Marc Thiessen, Opinion: Canada turns authoritarian to shut down the ‘Freedom Convoy’
What Trudeau is doing is far worse than a photo op with a Bible. He has not only threatened to arrest the truckers, he has also declared he will take away their licenses — and thus their livelihoods — if they don’t stop protesting. The prime minister is also threatening, without a court order, to suppress the free speech of Canadians by seizing the bank accounts of anyone who donates to the protesters — actions that would be blatantly unconstitutional here in the United States. And he is doing all this using an emergency law that is only supposed to be invoked to deal with threats to “sovereignty, security and territorial integrity” of Canada. I’m sorry, but the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of Canada are not under threat.
What is under threat are the basic freedoms of the Canadian people. It was one thing for the government to end the unlawful blockade of the Ambassador Bridge connecting Detroit and Windsor, Ontario — something Trudeau was able to do without invoking an emergency law. But it is quite another for the prime minister to use those emergency powers to stifle the free-speech rights of peaceful protesters gathered in front of their country’s elected Parliament.
And Trudeau’s words are as worrisome as his actions. Not only has Trudeau threatened a crackdown, he has also claimed the demonstrators hold “unacceptable views.” He accused a Jewish member of parliament — the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors — who questioned his invocation of emergency powers of “standing with people who wave swastikas.” He called Canadians who oppose vaccine mandates a “sect” who “do not believe in science,” are “often misogynists, often racists” and “are taking up space.” And, he said that, as Canada’s leader, he has to decide “do we tolerate these people?”
This is the stuff of authoritarian regimes. In a free society, the government doesn’t get to decide whose views are “unacceptable” or whether it will “tolerate” them. In a democracy, the government does not get to intimidate people who protest policies they consider unjust by threatening to take away their jobs and their ability to feed their families. Those are actions one would expect from totalitarian regimes in China and Russia, not a Western democracy.
If you doubt Trudeau has crossed the line into despotism, ask yourself a simple question: If he were taking the exact same steps to suppress Black Lives Matter protesters, would that be acceptable? If anything, he would be the one labeled a racist and extremist.
Canadians, like all free people, have a fundamental right to protest their government’s policies. During the 2020 protests in Lafayette Square, a fire was set in the basement of nearby St. John’s Church. More than 200 Black Lives Matter protests have descended into violence (including attacks that led to the deaths of police officers and bystanders). There have been no comparable incidents of violence at the Freedom Convoy protests. Most of the protesters are not extremists; they are ordinary Canadians who are engaging in legitimate acts of nonviolent civil disobedience to protest Canada’s draconian covid rules.
And draconian they are. Two years into the coronavirus pandemic, Canada is still one of the most locked-down countries in the world. When the omicron variant arrived, Americans groused about the return of mask mandates. But in Ontario and Quebec, Canada’s two most-populous provinces, the government ordered full lockdowns. Restaurants were closed except for outdoor dining. (Who eats outdoors in Canada in January?) So were gyms, sport facilities, barber shops, museums, galleries and amusement parks. The government limited social gatherings to just five people indoors and 10 people outdoors. Children were yanked from classrooms, workers were required to work remotely, and all “non-urgent” medical procedures were canceled. For Canada, it was like 2020 all over again.
Except it is not 2020. Omicron is less dangerous than earlier coronavirus variants. Canada is one of the most vaccinated countries on Earth — 84 percent of Canadians aged 5 and older have had two doses, and 46 percent have had a booster shot. Many Canadians decided the government had gone too far. They looked at the United States — where more than 70,000 people sat together mostly unmasked at the Super Bowl — and seethed as Canadian NHL teams were forced to play in empty arenas or not play at all. They watched as even blue states such as California and New York announced they were lifting mask mandates, while Ontario’s government declared social gathering limits of 50 people indoors and 100 people outdoors will remain in place until March, with no end in sight for mandatory masking. And then, when Trudeau added a vaccine mandate for truckers crossing the Canadian-U.S. border, for many, that was the last straw.
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