There are two distinct narratives about last winter’s Freedom Convoy emerging from the current judicial inquiry into the Trudeau government’s imposition of the Emergencies Act.
Let’s call the first narrative – the one being peddled by politicians and “progressive” journalists at the time – the Panicked Version. The other narrative – the one from more sober officials, police commanders and intelligence services – could be labelled the Realistic Version.
There are two distinct narratives about last winter’s Freedom Convoy emerging from the current judicial inquiry into the Trudeau government’s imposition of the Emergencies Act. Let’s call the first narrative – the one being peddled by politicians and “progressive” journalists at the time – the...
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In the Panicked Version, the truckers were sadistic insurrectionists, armed rapists bent on intimidating ordinary residents of our nation’s capital while plotting the overthrow of our government.
According to the Panicked narrative, the only thing standing between our democracy and utter chaos was our prime minister’s bold declaration of a national state of emergency.
Under the Realistic Version, which was the subject of much of this week’s testimony at the Rouleau Commission (officially the Public Order Emergency Commission), the convoy truckers were disruptive, to be sure, and there were a few minor scuffles, as you would expect during any mass protest. However, participants were no threat to public safety or national security.
They were not the dupes of American white nationalists nor the puppets of foreign governments. They were not armed. And none were ever charged with a serious violent crime.
Outgoing Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson testified (as he had said previously in public) that truckers had intimidated residents within the zones they occupied by yanking the COVID masks off anyone wearing one.
But (
Whoopsies!!!) under cross examination at the commission, Watson had to admit he had never witnessed such intimidating tactics nor received police reports of them. Instead, he had heard about the mask-stripping and other alleged bullying only through media reports.
In true invisible-monsters-under-the-bed fashion, Ottawa city councillor and New Democrat, Catherine McKenney (currently also an Ottawa mayoralty candidate), testified this week that they felt “fear” and “terror” from the convoy (although in the next breath they talked of how they walked daily around the blockade sites without being assaulted or abused).
Like Watson, though, McKenney, too, was forced to admit they had seen no acts of intimidation or violence, but rather had relied on social media accounts as their “proof.”
The federal Liberal cabinet claimed the convoy was full of rapists based on, well, no one is exactly sure what that slander was based on. All we know is that Ottawa police registered no sexual assaults related to the convoy.
Convoyers were called arsonists after a fire in an apartment block near their protests. Yet no one apologized when Ottawa police charged suspects unrelated to the convoy.
And on and on and on, etc…Link above, etc…
There are two distinct narratives about last winter’s Freedom Convoy emerging from the current judicial inquiry into the Trudeau government’s imposition of the Emergencies Act. Let’s call the first narrative – the one being peddled by politicians and “progressive” journalists at the time – the...
apple.news
On the Realistic Version side, this week the Rouleau commission heard from Pat Morris, the head of the Ontario Provincial Police intelligence unit. He described most of the political/media depictions of the convoy as “hyperbole” and “sensationalized.”
Remember when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau slurred convoy participants as a “fringe minority?” Morris testified that, on the contrary, his unit determined participants had a “multitude of grievances” and appeared to be mostly ordinary citizens with a “large degree of support” across the country.
That echoed testimony from last spring by Barry MacKillop, deputy head of the federal government’s own terrorism-funding, money-laundering investigation unit. MacKillop told a Commons committee his agency could find no evidence of illegal funding for the convoy. In fact, most donors seemed to be ordinary people fed up with COVID restrictions who had chipped in a few of their own dollars.
Canadian elites – the Panicked Version adherents – had talked themselves into believing the Convoy was a vast conspiracy to undermine our institutions (i.e. to undermine them). But as we are learning at the Rouleau commission, this was largely delusional.
In the Emergencies Act, the incompetence of local police is not listed as one of the reasons to invoke the act. Ending the occupation of downtown Ottawa required effective policing, which did eventually happen, all of which could have happened without suspending civil liberties or freezing bank accounts of ordinary citizens protesting their government.
