{"id":5607,"date":"2022-02-17T20:52:42","date_gmt":"2022-02-17T18:52:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/?p=5607"},"modified":"2022-02-18T01:05:03","modified_gmt":"2022-02-17T23:05:03","slug":"trudeau-protesters-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/2022-02-17\/trudeau-protesters-right\/","title":{"rendered":"As Trudeau cracks down, the left drives protesters into the right’s arms again"},"content":{"rendered":"

Divide and rule, the cultivation of tribalism, is an insurance policy against successful dissent and the threat of revolution<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Mint Press – 17 February 2022<\/p>\n

If you were Canada\u2019s prime minister, what would you be prepared to do to enforce Covid restrictions on large swaths of your population? No one need ask that question any longer. Now we know the answer.<\/p>\n

For the first time in the country\u2019s history, Justin Trudeau has invested his office with sweeping and undemocratic powers under the 1988 Emergencies Act in a bid to stop the so-called \u201cTruckers\u2019 Protests\u201d against Canada\u2019s pandemic restrictions. But, as one might expect, Trudeau has promised<\/a> to use those powers briefly and sparingly \u2013 at least, until he decides otherwise.<\/p>\n

His government can ban protests, seize protesters\u2019 income and property without court oversight, and effectively appropriate many millions of dollars raised by supporters on crowdfunding sites to finance the protests. That isn\u2019t a theoretical danger. Even before the current emergency powers were invoked, the Canadian government did just that. Almost certainly under federal pressure earlier in the month, GoFundMe withheld<\/a> some 10 million Canadian dollars donated by protest supporters.<\/p>\n

Trudeau has brought Canada as close to martial law as he dares without drafting platoons of soldiers on to the streets of Ottawa and Toronto and having the army seize control of the TV stations.<\/p>\n

And paradoxically, he has responded to protesters, whose rallying cry is that the Canadian government is using the pretext of Covid to accrete more powers and behave undemocratically, by actually accreting more powers and behaving undemocratically. Trudeau acts as though this will dampen down tensions. Or maybe he is simply pandering to his electoral base.<\/p>\n

A wiser approach has been taken by Ontario\u2019s premier, who started lifting<\/a> some of the largely redundant restrictions in his province this week as a way to take the wind out of the protesters\u2019 sails.<\/p>\n

Draconian measures<\/h3>\n

But let us stand back from Canada\u2019s drama for a moment and consider both the purported and actual reason for the declaration of a state of emergency \u2013 a peacetime equivalent of Canada\u2019s earlier War Measures Act.<\/p>\n

The truckers\u2019 protests have been largely peaceful \u2013 at least in the sense that there have been very few arrests and relatively minor criminal damage. The protesters have caused inconvenience but only of the kind that is inevitable in any civil disobedience campaign.<\/p>\n

Emergency powers have been invoked because the protesters have refused to disperse and because officials warn of some future scenario of potential violence \u2013 exactly the sort of accusation leveled against any unwelcome mass protest.<\/p>\n

However, the more pressing reason is that the truckers\u2019 actions have impeded cross-border deliveries from Canada to US factories, such as car plants. That has started to have a damaging impact on the US economy, and President Joe Biden has been making his view<\/a> on the matter only too clear to Trudeau.<\/p>\n

It is worth considering a comparison to see how draconian and dangerously unreasonable Trudeau is being. Over several years, protests in the UK by the environmental action group Extinction Rebellion have repeatedly caused similar levels of disruption \u2013 and similar levels of antipathy from sections of the British public. Protesters have blocked highways, railway lines and airports. Some have been arrested and fined.<\/p>\n

But despite all of this, even the right-wing government of Boris Johnson has not suggested going as far as Canada\u2019s current state of emergency.<\/p>\n

Pull the rug<\/h3>\n

To put the gravity of Trudeau\u2019s decision \u2013 and the flimsiness of the justification for it \u2013 in proper perspective, consider what the Canadian prime minister needs to do to put an end to the truckers\u2019 protests compared to what would be required of Johnson for Extinction Rebellion\u2019s climate emergency protests to be brought to a halt.<\/p>\n

Johnson would have to radically overhaul the entire British economy, quickly ending its reliance on fossil fuels, while abandoning his entire political ideology of individualist, dog-eat-dog capitalism and replacing it with the far more collectivist approach inherent in a Green New Deal. That is a tall order indeed. Should they spread, Extinction Rebellion\u2019s protests really could become an emergency for Johnson.<\/p>\n

Trudeau, on the other hand, could easily pull the rug from under the truckers\u2019 protests \u2013 as Ontario officials are trying to do \u2013 with nothing more than a decision to relent on many of the most grating restrictions, especially mandated vaccines for some professions and the requirement on unvaccinated truckers to quarantine for 14 days on their return from the US.<\/p>\n

That would not touch Trudeau\u2019s political program. It would not cost the Canadian taxpayer a cent. It would not require a reorganization of Canadian society.<\/p>\n

So why has he chosen this particular hill to make his stand?<\/p>\n

Those who are still singularly focused on the dangers of Covid presumably think that Trudeau is right. But with the highly infectious and much milder omicron variant, hospitalization and death rates are plummeting worldwide, as the virus, after spreading like wildlife, starts to burn itself out.<\/p>\n

Even if vaccine mandates are enforced, few of the unvaccinated will manage to get both doses before they are exposed to the virus and develop natural immunity anyway. Omicron has made the already dubious need for vaccine mandates and quarantines largely moot. The evidence suggests natural infection provides \u2013 for the vaccinated and unvaccinated alike \u2013 stronger and longer-term immunity of the kind the vaccines have so far failed to deliver.<\/p>\n