Trust the government to be clumsily dictatorial:
That’s what an Ontario cabinet minister snapped at her federal counterpart in February as he pressed for answers about how the province and Ontario Provincial Police would handle so-called “Freedom Convoy” protesters who had by then paralyzed downtown Ottawa for nearly two weeks.It was the height of what would soon be declared a national public order emergency.Then-solicitor general Sylvia Jones’s icy retort to Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino was revealed at a public inquiry in one of hundreds of fascinating texts that showed how tensions mounted, police struggled and governments fought behind the scenes. ...There were signs all along the way that this would be a protest like no other. And yet, the failure of senior Ottawa police leaders to perceive the threat in advance was pivotal.Ottawa Police Service Insp. Rob Bernier — who would later run the Ottawa operation to clear the protests — sounded an early alarm.He said he told his boss of a “bizarre disconnect” between troubling OPP intelligence reports about the truckers’ looming arrival and a two-day traffic management plan by Ottawa police he felt simply wouldn’t be adequate.On the morning that hundreds of big rigs arrived in Ottawa, Bernier saw a modified operational plan — and, seeing no role for himself, he went skiing.What he saw when he got back was an occupation the Ottawa Police Service now admits it failed to adequately plan for, and should have seen coming. ...That evening, federal Justice Minister David Lametti sent a text message to Public Safety Minister Mendicino. “You need to get the police to move,” he wrote. “And the (Canadian Armed Forces) if necessary. Too many people are being seriously adversely impacted by what is an occupation.” ...CSIS director David Vigneault told the inquiry he advised the government that at no point did CSIS assess that the convoy constituted a threat to the security of Canada as defined by the CSIS Act. That is the legal provision that allows CSIS to open an investigation into an individual or group that would permit it to use intrusive surveillance techniques.CSIS was tracking individuals whom the spy agency had already targeted for investigation and who were present at the Ottawa convoy, but Vigneault said it did not identify credible evidence a new threat existed, and underscored that CSIS cannot legally investigate activities that are lawful protest. ...The infighting, backstabbing and jurisdictional bickering culminated on the weekend of Feb. 12-13, as cabinet weighed whether to invoke the Emergencies Act. ...Even though there was “no current evidence” extremist groups or international actors were involved, Charette advised Trudeau that the “disturbance and public unrest” across the country and beyond its borders stood to fuel the protest movement and lead to irreparable harm, “including to social cohesion, national unity and Canada’s international reputation.”
Where was Freeland and the bank CEOs when our economy was being decimated by lockdowns?
Have we forgotten that small businesses were forced to close their doors and livelihoods were ruined? Indoor dining was closed for over a year in Toronto — one of the longest shutdowns in the world. Similarly, movie theatres were closed for nine months, gyms for over eight months and spas and hair dressers for over 6 months. We all had to deal with expanding waistlines and shaggy hair. When they were allowed to reopen, they faced the recurring threat of shutdowns and were forced to deal with capacity limits.
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Remember when, in Ontario, you couldn’t go into a Costco or Walmart to buy clothes, shoes or home goods because you were only allowed to buy groceries? Or when, in Manitoba, you weren’t allowed to go to a drive-in church, even if you were staying isolated in your car?
“We are experiencing one of the greatest infringement of civil liberties in a generation, and many measures taken by government are unjustified restrictions on our most fundamental rights,” said Christine Van Geyn, the litigation director at the Canadian Constitution Foundation, in December 2020.
Governments, both federal and provincial, gave themselves the power to disrupt our lives on a whim, force private businesses into bankruptcy and perform what amounted to gross COVID theatre — doing things so it would seem like they were taking action when in reality they were avoiding actions that would actually make a difference, such as pouring money into our health-care system or mounting a public health campaign against obesity, one of the key comorbidities that resulted in death.
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In March, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business found that two-thirds of businesses reported taking on an average of around $160,000 in debt to make it through the first two years of the pandemic, and 14 per cent were still at risk of filing for bankruptcy or closing their doors.
And all that, for what? Douglas Allen, a professor of economics at Simon Fraser University, examined over 80 COVID-19 studies and concluded that “lockdowns have had, at best, a marginal effect on the number of COVID-19 deaths.”
The only reason most small businesses were able to survive at all was because of financial support from the government, financed by massive borrowing that Canadians taxpayers will have to pay back.
Perhaps what small businesses needed was a large corporate champion — a succession of calls from bank CEOs to Freeland saying lockdowns were a “national crisis” and the government needed to “act immediately” to restore livelihoods. That seems to work pretty well.
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But the calls only came when there were international concerns, when the Freedom Convoy was supposedly ruining our reputation as a place to invest.
(Sidebar: oh, Canada hasn't been a place to invest in since 2015.)
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How are you going to use those tanks now?:
Emails released through a public inquiry suggest federal Liberal political aides were scrambling earlier this year to figure out the extent to which members of the Canadian Armed Forces were supporting the self-described "Freedom Convoy" protests that had gridlocked downtown Ottawa.
The internal communications are among thousands of documents submitted to the Public Order Emergency Commission, which is looking at the Liberal government's decision to invoke the Emergencies Act to end the demonstrations in February.
On Feb. 15, one day after the Emergencies Act was invoked, Defence Minister Anita Anand's press secretary, Daniel Minden, emailed fellow political staff in the offices of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino.
"Please see this internal list of CAF members allegedly involved in the convoy so far," Minden wrote.
The email goes on to provide a "list of known members connected to protests," including five who are specifically named and two who are not. Those not named include a special forces soldier based in Ottawa and a civilian Defence Department employee.
So, the police had to be the jackbooted thugs, not the military (such as it is)?
Interesting.
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