Like many Canadians, I am both sick of and sickened by the coverage of this ongoing Ottawa rally. People like to call it a “protest”, but I'm not so sure I agree. I believe in the right to protest, of course.
The act of protest has done a lot of help shape the society in which we live. There have been protests for women's suffrage, the end of segregation, indigenous rights, equal marriage, etc. But there has also been a dark companion to this history of protest and progress. There were so-called protests where people hurled insults, and worse, at black children trying to go to school, protests against good people being able to marry whom they choose, and there were even doctors who closed their offices in protest at the beginning of Tommy Douglas's Medicare.
While some protests are about correcting injustice and extending rights to more people, others are about railing against a future that has the slight chance of eroding the privilege one has enjoyed over other people.
This trucker rally belongs squarely in that second category. These are people who have not had to flee oppression. They have not been subject to institutional discrimination or persecution for who they are.
They have simply been asked to make a tiny concession of their own time and energy to protect the well-being of their own community, and they have responded, “No!” time and time again. That's not really a protest. There is a more apt term for it: a temper tantrum. It is the sort of thing a small child does when they have no concept of the world beyond what they want at that exact moment.
Moose Jaw's own Fraser Tolmie has now posed with other elected officials showing support for the rally. He said he stands with the “hardworking and patriotic truckers”. And to be clear, so do I. I have nothing but respect for our hardworking and patriotic truckers: specifically, the 130,000 truckers who got their vaccinations like reasonable people and carried on with their important work.
I feel as bad for those truckers that this rally has come to represent them as I do for myself that it's apparently come to represent all of Canada. But this is not a grassroots movement of the entire working class like the worker's march that came to Ottawa in the 1930s. It is the extremely vocal minority of disconnected communities brought together by social media and the power of rage.
Some people have been shocked by some of the images that came out of Ottawa. People flying Confederate flags or swastikas, people harassing a homeless shelter and an ambulance, the appropriation of the Terry Fox statue and the blatant disrespect for the war memorial. Shocking and sickening yes.
But not really surprising. The appearance of racists and white nationalists at this rally isn't an accident. Several key members of the convoy's unofficial leadership (including those running the GoFundMe page, that has raised over $7 million) have a history of racist rhetoric, or even ties to white nationalist organizations.
And even those who stay on-message with regards to vaccine mandates still spout the ludicrous conspiracy theory that vaccines contain tracking devices. (Smartphones all contain tracking devices, but they don't seem willing to part with those.) So from the very foundation, this rally was built on hatred and lies.
The participants of this national temper tantrum want us to believe that they have been bullied and terrorized, and that Trudeau is an authoritarian. They spout this lie even though they continue to face no real consequences for their actions. Even as heinous and outlandish as their behaviour has been, from parking trucks on the War Memorial to dancing on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, there has been no major recourse against them.
There has been no tear gas, no mass arrests, no sort of response you might expect from an authoritarian state trying to rob its citizens' freedoms. And these protesters act with such reckless abandon because they know, in their hearts, that nothing will happen to them. They know they will not face any serious consequences. The whole thing is theatre, with the innocent residents of Ottawa caught in the middle.
The kind of freedom they are fighting for at this rally is not the freedom that has built our society. They are demanding personal freedom at the expense of everyone around them.
They believe that their right to do whatever they please is more important than the rights of the rest of us to live and work safely. They believe that being told to take a free vaccine that will do nothing but help them is somehow more horrible than being told that a loved one has died of Covid-19, or that your life-saving surgery has been cancelled because the hospital is overcrowded.
Like a toddler having a temper tantrum, they think only of what is convenient to them, and nothing about the safety and comfort of others. And like a toddler having a temper tantrum, the Ottawa police and the Canadian government are simply letting them tire themselves out.
Blair Woynarski
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the position of this publication.
