The Truckers Won. Everything.
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Such an excellent read! Thank you so very much for finding it. I don’t think I completely understood how important it was at the time for this morning-abhorrent, tropics-loving girl to get her fanny on that overpass at 6:30 a.m. on the coldest day of the winter. At 6:00 a.m., as I was grumbling about probably being the only person on the first overpass of our leg of the convoy, I knew that my own principles about freedom and bodily autonomy required that I be out there. The retrospective below makes me happy I was there. (I fixed a few spelling and grammatical errors that muddied the narrative.)
“I keep encountering this misconception from people who don’t follow Canadian politics...
That somehow the Trucker convoy was defeated.
The Freedom Convoy was the most wildly immediately successful protest in Canadian history, maybe WORLD history.
People remember Trudeau’s crackdown, old ladies having their skulls cracked with batons, disabled indigenous grandmothers trampled by police horses, bank accounts frozen and public employees investigated for mere donations...
And there’s a big reason people remember this... It was dramatic, and the media and the regime certainly wanted you to think resistance was futile...
What people don’t remember is what happened in the immediate aftermath: The government caved on absolutely everything within a week for the most important things, and then a month or so for the rest.
First off, there was the massive political shift that happened as the convoy was occurring: Jason Kenny, the pro-lockdown Premier of Alberta (Canada’s most conservative province) was forced to announce his resignation, and Alberta immediately lifted all its lockdown impositions.
Erin O’Toole the pro-lockdown leader of the Conservative Party was likewise forced to resign, his temporary replacement Candice Bergen (not to be mistaken with the actress) being a longtime rival opposed to lockdowns, and his main rival who replaced her after intra-party elections was Pierre Poilievre, the politician after Maxime Bernier who was quickest to embrace the Truckers and their cry for freedom.
As the convoy was ongoing, Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act (the Act which replaced the War Meassures Act for invoking Martial Law). Now these grant the government almost unlimited powers. Famously, the War Meassures Act was invoked by Trudeau’s Father to detain Quebeckers and raid hundreds of homes without warrants during the FLQ separatist crisis of 1972. The catch is that while the Emergencies Act can be invoked by a Prime Minister, Parliament has to sign off on the Act’s continued use within one week.
Well skulls were cracked, accounts frozen, and as the week passed, things came down to the deadline. On the very last night, Trudeau managed to get sign-off (without the conservative opposition) from the House of Commons, but it had to go to the Upper House, the Canadian Senate.
NOW. The Canadian Senate is a shameful institution. It’s like the British House of Lords, but without the nobility.
A senate seat is a lifetime appointment, by the prime minister... and that’s it. Little to no review, no democratic input, and this is supposed to be equivalent or superior to our elected House of Commons.
Naturally the go-to use of the Senate is as a spoils system for cronies. Do some shameful favour for a prime minister, raise a lot of money for the party, be politically connected to a provincial government the PM wants to buy off... Get a Senate seat.
One of the longest-standing political agreements in Canada is how badly the Senate needs to be abolished... but can’t be because Quebec is nominally overrepresented in the Senate, and abolishing it would cause a constitutional crisis. So mostly the Senate keeps it’s head down and tries to avoid the news... because it will never be sympathetic.
So this nursing home for cronies, criminals, fall guys, and connected activists past...people who’s names haven’t been spoken aloud since 1996... an institution that was last in the news 10 years ago for an expense scandal whose essence was “Wait we’re paying these leeches’ expenses!?”... that body was called upon to sign off on the Emergencies Act.
And all these self-important losers smelled blood in the water. Did they have some principled stand on civil liberties grounds? Absolutely NOT. They had a principled objection that they weren’t being treated as more important!
Sure they’d consider signing off on Trudeau’s abuses, but they wanted an ongoing senate committee to continuously review the abuses, with cabinet level briefings for the committee members, regular pressers, inclusion on the forming of policy... Juicy Juicy INFLUENCE.
The exact thing these shameful roaches had been denied ever since their real political careers flamed out in ‘92 and they’d been forced to become lost souls in the senate.
The speeches these delusional 70-year-old nobodies gave ... MY GOD, barely coherent gibberish from geriatrics convinced they were great statesmen... convinced their wisdom might now be included in great volumes of Canadian oratory next to Laurier, Macdonald, and Pearson.
With mere hours left to the deadline, no passage in sight, and the nightmare of dealing with these people before him ... Trudeau voluntarily withdrew the act.
In the preceding week his Finance minister, Chrystia Freeland, had given press statements and interviews to the effect that they planned to hunt down everyone who donated to the convoy, and create an expansive new system of financial control... with hints this would extend not only to the protesters, but all the unvaccinated...none of this would happen.
Instead, Trudeau weakly tried to claim victory. There were no protestors in Ottawa or on bridges! But in the week that followed, lockdown measures were quickly and quietly pulled back. Alberta had already rescinded their measures, and other provinces were following suit. By June, almost all domestic restrictions were gone, the regime desperately afraid that if the protesters were able to shut down the capital and cross-border trade in minus 20 to minus 40 degree weather...what might they do in the summer? Canada Day (July 1) was approached with fear.
By August, I travelled to the US for a wedding ... unvaccinated. The greater barrier being the risk the US would refuse me entry than that Canada would hassle me. The US border guard didn’t ask.
And on the way back the Canadian border guard, obviously over with this stuff, told me “Now because you’re unvaccinated you do technically have to quarantine, and they could possibly call, and if you say you haven’t been quarantining they might do something...” I received one email from public health and immediately deleted it.
There was no enforcement. I travelled again in October, and was not even asked upon return. The last measures had been withdrawn. The Greatest barrier to travel was US border restrictions and requirements, which technically only ended in May this year.
WITHIN 1 month, the trucker convoy had effected a hostile overthrow of the Governments of Alberta and the official opposition, the Conservative Party of Canada, from pro to anti- lockdown, and crushed the moderate wing of the conservative movement.
At Multiple points, Trudeau was nearly forced out by his own party and his government was humiliated with most of its perceived power destroyed. It now exists as a rump failing to pass gun control bills (IN CANADA!) against moderate opposition.
Within 2-4 months, all domestic restrictions were gone and, within 8 months, even the pantomime of international restrictions didn’t exist. Canada had fewer covid restrictions than the US.
COMPLETE CONSENSUS had been totally destroyed such that in less than a year the national consensus was the polar opposite. And all the actual action took place in 1 month, on the coldest days of the year, with a movement whose key members had to drive 4000-5000 km (~3000 miles) along treacherous northern roads, being greeted roadside by supporters who stood out in minus 40 to give them coffee food and support.
This was at once the most logistically challenging protest in human history involving the volunteering of tens of millions of dollars of equipment, weeks of time, tens of thousands of people, across a continent.
And it might just have been the most successful individual protest in human history. The most successful violent revolutions have not achieved such total reversals in culture and policy across so many levels of government, in such few short months.
THERE IS A VERY GOOD REASON THE REGIME WANTS YOU TO THINK OF IT AS A FAILURE.
The same reason things like Brexit, the Yellow Vests in France, or Jan 6th, or the Dutch Farmers protest freaked out the elite so much.
The greatest possible threat to them is that the mass of the Suburban and rural Middle-class: Flyover country, the Petite Bourgeoise, the small business owners, the farmers, the truckers, the Kulaks. The greatest possible threat to the regime is that this mass will realize its incredible power both in coordination, logistics, and initiative. And that it will overthrow the governing class of Bureaucrats, Regulators, Lawyers, DEI Administrators, and leeches who’ve gotten rich surviving off their tax cattle who actually work and produce things.
They HAVE to play off the Truckers as a failure... Trudeau had to declare victory then cave on every single individual policy.... because they can’t let people see what it was: A premonition of the great Class War to come.”
I remember your posts both before and after action. What an encouraging report you have written about the truckers protest. Thank you!
That is some great testimony LL. I remember that battle. God bless
Placemark for Truckers. I remember you described your appearance on an overpass in case you made it into a photo. Short, and something about bright colored boots. Can’t remember if blue or pink...
CBC or the rest of the establishment media up there is/has been a stone waste of time, so I've been following Rebel News plus Canada Free Press....or perhaps I should say "attempting" in the case of CFP ever since Google/somebody decided to cancel their server on my browser(s).
Anybody got any leads I can follow?
The truckers were the first, and most inspiring. I will never forget how resolute, and yet how joyful they all were together in the freezing streets. Magnificent.
I hope they make a movie about them someday.
“They HAVE to play off the Truckers as a failure... Trudeau had to declare victory then cave on every single individual policy.... because they can’t let people see what it was: A premonition of the great Class War to come.”
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“They HAVE to play off the Truckers as a failure... Trudeau had to declare victory then cave on every single individual policy.... because they can’t let people see what it was: A premonition of the great Class War to come.”
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My sister was and is a huge fan of the Truckers and their tremendous successes.
She made me pay attention.
I think Americans attended January 6 with no thought that violence would happen because no one expected our government to underhandedly cause what happened at the Capital. We the People weren’t as organized as the Canadian truckers just because most of us never expected such from our government.
Today if the January 6th prisoners had the support the Canadian truckers had they would likely be free. Fear of government retaliation has so many fearful to do anything. Your information shows that the people can demand and win freedom.
What a beautiful and thorough recap of the truckers’ protest and its results. It was by turns sad, infuriating, and heartening to watch a free people take on a tyrannical government. I had no idea all that had been accomplished. Well done and thank you!
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shared.
Outstanding! Thankyou for this. Viva Frei and Robert Barnes were our daily go-to during the trucker saga. Viva Frei went out every day walking the long line of trucks and interviewing; he was great.
The Truckers Won. Everything.
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Great read! I really like your writing style. I’m going to pass this along to my niece who lives in Edmonton
Truckers placemark