The cavalry has arrived. A little late, it must be said. We would have liked her to show up earlier, but hey, she’s there, massive and strong, in the snowy heart of Ottawa. Street by street, meter by meter, it sounds the death knell of the “freedom convoy”.
Posted at 5:00 a.m.
You will never see it in the Heritage Minutes, but one of the most absurd episodes in Canadian history is drawing to a close.
In the early hours of the police deployment on Friday, protesters set up a bouncy castle for children in front of the federal parliament. Others cooked a whole pig on a spit.
It was time for barbecue and partying on rue Wellington. With a bit of fatalism, all the same. We almost expected to see the musicians of the titanic.
The police had tried to warn the demonstrators with a megaphone, but the latter maintained their positions. They refused to move.
Until the end, many did not believe it. In their parallel world, where they imagined themselves freedom fighters, they could not be stopped. It was impossible.
The leaflets stuck under their windshields to warn them of an imminent intervention, the police establishing a security quadrilateral around them, the Emergency Measures Act…they didn’t believe any of it.
Again on Thursday evening, Florentina Deaconu, a Montrealer parked in front of parliament since day one, said to my colleagues: “The police are our brothers and our sisters. They ensure our safety. They’re never going to end the convoy. This is the new reality now. »
It had to stop.
There was nothing more to say. Nothing more to negotiate.
It was time to clean up. The limits to freedom of expression had long since been crossed. These demonstrators had the right to profess all sorts of nonsense, but not to force people to listen to them.
They had every right to demonstrate, but not to block the heart of the capital and threaten its democratic institutions.
The police made the arrests slowly, methodically. As they advanced, the demonstrators had to face the facts; the advent of their “new reality” would come later.
But they weren’t going to surrender without a terribly ungraceful last stand.
Hoping to disrupt the police operation, “patriots” overloaded 911 lines with non-emergency calls, putting the lives of Ottawa citizens at risk.
Some have gone so far as to place children between the police lines and those of the demonstrators. They used their own children as human shields.
No, really, it had to stop.
Come on, cavalry: Make Canada Boring Again.
The Emergency Measures Act provide the electroshock required to clear the streets of Ottawa? Was it really necessary to invoke this emergency law? Once the last trucks are towed, will we still need them?
Many constitutional scholars are not convinced. According to them, the threat posed by the demonstrators did not justify the use of this law, which gives extraordinary powers to the government. The police already had all the tools to evacuate downtown Ottawa.
All of this is debatable, of course. And that is exactly what parliamentarians would have done on Friday if they had been able to sit in the House of Commons.
But the emergency debate on the Emergency Measures Act was urgently canceled due to the police operation taking place at the gates of parliament…
When we have cleared the way for elected officials, will it be too late to debate?
The Windsor Bridge has been unblocked. The Coutts border has been reopened. And the siege of Ottawa has been partially lifted.
The national crisis seems more or less resolved.
Suddenly, the urgency seems less… urgent.
It remains to consider the financing of the conveyors of anger. This is not a detail: American donors have showered millions on individuals who imagined they were recreating the storming of the Bastille in Ottawa.
These donors funded an attempted insurrection in Canada. They knowingly sought to destabilize a foreign democracy.
The Emergency Measures Act has made it possible to freeze the funds collected and subject the crowdfunding platforms to closer monitoring.
But links have been created. The fly of Trumpism has stung Canada. I hope I’m wrong, but I fear that this absurd episode is the first of an American-style series.
For the populist right, south of the border, Canada has descended into tyranny. On Fox News, host Tucker Carlson keeps cursing Justin Trudeau – the offspring, he repeats without laughing, of Fidel Castro. On Twitter, Elon Musk compares the prime minister to Adolf Hitler.
Even the former president of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad got involved, denouncing Thursday on Twitter the “violent repression” of freedom in Canada!
When I read such nonsense, I tell myself that we may be there after all.
In the new reality.