, 01.31.2022 08:41 PM

My latest: the anti-vax truckers – Trudeau’s newest best friends

Let’s do a recap, shall we?

People partying on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

People defacing the statue of Terry Fox.

People breaking into the Shepherds of Good Hope to take food that was being prepared for poor people.

People assaulting and abusing reporters who were there to cover the protest. People assaulting and abusing homeless people.

People blocking ambulance crews, apparently leading to at least one preventable trauma patient’s death.

People urinating and defecating all over the place — urinating on the War Memorial, defecating on the property of a family displaying the Pride flag.

People threatening teenagers at fast food places because the teenagers politely asked them to wear a mask.

People parking wherever they want, and screaming at passersby, and having drinking parties around the clock.

And, of course, people displaying swastikas and Confederate flags and calls for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to be assassinated.

That’s just some of the stuff that went on in Ottawa this weekend. That’s based on what I have seen with my own eyes, or from uncontradicted news reports by organizations like this one.

It happened. It’s real. And it’s been condemned by everyone from a Liberal prime minister to a Progressive Conservative Ontario premier.

Oh, by the by, don’t start telling us in the media how to do our damn job. Our job is not to provide sunny ways reports about the majority of people at the protest obeying the law.

That’s not news. People are supposed to obey the law. Obeying the law and acting like a civilized human being is not news, ever.

But when someone holds up a Nazi flag near Parliament, and thousands of other people don’t do a damn thing about it? That’s news.

As for the suggestion that we are on the Trudeau government’s payroll? That’s more than laughable. That’s a lie of Nazi-like proportions, frankly. A big one.

This newspaper has relentlessly documented the failings of Justin Trudeau‘s government. And this writer, to be blunt, does more to bring about the end of the Trudeau government — in a single afternoon — than most of you would do in 10 lifetimes.

So, take some responsibility, folks. If you were there, or you supported those who were there — and if you are in any way honest — you know that this weekend looked really, really ugly to a lot of regular, unaffiliated voters. Normal people. Not just so-called Lefties.

Now, most of the protesters were not there because of vaccines. They were there to oppose Justin Trudeau‘s government. That’s fine. I oppose it, too.

But here’s the problem, Trudeau critics: The people you have now alienated are the people you needed to reach.

Since you are not going to dethrone him with some nutbar manifesto removing all elected Members of Parliament, and then creating a whackadoodle regime where we are governed by an unelected Governor General and some unelected senators. That is crazy. It is insane.

No, if you are going to remove Justin Trudeau, you needed to reach other voters, folks. You need to make those voters less enthusiastic about him. In an election.

But this weekend‘s events in Ottawa didn’t do that. This weekend‘s events did the exact opposite. This weekend’s events turned many, many normal people off.

Until someone comes up with an alternative, we live in a democracy. To win in a democracy, you need to win over the majority.

You didn’t do that, trucker fans. You did the opposite.

And, along the way, you have re-elected Justin Trudeau.

Good job.

42 Comments

  1. Warren,

    I wonder if HimselfTM will refer to it as TheBeansForBrainsTM Election? Thanks so much Erin O’UnvaccinatedTruckersTM for losing us the next one even before it’s a twinkle in this Prime Minister’s eye. Like I said caucus, get those pens out on Wednesday and sign, bloody sign. What a disgrace to have an OLO that’s even more stupid than the leader.

    • PJH says:

      Mr. O’Dowd: I will not be sorry to see EOT go…my concern is if he is replaced with someone who truly is of the bible thumping ilk, as some who were opposed to passing the conversion therapy bill are. If someone like Leslyn Lewis becomes leader, we will be in the political wilderness for the next ten years.

      • PJH,

        I like Leslyn but most of the membership already know that the only way forward to victory is centre-right. I’m not worried about the future.

        • Robert White says:

          Poilievre is a shoe in for next iteration.

          RW

          • Sean says:

            He’s master of the soundbite, no doubt about it… and entertaining as hell… But he’s all over the board with what he actually stands for. Also, his demeanor won’t play well with Blue Liberals / Red Tories and that’s who they need. PM for PM.

          • Ronald O'Dowd says:

            Sean,

            Pierre has matured and mellowed so I could live with him as leader. But like a blushing bride, I’m already spoken for if O’Toole resigns.

    • JIM Johnson says:

      Here is what our paid off Trudeau media will not say and it takes Tucker Carlson from Fox news to nail Trudeau.

      https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/tucker-carlson-canada-prime-minister-justin-trudeau?test=b70ba6a2d9f75046b0c2b5910a798767

      • Jim,

        Do you think you can get someone, ANYONE to get Carlson to nail the Ruskies? Reminds me of that certain former president and a golden rainbow. But is there a flag for that golden rainbow?

      • Derek Pearce says:

        Lol JIM you completely missed the point of this column! Hint: Tucker Carlson is NOT the person to persuade Canadians– normal apolitical Canadians, the kind of Canadians who are disgusted with the convoy– to vote against Trudeau.
        Objectively the echo chamber is worse on the right than the left. Quit sniffing your own farts. For instance, I’d never point someone to Rabble and then expect them to vote for my pick.

  2. Sean says:

    Yep. Totally bang on. The racist riot formerly dressed up as a trucker convoy has achieved the impossible… They’ve made that sniveling weasel look like he was actually standing up for something.

    • Pedant says:

      “Racist riot.”

      The Annex and Westmount sure are enraged to see the unwashed underprivileged working class Canadians asserting themselves against restrictions that primarily impact THEM, not the laptop crowd who have been massively financially enriched by Covid.

      But they’re all just rioting racists, or the whole 15 or so such individuals out of tens of thousands. The nerve of the working class thinking they should push back on government overreach. Who do they think they are?

      • Ronald O'Dowd says:

        Pedant,

        You have a strong point but the fact is, the truckers brought it on themselves. Where was their organized internal security — to properly police themselves — so things stayed peaceful and decent? And did not one of them have a thinking brain to immediately kick those guys in the balls who were carrying The Stars and Bars and the Nazi Germany flag?

      • The Doctor says:

        Pedant, I think it’s a tad simplistic to see this as some black-and-white rich versus poor folks issue. I know very wealthy people who are virulently opposed to masking, lockdowns and vax mandates. And look at the Spectator in the UK — it’s a veritable firehose of Covid skepticism, and its readership is basically London City Oxbridge toffs. Conversely I live in a decidedly working class neighborhood and support for mandatory vaccinations and masking is high.

      • Derek Pearce says:

        Grocery store, fast food and (though higher earning still blue-collar) transit drivers are all overwhelmingly I’m favour of mask and vaccine mandates. Those of us who aren’t at home on a laptop know these idiots are endangering us.

  3. Steve T says:

    Good points, all. I agree that any protesters who don’t act quickly to rid their crowd of human garbage, like those that stained Ottawa this past weekend, are essentially condoning that disgusting behaviour. The trucker protests, whatever their marginally-valid points, have been destroyed by the actions of those in their midst.

    I trust that everyone will remember that same mantra the next time there is a BLM protest that degenerates into a riot. Or the next time there is a railway blockade that breaks the law and causes millions in economic damage. Or the next time a group destroys statues and vandalizes public property in the name of their cause. All of those things are illegal and disgusting acts as well – and should also be scorned in the media.

  4. Ronald O'Dowd says:

    Well, caucus did it. A third have signed a letter calling for an early leadership review. So…what will happen on Wednesday?Thank God that O’Toole is likely to finally be held accountable for screwing our chances for power with his serial and ridiculous defence of unvaccinated truckers. We all warned him repeatedly about coddling the unvaccinated in the campaign and after and he still kept digging with that vote losing shovel. I hope the leader will save us any further embarrassment and simply resign quickly.

    • Well Ron, I think we are seeing the end of the Conservative party of Canada. I don’t think there is a leader in Canada who can resuscitate this cluster fuck.it sure as hell ain’t that potato farmer.

      There is no glee here, Democracy is broken in Canada as much as anywhere else. The so called “centrist” party is governing to the left of the left-wing party. In fact I would be so bold as to suggest if there were is no conservative alternative the NDP might lose more seats next election.

      Right now I can’t even imagine the party that can defeat the liberals, and I can’t imagine how this cult of personality will somehow have a find Jesus moment when this spawn decides it’s time to leave and come back to the centre.

      That won’t happen till we have a collective ass slapping form international creditors.

      I’m not defending O’Toole I’m saying let’s get it over with, pull the plug, prepare the lethal injection or whatever it takes to kill the Conservative party off. The west will never win the east over with its brand of conservatism and the east will never again take power without appealing to the west.

      It’s like watching the road runner – no matter how much you like the coyote as a character- you know he’ll never catch up.

      I think Alberta needs to win over western provincial allies and declare a nation but one like Quebec within Canada.

      Ontario, eastern Canada and the west coast will have varying degrees of success within a less central Canada but I think it’s time we reset and let the next generation try to figure out our failures.

      It is not the woke crowd that is killing Canada it is the mushy middle. I finally get it, the old timers used to reflect “we got another damn do nothing liberal government”. We get those because the middle doesn’t have the stones to try something new. We voted liberal till they threatened to lurch too far left and we voted conservative.

      We get indefensible Government because we don’t choose to defend our own selves.

      Maybe from the ruins of the two Conservative factions something will develop to counter liberalism but don’t count on it. I don’t have to support my federal government to live with it.

      c’est la vie c’est la garre.

      • Phil,

        I could be wrong but will stick with a half-full glass, that is, until it gets spilt.

        • Robert White says:

          Blame Harper for the one hit wonder Conservative Party, Ronald. That party stood a chance as the Progressive Convervative Party, but since Harper’s interloping governance came to town it has been impossible for that party to acheive any consensus whatsoever.

          Manning is to blame too.

          RW

          • Robert, Three election wins is a one hit wonder?

            Manning is only to blame for being right, honest and justifiably angry. Without him the trillion dollar debt bubble would have already burst.

            You’re a self admitted socialist who would never vote right of Singh and the NDP so please while you have an opinion your judgement of Paul Martin and John Manley much less further right is extremely biased on this front.

          • Robert,

            I voted against the merger but Harper still managed to pull off three governments. Obviously, without the merger we would have pulled off zip. So, in a strategic sense, I belatedly came around.

    • Gloriosus et Liber says:

      I fear this I being drive by the far-right wing. I also fear that there is no liberal-conservative alternative for leader and the Tories will get a junior MAGA-head instead.

      • GEL,

        Of course, this is being driven by the far right in the party. They have a right to hold the leader to account. But what they don’t get is that they are driving the lead car on the truck/car manufacturer’s delivery truck. They will not get to drive that truck — nor will O’Toole who has disqualified himself by his foolish positions on assault-style weapons and vaccination.

        For caucus it comes down to this: can O’Toole not only win next time, or is he in fact even capable at BEST of holding HimselfTM to another minority next time? The first answer is a deafening NO and the second is absolutely not. At minimum, we need to do better than hold the furniture. Everyone in caucus knows that and they also know that O’Toole is not the guy capable of moving the needle beyond that. O’Toole has self-destructed politically and its entirely of his own making and that of his OLO, period. Show him the door now.

        • Pedant says:

          Far right? 80% of Conservative supporters want an immediate end to the mandates and other authoritarian covid restrictions.

          There is nothing wrong with meeting with a large group of working class Canadians of whom 99% were peaceful and respectful.

          • Ronald O'Dowd says:

            Pedant,

            Obviously, calling those 80% of CPC supporters centre-right amounts to stretching the elastic band mighty tightly. So… what would you call them? I’d call them not in tune with reality. Hello, how many times do we have to serially spike before that gang gets it? This ain’t rocket science. Jesus Christ are they ever DENSE. Think as a brick…

          • Ronald O'Dowd says:

            Thick as a brick.

  5. PJH says:

    Devilishly good piece, Sir…….I sent a copy of this to my Conservative MP(who nominally supported the truckers)….I hope in future he thinks about consequences before jumping on bandwagons with Refoooormist zeal.

    In other news, I’m curious about your views on a third of the Conservative Caucus eager to see Erin O’Toole walk the plank on Wednesday…will he survive the attempted Con coup d’etat?

    • Sean says:

      I want to celebrate the fact that MPs are at least using the power already allotted to them. They don’t need special laws to remove the leader. They don’t need a vote of the membership. They can vote the leader out whenever the hell they want without notice, for any reason…. and it is nice to finally see MPs wising up to that fact. It has also been amusing to watch the media trying to catch up with that reality. Oh wait?! MPs actually have power?! WTF?! Other parties – especially the Liberals should take note.

    • PJH,

      O’Trucker should get in touch with BOJO to book travel plans together. Both are likely to have a lot of spare time on their hands in the coming weeks and months…

  6. William R Morrison says:

    Sadly, I think you are entirely right here….

  7. I’m not sure the impact will that great. The electorate has a very short memory. When we go to the polls in two or three years, there will other far more pertinent matters that will be on the agenda. IMHO, the whole rally was not an organized event; it was a free-for-all with nobody in charge, and a complete “make a bloody fool of yourself” mentality. As usual, the authorities were far too tolerant with all of the mischief, and should have cracked down right away. That would have sent a very clear message.

  8. The showdown will be in caucus. O’Convoy wants to keep his job. Now, the rubber hits the road for each MP and Senator. If O’Toole wins in caucus and I doubt he will, we’ll need a membership vote on his leadership just like we had before the parties merged in 2003. It needs to be done in all instances unless O’Toole has the decency and common sense to resign as leader.

  9. Miles Lunn says:

    Fully agreed. Too many pushing this nonsense live in echo chambers and wrongly assume most see things their way when that is false. Median voter neither loves or hates Trudeau. They see him as a flawed individual and are open to going elsewhere, but only if alternative is reasonable.

    All of us are sick of COVID-19 and would love to get life back to normal, but many of us also want to go back to normal safely, not just drop all rules and let it rip. Proposing things like increasing ICU capacity so lockdowns no longer needed, free rapid tests for all Canadians so people who catch it can find out soon and stay home and paid sick leave so those who get COVID-19 stay home and don’t spread it are all ideas Canadians could get behind.

    Never mind people also look at company you keep and when you hang out with extremists or vile types most dislike, it usually backfires. Even many of those sympathetic to cause of convoy will turn away in disgust at behaviour of some.

  10. Pedant says:

    Latest Angus Reid poll shows 54% of Canadians want all mandates and other authoritarian restrictions quashed, up from 40% a month ago.

    A few dozen distasteful people out of a crowd of thousands aside (funny how nobody ever demands collective punishment for unpleasant occurrences at ANTIFA protests), I think the truckers are both a sign and a driver of a shift in public opinion.

    I assume that most if not all the comments above are from those who belong to the “laptop class” (of which I am one), for whom Covid has been a financially enriching experiencing thanks to the US Fed and Bank of Canada money printing (Cantillon effect) and government goosing the housing market. Might I suggest that most in the laptop class are out of touch with the experience of the working class who have seen none of these benefits.

    • Ronald O'Dowd says:

      Pedant,

      The elite jettisoned capitalism in the 1980s first with Clinton. Same thing in Canada. We are the slaves of crony capitalism which is worse than socialism. And as you so well pointed out, the usual suspects will make a killing. In my case, I’m my own central bank so you know what that means in terms of $$$.

    • Robert White says:

      I wrote to Prime Minister Blackface Feminist-in-Chief, Speaker of the House of Commons Anthony Rota, & Deputy PM/Finance Minister Freeland with a polite request that they all take financial haircuts for the structural inflation they have introduced via Governor of the Bank of Canada Iffy Macklam.

      Speaker of the House of Commons Rota wrote back and denied my request with a final ruling as Speaker.

      There are laptop class Canucks that didn’t make one thin Canadian dime off of this bioweapon.

      RW

  11. Some in that crowd who may or may not be truckers or anarchists managed to piss and shit their way to Ottawa. O’Toole foolishly wrapped his personal political brand and whatever credibility he still had as leader to their standard and now it has pissed and shit all over him. It’s both ironic and incredibly amusing how O’Toole has become collateral damage as a result of this seemingly never ending protest in the nation’s capital. It speaks to his monumental lack of judgment, not to mention the lack of strategic skills of those warming up chairs in the OLO. To put it politely, quite obviously, those around O’Toole are sub-standard.

  12. I would give all I have to get Harper on the line and hear him speak candidly about this monumental disaster. But I digress.

    • Robert White says:

      The one thing Harper did right was to bugger off back to Alberta and retire from politics without interjecting his influence as a partisan politcian YoY.

      Can’t say the same for the Orange Bastard in the U.S. though.

      RW

  13. Erwin Rofl says:

    I’m lonely and feel hated by everyone.

  14. Wes W says:

    I don’t know. I think Trudeau has been hurt by his Diogo response to the situation. Unpriministerial at best. He’s a laughingstock.

  15. Gilbert says:

    I hope the media will denounce the destruction of statues, violence, vandalism and disruption to people’s lives the next time we see a protest by the left. It’s obvious that the media is not neutral.

    The problem with Erin O’Toole is that he’s not really conservative. He ran as a true blue Conservative but obviously isn’t. I understand. It’s hard to win nowadays if we’re too far to the right, but people don’t want someone who changes his/her positions all the time.

Leave a Reply to Ronald O'Dowd Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.