Below, please find the links to a number of articles of interest regarding the Ottawa Occupation.
Let’s talk about the real problems facing truck drivers: safety, low wages, gig work and fatalities
By Jim Stanford
Toronto Star
It is well-documented that the “truckers protest” in Ottawa has little to do with trucking. Most vehicles in the convoy were not trucks. Most people at the protest are not truckers. And most of the organizers’ demands (from opposing all COVID-19 health restrictions to removing the elected government of Canada) have nothing to do with trucking.
Meanwhile, actual truckers are going about their business — while complying with the dozens of government rules that regulate their industry every day. Requiring double vaccination to cross the Canada-U.S. border without quarantine is just one of those rules. Industry experts say 90 per cent of truckers are vaccinated (roughly the same as the rest of us).
The nebulous connection between trucking and this protest has not stopped right-wing politicians from invoking the rugged image of “hard-working truckers” as a convenient prop for their flirtation with extremism. Erin O’Toole and Jason Kenney spoke glowingly about the dedication and bravery of drivers (it didn’t save O’Toole, and probably won’t save Kenney). Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe was especially shameless: issuing a phoney “thank you letter” to truckers simply as a gimmick to cancel more COVID restrictions, despite Saskatchewan having one of the worst COVID-19 hospitalization rates in the country.
Real truck drivers face many challenges. They are treated unfairly by employers, shippers and governments. Even if the cross-border vaccine mandate was eliminated tomorrow (it won’t be), all those challenges would remain. Perhaps all this attention on truckers will translate into awareness and concern for the exploitation they experience every day. But don’t wait for conservative politicians to do anything about it.
To read more, please go to…
5G and QAnon: how conspiracy theorists steered Canada’s anti-vaccine trucker protest
The Guradian
Ottawa’s occupation was a result of unrivaled coordination between anti-vax and anti-government organizations
Thousands of demonstrators have successfully occupied Canada’s frigid capital for days, and say they plan on staying as long as it takes to thwart the country’s vaccine requirements.
The brazen occupation of Ottawa came as a result of unprecedented coordination between various anti-vaccine and anti-government organizations and activists, and has been seized on by similar groups around the world.
It may herald the revenge of the anti-vaxxers.
The so-called “freedom convoy” – which departed for Ottawa on 23 January – was the brainchild of James Bauder, an admitted conspiracy theorist who has endorsed the QAnon movement and called Covid-19 “the biggest political scam in history”. Bauder’s group, Canada Unity, contends that vaccine mandates and passports are illegal under Canada’s constitution, the Nuremberg Code and a host of other international conventions.
To read more, please go to…
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/08/canada-ottawa-trucker-protest-extremist-qanon-neo-nazi
“A night with the untouchables”: A response.
By Rita Flynn
February 8, 2022
Rita Flynn is an Ottawa-based blogger. This article comes from her online publication, “ Rita’s Newsletter”.
The occupation of Ottawa by the Freedom Convoy 2022 is now in its 11th day, at this writing. The downtown core is unreachable. Downtown businesses remain closed into the second week, because the convoy members refuse to wear masks, and many of them verbally abuse the people who work there.
Although the Convoy is showing absolutely no respect for Ottawa’s and Ontario’s laws, police enforcement is ineffective, enabling the occupation by default. The residents of Ottawa are being held hostage. And they have not one thing to do with the ostensible object of this protest, the lifting of COVID restrictions.
To read more, please go to…