Justin Trudeau was more sympathetic to the Boston bombers and returning ISIS fighters than he has been to the thousands of truckers and their supporters in Ottawa because they're fed up with Covid restrictions.
With the Boston bombing, he wanted to understand the "root causes" rather than condemning it outright. cbc.ca/news/politics/…
I'm not comparing the truckers to terrorists, but rather pointing out the bizarre and twisted criteria Trudeau has set up for who is worthy of engagement and who is worthy of denunciation. He's had harsher words for these truckers than he's had for some terrorists.
Remember when Justin Trudeau met with Joshua Boyle? But those evil, misogynistic, racist truckers? Nah.
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BREAKING: The Ontario government says it has effectively frozen all donations made to the trucker convoy through GiveSendGo. It is now a criminal offence to have any "dealing" with money from donations through this platform.
There are two duelling freedom convoy press conferences today scheduled for 1:00pm. One is hosted by convoy organizers Benjamin Dichter and Tamara Lich; the other has Maxime Bernier, Randy Hillier, Pastor Henry Hildebrandt, and "convoy doctors" Roger Hodkinson and Paul Alexander.
The former – the official one – is set to address questions about the convoy's fundraising efforts (the GiveSendGo campaign is up to $7.4 million US at present). I'm not yet sure who's organizing the latter. (A PPC contact tells me it's not a PPC affair).
The organizer of the original GoFundMe campaign, @Tamara_MVC, has just issued this statement affirming the convoy's official spokespeople are her, Benjamin Dichter, Chris Barber, and Dagny Pawlak (a name I'm seeing for the first time here).
On "free market" grounds, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney defends right of businesses to require proof of vaccination after the government's vaccine passport program ends tonight, but says he wants to move away from all of it.
Kenney will obviously be criticized for this by a number of people, but as a libertarian I am okay with this. The people who want to perpetually live their lives like it's March 2020 can carry on doing so – I'll live freely and associate with people and businesses doing the same.
The issue with vaccine passports has never, to me, been an issue with vaccination, but rather with government-imposed vaccine requirements, especially on businesses only permitted to open by agreeing to demand medical data from their customers.
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney says his cabinet Covid committee has passed a plan to "get our lives back to normal." He's about to present said plan.
Kenney says Alberta's policy has always been about safeguarding healthcare system while "minimizing the damaging effect of restrictions on broader health of our society."
"With what we know now... the threat of Covid-19 to public health no longer outweighs the hugely damaging impact of health restrictions," Kenney says.
"We are not intimidated by those who hurl insults and abuse at small business workers and steal food from the homeless. We won't give into those who fly racist flags. We won't cave to those who engage in vandalism or dishonour the memory of our veterans," Trudeau says.
Trudeau has decided to attempt to turn the country against the peaceful protesters, by attempting to malign the whole movement by the outliers who have been condemned and denounced by the convoy's organizers and supporters.
"The behaviour on display this weekend does not represent you," Trudeau says to truckers.
Heading home after a busy, loud, and hopeful weekend in Ottawa covering the Truckers for Freedom Convoy. I have a feeling I'll be back soon, and will have lots of footage, interviews and analysis to release over the coming days, so stay tuned.
A huge thanks to the fantastic team at @TrueNorthCentre on the ground in Ottawa and back in the offices for all the support to those of us in the field. If you're able to assist these efforts, we're set up for donations at donate.tnc.news
A big thank you as well to my newsletter subscribers. I'll have a postmortem for you all in the next couple of days, so make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss it! andrewlawton.substack.com