Posted on 02/17/2022 4:32:46 PM PST by Kaslin
Everything Justin Trudeau has done since the protests began has made a confrontation between protesters and police all but inevitable.
The only way to understand the actions of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau over the past two weeks is that he wants the Freedom Convoy protests in Ottawa, which so far have been entirely peaceful, to descend into a violent confrontation between protesters and police.
Everything Trudeau has done, from his initial dismissive remarks about the protesters being a “small, fringe minority” with “unacceptable views,” to his ongoing refusal to meet with them, to the unprecedented invocation of the Emergencies Act this week, has served to escalate the situation in Ottawa and increase the likelihood that it ends in some kind of violence.
Consider the draconian measures Trudeau’s government is now pursuing. The protests, while certainly inconvenient and even onerous to the residents of Ottawa, are obviously not an existential threat to Canada. They are not even a national emergency according to the Emergencies Act’s own definition: an “urgent and critical situation” that “seriously endangers the lives, health or safety of Canadians and is of such proportions or nature as to exceed the capacity or authority of a province to deal with it.”
No reasonable person thinks that’s what the protests in Ottawa are. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association has said the federal government has not met the threshold necessary to invoke the Emergencies Act, and that invoking it “threatens our democracy and our civil liberties.” According to some recent polls, a not insignificant number of Canadians agree.
Yet Trudeau is bringing down the full force of the federal government to quash the Freedom Convoy. Under the Emergencies Act, protesters can have their bank accounts frozen, and so can people who simply donate to protesters. Crowdfunding platforms and payment service providers must cease all services to anyone they suspect might be participating in “illegal blockades,” and report it to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Truckers can have their commercial and private drivers’ licenses revoked, and can lose their insurance and their vehicles.
Even more ominously, Canadian government officials are now warning parents who bring their children to “illegal assemblies,” or even provide food or fuel to protesters, that they could not only face jail time and steep fines, they could lose custody of their children. On Wednesday, the Children’s Aid Society of Ottawa put out a statement urging parents at the demonstrations to make alternate care arrangements, “should they become unable to care for their children following potential police action.”
The threat here is obvious: if you protest, we’ll arrest you and take your children away. Trudeau has effectively weaponized Canada’s version of child protective services to suppress legitimate political dissent. What do you think is going to happen when the police start trying to remove children from their parents? If it were your child, what would you do?
All of this could come to a head in the coming days. Police in Ottawa have begun handing out notices to protesters that they must “leave the area now” or face arrest. According to some reports, if police want to clear the streets of Ottawa, they’re going to have to get it done in the next 48 hours, because thousands more protesters are expected to arrive in the Canadian capital this coming weekend in what could be the largest demonstration yet.
But it’s unclear how exactly the authorities are going to clear the trucks. Towing these semi-trailers is going to take heavy equipment, and so far local towing companies have refused government requests to tow the Freedom Convoy trucks. The military would be able to move them, and Trudeau’s invocation of the Emergencies Act enables the use of the military for such an operation. But that would create a disturbing spectacle at the least, and at worst provoke a confrontation that could turn violent.
If that happens, Trudeau will bear the blame. He has set up a situation where violence, or at least some kind of forcible crackdown by Canadian law enforcement against protesters, is becoming inevitable. Indeed, how else are we to understand Trudeau’s statement earlier this week that the protests, which have so far been totally peaceful, are in his judgment no longer “non-violent”?
At no point, even after drawing widespread criticism for his mishandling of the situation, has Trudeau shown any sign of compromise, or done anything to give the protesters an off-ramp. Even as provincial governments have eased or rescinded Covid mandates and restrictions in the face of sharply declining case numbers and hospitalizations, Trudeau is holding fast. As Eric Kaufman noted this week in the Telegraph, Trudeau’s hypocrisy in these matters is blatant:
Contrast his combative posture towards the truckers with his gentle approach to protesters who would seem to share his philosophy. When Left-wing arsonists burned some 30 Catholic churches over a false claim that mass graves had been discovered near a former residential school for indigenous Canadians, Trudeau called the violence ‘understandable’. When indigenous protesters and their allies blocked rail lines and pipelines over a longer period than the trucker convoy, Trudeau patiently called for ‘dialogue and mutual respect’.
Contrast his combative posture towards the truckers with his gentle approach to protesters who would seem to share his philosophy. When Left-wing arsonists burned some 30 Catholic churches over a false claim that mass graves had been discovered near a former residential school for indigenous Canadians, Trudeau called the violence ‘understandable’. When indigenous protesters and their allies blocked rail lines and pipelines over a longer period than the trucker convoy, Trudeau patiently called for ‘dialogue and mutual respect’.
At this point, if you’re a protester in Canada, or someone who supports the protests, or even someone who thinks the protesters are wrong but the government has gone too far, the message from Trudeau is clear: We will not listen to you, we will not compromise with you, and if you don’t comply with our orders, we will ruin you.
That is a recipe for violence, and Trudeau knows it. He wants to make an example out of these truckers because deep down he is an illiberal man with an intolerant worldview.
These protesters have the wrong views, so they don’t deserve the “dialogue and mutual respect” afforded to left-wing protesters. For all his virtue-signaling about diversity, Trudeau doesn’t really believe in Canada as a pluralistic society where people of different views and ways of life can live together in peace. He believes in a society where the little people, the people with the wrong views, do as they’re told.
The thing is, most of these protesters have done just that. The vast majority of the truckers are vaccinated. They have complied with some of the most severe Covid mandates and restrictions in the western world for two years now. They did all that was asked of them, and when they finally got fed up with it they organized a peaceful protest.
And for that, Trudeau is trying to crush them.
How do you say “Pinochet” in Canadian? They’re going to need one.
Asking for a friend. In Minecraft.
No kidding.
Bkmk
Ditto all that........!!
trudeau is trucked
general strike is next logical step
I wonder if heâÂÂs ever made a fist.
Bullying is tyrants’ hallmark whether it’s Biden in Ukraine or Trudeau in Canada. They are cowards who call themselves leaders and they don’t know a thing about leadership.
I disagree. Violence is what the majority of already vaccinated truckers are probably committed to strike over.
If Trudeau can remove the truckers from Ottawa without violence against them, he will have threaded the needle. He would break the protest and avoid a strike. Then he can go Jan 6 and throw them in a pit and turn off the lights.
Of course not…he wants his own Jan06 so he can continue to demonize and and all opposition.
Not unlike Stalin, Hitler, obama or Biden
Castro
And many others, but yes I forgot Margaret’s baby daddy.
Amen, to your declaration!!
Grandpa was a sergeant in the Detroit Mounted Police.
One day he asked me, “ Who’s the most dangerous man in the world”? He then answered his question, “A man that has nothing to lose”.
Gramps was a wise man.
The RCMP won’t be the one’s dealing with them. There are mercs from all over the world chopping at the bit to come to Canada. Spend some time on the darker parts of the web and there is clearly a group willing and ready to. This is how things get done in Africa or Latin America when some eggs need breaking but the locals won’t or can’t do it. Don’t put it past the canook version of DS to put a casting call for hired goons. Look for “tactical” dressed guys with no unit or province ID patches that will be the dead give away. Once the gloves come off they are off. Heck the Russians or CCP might send troops if asked for as peacekeepers much like NATO did against the Balkans.
Your choice of metaphor is most instructive.
And how would those same "locals" respond? That's a question.
When that happens, the truckers will become a very dangerous force to deal with. RCMP better think damn hard how much they want to push a cornered man who has decided he has nothing to lose.
Brandon better as well..
He tanks the economy and people lose everything the depression won’t cause breadlines it’ll turn in to cw2.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.