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Too dangerous: The mayor and police chief of Windsor said Wednesday that they are unable to clear a blockade on the bridge to Detroit because of fears of violence, the Globe reports.

On day three of the blockade, Drew Dilkens, mayor of Windsor, Ont., said arresting the demonstrators opposed to pandemic health measures and towing their vehicles could lead to violence, because some have said they are “willing to die for it.” So instead, police are trying to negotiate an end to the blockade. The Ambassador Bridge connects Detroit and Windsor and carries about one-quarter of Canada’s trade with the United States – about $450-million in goods between the countries. Commercial traffic is being diverted to the Blue Water Bridge in Sarnia, Ont., where the wait to cross to the U.S. on Wednesday was almost five hours.

The blockade is already leading to slowdowns at Ontario factories.

Brian Kingston, head of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers’ Association, said Ford Motor Co., General Motors Co. and Stellantis NV, have all cut production. “This can’t be allowed to persist. The blockades need to be removed,” Mr. Kingston said. Mark Sciberras, a Unifor union leader at Ford’s Oakville assembly plant, said employees’ shifts have been cut in half because of the parts shortage. Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem warned at a Wednesday press conference that if the blockades last much longer they could “start to have a measurable impact on economic activity.”

Enough: One actual trucker, who had a five-hour detour because of the blockade, told a City TV reporter the protesters should stop.

Bad for business: The disruption at the Detroit-Windsor crossing, which handles more than a quarter of the roughly $775 billion in cross-border goods trade, is alarming the business community, CP reports.

A group of 70 trade organizations including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce has called for a “swift and immediate clearing” of the blockade, citing the need for a steady supply of food, medical products and industrial parts. The delays could result in higher food prices and more spoilage, due to longer, costlier routes as trucks are diverted, allowing produce less time on shelves before getting too ripe. “Already we are seeing delays in product of 12 to 24 hours in deliveries,” said Gary Sands, a spokesperson at the Canadian Federation of Independent Grocers.

Ford, Trudeau talk: In a sign that governments might be preparing to act, late Wednesday night Justin Trudeau tweeted that he and Doug Ford had discussed the matter.

Settling in: Protesters blocking an Alberta border crossing greeted Mounties with cries of “Hell no, we won’t go” on Wednesday, vowing to stay put, CP reports.

The Alberta government announced Tuesday that it was scrapping its COVID-19 vaccine passport requirement starting Wednesday. Other public health measures, including a mask mandate, are to be lifted March 1. For many of the protesters, it wasn’t enough. “We’re here for the big picture. It started with the border thing. It started with (Prime Minister Justin) Trudeau, and until Trudeau moves, we don’t move,” said John Vanreeuwyk, a feedlot operator from Coaldale, Alta.

No action: CBC quotes Bill Blair, Omar Alghabra and Marco Mendicino, who all say that the situation is grave, but for the moment they are not signalling action, CBC reports, leaving it to the police to sort out.

Warning: Ottawa police, now presiding over Day 13 of disruption, issued a warning to the protesters who are still dug in in the capital on Wednesday, Global reports.

“The unlawful act of blocking streets in the downtown core is resulting in people being denied the lawful use, enjoyment and operation of their property,” read a statement from the Ottawa Police, issued on Wednesday. “We are providing you notice that anyone blocking streets or assisting others in the block of streets may be committing a criminal offence. You must immediately cease further unlawful activity or you may face charges.”

Hard men: Matt Gurney, writing for the Line, has been wandering around the protest site and talking to people with insight into the security challenge, and he concludes that Ottawa Police Chief Peter Sloly, who has been frequently blamed by frustrated residents, has been telling us something serious—there are some dangerous people in Ottawa.

Some of them are ideologues, others just grifters, but they’re real, and they’re in Ottawa. Maybe not in that parking lot. I certainly didn’t get the chance to take any names. But local officials know they’re out and about, and are worried that any move they make will trigger an incident that can easily result in dead cops, dead truckers and delighted far-right agitators.

Safe for kids? Truckers and supporters told the Citizen Wednesday they are proud to have their children with them at the protests.

“Our kids are living better than most kids. They call it glamping,” said Marc Kozlowski, who drove from Vernon, B.C., with his wife Danielle and their three children Ariana, 8, Emerson, 7, and Braylin, 2. The self-employed couple runs wine tours in the Okanagan Valley, a business that has been severely affected by COVID-19 lockdowns. The family has been living in their Ford Expedition SUV while in Ottawa, but has been invited to homes to shower and do laundry. Kozlowski says he has no worries or safety concerns about his children.

Errant trucks: CBC reports that some companies are finding out to their surprise that trucks they own are being used in the protest.

Less trusting: Canadians are losing trust in their leaders and institutions as the pandemic drags on, CP reports. “When we have 46 per cent of Canadians saying they still feel anxiety and stress, it’s taking a toll on trust in Canada,” said Bruce MacLellan, CEO of Proof Strategies, which carried out the survey.

The trust index suggests general trust in governments, business, media and advocacy groups … has fallen to 34 per cent. That is driven largely by cratering trust in governments, with only 22 per cent saying they trust governments or politicians, compared with 40 per cent in the early days of the pandemic in May 2020.

Critical MPs: Even government MPs seem to have less trust in the government. Quebec Liberal MP Yves Robillard told the Hill Times that he agrees with Joël Lightbound, the Quebec City MP who on Tuesday criticized his government for playing politics in its handling of the pandemic.

Voix de la raison: Quebec commentators cheered Lightbound on Wednesday, for having the gumption to speak truth to power. Journal de Montréal columnist Richard Martineau praised him as a voice of reason (translation).

This is what was missing from this movement which, as the polls show, is snowballing in the country. A spokesperson who is neither a conspirator nor a Trumpist. Who respects the expertise of scientists. Who recognizes the dangerousness of the virus. Who does not ask for the immediate lifting of all the restrictions. Who does not cry out for dictatorship or tyranny as soon as the government introduces a measure. And who doesn’t hand his microphone to the first oddball just to increase his ratings and prove to his listeners that he still and always remains a “rebel” despite his grey hair. In short, a calm and responsible personality, who is able to make sense of things and does not criticize the government for the simple pleasure of criticizing it.

Ill GG: Gov. Gen. Mary Simon and her husband have both tested positive for COVID-19, CTV reports.

— Stephen Maher

The post Windsor mayor and police chief say they can’t clear the border blockade appeared first on Macleans.ca.

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(Photograph by Wade Hudson)

In the lead-up to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s announcement of a new federal cabinet last October, Anita Anand had heard the rumours. As always, she came prepared.

Anand had just won her second election in two years. She’d learned the ropes as a rookie MP for Oakville, Ont., while simultaneously serving at the helm of what was usually a low-key, though imperative, ministerial portfolio. As it turned out, during a global pandemic, Public Services and Procurement was anything but low-key.

“The journey has been incredibly intense and has required me to be focused and determined,” Anand says. “Every day, I am 100 per cent focused on my job.”

Being thrown into the middle of a high-stakes file from the get-go—one that could cost Canadian lives, if vaccine, PPE and rapid-test procurements went poorly—was a leadership trial by fire. She followed her instincts and took away a few lessons: “Be involved. Be at the table. Make decisions. And be firm.”

THE POWER LIST: See the full ranking of 50 Canadians

So after the election, when Anand read speculative reports about her potential appointment to National Defence—despite having heard nothing about it herself—she rolled up her sleeves a little early. “I started making a to-do list in case I was asked,” she says, “and I had that to-do list in my pocket.”

Anand got the call and became the first woman of colour to oversee the Canadian Armed Forces. Her first priority, she says, is to ensure cultural change in the military, so “everyone feels safe, protected and respected.” With dozens of recommendations about sexual misconduct and military justice yet to be implemented, and an alarming statistical picture emerging from the volume of class-action claims made by military members, the job’s easier said than done.

Her second major priority is equipping the forces by fixing a complicated, painfully slow procurement process. (She has some experience with that.) And, perhaps counterintuitively, she mentions the military’s raison d’être—to support “the rules-based international order” alongside allies—as her third priority. At least for now.

The career academic, who spent 25 years as a professor in corporate and securities law, has quickly become one of the stars of Canadian politics—despite, or perhaps because of, an aversion to showboating. Her no-nonsense approach and capable management of thorny issues has earned her regular mentions on lists of potential successors to Trudeau.

Of course, Anand won’t comment yet on whether a to-do list for the whole country is in her pocket. She’s too focused on her job.

The post Why political powerhouse Anita Anand is No. 5 on the 2022 Maclean’s Power List appeared first on Macleans.ca.

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In Secwepemctsín, the language of the Secwépemc, they’re called le estcwéý. The missing. The ones taken to residential school who never returned. Survivors of Kamloops Indian Residential School in B.C. spoke of them, as did Elders across Canada who were forced into the notorious facilities. An entire volume of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) report focused on them.

Then came late May and the announcement by Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc that some 200 presumed graves of le estcwéý had been found on the grounds of the Kamloops residential school. Waves of revulsion and guilt washed across the country. Through decades of testimony of abuse—through the federal reports, legal settlements, formal apologies and a years-long public hashing-out of this national disgrace in the TRC—there had been periodic outpourings of disgust and grief. But this shock was deeper, as non-Indigenous people and First Nations, Métis and Inuit alike thought of children’s lives being cut short while they attended these harsh, chronically underfunded and assimilation-focused boarding schools, and of hundreds being buried in something unthinkable in the non-Indigenous world: a school cemetery.

THE POWER LIST: See the full ranking of 50 Canadians

Flags went to half-staff and stayed there for half the year. Canadians brought shoes and toys to makeshift memorials at city halls coast to coast. As weeks passed, the grief layered on: there were similar revelations from Cowessess First Nation in Saskatchewan (751 unmarked graves, in an area known to be the resting place of both students and local residents), Lower Kootenay Band in B.C. (182 suspected graves), Penelakut Tribe in B.C. (160) and Williams Lake First Nation in B.C. (93). The TRC and other experts had pegged the total figure in the thousands, and here was tangible evidence, puncturing long-standing denials that Canada’s policy toward Indigenous people had been genocidal.

To say the least, the news dampened normal jubilation around Canada Day and gave further solemnity to the first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation (for those among us not titled Right Honourable, at least). Politicians felt compelled to do something, finally tackling some of the TRC’s calls to action, pledging the release of long-suppressed documents related to residential schools and committing millions to help other First Nations do what many communities call “ground truthing” at school sites. When Ottawa finally reached a settlement to redress discrimination in Indigenous child welfare, Cindy Blackstock of the Caring Society credited public pressure arising from the gravesite discoveries.

OUR EDITORIAL: How we chose the 2022 Power List

The announcements even stirred one of the planet’s most intractable institutions—the Vatican. Pope Francis will meet this year in Vatican City with Canadian Indigenous leaders and has accepted an invitation to come here. He might finally deliver a long-demanded apology for the church’s role in the residential school catastrophe.

Sen. Mary Jane McCallum, the upper chamber’s lone residential school survivor, says the graves could become a catalyst for “conciliation,” a term she uses in place of “reconciliation” because she sees no previously good relationship between Indigenous people and the rest of Canada to renew. “These young spirits have been waiting for years to be found. They were crying out for this country to change,” the Manitoba senator tells Maclean’s. “I’ve had so many people write to me—individuals—and some of them say, ‘I will now teach my children about residential school. I will now make an effort to do better.’ ”

McCallum wonders why it often takes horrendous discoveries to change Canadians’ outlook, when much of the trauma and atrocity was known. It’s a repeating pattern. Though the mass flight from Syria had been well-documented for several years, there had been little action in this country before heart-wrenching photos emerged of three-year-old Alan Kurdi’s body on a Turkish beach. It spurred Canadian leaders to hurriedly bring in tens of thousands of Syrian refugees.

RELATED: The search for graves—and truth—at a Nova Scotia residential school

In the case of le estcwéý, there was no galvanizing photo, no image of a child, no name, no birth or death date. There was, instead, the mere imagined presence, and loss, of all these children. Several classrooms’ worth of them in Kamloops alone, their lives ended prematurely by disease, violence and indifference. Standing in for the unknown children’s in-memoriam pictures were archival church photos. Or vigils of small shoes. Or 751 orange flags in a field at Cowessess First Nation.

Eva Jewell, a sociologist and research director with the Toronto-based Yellowhead Institute, has co-written annual reports tracking progress on the TRC’s 94 calls to action. In 2020, the report found, three were completed, more than in the prior three years combined. And they all came in June, within weeks of the finding at Tk’emlúps. But they were all calls for symbolic action, Jewell points out: the TRC’s demands for a national commemoration day, an Indigenous languages commissioner and changes to the citizenship oath.

Other symbolic gestures abound. Flags down? Symbol. Meeting with the pope? Symbol. Meanwhile, boil-water advisories remain on several reserves. Deep-rooted inequality lingers in education, health and housing. Calls to action “that would change the lives of Indigenous people, and children who are still mired in a colonial system of inequity and oppression—those have yet to be completed,” says Jewell, an associate professor at the university that will soon no longer be named Ryerson, after its board last summer voted to scrap a name associated with the establishment of residential schools. “Hard work on the symbols, Canadians, with your orange shirts and your day off. We’re still on a boil-water advisory.”

Jewell acknowledges, though, that many of these symbolic measures were sought by survivors and others, as part of what’s widely understood to be a long road to reconciliation. Symbolic action, along with what polls indicate is a greater desire to walk that path, could lead to something more significant, she says.

Close to her own home in southwestern Ontario, the Chippewas of the Thames First Nation, is the former site of Canada’s second residential school, Mount Elgin. Jewell grew up on its grounds, and the presence of graves was widely understood. “There are parts in the community that people just don’t build on,” she says. Now, the findings in Tk’emlúps and elsewhere have prompted government and corporations to fund the ground-penetrating radar to detect how many graves there might be on these lands. Similar efforts are unfolding at an unprecedented pace on First Nations, Métis and Inuit communities throughout Canada.

This intensified search could reveal the resting places of hundreds or thousands more Indigenous youngsters. If this, to Canada’s discredit, is what it takes to address historical atrocity, the legacy of these children will grow. Once the epitome of powerlessness, in a society deafened to their plight by prejudice, they and their silent cries for justice are finally being heard.

A National Indian Residential School Crisis Line has been set up to provide support to former students. This 24-hour crisis line can be accessed at 1-866-925-4419.

The post We failed to hear them when they lived. We are obliged to hear them now. appeared first on Macleans.ca.

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Murray and Niigaan Sinclair are No. 30 on the 2022 Maclean’s Power List, a ranking of 50 influential Canadians. Click here to see the full list.

The way Niigaan Sinclair puts it, his father, Murray Sinclair, was the first one in the room. That is, he was among the first Indigenous person in Canadian institutional settings. In the courtroom, as a lawyer. Then on the judges’ bench. Then in the Senate. Then as chief commissioner for a long-overdue inquiry into the residential schools system.

When Niigaan was a little kid, he’d sit in courtrooms, admiring his dad’s bravery as he navigated an overwhelmingly white, biased legal system. That admiration was mixed with sadness. “I’ve been mad at Canada for a lot of things. Violence and genocide. But I’m also mad because my dad had to spend his life fighting it instead of coming to my soccer games,” he says, adding: “There’s a reason I didn’t become a lawyer.”

THE POWER LIST: See the full ranking of 50 Canadians

If Murray Sinclair was the first person in the room, his son is trying to change the room altogether. But he admits he fell into that mission by accident. Niigaan wanted to be an actor. It didn’t work out. He wanted to be a professional soccer player. But he shattered his leg.

Instead, Niigaan, now 45, was drawn into local community work, then academia, then media. He is the department head for Indigenous studies at the University of Manitoba, a regular columnist at the Winnipeg Free Press, an author—among other projects, he’s ghost-writing his father’s memoir—and a familiar face on TV. His growing public presence has him tugged in a thousand directions, but he still spends Sundays with the Mama Bear Clan, a women-led group that patrols Winnipeg streets to offer compassion and donated goods to people in need.

Niigaan has trained thousands of teachers about Indigenous education. Murray, in the twilight of his own career, mentors young lawyers. Though he keeps intending to retire, his pre-eminent expertise is highly sought-after. The septuagenarian former senator now oversees high-profile negotiations over federal compensation to Indigenous children.

He knows his career cost him time with his own kids. Asked if those sacrifices were worth it, he answers simply: “I don’t know.” But this is a man intensely proud of all that his children and grandchildren have accomplished—though he quibbles with Niigaan’s analogy. “There’s no doubt that merely being in the room or getting through the door, in and of itself, changes things,” he says, adding that Niigaan is building on that work. “He is changing the size of the room as much as anything.”

The post Murray and Niigaan Sinclair, the father-son duo working toward reconciliation—and opening Canada’s eyes appeared first on Macleans.ca.

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At the top of our annual Power List are the unknown victims of residential schools—hundreds of children who lost their lives before they were finally heard.

Here, in brief, is the thinking behind our decision, which some may consider unorthodox. In 2021, amid report after report of presumed grave sites being found on the former grounds of residential schools, non-Indigenous Canadians undeniably experienced an awakening.

Everyone from random citizens doing TV street interviews to the Prime Minister himself voiced horror and dismay, as if blindsided by the fact that the assimilationist project this country ran for the better part of a century had claimed the lives of children. Many, many children.

We were not blindsided, of course. The deaths of young Indigenous kids at places like Tk’emlúps, Cowessess and Williams Lake, B.C. were shared widely in the accounts of former students, who passed the knowledge to their children and grandchildren. They were meticulously reported by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2015.

We’ve a long way to go to fulfill the essential goals of that commission. But the massive shift in public attitudes that followed the grave discoveries is undeniable. Before making this choice, Maclean’s consulted privately with Indigenous, Métis and Inuit leaders, who unanimously approved of, and in some cases applauded, the idea. The grave finds, they agreed, changed the tone and substance of debate over Indigenous rights. Whether that change yields action, they’re waiting to see.

Go straight to the ranking ↓

As in 2021, our ranking hews toward good-faith actors pursuing positive change, even if their approaches, or their notions of positive, are not universally shared. Pierre Poilievre, the presumptive frontrunner for the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada, is not everyone’s first choice as a seatmate on a long flight. But the Tory MP excels in his role as an opposition critic, holding the government’s feet to the fire.

And again, we’ve looked beyond mere status. The nabobs of banking, lobbying, telecom and other arms of the establishment must do more than occupy corner offices to merit berths on our ranking.

The result, we believe, is a list that reflects the pressing issues facing the country, and the opportunities ahead. Attentive readers will notice that Canadians who guided us through the first years of the pandemic—public health leaders, epidemiologists—have given way in this year’s ranking to those who will guide us out of it.

It’s our version of cautious optimism. With luck and good sense, we’ll emerge from Omicron into a world where COVID-19 is a managed risk, and we’ll refocus on the challenges that define Canada and its place in the world. As ever, our ability to navigate these problems will rest heavily on our brightest, bravest and most accomplished. Remember their names, and lend them your ears.

The post The Power List appeared first on Macleans.ca.

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Backbench critique: Liberal Quebec City backbencher Joël Lightbound had a newser on Tuesday in which he criticized his government’s pandemic response, which, Paul Wells writes in Maclean’s, constitutes “the most serious threat to Justin Trudeau’s leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada since Jane Philpott quit the federal cabinet.”

“I think it’s time we stop dividing the population,” said Lightbound. And, “Not everyone can earn a living on a MacBook at a cottage.”

Wells is sympathetic to Lightbound’s critique and critical of the Liberals:

If you can’t defend your policy, it doesn’t much help if you ball up your fists and demand that everyone be a team player. If you can defend your policy, great: defend it. Lightbound’s broader argument—that this government has been leaning way too hard on “get with the program” as an argument for way too long—is not only reasonable, it’s obvious to anyone who can see. Including many Liberals of my acquaintance. The truckers vs the lockdown is a perfect illustration of a central characteristic of the Trudeau government and, I might as well say it, of Justin Trudeau: the strong belief that there will be a perfect time to make a decision later, after the crisis is over.

Wells notes that some Liberals want Lightbound ejected from the caucus, but Toronto MP Nathaniel Erskin-Smith, who often speaks at variance with party policy, tweeted that he should stay in caucus, and later Liberal whip Steve MacKinnon tweeted that he will stay in the caucus. Others praised him for being brave enough to speak out.

The Star has a good roundup of the reaction, and Althia Raj has a heartfelt column calling for greater tolerance for dissenting views within the government caucus.

I hope Lightbound will retain his chairmanship of the industry committee. I wish the media and political parties made less of a fuss about internal dissent so that more MPs could find the courage to share their thoughts publicly. It is not normal for a broad-based party to have absolute unity of thought.

Bridge open: Truckers and “truckers” continue to dominate the news. Some traffic is flowing again over the Ambassador Bridge between Windsor and Detroit but a partial blockade remains in place, disrupting a vital economic link. Police and politicians are concerned, the Globe reports.

Border closed: Traffic is still blocked at Alberta’s Coutts border crossing, the Calgary Herald reports, but it sounds like the Mounties are trying to clear the trucks.

Reopenings: By coincidence or not, Jason Kenney announced the “staged reopening” of Alberta on Tuesday, the Herald reports. Similar announcements were made in Saskatchewan and Quebec, the Star reports.

The convoy organizers are willing to form a coalition government, they said at a news conference on Tuesday, to widespread derision, although they later announced they were withdrawing the MOU in which they proposed to take over the government after deposing Justin Trudeau.

Kids on board: There are still many protesters in Ottawa, including many children in the trucks, CBC reports.

No good deed: In an ugly story in the Citizen, reflecting the fanaticism of convoy supporters, a tow truck driver who played good samaritan, towing a shack for the protesters, has been subjected to online abuse.

Horn silencer: Also subject to online abuse is Zexi Li, the 21-year-old Ottawa woman whose lawsuit stopped the incessant honking, CTV reports. She seems to be taking the abuse in stride: “I really, really felt that no matter what, I had to do something. If that something is to be a voice and be a face—and even be even a target—for people to understand what really is going on here, I was more than willing to do so.”

Of one mind: The Globe is full of commentators saying it is time to get tough on the protesters in Ottawa.

Former RCMP commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli writes that it’s time to move the trucks: “The trucks, which have created physical and auditory disorder in Ottawa for a week, must be moved – if not by their owners, then by heavy machinery or, if necessary, police-contracted and protected drivers, no matter how difficult it may be. Any illegal structures – tents, shacks, fire pits, etc. – must be dismantled.”

Historian Andrew Cohen nostalgically recalls Pierre Trudeau’s handling of the October Crisis, and calls on his son to man up: “It’s about democracy, the integrity of the state, the preservation of order, and freedom from this noisy caravan of anarchy, prejudice and harassment.”

Columnist John Ibbitson points out that the Liberals didn’t seem particularly occupied before the occupation started: “We were just sitting around up here, waiting for something to happen, when that something arrived in the form of a truck convoy.”

Former Defence Minister David Pratt argues that we should not shrink from using the military.

For variety, the Globe also has a column from Gary Mason attacking the Conservatives for being too soft on the convoy, which Tucker Carlson mocked on Fox.

Whether Canadians more generally will feel comfortable with Mr. Poilievre’s adoption of language associated with Mr. Trump and the worst elements of the Republican party (Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Marjorie Taylor Greene et al) is highly doubtful. Poll after poll has shown little appetite in this country for Mr. Trump’s divisive, anti-media, autocratic style of leadership.

A Leger poll on Tuesday, though, showed Poilievre, who is so far unopposed, with a commanding lead over as-yet theoretical rivals.

Divided: The Star has a good roundup on divisions in the Conservative party, between convoy backers, like Poilievre, and critics, like Michael Chong, who could run against Poilievre. Others being discussed as potential candidates: Leslyn Lewis, Tasha Kheiriddin, Patrick Brown and Peter MacKay.

To the devil: In Le Journal de Montréal, Emmanuelle Latraverse has a scathing column (translation), pointing out that law-and-order-loving Conservatives seem to have entirely abandoned the principles they used to go on about constantly.

Would the Conservatives have been so tolerant if the city centre had been occupied by Indigenous people with drums? To ask the question is to answer it. Worse, now the party of law and order defends that municipal and provincial laws are flouted with impunity.

Facebook! American outlet Grid has an interesting deep dive on how Americans are mixed up in making Ottawa so miserable. Unsurprisingly, the movement seems to has been heavily promoted on Facebook through a number of groups run by an apparently hacked account.

The account launched a handful of Facebook groups for the protest, all between Jan. 26 and 28, before the trucker convoy reached Ottawa. With a combined following of more than 340,000 members and more than 7,500 posts, the group names were variations on a theme: “Convoy to Ottawa 2022,” “Convoy for Freedom 2022,” “Freedom Convoy/Ottawa 2022 for Canada,” “Freedom Convoy 2022” and “2022 Official Freedom Convoy to Ottawa.” Facebook groups are organized by administrators. Grid found that the only administrator account for these groups belonged to the Missouri woman. Reached briefly by phone on Monday, she said her account was hacked and she was not involved with the groups.

— Stephen Maher

The post Joël Lightbound’s push against the Liberal status quo has caused quite a stir appeared first on Macleans.ca.

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It’s hard to cling to faith in the orderly temperament of Canadians with streets and bridges blockaded, diesel fumes hanging heavy in the winter air. No matter how the convoy chaos in Ottawa (and beyond) is ultimately resolved, this episode should spell an end to illusions about Canada’s supposedly peaceable culture and moderate character insulating our country from the scary side of right-wing populism.

In fact, the notion that there’s something in the Canadian disposition that makes us less susceptible than the Americans were to Donald Trump (or the Brits to Brexit, or the French to their far-right presidential contenders) has never been all that convincing. Sure, a big majority of Canadians overall disapproved of Trump, but we should have taken heed when an Ekos Research poll at the outset of his dystopian presidency showed that 57 per cent of Conservative voters in Canada viewed him favourably.

And Canada has its share of the factors that strain social cohesion, including economic anxiety, nativist intolerance, regional resentments—all exacerbated by the nerve-fraying frustrations of the pandemic. Yet this doesn’t mean we should abandon hope that sensible, centrist politics might stand a better chance of prevailing here than in some other democracies. It’s just that we should trust less in the mysteries of Canadian identity, and more in the advantages of our political system, and key policies and practices that have flowed from it.

The first factor to keep in mind these days is the outsized clout of sparsely populated states in the U.S. Senate, and hence in Washington’s power dynamic. At the federal level, there’s nothing in Canada that parallels the way, say, Vermont elects two senators and so does New York, or Wyoming two and so does California. In Ottawa, the big provinces with the big cities wield legislative power at the federal level commensurate with their large, diverse populations.

But that shouldn’t be mistaken for meaning resentment of what Toronto and Ottawa symbolize across much of Canada is less virulent than antagonism toward what New York and Washington represent across vast swaths of the U.S. map. It’s just that our Parliament doesn’t lend the less populous regions nearly as much legislative leverage. Our system is different, not our psyche.

Or consider the way elections are run. In the U.S., local and state control over the voting process has led to the sort of wildly varying rulebooks that Trump and his allies tried to exploit to sow confusion after he lost the 2020 presidential vote. In the early years after Confederation, Canadian elections were also largely local affairs, and subject to confusion and corruption. That was largely fixed in 1885, when the national election processes we benefit from today were instituted.

Dirty politics, though, persisted. For example, gerrymandering was a long-running scandal in Canada up until a key 1964 reform finally took the key task of mapping of ridings out of the hands of party functionaries, and gave the job to upright independent commissions. In the U.S., constituency boundaries for seats in the House of Representatives remain notoriously subject to being redrawn to favour one party or the other. History shows that Canadians aren’t inherently more fair-minded. We owe our edge to far-sighted reformers who made the right change when the opportunity arose.

Canadians also shake their heads at the highly politicized—even polarized—nature of U.S. judicial appointments. No serious watcher of Canada’s courts, including the Supreme Court of Canada, pretends judges don’t bring their own ideologies to the bench. But the Canadian process for picking them remains far less tainted by partisanship than in the U.S., and that must be safeguarded to preserve what’s left of public faith in institutional authority.

This is another advantage Canadians shouldn’t take for granted. Sean Fine, the Globe and Mail’s veteran justice reporter, has flagged concerns about Ontario’s excellent appointment system becoming more exposed to the preferences of the party in power. As well, the Globe reported a few years ago on the federal Liberal government checking potential judges names through a party database. The eye-glazing details of selection processes will never generate sustained public concern, but we need journalists and independent experts to be vigilant and vocal.

This sort of Canads-U.S. compare-and-contrast exercise leads inevitably to an even more fraught issue. Is Canadian politics less twisted by racism? That question is too big for this piece, but I can point to research from academics like University of Toronto’s Phil Triadaﬁlopoulos, who have shown how Canada’s immigration policies, dating back to the reforms of the 1960s, offered an easier path to citizenship and fostered greater democratic participation among new Canadians.

Those engaged newcomers tend to concentrate in Toronto and Vancouver, often in suburbs where party election strategists know they must be competitive to have any hope of prevailing in national elections. In this way, immigration policy loops back to reinforce the way power in Parliament properly reflects population density and diversity. (And it helps that getting rid of gerrymandering meant nobody could redraw the electoral map to erase the ballot-box clout of any inconvenient voters.)

These and other ways Canada’s democracy looks healthier, compared with the U.S., don’t rest on some underlying Canadian sensibleness, some congenital propensity to moderation. In other words, there’s nothing in our national character we can count to make us less likely to gather for an unruly, unreasonable protest, issue blatantly undemocratic demands, and lay siege to the capital. There’s also nothing to stop certain duly elected politicians from actually praising such actions. It turns out Canada and the U.S. have this in common.

When the diesel fumes clear, there will be plenty of agonizing over misguided motivations and uncivil inclinations. Fair enough. But soul-searching is less important that recognizing the strongest elements in how our democracy works, and build on the parts that hold firm even when our sentimental sense of our national character is rudely shaken.

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Here’s Dillon McGuire, Operations and Tour Assistant to the Minister of Housing, Diversity and Inclusion (that’s Ahmed Hussen, I learn), calling for Joël Lightbound to be removed from the Liberal caucus “as swiftly as possible.” I haven’t met McGuire and my interactions with Lightbound have been limited, but the young staffer’s tweet hints at the very large difficulty Lightbound now presents to the Liberal Party of Canada.

You’re forgiven for not knowing Lightbound. He’s the Liberal MP for the Quebec City riding of Louis-Hébert, and his astonishing Tuesday-morning news conference was a detailed prosecution, not only of Liberal policy on COVID-related restrictions, but of the Liberal manner of governing over at least the last several months. “I think it’s time we stop dividing the population,” he said. And, “Not everyone can earn a living on a MacBook at a cottage.” I mean, he’s criticizing the government’s timetable on health-care transfers. Whatever a backbench MP’s knitting is supposed to be these days, Lightbound is spectacularly not sticking to it.

And all of this is happening while a bunch of truckers and “truckers,” some fraction of whom hold pestilential views and some of whom control immovable and potentially unstoppable concentrations of rolling metal, continue to occupy downtown Ottawa. Which is also part of Dillon McGuire’s point. Lightbound will be accused, is already being accused, of advocating surrender to blackmail.

I’m torn here. On one hand, it was disappointing that so many questions at Lightbound’s news conference were about the very caucus politics I lead with here, instead of about the substance of his argument. On the other hand, I do believe Lightbound’s sortie today constitutes the most serious threat to Justin Trudeau’s leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada since Jane Philpott quit the federal cabinet.

So, as I say, torn.

A few things about Lightbound. He’s not super-likeable, in the way smart guys can sometimes be a bit much. He’s chippy and has no discernible sense of humour. Honestly I am pleased when anyone in this city shows any personality, so do not take this as a criticism.

Today is apparently his 34th birthday.

He won the National Laskin Moot as a student at McGill Law, which is even bigger than being on the McGill debating team and suggests Lightbound is a dangerous guy to get caught in a debate with. He became a lawyer at Fasken in Montreal, which suggests a good start on a life of hard work and ever-increasing financial reward, before he ran for the Liberals in 2015 in Louis-Hébert, a riding that’s been held by four different parties since 2006. Conservative, Bloc, NDP, Liberal. That’s a significant part of the day’s puzzle.

So’s this. At home, Lightbound gets coverage like this—wunderkind sacrificing the gravy train for a chance to make a difference. And indeed, in the first year of this government, it was not uncommon to hear Lightbound mentioned around Ottawa as one of the Liberals’ brightest talents. But he hasn’t clicked. He was parliamentary secretary to the minister of finance before the election. Just about every other person in that hard job has been promoted to cabinet: François-Philippe Champagne, Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Sean Fraser. Lightbound, instead, was dumped from his parliamentary-secretary job after the 2021 election. He’s the chair of the Industry Committee, which isn’t nothing. But all of this suggests uncommon ambition thwarted.

Two more data points. After six years in Parliament, he’s eligible for a full pension, as some people were pointing out on Twitter today. And while he’s been winning lately by 11- and 12-point margins, Quebec City is a strange bubble, certainly Quebec’s capital of frustration with restrictions and mandates, which means he’ll certainly have been hearing a lot about them from constituents with a documented history of partisan fickleness.

This adds up to Lightbound as a mix of real smarts under real pressure with a strong feeling of nothing to lose. It’s funny how the nines and 10s are so often the ones to snap around here.

On the substance of the argument, I think he’s right that the government would have a hard time defending each of its policy decisions in turn, which is one reason the government never comes anywhere close to bothering to try. (Another reason is that this government is simply incompetent at making any coherent argument. I mean, it’s breathtaking. This comes from the top.) There’s a line in Lightbound’s prepared remarks about wishing for evidence instead of talking points. That’s the sort of thing music collectors call a “deep cut.”

The bit about how we’re in the middle of a crisis—about how everyone should just hold the line until the truckers and “truckers” and many well-meaning protesters and small cohort of serious troublemakers simply leave town—I have a lot of sympathy for that argument. I’m not big on rewarding convoys when making policy decisions. I was appalled last week when Quebec Premier François Legault mentioned truckers and “truckers” among his reasons for dropping a no-vax tax that could not have been implemented anyway. Way to ensure that anyone with access to some trucks will use them in any policy dispute forevermore. So I don’t want to dismiss that real concern.

But if you can’t defend your policy, it doesn’t much help if you ball up your fists and demand that everyone be a team player. If you can defend your policy, great: defend it. Lightbound’s broader argument—that this government has been leaning way too hard on “get with the program” as an argument for way too long—is not only reasonable, it’s obvious to anyone who can see. Including many Liberals of my acquaintance.

The truckers vs the lockdown is a perfect illustration of a central characteristic of the Trudeau government and, I might as well say it, of Justin Trudeau: the strong belief that there will be a perfect time to make a decision later, after the crisis is over. The early-2020 “build back better” rhetoric amounted to a hope that, after the icky virus went away, Canada could get back to building light rail, which sometimes seems to be the only thing that excites this gang. The nasty political sideswipe from the collapse of Kabul in the first week of the 2021 election campaign was similar: How dare there be a mess when he was trying to build the future? Everyone in Ottawa can list a dozen decisions that are way overdue, and the reason they’ve heard for the delay is some variation on, “Not yet. The time’s not right yet.”

But here’s the thing. The time’s never right. The crisis is the job. I’m not sure how “issues management” came to be synonymous with “making issues go away so we can do what we want.” What it could mean is, manage the issue. Canadians are less and less sure the way they are governed makes any sense. That is true whether there are trucks or not. So manage that issue.

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Justin Trudeau, week-long COVID isolation done, spoke in an emergency debate in Parliament Monday night, failing to extend an olive branch to the anti-mandate protesters occupying Ottawa. Instead, he said they should leave, the Globe reports: “Individuals are trying to blockade our economy, our democracy and our fellow citizens’ daily lives. It has to stop. The people of Ottawa don’t deserve to be harassed in their own neighbourhoods. They don’t deserve to be confronted with the inherent violence of a swastika flying on a street corner, or a confederate flag, or the insults and jeers just because they’re wearing a mask.”

Candice Bergen, who has met with the convoy protesters, unlike Trudeau, said Trudeau is making things worse: “Does he regret calling people names who didn’t take the vaccine? Does he regret calling people misogynist and racist and just escalating and poking sticks at them and being so divisive to individual Canadians?”

Last week, the Globe reported that Bergen argued within her party that Tories should not ask the protesters to leave. The party is divided on the issue, with some, like Michael Chong on Monday night, calling for the protesters to leave—while others, like Garnet Genuis, stand foursquare behind the horn honkers.

Bridge shut: Protesters did not pay heed to Trudeau’s speech, and shut down the Ambassador Bridge connecting Detroit and Windsor on Monday night, CBC reports.

Quieter: The horns of Ottawa fell silent on Monday after lawyers Paul Champ and Emilie Taman won an injunction, the Citizen reports. They brought the action on behalf of a young woman who lives downtown, arguing that the honking was harmful and unnecessary, which convinced Justice Hugh McLean.

“Tooting a horn is not an expression of any great thought,” McLean noted wryly, even allowing for the “potential artistic merit” of the truckers’ creative use of patterns and beats.

Most oppose: The silencing of the horns should please Ottawa residents, the majority of whom, unsurprisingly, oppose the protest, according to an Abacus poll for CTV.

According to the poll, 47 per cent of residents strongly oppose the protest, and 20 per cent oppose it. In contrast, 10 per cent of respondents said they support the convoy and 12 per cent strongly support it. Eleven per cent said they did not have a clear view.

Cops sought: Ottawa is still seeking 1,800 more troops to improve security in the suddenly quieter city, Global reports. The feds had a newser Monday to push for better security co-operation. Police said they were stopping refuelling, but it appeared to be continuing.

Economical with the truth: Ottawa Police disputed the number of OPP helping the city, CTV reports. Solicitor General Sylvia Jones issued a statement on Sunday claiming the province had sent “more than” 1,500 officers from the OPP and other forces to help Ottawa police. But Ottawa police said Monday the service received just 100 OPP officers.

Fire: Police are investigating a reported arson in an apartment building, Global reports.

Dangerous mail: Nova Scotia CPC MPs received envelopes containing disturbing images and what appeared to be a dangerous chemical, CP reports.

Charest courted: CPC Quebec MP Alain Rayes told Radio-Canada Monday that he has spoken to former premier (and federal PC leader) Jean Charest about running for the CPC leadership, CBC reports: “He’s a political machine, an exceptional speaker who knows Quebec and who, in my eyes, would be a formidable opponent for Justin Trudeau.” Charest had no comment.

Interested: National Post columnist Tasha Kheiriddin announced on Twitter that she is considering running.

Carney writes: Speaking of leadership and columns, former central banker and potential Liberal leader Mark Carney had a cogent, strongly worded column in the Globe on Monday, calling for firm leadership to end the crisis in Ottawa.

But by now anyone sending money to the convoy should be in no doubt: You are funding sedition. Foreign funders of an insurrection interfered in our domestic affairs from the start. Canadian authorities should take every step within the law to identify and thoroughly punish them. The involvement of foreign governments and any officials connected to them should be identified, exposed and addressed. I know from experience that crises don’t end by themselves. You can’t spin your way out of failure. You must recognize the scale of the challenge, devise a clear plan and then implement it methodically and deliberately.

Poloz speaks: Former Bank of Canada governor Stephen Poloz has a surprisingly interesting interview with Maclean’s Marie-Danielle Smith, discussing Star Trek, his new book and what is likely to happen with inflation.

Could it still be picking up? Yes, I’d say that’s a risk. But people aren’t doing a very careful job of understanding what prices have done. Supply chain issues will also get worked out—there’s too much money at stake for companies to not figure those things out. And the big counterargument, which I want to remind people of, is that the fourth industrial revolution [driven by artificial intelligence and biotech] will cause a lot of prices to fall.

View from Ottawa: Matt Gurney has a readable feature in the Line on a day among the deplorables in Ottawa, where he found many friendly if vaccine-obsessed protesters, and also mentally ill people and hard men. He found the noise unpleasant:

I still roll my eyes a bit at some of the more overheated descriptors of the honking — no, it’s not like being in a warzone, because in wars, the loud noises also include things like fire and shrapnel — I appreciate better how aggravating it would be for having now been up close myself. I was told repeatedly that Monday has thus far been a quiet day, relatively speaking. Still, after only a few hours of a relatively quiet day, I’ve had quite enough of truck horns. After 11 days, I might be prone to hyperbole, too.

Falcon in: New B.C. Liberal leader Kevin Falcon got off to an eventful start Monday, wishing John Horgan well and learning that former leader Andrew Wilkinson will resign his seat, allowing for a by-election that Falcon should win, Vaughan Palmer writes in the Vancouver Sun.

— Stephen Maher

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Crackdown: After a difficult weekend for Ottawa, Mayor Jim Watson declared a state of emergency on Sunday, calling the occupation of the capital “the most serious emergency our city has ever faced,” CBC reports.

A local state of emergency will allow Ottawa to work more efficiently to manage essential services and make procurement more flexible, the city said. Provincial legislation grants mayors powers during an emergency to make orders “not contrary to law to implement the emergency plan of the municipality and to protect property and the health, safety and welfare of the inhabitants of the emergency area.”

Police move: Later, police moved on a logistics camp, seizing fuel and making arrests. CBC’s Judy Trinh got video of the episode. Protesters appeared surprised and angered by the move, a departure from the hands-off approach that Ottawa police had pursued so far. Several people were arrested on mischief charges, and CTV reported that police were planning to cut off fuel supplies.

Deputy Chief Steve Bell told CTV News at Six this is the next step in the enforcement to deal with the ongoing protest downtown. “Look at how we limit things moving in and out of the protest area,” said Bell. “We’ve really focused and targeted on removing the access of gasoline to the area and we’ve had several seizures and several arrests related to that.”

Surge: Enforcement seemed to take a long time. On Friday, Police Chief Peter Sloly pleaded for more resources at a meeting of the Ottawa Police Services board, CBC reported, with councillors expressing frustration at the lack of enforcement. On Saturday, there were bouncy castles, saunas, a wooden food shack in Confederation Park and a feeling of lawlessness in the city, as horns honked and fireworks were set off next to apartment buildings.

Getting somewhere: In a column in the Citizen, Kelly Egan captured the frustration, but also a growing feeling that the authorities were beginning to take steps.

Sunday afternoon brought word that police would be cracking down on the supply of fuel and other materials to the vehicles in the core. And Mayor Jim Watson’s declaration of a state of emergency will only open more doors to extraordinary measures. So, maybe we’re getting somewhere. It can only help, too, that Sloly announced during the Saturday meeting that 257 RCMP officers were being made available to OPS. (In terms of numbers, especially early in the week when the protest-crowd slumps, there will surely be enough manpower to handle whatever needs to be done.) One has to think this week will be a turning point. Everyone is tired, or outright exhausted, there is no movement on “ending mandates,” not even a hint at political negotiations, a growing need for everyone to get home. (Do these people not have lives?)

Fear: Steps cannot come too soon for downtown residents, who learned Sunday from Twitter that someone had taped shut the doors of an apartment building and set a fire in the lobby.

Loathing: Republicans are angry that GoFundMe, under pressure from Ottawa, shut down a U.S.-based fundraiser for the convoy, Reuters reports.

Hearing today: A hearing seeking an injunction to silence Ottawa’s horn honkers, which was adjourned Saturday, will resume this afternoon.

Enter Poilievre: On Saturday, while Ottawa was in chaos, Pierre Poilievre released a video announcing he will seek the Conservative leadership, although what he actually said, incorrectly, is that he is “running for prime minister.” CP has a story.

In a three minute video released on social media Saturday evening, Poilievre, seated at a desk in front of a bookshelf, doesn’t mention the Conservative party by name or the contest, saying only that he wants the job as prime minister. Despite his reputation as a fiery performer in Parliament, he calmly delivers his message that he believes government spending is out of control and wants to make “Canadians the freest people on earth.” As examples, he lists paying lower taxes, raising a family according to one’s own values and “freedom to make your own health and vaccine choices.”

Poilievre is seen as a favourite, and he quickly collected endorsements from a number of Conservative MPs and former minister John Baird, who went on Global to promise that Poilievre can “galvanize Canadians.” As yet, nobody else has announced a candidacy, although redder Tories Peter MacKay, Jean Charest and Patrick Brown are all being discussed as potential challengers.

Convoy Attitudes about the convoy divide Conservatives as the leadership kicks off. Some, like Poilievre and Lethbridge MP Rachel Thomas, support it. Although there are indications that the mood may be shifting. Calgary MP put out a post supporting the convoy and complaining about media coverage of it, and then a later post with a different tone.

Stay away: In the Post, Tasha Kheiriddin writes that the party should avoid supporting the lawless protesters.

Middle-class families in suburban ridings across the country aren’t likely to drive around with obscenities gracing their cars. New Canadians, BIPOC Canadians and LGBTQ Canadians aren’t going to join a party that smells of intolerance. And Canadians in general take a dim view of the Trump-style politics that are entrenched south of the border.

Fringe: In the Star, Chantal Hébert makes a similar point, warning that CPC risks becoming a “fringe party.”

If there is a sweet spot for the party to land in, it is at centre-right, where Red Tories but also scores of Blue Liberals are quietly uncomfortable with the economic direction or lack thereof of the Trudeau government. Those voters crave a competent, fiscally conservative alternative that is more interested in policy heavy-lifting than in glib, misleading social media hits.

RIP John Honderich: The Star has a heart-felt editorial outlining the decades-long commitment to journalism of former publisher John Honderich, who died on Saturday at the age of 75.

— Stephen Maher

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