The real ‘Freedom Convoy’ threat is to society itself

The problem with the anticipated return of the so-called Freedom Convoy isn’t just the obnoxiousness or the noise or the violence that’s inherently present in your average siege. It’s the damage done to institutions that hold our society together, starting with the rule of law and the integrity of our parliamentary system.

The rule of law means the law applies to everyone equally. So if, to pick an example at random, it is against the law to sit half-naked in a hot tub on Wellington in front of Parliament, then anyone caught doing that, especially if they were also drunkenly disturbing the peace, would be thrown in the clink.

Not, as we have seen a few months ago, left alone to macerate in peace. Now they feel entitled to break the law, which chips away at our shared understanding of what the basic rules of living together ought to be.

Our system of self-government is far from perfect. But if we all agree to live by the same ground rules, we’ll muddle along okay. That’s why most of us take turns to speak, vote and accept the results even those we don’t like. When a small group decides they get to overrule elections and throw decency and fair play under the truck, we no longer have self-government. We have rule by the most obnoxious.

Protesting is one of the most valuable privileges of democratic societies. But occupying, intimidating and treating bystanders with violence in addition to deafening them and poisoning their air, is not protesting.

Apparently, the plan is to stay in Ottawa as long as it takes to get the prime minister to resign. Why? That’s ... not clear. I mean, they obviously don’t like Justin Trudeau and for all I know the feeling is mutual. To engage in illegal occupation to unseat a politician you don’t like is not how we do things in countries that aren’t banana republics.

Alas, it appears some politicians are actually embracing this institutional vandalism.

Alas, it appears some politicians are actually embracing this institutional vandalism. Pierre Poilievre, a local member of Parliament who thinks he can change our system of government by repeating 10 million times that he is running for prime minister when this job is nowhere on the ballot, is eagerly supporting the convoyers. He’s not the only Tory MP to do so either.

Poilievre says no one from his campaign spoke to the organizers who plan to be on Parliament Hill on Canada Day but he totally supports and encourages protests against government attacks on our freedom.

That could be funny if indeed convoyers respected the law, decency, other people’s rights and also logic. I guess it’s a relief that most of them are there for the hot tub and not the constitutional confusion that sees vocal idiots claim they’re entitled to having their Miranda rights read to them and their First Amendment rights protected. Maybe try reading the Canadian Constitution?

I could sit here all week and mock the crass ignorance. But I am too worried about the damage to our institutions, to say nothing of violence, to think of laughing.

Charlie Angus, the NDP MP for Timmins-james Bay, recently published a piece in Policy Magazine commenting on security for politicians and widespread belief in wacko conspiracies among the Canadian public.

He cites Abacus Data polling that shows 44 per cent of Canadians believe “a secret group of elites is controlling elections, recessions and wars.” Nearly 40 per cent believe in the racist “white replacement theory” according to which there is a plot to replace “native-born Canadians” (ugh) with immigrants.

It is horrifying and distressing, as is the flaunting of Nazi imagery and flags near those convoys. Anti-semitism lives at the corner of evil and stupid, and if you allow its symbols in your vicinity, we’ll draw the appropriate conclusion.

Everyone has a right to protest mask mandates even after they’re lifted. Go ahead and fill your boots. But threatening the foundations and institutions that keep us free, prosperous and democratic is vandalism and cannot be tolerated.