Oh Canada

I thought we were better than this.

Photo by Naomi Mckinney on Unsplash

I’ve spent the majority of my time living in the United States feeling both proud of and comforted by my status as a Canadian. I arrived here in June of 2016 after all. About a year into living in San Francisco, in the waiting area of the Pilates studio where I used to teach, I laughed and snapped a picture when I saw Justin Trudeau on the cover of Rolling Stone with the headline “Why can’t he be our president?” If I’m honest, a certain smugness took over in moments like this, when my home country was suddenly the envy of Americans (or at least the right kind of Americans), instead of the butt of every joke, as it had been for much of my youth.  

In the months leading up to November 2020 I was on edge, constantly attuned to any signs that Trump might actually get reelected, and what that would mean for the world at large, for the US, and for my own future. Could we really plan to stay and build a life here in this country if it once again chose to endorse this type of person, this type of ideology? Wouldn’t staying here be, in some way, my own endorsement of Trumpism and all it represents? How could I possibly choose to stay in this country, protected as I am by my various privileges, when I had a perfectly good (morally superior, even) homeland to return to? 

The morning it became clear that Biden was going to win, Jamie and I sat on the seawall at our neighbourhood beach, drinking our coffees and listening to honks and cheers all around. We laughed as we watched a classic tech bro run by in his allbirds, puffy vest and lean frame, with a hundred dollar bottle of champagne clutched in his fist. It would be hard to imagine a place that better exemplifies coastal/liberal elites than the city of San Francisco, and they were certainly celebrating that day. 

But what I felt in that moment, as I sipped my oat milk latte and listened to the waves breaking against the shore, is we get to stay. We get to stay here in this place of almost gratuitous natural beauty, in a city we love, with friendships it’s taken years to cultivate, that I now couldn’t imagine living without. We get to stay here. I hadn’t realized how long I’d been holding my breath on our future until the deep sigh of that morning. 

I remember watching my American friends during the months surrounding the 2020 election and the January 6th insurrection, and knowing their experience of this political train wreck was vastly different from my own. Not only did they not have an escape hatch if things got too crazy here, no liberal homeland to flee to if the far right had their way and we found ourselves living a version of The Handmaid’s Tale. But it was also their country they were watching be torn apart. It was their homeland that had been so degraded and divided by outright lies and power hungry leaders who care nothing for the rights of the people they represent. How scary to watch one’s own country devolve like this, I thought, grateful as ever, to be a Canadian.  

It never occurred to me that I would be sitting here, basically one year later, watching the Canadian government do things that outright disgust and terrify me, and that I would feel grateful to not be living there because I fear for the future of my country. 

This type of writing is not in my usual wheelhouse, as anyone who’s been following me for a while knows. My intention for February was to put out a piece about my 2021 book list, but it felt insane to blithely share a post reviewing a bunch of books, without so much as even acknowledging what is going on in Canada at this very moment. I am talking, of course, about the Freedom Convoy and Trudeau’s invoking the Emergencies Act. I don’t know about you, but pretty much any time I hear of any government declaring a State of Emergency or granting themselves “emergency powers”, it sets off alarm bells. 

From the beginning of this peaceful protest, Trudeau has dismissed this massive movement (estimates are between 8,000 to 10,000 people) as “fringe”, as people with “unacceptable views”, and even “a few people shouting and waving swastikas”. All of this, it must be noted, without ever once deigning to speak to these people to ask them what they stand for, and what they are hoping to achieve.

In keeping with the Prime Minister’s narrative, the Canadian legacy media (who have been recipients of a staggering amount of government aid in the last two years and are deeply indebted to the Liberal party), obediently followed suit. First, they outright ignored the protest, and when that became impossible, they managed to find a few choice representations of white supremacist symbology, and splashed those across the news to denigrate the entire movement as a bunch of white supremacists, just as Trudeau has done. 

This article from early February, written by an Ottawa-based journalist, was a refreshing take. She notes the racial diversity of the people involved, the sense of community and kindness, and the collective joy of people coming together in support of a common cause after being locked away in their homes (or trucks) for so long. She also actually interviews the truckers and their supporters, many of whom are immigrants, to discuss their concerns and their intentions (spoiler alert: white supremacy is not on their agenda) and what has brought them out in such numbers.

What the Truckers Want

No one I know has actually participated, but those with friends who have talk of the singing and the bouncy castles for kids, the sense of comradery and community among strangers, and how people (of all races, again it must be noted) have shown up to cook for the truckers, even feeding Ottawa’s homeless population while they’re at it. These hardly sound like the Trumpian bigots they’re being painted as by much of the mainstream media on both sides of the border. 

But none of this seems to have gotten much play in the mainstream press because it’s not the narrative that suits Trudeau’s agenda. It’s been a lot easier for him to push through these measures by convincing Canadians the protesters are either “anti-vax” or “white supremacists”, just about the two worst things you could call people in this political climate. Perhaps this is why more Canadians I talk to don’t seem remotely concerned, and were vastly more eager to discuss every Trump headline for the last 6 years than they have been to even mention the breakdown of democracy in their own country. I guess the assumption is that these people are evil and therefore need to be stopped at whatever cost? 

Instead of actually speaking to the protesters and understanding that the heart of what they are protesting is excessive government control and how that’s disproportionately punishing the working class, Trudeau has chosen to accord himself and his party more control. The Emergencies Act is intended to be invoked only when all other legal means have been exhausted, and he hasn’t even once tried diplomacy. He lacks the basic humility to ask these people, the very same people once heralded as “Covid heroes” because of the absolute necessity of their work in keeping the rest of us alive for the last two years, what their concerns are and what they are hoping to achieve. 

Instead he’s labeled them as terrorists and tried to liken the situation to the January 6th, 2021 insurrection in Washington, where a capital building was literally stormed with the intention of overthrowing the results of a democratic election, and where people literally died. Drawing a false parallel between these two situations is not just flagrantly dishonest, it’s extremely irresponsible. But just like labeling an entire group of people white supremacists, the topic becomes too dangerous to touch, because who wants to be accused of defending terrorists or white supremists? I certainly don’t. I don’t support either of those things, and the idea that even speaking out against Trudeau’s actions could be conflated as such, is insane. 

I am much more concerned with Trudeau’s ignoring of due process, curtailing Parliamentary debate in order to push this measure through, granting his government the right to freeze and seize the assets of anyone even suspected of supporting those who oppose his policies, banning journalists from the site of the protest under threat of arrest, and setting a precedent for criminalizing peaceful protest. If this isn’t the path to full-blown totalitarianism, I don’t know what is. 

And now, just in time for the matter to be debated and likely voted down by the Senate for a lack of legal justification, he has revoked it. So I guess that’s something, and thank god for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and others who stood against this. But I’m curious to see what measures linger beyond this “emergency”, specifically who has the power to retroactively declare something a crime, and what liberties Trudeau’s government plans to take indefinitely with the finances of those they deem (without the burden of proof) to be enemies of the state. This all concerns me a great deal more than the boogeyman that’s been made out of these protesters. 

And are there some protesters who are as bad as they’re being made out to be? Undoubtedly. I’m sure a small number of them are far right extremists who hold views I would find abhorrent. But that is far from the majority, and we do ourselves a major disservice to paint them all with that brush and to dismiss their very legitimate concerns about government overreach and the erosion of civil liberties.

So what’s my point with all of this? Honestly, I’m not even sure. To speak up, I guess. To be a dissenting voice, however small or quiet or irrelevant. 

To say that I’m sick of the way things are, the way we reflexively dismiss people who have been labeled this or that, and silence voices that we don’t understand instead of seeking to understand them.

Most of all, I’m sick of the way we as a public are complicit in the machinations of politicians and media and tech companies who don’t have any of our best interests at heart, but who benefit from stirring up tribalism and hatred, driving clicks and votes and ultimately filling their own pockets. I’m so sick of all of it, and I hate to see it happening so blatantly in my own country, who I once believed was better than this.