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Rupa Subramanya: Justin Trudeau’s case against the Freedom Convoy falls on its face

How are our elected officials who purvey what can only be called misinformation be held to account?

Author of the article: Rupa Subramanya

Publishing date: Oct 21, 2022  •  October 21, 2022  •  4 minute read

The Public Order Inquiry Commission began public hearings October 14, exactly eight months after the declaration of a state of emergency by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government. Let’s recall that the Trudeau government claimed that the Freedom Convoy protests in Ottawa were so dangerous that they imperilled public safety and this necessitated the use of draconian and emergency powers, that have only once been previously invoked in peacetime. The hearings give us an opportunity to test Trudeau’s claim, and so far the government’s rationale has all but fallen flat on its face. Of course, there could be remarkable revelations in the future which put a different cast on the events, but so far, a range of witnesses give reason to be highly skeptical of the government’s rationale and the narrative that fuelled it.

It’s striking how many public officials, including outgoing Ottawa mayor Jim Watson, outgoing city councillor Mathieu Fleury, and would be mayor Catherine McKenney, made strong claims that the protesters were violent and destructive. For example, Watson claimed that protesters were ripping masks off local residents, but when challenged under cross examination, he admitted he didn’t see this himself but heard about it in media reports. This was a refrain from many of the public officials making these assertions about the protesters, and when challenged referred to hearing about it in the media. This was a classic case of the tail wagging the dog, as some media reports were largely parroting the narrative of the public officials without providing much if any documentary evidence.

Without doubt, the most important witness to date has been Pat Morris, who is intelligence chief of the Ontario Provincial Police. If anyone would know if the protesters were dangerous, it would have to be Morris. However, in his testimony, he was very clear that the OPP had produced no intelligence that the protesters would be armed, describing much of the rhetoric around the protests as “hyperbole” and “sensationalized.” In its totality, his testimony shredded the idea that the Ottawa protesters were anything like the insurrectionists who stormed Capitol Hill in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021.

Morris’s testimony also put paid to the notion that the protesters were an irrational and crazy fringe who had no good reason to be in Ottawa. On the contrary, he acknowledged the “multitude of grievances” of the protesters, whom he described as comprising of regular citizens with a “large degree of support” across the country. He saw them as group that was “organic” and “grassroots.” So much for Trudeau’s fringe minority of crazies.

It’s striking that there was much greater nuance and understanding about the protesters and what was driving them from officials such as Morris than there was from the elected politicians whom they serve. Kim Ayotte, who is responsible for Emergency and Protective Services for the city of Ottawa, likewise punctured some of the often repeated assertions about the protests that have since proven to be false. For instance, while over 3,000 tickets were issued to the protesters, not a single charge was laid for assaulting a peace officer, confirming that the protesters were peaceful, non-violent, and cooperated with police and by-law officers, including keeping safety and emergency lanes open. Ayotte also shredded another false allegation against the protesters, that they were responsible for a bomb threat at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario, flatly denying that there was any link to the protesters.

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Meanwhile, Morris hit the nail on the head. He argued that much of the discourse around the protests was “sensationalized” and not “premised in fact.” For instance, assertions of Russian or American influence, or that former U.S. president Donald Trump was somehow behind the protests, simply didn’t accord with reality. Likewise, the claim that the protests and the protesters themselves were somehow “un-Canadian” was a claim that Morris found “problematic” and he saw no evidence backing up such an assertion.

Ironically, branches of the government itself have been debunking some of the claims. On Feb. 10, 2022, Trudeau claimed that more than half of the funding for the Freedom Convoy on online platforms was coming from foreign sources, including the United States. A summary of a call between government officials and CSIS in early February, tabled at the Commission, makes clear that no “foreign actors” had been identified as supporting or financing the convoy.

What’s emerged from the first week of the public hearings is a reality very different from the narrative pushed by elected officials from Trudeau on down, and echoed in sections of the media. The claim that the protesters were violent insurrectionists bent on destroying Canada has simply been falsified. It’s only in Canada where the establishment saw the protests as violent, illegitimate, and seditionist, while most of the rest of the world saw the protests as a legitimate civil disobedience movement in the face of the some of the harshest pandemic restrictions in the world, giving voice to their own sentiments. Ironically, the protests were an inspiration in much of the world, yet an embarrassment for Canada’s political elite.

One has to ask, how are our elected officials who purvey what can only be called misinformation or even disinformation be held to account? Recall, that the commission has no power to sanction the Trudeau government, even if the report finds that invoking an emergency was unjustified and did not meet the necessary legal threshold. With his effective majority in Parliament, thanks to Jagmeet Singh and the NDP, Trudeau could simply put the report on a shelf to gather dust. Yet, the public has been witness to nothing less than a debunking of the official narrative. Will they be satisfied with inaction after the commission files its report?

However things play out, public trust in our officials and our media establishment has been damaged, and that’s not good for Canadian democracy.

National Post