On Monday night, I watched in horror as the votes were counted in Canada's House of Commons over Justin Trudeau's invocation of The Emergencies Act. Under the auspices of this invocation, Trudeau's government has seized the bank accounts of anyone affiliated with the Freedom Convoy, arrested over a hundred protestors and those who planned the truckers' protest and even seized some of the trucks in what has been an appalling display of government overreach.
And yet, Trudeau won; according to the majority of our elected representatives, the Emergencies Act would stand—at least for now; it is currently being debated by the Senate.
The House voting to affirm Trudeau's actions was a staggering blow, not just to Canada's protesting truckers but to anyone with a commitment to civil liberties, the rule of law and even the truth. As many have pointed out, there simply is no emergency to speak of. All the blockaded border crossings were open by the time Trudeau announced his invocation of EA, and up until the police arrived in Ottawa this past weekend, there had been no violence whatsoever at any demonstration associated with the Freedom Convoy. In fact, crime in downtown Ottawa dropped during the protest.
Of course, you probably don't know that. And it's not your fault. Instead of covering the actual protest, the media chose to focus on alleged "hate crimes" which are never followed up on, or on the lunatic fringe—people who were officially disassociated from the movement by the organizers of the convoy.
These organizers did their best to get their message out there to give an accurate account of what's been going on. They held their own press briefings because the media refused to interview them and hear their grievances. They sent out public missives on the biggest platforms they could find. B.J. Dichter, a spokesperson for the Freedom Convoy, was given a platform on Jordan Peterson's YouTube channel, where he dispelled a number of the lies made by Canadian politicians and pundits, like the canard that the Freedom Convoy planned to "overthrow the government."
Dichter rightly argued that such decisions are best left to the voting booth. "The Freedom Convoy is a peaceful and loving demonstration based on the principles of unity and respect for all Canadians," Dichter says in the video, where he reiterates the truckers' two simple and reasonable demands: an end to all COVID mandates, and the government's removal of its digital COVID-tracking app as a requirement to reenter Canada.
Dichter is now considered an enemy of the state by our Prime Minister. His bank accounts and lines of credit have been frozen.
Because Trudeau's war on truckers is not just a war on civil liberties, the right to peaceful protest, and the right to self-determination. It is a full-blown war on truth.
From the beginning, Trudeau sought to smear the truckers as hateful bigots, over and over accusing them of being a fringe of swastika-waving fascists. And he did this while implementing his own authoritarian measures.
Of course, he is not alone. One Liberal Party MP called "Honk Honk" an "acronym for Heil Hitler." Another MP tried to smear the truckers as antisemitic. And there has been no shortage of media reports gleefully multiplying the number of Nazi and Confederate flags at the protests from one each into many, again absent any substantiating data. Canadian and American liberal media outlets focused all of their attention on what is at most a far-Right fringe of the movement to avoid admitting to their readers that there are millions of Canadians who streamed out to Canada's streets to greet the truckers, who feel strongly that the government has overstepped when it comes to COVID and with whom the truckers' message resonates.
It's fear and hostility toward a truly populist uprising that has Trudeau and his allies lying through their teeth about what's actually happening.
Trudeau and others have made much of the contributions to the Freedom Convoy from the United States. But far more important is the obsessive need to be the victim of a January 6 style attack that Trudeau himself has imported. Trudeau and others in the ruling elites convinced themselves that the nonviolent demonstration of populist anger about COVID restrictions would become Canada's January 6, a violent insurrection that would overthrow the government.
It's part terror, part wishful thinking—a reflection of the kind of inferiority complex toward the U.S. that we in Canada are often guilty of. Of course, the true inferiority was put on full display by Trudeau himself on the Saturday that the Freedom Convoy arrived in Ottawa. Having memed himself into believing he would end up like Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, hiding under a desk while the barbarians raided his home on Sussex Drive, Trudeau fled the city, retreating to a property deep in rural Quebec. He did not return for over a week.
What kind of leadership is this, especially from the scion of a Canadian political dynasty? Trudeau appears to have internalized the lies of his very own media sycophants. As the convoy approached, Trudeau looked South, hoping to be handed all of the ammunition he needed to unleash his inner tyrant.
But the Freedom Convoy did not deliver; for three solid weeks, Canadians joined together in Ottawa peacefully to demand an end to Trudeau's COVID Regime. There was no violence. It was all partying—bouncy houses and hot tubs and dancing and hockey games.
So when Trudeau, believing his own lies, was not given any legitimate reason to crackdown on this festive protest, he proceeded to invoke the Emergencies Act to legitimate a police crackdown.
Those lies lead to a shameful display of police brutality this weekend, attacks on journalists, and now the weaponization of Canada's banking system against Trudeau's political enemies.
Make no mistake about it: Trudeau's war on the Freedom Convoy is a war on the truth itself. And we should all become part of the resistance.
Gord Magill has been a trucker for 25 years and writes about trucking at autonomoustruckers.substack.com. Follow him on Twitter @driverautonomy.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
