You may not have noticed or remembered, but we are passing through a series of anniversaries. Two years ago, right now, Canada was going through what we’ve come to call “the convoy crisis.”
There’s no firm start or end to the whole affair. I go with January 28, 2022, as the beginning, which isthe first time I wrote about it. As for the end date, I would pick February 23, 2022, because that’s the day the federal governmentrevoked the Emergencies Act (a whole day before Russia rolled into Ukraine and we moved onto that disaster). You could point to February 14, 2022, the day the act was invoked, as being the peak of the crisis.
But what jumps out at me, with the benefit of two years (give or take a day) of hindsight is that, in a lot of ways, it’s not clear to me that the matter is settled or ever fully ended. Last week, when my editor here at TVO Today asked me whether I wanted to write something looking back on it all, I agreed right away and was glad he asked; I’d been planning on writing something about it anyway. But as I actually put my mind to what I’d say, all I could really think of is how unsettled things remain.
Now, to be clear, there are definitely ways in which things have changed. For the better! Ottawa is clear, the border is open, the international community is not looking at us with bafflement and alarm, and although I do not think we are anywhere close to returning to pre-pandemic norms, we, as a society, do seem to have simmered down some. It seems a bit optimistic to declare that cooler heads have prevailed, but it’s probably fair to say that, in general, heads are cooler.
But it’s pretty amazing how little has changed over the past two years, even so. Politically, despite the fervent hopes of the protesters, Justin Trudeau and his Liberal party remain in power. The polls have certainly turned on them, suggesting that they will lose the next election, but the convoy was, in that basic sense, a failure.
Speaking of failures, Doug Ford, too, remains in his job. And, unlike the prime minister, he actually has faced the electorate since the events of two years ago. My views on howFordhandledthecrisis are on record, and entirely negative, but the voters had an opportunity to turf him and gave him another majority instead.
Okay!
Just about the only place we did see any real political consequences was in Ottawa. Peter Sloly was the chief of police at the start of the crisis; he didn’t make it to the end. Jim Watson, who was mayor when it all began, did not seek reelection and left public life. To the extent that I follow local Ottawa politics, it seems that the city’s wonky LRT system did as much or more damage to Watson’s political longevity as did literally losing control of his downtown core for weeks.
Once more, with feeling: Okay!
The situation is even more ambiguous when we consider the matter legally. The federal government’s decision to invoke the Emergencies Act has now been subjected to two formal reviews. Justice Paul Rouleau of the Public Order Emergency Commission found that the federal government was justified in invoking the act, though he only did so with reluctance. Meanwhile, Justice Richard Mosley, in a ruling released just last month, found that the government’s use of the act was not justified, though he also noted that there is plenty of room for disagreement and ambiguity.
Until an appeal happens, we won’t really know with any certainty whether the government was right or wrong to act the way it did. We’re all welcome to our opinions, and some of them will be more informed than others, but what we really need is the Supreme Court to rule on the matter. Until it does, we won’t know where we stand on any future uses of the act’s provisions for a public-order emergency (there are other categories for wars, natural disasters, and the like). Legal ambiguity is extremely unhelpful in these circumstances. I hope the appeal is speedy, but, having seen Canadian courts in action, I have concerns.
So that covers off the politics and the law. What about us? As a society? Where are we collectively two years later?
Tempers have cooled, as noted above. The public-health measures have ended, and for the overwhelming majority of us, life has basically returned to the pre-2020 normal. That alone seems to have taken an enormous amount of pressure off all of us, and that certainly includes me. Still, it is absolutely clear today that COVID has changed us all, probably permanently and only rarely for the better. But with the worst of the pressure gone and the controversial public-health measures rescinded, there is no longer as much impetus for the kind of protests we were seeing two years ago. There was a protest in Ottawa a few days ago. It was small, and, other than setting off some fireworks, not particularly disruptive. That is, on the scale of the past two years, a kind of progress.
Agenda segment, March 3, 2022: Unpacking the rhetoric of the "Freedom Convoy"
But that does not mean we won’t see more protests like the ones we did two years ago. The Canadian Press, citing CSIS documents it had obtained, reported just last week that there remains an active so-called Freedom Movement in this country. From the CP report (lightly trimmed for space): ‘“As many public health measures began to be lifted by early spring 2022, CSIS observed individuals ‘broadening the scope of their grievances’ and identifying as members of the ‘Freedom’ movement. ... The ‘Freedom’ movement builds on the fundamental narratives of the anti-public health measures movement, including opposition to globalization and suspicion of pharmaceutical companies, with a heavy focus on alleged government infringement of personal liberties, the CSIS analysis says.’“
That doesn’t surprise me, as I noted something similar from Ottawa just over two years ago. Inone of my dispatches from just outside Parliament Hill, I observed the incredible diversity and variety of the causes and complaints that mattered to the protesters. The pandemic and opposition to public-health measures brought them together, but only as a movement in the broadest possible sense. It is not surprising that it has lost a lot of its energy over the past two years and that what still unites it, to whatever extent it is united, is now a much more mixed grab-bag of political grievances and social fears.
The CSIS report obtained by the CP apparently also notes that CSIS is concerned with the movement only when there is some nexus between its adherents and threats to security, which remain few. That, too, aligns with what I saw in Ottawa. Most of the people there were well meaning, though misguided, in my view. But not all of them. There was a different element there. I’m not surprised CSIS still keeps an eye on some of them.
So that’s where we are, two years later. Little political change. Little legal clarity. And a protest movement that seems to have shrunk simply because it was robbed of much of its political oxygen. If I have any particular concerns today about all this, it would be these: events since the convoy have continually shown us that we remain a country that responds only very slowly and often ineffectively when presented with sudden threats. Canada is not a country built institutionally, jurisdictionally, or even psychologically for crisis. We have beenspoiled by a prosperous and peaceful history. This was one of the main lessons I took from the convoy crisis, and, instead of seeing signs of progress, I see more cause for alarm as time passes. If I had to guess, I’d say things are worse today, not better, in terms of nimble and effective institutional responses to sudden events. And I sense no urgency to address this.
And the other thing that worries me? While our society seems to have simmered down over the past two years, I have a hunch that all those same pressures would snap back into place with amazing speed if we were to find ourselves in a similar emergency again. As I said above, COVID changed some of us, perhaps all of us, and I think we would collectively react not as well to a crisis today as we did during the pandemic, at least in the beginning. Too much social trust has been lost and, I suspect, too much personal emotional damage done to every last one of us.
That’s an unpleasant thing to consider, especially when you combine those two concerns: a populace that would be less co-operative and more radical from the outset of a crisis and governments that are certainly no better at managing one.
I wish I had better news. Maybe things will look brighter in another two years. A man can dream, right?
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