Columnists
The plot thickens, or just gets lost
Once upon a time, we were faced with a virus that came from China. We thought that it was transmitted hand-to-hand, and that we could contain it by washing, fist bumping, and isolating. Our aim was to eliminate its transmission.
Fast forward two years to today. Downtown Ottawa is under occupation by the “freedom convoy”. Copycat protests are springing up across the country. Transcontinental borders are blocked by people who seem to be in no hurry to go home to their families.
The protesters came to Ottawa screaming about their right to exist without vaccine mandates, calling them a threat to their civil liberties.The presence of the protesters raises issues about whether they are a threat to public order. People are upset that the police seem paralyzed and haven’t been able to disperse the protesters. The V-word is cautiously uttered as one of the risks to take into account.
At the same time, due to a blockade at the Ambassador Bridge, the supply chain between Ontario and Michigan has been broken. People in the automobile sector on both sides of the border are being laid off. Canada’s reliability as a supplier of automobile parts is being questioned. The U.S. may see this as sufficient grounds to abrogate the USMC trade agreement providing for the free flow of goods across the border. It may be motivated to back Joe Biden’s proposal to subsidize ‘Made in America’ electric vehicles. Our automotive sector could take a massive hit. If it did, our standard of living would drop. Social cohesion and public order could disintegrate.If the plot hasn’t been lost entirely in this two-year period, it sure has thickened. The conflict has long since ceased to be ‘us versus the virus’; it is now ‘us versus us’. Two years ago, we didn’t know we would be fighting for our economic future against fellow taxpayers who have as much to lose as we do.
Where did it go wrong? How did the grudging public consensus that led to a 90 per cent vaccination rate lead to a situation in which, with the end of the sacrifices of the pandemic almost over, some of the 10 per cent suddenly can’t take any further encroachment on their civil liberties? Did we overpromise and under deliver on the potency of the vaccine? Were the lockdowns too severe and too lengthy? Were mandatory vaccination rules tied to employment status a bad thing? Was there clear and consistent communication of virus response policy? Was the virus used as a political wedge issue to divide the public into two different camps?
Expert committees armed with the benefit of hindsight will no doubt go through all this dirty laundry in due course. Let’s hope they also focus as well on the things that were done right, such as the speedy development of vaccines, the effective rollout of vaccination centres, and the unflagging dedication of medical staff, and remember that scientific knowledge of the virus could grow as the virus spread.
In the meantime, I have a suggestion. Let’s invite the freedom convoy—and its wrestling partners, the anti-freedom convoy and the police – to come and block, and attempt to unblock, our bridges here in the County. We’ve got four of them – five if you count the Glenora Ferry— and we could easily get by without three of them for a while, so long as we knew which ones were being blocked at what times. The protesters could practise their manoeuvres blocking inbound traffic one day and outbound traffic the next.
There is ample room to park in the 1,047 kilometres of roads maintained by the County, and I am sure that any $450 parking tickets could be torn up. They could also honk their horns with abandon, knowing they would be indisposing only a few people, unlike in a big city protest.
UPDATE
Late on Monday afternoon, after this article was completed, Justin Trudeau announced his intention to invoke the federal Emergencies Act.
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