What does the Truckers Convoy want?
Freedom? Well, it depends what you mean by that concept. Here is one relevant bit from from The National Post, hardly a left-wing rag:
“Freedom convoy” supporters convinced that the Governor General can dissolve Parliament on a whim have “absolutely inundated” Rideau Hall with calls over the past week, National Post has learned…
The callers are participants and supporters of the so-called “freedom convoy” that has been occupying the streets around Parliament for a week, demanding that the Trudeau government put an end to all public heath measures (even though the majority of them are under the provincial government’s purview.)
Last week, organizers also published a manifesto billed a “memorandum of understanding” demanding that the Governor General and the Senate unite to force all levels of government to end any COVID-19 measures and vaccine passports, and re-instate all workers laid off due to vaccine requirements.
That has seemingly pushed protesters and their supporters to flood Rideau Hall’s phone and email lines demanding that Mary Simon act, going as far as demanding that she dissolve government and remove Prime Minister Justin Trudeau from power…
It’s useless for protesters to be “calling Rideau Hall or pressuring senators to do something, that’s not how things work,” he added. “It’s a democratic system, and neither the senate nor the Governor General are elected, so they don’t have the democratic legitimacy” to dissolve government.
Originally those memorandum demands came from a group called Canada Unity, a major force behind the Convoy. Canada Unity has since withdrawn their proposals for a non-democratic transfer of power. Good for them! Still, “we withdraw the demands for an anti-democratic coup d’etat that we were promoting a few days ago” is hardly a reason for enthusiastic affiliation.
By the way, here are the responsibilities of the Canadian Governor General.
I’m not suggesting that all of the Convoy members have this particular political vision (though 320,000 signatures on the memorandum were reported), or even that those promoting this idea necessarily “mean it.” Maybe for many of them it is just a way to stir up trouble. Still, you can take this as another sign of “incipient knuckleheadism” in the movement.
By the way, I am myself opposed to the idea of governmental mandates for Covid-19 vaccines. (In part because I feared exactly this kind of backlash, but for liberty reasons too.) But it is very far from the worst governmental mandate the Canadians have!
Do you know what those people in the trucks actually should do? Go get vaccinated.
A related group for a while shut down the Ambassador Bridge, which carries 30% of the U.S.-Canada trade. The Convoy and associated movements are doing a great deal to restrict the free movement of goods and of people, hardly my idea of freedom either.
So I am happy to double down on my previous post.