Twitter is full of pictures and videos from over the weekend of people gathering on and around the highway to voice their opinion against the government’s dystopic vaccine mandates and restrictions.
Update (1935ET):The Canadian Civil Liberties Association has condemned PM Justin Trudeau for invoking the Emergencies Act, claiming in a Monday tweet that the Canadian federal government “has not met the threshold necessary” to do so. “The Emergencies Act can only be invoked when a situation “seriously threatens the ability of the Government of Canada to preserve the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of Canada” & when the situation “cannot be effectively dealt with under any other law of Canada,” the twitter thread continues.
The Emergencies Act can only be invoked when a situation “seriously threatens the ability of the Government of Canada to preserve the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of Canada” & when the situation “cannot be effectively dealt with under any other law of Canada.”
— Canadian Civil Liberties Association (@cancivlib) February 15, 2022
Governments regularly deal with difficult situations, and do so using powers granted to them by democratically elected representatives. Emergency legislation should not be normalized. It threatens our democracy and our civil liberties. #cdnpoli
— Canadian Civil Liberties Association (@cancivlib) February 15, 2022
Has Trudeau created a political emergency?
Don’t worry, @JustinTrudeau isn’t “calling in the military”. He is just authorizing banks to unilaterally freeze your accounts on the basis of suspicion alone, no court order required, with legal immunity. I hope everyone realizes how much more dangerous this is than the military
* * *Update (1715ET): As expected, Canadian PM Trudeau invoked sweeping emergency police powers Monday in his latest attempt to stamp out dissent from citizens protesting vaccine mandates and other COVID restrictions.
“This is not a peaceful protest,” the Canadian leader told reporters in Ottawa alongside top cabinet officials. “The federal government is stepping in because local police authorities have had difficulty enforcing the law,” he said.“This is about keeping Canadians safe, protecting people’s jobs and restoring confidence in our institutions.”
Enacting the new never-before-used law gives Trudeau, in effect, martial law control over everything and everyone; and not all of Canada is behind him…
BREAKING: Premiers of Alberta, Manitoba, Quebec, and Saskatchewan oppose Trudeau decision to invoke the Emergencies Act on the truckers
His first act, it appears, was to choke off any funding for the protesters by broadening its anti-money-laundering rules to cover crowdsourcing sites, threatening them with financing “terrorism”.
‘Your protest, dear Canadian truck driver friends, joins a worldwide chorus that wants to oppose the establishment of the New World Order on the rubble of nation states.’
(LifeSiteNews) – Dear Brothers and Sisters Canadian truck drivers,
The global coup that in these two years of psycho-pandemic farce has been carried out by the globalist elite appears most clearly if we do not limit ourselves to considering what happened in individual Nations, but broaden our gaze to what has happened everywhere.
Your protest, dear Canadian truck driver friends, joins a worldwide chorus that wants to oppose the establishment of the New World Order on the rubble of nation states, through the Great Reset desired by the World Economic Forum and by the United Nations under the name of Agenda 2030. And we know that many heads of government have participated in Klaus Schwab’s School for Young Leaders – the so-called Global Leaders for Tomorrow – beginning with Justin Trudeau and Emmanuel Macron, Jacinta Ardern and Boris Johnson, and before that Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy and Tony Blair.
It would seem that Canada is – along with Australia, Italy, Austria and France – one of the nations most infiltrated by the globalists. And in this infernal project we must not only consider the psycho-pandemic farce, but also the attack on traditions and Christian identity – indeed, more precisely the Catholic identity – of these countries.
You understood this instinctively, and your yearning for freedom was shown in all its coordinated harmony, moving towards the capital Ottawa. Dear truck drivers, you are facing great difficulties, not only because you give up your work to demonstrate, but also because of the adverse weather conditions, long nights in the cold, and attempts to be cleared away that you face. But along with these difficulties you have also experienced the closeness of many of your fellow citizens, who like you have understood the looming threat and want to support you in protesting against the regime. Allow me also to express to you my support and my spiritual closeness, to which I join the prayer that your event may be crowned with success and may also extend to other countries.
In these days we see the masks of tyrants from all over the world fall, and unfortunately we also see so much conformism, so much fearfulness, so much cowardice in people who up until yesterday we regarded as friends, even among our family members. Yet, precisely because of this extreme situation, we discover with amazement gestures of humanity made by strangers, signs of solidarity and brotherhood on the part of those who feel close to us in the common battle. We discover so much generosity and so much desire to shake us from this stupor. We discover that we are no longer willing to passively suffer the destruction of our world imposed by a cabal of unscrupulous criminals, thirsty for power and money.
In this relentless attack on the traditional world, not only your way of life and your identity have been affected, but also your possessions, your activities, and your work. This is the Great Reset, this is the future promised by slogans like Build Back Better, this is the future of billions of people being controlled in their every move, in all their transactions, in every purchase, every bureaucratic practice, every activity. Automatons without souls or wills, deprived of their identity, reduced to having a universal income that allows them to survive, to buy only what others have already decided to put up for sale, transformed by a gene serum into people who are chronically ill.
Today more than ever it is essential that you realize that it is no longer possible to passively assist: it is necessary to take a position, to fight for freedom, to demand respect for natural freedoms. But even more, dear Canadian brothers, it is necessary to understand that this dystopia serves to establish the dictatorship of the New World Order and totally erase every trace of Our Lord Jesus Christ from society, from history, and from the traditions of peoples.
Demonstrate for your rights, Canadian friends: but may these rights not be limited to a simple claim to the freedom to enter supermarkets or not to be vaccinated: may it also be a proud and courageous claim to your sacrosanct right to be free men. But your demonstration should be one of true freedom, reminding you that it is the Truth – that is, Our Lord Jesus Christ – who alone can guarantee you freedom: the truth will make you free.
Let us pray that Christ will return to reign in society, in your hearts and in your families. Take up the spiritual weapon of the Holy Rosary, and pray to the Blessed Virgin, Sainte Ann, Saint George and the Holy Canadian Martyrs to protect your homeland.
I would like to conclude my appeal by asking you to pray with me, with the words that Our Lord has taught us: may they be the seal of this awakening, of this national liberation. Let us all pray it together, out loud, so that our prayer may rise to Heaven, but also so that it may resound powerfully in these squares, in these streets, all the way to the palaces of the powerful:
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil. Amen.
Freedom is not a panacea for every challenge in life. But it is far superior to boundless submission to tinhorn dictators who know far less than they claim. Politicians like Trudeau and Biden, who fuel mass rage against any group that does not kowtow to officialdom, are sowing seeds of hatred that will proliferate long after the pandemic ends. In the long run, people have more to fear from politicians than from viruses.
The denigration of the Canadian trucker protest convoy exemplifies how freedom is now the biggest villain of the covid-19 pandemic. A Washington Post cartoonist portrayed the trucker convoy as “fascism” incarnate while another Post column derided the “toxic ‘Freedom Convoy.’” Anyone who resists any government command is apparently now a public enemy.
The trucker protest was spurred by the Canadian government’s sweeping covid vaccine mandate. Many truckers believe the risks of the vaccine outweigh the benefit and, more importantly, that they have the right to control their own bodies. Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau declared on Monday, “There is no place in our country for threats, violence or hatred.” Except for the hatred Trudeau whips up by denouncing vaccine mandate opponents as “racist” and “misogynistic.” And except for the “threats” and “violence” used by government enforcement agents to compel submission to any pandemic decree issued by Trudeau or other politicians.
Since the start of this pandemic, many people who boasted of their trust in “science and data” also believed that absolute power would keep them safe. According to their scorecard, anyone who objected to government commands was the equivalent of a heretic who must be condemned if not banished from every place except the cemetery. North of the border, Quebec epitomizes this intolerance with its new edict prohibiting unvaccinated individuals from shopping at Costco or Walmart.
The same critics who latch on to any obnoxious behavior by a few wayward Canadian truckers (MSNBC denounced them as a “cult”) to condemn freedom are also happy to exonerate any American politician who pointlessly destroyed freedom during the pandemic with bizarre edicts. In December 2020, Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti banned all unnecessary “travel, including, without limitation, travel on foot, bicycle, scooter, motorcycle, automobile, or public transit.” The mayor (who was caught violating California mask mandates at the National Football Conference championship game) offered no evidence to justify placing four million residents under house arrest. Governor Ralph Northam dictated that all Virginians must stay indoors from midnight until 5 a.m. with a few narrow exceptions. Federal judge William Stickman IV condemned Pennsylvania’s restrictions: “Broad population-wide lockdowns are such a dramatic inversion of the concept of liberty in a free society as to be nearly presumptively unconstitutional.”
Preventing politicians from obliterating freedom is now the worst form of tyranny. On Thanksgiving eve 2020, the Supreme Court struck down Governor Andrew Cuomo’s edict that limited religious gatherings in New York to ten or fewer people while permitting far more leeway for businesses to operate. The court declared that Cuomo’s rules were “far more restrictive than any Covid-related regulations that have previously come before the Court … and far more severe than has been shown to be required to prevent the spread of the virus.” An American Civil Liberties Union official fretted that “the freedom to worship … does not include a license to harm others or endanger public health.” Harvard law professor Lawrence Tribe and Cornell professor Michael Dorf warned that the Supreme Court was becoming “a place like Gilead—the theocratic and misogynist country in Margaret Atwood’s dystopian ‘The Handmaid’s Tale.’”
Many progressives talk as if America faces a choice between reckless freedom and paternalism—i.e., submission to a benevolent elite. But regardless of Anthony Fauci’s boundless conceit, omniscient officials have yet to come to the rescue. Government agencies have blundered catastrophically since the start of the pandemic.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) bollixed America’s initial response by sending out faulty, contaminated test kits that failed to detect the rapidly spreading virus to health agencies. Governors panicked and shut down schools, resulting in vast losses in learning and widening the achievement gap between affluent and low-income students. The vast majority of small businesses were locked down and thousands were bankrupted in a futile effort to prevent an airborne virus from continuing to spread. Placing scores of millions of people under house arrest led to record-breaking fatalities for drug overdoses and a tidal wave of depression and anxiety. New York City’s covid vaccine passport regime failed to prevent the Big Apple from becoming the hottest spot in the nation for the omicron variant.
President Joe Biden portrayed the vaccines as a magic bullet and falsely promised that people who got injected would not get covid. The CDC stopped counting “breakthrough” cases of covid among the fully vaccinated, paving the way for a resurgence of the virus that has now infected more than seventy million Americans. Or maybe two-hundred-million-plus Americans, since the CDC previously stated that only one in four cases are diagnosed and reported. Whatever. The Food and Drug Administration is seeking to delay fully disclosing Pfizer’s application for its covid vaccine approval for seventy-five years. After Biden issued a mandate that forced hospitals to fire healthy unvaccinated nurses, the CDC said it was OK for hospitals to rely on covid-positive nurses to treat patients—one of the biggest absurdities of the pandemic.
Freedom is not a panacea for every challenge in life. But it is far superior to boundless submission to tinhorn dictators who know far less than they claim. Politicians like Trudeau and Biden, who fuel mass rage against any group that does not kowtow to officialdom, are sowing seeds of hatred that will proliferate long after the pandemic ends. In the long run, people have more to fear from politicians than from viruses.
James Bovard is the author of ten books, including 2012’s Public Policy Hooligan, and 2006’s Attention Deficit Democracy. He has written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Playboy, Washington Post, and many other publications.
The Canadian Prime Minister, who recently described the trucker convoy as a “small fringe minority” who hold “unacceptable views” against Covid mantes, may have unwittingly unleashed the greatest challenge ever to his political career.
Like those in the medical profession, long-haul truckers dutifully perform their jobs largely behind the scenes, even during the peak of the Covid pandemic. And just like thousands of nurses and doctors – many of whom were exposed to the virus in the line of duty and probably protected by natural immunity – unvaccinated truckers have found themselves out on the street, or rather, out on the highway.
Dubbed the “Freedom Convoy” that began in Vancouver last week, the 18-wheeler movement is expected to reach Ottawa this weekend as thousands of truckers will clog the capitol in protest. The convoy reveals the level of frustration being felt across the country thanks to Justin Trudeau’s draconian vaccine mantes.
Speaking from Ottawa this afternoon, the PM describes #freedomconvoy2022 participants as a ‘small fringe minority’ expressing ‘unacceptable views’ that don’t represent the views of most Canadians pic.twitter.com/TtYcFE3Izr
Since Jan. 15, unvaccinated truckers entering Canada are required to be tested and quarantined for 15 days; the U.S. mandated similar restrictions on Jan. 22. Naturally such regulations made their job impossible to perform. Thus, the mandates have removed some 20-25% of the estimated 175,000 cross-border American and Canadian truckers due to noncompliance in both countries. But these sidelined workers are not leaving their jobs without a fight, and it seems that many Canadians support the cause.
While mainstream media and social media has largely been able to control the flow of information that Canadians receive with regards to Covid and the vaccination mandates, the trucker convoy has given the public a chance to really express themselves. Judging by early indications it doesn’t look particularly good for the Trudeau administration.
Telegram, the censorship-free messenger application, is chockfull of videos and photographs of overpasses near Toronto loaded with placard-waving supporters as the convoy grinds its way towards Ottawa to the east. Other platforms showed the local residents of small towns handing out meals to the truckers despite the frigid temperatures.
Undoubtedly the most influential advocate of the truckers’ cause thus far has been Elon Musk, who tweeted a three-word message that certainly did not sit well with Justin Trudeau: “Canadian truckers rule.”
Speaking of Trudeau, the 50-year-old leader of the Labor Party announced just this week that he had been “exposed to Covid-19,” and would therefore be isolating at home for five days. That announcement sparked a small riot on social media, with many suggesting that the Canadian leader had used the excuse of Covid to hopefully avoid the truckers.
Keean Bexte, a journalist with Counter Signal, suggested in a tweet that a new variant of “Coward-19” was detected.
“This is, perhaps, the greatest act of cowardice from a sitting Canadian PM in this nation’s history,” Bexte wrote in an accompanying article. “When Canadians finally take a stand, finally take real action, Trudeau merely waves it away, practically flipping them the bird through a single Tweet, ending it with “please get vaccinated” to rub salt in wounds he’s opened.”
This is the problem when the media and government refuses to permit any sort of formal debate on a serious issue that affects millions of people on so many different levels. Trudeau has given his countrymen just one option, and that is to get the vaccination or essentially become second-class citizens in their own country. Unlike other effected industries, however, truckers have the option of putting their machines to use for a very effective form of protest, and one that promises to cause severe logistical problems as far as transport goes.
Although the Canadian Trucking Alliance and the Ontario Trucking Association (OTA) have both distanced themselves from the movement, saying 90 percent of long-haul truckers are vaccinated, the remaining 10 percent (that is, assuming the figure is accurate as some believe the number of unvaccinated may be as high as 25 percent) leaves anywhere from 20,000 to 50,000 of rigs easily capable of affecting a large swath of the economy, both in the U.S. and Canada.
With tens of thousands of truckers now unemployed, the supply chain crisis, which was already noticeable before the mandates went into effect with over 100 cargo ships docked off the coast of California, unable to unload their shipments, store shelves could become conspicuously less stocked in the days and weeks to come. Already Canadians are displaying disturbing images from their local grocery stores on social media.
Thank you Truckers! Trudeau is attacking personal liberty and threatening everyone’s ability to get groceries because of his overreach on vaccine mandates. He is the biggest threat to freedom in Canada.https://t.co/5b5k5ZjuY3
Mike Millian, the president of the Private Motor Truck Council of Canada, said his organization is against vaccine mandates for truckers, but is worried about some of the rhetoric he’s seen among the protesters.
“Truck drivers are isolated in their jobs, haven’t been associated to spread, and we can’t afford to damage our supply chain any more than it is,” Millian said in an interview with CBC News. “But this convoy seems to have morphed into a kind of protest against all vaccine and COVID-related shutdowns.”
“We’re seeing signs that are calling our government ‘communists’ and ‘nazis’ and comparing the [situation over vaccine mandates] to the holocaust.”
“Obviously, we can’t support that message,” he said.
Meanwhile, the media in Canada seems to be priming the protest, suggesting that far-right agitators are behind the movement, even warning that Ottawa could experience its “January 6th storming,” a reference to the day when pro-Trump supporters took over the U.S. Capitol in their belief that the 2020 presidential election had been rigged in favor of Joe Biden.
What Justin Trudeau seems unwilling to admit is that Canadians are weary of the debate over vaccine mandates and the divisiveness it has caused throughout society, not to mention the loss of freedoms. For many of these people, the ‘Freedom Convoy’ represents an opportunity for Canadians to latch onto a movement that promotes their own ideas, which includes a strong dislike for the government’s handling of the Covid crisis.
Whether or not this trucker movement will morph into something greater remains to be seen, but it’s not a good sign that Justin Trudeau has removed himself from the public spotlight at possibly the most pivotal point in his political career.
Jan 31 – We all remember where we were when the Berlin Wall came down. While it may have seemed that communist rule would go on forever, when the people decided that they had enough suddenly the wall fell. Just like that.
Thus it is after two years of Covid authoritarianism that in Canada the largest truck convoy in history has smashed through the Berlin Wall of tyranny. I have watched as the Canada I once respected as a haven for antiwar Americans in the 1960s turned into one of the most repressive countries on earth. I wondered how a freedom-loving people could allow themselves to be abused by these mini-Stalins without a peep.
But then Canada stood up and showed the rest of the world that freedom can triumph over tyranny if the people demand it. As I say, no army can stop an idea whose time has come.
Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau had been basking in his ability to terrorize the population in the name of fighting a virus. He was so confident in his seemingly unlimited power that he felt he could ridicule any Canadian with different views. The prime minister said in a recent interview that unvaccinated Canadians were “extremists,” “misogynists,” and “racists.”
When the Canadian truckers stood up to his tyranny and began their historic convoy to Ottawa, he thought he could continue ridiculing people. The truckers and their supporters were just a “small fringe minority” who hold “unacceptable views,” he confidently claimed. For Trudeau, love of liberty is just an “unacceptable view.”
Less than a week later, as tens of thousands of trucks began entering the capital with millions of supporters behind them, the “brave” Canadian prime minister had fled the city and shuffled off to an undisclosed location.
As Elon Musk Tweeted, “It would appear that the so-called ‘fringe minority’ is actually the government.”
The Canadian mainstream media is obviously just as obedient to the regime as ours. They ignored the Freedom Convoy for as long as possible. There was almost no reporting. Then, when it became impossible to ignore, they began to attack and ridicule instead of trying to report it accurately. It was disgusting and almost comical to see a “reporter” from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation suggest that the Canadian Freedom Convoy was cooked up by Putin and the Russians!
Thousands of trucks have arrived in Ottawa. They demand an end to covid tyranny. They are backed by millions of citizens, who braved the Canadian winter at night to cheer the truckers on.
This protest is so important because it’s not limited to Canada. The truckers are being supported worldwide, and a similar convoy is being planned from California to Washington, DC. In a US where grocery store shelves are increasingly bare, the truckers have more leverage than the powers-that-be would like to admit.
If I were prime minister of totalitarian Australia or New Zealand – or most anywhere in Europe – I would be getting pretty nervous right now. Just as the Covid tyranny descended across the globe in a seemingly coordinated fashion, now that the Berlin Wall of the tyrants has been breached, it’s just a matter of time before the shockwaves are felt far and wide.
We owe a debt of gratitude to the Canadian truck drivers. Let’s all do whatever we can to help the freedom movement continue to gather steam!