Don't Talk to Me About My Obligations

When government refuses to listen, trust is undermined and faith in the system vanishes.

Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) officers in Ottawa, 8 February 2022. The sign on the door to the light rail transit station shows a woman wearing a fabric face mask. The text reads: “Mask required. Don’t enter if you’re sick.”

Yesterday, I wrote about nurse Kristen Nagle and her unexpected reaction to a police officer after she returned home from the Freedom Convoy protest. Her first person account of four weeks in Ottawa tells us that the police behaved like human beings early on:

They smiled, laughed, conversed with us, even shook our hands. As the convoy continued their attitude began to change. The smiles stopped, the conversations ceased, and the kind gestures were hard to come by. I noticed this change when they were told to start seizing all jerry cans.

On Valentine’s Day, Kristen’s father sent a large bouquet of roses to her hotel room to be handed out:

The truckers had received so much love throughout the entire day that I thought it might be nice to give the roses to the officers. February 14th was also the day the Emergencies Act was invoked, and we thought this gesture of kindness and love might remind some of the officers of their role to uphold the peace, and that we were all Canadians and here for a reason.

Some of the [officers] were thrilled and so thankful, accepting the roses with a smile. Others refused, and some didn’t even acknowledge us, keeping their vehicle windows rolled up. Some of those who refused looked conflicted, unsure how it might reflect on them should they accept a rose.

Think about that for a minute. You’re sitting there in your squad car, uncertain how to react. If you roll down your window and behave civilly will you find yourself in trouble with your superiors? Happy Valentine’s Day, indeed.

I’ve argued previously that “someone had the power to dissolve this protest in a trice, but it wasn’t the police.” We pay our elected leaders - our Prime Minister and cabinet ministers - to lead. It’s their job to seek solutions, to negotiate, to confront problems. It’s their job to listen to people who’ve driven thousands of miles in an attempt to have their concerns finally heard.

Instead, Justin Trudeau and his entire Cabinet behaved like cowards. They ducked. They hid. They looked away rather than stepping up. As a direct result, thousands of police officers were placed in an untenable position, were ordered to do ugly and dishonourable things.

When leaders fail this badly, faith in democracy is undermined. Trust is undermined. Expectations of fair play vanish. A new government report about the Underground Economy sermonizes about people who “evade their tax obligations.” It says the black market erodes “people’s faith in the integrity and fairness of Canada’s tax system,” and that more needs to be done to make it “socially unacceptable.”

Well here’s the problem. When government behaves the way it did toward the trucker protest, it obliterates its own moral authority. Don’t talk to me about my obligations. Don’t talk to me about integrity or fairness.

Our leaders have made it abundantly clear there’s Them and there’s Us. We’re over here, on the sidelines. Outcasts. Deplorables with unacceptable views. So guess what? I don’t care about the issues that matter to Them. And I will not lift one finger to assist the government.