Canada

If Canada, like much of Europe, often foretells the future of the United States, then conservatives ought to be watching Ottawa’s response to the ongoing trucker protest. This populist revolt against pandemic restrictions, among other things, has already scrambled debates over civil disobedience and demonstrations that impact innocent third parties.

The Canadian truckers are expressing the universal human aspiration to act like an American even if you aren’t one

An op-ed in the Washington Post about the Canadian truckers’ protest tells us that the idea of freedom is “White” with a capital W and that the truckers’ belief in freedom is “a key component of White supremacy.” This is about as sensible as saying that the idea of gravity is “English” or that the Post reports the news. True, Newton’s apple fell in England and the Post looks like a newspaper, but gravity is universal. The same goes for stupidity, though that takes many forms, and for the impulse to be free, though that too takes many forms, some of them stupid.

Taylor Dysart, the author of this insult to reason, is a white PhD student at private Ivy League university. Color me shocked.

Large groups of police officers moved in on protesters in downtown Ottawa Friday, making more than 100 arrests—including high profile organizers Tamara Lich, Chris Barber and Pat King—during intense clashes with the demonstrators who refuse to leave the area.

Interim Ottawa Police Chief Steve Bell called the effort to move in on protesters “methodical” and “well thought out” during a Friday afternoon press conference, commending officers for maintaining control of the situation on the ground.

“We will run this operation 24 hours a day until the residents and community have their city back,” Bell said.

Several hundred protesters are still out in downtown Ottawa, where the eastern police line has inched forward, now spanning between the Senate and Chateau Laurier. Lots of chants of “Freedom!” Lots of weed. I saw two media crews withdraw after being swarmed by protesters. pic.twitter.com/Qy7cRIXhhk

— Marc-André Cossette (@MarcCossette) February 19, 2022

A grandmother with a heart condition who had welcomed Freedom Convoy protesters at her border home, has told how she was violently arrested and jailed in a dramatic police raid.

Joanne Person, 62, said she was in her pajamas falling asleep when Canadian Mounties stormed into her house in Coutts, Alberta, just after midnight Valentine’s Day and hauled her off to jail along with 10 other people she was hosting near the border blockade.

Back home after two nights behind bars, the substitute teacher spoke exclusively with DailyMail.com Thursday, describing the horror of being slammed on to a car hood with arms cuffed behind her back, then deprived of her medication in a concrete cell smeared with feces.

Wild! Still I will not be surprised to find RCMP fingerprints.

The Freedom Convoy has shaken Canadian politics to its core.

On Monday 14 February, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau sent an unlikely Valentine’s gift to his citizens, invoking rarely used emergency powers, which came into effect the next day. This was in response to the ‘Freedom Convoy’ of thousands of truckers and protesters who have gathered in the nation’s capital, Ottawa. Trudeau claimed that the protests were not peaceful, implying that the crisis could not be solved by normal policing under existing statutes. The reality is that, during more than two weeks of protests, Ottawa’s protesters are guilty of little more than municipal traffic and noise infractions. There has been no violence. Nevertheless, two of the protest leaders, Tamara Lich and Chris Barber, have been detained by police under the emergency powers.