The Freedom Convoy is a distraction

Unless you are living under a rock, you have probably heard of the Freedom Convoy that recently descended upon Ottawa. The convoy organizers claim to be fighting for their freedom from pandemic-related restrictions but they also have been accused of espousing a lot of hate. One thing is clear to me about it: this is all a distraction. It is a distraction for those of us who do not support this specific movement. I also believe it to be a distraction for most of those who have found themselves a part of the movement.

It is my opinion that most of these people are mere followers in a desperate attempt to find community and belonging in a world that has shut them out. A lot of these people are under-educated and under-skilled, and living in economically-precarious conditions in an increasingly-costly country made even more precarious by Covid. They are perfectly positioned to be taken advantage of by bad actors seeking to advance their own interests.

Enter Saskatchewan premier Scott Moe, who recently put his support behind the Freedom Convoy while parroting their lies. Is he so dense and naive to not understand that he is supporting a group put together by nationalists and racists? One must assume someone does not become the head of a provincial government by being stupid so one must conclude that Moe supports this group because he either believes in their not-so-subtle authoritarian messaging, or he does not want to lose their support to the growing number of fringe parties popping up on the right. No matter what, the premier of Saskatchewan is putting power before the people and this is not good for democracy.

As I have been writing for a long time, our democracy is being threatened by increasing economic inequality which has been a direct result of both conservative and liberal politicians supporting and implementing pro-free market and anti-worker policies in recent decades that has caused hundreds of thousands of well-paying middle class jobs to be sent overseas, the gutting of public services, the cutting of regulations, and the lowering of taxes on the wealthy and corporations. Former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and his Progressive Conservatives began the process of destroying Canada's middle class in the 1980s and it continued with the Chretien Liberals and every federal government since, from Martin to Harper to Trudeau. Nothing serious has yet to be done to reverse the damage done by the neoliberal policies that continue to ravage communities today. Writing these protests off as a social media problem that needs to be censored is not going to make this all go away.

When there is no longer hope that working hard will result in a better future, as has been promised to us, people are going to be pissed and many of them are going to want answers, even if those answers themselves are lies. When large swaths of the population are abandoned by the powers at be, someone is going to take advantage of the human desire for leadership and direction, and it is more often than not bad actors who will fill that gap as we have been seeing in recent years.

The Freedom Convoy and its related movements like to blame Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for most of their problems. The misguided will be mistaken in that Justin was a mere boy when neoliberalism began to take hold in Ronald Reagan's America and Margaret Thatcher's United Kingdom in the early 1980s, and then quickly spread throughout the Western world. However, they would be correct in that Trudeau and the federal government could do a lot to improve the material conditions of all Canadians to lower the chances that they fall into the hands of extremists (though they are wrong in that lifting the mandates will accomplish any of this).

Our federal government could replace first-past-the-post elections to allow for a more representative parliament, as Trudeau once promised. They could break up the effective monopolies that persist across our country that result in high costs for everything, such as food and telecom services. They could incentivize communities to build more public housing while disincentivizing the practice of housing and real estate being an investment vehicle for the rich. They could provide clean water to all of the Indigenous communities that still go without it in what is one of the world's most wealthy countries. They could increase healthcare funding to the provinces so they could offer universal health services that actually meet today's demands whether it be pharmacare, mental healthcare, dental care, or responding to pandemics that we have been warned about for years prior to the one we are still experiencing.

The federal government could make it easier for so much of what we need to survive today to be produced in our own country, creating jobs here. This would help put an end to our "just-in-time" supply chain that has been proven to be extremely fragile in all but the most ideal scenarios, which are fewer and farther between today. Could you imagine if we made PPE, vaccines, computer chips, etc. here in Canada? It would be harder for corporations to cut costs for the sake of exponential profit growth (which is the primary goal of neoliberalism), but as a whole, our country would be more secure, more sustainable, and much better off.

If we fail to make changes to radically improve the lives of Canadians and continue to sweep growing economic inequality and weakening national security under the rug, extremism will only get more prevalent and more violent, growing into a movement large enough that it doesn't have to attempt to storm capitals or steal elections–they can just win them. This is the path Germany went on in the 1920s and this is the path America is presently on. We would be fools to think that history cannot be repeated here.