OTTAWA – It took me over an hour to walk from my car to reach the party. It might have been the last Freedom Convoy celebration. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has used the federal Emergencies Act to effectively suspend civil liberties in the city. Police from across Canada are everywhere with roadblocks and checkpoints on virtually every corner of the downtown – it resembles occupied Berlin in 1945. The police had been arresting truckers and protesters all day and had pushed the group to the corner of Wellington and Bank St., where they promptly began partying and snubbing their noses at the Trudeau police state.
And it is a police state. It could be called martial law except that it is not the military enforcing the rules. Trudeau has had the audacity to suggest none of this violates the Canadian Charter of Rights but of course this is a cruel joke. Not only are protesters being arrested for merely protesting – whether they have a rig parked on the street or not – truckers are having their bank accounts frozen, children seized and pets potentially euthanized. This is a government that means business – totalitarian business.
The cops have been severe in their enforcing the authoritarian law. They have pushed protesters to the ground when a mounted troop from the Toronto Police Service ran over a woman with a walker. She is in the hospital with injuries. Ironically, with all of Trudeau’s talk of reconciliation with First Nations people, the woman is a Mohawk. On Saturday night, a whistleblower released Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) correspondence that revealed the officers were actually making light of the incident, with one of them calling it “awesome.” One of these so-called peace officers suggested the protesters should “hear their jack boots on the ground.” Trudeau has made much out of the convoy protesters using fanciful Nazi imagery but it would appear that the cops are the ones enamoured with the Third Reich.
The police are enjoying complete anonymity in their abuse of power. They have stripped their uniforms of all identification and are refusing to provide their name or badge number when questioned. They have been brought into Ottawa from the municipal police services of Vancouver and Calgary as well as the provincial forces of Ontario and Quebec. The RCMP has sent its musical ride troop into town and are living in high style at the Fairmont Chateau Laurier, the most expensive hotel in Ottawa.
What is most disturbing is how most of the Canadian media has reported this gross violation of civil rights and flagrant federal outreach. While the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) is wholly government-owned, even private media outlets like Canadian Television (CTV) are now subsidized with taxpayer dollars and are beholden to the Trudeau government.
They have not disappointed Trudeau during this crisis, reporting his persistent but ridiculous claims that the convoy is dominated by Nazis and characterized by white supremacy despite the fact that the truckers and protesters were a multi-racial group that were united over their opposition to COVID-19 mandates and Trudeau’s intransigence over those issues.
The media has not just parroted government talking points and for that matter police news releases, they have become cheerleaders for the Emergencies Act, describing the convoy as an “occupation” and writing and insisting the police are exercising the greatest degree of discretion even when the video that you are watching insists otherwise.
Reporters applaud how the police have cleared out the protesters and how wonderful it is that things have returned to “normal” although things have been far from normal in Ottawa for the past two years with severe COVID-19 and rolling lockdowns that have ruined local businesses long before they could blamed the Freedom Convoy for doing so.
Ironically, the Emergencies Act still has to be approved by the House of Commons – and that is no certainty given that the Trudeau’s Liberal have a minority government and need the support of one or more other opposition parties in Parliament to do so. Yet despite the debate continuing, the act is being implemented without restraint and even if it is defeated, it is doubtful whether the damage it has already done can be repaired.
I spoke to a woman named Pam on Saturday night. She gave me her full name without hesitation but I am choosing not to use it because Ottawa’s power mad interim chief of police is threatening to prosecute anyone associated with the protest and as crazy as this sounds, I don’t want to facilitate this insanity.
She drove 30 hours from Saskatchewan because she “wanted to be here” before the police shut down the protest completely.
She says she has seen the abuses by police but “I’ve seen the good things. I’ve seen today how the protesters were even hugging officers. We walked down the streets coming here. People want to be hugged. Never before have I seen anything like this.”
Pam criticized the police for not reacting in kind. “I’ve seen some of them standing there with those clubs. And they’re beating people standing there, talking. And I just think it’s so not right. It’s not Canada,” she told Townhall.
She said she thinks that Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act because “he’s running scared and he has nothing else to back him up … but he knows we’re winning.”
Pam said she is very disappointed in reporters who have not reported the truth about the Freedom Convoy and spreading the prime minister’s smears about the people involved. “The main media has just been lies and lies and lies and that’s going to come back on them. And my heart just aches for them because that’s going to come back on them.”
“And whoever watches the main media: stop watching it! Stop watching it! It’s garbage. They’re filling your mind with lies.”
“Get off of CTV. We need freedom. We need our lives back.”