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Should Canada’s Truckers Go on Strike, or Did Ontario’s Premier Just Show Trudeau a Way Out of His Crisis?
In February 1979, about 1,700 tractors descended on Washington, DC’s Mall to protest low farm prices and foreclosures. They irritated Congress, USDA Secretary Bob Bergland, and the locals. They went from villains to heroes two weeks later when a two-foot snow storm made their vehicles the only way to get doctors and nurses to hospitals, and farm spouses took over hospital kitchens to prepare food.
President Jimmy Carter, who had fled town for Camp David early in the protest, returned to paused farm foreclosures, giving protesting farmers a small victory and a reason to return home for Spring planting. Carter shortly thereafter resumed the foreclosures. Farm country (and just about everyone else) responded by overwhelmingly voting for Ronald Reagan in 1980.
Canada’s truckers have arrived at their own climatic moment. They’ve occupied Ottawa for two weeks and held other protest in other Canadian cities. A few truckers shut down the Ambassador Bridge that connects Windsor, Ontario to Detroit, Michigan. A quarter of our $6 billion in annual trade between Canada and the US traverses that privately owned bridge (a new bridge is being built by the Canadian government).
Canada’s “Freedom Convoy” is unlikely to find their “heroes” moment as DC’s tractorcade did in 1979. And they’re not due for another election in several years. Worse, public opinion has not supported the truckers, nor Trudeau for that matter. Canada’s government-subsidized media is parroting Trudeau’s propaganda that largely compares the protest to last year’s January 6th fiasco (a former Bank of Canada President, Mark Carney, called it “sedition”) and false reports of trucker violence and arrests. It has truly been a mostly peaceful protest, which has been joined by Canadian farmers and tractors.
Interestingly, many towing companies declined government requests to remove trucks, citing Covid. How ironic.
The only known violence was committed by an Antifa activist against a trucker in Manitoba. Canada’s government has worked overtime to prevent some $9 million in donations, much of it from the US via GiveSendGo.com, a Christian alternative to GoFundMe.com, which has since been hacked and cooperated with Canadian government demands not to distribute the money. GoFundMe.com refused to transmit some $10 million in donations to protesting Canadian truckers and was pressured to refund the money to hundreds of thousands of donors. Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau complained to President Joe Biden about the US donations. Biden sympathized, and urged Trudeau to take punitive action.
And now, Trudeau is invoking a previously unused Emergencies Act to, in effect, impose a form of martial law, end or restrict many civil liberties, and try to force protesting truckers to stand down. This apparently includes freezing the corporate accounts of protesting truckers and other ChiCom-style financial restrictions. The last Prime Minister to invoke emergency power, under the War Measures Act, like this was Trudeau’s father, Pierre, to quell a militant separatist organization in Quebec that had kidnapped a Quebec official and a British diplomat. Canada’s Freedom Convoy is anything but militant, they’re not advocating for a separatist government, and no kidnappings have taken place.
It’s time for Canada’s Freedom Convoy to switch tactics. They should seriously consider going on strike, other than for hospitals and other carefully-selected essential services. At least prepare for one. And make their demands specific and achievable.
Maybe sparse grocery shelves, factories shuttered for lack of parts, and even empty fueling stations will get the attention of Canada’s smug government. Maybe it already has. I doubt their “Emergencies Act” can force people to work. Meanwhile, perhaps GiveSendGo.com and their attorneys, and other supporters can find creative ways to get financial support to truckers involved in the protest. Alternative payment processing systems are emerging.
This is government’s fault in Canada, both Trudeau’s Liberal government and Ontario’s “Conservative” government led by Premier Doug Ford, who is working hand in hand with Trudeau.
At least until Tuesday. Ford suddenly announced he was lifting most of the mandates effective March 1 (many other provinces have already lifted mandates) “in spite of” the protests. Uh huh. Ford has given an opening for Trudeau to wisely follow suit, which would effectively end the protests. Ontario is Canada’s most populous province and politically it’s most important.
Until now, between the two of them, they have badly managed and botched the Covid crisis, even worse than the United States, with brutal mandates, a faulty vaccine rollout, and continuing, coercive policies. Rights and civil liberties have taken a back seat.
But yesterday, Trudeau, as Carter in 1979, just needed to show respect to the people who comprise the backbone of Canada’s economy and supply chains. He needed to show an iota of humility. He just needs to recognize science, as even Democratic US governors have, that we must live to learn with the virus, stop mandating vaccines for truckers crossing the US border (get Biden to reciprocate) and masks that neither prevent infection or transmission, and return to normalcy. Focus on a growing bevy of effective therapeutics while protecting the vulnerable.
Don’t hold your breath.
This is not rocket science. Except, it appears, in Ottawa, and a few other places in North America and around the globe (looking at you, Australia and Austria).
A strike will need some careful thought and planning, and would not be needed if most of the Covid mandates were phased out. Should supportive Canadian farmers refuse to plant this year? Can donations make their way to protesting truckers and farmers, and their families? Which essential facilities and services need to be exempted from protests a served? Instigators are always a potential problem.
Such a strike would also hit many Americans, since the offending mandates evolve around vaccine requirements for cross boarder traffic. America gets a lot of lumber, cattle, and energy from Canada. Most of it is delivered by truck. Some American farmers and industries who have fought against Canadian imports for decades won’t complain, but consumers may feel the pinch of higher prices and delayed construction. That’s nothing new. As someone hunting for a new home, advocating for a trucker strike isn’t in my personal interest, either.
So be it. There are bigger things at stake.
Good luck, truckers. Thanks for fighting for your freedom – and ours – from excruciatingly failed government mandates, martial law, coercive politicians and their yearning for a permanent pandemic, and erosion of your civil rights and liberties. You have more support than you may know. Your cause is just.
And just like the American Agriculture Movement, you should capitalize on what you’re started, stay organized, and keep advocating for a common sense freedom agenda. You’d be amazed at what the AAM has achieved over the past 43 years.
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They should listen to Dan Crenshaw
I have kept wondering when Canada would have a general strike. The problem is the labor union management will not be behind this and they are the ones who could organize the strike easily.
If the Truckers engage in a general strike, food stops flowing.
I do not understand why Trudeau is being so persistent in tactics that so clearly are likely to harden the opposition, and I think are likely to cause people to sympathize with the opposition.
He expects to win by breaking them.
Kelly, what is your source for the claim that a quarter of our $6 billion in trade with Canada passes over that one bridge?
$6 billion seems way too low. A quick Google search says that our trade with Canada is about $700 billion, including services. About $600 billion is goods.
Kelly, can I suggest you invest in a little more proof reading. The typos (“climatic moment” in this one, for example) detract from the excellent content.
LOL
You have made posts quitting twice and yet you are still here.
Tyrants always have to break. He has to prove to his Leftist base that he can put and keep the right in its place. So he will destroy the truckers before giving to them. Even if it destroys the illusion Canadians believe that they are free. They are free, free to do exactly what the Left wants.
One possible immediate step, before a widespread trucker strike or a general strike, would be for independents to refuse loads to Ottawa and any provincial capital that maintains vax mandates. That won’t shut down everything, but we’ve seen that transportation shortage on the margins show up (or rather don’t) on store shelves and in supply chains fairly quickly when the system is already strained.
Nah,
Shut it all down. Bring the pain to the people who are supporting the tyrant.
Sherman was right. You stop the war by making the comfortable howl. The only way to win is the make the elites suffer the results of their own policies.
So how many truckers have participated in their demonstration?
I don’t get the impression that truckers in Canada have an organized union. Would enough truckers go on strike to make it effective?
Blocking roads takes a lot less truckers than an effective strike would.
He is an arrested adolescent who cannot think as an adult. He is likely to be forced out by his party’s back-benchers joining in a vote of no confidence in his government.