The Crossroads

We're at a dangerous crossroads. Andrew Nikiforuk writes:

It is clear now that a highly organized group of militants — some with military and counter insurgency experience — have mobilized incoherent popular frustrations created by the pandemic to shield their goal of undermining a democracy and overthrowing a government they don’t like. Many of these militants hail from Alberta and the west.

The protestors talk about individual rights and freedoms but no one talks about responsibilities and that’s how democracies fail.  

They are aided by the internet, foreign funds and perhaps foreign players (the whole “freedom convoy” movement has the stink of covert Russian involvement). As they occupied Ottawa, they presented a hard face composed of a phalanx of diesel trucks and a soft face made up of rock music, fireworks, kids and hot tubs.

And people defecating on doorsteps.

Unquestionably, these are difficult times:

Like most western democracies Canada seethes with unease and anxiety about a cross-hatch of complex problems: an evolving pandemic and its social fallout, rising inflation, housing shortages, grotesque economic inequality, an opioid crisis, escalating climate destabilization, a degraded media and an unresponsive political class.

Just like Boris Johnson’s political class in England, ours shares a fundamental flaw: a narrow partisan politics committed to permanent campaigns that have nothing to do with the welfare of the people or solving problems.

As a result, Canada’s democracy has become hostage to fragility and idiocy.

Nothing less than our democracy is at stake. And rot abounds:

Mendacity is a now greater contagion in western democracies than COVID, and yes, democracies do fail when political parties reward loyalty over competence and everyone regards the news as “fake.” As Russian operatives realized not so long ago, every war is an information war, and Canada is now in the midst of one, as is every western democracy.

And, most worrisomely, we face a leadership deficit:

Why does it take a week for the premier of Ontario to think that an illegal blockade of Ambassador Bridge might be an economic and international problem that shuts down factories?  

And then there is Premier Jason Kenney, perhaps the most despised politician in Alberta’s history. Facing defections in his own party, he now serves a radical fringe in his party in order to cling to power regardless of the consequences for Albertans. Or Canada.

To appease those blockading a border crossing at Coutts, Kenney abruptly ended all public health restrictions last week. Guess what? The blockaders didn’t move. As Rudyard Kipling wrote about blackmail, once you pay the Dane-geld, “you never get rid of the Dane.”

Members of Kenney’s own party dutifully brought the Coutts blockaders coffee while the RCMP sat on their asses contemplating the vastness of their dysfunction. (Yesterday they arrested a well-armed cell among the blockaders.)

Next comes the Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. He has failed in his duties as spectacularly as Kenney. First he described people hesitant about vaccines or just plain fed up with the pandemic as citizens who “don’t believe in science or progress and are very often misogynistic and racist.”

Much has been written about the protests in Ottawa as somehow being courteous and peaceful. But that’s not true. Occupying a community with large industrial machines that spew toxic diesel fumes is a form of industrial violence and bullying of the highest order.

Blasting that same community with blaring horns exceeding 83 decibels day in and day out is not only offensive but torturous.  

This cannot continue. The question is, what will be left in the aftermath?

Image: chatnewstoday.ca