Canada’s “Freedom Convoy” could have international ramifications

Concerns mount ahead of U.S. State of the Union Address

COLIN MULLANEY / ASST. NEWS EDITOR / THE USD VISTA

As the world approaches the second anniversary of COVID-19’s emergence as a global phenomenon, brewing political tensions are reaching an all-time peak. With most countries in the West loosening their restrictions and accepting COVID-19 as an endemic disease, Canada remains an exception.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau doubled down on mandates of vaccine passports and masks in Ottawa, even though “two-thirds of Canadians say it’s time to drop COVID-19 restrictions and begin living with the virus,” according to Maru Public Opinion. 

Similar to Canadian public opinion polls, “seventy percent of the American people… say it’s time to just learn to accept COVID as a part of life,” according to a recent Monmouth University poll. On Feb. 16, California lifted its indoor mask mandates pursuant with updated Center for Disease Control (CDC)guidelines, loosening COVID-19 restrictions after the Omicron variant. Canada has not made any decision thus far to update its restrictions or lift mandates, frustrating many Canadians and riling some into action. 

In Ottawa, for example, hundreds of truckers have been protesting since Jan. 29, staging a large scale sit-in of idling trucks in Canada’s capital city. They parked their trucks on major streets, barricading commerce, and demanding that Prime Minister Trudeau lift vaccine passport mandates when entering the country: legislation which has affected truckers in particular. 

Self-identified as the “Freedom Convoy” these truckers refused to leave until their demands were met, claiming to local media that they were prepared to stay indefinitely. Trudeau was quick to dismiss truckers’ initial gatherings, stating in a public appearance that they were, “a small, fringe minority” who “do not share the views of most Canadians.” 

In response to the ongoing protests, Trudeau refused to meet or negotiate with organizers, instead invoking Canada’s Emergencies Act for the first time since its inception in 1988. Among other things, the Act enables “city, provincial, and federal law enforcement officers… to remove demonstrators, their trucks, and cars, that have been blockading the streets,” according to CNN. 

When protestors caught wind of Trudeau’s intent to have them removed, they increased their activities from idle blockades to more aggressive resistance. According to CNN, “one protestor launched a gas canister and was arrested” while another, “was arrested after throwing a bicycle toward a police horse,” and by the end of the day, “more than 100 were arrested and 21 vehicles were towed.”

USD sophomore Russell Gokemeijer agreed with the government’s actions to remove protestors by unprecedented means.

“If I was the Canadian government, I would not let that stand,” Gokemeijer stated in response to the protestors’ increasingly aggressive tactics. 

CNN analyst Juliette Kayyem seconded Gokemeijer’s assessment, stating on Twitter, “The convoy protest, applauded by right-wing media as a ‘freedom protest,’ is an economic and security issue now. The Ambassador Bridge link constitutes 28 percent of annual trade movement between U.S. and Canada. Slash the tires, empty gas tanks, arrest the drivers, and move the trucks.”

Other political commentators like Ben Shapiro weighed in on his show saying, “it is amazing to see that the Canadian authorities who have spent two years locking down their citizens in unprecedented ways and helping to squash small business… are now very concerned about ‘economic impacts’ of people clogging up the arteries of the roads.”

Joe Concha wrote for TheHill, highlighting the hypocrisy in the government turning against truckers, who were previously heralded as essential, frontline workers. The government has cracked down on that demographic, despite the fact that “perhaps no other job in the world affords more isolation, more self-quarantine, than that of a trucker.” 

Concha also questions the science behind enduring mandates, amidst “a fading coronavirus variant, hospitals working at full capacity, cases plummeting, and a population that is almost fully vaccinated.”

Ongoing mandates and COVID-19 policies have received pushback across the world. According to CNN, “officials in the US are concerned that similar unrest [as the trucker convoy] may arise in Washington D.C., as President Joe Biden prepares for the State of the Union address on March 1.” 

While the U.S has not been nearly as strict in its COVID-19 mandates as Canada, some fear that disaffected people, angered by two years of the pandemic restrictions, could be liable to resist in a violent matter and that the Canadian protests are not an isolated occurrence that only Canada will face.