After reading several articles on PJM in which I expressed my disenchantment with Canada as a dismally governed and increasingly repressive country, and my intention to emigrate once—or if—permitted to travel again should Covid vaccine restrictions be lifted, a friend asked me what it would take to change my mind. There are, admittedly, hopeful signs: the Great Trucker Convoy that has galvanized international attention; a cowardly prime minister who has gone into hiding, thus showing his true colors; and a new majority approving of dissent against a coercive administration. As the Toronto Sun reports, “The latest poll, taken Jan. 27-28, found 54% want restrictions to be lifted compared to just 39% who wanted restrictions lifted when the same question was asked two weeks earlier.”
At the same time, in a blatantly totalitarian move, the province of Nova Scotia has banned truck convoys and levied fines of $10,000 for highway cheering. The leader of the New Democratic Party, Jagmeet Singh, is busy defaming the truckers as “a convoy led by those that claim the superiority of the white bloodline and equate Islam to a disease.” The bought-and-paid-for press, basking in a $600 million subsidy from the prime minister, is pursuing its usual disingenuous policy of either ignoring or defaming the many thousands of truckers, whose statement of intention is a civil and egalitarian document arguing for a just, free, and unified Canada. The signatories ask “for your love, patience, and support so that we can unify all Canadians around the virtue of freedom.” Predictably, the statement appears to have been erased from the Internet. The Canadian Tucking Alliance in standard union fashion is in bed with the government, lobbying against their own people. Outright lies and false flag operations proliferate, including the defacing of monuments with Nazi imagery, as was to be expected. The City of Ottawa is threatening to seize trucker funds. Trudeau continues to circulate divisive and duplicitous messages to the public, condemning the protest as “an insult to memory and truth.” In his latest tweet, he has accused the truckers of stealing food from the homeless and flying racist flags. As the Yiddish expression has it, “What chutzpah!”
For myself, I wonder if the polled majority of the population will hold fast, given the whimsical nature of public sentiment and the arsenal of weapons being brought to bear against reason and probity. Moreover, when one looks at electoral results, fully two-thirds of the public vote for socialist government; the composition of parliamentary seats distributed among Liberals, the New Democratic Party, the Greens, and the Bloc Québécois makes this clear. Add to this spectacle of left-wing unanimity the fact that the Conservative Party is almost indistinguishable from the Liberals, and its current leader Erin O’Toole is a man apparently without substance or principle, providing no meaningful opposition to Trudeau’s mandate-driven policies, and a certain skeptical disillusionment is hard to avoid. Canada is as blue as California, Oregon, or New York.
So, the answer to the question “what would it take” to reverse my conviction is: nothing less than a sea-change in the Canadian sensibility and a profound reformation of our political behavior. Since, like my fellow unvaccinated I am imprisoned in this country, I have no choice but to play a waiting game and hope for the improbable. Should a miracle occur, I would reconsider. But miracles are few and far between, and I suspect that nothing much will change in the long run, even should the truckers, Lord bless them, succeed in the short term. I would like to be wrong, but I live in the real world.
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