Anger.

Because let’s all agree that this weekend’s big trucker protest in Ottawa isn’t about anything else. It just isn’t.

Oh, sure, some claim that it’s about vaccinations. But that’s a lot of crap. The governments of Canada and the United States decided, jointly, to require truckers to be vaccinated against COVID-19.

And most truckers already are. And the trucker associations support that. Big deal, suck it up. It’s a little needle. It’s not like the truckers are being asked to donate a kidney or something.

It’s not some diabolical Liberal Party conspiracy, either. Trust me: The Trudeau Liberals couldn’t organize a decent conspiracy if their lives depended on it.

No, the vaccination requirement is the product of an actual bilateral agreement between Canada and the United States. That’s it. It’s a law, basically.

A so-called vaccination mandate was therefore never what this was about. It was, and is, about anger.

Anger is upon the land. And not just with some truckers, either.

Two years ago this week, a man was admitted to Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto. He had a form of pneumonia the doctors and nurses had never seen before.

And so began the upending of all of our lives. So began the biggest political, economic, cultural and personal disruption of our collective lifetimes.

All of us — including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who initially said it might be over in “weeks,” and President Donald Trump, who said it would be over by the spring — figured it would be finished with us before now. It wasn’t just Trudeau and Trump: Most of us believed we’d be back to normal by now, too.

Well, we’re not. Obviously. And that’s why so many are angry. Angry at the media, angry at governments, angry at politicians, angry at our neighbours. Angry at everything and everyone.

Someone came up with a poll this week. The poll said that only 10% of Canadians are happy. Ninety per cent aren’t. And, within that 90%, many are deeply pissed off.

It isn’t just an ideological thing, either. The anger is found on both sides of the political spectrum. Left and right.

To be sure, the convoy descending on Ottawa this weekend is mainly a conservative populist uprising.

Because they can’t help themselves, and because they are always so pathetically desperate to latch onto every whackadoodle populist movement that comes down the pike, a gaggle of Conservative politicians (and media) have hitched their proverbial wagons to the convoy. It’s their latest political pet rock.

I will wager, right here and right now, that these Tory MPs will come to profoundly regret getting cozy with kooks. I’ve been writing about the white supremacists and neo-Nazis who make up Canada’s far right for more than three decades.

Just as they did with the United We Roll protest that converged on Parliament Hill in February 2019, the far-right jerks are working overtime to insinuate themselves into this weekend’s events. They want a piece of the action.

Why? Because they see millions of dollars raised on GoFundMe. Because they see thousands of angry potential recruits. Because they see a public relations bonanza.

Not every conservative politician is playing with fire, however. Erin O’Toole isn’t. Some in his caucus may be turning a blind eye to the presence of extremists. O’Toole, to his credit, is refusing to be suckered into a meeting with them. He recalls that playing footsie with lunatics sank Andrew Scheer’s political career.

Justin Trudeau, however, is wrongly calling every trucker an extremist. That’s unfair and inaccurate. But it won’t hurt him with his base.

Will this weekend be Canada’s Jan. 6, 2021 equivalent of an assault on our seat of government? It could be. It might be.

Or will it be a peaceful and democratic protest of regular people who are just fed up? I hope so. I pray so.

Whichever way it goes, one fact is undeniable: This thing isn’t about vaccines.

It’s about anger.

— Warren Kinsella was Jean Chretien’s special assistant

Comments (28)

Now we know how we could have stopped the World Wars.

Just, you know, hold up a piece of paper with a hashtag on it. That would’ve stopped Hitler, big time. Boom. War’s over.

Oh, and make sure to look pretty serious. Don’t smile or anything. Bravely hold up that hashtag, don’t smirk, and make sure to get one of your taxpayer-subsidized staff to snap the historic picture just right.

That — plus the ultimate weapon of mass deterrence, #StandWithUkraine — will shut down Russia’s dictator, Vladimir Putin, every time. He won’t dare invade Ukraine now.

The Ukrainians will really appreciate your courage, too. They’ll stop scrambling to build bomb shelters, and they’ll stop frantically looking for safe places to send their children, and they’ll stop teaching terrified Ukrainians, too young and too old, how to carry a rifle.

They’ll pause, and remember the valour and fearlessness of Canadian Members of Parliament. How those MPs — Liberal, Conservative, New Democrat, it didn’t matter their party affiliation — dared to hold up a piece of paper with a hashtag on it, and stopped a war.

Liberal cabinet ministers Harjeet Singh, Mary Ng, Marco Mendicino . NDP MP Heather McPherson . Conservative MPs Marty Morantz and Cathay Wagantall . Remember those names, because those are the names that will live in history. The ones our children will talk about, for years to come.

They are the ones who stood up with a hashtag. So badass.

Because hashtags work better than any of the alternatives. Hashtags — those words we put up on Twitter, preceded by the symbol usually known as an “octothorpe” and “hash” — are far more effective than anything else these plucky Parliamentarians could have done.

You know, things Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said his country desperately needed from us. Like:

• Sanctions: As in sanctions against Russia’s vile potentate, and his cabal, before an invasion. Not after there’s an invasion.
• SWIFT: SWIFT is the international payment messaging system. Cut Russia off from SWIFT, and it will help to cripple their economy and their leaders.
• Weapons, arms: Specifically, send Ukraine anti-aircraft weapons, drones, air and coastal defence systems, Javelins, Stingers. And arms — and ammunition, and armed drones, long-range counter-artillery radar, electronic warfare capabilities, anti-ship capabilities, and anti-tank and naval mines. Failing that, access to NATO military stockpiles and intelligence. Immediately. Now.
• Shows of force: Send a message. Russia needs to see American and other NATO cargo aircraft landing every single day, offloading the stuff noted above. Keep showing military might until Putin turtles and returns his troops to their garrisons — far from Ukraine’s border.
• NATO: Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, then head of NATO, promised Ukraine would become part of the military alliance in 2008 — 13 years ago. Thirteen years later, that hasn’t happened, because member states were afraid of what Putin would do. Well, he’s about to invade anyway — so give Ukraine membership as a deterrent, for the love of God. Because an attack on one NATO member invites a response from all. Or should.

Those are the sorts of things Ukraine wants and needs from us. Those are the things Canada, and its allies, can do. Right now. No delay.

But, by all means, keep flashing those all-important hashtags on Twitter, Canadian Parliamentarians. And don’t worry that the cynics say it is juvenile, and puerile and pathetic. Don’t concern yourself with those (like, say, this writer) who think that Vladimir Putin is laughing at you, waving around a piece of paper, like modern-day Neville Chamberlains.

Because, really, Putin is laughing at you. For real.

Try to make that into a hashtag, boys and girls.

— Warren Kinsella was Jean Chretien’s special assistant

Comments (24)

Comments (0)

Comments (6)

A long, long time ago, when the Earth was still young, and dinosaurs like me roamed Parliament Hill, I cornered my boss, The Rt. Hon. Jean Chretien.

He was the leader of the Opposition, back then, and I was his special assistant. I’m not sure why he kept me around, but I think I amused him.

Anyway, I was excited about something in the news, and saw it as a great opportunity for Chretien to get some media coverage. Others in the office agreed with me, as I recall.

Chretien listened to me, grinning, then shook his head.

“Young man,” he said, which is what he always said to me (and still does) when he was about to disagree with me, “I don’t need to be in the newspaper every day. I shouldn’t be. Mr. Mulroney is in the paper every day, and what has it done for him?”

It was true. With constitutional machinations, with battles about the GST, with windy pronouncements about everything and nothing, 24/7, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney was then supported by 12% of Canadian voters. Twelve per cent!

Chretien was a big believer in less is more — undersell and overperform. So, after the election, he made me chief of staff at Public Works and Government Services, and instructed me to cut the living you-know-what out of the federal advertising budget, which I did.

Chretien: “The Tories polled and advertised all the time. It got them two seats. Cut.”

The moral of the tale, generally, is that Jean Chretien is always right. More specifically, the moral this: If you are in politics, and people are seeing and hearing you too much, they’ll get sick of your face.

Which brings us to another Right Honourable, Justin Trudeau. Seen him around, lately? Trust me: You haven’t.

He had one press conference in the first week of January, billed as a COVID-19 update, and let his assembled ministers do much of the talking. Same thing a week later. COVID talk, ministers present. Yawn.

Over on his web site, it’s the same. Two (2) press releases so far this year — one about Nova Scotia, one about changes in the federal bureaucracy. His office has issued statements on various things, like the sad passing of former NDP leader Alexa McDonough. But precious little else.

What does it mean? It means Justin Trudeau has rendered himself less visible, Virginia. And it’s paying dividends — because, nowadays, the federal Liberal leader is more popular than not. And his principal opponent, Erin O’Toole, is doing very badly, indeed.

Elsewhere, leaders who are too public aren’t too popular: U.S. President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, to cite just two examples, are all over the front pages these days. And their approval numbers are basement-level.

It may be that there is no smart strategy at work here. It may simply be that Trudeau has been chastened by the election result, and is off at Harrington Lake, licking his wounds.

But it’s more likely that Trudeau’s brain trust has finally (thankfully) embraced the Chretien approach to visibility, and it’s decidedly working. And, given how Trudeau used to be, that’s a big, big change.

Because, back in the early days of his regime, Trudeau was the Kardashian of Canadian politics: He was everywhere, like a computer virus. Cover of Rolling Stone, flirting with Melania Trump, documenting every waking moment on Instagram, his medium of choice.

And now? Poof. He’s vanished.

And it’s working.

— Warren Kinsella is CEO of the Daisy Group, a public relations and crisis communications firm

Comments (8)