When Politicians Abdicate, Others Step Forward

The Freedom Convoy was an attempt 'to get the government to start listening'.

Annamie Paul @AnnamiePaul

We all agree, vaccines save lives and will be key to defeating the COVID-19 pandemic. If you haven’t already, get the shot! #VaccinesSaveLives

A year ago, prior to the federal election, the leaders of five Canadian political parties smugly lectured the public in the above video. There was only one permissable perspective on COVID vaccines: Get the shot.

Alternative, non-mainstream views received no political representation. The self-evident fact that no one who’d already recovered from COVID needed such a shot was willfully ignored. Our politicians chose to sing from an identical hymn book. Having already become The Borg, they urged us to become Borg, as well.

During his recent testimony at the Emergencies Act hearings, Saskatchewan trucker and Freedom Convoy organizer Chris Barber described himself as someone who “used to post nasty, distasteful memes” on social media. His leadership role in the Freedom Convoy appears to have been a watershed event in his life.

By his account, the convoy was a whirlwind, the public response was overwhelming, and Ottawa was no longer the end of the journey. It became a place where diverse individuals found each other and became a unified new community:

I can honestly say that if anybody learned anything or grew more during the convoy it was me. I was a different person nine months ago, whatever it was, ten months ago. Coming out here and seeing the amount of love and the people of all different colours, all different races, everything, it was such a diverse crowd of people here.

…there was so many tears, there was so many hugs, there was so much laughter… it changed a person — it changed me. [p. 50 of the official transcript]

While pounding the pavement each day, checking in with truck drivers, checking in with the police, he says he constantly pushed a message of

peace, love, community. Like I said, it changed me as a person listening to myself daily saying that. [p. 57]

Chris says the purpose of the convoy was “to try and get the government to start listening to us.” COVID measures were tightening rather than easing. Truckers who’d crossed the border freely for two years now needed to be vaccinated to continue working. In his corner of the country, he estimates this reduced the cross-border labour pool by one third.

In other words, drivers chose to retire rather than submit to a government-mandated medical procedure. Fresh damage was being inflicted on the economy and on society, and no one was even talking about the harm that had already been endured.

There are, says Chris,

so many different stories that I've heard throughout this ordeal that contributed to why we went [to Ottawa]. When you're hearing stories of people's parents dying in a hospital bed alone…

…My daughter was 16 at the time, was unvaxxed in high school, bullied by the rest of her classmates. Because she wasn't vaccinated, she had to play a clarinet in a music class in a separate room. [pp. 105-106]

So much trauma. So much misery. Yet the politicians in the video above are so self-satisfied.

Chris was behind the wheel of the lead truck that drove across the prairies. The long line of big rigs behind him soon captured the imagination of millions. The world, he says, was watching. He and other organizers felt a heavy responsibility. The protest needed to be safe. It needed to be peaceful.

Political leadership was missing in action. So a trucker from Saskatchewan stepped forward and changed history.