Chrystia Freeland's speech made me incandescent with rage. These people are evil fucking bastards, and today has been possibly the darkest day in Canada's history.
If the country recovers from this, we will be stronger for it, and never let something like this happen again.
I keep telling myself that.
I don't think we can recover from it. And if we do, I don't think we'd stop it from happening again. After all, we interred Japanese-Canadians during WWII.
The last times the Act was invoked (formerly War Measures, now Emergencies, but it's the same fucking act) there were actual emergencies going on. You can criticize the choice to invoke it, and people have, rightly — but you can't deny that there was actual fucking unrest. Like...WWII. Or kidnappings and bombings.
This was a peaceful protest with a bouncy castle for the kids and dance parties for the adults. Protesters put homeless people up in hotels so they wouldn't freeze on Ottawa's sidewalks. They shovelled snow and cleaned up the war memorials. Ottawa crime rates were down.
In short, the protesters were quintessentially Canadian in their protest, and Ottawa was better taken care of by them than by the ruddy politicians.
So of course, Justin Trudeau tried to start a dialogue with them, to meet them halfway and see what they wanted, and it quickly went south and the protesters turned violent and they had to invoke the Emergencies Act....
No. That didn't happen. He didn't even try to have a dialogue with them. He didn't even try.
This is our Prime Minister who, in the span of less than 3 weeks, refused all diplomatic channels, hid from his constituents, insulted the people on his doorstep, and then declared martial law.
Whether or not you agree with the aims of the convoy, you cannot deny this was an utter failure of leadership. No one who can't have a diplomatic dialogue with his own citizens should be leader of a country. No one.
If he's not going to try diplomatic channels with peaceful protesters on Parliament Hill, then why should we think he would with other countries?
Or will he, because Canada has a weaker military than any other country and he knows we'd lose?
It's easy to push around peaceful unarmed protesters. It's easy to crush citizens. Of course we'll ignore diplomatic channels with them, because they're little people who don't count.
Other countries, though, he has to be nice with – or daddy Schwab will spank him.
I think some of us might pay to see that.