Canada's trucker vaccine rule is making freight and fruit pricier - "New rules requiring truckers to show proof of vaccination when crossing the Canada-U.S. border are cutting into shipping capacity and boosting the cost of hauling everything from broccoli to tomatoes. The cost of transporting produce out of California and Arizona to Canada jumped 25 per cent last week as fewer trucks are available to cross the border, according to George Pitsikoulis, president and chief executive officer of Montreal-based distributor Canadawide Fruits. "The lower the supply, the higher the price. Ultimately it’s the consumer that pays for this”... Canada implemented new rules on Jan. 15 that require border agents to turn away unvaccinated U.S. truckers, a move industry executives warned could slow down supply chains that are already under stress. Canadian truckers who can’t show proof of vaccination will be required to quarantine when they re-enter the country from the U.S... Shipping is expected to get disrupted in both directions, with the U.S. set to impose its own vaccine mandate on foreign travelers on Jan. 22. Only 50 per cent to 60 per cent of U.S. truckers are vaccinated, according to an estimate from the American Trucking Associations... Those costs have to be passed on to customers... Canadian importers rely on trucks to transport fruit that arrives from South America to ports in the northeastern U.S. A shortage of global containers and truck drivers is already causing shipping delays of as long as two weeks and having fewer available truckers will likely make things worse, said Larry Davidson, president of North American Produce Buyers Ltd. in Toronto."
When covid hysteria means you shoot yourself in the foot. Of course, you can just blame "anti-vaxxers" and lots of credulous people will believe you
Trucker vaccine mandates hit Canadian food supply chain as US reciprocates - "Food, Health and Consumer Products of Canada (FHCP)... members reported a 17% increase in costs as a result of supply chain constraints... Sylvain Charlebois, a professor in food distribution and policy at the Faculties of Management and Agriculture at Dalhousie University in Halifax, said the winter weather has also played a part in supply chain disruptions and pushing up costs. He pointed to some reports suggesting “getting a truck to cover the Canadian market is 25% more expensive compared to just a few days ago”."
COVID-19 vaccine mandates will worsen trucker shortage, affecting consumers, experts say - The Globe and Mail - "Consumers should expect fewer choices on grocery-store shelves in the coming months, industry experts say, as the shortage of truckers worsens amid cross-border vaccine mandates. Even before the surge of Omicron cases, the trucking industry was facing one of the highest job-vacancy rates in Canada, with almost 23,000 driver positions unfilled as of the late summer. This is an increase of 8,000 since the beginning of 2021... Consumers and producers began stocking up on goods at the same time as a key labour pool for trucking companies – immigrants – faced delays in arriving in the country. In addition, consumers, stuck with closed movie theatres, sports arenas and restaurants, spent more money online and drove demand for the boats, trains and trucks that deliver their packages. At Eassons, last year’s 30-per-cent turnover in drivers has worsened to 50 per cent."
EDITORIAL: Trucker ban may do more harm than good | Toronto Sun - "As Dr. Sylvain Charlebois — senior director of the agri-food analytics lab and a professor in food distribution and policy at Dalhousie University — warned in the Sun last week, “this is the first public health measure with the potential to disrupt trade between Canada and the United States since the pandemic started.” About two-thirds of the $650 billion in Canada-U.S. trade annually is delivered by trucks... “Much of the volume comes during the winter months when produce from the southern states offers welcome supplies to Canadian consumers. Stopping some of that business could exacerbate the driver shortage the industry is already experiencing and could drive up retail prices even further in the weeks to come.”"
FIRST READING: The giant trucker protest Ottawa is strenuously ignoring - "So there’s a pretty substantial truck-based protest movement sweeping the country right now . Freedom Convoy 2022 is composed of hundreds of semi-trucks setting out from cities across Canada with the goal of converging in Ottawa in order to protest vaccine mandates... Truck Convoy supporters would be correct in their contention that the protest isn’t attracting nearly as much official attention compared to prior protests that have been numerically much smaller , such as the pro-Wet’suwet’en blockades that dominated the national discourse in early 2020. Only on Monday did the convoy first receive acknowledgement from major party leaders. Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole dodged a question on the convoy, while Prime Minister Justin Trudeau obliquely mentioned the protests while accusing Conservatives of “fear mongering” by linking trucker vaccine mandates to supply chain disruptions. Actually, one of the only major organizations to comment on the protest has been the Canadian Trucking Alliance, who denounced it . The CTA – which previously opposed vaccine mandates on truckers – is now advising truckers to comply and “strongly disapproves” of protests to the contrary... So what does the convoy want? According to its GoFundMe, they want Ottawa to “cease all mandates”; no vaccine passports, no COVID strictures at the border and a definite end to Ottawa’s new vaccinate mandate on cross-border truckers. But as with any big-tent protest movement, it’s attracted some fringier views."
Trudeau doesn't listen to the experts when they say trucker vaccine mandates will disrupt supply chains
Rex Murphy: Truckers are the proxy protesters for a lot of angry Canadians - "Most protests are way past tired. Same core folks; same lame chants. Ugly signs. And what they are pleased to call tactics, same there. Block a city intersection close to downtown media outlets. Have two or three glue themselves to something. Go “dead” when the police have to drag you away. This was boring even in the ’60s... A true protest, one that’s grounded in actual circumstances, that arises from long-term government overreach — grave impingement on the freedoms of a majority of citizens — one that emerges from discontent long discounted and ignored, built around the cardinal idea of pursuing a legitimate livelihood, well, that’s rare. That’s what we’re seeing with the truckers. There was a protest movement like this in France a couple of years ago. The so-called “yellow-vests” demonstrations came in response to a rise in fuel prices that hit the working class very hard. You know a real protest when it seems to spring up with something close to spontaneity and with tremendous suddenness enlists hundreds of thousands, even millions. It may spring from a single incident or a single policy, but inevitably grows beyond the original trigger event to a large-scale, powerful manifestation of deep discontent with how people feel they are being governed. Discontent with authority may slumber for a very long while. Resentment over the hypocrisies of officials and politicians can daily wear at the patience of citizens. Disruption in the ordinary daily life of people may be sullenly tolerated over a protracted period. Most people, as we say, will “put up with a lot,” but the time will come when even the most tranquil of citizens will say “no more!”... In the early days of COVID, truckers were being sung as heroes. That melody has ceased. It should be restarted."
WARMINGTON: 'Freedom' truckers may form world's longest convoy | Toronto Sun - "According to Guinness World Records, the longest truck convoy ever recorded was 7.5 km long, in Egypt in 2020. The Freedom Convoy heading from British Columbia to Ottawa is said to be considerably longer. “It’s 70 km long,” said Benjamin Dichter, spokesman for the Freedom Convoy 2022. “I have seen footage from an airplane. It’s impressive.”... Plans call for the convoy to arrive in Ottawa on Saturday for a protest. If it gets there on time — and if the convoy holds together as it has in British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan — it could be 10 times larger than the world record... There are estimates the Canadian convoy could comprise 50,000 trucks from the West, East, and even from the United States... Thousands of Canadians have lined the route, cheered from overpasses and offered to feed drivers in their homes and restaurants. It’s a grassroots demonstration that has become far bigger than anything organizers had envisioned. With that comes problems. Media reports said a GoFundMe campaign for the convoy, which had surpassed $5 million by Wednesday morning, had been frozen by GoFundMe... Dichter said he and Lich are the only two speaking on behalf of the Freedom Convoy. So when social media posts talk of insurrection or violence, he added, it will be clear such agitators or saboteurs are not involved in organizing their “peaceful” and “law-abiding” demonstration. The protest, Dichter said, is about lifting vaccine mandates for truckers at the Canada-U.S. border and other issues relating to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, including forcing drivers to wear masks in trucks. For the public, the convoy has become a beacon of hope that overreaching COVID-19 lockdowns, restrictions and mandates will soon come to an end. However, the Liberal government is standing firm."
John Robson: Justin Trudeau the supreme divider of Canadians - "When Barack Obama was elected it was truly historic. Plus after eight years people were fed up with George Bush failing as “a uniter, not a divider.” But after eight years of “Hope and change,” Americans elected Donald Trump, and we’ve never had a mea culpa that just possibly Obama’s condescending attitude had a polarizing effect. Then there’s Justin Trudeau. Ostensibly he’s all about sunny ways, sexy smiles and bringing us together. But watch him in action and something’s not right. Lyndon Johnson, no stranger to hardball politics, was fond of saying “Come now, and let us reason together” and sometimes he even meant it. Whereas Trudeau recently declared the vaccine-hesitant racist and misogynist without even checking whether they were angry old white men. He just reflexively invoked a mean-spirited stereotype. It turns out vaccine skepticism is more common among non-whites. Of course they could still be racist, but there’s a subject for another day. Or maybe not, because Monday I got one of those vapid PMO statements about commemorating something nobody heard of, “World Day for African and Afrodescendant Culture”... Trudeau is in fact a bully. Remember him elbowing his way through some MPs when he didn’t get his way? I think he got away with it partly because it seemed so out of character people had trouble processing it. But I’m not sure Trudeau really gets away with his ethical lapses and ruthless responses to criticism, including somehow tossing Jody Wilson-Raybould under the bus... I presumably don’t have to remind readers that I was an anti-Trumper before he was even a candidate and have never wavered in my insistence that he was morally and mentally unfit for the office. But I have also maintained that for the other party to spend half its time promoting lunatic causes like defund the police and the other half sneering at MAGA deplorables has made things worse not better. Now consider Trudeau’s knee-jerk reaction to this truckers’ freedom convoy. It’s the only kind of reaction he has. And it was vindictive and shallowly partisan. “I regret that the Conservative Party and conservative politicians are fearmongering to Canadians about the supply chain, but the reality is that vaccination is how we’re going to get through this.” So yes, he reached out. With a wedge in one hand and a sledgehammer in the other. Never mind “I see where you’re coming from, but please consider this alternative.” This convoy appears to me to reflect a great deal of legitimate anger and frustration at our pandemic responses, including the casual trampling of what we thought were our rights and freedoms. But as I’ve said about supporting Trump, the fact that people are asking important questions does not mean they have found sensible answers. So we should be having a conversation."
GUNTER: Roll on, Freedom Convoy | Toronto Sun - "Is there a scientific basis for the government’s order? No. When pressed last week for any evidence that truckers had been bringing COVID into Canada during the past two years along with their loads of lettuce, electrical switches and car parts, a government spokesperson was at a lost to name even one case in which a trucker had infected so much as a single worker at a fast food stop along his route. Truckers are not 18-wheeled super spreaders. Trudeau’s vaccine mandate is pure politics. He merely wants to look as though he is taking a tough stand to protect Canadians from COVID. Even if only out of sheer gratitude, Trudeau should leave long-haul drivers alone... All last week and this, provincial health officials have been announcing that they are transitioning from pandemic mode to endemic mode... In many provinces testing is being scaled back along with contact tracing. If you suspect you have COVID, isolate at home. Don’t go to hospital unless you develop symptoms you consider threatening. It truly is the new flu. Infections rate are dropping quickly. Soon, I suspect, capacity restrictions will be lifted at sporting, social and religious events. Restaurants will reopen, along with gyms. (In Alberta they never closed for Omicron.) There will be walk-in appointments at nail and hair salons, again. Many people will return to their offices. Eventually, we will be allowed to stop wearing the damned masks. Over the weekend, even Dr. Howard Njoo, Dr. Theresa Tam’s deputy chief at the Public Health Agency of Canada, recommended against mandatory vaccination. Vaccines are vital, but it’s just not done in a free country to force people to get injections under threat of jail or hefty fines or loss of jobs."
Since the vaccines don't even prevent infection or transmission...
FIRST READING: Have a bunch of truckers became Canada's most powerful protest movement? - "A recent drone video showed lines of trucks long enough to bisect Downtown Vancouver.
Aerial footage taken by a supporter somewhere in the Prairies showed a line of trucks literally stretching as far as the eye could see.
In Okotoks, Alta., it took about 30 minutes for the convoy to fully pass.
In just 24 hours, the GoFundMe for the convoy has surged more than $1 million to hit $4.6 million. And that’s largely being driven by small donations of $50 or $100. The largest single donation, in fact, is just $11,000, which came in from a donor identified as MGV Concrete Finishing... some conservative legislators have begun to throw in their lot with the truckers... Roman Baber – an Ontario MPP who was kicked out of the Doug Ford government for his opposition to COVID lockdowns – opined Tuesday that there are going to be more in the coming days as “politicians can tell where the wind is blowing.”"
Trucker convoy opposed to COVID-19 vaccine mandates gets big greeting in Winnipeg - The Globe and Mail - "The convoy, which started in British Columbia, has grown as it rolls east. There were about 1,200 trucks and other vehicles by the time it reached Regina on Monday night, police in the Saskatchewan capital said... A Calgary woman, who would only give her name as Delores, said the convoy is more than a protest against vaccine mandates for truckers. She said it’s also about an “us versus them” mentality that she believes applies to the vaccinated and unvaccinated."
WARMINGTON: Trucker convoy took two hours to roll through town | Toronto Sun - " “Many people lined the streets to support them,” said Finlayson. One man in the convoy said it’s so large, people will be shocked... Hotels in Ottawa say they are running out of rooms as the capital braces for a huge onslaught of demonstrators. Time will tell what actually does happen, but after talking to people en route, it could be massive... In Canada, much of the coverage has been focused on potential racist participants or the fear of a Jan. 6-style insurrection. Federal Transport Minister Omar Alghabra told The Canadian Press of worrying “about the small number of far-right, vocal opposition that is polluting” the political discourse this winter — describing it as “something that we all need to be aware of, we all need to call out.” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has called the unvaccinated “racist” and “misogynists” — despite coming under fire in the past for his treatment of women in his cabinet and, as a younger man, appearing in blackface. On Wednesday, Trudeau called convoy participants a “small fringe minority of people who are on their way to Ottawa … holding unacceptable views that they are expressing” and that they “do not represent the views of Canadians.” But the tens of thousands supporting this grassroots pilgrimage seem to be unfazed by this predictable pushback. Anybody looking for proof just needs to look at the size of the convoy. The convoy has more than 600,000 Facebook followers and a GoFundMe has raised more than $5.6 million — from more than 72,000 contributors — for the cause. This organic phenomenon is being led by independent truckers who have been beaten up in recent years over many issues, including carbon taxes, before being told they had to be vaccinated to make a living. Even though the government has said it will not budge, this should be an interesting weekend with thousands of truckers and good Canadian patriots saying they will lawfully and peacefully get their message out"
Freedom Convoy plans to gridlock Ottawa until all vaccine mandates repealed - ""This is not about the vaccine, by the way. There’s nobody in here that’ll tell you it’s about vaccines on this entire convoy. We’ve got double jabbed, we’ve got single jabbed, we’ve got no jabbed, we’ve got the boosted,” said James Bauder, founder of the Canada Unity Foundation, one of the groups that is organizing the “Freedom Convoy 2022.” “It’s not about the vaccine. It’s about the mandate…. We’re done with mandates.”... organizers have arranged speakers — including politicians, truckers and Indigenous elders — and a stage will be set up in an undisclosed park on Monday. There will be events every day until the convoy receives an answer from the government... Ottawa police said that the Freedom Convoy had so far been peaceful and cooperative with police and city officials in other jurisdictions... Tamara Lich, who organized the GoFundMe campaign that has raised more than $5.5 million, said in a recent Facebook video that convoy participants should report anyone who is “misbehaving, acting aggressively in any way or inciting any type of violence or hatred,” to the police."
Which poll on support for trucker vaccine mandates do you believe? | Toronto Sun - "As the Freedom Convoy 2022 rolls toward Ottawa, a national poll reveals “only one-in-three Canadian’s fully support allowing unvaccinated truckers to cross the US/Canada border.” A “national survey,” posted Thursday by Maru Public Opinion, indicates just “28%” are for truckers crossing border “without any difficulty in order to deliver food, goods, and other materials to a variety of Canadian destinations.”... But unlike with most polls, this time there is something to compare it to. For example, while highly-respected Maru’s survey, put out by the company and not paid for by a sponsor, said it polled 1,500 people across the country, a GoFundMe page posted this month has raised more than $6.2 million from more than 80,000 donors. And a Freedom Convoy 2022 Facebook page — Convoy to Ottawa 2022 — has more than 700,000 followers. Not exactly a “small fringe” group of people, as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau claimed... Wright suggests 80,000 “people donating almost $6 million to the cause on GoFundMe, or more than 600,000 signing up on Facebook in support, are a tangible subset of the roughly 3 in 10 Canadians who are angry and frustrated with many aspects of how the pandemic has affected them.” That said, Wright observed while “the Prime Minister has tried to vilify this group as a fringe … it does little to acknowledge the frustration people have and calm things down.” Wright also mused “if the 28% in the poll is representative of an intolerant fringe, then I would remind him that the latest polling numbers I can see for his own party have him at 28% as well.” Trudeau’s harsh words toward this group, and the scrutiny the media has put it under, outweighs vetting other polls typically get. Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre dealt with that double standard Thursday as he asked reporters “when was the last time the press gallery went through the social media posts of every single person attending a left-wing protest to find and report every crazy comment made” while saying it’s wrong to “disparage the thousands of hard-working, law-abiding and peaceful truckers, who quite frankly have kept all of you alive.” Some professional polls may show low support for the convoy, but tens of thousands of Canadians, who put their money where their mouths are, may disagree."
Support for Freedom Convoy heats up despite Trudeau's chill | Toronto Sun - "Thousands of people took to the highway Thursday from Niagara to Hamilton to Milton to Port Hope and throughout the GTA to offer their backing for a convoy of truckers who hope to send a message loud and clear that not only are they vital to Canada’s supply chain, they are entitled to choose for themselves what medicine they put in their bodies... The support for the truckers is not just local. Billionaire Elon Musk, the richest person in the world, got into the action by tweeting “Canadian truckers rule”... Lampooning Trudeau’s last-minute declaration that he was exposed to COVID-19 and will isolate for five days, American comedian Rob Schneider took to twitter and teased: “Generalissimo Trudump has (conveniently) contracted the truckers-are-coming-for-me variant! Official statement should read ‘Staying Safe avoiding any vehicles with more than 17 wheels!’”"
Auron MacIntyre on Twitter - "Citing its powers under the COVID state of emergency beginning March 2020, the government of Nova Scotia, Canada, has declared it illegal to:
•Finance, organize, aid, or participate in a truck convoy
•Line the roadside in support of a truck convoy
Violators face $10,000 fines."
"Democracy is so sacred you must ban workers from protesting lest they endanger your delicate system of popular sovereignty"
Keean Bexte on Twitter - "Any mainstream media outlet that has called this convoy xenophobic or alt-right has my complete permission to use this interview. This protester is Lou Anne, an indigenous Ontarian who braved the cold to show her solidarity with the convoy. Listen to her words. They are powerful"
So many liberals are claiming that if the truckers were indigenous, they would be arrested. Yet when indigenous protests went on for 2 months and shut down train lines across the country, disrupted supply chains, set fires on railway tracks and damaged police vehicles with metal spikes to protect their occupation (in spite of a court order telling them to stay out), nothing happened since the kid gloves were on. But when it came to a peaceful protest liberals didn't like, they demanded they be shut down after 2 days
Geoff Russ: The 'irrational orgy of hysteria' surrounding the trucker convoy - "The protests in Ottawa have been a gift to Canada’s Laurentian elite, who have framed it as if Adolf Hitler and Jefferson Davis were assaulting Parliament Hill. The trucker convoy was obviously no Panzer division, but goose-stepping rednecks weren’t needed for a narrative of something similar to be pre-packaged before the protesters even arrived in Ottawa... Days before the rigs flooded the streets, very serious people from Canada’s respectable media began publishing op-eds decrying how dangerous the convoy was. A scan of Twitter made it clear that they thought the barbarians were at the gates. This is nothing new. Whether it be Louis Riel, the Reform party, Tommy Douglas or truckers, the Laurentian elites are utterly terrified of organized westerners... Once the convoy arrived in Ottawa, it didn’t take long for the hideous flag of Nazi Germany to be unfurled by less than half a dozen people on the massive crowd’s periphery. The Mohawk Warrior Society’s flag was also present, as was the Serbian flag. Most of the flags, however, were Canadian. Quebec’s flag came in a distant second. But if you solely read the social media posts of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s foot soldiers, you’d think the weekend protest was the maple-flavoured version of the neo-Nazi rally that took place in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017. The sight of the lone swastika was all Liberal politicians needed to have a field day. Terry Fox’s statue was “defaced” by members of the convoy. Listening the politicians and pundits, however, you’d think it had been splashed with red paint, had its limbs hacked off and been torn from its pedestal, a fate that many other Canadian monuments have met recently. In reality, a Canadian flag was wrapped around the statue’s neck, a hat placed on its head and a sign reading “Mandate Freedom” was put between its hands... Nothing less than the word “hysteria” describes the sanctioned narrative of the trucker convoy. Yet little of it actually matched what happened on the ground. Journalists who were there, even those critical of the protest, freely admitted it was mostly peaceful . Ottawa police reported no smashed storefronts, and the sole inferno was a controlled bonfire in the -30 C weather. Being there in-person wasn’t needed to see how it really played out. Dozens of live streams were available on YouTube, which provided a good view of the hundreds of anti-vaccine stalwarts, anti-vaccine mandate activists and other protesters chanting, laughing, drinking beer and apparently having a grand old time. “Dixie” or “Die Wacht am Rhein” were nowhere to be heard on the loudspeakers, but celebratory fireworks echoed throughout Ottawa’s downtown core. For anyone who paid serious attention to Ottawa over the weekend, it was clearly not Canada’s Jan. 6 moment, but rather something of a frigid street party. That hasn’t stopped the comparisons to the storming of the United States Capitol, though... For its harshest critics, the convoy must be some kind of American import. But given that American truckers are now organizing their own convoy to Washington, it turns out that the opposite is in fact true. The refusal to recognize the Canadian origin of the convoy explains why many Central Canadian political and media elite treated the convoy as a foreign entity, and a threat... For a nation that prides itself on being more polite and rational than the Americans, the reaction to the trucker convoy was nothing less than an irrational orgy of hysteria, and it’s the most embarrassing part of this whole circus."
Of course, putting a Pride flag on Terry Fox is good and BLM riots are good
Stuart Parker: Why the coverage of the trucker protest should worry all Canadians - The Hub - "“In our voting system, the most successful party is one best at reducing the number of choices its potential voters feel that they have. A look at Liberal messaging shows that Jean Chretien became increasingly reliant on his ability to convince potential NDP and Green Party supporters to vote for his party. And despite his antipathy for Chretien, Paul Martin intensified this approach. What we missed during that time was how this change in Liberal tactics helped to change Canadian ideas of what made a legitimate government. As the Liberals lost their capacity to intimidate left-of-centre voters, they lost power. And Canadians learned a lesson: a government’s legitimacy comes not from its ability to appeal to the majority but instead from its ability to control and discipline its own supporters and potential supporters.” In the ensuing thirteen years, this idea has become increasingly entrenched in mainstream Canadian values. If a candidate for office or legislator expresses any view contradicting their party’s leadership in any way, it becomes a scandal, even if their view is broadly supported by the public and the head office view is unpopular. It is covered in the media as a threat to a party’s ability to govern because the leadership’s control over its legislators and prospective legislators is less than absolute. It reveals not that a party is diverse, complex, and pluralistic (all things once deemed core Canadian values) but rather that the party is weak and unsafe because it permits diversity, complexity, or pluralism. The country that invented the Westminster parliamentary system still routinely tolerates dozens of MPs voting against a party’s leadership and yet not just remaining in the fold but eligible for future promotion. Indeed, the Westminster system was designed to handle major splits within the factions it represents. Caucus rebels, back in the twentieth century, were understood to be legislators who could be expected to vote against and/or publicly contradict their leaders during every term they served. Today, the definition of a caucus rebel is a legislator who votes in lockstep with their party, never makes a public pronouncement not approved of by the party but grumbles about having to do this in private with their core supporters. MPs and MLAs, right now, are being punished by chiefs of staff and party whips simply for privately grumbling—that is all that dissent has become. As I predicted back in 2008, the people who now hold this belief that anything less than total control and absolute discipline is a sign of weakness and illegitimacy are now what pollsters politely call “the centre-left.” Sadly, as with all broadly held cultural assumptions, these values concerning control, submission, and dissent eventually escape their original context and run rampant through society. If people become convinced of a new moral order for how the world above them should run, it ultimately shakes down to the world below. And we see this here with centre-left reaction to the national truckers’ protest in Ottawa... Those of us who cut our teeth in the 1980s peace movement know this story well. The Vancouver Peace March used to attract 10 percent of the city’s population (50,000 protesters at its peak) for its annual walk across Burrard Bridge to support global nuclear disarmament. And, consequently, the vanguard of the march comprised the Trotskyites, Maoists, and other communist sectarians and foreign dictator fan clubs who saw this as their big annual opportunity to radicalize and recruit ordinary anti-nuclear activists. Right-wing commentators sought to discredit these protests by heavily featuring and platforming the most off-topic or the most radical protesters and then seeking to paint all protesters with that broad brush. This approach generally failed and was mocked by the mainstream press, who depicted the diversity of protesters and homemade signs as a sign of the depth of its support. But today, that approach is working because our society’s mainstream values have changed and because the target audience is a different one. Because Canadians, as a whole, but especially centre-left voters have now come to believe that the legitimacy of a movement inheres not in its size or the diversity of people and views it represents but rather in its ability to discipline and control its supporters, this protest looks both illegitimate and frightening. Not only is this protest not controlling the speech and signage of its members; it is celebrating its refusal to control these things and instead sticking to the basics of making sure protesters are nonviolent and law-abiding...
Despite a recent passing interest in toppling pro-Confederate and pro-war statues in the United States, Canadian progressives have suddenly become very concerned about nationalist statuary. While I would never try to politicize a Terry Fox statue, myself, the level of offense centre-left urbanites are taking at people placing entirely removable and undamaging objects and signs on Ottawa’s Fox memorial is deeply worrying. No one has toppled the statue; nobody has even got paint on it. Similarly, the fact that there is urine of unknown provenance in the snow near the memorial to the unknown soldier is now being redescribed as protesters, as a whole, urinating on and thereby desecrating the war memorial. Who knew that the mere possibility of a half a dozen or fewer individuals disrespecting a war memorial by urinating near it could de-legitimate a gathering of thousands in the minds of Canada’s mainstream centre-left!?...
News media are depicting the hand-drawn swastikas and upside-down maple leaves used in the posters making those comparisons as endorsements of Naziism and opposition to the existence of Canada. While I am sure there are some genuine Nazi sympathizers among the thousands of truckers in Ottawa, the protest art I have seen using the swastika is the basis of an inaccurate and offensive comparison and not an endorsement of Hitler. Fortunately, because Canadians’ willful embrace of ignorance and stupidity, urban progressives who can, themselves, barely hold onto the idea that one can compare one thing to another thing, are unable to imagine that the truckers may be using symbols to make a comparison—no, they must all be Nazis, traitors...
We should also think about the Proud Boys and Sons of Odin who have gone to the rally to radicalize its participants. The on-the-ground experience of regular folks participating will be of being called Nazis, traitors, Klansmen, bigots, etc. Not only will this place greater distance between the participants and urban Canadian society; it will make them look less unfavourably on others who are called Nazis and Klansmen. How bad could those guys really be, they will ask themselves? Were they also smeared as part of a bum rap by shills for the pharmaceutical industry? They will wonder if those folks also came to be known as these things the way they did. As a person who, because I dissented from the progressive consensus on a single issue, has been smeared as a transphobe, homophobe, pedophile, white supremacist, racist, and ableist in the past year and a half, I can no longer simply accept the opinion of centre-left media on whether someone is a dangerous, bigoted member of the alt-right. I can no longer trust the government-financed Canadian Anti-Hate Network on whether someone is a dangerous hatemonger because many of my comrades and I are on their list. And not everyone is going to be like me and check those claims against the facts. Most people will just start ignoring those claims. There is a high price to pay when you decide to cry “wolf” over fascism in a political situation like our own, where the authoritarian threat is real and society-wide."
Not to worry. The media will just go back to their old stance of how it is important to be able to protest whenever it's a left wing protest. And any controversial parts of a left wing protest get dismissed by the left, to uphold their narrative
Kraychik: On the Ground with Canada's Freedom Convoy - "News media outlets described a fictional parallel universe divorced from the demonstration’s reality. The Associated Press framed Saturday’s demonstration as marred by swastikas, Confederate flags, and desecrations of war memorials without providing any photographic or video evidence. CTV operatives breathlessly tweeted accusations of protesters taking food from homeless shelters, waving swastikas, and – gasp! – going maskless into a Tim Hortons. I asked Shanna, who lives near Ottawa and had been to the demonstrations daily since Saturday, to address derisions of protesting Canadians from those in news media and politics. She replied, “Just come down. Come down any day – even on the weekends or on a weekday – look around. You’ll for sure see Canada here. Everybody is here in unity, and there’s all love. I’ve been down here five days trying to find this ‘hate.’ I can’t find it.” The uplifting energy was inescapable. Canadian flags were everywhere. Patriotism was in the air. I could not resist asking Daz, another demonstrator, to remark on news media narratives framing the Freedom Convoy as motivated by “white supremacy” given his dark skin... “White supremacy, as a whole, is a red herring,” Daz declared. “They always mention ‘white supremacy’ … I’m not going to fall for these kinds of narratives. If you see me, do I look like a ‘white supremacist?'”... News media warnings of the threat of “violence” at the Freedom Convoy never came to pass. Ottawa Chief of Police Peter Sloly said on Monday, “Let me repeat, no injuries, no deaths, no riots in the last four days in the nation’s capital, despite the fact that we have a global cause, a national protest tens of thousands of individuals, from a wide variety of causes, who’ve gathered to actively demonstrate 24 hours a day”"
No wonder they needed to fire the police chief. He wasn't pushing the narrative
LILLEY: Media's handling of trucker convoy one-sided and shameful | Toronto Sun - "I’ve covered all kinds of political protests from the Summit of the Americas riots in Quebec City to riots in Montreal, violent protests in Ottawa and the Idle No More campaign that took hold near Parliament Hill for weeks. Never have I seen our national media, led by those on Parliament Hill, spend so much time digging into the comments and views of a group of people trying to find those they can demonize... Normally though, journalists will say that organizers of a protest want a peaceful protest even as extreme elements threaten violence. That isn’t happening with this protest because it’s not one most in the media like or understand — it’s a group of people they look down upon.... Watch any of the news networks or, more importantly, read the Twitter accounts of supposedly objective journalists, or listen to the contempt in their voices as they ask questions to see that they have clearly taken sides. When Trudeau referred to the convoy as a “fringe minority” with “unacceptable views” the journalists covering him didn’t push back and ask him why he would use such language. They just moved along... Apparently, the journalists on Parliament Hill these days think their job is to hold the opposition and not the government to account. It also appears their job to support some protest movements and attack others based on the personal preferences of the journalists. The line between columnists and commentators, like myself, and supposedly neutral, objective reporters gets blurrier by the day. The behaviour of Canada’s media from reporters to news anchors, show hosts to editors, has been shameful over the past few weeks. Can we really be shocked that public trust in the media continues to fall?"
BONOKOSKI: Mainstream media fearful of protesters, oh my | Toronto Sun - "“You know what I think is interesting is that when there’s a left wing protest on Parliament Hill we don’t see the Liberal media going through every single name of the people who attend to try and find one person they can disparage the whole group with,” said Poilievre. “The CBC, for example, has been accused by its own employees of systemic racism, and yet we don’t see the media here generalize that everyone who works at the CBC is a racist.” “Whenever you have 5,000 or 10,000 people who are part of any group, you are bound to have a number who say unacceptable things,” said Poilievre. “They should be individually responsible for things they say and do. But that doesn’t mean we disparage the thousands of hard-working, law-abiding and peaceful truckers who, quite frankly, have kept all of you alive the last two years (of the pandemic) by filling your grocery shelves.”"
Letter: Preston Manning on why the Constitution supports the truckers - "Participants in the Freedom Convoy currently occupying Ottawa are exercising their freedom of belief, expression, association, and assembly — all rights guaranteed by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Section 6 of that Charter also specifically guarantees “mobility rights” — the right of every citizen “to enter, remain in, and leave Canada” and the right to move and gain a livelihood. If the federal government wants to limit the exercise of these rights, according to Sections 1 and 24(1) of the Constitution Act, 1982, it must be able, if challenged, to demonstrate before a court of competent jurisdiction that the law imposing the limitation is reasonable and justifiable in a free and democratic society. This the Trudeau government has failed to do, and thus it is the members of that government not the truckers and their friends who are failing to comply with the rule of law.
Preston Manning was the founder of the Reform Party of Canada, served as leader of the official Opposition in Parliament and is a founder of the Canada Strong and Free Network.”
Jonathan Kay: To Ottawa progressives, the trucker convoy is a military invasion they are bravely resisting - "It says a lot about Canada that a guy like me is labelled (i.e., “denounced as”) a conservative. In any sane world, I’d be instantly recognized as — in almost all respects — just another insufferably doctrinaire Toronto progressive. I live downtown, own an electric car, edit essays for a black-turtleneck web site catering to academics, hold forth on the importance of vaccines, and wile away my evenings tweeting smugly about whatever thumbsucker I just read in The New York Review of Books or BlubberTusk. I maintain my composure in the presence of trucks, so long as they’re tiny — like the ones Amazon workers use to deliver my pina-colada protein bars and Japanese fountain-pen inks. But the big trucks scare me — even when they appear individually, let alone in a convoy... More than 86 per cent of Canadians have been partially or fully vaccinated (including about 90 per cent of professional truckers), this being among the highest rates on the planet. (Within the OECD, only Chile and Portugal surpass us.) So we’re talking about a debate that our pro-vaccine public-health, political, and media elites have already won. Yes, there are holdouts, but it’s been clear for a while now that further efforts to hector them into submission are counterproductive. Given all this, I naively expected that members of Ottawa’s political class would respond to the trucker convoy with little more than a few disdainful and condescending tweets, presumably sent while fleeing the expected traffic gridlock en route to weekend ski condos. It’s not as if Canada is a stranger to protest. I was in Quebec City 22 years ago when violent riots flared across much of that city during the 3rd Summit of the Americas. Ten years later, over 1,000 protesters were arrested in Toronto at the G20. When Doug Ford was elected as Ontario premier, left-wing protesters briefly shut down the province’s legislature and, in a separate incident, set up a mock guillotine. As recently as 2020, large parts of Canada’s rail system were paralyzed for weeks by barricades erected in the name of Indigenous rights — the same cause that’s led to numerous statues being toppled, and churches burnt. Many of these acts were downplayed (or even condoned) by progressive Canadians, who argued that, as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez put it so eloquently, “the whole point of protesting is to make people uncomfortable.” I’m no AOC groupie. But on this, she’s not wrong. Instead of exhibiting sangfroid, unfortunately, many of Ottawa’s grandees reacted as if they’d become history’s witnesses to a military invasion. That single aforementioned whack job with the Confederate flag was held up as evidence that Ottawa had become Danzig-on-the-Rideau. “Watching what is happening today, I am not sure if I am more worried that this will be similar to Charlottesville or the January 6 (Capitol) insurrection,” tweeted Liberal MP Anthony Housefather. “Either way, it is something I hoped never to see on this side of the border.” Horrified by the possibility that this earnest-seeming Liberal’s apocalyptic fears were being realized, I surfed a few news channels, all of which were broadcasting images of what was essentially a combination traffic jam and street party. If a bunch of dudes in horned fur hats had conquered the House of Commons in the name of Incel Roganistan, it wasn’t being reported. On Twitter, I played the Housefather hysteria for laughs. Privately, however, I was scared that some lone-wolf type would do something truly horrible — god forbid with a truck. Something awful might still happen. But as of this writing, the newsmaker moments we’ve seen have mostly consisted of scattered protesters acting like thoughtless rubes — including some goons embarrassing themselves at the National War Memorial. At least one hothead convinced himself that the best way to libel Justin Trudeau as a fascist would be to bring along a Nazi flag. Very not cool. Yet even when it came to such hateful symbols, the pickings seemed somewhat slim given the many thousands of people who were in attendance—with some of the reported specimens fizzling upon further inspection. This included a viral photo of a few protesters parking their cars close to the National War Memorial cenotaph — which was quickly followed by Ottawa Police assuring everyone that the drivers had promptly moved the cars as soon as they’d been asked... In true Canadian fashion, protesters even began policing one another’s behaviour. This included setting up ad-hoc litter patrols to clean up everyone else’s mess — leading to the unintentionally hilarious spectacle of CBC reporter Hannah Thibodeau trying to drum up outrage with a tweeted picture of neatly arranged garbage bags. Her CBC colleague Falice Chin, meanwhile, complained that protests were negatively affecting residents’ ability to do weekend “errands,” while also somewhat breathlessly reporting that a truck was “literally” parked on the street outside her home. Other complaints seemed positively Victorian, with one Ottawa architect tweeting at great length about truck-driving yobs perpetrating “all manner of rudeness.” Being a well-behaved Canadian, I’m certainly no fan of rudeness. But as the weekend wore on, it was getting hard not to notice that we’d quite abruptly gone from “Oh No. Here comes Hitler” to “Can you rewind? I missed the punch line because of the honking.” Even Canadaland’s Jesse Brown was honest enough to admit: “No physical violence, no government buildings stormed… I feared that this was gonna be a Canadian Jan. 6th. Glad I was wrong.” Other progressives, by contrast, went to extraordinary — some might say desperate — lengths to keep Friday’s spirt of social panic rolling into the weekend. This included NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, who attracted widespread and well-deserved ridicule for a lurid gambit by which he attempted to use the convoy as a pretext to link Conservative MPs to the 2017 Quebec City Mosque killings. A Canadian Press article under the headline, “Calling the Ottawa protests ‘peaceful’ downplays non-violent dangers, critics say,” wanly argued that — violence, shmiolence — it was still all one big hate-o-rama. Then there was journalist Andrea Gunn, who excitedly announced on Sunday that she’d found a smoking-gun video in which protesters had admitted (in full public view!) to being literal white supremacists — not realizing (until reading the comments) that the “admission” she’d breathlessly reported was sarcastic shtick aimed at skewering journos (such as Gunn herself) who insist on smearing all heterodox attitudes as purblind hate. Needless to say, Gunn’s video was tweeted out credulously by numerous politicians and journalists— including the Executive Producer of CBC Ottawa News, two Toronto Star journalists, and, I need scarcely add, the aforementioned Mr. Housefather. The Ottawa police, who’ve been the adults in the room throughout all this, have predicted most trucks will be gone by mid-week. But the spirit of demented agitation now roiling Ottawa’s progressive cadres will last far longer. One particularly McCarthyist Instagrammer, Kelsey Grace, has been curating a published list of Ottawa businesses that are “actively supporting” truckers. The catalog of accused entities includes (and I am not making this up) a french-fry truck, a restaurant that specializes in shawarma (that favourite delicacy of all white supremacists), and a diner with a sign reading “20$ trucker special.” Remember that restaurants have been hit hard by the pandemic. And so, putting politics to one side, it’s hard to fault any Ottawa-area eatery for trying to profit from the sudden influx of outsiders. In some cases, these truckers may be the only thing keeping some of these restaurants from bankruptcy. But of course, for an Instagrammer whose career couldn’t be further removed from this sort of front-line service gig (Ms. Grace self-describes as a “PhD Candidate Cultural Mediations”), real-life working-class travails might be difficult to understand... the last few days have provided an instructive spectacle — a microcosm for the larger, profoundly off-putting phenomenon by which progressives lazily default to labelling anything they dislike or disagree with as a manifestation of bigotry. We’ve been seeing examples of this for years, of course. But what took place over the weekend was unusual, as it didn’t involve any of the sacred cows (BLM and residential schools, in particular) that have otherwise served to stigmatize dissent. It was basically just a bunch of very privileged (and very white, by the way) elites loudly and unapologetically reminding us of just how deeply contemptuous they are of anyone who doesn’t read from their psalm book."
Guillotines are only wrong when Trump supporters set them up
Truckistan Amb. Poso 🏁 on Twitter - "There is an actual labor uprising going on in Ottawa and the establishment left is trashing them Pay attention to this"
Facebook - "MAGA is class consciousness. The Freedom Convoy is class consciousness. An international workers' movement has arisen in response to corrupted capitalism, and because it wants freedom, not equity, liberty, not slavery in Socialism, the Left hates it. They were always frauds."
Socialists Condemn Workers Of The World For Uniting | The Babylon Bee
Mona Fortier 🇨🇦 on Twitter - "Freedom of speech is a fundamental right we will always uphold. That does not include freedom of hate speech or freedom to defile our symbols of hope and strength. 🇨🇦"
To liberals, freedom of speech is only to be used for liberal-approved causes
Justin Trudeau and his family leave their home in Ottawa for a secret location amid security concern - "Days earlier, the Prime Minister had called the truckers headed for the city a 'small fringe minority' before the convoy of hundreds of vehicles grew up to 45 miles long as it made its way to the capital... Despite security concerns, there have been no incidents at the rally, Ottawa Police said in a tweet. Flying the Canadian flag, waving banners demanding 'Freedom' and chanting slogans against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the truckers were joined by thousands of other protesters angered not only by Covid-19 restrictions but by broader discontent with the government. There was an enormous clamor as hundreds of big trucks, their engines rumbling, sounded their air horns non-stop. Closer to Parliament, families calmly marched on a bitterly cold day, while young people chanted and older people in the crowd banged pots and pans in protest under Trudeau's office windows... As many as 32,000, or 20 percent, of the 160,000 Canadian and American cross-border truck drivers may be taken off the roads due to the mandate, the Canadian Trucking Alliance (CTA) estimates... Canada has enacted some of the most strict COVID-19 protocols worldwide."
Only In Canada - "Cleaning the Terry Fox statue showed class. Veterans there protesting getting people off tomb gave credibility to the hole group. BLM pouring paint on statues puts the government in a tough spot. If the government moves on peaceful respectful protester they will loose. Justin is in a tough spot. Show support but don't give media sound bites. This is about hearts and minds of all Canadians."
Meme - NPC: "A protest is supposed to make people uncomfortable."
Truck Driver: "HONK! HONK! HONK!"
NPC: "Nooo not like that stop honking why won't you stop honking can't sleep I have PTSD my wife ran away and my cat shat the bed"
LIVE UPDATES on the trucker convoy: Premier asks protesters to 'let the people of Ottawa live their lives' - "[According to] the president of the Ottawa Paramedic Association... Darryl Wilton... Most problems have occurred on the fringes of the protest, he said. Inside the core, the truckers themselves have been helpful to paramedic teams. “Once you get inside the perimeter, people are very polite.”... The food — boxes of apples, bags of chips, cases of granola bars, donuts and bread — has been donated by local people, he said. “It’s for everyone. People living here. People living on the street, truckers … it’s a free-for-all,” he said. As he spoke, a teen passed by with a tray full of Tim Hortons coffee. “You want a double double?” he called out. “This is what I mean,” Scott said. “People just come up and offer things. People coming up and hugging you. I don’t know a person here but there’s just a lot of love.”"
Of course, 2 years of covid restrictions aren't stopping people from living their lives
