Canada is one of those countries that we think of as inclusive, liberal and democratic. The recent declaration of emergency in the country is therefore alarming. It doesn’t just concern us because lakhs of Indians live and work in Canada – it concerns us because a liberal democracy behaving in a fascist, arbitrary manner is a global threat. Troublingly, we are seeing an aspect of repressive, authoritarian regimes from a country we would least expect it from.
It began with the country’s truckers demanding an end to vaccine mandates and other COVID restrictions. The mandate required truckers who routinely travelled over the borders between the United States and Canada to be vaccinated. This was causing delays, interrupting supply chains and resulting in a loss in business revenues. Since the government did not remove the mandates, the truckers decided to protest: the Freedom Convoy 2022.
The city centre of the Canadian city Ottawa was paralysed by protesting truckers blocking streets and causing disruptions and gridlocks across the nation. The protests have drawn support from other countries and funds have also poured in in support of the trucker’s protests. Anti-vaccine groups have also joined the protests. The protests have now gone on for three weeks and protesters have said that they will not leave until vaccine mandates are lifted.
According to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the protesters are “trying to blockade our economy, our democracy and our fellow citizens’ daily lives.” He also said that the trucker convoy crowd was guilty of “hateful rhetoric” and “violence toward citizens,” though the protests have remained peaceful and nonviolent on the whole, save a few stray incidents. Following this, Canada has imposed a National Emergency. This will give more powers to law enforcement agencies to disperse gatherings, permit the authorities to freeze accounts of protestors, impose large fines and take other extraordinary measures.
These protests have been peaceful on the whole. Though disruptions have been severe, there have been no lives lost. The truckers’ demands are not unreasonable. Over 85% of the Canadian population has received at least one dose of the vaccine. The number of daily cases is not so high as to put an undue strain on the healthcare system. The truckers claim that 90% of them have been vaccinated as well, so lifting of the vaccine mandates is hardly an unreasonable demand given that the mandates are causing significant hardship. The government has been unable to give any evidence to support the claim that the trucker movement was responsible for any significant spread of the disease in the country. So why has the government taken this inflexible stance? Given the situation, the declaration of an emergency seems extremely excessive.
Other developed nations are in the process of removing all COVID restrictions, including mask mandates and social distancing norms. Why then is Canada digging its heels in? It is also worrying how there has been an attempt to discredit the protestors. They are being framed as extremists. The appearance of some fringe elements with confederate flags, swastikas and pro-Trump flags, the constant chorus of loud air horns from the trucks has been troubling, but this is hardly the kind of behaviour that warrants the imposition of a national emergency.
We saw such a situation closer at hand with the farmers’ protests at Delhi’s borders that lasted well over a year. There were various attempts to discredit the protests, instigate protestors into violence, give them a political colour and repeated attempts to link them with terror outfits. There was the old bogey of the ‘foreign hand’ that was also raised. The protestors were declared anti-national and seditious. The government and its supporters tried their best to dismiss the protests as being funded by shadowy/ terror outfits, politically motivated or misguided at best.
In Canada as well democratic protests are being painted as some foreign conspiracy and an anti-science movement. The protestors are being called seditious (which sounds alarmingly familiar to us Indians these days). This is unfortunate, to say the least. It would have been sensible for the government to listen to the truckers’ demands and to lift or at least suitably amend the vaccine mandates. However, they have dug their heels in and doubled down on their stance with the Emergency. In the end, regular citizens pay for the intractable positions taken up by both sides – as we saw with the farmers’ protests in India – against laws that were repealed after a 16-month long standoff.
The actions of the Canadian government have shown them in a poor light. They appear not to care for the legitimate wishes of their citizens and seem keener to delegitimise the democratic process by giving themselves extraordinary powers. It seems strange that while Trudeau had supported the protests in India, he has a different view when it comes to his own country. Even if we do disagree with the protestors we have to respect their right to dissent and to be heard – this is the lifeblood of a democracy. The repressive attitude of his government smacks of authoritarianism – when a liberal democracy appears to be going down that path, this should worry all of us.
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