Vincent J. Curtis
28 Nov 22
“But it was clear that they didn’t just want to be heard, they wanted to be obeyed,” said Justin Trudeau at the end of his questioning by Commission Counsel. Winston Churchill may well have said that being in a democracy meant occasionally having to defer to the wishes of other people, but Justin Trudeau was made of sterner stuff.
Justin Trudeau is a post-modernist progressive. Being progressive means you believe in progress while others don’t. Progressives believe their political goals should be pursued with the “moral equivalent of war.” Progressives believe in rule by expert. Since they are absolutely convinced of the enlightened rightness of their cause, disagreement with them can only be due to ignorance, evil, or some other malignancy. I’ve written about this before, and so have many others. The exercise of power by progressives is crucial to them because it is only through the exercise of power that their aims can be met, and the more power progressives have the more of their aims can be met.
Post-modernism is distinct from progressivism. Deconstructive analysis began with port-modernism. The importance here is that post-modernism holds that there is no accessible objective truth; truth is relative: you have your truth and I have mine. Truth has a history. Truth is about power, and those who have the power are able to impose their truth. We saw and heard the application of these philosophical beliefs starting with the first efforts to discredit the Freedom Convoy. There was a concerted effort to make the truth about the Convoy not about protests against oppressive and unnecessary mandate that truckers who crossed the border be vaccinated, but that this was simply an irrational reaction against science by racists, misogynists, and low-class unwashed with “unacceptable views.” They conveniently discredited themselves by flying confederate and Nazi flags as representations of their political outlook, and it was wrong of them to adopt the Canadian flag as the obviously false representation of their love of Canada. We also saw private definitions of violence and “assaultive behaviour” (my truth) employed deceptively in the giving of testimony. It is simply impossible for progressives or post-modernists to discuss Convoy actions or intentions in good faith, because, besides emotional and political investment, good faith is an impossible concept to post-modernists. Post-modernism’s whole business is the bad-faith re-interpretation of the past and of others, what they call “deconstruction.”
Trudeau’s statement revealed his honest view of protests: that they’re okay for blowing off steam, but aren’t to be taken too seriously. At one point he said, “Public protests are a way of getting messages out there and letting people know how they feel about these issues, but using protests to demand changes to public policy is something that I think is worse.” Realizing he was making an untenable argument, he backed off a little: of course the purpose of political protest is to change policies, but in the Convoy case changing policy was about compelling obedience; the Convoy didn’t back off after the first weekend. The truckers could have their weekend to blow off steam and then go home; but to actually change policy, lift the mandate and find some other way, redress their grievance after they made it clear they were serious, and challenged Trudeau’s power:
“There is a difference between occupation, and saying ‘we’re not going until this is changed’ in a way that is massively disruptive. And potentially dangerous versus just saying ‘we’re protesting because we want public policy to change and we want to convince people to get enough of them that we will listen to enough people that we will say okay I’m going to lose votes if I don’t change this. That’s the usual way that protests can be effective.” (Note the costing of votes amounts to a costing of power.)
When sympathy protests began popping up all over Canada, at the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor; Coutts, Alberta; Emerson, Manitoba; and Surrey, British Columbia, Trudeau didn’t see these as sign of national discontent with mandates, but as a provincial enforcement issue. His policies were his policies and were for the good of Canadians, so he couldn’t possibly in the wrong. Changing them under pressure of national discontent would be just plain wrong!
We finally learned how the Convoy protest in Ottawa came to be an “illegal” “occupation.” Though hinted at by other witnesses, the Convoy came to be illegal because it was violating the municipal parking by-laws on Wellington Street, and because the Convoy did not have a permit from the City of Ottawa to protest. It became an occupation because the Convoy was “occupying” municipal streets. And that was that. A friendly mainstream media picked up the discrediting descriptors, Ontario Premier Doug Ford picked them up, and every government official has been at pains to refer to the Convoy as an “illegal occupation.”
Under questioning by Commission Counsel, Trudeau maintained that the protest wasn’t about him. Early on he said that the occupation was not a Federal issue; it was a matter for police to take care of. When it was revealed that Alberta Premier Jason Kenney suggested that Trudeau extend an olive branch to the Convoy, Trudeau replied that the Convoy’s “asks” were a “non-starter.” In other words, having the medical experts come up with a different plan because the current one was causing too much political discontent was out of the question. Trudeau was worried about setting a precedent “where if anyone wants something, they set up a blockade on Wellington Street.” He didn’t want to legitimize the Convoy by engaging with them. That would be “making a bad decision” and everyone agrees that we don’t want Trudeau making “bad decisions.”
Trudeau was getting annoyed that provincial premiers weren’t coming to his political rescue as the Convoy persisted and the sympathy protests began to spread. (The protests were costing him votes!) He complained, “Provincial politicians who were being overlooked in the complaints everyone had about why this wasn’t being resolved would say “let’s not push our noses into this, and people will keep criticizing those people who helped. A decision to sit back and let us wear this a little bit.” Trudeau was complaining that most mandates were provincially imposed and that they contributed mightily to the discontent against mandates in general, and him in particular. Poor him was being left out to dry because he was perceived as being the author of the mandates, even though the Convoy in Ottawa was concerned with the federal mandate on truckers.
The “incompetence” of the Ottawa police as manifested in its failing to disperse the Convoy after the first weekend, as we’ve seen, disturbed Trudeau, and moved him to label the Freedom Convoy as an illegal occupation. He wearied of police promises of action and not getting any, allegedly. (though the Ambassador Bridge was cleared the day before the EA was invoked, and when Jason Kenney said of Coutts “it’s well on its way to resolution on February 14 before the invocation.) “We had heard this before,” Trudeau complained. The EA was invoked in part to prevent a recurrence or a restaging of a protest elsewhere. He had to get the national emergency under control.
When the Commission Counsel turned to the invoking of the EA, Trudeau revealed he was full of self-pity and self-justification. He often referred to mysterious “reports” he was getting from unnamed sources. (“There were a lot of people calling on us to invoke the EA for the pandemic,” he said at one point.) “There were popups and troubling reports right across the country.” That ‘things were occurring all across the country’ is is what required the EA. (Even though most premiers said they didn’t need it in their province.)
Trudeau said near the end of his testimony, “They wanted us to change public health policy designed to help Canadians and were going to occupy locations across this country and interfere with the lives of Canadians until such a decision was taken. And I can’t to have notice but when Premier Kenney in Alberta did in the course of these convoy occupations remove a number of mandates instead of decreasing the amount of concern the convoy at Coutts, the occupation at Coutts, seemed to be emboldened. “Look, it’s starting to work, let’s keep going.” Instead of deescalating. I am very aware that expressing concern and disagreement around positions on public policy is the right and is to be encouraged by any Canadian who wants to but the occupation and the destabilization and disruption of the lives of so many Canadians and the refusal to maintain a lawful protest is not all right.”
It turns out, Trudeau had been wanting to invoke the EA for a while. In March of 2020, at the very beginning of the pandemic, he consulted with the provincial premiers about the advisability of invoking it then, and was dissuaded by them then. (It is noteworthy that his father, Pierre Trudeau, invoked the War Measures Act in October, 1970, and that experience led to the repeal of the War Measures Act and the substitution with the EA. Justin’s invocation was the first time the EA had been invoked since its enactment in 1988.) Justin Trudeau was primed and ready to invoke the EA when the police weren’t dispersing the protests popping up everywhere against him.
There was the problem of the invocation under a Public Order Emergency requiring ‘serious violence’, and the protests and especially the Convoy were non-violent. Hence, what constituted serious violence had to be changed. Though she denied it on the stand, Chyrstia Freeland asked “David” (not clear if it was David Vignault, head of CSIS or David Lametti, Attorney-General) to designate Tamara Lich a terrorist. The danger of counter protests (Antifa?) clashing with the Convoy supporters was raised by Trudeau. (Such an event is known as a riot, which police know how to deal with, and does not constitute a national emergency.) “We couldn’t say there wasn’t potential for threats of serious violence.” Then there was economic harm. To Premier Ford, Trudeau complained the blockaders of the Ambassador Bridge are barricading the Ontario economy are doing millions of dollars in damage a day and harming people’s lives.
After complaining we’ve heard all this before, he says that he would have refrained from invoking the EA if he had been given empty promises of the type he had just dismissed.
Trudeau portrayed himself either as an innocent victim or a hero, and was constantly blame-shifting: onto the IRG, the cabinet, the Canadian people, the Clerk of the PCO, and parliaments past. At one point he blamed the Canadian people, “What would they think of me if a police officer got hurt and I hadn’t invoked the [EA}” he said near the end. The self-justifications and his Olympian concern for the welfare of Canadians he was constantly insinuating into the evidentiary record. You can’t blame him for what he did!
The economic consequences of the blockade at Windsor did not constitute serious violence. The Coutts gun possessors were in jail when the EA was invoked. The threats of possible return of protests did not constitute a threat of serious violence, riots between protesters does not constitute a threat to national security. But Trudeau was determined to invoke the EA somehow, for some reason, and the Convoy presented itself. Trudeau secured legal advice from his Attorney-General (an eminent lawyer himself who had to agree with the advice or he would have resigned) to the enable him to ignore the plain wording of the statutory language. He did not consult with the premiers in good faith as required in a good-faith way and intruded onto provincial sovereignty. Seven of ten premiers were against the invocation at the hastily called teleconference.
A good-faith dealing of the Convoy even now is impossible of the Liberal government and its supporters in the MSM. Trudeau surrounded himself with yes-men. The EA was invoked unlawfully, and Trudeau’s philosophical outlook, combined with a daddy complex, goes far to explain why a manifest political problem created by two years of oppressive mandates would not be dealt with politically, but with force and the menace of impoverishment by the seizure of bank accounts instead.
An interesting fact is that because it’s
now a cabinet secret and protected by solicitor-client privilege, the
conditions in which a Public Order Emergency can be declared is a state secret!
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Trudeau did lie under oath. He was asked if he ever called the unvaccinated racists and misogynists. He said “I did not call people who are unvaccinated names.” EXCEPT that in an interview in September, 2021, Trudeau told the hostess in French, “…by vaccination then if we all know people who are hesitating a little bit we will continue to convince but also people who are fiercely opposed to vaccination are extremists who don’t believe in science who are often misogynists often racist too it’s a small small group but it takes up space and there we have to make a choice as leader as a country are we – what do we tolerate these people where do we say let’s see most people almost….”
As one evaluates this, keep in mind that power dictates what truth is, according to post-modernism. That Trudeau calls those opposed to vaccination bad names has nothing to do with facts but with power. He has the power to label people who disagree with him with bad names, and freely does so for the same of imposing his power, the power to have people vaccinated. Objectively speaking, Trudeau would have no way of knowing for certain that a woman who opposed vaccination was a misogynists, or extremists in any other respect; or a scientist who is skeptical could be a disbeliever in science. The Black community was notoriously slow in vaccine uptake – does that make Blacks racist? These are all slanders for the purpose of discrediting people who disagree with him, and manifestly have nothing to do with objective truth. Besides, even extremists, racistsmisogynists, and disbelievers in science can have correct opinions about the wisdom of vaccination against COVID. What about those extremists, racists, misogynists and disbelievers in science who AGREE with Trudeau? Don’t that discredit Trudeau?
Don’t look for consistency here!
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