Rights, Freedoms and Gulags
At the time the truckers descended on Ottawa, many Canadians supported jail time, punitive taxes, denial of health care & denial of drivers’ licenses for the unvaxxed
As these photos, taken in Ottawa a year ago demonstrate, protesters weren’t asking for the moon. They simply wanted their fundamental, longstanding rights to be respected.
On the left of the protest sign below we see Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms in English
Here it’s displayed in the window of a truck in French:
Many Canadians were deeply concerned about the direction in which this country was headed. Three days before the first Freedom Convoy trucks hit the road in British Columbia, a National Post headline proclaimed: More than one in four Canadians support jail time for the unvaccinated, poll finds.
The article said 37% of Canadians agreed with denying health care to the unvaxxed. (When’s the last time pollsters asked if it’s OK to deny healthcare to drug addicts, drunk drivers, terrorists, child abusers, or rapists?)
33% of Canadians thought the unvaxxed should be prevented from renewing their drivers’ license, 61% thought the unvaxxed should pay a healthcare tax of $150 per month, and two thirds!! favoured “mandatory vaccines for everyone over the age of five.”
When asked how much sympathy they might feel for an unvaccinated person who became seriously ill or died from COVID, “27 per cent said they had none at all.”
In other words, Canadian society was becoming ugly and dangerous. Politicians, academics, and journalists talk incessantly about respect for minorities. It’s now become clear that’s just meaningless blather. The past few years have taught us that the veneer of civilization is exceedingly thin. Most of our fellow citizens have no respect whatsoever for individual choice or medical autonomy. The harshness with which large numbers of people are prepared to punish those with whom they disagree is breathtaking.
Which means that, rather than being an exaggeration, the message on this sign is bang on:
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Donna Laframboise writes a daily blog at ThankYouTruckers.substack.com. It is a first draft of her upcoming book that focuses on interviews with Freedom Convoy truckers. She is a former National Post and Toronto Star columnist, and a former Vice President of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.
