The wife and I had an interesting discussion on the supposed freedoms being demanded by the Ottawa occupation force the other day. We had been watching a group of the protestors cavorting for the television cameras and waving large Canadian flags. We both objected to these people using our flag to support their antics. We might share the same flag but we see them dishonouring it.
There is nothing new about this. There has been a growing base of libertarianism in North America for many years. What brought it out into the light of day was the election of Donald Trump in the United States. We were shocked by the repetitious use of patently false information. We were puzzled by the insistence in telling us we were the ones listening to false news.
But Canadians were hardly safe from the same BS. We were starting to hear the same crazy dialogue from north of the border. There were Canadians buying into Trump. I think we were actually pleased when Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party started carving into Harper’s conservatives. We thought it was helping the more progressive parties.
What was not helping was the lack of good leadership for those progressive parties. The liberals gave young Trudeau the crown and he disbanded the party. He got rid of the greybeards in the senate and built his own elitist structure. At the same time, an observant Sikh enlisted the diaspora of the Sub-Continent to win the leadership of the new democrats. Lacking adequate leadership, that progressive party also lies dormant.
The surprise of the Ottawa demonstration was not that it happened as we moved into the worst of the winter weather. It was the size and the ease of funding. It was not the crazies in Ottawa that were the problem. It was the crazies who were reported to be funding them. Even anarchy needs financing.
What is also wrong is that the separatists and conservatives in parliament are also supporting anarchy. Their hatred for their opponents is taking them into the path where no country wants to go. The Ottawa police and the Province of Ontario failed us. The Emergency Measures Act was the only recourse. Get rid of those scofflaws on the Hill and then let’s talk about it.
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