Rex Murphy: There is something happening in the Netherlands that has been happening for weeks, which if anything even closely resembling it were happening in Canada, especially in Ottawa, it would surely be called an “insurrection.” It might even have cabinet ministers and the prime minister calling those participating an intolerable “fringe minority.” Come to think of it, it would probably have driven the government to invoke the civil-rights-denying Emergencies Act, and arrest any of its leaders, especially any of those from the rebellion hot spot of darkest and most menacing Medicine Hat.
I am referring to the huge and continuous protest against the Dutch government. For some weeks now upwards of 40,000 farmers have been on their tractors and in their trucks crowding highways and snarling traffic in a mass protest against a green edict that would force them to halve emissions of nitrogen oxide and ammonia by 2030. Among the minor (sarcasm here) consequences of this wand-wave from on high is that the Dutch would lose about 30 per cent of their livestock numbers. Only 30 per cent — a mere rounding error. Who needs livestock? Food suppliers?
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