At a rally on Saturday, former president Donald Trump hailed “those great Canadian truckers” who are “who are resisting bravely these lawless mandates and doing more to defend American freedom than our own leaders by far.”
Trump was, of course, speaking about the “freedom convoy” that converged on Ottawa over the weekend to protest government covid policies. The continuing protest is small in number: about a 1,000 trucks with (generously) 10,000 people. By point of comparison, the 2019 climate protests in Canada saw one million people take to the streets, including roughly half a million in Montreal.
The freedom convoy is getting attention out of proportion to its size. It is very disruptive, with reports of vandalism and scuffles. Some in the Canadian media and political establishment have decried disrespect shown to statues of heroes like Terry Fox (famed for his work in raising money for cancer research) and the tomb of the Unknown Soldier. There were confederate flags and swastikas on display. More broadly, the protests are evidence of much more mobilized and radicalized Canadian right that has emerged during the pandemic.
To assess the convoy, I talked to the freelance journalist Nora Loreto, who has been doing some of the best coverage of the pandemic in Canada. Nora’s work can be found her substack. She’s the author of the new book Spin Doctors about media and political failures in addressing covid. Nora and I took up the question of the nature of the protests but also the wider political failure that is allowing the extremist right to exploit popular discontent.We also discuss the racism of some of the protestors, and the conspicuously small number of people of color in the convoy—especially striking when you consider that nearly 20% of Canadian truckers are of South Asian descent. We also take up the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on poor and racialized Canadians as well as the way the latest wave is causing greater disillusionment and anomie.
(Edited by Emily M. Keeler)
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Podcast: Those Great Canadian Truckers