Peaceful Protesters Are Punished

Violent protesters are not. More Convoy double standards.

A few days ago, I observed that journalists are supposed to be a check on government power. They’re supposed to ‘afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.’ The reason journalists are granted special access and special protections is because they’re the public’s eyes and ears.

Upending that long tradition, during the Freedom Convoy protest journalists targeted, abused, and demonized the truckers and their supporters. For the crime of protesting government overreach.

While that was happening, Toronto Sun columnist Brian Lilley admirably documented the fallout ordinary people experienced after being outed by journalists. He talked about an Ontario government employee who was fired after her $100 donation to the truckers became public. (It’s a Conservative government in power in Ontario.)

He told us about:

• the Ottawa gelato shop threatened by “people upset at the owner’s donation”

• the Burlington, Ontario bakery employees who were screamed at “because the owner had made a donation to the convoy”

• calls to boycott a tea company because the founder’s wife made a discreet donation entirely unlinked to the business

As Mr Lilley points out, Canada has experienced many violent protests. In June 2020, individuals associated with a BLM protest smashed windows, looted stores, and lit fires, damaging dozens of Montreal buildings. In August 2021, protesters toppled a statue of Canada’s first Prime Minister in Hamilton, Ontario after the democratically-elected city council decided to keep it in place.

Mr Lilley said he was unaware of any level of government - never mind vigilante members of the public - who took it upon themselves to identify, harass, and persecute people who had funded or were otherwise involved in those violent incidents.

Yet, he says, in response to the peaceful trucker protest, “progressive Canada is on a search and destroy mission to punish anyone who disagrees with them.” Mainstream journalists are almost always left-wing, bubble-inhabiting progressives who haven’t the foggiest notion of how ordinary people experience the world. These days, they’re extensively funded by the Canadian government. This is a disturbing state of affairs.

Read Brian Lilley’s entire column here.