Crossing a Different Street

MP compares the Freedom Convoy protesters he met in Ottawa to those imagined by the drama queens.

Bob Zimmer, screen capture from a 30-minute video interview conducted by Eagle Vision Video Productions. The interview is part of the bonus material available to viewers who purchase online access to the documentary film Unacceptable? (click image)

Bob Zimmer, the Conservative Party MP who paid for a hotel room for a couple of nights for trucker Bern Bueckert, had some spicy things to say when interviewed by documentary filmmakers several months later. He talked about walking the two blocks from his hotel room to his Parliamentary office daily during the time the Freedom Convoy was in town:

I was offered hot chocolate, I was offered hot dogs, and we were greeted every morning. ‘Good day, sir, how are you doing today?’ And we'd have great conversations because they were just regular Canadians standing up for their freedom.

The person offering free food “had a big smile on his face,” recalls Mr Zimmer. “We had so many good interactions with people, and then we got into the House” where Mr Trudeau and drama queen Singh were spinning fiction:

the prime minister, all he could do was slag the protesters and say how terrible they were. And then Jagmeet Singh would get up and look into the TV camera and say, ‘I was afraid for my life as I was crossing that street.’

He “must have been crossing a different street than I was,” Mr Zimmer says wryly. In the view of this third-term MP, “one thing that a politician needs to learn is how to listen.” By refusing to meet with the truckers, Mr Trudeau “stoked division instead of trying to broker peace”— exactly the opposite of what a responsible leader of a cohesive nation is supposed to do.

In Mr Zimmer’s words, “I saw very few people that were angry and upset like the media portrayed them to be.” In fact, he says, they were just “regular people,” similar to the neighbours who live on your street.

Canadians looked at the same thing and saw two starkly different versions of reality.