Heard the other day that Alberta Premier Jason Kenney intends to go to court to block the Trudeau government’s use of the Emergency Measures Act. That is a little late and a loonie short. If Kenney paid attention to the court of public opinion, he would realize the case has been made and the court has ruled.
The removal of the “Freedom Convoy” convoy from Parliament Hill provided Canadians with many hours of an enjoyable reality show. It was one of those shows that if you took a washroom break and even stayed to have a shower, you did not miss much.
One lesson learned was that you do not use snowballs when the cops have pepper spray. It was a purely Canadian event. We have seen news clips of crowd control from around the world. We have seen people beaten with batons, stomped with heavy boots, soaked by water cannon, hit by rubber bullets and murdered with real bullets. That is not the Canadian way. We use patience, oodles of warnings, pamphlets, and announcements. That boot in the ass you got might not have been accidental but you probably had expended your entire vocabulary of expletives on the boot-owner first.
Kenney’s only argument against using the act is that the border crossing problems had been resolved without massive police action. And he is right. Small events require small reactions: large events require larger actions. The borders had been cleared before we moved the larger forces into Ottawa. There is no question that 100 cops facing off against a thousand protestors is a killer confrontation. That is when people get hurt needlessly.
Watching Kenney in Alberta these days is like watching a lab rat in the final stages of a study of a serious disease. He came west to ‘unite the right’ and stayed to try to lead it. He was following the path of his mentor Stephen Harper. Without the glue that Harper used to tie the disparate factions of the right together, Kenney was doomed to fail. He is a failure in authoritarianism, and awaits the final decision of Alberta voters.
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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry
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