Patrick Gossage

February 20, 2022

There is little doubt we have found out that the ideological leadership for the Ottawa Freedom Convoy was well-organized and funded and bent on challenging the government’s legitimacy to enact vaccine regulations that controlled their lives.

Their deluded stated purpose was to force the removal of all the COVID-19 restrictions applied by a tyrannical government led by the hated Justin Trudeau – even though most of them were instituted by the provinces.

The other irony of the Ottawa occupation, as it developed into a completely equipped village installed in front of the Parliament buildings, is that the majority of the demonstrators there in it were pretty ordinary, mostly young people and families, deluded into believing they were part of a larger patriotic freedom movement.

As days turned into weeks and friendly police left laws they were breaking unenforced, their leadership had told them they could not be arrested and made sure copies of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms were widely distributed. When Saskatchewan lifted many restrictions, they felt they were winning. This belief that encouraged them to have dance parties, put up hot tubs and toilets and food stations and kids play areas with impunity, seems to have been the result of a misguided city policy to not provoke them and to keep the city calm.

It was so successful that when police were finally reinforced after three weeks and started to methodically break up demonstrators and remove their trucks and facilities, many still held the deluded belief they could not be arrested and that the police were still their friends. They also were encouraged by a certain level of support from Conservative federal politicians and by the Official Opposition claiming the government’s unwillingness to hear their views contributed to the occupation.

They were, of course, horrified when 170 of them were arrested over the weekend, many still have not been charged in a police action that faced almost no violent push back.  This disproportionate use of emergency powers will continue to haunt the Trudeau government. As will the criminalization of so many who believed they were patriotic freedom fighters.

The larger group of demonstrators may remain deluded that they are free to disobey any future health or other restrictions they do not agree with.

This will strengthen, not weaken, the movement as will the positive reinforcement of its becoming a cause celebre in the powerful US world of Trumpian right wing politics and media. And of course, governments are slowly dismantling covid restrictions, so the protesters can claim eventual victory.

The larger group of demonstrators may remain deluded that they are free to disobey any future health or other restrictions they do not agree with. But the future danger is more in right wing ideologues connected with and encouraged by their US counterparts, who have proven they can delude large numbers of particularly young citizens angry at government for ignoring their sense of hopelessness and a shrinking future into mounting other mass demonstrations.

Another Freedom Convoy will never be allowed to settle in and put down roots. The police have learned their lesson. But the strategy to mobilize discontent in this country is waiting to be used by clever ideologues again.

Contributing Writer Patrick Gossage is the founder of Media Profile, a communications consulting firm based in Toronto.