Since its inception, the Freedom Convoy has been an inspiration to people across the globe. The idea of people being fed up with their situations and sticking up for change is a story as old as time itself. This convoy that originally began as a protest over cross-border truckers not being able to work nearly immediately evolved to cover the entirety of COVID restrictions across the country.
As these truckers convoyed across Canada, their message picked up steam, and more and more people got involved. From the small market truckers who were only affected by inter-province rules to American truckers who wanted to stand in line with their brothers, to the average Canadian who was tired of the restrictions, they all stood together and said enough is enough as they took their message to Parliament in Ottawa, Ontario.
Naturally, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau couldn’t face his fellow Canadians. He was whisked away to an undisclosed location where his influence could still be imposed upon the protesters, but he had little to no risk of harm or confrontation. Instead, he faced Parliament where he made massive mistakes in aligning one of his key MPs to the people waving the swastika, and he, in essence, told people he heard them but he didn’t care.
In the wake of this controversy, numerous policies, and stances on politics across Canada have changed. Provinces like Alberta, Prince Edward Island, and even Trudeau’s home Province of Ontario have begun rolling back COVID restrictions. While many Premiers have been claiming that the protests had nothing to do with these changes, it’s impossible to ignore the timing – even if the science has been backing the loosening of restrictions for months.
One of the protesters, Mark Suitor, saw what they had done in Canada first hand. “I think we’ve started something here…This is going to be a very big division in our country. I don’t believe this is the end.” He’s right, too. Other countries like Australia, France, and New Zealand had their protests over the ever-increasing and unpredictable restrictions. These countries, too, saw the poison their leadership was feeding them, and they had enough.
As the protest waged on, their horns became increasingly disturbing to many residents. So much so that the Ottawa Mayor reached out to the Freedom Convoy leadership in a letter. This classic but traditional way of passing a request simply asked them to concentrate their protests closer to the Parliament building to cease disrupting the lives of so many local families and small businesses. Given the owner-operator status of many of the truckers, they knew how badly they may have been changing their lives, so the vast majority gladly moved to ensure less disruption to the common people.
While seemingly good-natured, this move gave Trudeau a golden opportunity to institute the 1988 Emergencies Act – something never before done in Canadian history. This allowed for a massive increase in the police force assigned to the protest, the increase in potential violent confrontations, more arrests, and semi-trucks being towed. In total, a minimum of 191 people were arrested, 79 vehicles were towed away, and 206 bank accounts had been frozen. Given the Canadian admission that they could do as they pleased, these numbers are almost assuredly lower than the true figures.
Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino gave some hope to the Canadian people after the protest had officially been disbanded. “For the first time in three weeks the streets are calm, they are quiet and they are clear. That all followed the invocation of the emergencies act. We will not use it for a single minute longer than we have to.” Given the small swath of land that the Emergencies Act was authorized for, undoing their horrific wrongs by the peaceful protesters should be quickly accomplished. Now, they just need to convince PM Trudeau to drop the vaccine passports and mask mandates completely.
