February 21, 2024 — A Fun and Playful Event Marks the 2-Year Anniversary of a “Mishmash of…

February 21, 2024 — A Fun and Playful Event Marks the 2-Year Anniversary of a “Mishmash of Grievances”

Other than multiple articles written to try to organize my thoughts and understanding of eating disorders, I haven’t frequently posted consecutively on single topics. A major exception was two years ago this month, when, with the attention of the entire country fixated on the blocks in downtown Ottawa which had become ground zero for the Freedom Convoy, I was moved to write “There May Not Be a Policing Solution to this Demonstration” and, nearly three weeks later, “‘Convoyage’: Ottawa Made Boring Again”.

On February 17 (Family Day weekend, in Ontario), a rally was held to mark the 2-year milestone since the protest was dramatically ended by the invoking, by the federal government, of the Emergencies Act. That decision led to police moving in to remove the motley assortment of demonstrators — characterized, by Konrad Yakabuski in The Globe and Mail, as “self-anointed freedom fighters whose obnoxiousness wore down the patience of average Canadians” — who’d camped out on, blockaded and occupied, with their horn-blaring trucks (and barbeques, and hot tubs, and bouncy castle) the streets just south of Parliament Hill.

Once bitten — by widespread criticism for their inept handling of the original protest, in fundamental areas such as command and control, intelligence collection, and cooperation with other police forces — twice shy: this time, the Ottawa Police Service took great pains to make clear that they were really ready to jump into action, announcing prior to the weekend that — unlike in 2022 — they had “an operational plan to address the possibility of a vehicle-based demonstration that will ensure that there is no vehicle-based protest in the downtown core.” (The OPS itself has acknowledged the shortcomings which it so painfully revealed two years ago: as noted by journalist Paul Wells in an April 2023 interview with current OPS Chief Eric Stubbs — an illuminating conversation which focused on law enforcement agencies’ evolving thinking on handling significant protests. During the Rouleau Commission inquiry into the use of the Emergencies Act, Wells reminded Stubbs, Patricia Ferguson, a deputy chief under former OPS Chief Peter Sloly, stunningly testified that few senior OPS officers were familiar with the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police’s “National Framework for Police Preparedness for Demonstrations and Assemblies.” That is, honestly, quite an assertion; I’m surprised that it didn’t appear on some front pages — but where the Freedom Convoy was concerned, there was a lot of material to choose from….)

Convoy supporters of the 2024 variety were keen to assure the public of the innocuous nature of the commemoration; the event, suggested movement supporter and organizer Bethan Nodwell in a CBC radio segment, would be “particularly positive and light-hearted… it’s gonna be fun and playful, and there’ll be speeches and music,” she predicted. “I think that there’ll be a really celebratory energy in the crowd.”

The once-angered-by-vaccine-mandates crowd has evolved (out of necessity, given the current absence of, um, COVID vaccine mandates) into a more general movement against what the 2023 Canadian Security Intelligence Service brief Defining the Freedom Movement termed “perceived government overreach” — an overflowing horn-of-plenty of frustrations succinctly summarized last week by CBC journalist David Fraser as a “mishmash of grievances.” (Writing in The Walrus this month, journalist Arno Kopecky astutely commented that while civil disobedience has traditionally been associated with leftist causes, “it seems clear that one of the big cultural shifts the pandemic brought about was an awakening to the powers of mass protest among the right wing.”)

Whatever the tyranny being opposed, the libertarian/conservative (both small and big ‘C’) movement has a spring in its steps these days, particularly given the late January ruling of Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley that the federal Liberal government overstepped its authority by declaring a public order emergency under the Emergencies Act. The government decision, determined Mosley, did not “satisfy the requirements of the Emergencies Act” and the “temporary measures adopted to deal with the protests infringed provisions of the Canadian Charter of Rights.” “Did the right beat the left at its own game?” wondered Kopecky — though he’ll have to ask the question in a louder voice to be heard over the incessant anti-Trudeau/pro-“freedom” campaigning of Pierre Poilievre, a politician hilariously (yet accurately) described by Steve Burgess last year in The Tyee as “a petty, caustic political knife-fighter with a fondness for fringe views and the fringey folk who espouse them.”

Justice Mosley’s ruling was based, in part, on his finding that the Emergencies Act forbids the federal government from seizing powers the provinces already have. The problem, where the Freedom Convoy was concerned, was that the Ontario Conservative government led by Doug Ford simply wasn’t bothering to use its policing powers to extract the occupiers from the streets of downtown Ottawa. As the Act is written, the Federal Justice concluded, the province’s refusal to act still didn’t give the federal government the right to step in and, as Yakabuski scathingly wrote in The Globe and Mail, “invoke sweeping powers to suspend [Canadians’] rights at its whim by defining security threats to suit its political needs.” (In another two years, I’ll probably be mulling over and writing about the decision of the Supreme Court — as it seems that only the almost inevitable ruling of the highest judicial branch in the land may finally settle this debate on the appropriateness of the February 2022 invoking of the Act.)

I didn’t feel the need to venture downtown to take in the festivities. Perhaps I should have made the effort to view the spectacle — the “fun and playful” festivities included multiple volleys of fireworks, and the gathering of “the convoy people” around “a giant inflatable sheep in a parking lot at Queen and Kent chanting ‘arrest Trudeau’ and heckling police.” One Twitter commentator was quick to quip that “nothing screams freedom like a giant inflatable sheep — baaaaaaa”; another quite predictably suggested that a pint-filled protestor might feel amorously inclined to attempt to mount the ram… The take-away here, surely, is to always resist scrolling through the comment section…

But ‘sadly,’ I missed out on the “celebratory energy” and love-of-freedom-fueled hijinks altogether. I’d been out late the night before, making a rare foray into the Market to catch the Born Ruffians show at the Rainbow Bistro. That was followed up with a ski in the sunshine on Saturday, a more than adequate consolation prize given the continued closure of the Rideau Canal to skating. (The Skateway had been open when I last wrote, but for only a brief 4-day stretch, after which only maintenance employees were permitted on the ice, aside from a pair of wayward and much-shared-on-social-media foxes.) On February 19, however, the green flag was raised; the Skateway was back in business. “This is your moment,” texted my friend Christine. “The canal is like bananas and avocados. There’s a small window of opportunity.”

We all have our own views on what constitutes “fun and playful.” As I often like to say, any day with ice is a good day. For residents of downtown Ottawa, a good day might be one without blaring horns, unsanctioned fireworks and abrasive anti-Trudeau f-bombs.

I’ll not speculate as to anyone’s “fun and playful” stance regarding the sheep.

Epilogue: At a February 26 Ottawa Police Services Board meeting, Chief Stubbs clarified that the OPS had issued 9 tickets for bylaw violations during the anniversary rally, and refuted accusations that the force had treated the convoy event more leniently than the enforcement on display during other recent demonstrations (pro-Palestinian marches, in particular). Chief Stubbs also asserted that the OPS “did not observe any fireworks deployed while they were present” — a claim which was quickly debunked by Luke LeBrun of the non-profit news organization PressProgress, who posted time-stamped video clips on Twitter showing officers watching the fireworks and then leaving the scene, “at which point convoy supporters launched more fireworks” and “cherry bomb-like objects.” In response to being questioned on this inconsistency, Ottawa Police Services Board ordered, a day after its meeting, an “operational review” of the OPS response to the “fireworks incident.”

Two years on, the convoy movement continues to bedevil the Ottawa police.

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