When the dust has settled on all of this, if it ever does, we need to have a serious, dispassionate discussion as a society, and in the houses of Parliament, on whether or not blockades are a legitimate form of civil disobedience, and if they are, what form(s) they can take.
1⃣ Then, in that environment removed from the heated emotion of the moment, we need to craft laws clearly defining the offence, the consequence, and the manner of acceptable enforcement.

2⃣

This is the part that seems to be almost entirely absent in media coverage of this event, and it boggles my mind. Nevermind whether some rogue factions have infiltrated this movement, whether white supremacists have hijacked it, let's examine the goals of the *organizers*.
🧵
1⃣

https://twitter.com/paulisci/status/1487200434880061441

Organizers have been quite explicit about their intentions from the very beginning - admirable on some level. They even did us all the service of writing in down in a "MOU" (more of a manifesto really) that they expect "The Senate" and the GG to sign.
2⃣

OK, I'm probably not the one who should be venturing into this, but I'll do my best.

Let's take Delta, with a hospitalization rate of 2.3%. That's a fixed rate or multiplier, if you will. 1,000 people get Delta, 23 will be hospitalized. 2,000 infections - 46 hospitalizations. Spoiler alert: I'm going to throw in some significant caveats at the end of all of this, but in the meantime, let's proceed.

As humans we are very poor at evaluating risk, particularly when large numbers are involved. With the Astra Zeneca data, the 25 cases of blood clots in 20M injections translates into a 1 in 800k chance. How does that compare with other risks we take?

1/x It's actually very similar to the incidence of Deep Vein Thrombosis on airline flights of 6 hours or more: 1 in 700K.
2/x

This is not a partisan thread. By now politicians of all stripes have violated the public's trust by travelling outside the country during the holidays, albeit for varying reasons.

Fatuous, insincere, perfunctory apologies aside, I don't think a single one of them gets it.
1/x They don't even begin to comprehend that this time the offense and injury isn't just moral; it's personal, & it's VISCERAL.

Every single decent Canadian who cares about the country and his/her fellow Canadians made sacrifices this holiday season, deeply personal sacrifices.
2/x

Recently the AB gov't began reporting comorbidities along with its daily COVID death count. This appears a cynical effort to somehow minimize or diminish these deaths, as if to suggest that most of these people were really on Death's door anyway.

So ...
*** A THREAD ***
1/X We've all seen the dismissive comments on FB and Twitter from the COVID deniers: "But most of those people had comorbidities," or "But if you take out the number of people with pre-existing conditions, the numbers are really quite low."
2/x