Roundup: Police action underway, and the occupation thins

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On day twenty-two of the Grifter Occupation, the police closed their net. With all of the access routes to downtown Ottawa cut off with over 100 checkpoints, no grievance tourists were getting in for the weekend. Then, starting at Nicholas street, the combined police forces started pushing west, gaining ground on the occupiers, arresting over 100 occupiers and towing over 21 vehicles (though I’m not quite sure what the total was by the end of the day). The advance had been halted near the Chateau Laurier for most of the evening, but police have said that this would be going twenty-four hours a day, and while they can rotate in shifts, the occupiers can’t really, so we’ll see how far they have advanced in the morning when this goes live. Once the action started happening, other trucks that had been parked along Wellington started to get the message that this is real, that their organizers have all been arrested or fled the scene, and that their best bet is to leave while they still can. And so, a number of them did do just that—being stopped by the police on the way out to be given a ticket, but then sent on their way. But the hard-core elements are still there, and there were parents who put their children in the way of police as human shields yesterday, which is a Problem.

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1494795721094086659

To add to that, disinformation was going around, spread by certain less than scrupulous media figures in this country and picked up and amplified by Fox News personalities, claiming that a woman was trampled to death by a police horse (untrue, though occupiers did throw a bicycle at one horse to try to trip it up). Even more egregious were the declarations among right-wing media that this was somehow Canada’s Tiananmen Square, which is utterly boggling. Police haven’t even approached the level of violence if this were a homeless encampment in a park. They have been exceedingly careful with this whole affair (sparking yet more discussion of double standards and white supremacy), but it the fact that they are trying to make this comparison, and that Stockwell Day of all people was screaming this over Twitter, is just unbelievable, but considering that these people seem to think that Justin Trudeau is worse than Hitler (no, seriously), you see how completely unhinged their world view is.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1494851024376541187

And then there were the Conservatives, who were tweeting up a storm today to disapprove of what has taken place, expressing their “sadness” at the police action taking place, decrying the use of emergency powers, and blaming the prime minister for not meeting these extremists or capitulating to their demands. More to the point, they are trying to foist this narrative that Trudeau is being “divisive” (along with “stigmatized and traumatized Canadians”) because he *gasp!* clocked these extremists for who they were and called them out. You call out extremists—you don’t coddle them or offer them succour. But the Conservatives are so willing to go to bat for these kinds of people in the hopes that they will get something out of it in the end, which they never will. Once the Overton window has been shifted, the extremists still won’t vote for the Conservatives, and the terms of debate will be worse than when they started. They just refuse to see this happening all around them. What’s worse are the right-leaning white male columnists who are also going to bat for these people, and buying into the “Trudeau is being divisive” narrative, no matter how it’s nothing more than bullshit.

Good reads:

  • Sittings in both Chambers of Parliament were suspended yesterday because of the police action, but the House of Commons is set to resume today.
  • Dr. Theresa Tam says that the current COVID modelling shows that we are past the peak of omicron, but that loosening restrictions could see a swell in cases by spring.
  • The cost of the Trans Mountain Expansion has grown by some 70 percent, and the government announced that they are not spending any more money on it.
  • Investigations are underway after the attack on a Coastal GasLink site in BC.
  • The NDP plan to vote for the Emergencies Act, but that doesn’t mean they’re necessarily happy about it, nor are some of their former members.
  • Saskatchewan’s NDP leader, Ryan Meili, is stepping down after the party lost a long-held seat in a by-election.
  • TVO spoke to psychiatrist Tyler Black about the moral panic over children’s mental health when it comes to school closures, and why the data doesn’t bear out.
  • Althia Raj is saddened by the whole situation with the occupation, from the disinformation that drove people to it, to the police action to end it.
  • Chantal Hébert notes that the real deciding voice on the vote on the emergency orders will be Jagmeet Singh’s, given that it’s a hung parliament.
  • James McLeod notices how Very Online the whole occupation has been, and sees the constant livestreams as “connective tissue” between the real and online worlds.
  • Andrew Coyne calls out the Conservatives’ devolution into political magpies, collecting shiny objects, while they drum up a phony class war in populist drag.
  • My weekend column looks at how America is trying to co-opt the occupations into their culture war on both sides, and how that fuels certain segments in Canada.

Odds and ends:

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3 thoughts on “Roundup: Police action underway, and the occupation thins”

  1. Adam Pankratz is why people can’t stand politicians.
    http://twitter.com/adamjpankratz/status/627969932223889408
    Also reading people like Andrew Coyne, Scott Gilmore, Emmett Macfarland who seem to condemn Pete Poliver while not getting past their personal animosity to the PM is pretty much why Poliver might win. The PM can take his wife and kids to the Aga Khan’s island every weekend and run JWR in a by-election and shuffle her around Cabinet every other day and he’s better than Poliver any day yet those thick people won’t get past it.

  2. The Nazi cons are the ones traumatized by the fact they can’t win elections against someone they consider to be so “weak,” so they call him a strongarming dictator to compensate. They need therapy for how much of their hatred of this prime minister stems from handed-down mythologies about his father. If I were adding an entry into the DSM for it, I’d call it PTSD: Pierre Trudeau Stress Disorder.

  3. Why is Pierre Polievre allowed to openly campaign for leadership during the debate about the emergency act? “When I am prime minister…” Leah Gazan even asked him what he would do as leader and gave him another chance to campaign. I keep waiting for someone to object, but no one is. It must make Hansard pretty confusing.

    The speaker told the Prime Minister not to mention ministers’ names the other day (he said Duclos by name instead of “the minister of health”). But running a leadership campaign during a historic debate is apparently okay?

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