Reuters

L. Ian MacDonald

February 1, 2022

One of the small ironies of the truckers invading Ottawa is that it’s become much easier to drive there, since hardly anyone is on the road.

Ontario highway 417 was a speed track on Monday, easily less than a two-hour drive from Montreal, without approaching anything like the 150 km per hour threshold that can trigger posted warnings of a $10,000 fine and loss of a driver’s licence on the spot.

And yet in the heart of the nation’s capital, the cops aren’t even issuing parking tickets to truckers, much less towing away the big wheelers of those who have paralyzed the Parliamentary Precinct for days, blaring their horns from early morning until the middle of the night.

As for the behaviour of the truckers and anti-vaxxers who’ve latched on to their cause, it’s been simply disgraceful and disgusting. They’ve defaced the statue of the iconic Terry Fox, desecrated the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier by dancing on it, while urinating at the National War Memorial after the protest organizers turned it into a parking lot.

Driving up Metcalfe Street into Centretown, it wasn’t hard to discern the gist of their message. Two out of three lanes were blocked by parked trucks, while a pickup truck drove in the open lane displaying a banner that was one of their omnipresent mottos: “F**k Trudeau”.

That was nothing. There were also Confederate flags and Nazi swastikas in view, symbols of slavery in one century, and genocide in another.

On the weekend, they invaded a soup kitchen, stealing food from the homeless and depriving them of shelter on one of the coldest nights of the year. Ottawa in January. Not for nothing is it known as the coldest capital in the world.

For the one million people who live and work in Ottawa, the last five days have been a continuous nightmare, with the city paralyzed during the day and its traumatized residents deprived of sleep at night by the incessant blare of the truckers’ horns.

For the one million people who live and work in Ottawa, the last five days have been a continuous nightmare, with the city paralyzed during the day and its traumatized residents deprived of sleep at night by the incessant blare of the truckers’ horns. Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson spoke for his city when he said Monday people were “sick and tired” of the whole thing, and implored the uninvited guests to “leave our city, because you’ve worn out your welcome.”

As for Justin Trudeau, the prime minister made a succinct statement on the doorstep of a secure location in the Gatineau Hills to which he and his family had been moved by the RCMP last week because of concerns for their safety at their residence on the grounds of Rideau Hall.

“We’re not intimidated by those who hurl abuse at small business workers and steal food from the homeless,” he declared. “We won’t give in to those who fly racist flags, and we won’t cave to those who engage in vandalism or dishonour the memory of our veterans.”

He added: “Canadians are shocked and frankly disgusted by the behaviour of some of those involved.”

Normally, Trudeau would have made a statement in the House in the West Block, or at the Prime Minister’s Office, or the Sir John A, Macdonald building, all inaccessible and insecure because of the truck blockade on Wellington Street.

Moreover, as he disclosed, he had just tested positive for COVID-19, notwithstanding being triple-vaxxed, and said he would be observing a five-day quarantine of working from home. Two of his three children, having also previously tested positive, are out of school for the week.

Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole wished the PM and his children “a speedy recovery”, as the House resumed sitting after the lengthy holiday recess. A lovely grace note, the one thing O’Toole seems to have got right in all of this.

O’Toole and his entourage made a big mistake in agreeing to meet with a few selected truckers on their way to the capital at the weekend last Friday, without any cautionary foreboding of how he might be sideswiped by unanticipated incidents along the way.

This happened only two days after the Conservative party released an internal report of what went wrong in last summer’s election campaign, essentially concluding that O’Toole blew it.  The political equivalent of a coroner’s inquest finding death by negligence.

The discussion in the Conservative caucus, a notoriously ungovernable gang, was entirely predictable. The caucus has since fallen back on the Reform Act, a bill from widely respected Conservative Michael Chong that enables a party to call a leadership review if 20 percent of its members ask for one. And then, if 50 percent plus one of its MPs vote against the incumbent, the leader is out and must resign.

As the Globe and Mail reported Tuesday, that’s where the Tories are now, with one third of their caucus asking for a review, and a majority apparently ready to dump O’Toole.

“I’m not going anywhere, and I’m not turning back,” O’Toole said in a statement released on Twitter Monday night.  In other words, bring it on.  Something he should have done right after the election, in terms of a pre-emptive takeout of his critics and would-be successors.

Thus, there will be a leadership vote at Wednesday’s caucus. Which, as fate would have it, falls on Groundhog Day. O’Toole will find out whether he’s looking at an early spring, or if he sees his own shadow, another six weeks of winter.

L. Ian MacDonald is Editor of Policy Magazine