381) wished he had had such coverage.  But that seems to be the aim of many protests, to attract media attention; to create false heroes; to make outrageous demands.  What started out as an anti-vaccine mandate protest has now turned out to be a demand for a change of government, even a for a government run by the protesters themselves.  The word most heard is “freedom”.

But freedom is not, and never has been, absolute.  Freedom is restricted by customs, religious rules, and laws.  Even our Charter of Rights and Freedoms is not absolute.  They seem to want freedom for themselves, but not freedom for others to remain healthy.  If there was absolute freedom, I could take one of their trucks or attack a protester without recourse. 

It’s kind of funny to see a large protest in Canada in the middle of winter.  Spring and summer are usually the favoured seasons.  You get more people out then, protesters and spectators alike.  I used to work on the 11^th floor of an office building in Ottawa on Laurier Avenue at the corner of Elgin Street.  From my office, I could see all the way down to the Parliament buildings.  It was quite common to see groups of protesters marching on Elgin to or away from Parliament Hill carrying their flags and signs.  They, like so many protests, never seemed to achieve anything.

Protest for protest’s sake.