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If you were part of the protest and you made no move to counter the disgusting behaviour, if you knew this was happening and you stayed because you were having so much fun, as one protester put it, then you were part of the problem.
by Larry Brown, NUPGE President
There is a growing sense of pandemic fatigue in this country. Some feel, rightly, that governments did not do enough to help, to help stop the spread, to help those impacted, to protect people from hardship and uncertainty. We see that a few profited greatly while the many bore the strain.
There is room for a legitimate debate about how we collectively handled the pandemic. Our political leaders need to make room for that debate, and they need to ensure that the rhetoric of us ‘all being in this together’ is made more real on the ground.
Spewing diesel fumes into the air and sewage onto the ground while ignoring and trampling on the rights of thousands of honest, decent citizens, as has happened in Ottawa, is not part of that legitimate debate.
The occupation of downtown Ottawa has been labelled a Freedom Convoy. It was no such thing. What that group stood for was the polar opposite of freedom. Their most common goal was to have selfishness become the key guiding principle in Canada.
They had their freedom to protest, and they have the freedom to choose not to be vaccinated. They were freely demonstrating that they have no concept of what freedom really is.
Every school kid learns that their freedom to swing their fists ends at the tip of someone else’s nose. Freedom does not mean the right to harm others.
The event was often labelled a trucker’s protest. It was not. While there were truckers involved, most of those participating were not. This was an embarrassment to the thousands and thousands of real truckers who oppose everything this gang espoused.
We are told that there were some in the mob that did not endorse the racism, thuggish behaviour, threatening, bullying, complete disrespect for the people of Ottawa, obstruction of hospitals and medical care, the use of city streets and residences as public toilets, and on and on. Well, if those people didn’t ‘endorse’ that behaviour, there is no evidence that they opposed it or tried to stop it. Story after story after story of disgusting behavior, and some of the participants still argue that this was a legitimate protest because they themselves didn’t carry a Nazi or confederate flag?
Sorry. If you were part of the protest and you made no move to counter the disgusting behaviour, if you knew this was happening and you stayed because you were having so much fun, as one protester put it, then you were part of the problem.
This occupation was contemptuous of the people who live in Ottawa. Any protest worthy of the name tries to affect the subject of the protest while not harming or unduly inconveniencing the public. This occupation was the opposite. The supposed targets of the protest were not affected at all. The people of downtown Ottawa were threatened, bullied, harassed, denied the chance to go to work, to seek or even provide medical care, visit their elderly parents, even sleep. Yeah, that will show Trudeau, all right.
Some have said the occupation “made its point.” What point was that exactly?
To oppose vaccine mandates or restrictions was supposedly one of the goals. Occupying Ottawa to oppose vaccine mandates or restrictions that are almost entirely the decisions of provincial governments! Nonsense.
To have the Trudeau government resign was one of the goals. Government by mob rule? Nonsense. And worse.
Of course, in Canada people have the right to protest. But the sheer lunacy of a protest designed in part to impose a system of government that would not allow protests, is bizarre.
The protest was taken over by, some of the organizers were, white supremacists, racists, and haters of democracy.
Let’s call this what it was. It was a large number of people who are tired of the pandemic, like almost everyone is. But unlike the majority of Canadians, the protesters are not willing to do anything, or to accept rules, to protect themselves and their communities from the spread of the virus.
What is a vaccine mandate? It is a requirement that you not willingly or negligently infect your fellow workers or your fellow citizens with a deadly virus. If you won’t accept that, fine, but stay away from workplaces or public areas so you don’t infect others.
And yes, people have the legal right to be selfish. To put their own comfort over the rights of others. And they even have the right to demand that their selfishness be respected.
But we have no obligation to take that seriously.