Many of the protesters were rude, refusing to wear masks, and were intimidating. A few carried hate symbols (none is too many). Several hundred parked their rigs and trucks for weeks, blocking traffic and pedestrian access, while causing substantial economic loss to businesses that were still trying to recover from covid. But there was no weapons cache and very little actual violence, and all the above could have been and eventually was dealt with using provincial law and the Criminal Code, not the Emergencies Act.
The real concern going forward is how comparatively little it took for the prime minister to bring in the Act. The fact that most Canadians approved of this extraordinary use of power to curtail freedoms is most unfortunate but very much in keeping with our historical willingness to trade away our rights and freedoms. Each time we go along with this unwarranted abuse of emergency power, the government assumes that Canadians’ constitutionally entrenched rights and freedoms are negotiable.
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