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Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau has cornered himself. The right move for Trudeau to extract himself now is to end the useless jab everyone, shut down everything, everywhere prolonged mandates, for which he will inevitably lose some credibility and face. His other options seem to be to wait out the convoy, systematically disrupt the convoy (e.g. parking fines, confiscating jerry cans, continuing the demonization of the protestors), or call in police as he has already done or even the army. Those are all losing options because it signals that he has not read the pulse of the nation and became trapped by his own unpopular mandates. Trudeau has to go. Here is why:
First of all, one expects a prime minister of a country to try and represent all citizens of the country. Yet, Trudeau smears a large chunk of the population. A commonly heard factoid is the claim that 90 percent of truck drivers are vaccinated.
So what? Even if that is 100 percent accurate, it does not take into account all the vaccinated types who regretfully drank the Kool-Aid of the government and its flunkies.
It does not account for those pissed off at contracting COVID-19 despite being fully vaccinated.
It does not account for those who were coerced into being vaccinated. For a leader to threaten citizens with job loss for not surrendering their bodily autonomy is morally corrupt.
Such actions expose Trudeau as unfit to lead. Besides, even if 90 percent of the people were fully informed and willingly accepted being vaccinated that still leaves 10 percent of the population as unwilling.
Granted, the trucker convoy may well be a minority that does not represent the views of the majority of Canadians, but does Trudeau not realize that he is the leader of a minority government? And is his divide-and-rule strategy acceptable for governing a country?
It is well known that more bees are attracted to honey than vinegar. But Trudeau has been pouring vinegar on the truckers and their many supporters. He channels George W Bush’s dismissal of millions of anti-war demonstrators as a “focus group” by calling the trucking convoy a “fringe group” holding “unacceptable views.”
In saying so, he has vainly appointed himself as an arbiter of what views are acceptable and unacceptable. Obviously, in pursuing a path of splittism, Trudeau precludes presenting himself as a uniter. Trudeau again seems to channel Bush and his false dichotomy of being either with or against.
“Over the past few days, Canadians were shocked, and frankly, disgusted by the behavior displayed by some people protesting in our nation’s capital,” Trudeau said. “I want to be very clear: we are not intimidated by those who hurl insults and abuse at small business workers and steal food from the homeless.”
Not intimidated? So fearless was Trudeau that he tested positive for COVID-19 and went into quarantine as the truckers arrived. Sick or not, Trudeau, whose vaccine status is questioned by some, stands as an exemple that the vaccinations he promotes do not confer immunity to the virus. Finally, courageously or not, he has pointedly refused to speak with the truckers.
Said Trudeau,
“People of Ottawa don’t deserve to be harassed in their own neighborhoods, don’t deserve to be confronted with the inherent violence of a swastika flying on a street corner, or a confederate flag, or the insults and jeers just because they’re wearing a mask. That’s not who Canadians are.” Trudeau lambasted truckers and their supporters protesting mandates as showing “disrespect to science” and championing “hate, abuse and racism.”
Trudeau criticizes the disruption posed to residents of Ottawa. Ottawans are not a monolith. The convoy assuredly is a nuisance to some Ottawans, but assuredly other Ottawans, perhaps again a minority, are supportive and find the convoy refreshingly and brazenly defiant, awe-inspiring, and festive. At the same time, not just Ottawans but Canadians everywhere are being disrupted by the mandates. In essence, the trucker convoy is fighting fire with fire: causing disruption to end the disruption.
On several occasions, one could hear Trudeau urge Canadians to follow the science, but he has never, as far as I know, presented or divulged specifically what science people should follow. That is hardly persuasive for people who demand evidence, as the scrutinization of evidence is a sine qua non for science.
And if Trudeau’s respect for science is so profound, then why does he try to censor doctors and scientists whose research and understanding reaches a different conclusion? Besides, the vaccines are still experimental, and the science is clear on wearing masks to protect against respiratory viruses: the masks don’t work.
I haven’t seen Trudeau pointing to any scientific study that says masks work. And it wouldn’t matter if he could find one such randomized controlled study that rejects the null hypothesis (that there is no difference in the variables being studied) because of the surfeit of studies that all accept the null hypothesis.
Thus, the possibility that these are all Type II errors (mistaken rejection of a false null hypothesis) is extremely unlikely. Since the null hypothesis has already been accepted, then rigorous science demands the alternative hypothesis be rejected. [See Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (New York: Routledge Classics, 2005) or the layman’s language of Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (Headline Book Publishing, 1997): 34.]
As for hate, all people of conscience must decry hate. First, truckers are not a monolith. Neither are the truckers in the trucker convoy a monolith. That one or a few truckers might be fueled by hatred does not imply that the vast number of truckers nurture hatred.
Moreover, Trudeau immodestly asserts that he knows the story, the protestors do not:
“This is not the story of our pandemic, our country, our people. My focus is standing with [some] Canadians [the ones who comply with his mandates] and getting through this pandemic.” [bracketed comments added]
Despicably, Trudeau stole the platform of the trucker convoy, tweeting:
Canadians have the right to protest, to disagree with their government, and to make their voices heard. We’ll always protect that right. But let’s be clear: They don’t have the right to blockade our economy, or our democracy, or our fellow citizens’ daily lives. It has to stop.
Canadians have the right to protest, to disagree with their government, and to make their voices heard. We’ll always protect that right. But let’s be clear: They don’t have the right to blockade our economy, or our democracy, or our fellow citizens’ daily lives. It has to stop.
— Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) February 8, 2022
Let’s unpack that tweet: The truckers, says Trudeau, don’t have a right to blockade the economy. But that is what his government’s mandates are doing, stifling the economy.
And the mandates are disrupting every citizen’s life. When one cannot attend school, enter a restaurant, play hockey at the rink, travel, etc is that not a disruption of daily life that so many citizens are fed up with?
Trudeau respects the right to protest but says,
“It has to stop.” It is a familiar refrain from Trudeau. Elsewhere, when the Wet’suwet’en and their supporters were protesting corporations invading their territory, Trudeau said, “… the barricades must come down.”
There has been talk of the army being called in against its fellow Canadians. Trudeau was non-committal on calling in the military to end the trucker convoy standoff saying it is “not in the cards right now” — the Canadian equivalent of “all options are on the table.”
Given the political lineage in his family, one would suppose that Trudeau was brought up to read the political winds. But mandates are dropping in European countries and now in two Canadian provinces.
Even Canadian high school students, those lucky enough to currently have classes, are boycotting classes in opposition to the mask mandate.
Yet, Trudeau seems estranged from the political Zeitgeist. And now, Brian Peckford, a political figure from the past has stepped to the fore.
Former prime minister of Canada, Pierre Trudeau, the father of Justin, had envisioned a Canada united with equal rights for all Canadians.
Pierre was joined in the signing of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms by former Newfoundland premier Peckford.
Disturbed by the mandates, Peckford has launched a legal fight for those rights and freedoms. Apparently, Justin is not a chip off the old Trudeau block.
Throughout all this, the state/corporate media bias has been palpable. The demand is not on how the protestors’ concerns can be fairly depicted or dealt with. No, the focus is on how the protestors can be removed.
Statement of Prime Minster Trudeau on February 2, 2022
But pictures can speak a 1000 words (in video form):
Video by Global Research
Justin Trudeau will likely try and hang on to power, but maybe it is time for him to take a cue from his father and go for a walk in the snow.
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Kim Petersen is a former co-editor of the Dissident Voice newsletter. He can be emailed at: kimohp at gmail.com. Twitter: @kimpetersen. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
