When is your “Just watch me”, Mr. Trudeau?

So the message is clear: in this country, if you want to paralyze a cross-border link essential to Canada-USA trade and if you want to paralyze the life of the capital, do it in a heavy truck. We won’t bother you.

Post threatening slogans, enlist your children with you, bring some weapons and the police will be all polite, all nice. This is what happened in Ottawa.

On the Ambassador Bridge linking Detroit and Windsor, the same deference from the police. We don’t break the blockade for fear of violence.

Ditto in Alberta, where a Canada-USA highway link is the subject of a homeopathic appeasement on the part of the authorities, to avoid, once again, violence.

Then there is this ignominy: the police – municipal, provincial, federal – who dare not intervene when truckers use their behemoths to make the people sweat.

Then, another more serious ignominy: the collapse of political leadership in Ottawa.

I have expressed all the disgust that the federal Conservatives inspire in me in the nauseating saga of the demonstrators who occupy Ottawa. This protest was organized by far-right individuals and groups. It’s not a secret. Canada Unity, for example, has said it wants to replace MPs with non-elected¹. Convoy leader Pat King believes Justin Trudeau should be shot². No big deal: elected Conservatives got stuck on this convoy, because this convoy pisses Justin Trudeau off.

But we’re going to have to start seeing Justin Trudeau’s inaction for what it is: a way to earn political points. It is clear that in liberal pharmacies, the calculation is as follows: the party that looks crazy, with these demonstrators, is the Conservative Party…

And that’s true.

But it’s a calculation that grows more cynical with each passing day. Justin Trudeau is not the Prime Minister of the Canadian Liberals. He is the Prime Minister of the Canadians, period. He lets the situation deteriorate to gain a partisan advantage. His inaction is a form of action.

There is always a limit to just saying and repeating that it is up to the Ottawa police to act. The Ottawa police may have missed the boat at the start of the occupation, but they are overwhelmed by the scale of this siege. If the feds don’t have the tools to put down hooligans occupying their capital (and, now, their airport!) and a cross-border bridge, they might as well disband the feds.

Journalist Matt Gurney gave an excellent account of what is happening in Ottawa³. Yes, there are good people in the demonstration in Ottawa, he notes. But beyond the images of the occupation, the fact remains that this demonstration is controlled by elements of the Canadian far right who have only one objective: to do battle with the Canadian state and shake the columns of the democracy. What Gurney writes is extremely concerning.

This clash with the state is what the American far right has been seeking for decades, what it has sought for a long time on the margins of the respectable political game. But under Trump, the American far right has succeeded in colonizing the Republican Party. It can now weaken democracy – and the state – from within. Tie your hats with barbed wire.

What is happening in Ottawa – and elsewhere in Canada – has been the wet dream of the Canadian far right for years, of a confrontation with the state. It didn’t work so much when these agitators used the fear of immigration to mobilize people…

But it’s been working storm since they use health fed up and pandemic fatigue to occupy public space, in the name of “freedom”. It is no coincidence that the far-right agitators who crunched the immigrant yesterday have recycled themselves in health conspiracies today.

It is not true that in the face of this threat, Justin Trudeau has no options. If the Canadian army can intervene in CHSLDs, during natural disasters and even during snowstorms, the Canadian army can very well intervene to dislodge demonstrators who responded to the call of Canada Unity, a group that advocates the overthrow of the country’s elected government.

The Canadian State Criminal Code also has sections devoted to efforts to overthrow the country’s elected government. It’s called sedition. Did those who openly organized this demonstration, advocating just as openly the overthrow of the government, commit a seditious act?

This is more than a theoretical question.

After two weeks of occupation in Ottawa – and other occupations elsewhere in the country – it is clear that if the minority of truckers (and their fans) exploited by the extreme right get off without consequences, they will only inspire other trolls who will come out of the web to occupy other highways, other city centers, other bridges…

They are already inspiring in several democracies around the world.

The federal government’s inaction is already inspiring passages to action in far-right circles. She already inspires. Justin Trudeau’s message is clear: there is no price to pay for breaking the law, encouraging sedition and behaving like a hooligan.

He seems to think that the price to pay will only be partisan, for his opponents.

He is wrong.

His inaction is like steroids for far-right agitators in this country.

In short, Mr. Trudeau, the law-abiding citizens of this country are wondering when you are going to find a plan of action to oppose the demonstrators manipulated by seditious agitators.

I’m sure you can dig into the family archives to understand the meaning of these three famous words.⁴ : “ Just watch me “.