After laying siege to Parliament Hill for over three weeks, it looks like the last trucker was finally removed on February 19.
This was unbelievable. Canadian truckers received accolades around the world from Fox News, right wing U.S. senators and Trump himself to demonstrators in Paris and other cities. But amongst serious people in the world, Canada was a laughing stock. There is not a single country in the world that would have put up with a siege of their capital city and a blockade of its seat of government for this long a time.
How in the world did this all happen?
Fundamentally it was a Perfect Storm of Stupid decisions that just kept compoinding the issue into something that kept getting bigger than it ever should have.
Stupid #1
The Trudeau government brought in a vaccine mandate for truckers crossing the border into Canada on January 15. Was there any science behind this decision? I never saw any numbers.
In mid January there were more than 32,000 cases of Covid being reported per day in Canada (and probably many more since many people have not been able to get tested). About 90% of Canadian truckers were already vaccinated. Were the number of additional Covid cases that would be caused by an unvaccinated truck driver crossing the border make a significant difference? Not likely. Most epidemiologists didn’t think so either.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/truck-driver-vaccine-mandate-canada-1.6315936
The Trudeau government should have done this analysis and seen that that it didn’t make a lot of sense. As an incentive to get more truckers to get vaccinated, it would not have made much difference either. Most of the 10% of truckers who aren’t vaccinated had made up their minds by now.
The government also should have had some ears on the ground and realized that the strong willed truckers would react negatively to the mandate. Truckers had been given special consideration as critical workers throughout the pandemic and were exempt from vaccination requirements. This was not the time to change that status for so little gain.
In fact the whole Canadian mandate was a moot point. The US had instituted a vaccine mandate for truckers crossing into the US. It went into effect a week after the Canadian mandate but the net effect was that unvaccinated Canadian truckers could not cross the border into the U.S. So the net effect of Trudeau’s mandate was to prevent a few unvaccinated American truckers from crossing into Canada.
Stupid #2
In the meantime various people in the trucking industry were organizing a convoy to protest the vaccine mandate. But the effect of their protest to get the Canadian government to remove its mandate was essentially just going to be for the benefit of unvaccinated American truckers coming into Canada. I wonder how many Canadian truckers who were driving across Canada to protest in Ottawa and other border crossings understood this?
It became the “Freedom Convoy”. But not a single trucker has had his freedoms revoked and been forced to get vaccinated. If a trucker felt he was being coerced into getting vaccinated because he wanted to do business across the border it was in order to comply with the U.S. mandate. Demonstrating in Canada to get the Canadian vaccine mandate for truckers removed would not change that.
At this point the Trudeau government should have seen how futile the Canadian vaccine mandate for truckers was going to be and just withdrawn it. But Trudeau had no vision or understanding of the dynamics.
In fact a retraction may not have dampened the truck convoy movement because the original protest had morphed into a general protest against intrusions into rights and freedoms. This was now a movement which was attracting all kinds of other activists like anti-vaxxers and white supremacists and it was getting millions of dollars in funding, much of it from the U.S.
Stupid #3
On January 27 Ottawa police chief Peter Sloly rejected a federal appeal to keep trucks away from Parliament Hill and the Prime Minister’s Office because he believed the truckers had a legitimate right to protest.
https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/the-occupation-of-ottawa-a-timeline
As the truckers arrived and camped on Wellington Street in front of the Parliament buildings, their horns at full blast, Sloly was interviewed on CBC national news. He said that he thought this could not be handled by the police and would have to be dealt with by other means.
More and more trucks arrived and camped out on the streets creating a disturbance and a public nuisance that intimidated the residents who lived in that part of Ottawa. There was no attempt by Ottawa police to clear vehicles that had been illegally parked for days at a time.
Stupid #4
In the meantime, other trucker protests were tying up border crossings across the country, most significantly at the Ambassador Bridge between Windsor and Detroit. Day after day the NDP opposition in the Ontario legislature was asking questions about what the government was going to do about these blockades. Doug Ford was not even in the house. Nobody knew where he was and there were no statements coming from him.
A few days later some plants in Detroit which depended on shipments of auto parts from suppliers in Windsor were starting to shut down. Joe Biden called Trudeau on it, the governor of Michigan made statements that Canada needed to solve this problem quickly and some Michigan State legislators started to say that the U.S. auto industry should be using American sources for all its parts since Canada was unreliable.
Suddenly Ford appeared and announced that truckers who were obstructing traffic in Windsor would face fines up to $100,000 and jail time. It still took several days for the police to clear the bridge so that critical commercial traffic could flow again.
Ford also said that the truckers were staging an illegal siege of Ottawa and they shuld go home. But no real action followed. While Ottawa may be the capital of Canada, the federal government has no jurisdiction over the city. Ottawa is a city in Ontario and it is the province of Ontario along with the municipality of Ottawa that has jurisdiction over roads and highways in Ottawa, not the federal government.
Why did Ford do so little? He once again demonstrated, as he has so many times throughout this pandemic when he ignored recommendations of his own Science Table, that he is a petty little politician who does not act for the benefit of most of the people in Ontario.
The Result
In the face of this complete gridlock and no prospect of any movement, Trudeau invoked the Emergency Measures Act. The OPP finally sent in reinforcements to Ottawa along with police from Quebec and even some western provinces in order to end the blockade.
PSS (Perfect Storm of Stupidity) = Trudeau x Truckers x Sloly x Ford
The head of the Ottawa police chief has already rolled as did the chair of the Ottawa Police Service Board who hired him. Let’s see if any more heads roll as people come to see how badly this situation has been handled from start to finish. Two of the biggest heads however will continue to bobble and will not roll until the next elections roll around.
Well done, Ernie. The governments should engage you as a consultant and advisor. They would make fewer and smaller mistakes if they listened to you. Go Ernie!
Ernie, well said. I concur with all that you have said. At least four stupids.
I think too that it is important not to downplay the fact that the occupation was something that was planned and organized by groups on the extreme lunatic right. In my view they used the issue of vaccine passports for truckers as a convenient tool, one at the right time in the right place, in order to further their radical goals, including undermining or even toppling democracy. These are vile, dangerous people who have duped a lot of conservative people, but not those who espouse radical ideologies, into supporting the cause. The people who have been conned into supporting them are tired and frustrated by the way Covid has changed our lives and wanted to do something, anything and didn’t weigh the consequences of taking part in an occupation. The bad news is that when all is said and done, the extremist groups will still exist and will be looking to cause more disruption of society.
One more thing. I remember debating with you about Trudeau before he was elected the first time. You were a big supporter then. I wasn’t and certainly am still not.
(Communication from Ron)
Ernie, this is, as usual, a brilliant analysis of our current situation. I, however, have a slightly different take on things.
Emotions are running high and people are having radically different interpretations of what’s going on. Long-time friendships are coming apart and once close family units are dissolving into warring parties. Is it possible for people to have fundamental disagreements and yet maintain mutual respect? I’m just not sure!
I used to see myself as a somewhat left leaning open minded liberal, but in recent years I have found myself becoming more and more right wing in my thinking.
Trudeau has repeatedly shown that he has both the courage and determination to stand up for the rights of persecuted minorities such as indigenous people, women, gays and lesbians, trans people, immigrants, blacks and virtually all other minorities. He has issued innumerable tearful apologies to each of these groups, and he did not hesitate to bend his knee in support of the BLM movement when they were violently rioting in major cities throughout the USA. He has clearly demonstrated that he is a man of conviction!
So, who are the oppressors of all these persecuted minorities? The answer is obvious. They are the ignorant, poorly educated, macho, racist, hate filled, xenophobic white men. White men are no longer welcome in universities. All large corporations have explicitly stated that white men need not apply for jobs or if they do, they will have to prove that they are eminently more qualified than any of the other persecuted minority groups.
Yet, if a power line breaks at two o’clock in the morning in twenty below weather, or if food or other supplies must be delivered from Vancouver to Ottawa, or if a condo is being constructed in a winter storm, who is doing all that very unpleasant work?
The militaries in the US and Canada have been making very well publicized attempts to hire more gays, women and trans people into the armed services and they have been demonstrating that they have both the courage and the integrity to very publicly expose any officers who may have been guilty of sexual abuse, even when both parties had been in a mutually consensual relationship. What is never discussed, however is the fact that almost all the people who have been maimed or killed in action have been those same despicable white men!
These are the same white men who have descended on Ottawa. They are angry and inarticulate, and I sometimes cringe when I hear their arguments against vaccines…but my heart goes out to them.
We live in downtown Ottawa and at times the truckers have been honking their horns less than a hundred meters from where we live. We have been a bit inconvenienced, but we never once feared for our personal safety.
White men, often with the complete support of their wives and girlfriends, are sick and tired of being blamed for all the world’s problems.
Although few are stating it in those terms, I believe that that is the underlying sentiment behind these demonstrations.
The following YouTube discussion between Rex Murphy and Jordan Peterson expresses similar sentiments. Lots of details that they have wrong, but fundamentally, I agree with them.