Another Convoy?

This week marks the first anniversary of the Truckers Convoy to Ottawa. Susan Delacourt writes:

In many ways, Ottawa is facing the same kind of test this weekend as the vaccine mandates that triggered the convoy outrage last year. We will only know what’s working by what doesn’t happen — if the convoy virus fails to infect the country as it did last year.

Officially, the Rouleau commission was only supposed to answer the question of whether Trudeau was right to invoke emergency legislation to end the protest. But of course, those hearings turned into much more, and many people (including this writer) hope all that testimony has become a vaccine of sorts against a future protest.

Then again, what Rouleau’s hearings demonstrated was that the convoy wasn’t just one protest. It was, in the words of former chief Sloly, a many-headed “hydra” that was impossible to confront as one, singular beast. One would hope that police and security are mindful of that reality in 2023, not assuming that a repeat of the convoy can be avoided by negotiating with a few people.

One of the things the truckers demanded -- the end of vaccine mandates -- has come to pass:

Much of the motivation behind last year’s mass protest — those vaccine mandates — are gone, which some supporters of the convoy regard as a victory of the Ottawa occupation and border blockades. That’s obviously an overreach. COVID isn’t gone, but Canada, like the rest of the world, seems to be learning to live with it without lockdowns.

One other big demand of the protesters — the ouster of Trudeau — obviously didn’t happen, and judging from the small demonstrations in Windsor and Hamilton the past couple of weeks, that’s still annoying an angry knot of Canadians. But is that sentiment rampant enough to paralyze a capital and a country again?

As my colleagues Raisa Patel and Grant Lafleche wrote in a one-year anniversary piece last weekend in the Star, the “freedom” movement is scattered and splintered now — likely unable to regroup, even to bask in the memories of last year.

For the next few days, though, many in Ottawa will be hyperalert to the sound of trucks honking or the sight of flags flying from vehicles entering the capital. This weekend will show whether Ottawa has been convoy-proofed.

The crazies are still out there. But, for the moment, they're disorganized.

Image: The Toronto Star