Recently, at the insistence of a prominent member of the Maverick Party, a western separatist group, some truckers heeded her call and converged on Ottawa. Illustrating how easily some folks could be manipulated into parallelising their own capital. I’m sure foreign governments were impressed at how easy it was to destabilise, if only briefly, Canada’s centre. That could be very useful to any state that doesn’t like Canada’s democracy or its more liberal attitudes .
The media gave us images of Nazi flags, Confederate flags and even Trump flags. I am not sure which is worse, but what is frightening is for some people to show admiration for some of histories greatest losers. To be sure most attenders were not supporters of Nazis, the Confederate State or even Trump, any more than they sympathised with the fellow with a tinfoil hat.
If we are to believe them, they were there as patriots, just like the nice people who stormed the Capitol not so long ago. Thankfully, their patriotism did not transform into a fever of sedition, like it did in the US, but it could have. These people were pawns, oblivious to the paradoxes of attacking a legitimate democratically elected government and their outrageous claim of fighting for freedom. They all need a civics lesson. They drive to Ottawa to protest against mandates imposed by their province or by local health authorities.
They raised a lot of money for themselves and they cost taxpayers a lot of money. Policing alone is pegged at $800,000 a day. I imagine the cleanup of the detritus they left in their wake will also be costly. However, more importantly, they drove a wedge in Canadian society. They deepened the divide between responsible citizens and fearful antivaxxers. It’s a rift that will be difficult to heal. Each group lives in a different reality. The vaccinated are largely better educated and more trusting of government, mainstream media and the scientific community. Antivaxxers see themselves as victims of an overzealous government that is just itching to take away their freedoms and track their every move. They don’t trust mainstream news and generally prefer to rely on social media and right or centre news outlets such as Ezra Levant’s Rebel News or True North, sites that do not hide their bias, but are viewed as “truthful” by people who have grown fearful of mainstream outlets. Getting these people to abandon their distrust and return to being normal members of society may prove a daunting, if not impossible task.
Nevertheless, we have to learn to live together, not like Democrats and Republicans in the US, but as a true society convinced that each side has some merit and that we are not enemies. We cannot afford to behave like Americans.