I was talking with my friend Ellen last night and Canada came up,problems with Canadian truckers or something...
On 2022-02-21 10:31 a.m., Will Dockery wrote:
I was talking with my friend Ellen last night and Canada came up,problems with Canadian truckers or something...
I have no idea what's coming through the news about the truckers in your
neck of the woods; but I've been following the story for a month, and
here's a nutshell view as I've read it:
As in the U.S., the vaccines didn't end the pandemic, but led to new variants, culminating with omicron and a huge rise in cases from
Christmas on. What the vaccines did do well was to lower deaths and hospitalizations; that, and the mildness of the variant, has led one US
state and European country after another to give up vaccine passes and
other mandates. Not in Canada, though, where the Trudeau gov't doubled
down on them.
On Jan. 15, Trudeau announced a vaccine mamdate for truckers hauling
goods into Canada from the U.S. (Canada also lobbied the U.S. to bring
in one, which Biden did a week later.) It didn't make much sense;
truckers have one of the most solitary jobs around, and they worked unvaccinated for the first year without problems. It was also harmful:
while 90% of Canadian truckers are vaccinated, stopping the other 10%
from trans-border work meant more work for the rest in an already short-staffed industry (just like with the nurses). But Trudeau, who
seems to still believe vaccination can stop the virus and end the
pandemic, went ahead.
So some truckers organized a protest convoy to Ottawa, Freedom Convoy
2022, to protest the mandate. The convoy itself was popular beyond their dreams: Canadians turned out in town after town to welcome them and
cheer them on; Canadians, and some Americans, raised $9 million for them
on GoFundMe (and when the government got GFM to freeze those funds,
raised another $9 million on GiveSendGo). You can read all that on my politics blog in Jan: http://gdspoliticalanimal.blogspot.com/2022/01/
but if you just want to see the highlights, check out the last two
videos I've added to the "Trucking" Dancehall.
The drive into Ottawa was the high point; then it went downhill. Trudeau refused to meet with them, calling them a "fringe minority," and left
town saying he was isolating because his son had Covid. (Trudeau was
exposed last year, when his wife had Covid, and he's been
triple-vaxxed). The media went looking for kooks, and found a few: this
is a real people's movement, not astroturfed, so you'd expect a few nuts
in the mix; one guy who believed in white replacement, for instance.
There was also a Nazi flag guy and a Confederate flag guy, who walked
around Ottawa and got their pictures into most of the msm. Anyway, you
can read the details in the February blog. The bottom line is that after
2 weeks of this Trudeau brought in the Emergencies Act, and used it to
(a) freeze the truckers' GiveSendGo funds, and even start freezing their personal bank accounts (b) bring in police from Ontario and Quebec,
until the truckers were outnumbered, and then move and arrest them,
which they did last weekend. That's where the story stands now.
More to follow, if there's interest.
On Tuesday, February 22, 2022 at 12:07:42 AM UTC-5, George J. Dance wrote:
On 2022-02-21 10:31 a.m., Will Dockery wrote:
problems with Canadian truckers or something...
I was talking with my friend Ellen last night and Canada came up,
I have no idea what's coming through the news about the truckers in your
neck of the woods; but I've been following the story for a month, and
here's a nutshell view as I've read it:
As in the U.S., the vaccines didn't end the pandemic, but led to new
variants, culminating with omicron and a huge rise in cases from
Christmas on. What the vaccines did do well was to lower deaths and
hospitalizations; that, and the mildness of the variant, has led one US
state and European country after another to give up vaccine passes and
other mandates. Not in Canada, though, where the Trudeau gov't doubled
down on them.
On Jan. 15, Trudeau announced a vaccine mamdate for truckers hauling
goods into Canada from the U.S. (Canada also lobbied the U.S. to bring
in one, which Biden did a week later.) It didn't make much sense;
truckers have one of the most solitary jobs around, and they worked
unvaccinated for the first year without problems. It was also harmful:
while 90% of Canadian truckers are vaccinated, stopping the other 10%
from trans-border work meant more work for the rest in an already
short-staffed industry (just like with the nurses). But Trudeau, who
seems to still believe vaccination can stop the virus and end the
pandemic, went ahead.
So some truckers organized a protest convoy to Ottawa, Freedom Convoy
2022, to protest the mandate. The convoy itself was popular beyond their
dreams: Canadians turned out in town after town to welcome them and
cheer them on; Canadians, and some Americans, raised $9 million for them
on GoFundMe (and when the government got GFM to freeze those funds,
raised another $9 million on GiveSendGo). You can read all that on my
politics blog in Jan: http://gdspoliticalanimal.blogspot.com/2022/01/
but if you just want to see the highlights, check out the last two
videos I've added to the "Trucking" Dancehall.
The drive into Ottawa was the high point; then it went downhill. Trudeau
refused to meet with them, calling them a "fringe minority," and left
town saying he was isolating because his son had Covid. (Trudeau was
exposed last year, when his wife had Covid, and he's been
triple-vaxxed). The media went looking for kooks, and found a few: this
is a real people's movement, not astroturfed, so you'd expect a few nuts
in the mix; one guy who believed in white replacement, for instance.
There was also a Nazi flag guy and a Confederate flag guy, who walked
around Ottawa and got their pictures into most of the msm. Anyway, you
can read the details in the February blog. The bottom line is that after
2 weeks of this Trudeau brought in the Emergencies Act, and used it to
(a) freeze the truckers' GiveSendGo funds, and even start freezing their
personal bank accounts (b) bring in police from Ontario and Quebec,
until the truckers were outnumbered, and then move and arrest them,
which they did last weekend. That's where the story stands now.
More to follow, if there's interest.
Of great interest.....
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