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Rupa Subramanya: Freedom Convoy dismantles stereotypes about who is opposed to vaccine mandates

Anyone dismissing this movement as a flash in the pan or a few disgruntled people is underestimating the potential impact on the Canadian polity

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OTTAWA — Freedom Convoy 2022 has busted some important stereotypes. We were told it would be a small number of disgruntled middle aged, far right, potentially violent, old stock white Canadians, but walking around the protests over the weekend in Ottawa, one saw people in large numbers of all ages and ethnicities, with no violence so far reported by the police.

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Some estimates place the number of people on Saturday between 8,000 and 10,000, remarkable for a day with an extreme cold warning and in the midst of a lockdown, where you couldn’t even sit down at a coffee shop to warm up. While Sunday’s crowd was thinner when I was walking around in the morning, numbers may have swelled later on. From where I live in the Byward Market, I sensed throughout Sunday no let up in either enthusiasm or the decibel level from truck and car horns, and fireworks. All weekend, the atmosphere was festive, with an obvious sense of catharsis after two years of heavy restrictions and repeated lockdowns.

The protestors comprised both old and new Canadians, young and old, of all political persuasions. What’s more, while the convoy’s stated objective is to oppose federal vaccine mandates and other restrictions, like lockdowns and mask mandates, two of the leaders and some of the protestors are in fact themselves vaccinated, but believe vaccination should be an individual choice. Those leaders have distanced themselves from parallel convoy organizers that have opposed vaccination outright, promoted vaccine misinformation, or have made other hateful remarks.

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One myth that was busted right away was the striking diversity of the protestors starting with the two main organizers, Benjamin Dichter, who is Jewish and Tamara Lich, who is Metis. Far from being a uniformly disgruntled group of white Canadians, not that there is anything wrong with being that, one saw Indo-Canadians, Arab Canadians, Chinese Canadians, Black Canadians and just about every other ethnic Canadian under the sun.

People had different reasons for joining the protests. One couple from Cambridge, Ontario, whose nephew died by suicide due to depression during the lockdown, said that they were here to make their voice heard for kids, including for their daughter, who was with them, locked out of schools, physical activity and social life. Recall, as I’ve written about earlier, Canada has had amongst the harshest of all restrictions among advanced rich nations, and Ontario has been harsher on average than the rest of Canada, especially for children.

One Indo-Canadian trucker, Kamal Pannu from Montreal, I spoke to, was bemused that the protestors were being bracketed as white supremacists when so many of them including he himself are ethnic minorities and people of colour. Some Sikh Canadians who represent a large percentage of truckers in Canada appeared to be out at various transit points on the trucker’s routes to Ottawa to share food and blankets with the truckers, Pannu who is Sikh says.

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There were those who had either lost their jobs because they were unwilling to be vaccinated or they had friends or family who had lost jobs for similar reasons or due to the economic impacts of lockdowns. I spoke to Orlando, Barry, and Ayesha, Black Canadians who drove from Toronto, protesting on behalf of those who lost jobs — including Orlando, 43, who now works as an independent contractor, given that he had a trade to fall back on.

As vaccines were being rolled out, recall that surveys told us that vaccine hesitancy was highest among Black Canadians and other racialised groups that, for entirely legitimate reasons, have fraught relationships with authority. Perhaps that’s why there were so many Black Canadians at the weekend’s protest? Of course this doesn’t necessarily imply they’re unvaccinated, but certainly oppose government imposed vaccine mandates. How did elite Canadian opinion go from compassion for marginalized groups fearful to be vaccinated, toward hate and vitriol, that such people should be ostracized, imprisoned or fined, in just a few months? This increasing extremism among the ostensibly mainstream should give us reason for pause.

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What many observers have missed is the clear class divide that’s been exposed by the protests. While public servants and others who can safely work from home on a series of endless Zoom calls are largely unaffected by lockdowns, the impact on blue collar workers has been devastating. For them, the restrictions on their freedom emanating from lockdowns and mandates is existential, literally relating to losing a job and not being able to pay rent or put food on the table.

On Sunday in Ottawa, Dichter and Lich laid out their objectives, which is not to be a partisan movement but to galvanize the public against encroachment on their liberties that started with the first lockdowns in the spring of 2020. Ontario and Quebec are just about to exit harsh restrictions that are a throwback to the beginning of the pandemic, despite high vaccination rates and other therapeutic tools to deal with COVID19.

Dichter and Lich say they have no truck, no pun intended, with any racist fringe elements who may have attached themselves to their movement. A few images have been doing the rounds of Confederate and Swastika flags, but as Dichter told me, as he is Jewish and Lich is Metis, the notion that they would endorse such racism is “hysterical.”

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It’s also worth noting that in a short span of time, the convoy raised $8.5 million through a GoFundMe campaign. For comparison, major political parties such as the Liberals and Conservatives raised this order of magnitude of money in about a three month period. Anyone dismissing this movement as a flash in the pan or a few disgruntled people is underestimating the potential impact on the Canadian polity. Whether anyone likes it or not, there’s a churn happening and it would be better to understand it, than to bury our head in the sand.

While just about everyone is angry at lockdowns and restrictions, and this cuts across party lines, the impact of the protests are most existential for the Conservative party, which clearly is divided on whether to embrace or shun the protestors. While party leader Erin O’Toole has tried to maintain a studious neutrality, while a few, such as Pierre Poilievre, have reached out to them.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has derided the protestors as a “fringe” whose views are unacceptable, but it’s clear the protest movement is much more than that. Tell the guy who lost his job or the family that lost their nephew to suicide that they’re just a fringe.

The big issues are far from settled. Sign up for the NP Comment newsletter, NP Platformed, at nationalpost.com/platformed 

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