Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
So that means all protestors share his extreme views? I’d say 99.95% of them do not.
It's not relevant if they SHARE his views or not. What is relevant is they allow him to be their spokesperson while he believes what he believes - sorta like what would be the point of electing a guy as your Republican congressman if the guy was on record declaring himself for years as being a Democrat.
I think that it's one of the things. Others would include the cache of weapons found at Coutts, the truck full of guns that went missing near Peterborough and now heading for who-knows-where, the constant honking and other noise in Ottawa, the desecration of the War Memorial and Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and the border blockades at Windsor, Coutts, Surrey, Sarnia, and Emerson. Plus unsuccessful attempts to use truck convoys to shut down Quebec City, downtown Toronto, and other cities.
These, coupled with the absolute ineptness of the Ottawa police, helped. The mayor of Quebec City basically told protesters there, "Okay, you can have your weekend protest, but come Monday, we start towing." Toronto sealed off Queen's Park so well, that the only way to get through the area was on the subway, so trucks had pretty much nowhere to go. But the Ottawa police let things happen, until things got beyond their control.
Justin Trudeau himself is another reason. I certainly don't fault him for failing to meet and to enter into negotiations with the organizers (never mind that there was nothing that was negotiable, and they'd likely kill him if it was an in-person meeting), but his repeated entreaties to "Pack up and go home" over two weeks, were falling on deaf ears, and he failed to see that. His remarks about "They hold unacceptable views" bothered many, even those who did not support the truckers and the blockades--what, suddenly the Canadian government decides what is an acceptable view and what is not? It was obvious that he didn't want to be the second Trudeau who invoked the War Measures Act/Emergencies Act for only the second time in Canada's history. Which--and I'm only guessing here--is why he dithered for so long.
His own tipping point may have come when one of his own Liberal MPs turned on him last week, in a very public press conference. That, plus Doug Ford pleading for help, the Windsor mayor pleading for help, Ontario bleeding jobs because of the Ambassador Bridge shutdown, pressure from American authorities in Washington and Michigan to get that border open because Americans were being laid off too, the Ottawa police chief pleading for help, and the mayor of Coutts (population 250) pleading for help on national television (likely the only time that tiny Coutts ever merits a mention on the national news). Meanwhile, police in Paris were not putting up with any BS from truckers who tried to protest there; and even typically quiet and inoffensive New Zealand saw a lot of arrests, many quite rough, at a protest in support of Canadian truckers in Wellington; and Trudeau's hand was forced. Everybody holding hands and singing "Kum Ba Yah" was no longer an option.
It was a perfect storm of things that he, and only he, could address with any authority. He had to do something, and no matter how distasteful it was to him personally, I'm sure that Cabinet and other advisors told him that it had to be done. He simply couldn't say "Pack up and go home" any more, if he was to be taken seriously from here on.
The problem that I see is that like the situation his Dad faced with the FLQ, the truckers are an abhorrent group but they are tapping into a wide feeling that Covid is being used as a cudgel to punish people for their lifestyles and what the elite call "free-dumb." Just as Mussolini and Hitler tapped into legitimate grievances but were themselves far from legitimate. In the U.S. we had that in far milder form with the election of Huey P. Long and Donald Trump. People have just "had enough."
The clown is the Prime Minister calling truckers and working class people of his country white supremacists.
This is not going to end well for him.
Well, the jury's still out on that. Canada has a different set of parameters when it comes to addressing those who might protest something deemed insignificant and to make their point known, deliberately set out to hurt their fellow citizens in the process.
Especially so when the whole thing was fabbed up and led by known white supremacists who have, in the past, made no secret of their beliefs.
Trudeau has made more than one misstep (many) in his tenure as P.M. but the tendency to judge his performance by those is tempered by his and his cabinet's long term over-all performance as compared to what the other major parties are putting forth as possible contenders.
When the most relevant political party in opposition cannot even agree upon who should be their leader and instead perform the back-stabbing, in-fighting process multiple times for all to see . . . well. . . .
It's all too easy to say he's 'got to go' when the other parties have been virtually mute during this entire period of pandemic and protest, coming forth with no effective alternate plans and content to let Trudeau carry the blame for all things, even those things under the complete control of the 13 other premieres/governing entities.
The clown is the Prime Minister calling truckers and working class people of his country white supremacists.
This is not going to end well for him.
*shrug* After the election results in September, there was a lot of speculation about who his successor might be. I think many would welcome a new Liberal leader, just as they would welcome a new Conservative leader who wasn’t trying to appeal to the PPC base.
100% publicity stunt. He had to have known that he would not be admitted to Canada without a vaccine and negative test results. Especially when he tried to cross the second time. From what I understand that is a big no, no to try and cross the border a second time after being rejected the first time.
But even if he did have the vaccination and negative test, if the Emergencies Act prohibits Canadian citizens from traveling to Ottawa to participate in the demonstrations, would it not also stop Americans trying to participate at the border?
That's what I said about the pillow guy. Or else he didn't REALLY want to give up 10,000 pillows for free. But he had to know what the rules are to cross the Canadian border, of course.
RE your question, if Americans stay on their side of the border, then it doesn't matter if they are vaccinated/have a test. Everyone crossing has needed to show a PCR test since early last year, and since July, has had to show they are vaccinated.
How? The protestors switched early on to wanting all mandates ended. The federal government does not have the constitutional authority to end mandates enacted by the provinces. As I posted in another thread, if the Federal government tried to interfere, the provinces would just tell Trudeau to go pound sand.
By the way, the U.S. required Canadian truckers to be vaccinated before the Convoy to Ottawa started out.
It's all a matter of approach. Are there a certain number of people who are seeing this as an opportunity to just rebel against the Trudeau government who they've hated all along anyway? Sure. There's always a radical fringe.
But consider the reality of the situation that Canada - more than most countries - needs truckers because it is such a vast country and an economy with a significant focus on resource extraction. Now trucking is kind of a crappy job, you don't sleep in your own bed a lot of the time, there's a lot of tediousness to it, the pay is not fantastic, in other words, it's not exactly what your average kid grows up hoping to do one day.
A lot of countries, the US, Canada, many European nations, are having shortages of truckers. Some people say there's no point recruiting them because of 'self-driving trucks' taking over. Well, maybe but that's probably 10-20 years away. In the meantime somehow stuff needs to get moved so we have bread on our tables and companies can manufacture the things you need for your everyday life.
So it has to be acknowledged that truckers have a lot of leverage. They've always had. Hence why the Teamsters Union was so powerful for so long, and the tactic the "Freedom Convoy" uses has been used to good effect in France in the past there.
In fact, the "Freedom Convoy" is easily the most effective political protest seen on this side of the Atlantic in many decades. And that is precisely why Trudeau has felt the need to get out 'the big guns' and why the Biden administration has encouraged them to do so.
But hold on, the alternative to just bulldozing them over is to acknowledge the leverage they have and to negotiate in awareness of that leverage. In other words - to respect them as a party with grievances that need to be addressed. If this had been the approach to begin with, this likely could have ended weeks ago. But the government just couldn't get themselves to do that because they cannot on any level relate to the protestors, unlike with say BLM or climate protestors who have similar political views and values.
In the 1930s U.S. WW1 veterans marched on D.C. asking for bonus payments to be delivered immediately in the face of the economic woes of the Great Depression including widespread unemployment. President Hoover refused as this would have required a tax increase. When the protesters blocked D.C., he eventually called in the Army to clear them. Hoover got the protestors expelled but it was a broadly unpopular move and many say it may have cost him re-election. His successor, FDR, was careful not to appear too militant and instead negotiated and arranged for many of the veterans to get jobs in one his new federal work programs.
Ironically, he too vetoed the bill to pay out the bonuses, and many veterans later felt those work measures were less about helping them and more about giving FDR good press. But he fared much better politically because he had appeared conciliatory rather than confrontational, trying to find a solution for the veterans rather than just telling them to get lost or else.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
But he had to know what the rules are to cross the Canadian border, of course.
