It took two weeks for Justin Trudeau to deign to consider the seriousness of the illegal occupation of the outskirts of parliament in Ottawa, a libertarian movement that has degenerated and is now responsible for the blocking of three bridges leading to the United States, including the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor where 100,000 trucks must travel daily.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford is not to be outdone, he who adopted the same cowardly attitude by taking refuge in stubborn silence before finally declaring a state of emergency on Friday.
At the beginning of the siege — because it is a siege and not a demonstration — Justin Trudeau’s silence served his partisan interests. He was only too happy to see the Tories go to hell with the “Freedom Convoy,” which boosted the campaign against Erin O’Toole and led to his resignation as party leader. The firm stand taken by Pierre Poilievre, “candidate and future prime minister”, as he presumably called it, in favor of the protesting truckers undoubtedly pleased the Liberal leader, as did the volte-face of the interim leader of the Party Conservative in the Commons, Candice Bergen, who, after supporting the occupiers whom she described as “passionate, patriotic and peaceful”, asked them to lift their seat. It must be said that it has become embarrassing for the Conservatives to support a movement which, acting illegally, is seriously disrupting trade with our American partner to the detriment of the Canadian economy.
As for Doug Ford, his silence was embarrassed. He who has an electoral appointment in June feared, whatever he says and whatever he does, to displease his electoral base while repelling the centrist voters on whom his re-election depends.
So we will have spent days playing “Where’s Justin?” like playing “Where’s Charlie?” It took the release of Liberal MP Joël Lightbound on Tuesday, a real thunderclap in the political sky, to pull the Prime Minister out of his casual torpor. Risking ostracism within his party, the elected representative of Louis-Hébert accused his leader of having exploited, for electoral reasons, the divide between vaccinated and unvaccinated. Under the circumstances, however, his position is not very clear since he questions the scientific justification for the health restrictions endorsed by Public Health. He seems to forget that these measures, decried by libertarians, have resulted in Canada having three times fewer COVID deaths than the United States per 100,000 inhabitants.
After two years of the pandemic, widespread weariness is fertile ground for this far-right discourse that rises against governments, science, the rule of law and ultimately democracy. It is not surprising that this “Freedom Convoy” has received the support of Donald Trump and can count on funding from the United States.
It is an extremist movement in which ordinary citizens who are fed up with health measures mingle in a worrying way. The social media echo chamber makes its followers imagine themselves to be far more numerous than they really are. If it still represents only a small minority in Canada, we can only note that this movement threatens in the United States, fueled by media, traditional or not, controlled by a well-off right. Adopting, without any embarrassment, an insurrectionary discourse, this extreme right has succeeded in undermining American democracy and transforming politics south of our border into a ruthless war between sworn enemies. We cannot stand idly by in the face of a deleterious Americanization of Canadian political culture that leads to its radicalization.
It should be remembered that these thousands of individuals, who claim to represent the 10% of unvaccinated truckers, harm the 90% of truckers who are. They advocate the abandonment of a vaccination passport required by a foreign government, the end of all health measures and, as long as it is, the overthrow of a democratically elected government.
The lightness shown by Justin Trudeau is staggering. He seems to consider that this national crisis is not his responsibility, leaving the stewardship to take care of these unfortunate details. However, we cannot let extremists with hazy ideas commit illegal acts without reacting. It is our democratic institutions and the rule of law that are at stake. Because we must not let these protesters, encouraged by the impotence of the public authorities, pursue their seditious and nihilistic aims.