What is the Freedom Convoy?

My answer on Quora

The Freedom Convoy is a grassroots protest movement that emerged from the trucker community in Canada, in opposition to the excessive use of vaccine mandates by the various levels of government. It affirms the central nature of individual rights and offers a loud, but necessary denunciation, of persistent state overreach initiatives that have come at the expense of personal freedom and choice.

Predictably it has ruffled a great deal of establishment feathers producing an avalanche of purposely contrived negative reporting, that has been regurgitated here on Quora and other sites, by a chorus of voices whose confirmation bias precludes an honest attempt at evaluating the issues.

Freedom Convoy source: BBC

The convoy is not an extremist movement. Nor does it have the intention of overthrowing the government. In addition it is not a vanguard for anti-vaccine mania. This is all establishment propaganda, deliberate hokum generated to muddy the waters and besmirch enemies of the administration. There are enough strawmen here to cover the great wheat fields of the Steppes. Remember one can stand in opposition to vaccine mandates while personally been vaccinated oneself, as I and most truckers are. So enough with the pig swill counter-narratives.

Oh….and the Freedom Convoy is not a fringe movement. Not even close. Trudeau knows this too…which further highlight his fibbing…you don’t invoke Emergency Acts for a handful of ‘undesirables’.

What is most ironic and indeed tragic about the Freedom Convoy is that if the Federal and Provincials governments had listened to the various stakeholders in our Canadian society, instead of treating them as underlings, who must be spoken down to none of this would have happened.

This was of course wishful thinking. Authoritarians never miss the opportunity to enhance their domain and Trudeau and many of the other Premiers in the country have marched to this exact drum. They have exceeded their own ‘mandates’ of governance and have deliberately pushed aside a key principle that is vital to all liberal democracies – the notion that government is a servant of the people. The reverse is the short route to tyranny.

Elitists of course hate it when you push back and remind them of their foundational quicksand upon which their egos stand and so it is with Trudeau who has tried every trick in the book to dismiss the truckers, lie about their intent while deliberately using the legacy media to sow further national division.

The decision by his government to not open necessary dialogue with the Trucker leaders is a low point in Canadian political history. Imagine if Trudeau had followed a similar approach with BLM protests in 2020 or the Native Demonstrators in 2021.This is even more laughable by his hypocrisy in lecturing the Indian government in months gone by about the shameful nature of their clamping down on grassroots protests. NIMBY overload I guess.

Canadian Civil Liberties Association takes federal government to court over Emergencies Act

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association is taking the federal government to court over Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s historic move to invoke the Emergencies Act this week.

https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/canadian-civil-liberties-association-takes-federal-government-to-court-over-emergencies-act-1.5785850

Trudeau was always an inept leader but his handling of the convoy crisis has illuminated - even after several years as head of the government - how ill-prepared he still looks in the country’s top executive job. Name recognition was a shining feature of his original appeal - there wasn’t much else- but his actions here show that once that sheen is removed from his superficial exterior, how lacking in substance he really is.

Not only does the Emperor have no clothes he has no clue where to acquire them at all.

Trudeau had a chance to bring together Canadians, reach out across the political impasse and stand tall as a man of character. Instead he gave the finger to those voices he personally disagrees with, stormed around like a petulant child in Parliament and sank his entire arm elbow deep into the Fascist handbook by threatening to weaponize the financial institutions to go after his opponents. The latter should frighten both sides of the aisle. Evil ideas have a habit of biting back and coming full circle.

He not only blew it but he placed the nation on notice about how malicious those in power can be. This should be added to his reading list.

Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms

Background Before the Charter came into being, rights and freedoms were protected in Canada by a variety of laws. These included the 1960 Canadian Bill of Rights . Although important, none of these laws was part of the Constitution . They therefore lacked the supremacy and permanence of the Charter. The Bill of Rights also only applied to federal , rather than provincial laws. A Difficult Beginning In the early 1980s, the government of Pierre Elliott Trudeau began the process of patriating Canada’s Constitution — taking it out of the hands of the British Parliament. The Trudeau government also decided to include within the Constitution a new Charter of Rights and Freedoms . ( See also Constitutional History .) Amid the wider constitutional debates of 1981 and 1982, there were concerns about whether the Charter would give courts and judges too much power to interpret its meaning. There were also questions as to how it would be amended once it was in place. Many provincial leaders feared that a Charter would restrict the right of provincial governments to make laws as they saw fit. ( See also Distribution of Powers .) The hard work of negotiating and crafting the Charter fell to Trudeau’s justice minister , Jean Chrétien (later prime minister ). Chrétien was helped by two provincial attorneys-general , Roy Romanow of Saskatchewan (later premier ) and Roy McMurtry of Ontario . Ontario Premier Bill Davis was also instrumental in bringing the Charter to life. ( See Patriation of the Constitution .) In February 2003, former Prime Minister of Canada Jean Chrétien speaks at the Canada Winter Games in Bathurst, New Brunswick. Photo taken on: February 22, 2003. Quebec Premier René Lévesque , however, was less concerned with the Charter. In 1975, Quebec had passed its own Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms . It took precedence over other laws in the province, but was not enshrined in the Canadian Constitution. Lévesque was initially a fierce opponent of any new constitutional arrangement, especially one that did not honour Quebec’s traditional constitutional veto. But he entered into an alliance with other provincial premiers . ( See Gang of Eight .) Lévesque agreed to surrender the veto in exchange for a constitutional agreement that prioritized provincial rights over what he called a “rigid, even in some ways authoritarian conception of federalism .” The other premiers of the Gang of Eight agreed to the new proposal spearheaded by Chrétien and Romanow. ( See Kitchen Accord .) However, they chose not to seek Lévesque’s approval because, as Romanow explained, “What the province of Quebec would have done is requested additional amendments or changes, in my judgment, that would have either obfuscated or delayed and thereby killed the process.” Lévesque and his lieutenants vehemently objected to the way the constitutional deal was negotiated in his absence. This became known in Quebec as the “night of the long knives.” “What they did this

https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/canadian-charter-of-rights-and-freedoms

As for the Convoy they have pulled off the mask of the elites and have hopefully opened the eyes of Canadians about the need to return to the basics. Positions of power do not give you a blank check to bulldoze ahead with policy that makes no sense. Kudos to the Convoy for reminding Trudeau and the nation about this. Be Strong Canada.