With the ongoing trucker protests that have rocked Ottawa and several other Canadian cities and jurisdictions, it is reasonable to say that we’ve reached the peak of the politicization of this pandemic.
Something like this was bound to happen.
The support the protest has garnered is clearly a product of frustrations that have reached a tipping point after two years of botched pandemic responses. The two main ingredients of it are manifestly the collapse in trust in institutions and the astonishing lack of self-awareness of our politicians that continues to fuel it.
It has also quickly become a culture war battle in which, yet again, the casualty is any worthwhile debate on COVID mandates and how we should work toward ending them.
Conceding that Canadians are indeed “tired” of the pandemic, he then went on to accuse the protesters of undermining democracy and reiterate the point that they are akin to a band of racist Nazi sympathizers. “This is a story of a country that got through this pandemic and a few people shouting and waving swastikas does not define who Canadians are,” he said.
Trudeau commended members of the opposition who called for an end to the blockades, saying it was “time to put national interests ahead of partisan interests.” This is true, but such a statement rings hollow coming from an elected official who has subjected much of the discourse on COVID to his own political interests.
Constant flip-flopping throughout the pandemic by federal and provincial political leaders and health authorities was bound to either reinforce those already skeptical of restrictions or make skeptics out of those who were once fully on board with them. The same effect has been seen as a result of claims by Trudeau and others to the effect that those critical of mandates were somehow less Canadian and perhaps should not be tolerated.
What continues to escape the gaze of these politicians is that, despite the widespread objection to the tactics used by some protesters and the few extremists in their ranks, a large swathe of Canadians at least sympathize with the frustration of many of those participating in the convoy.
If Canada’s politics are to resemble anything close to sane as we enter the post-COVID period, those in elite positions need to develop a sense of self-awareness and ruminate on how their own conduct may have contributed to a loss of trust and respect that has led to what we’ve been witnessing in the Freedom Convoy protests.
