Truck convoys as a modality of political protest and potential violence
Security MagazineOct 17, 2022
Culminating six weeks of public hearings inquiring into the Canadian government's use of the Emergencies Act during the Freedom Convoy protests against COVID measures earlier this year, PM Justin Trudeau publicly testified in defense of his invocation of the law on Friday.
In his testimony, Trudeau said it was up to him and his cabinet to decide whether the threshold to declare a "public order emergency” had been met. “We could not say that there was no potential for threats of serious violence," he claimed. “We were seeing things escalate.”
The radical far-right mob called themselves the "Freedom Convoy" to hide their true colors. The anti-vax trucker movement was made up of dangerous conspiracy theorists that posed a clear threat to Canadians' safety during an already-dangerous pandemic. The government and police responses were completely justified during a time of an unprecedented uprising.
Trudeau was warned by his own intelligence agency that invoking the Emergencies Act would only escalate anti-government sentiment and potentially even violence. While protesters were exercising their rights to oppose extraordinary public health mandates, the government decided to exercise an assault on civil liberties. Labeling all protesters far-right conspiracy theorists is a deliberate distortion of the truth to justify this authoritarian crackdown.