Cory Morgan: Overstatement of Business Losses yet Another Misrepresentation of the Freedom Convoy Protest

Workers build a fence on Metcalfe St. in Ottawa on Feb. 21, 2022, after the Freedom Convoy protest was cleared in the days prior. Jonathan Ren/The Epoch Times

It’s a rare event when any kind of government program manages to come in under budget, but that’s what happened with the business subsidy offered by the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario to businesses harmed by the Freedom Convoy protest in Ottawa in February.

A fund of $20 million was earmarked for small businesses, yet only $12.9 million of the money was dispersed. This indicates that, like many other accusations made against the convoy protesters, the damage done to local businesses over the course of the protests was greatly exaggerated.

There’s no doubt that many people chose not to go to the businesses within the protest site. Access to the city core was limited, and many citizens surely chose to do their shopping and dining outside of the protest zone. It’s hard to blame them if they had been watching legacy media coverage of the event or listening to local politicians. They would have been convinced Ottawa had been taken over by raging, armed white nationalists who were setting apartment buildings on fire and assaulting women.

Those accusations were all found to be bunk over time, but they surely kept many consumers and workers from going near the protest zone for some weeks in February.

The hysteric and exaggerated depictions of the protesters by the media and political establishment surely chilled downtown trade as much as the protests themselves did. Perhaps some of the people who spread misinformation about the protesters should be on the hook for paying damages to businesses impacted by the event rather than taxpayers.

Not only was the danger posed by the protesters overblown in reports at the time, but so was the economic impact of the protest. The CBC reported that estimates of lost sales and wages in Ottawa due to the protests were in the range of $44 million to $200 million. If such economic damage had been wrought, surely businesses would have been falling over each other to recoup some of those losses through the subsidy program. One would imagine a fund of only $20 million would barely make a dent in the losses as the businesses lined up to demonstrate how much they had lost.

In reality, the agency dispersing the funds struggled to find applicants for the subsidies. Times have been tough for businesses in the last two years due to the pandemic. Few would say no to a cheque from the government to help them out. The reason so few businesses applied for the bailout is that few businesses could prove negative impacts on their trade from the protests.

One of the reasons the business losses weren’t as high as reported by legacy media and politicians is that some of the trade was replaced by protesters themselves. The thousands of people taking part in the protest were also consumers. They purchased food, fuel, and other retail items while they were in Ottawa. Some businesses remaining open during the protests saw an increase in sales as they served protesters. The Iconic Café in Ottawa was bustling as it served customers from the protests, until the police forced them to close their doors. Yes, it was the police, not protesters that forced some business closures.

The accusations of lost wages were blown out of proportion as well. In something of an irony, pandemic restrictions had caused many downtown offices to embrace work-from-home models for their employees. This means many of the offices in the area would have been empty in February—even if the protests had never happened.

In Windsor, $2.5 million was budgeted to aid businesses impacted by some short-lived border protests inspired by the convoy. Not even 25 percent of the fund was used, as only $462,469 was dispersed. The protests in Windsor may have been annoying for local businesses but they weren’t that costly.

The overstatement of business losses due to the Freedom Convoy protest is just another of the many misrepresentations spread about the protest by the state and many complicit media outlets in a campaign to undercut public support for the protesters. Property damage was minimal, violence wasn’t evident, there was no attempt to force access to legislative buildings, nor was there any attempted coup or insurrection—though the convoy protesters were accused of all those things and more.

The Public Order Emergency Commission inquiry is set to begin soon. It’s going to be very difficult for the Liberals to justify their invocation of the Emergencies Act upon citizens when their actions are exposed to public scrutiny through the hearings. Using hyperbole and misinformation may have appeared to be a good plan at the time, but I suspect many government officials are regretting that tactic today.

History will not be looking kindly upon the actions of the Canadian government during the truckers’ Freedom Convoy protests of 2022.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.