We now have a perfect political storm. Susan Delacourt writes:
Two sharply divergent views of those convoy protests, two opposite rulings from judges. Not surprisingly, each side will now be able to claim vindication, as well as grievance.
That was evident in the immediate aftermath of the ruling by Federal Court Judge Richard Mosley on Tuesday, with Conservatives and convoy supporters claiming victory, while Trudeau’s government wasted no time in announcing it will appeal the decision all the way up to the Supreme Court of Canada if it must.
In short, those extraordinary weeks in early 2022, which so divided the country, continue to pitch politics into two, polar-opposite camps.
And The Right is having a field day:
No question, it is looking like a good week for the anti-Trudeau right, what with convoy supporters getting to run a victory lap, Conservatives getting to rail against Trudeau “breaking the law” and, in a bonus of timing, former Fox News darling Tucker Carlson arriving in Alberta to appear at a bash-the-Liberals event with Premier Danielle Smith.
“I’m going to go liberate Canada,” Carlson said in an interview with Politico as he was getting ready to board his plane.
Smith believes the Federal Court has handed her another way to bludgeon Trudeau’s Liberals in her mind-your-own-business crusade against Ottawa. In a post on X on Tuesday, Smith said: “Whether it’s today’s court decision, or their defeat on plastics or the Impact Assessment Act, it is clear the Trudeau Liberal government simply does not understand or respect the Constitution of Canada.”
But things are not that simple:
Convoy supporters, for instance — and all of those people who said this was just a spirited party with bouncy castles and hot tubs on Wellington Street, should take note of this blunt statement from Mosley: “I considered the events that occurred in Ottawa and other locations in January and February 2022 went beyond legitimate protest and reflected an unacceptable breakdown of public order.”
Mosley goes on to say that he might have made the same decision himself to invoke the emergency legislation. But he has two fundamental problems with how the government used the emergency law: one with the argument for using it, the other with the scope of it.
In politics, where everyone wants to choose their own opinions — and facts — these days, the only certain outcome of the Federal Court decision is new life into a two-year-old fight over those convoy protests. There is a middle to be found between the two judges’ rulings, between Rouleau and Mosley — but don’t expect to hear too much of that in the polarized political arena.
If the Ottawa police had acted earlier, things might have been different.
Oliver Wendall Holmes famously said that freedom of speech does not mean that you have the right to yell fire in a crowded theatre. These days, the wisdom of that position is forgotten. For that reason, I still side with the government.
Image: NBC News
