The media worked very hard to demonize the grassroots protests that coalesced into the Canadian Freedom Convoy in early 2022, and they’ve continued to push the notion that either the movement was an utter failure or that it was a maple-flavoured January 6 “insurrection” righteously suppressed by our beloved Dear Leader and his stormtroops. Someone using the handle “Kulak” wants to remind you that the convoy wasn’t a failure and in fact was the catalyst for great changes both in Canada and around the world:
A screenshot from a YouTube video showing the protest in front of Parliament in Ottawa on 30 January, 2022.
Photo via Wikimedia Commons.
I keep encountering this misconception from people who don’t follow Canadian politics …
That somehow the Trucker convoy was defeated.
The Freedom Convoy was the most wildly immediately successful protest in Canadian history, maybe WORLD history.
People remember Trudeau’s crackdown, old ladies having their skulls cracked with batons, Disabled indigenous grandmothers trampled by police horses, Bank accounts frozen and public employees investigated for mere donations …
And there’s a big reason people remember this … It was dramatic, and the media and the regime certainly wanted you to think resistance was futile …
What people don’t remember is what happened in the immediate aftermath: The government caved on absolutely everything within a week for the most important things, and then a month or so for the rest.
First off there was the massive political shift that happened as the convoy was occurring:
Jason Kenny, the pro-lockdown Premiere of Alberta (Canada’s most conservative province) was forced to announce his resignation, and Alberta immediately lifted all its lockdown impositions.
Erin O’Toole the pro-lockdown leader of the Conservative Party was likewise forced to resign, his temporary replacement Candice Bergen (not to be mistaken with the actress) being a longtime rival opposed to lockdowns, and his main rival who replaced her after intra-party elections was Pierre Poilievre, the politician after Maxime Bernier who was quickest to embrace the Truckers and their cry for freedom.
As the convoy was ongoing Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act (the Act which replaced the War Measures Act for invoking Martial Law) … Now these grant the government almost unlimited powers, famously the War Measures Act was invoked by Trudeau’s Father to detain Quebeckers and raid hundreds of homes without warrants during the FLQ separatist crisis of 1972 … the catch is that while the follow on Emergencies Act can be invoked by a Prime Minister Parliament has to sign off on the act’s continued use within one week.
Well skulls were cracked, accounts frozen, and as the week passed things came down to the deadline … On the very last night … Trudeau managed to get sign-off (without the Conservative opposition) from the House of Commons, but it had to go to the Upper House, the Canadian Senate.
NOW. The Canadian Senate is a shameful institution.
It’s like the British House of Lords but without the nobility.
A Senate seat is a lifetime appointment, by the Prime Minister … and that’s it. Little to no review, no democratic input, and this is supposed to be equivalent or superior to our elected House of Commons …
Naturally the go-to use of the Senate is as a spoils system for cronies. Do some shameful favour for a Prime Minister, raise a lot of money for the party, be politically connected to a provincial gov the PM wants to buy off … get a Senate seat.
One of the longest-standing political agreements in Canada is how badly the Senate needs to be abolished … but can’t be because Quebec is nominally overrepresented in the Senate, and abolishing it would cause a constitutional crisis.
H/T to Donna Laframboise for the link.
