How I was Impacted by the Emergencies Act in Canada

When I heard that truckers needed to be vaccinated in January of this year, which seemed to me a very late date that made no sense, I found it extremely unfair, just as it was unfair that suddenly health care workers were laid off. We suffered drastically as a result of a reduction in healthcare workers and now the supply chain was about to be interrupted. Our government, along with our top health officials, were no longer acting in the interests of the public but were instead becoming vindictive and behaving in an unprecedented, authoritative manner.

I watched the streams of people who supported the truckers as they drove across Canada, but I had to watch home videos because our Canadian news outlets did not carry this major coast to coast event. And that was the case once truckers reached Ottawa, as well. The media pounced on the slightest misdemeanour without even investigating and made it a sensational news issue. There was a pre-meditated narrative, tarring innocent truckers.

At that point I saw I could no longer trust the news media. I probably watched a dozen different, on the ground, unofficial “reporters” from day to day and heard first hand reports from people I knew who went to Ottawa. The story did not match what I heard in the news.

What was most troubling to me was that our Prime Minister Trudeau concocted a narrative that made it convenient for him to initiate the Emergencies Act.

When bank accounts were frozen and information was hacked from GiveSendGo and GoFundMe and publicized on Twitter, there was no holding anyone to account for this illegal action and violation of personal privacy. In fact violating personal freedoms was celebrated in the news.

Truckers cooperated when they were arrested yet in one case a trucker was brutally beaten. He was also a first generation immigrant. Truckers who were recent immigrants to Canada said things like they came here for freedom. They were also the first to say how much our government actions surrounding the mandates reminded them of the oppressive countries they fled.

Prime Minister Trudeau never publicly corrected the fallacy he repeated, which was published and later retracted by the CBC, that the convoy was funded by foreign actors.

What I find so heartbreaking is that our Prime Minister was hell bent on making an example of the truckers. He predetermined that they were something akin to terrorists. By all appearances, he wanted to re-enact the January 6 event we saw south of the border.

But instead he looked like a coward for not legitimizing the concerns of truckers who lost their livelihood. The world looked on with scorn and horror at the seizure of bank accounts and credit cards, leaving people with no ability to buy food or pay bills. A woman my husband encountered had her bank account frozen for a month for giving $25 to the truckers. We have lost our international respect as a charitable democracy.

Meanwhile the focus of this enquiry is on how locals in Ottawa were inconvenienced by the presence of the truckers. Truckers supplied food for homeless people. They kept the streets immaculate. They kept crime down. They cooperated with the police. The Ottawa police are the most reliable witnesses of what actually happened, yet they are being villainized if it is discovered they gave a donation to the truckers. Simply unthinkable.

There was no need for businesses to be shut down around the parliament. MP’s walked by the truckers daily and never felt any danger or threat. And needless to say, the alleged weapons were never found among the truckers, yet they were treated as terrorists.

When a woman on a walker was knocked down by horses, and I’ve seen the video to prove it, the news told us a bicycle was thrown in front of the horses. No, it was her walker. I didn’t see any retraction by the media of this and many other false narratives, and exaggerations and insinuations.

People were in Ottawa for freedom. This is not the message the media gave us and I find this extremely troubling. Our Prime Minister committed an egregious offence against Canadians by initiating the Emergencies Act. The proper thing would have been to lift the mandate against truckers as early as possible.

The fact that there was no major outbreak of the virus while thousands gathered in Ottawa is further proof that the mandate was unnecessary. The actions of our government were merely wedge politics culminating in the Emergencies Act. What was done with the Emergencies Act, arresting and imprisoning innocent citizens, including a woman, has seriously eroded Canadian trust in our government and its institutions. And even now the media does not stop but went as far as to trace how many participants in the truckers convoy donated to the Poilievre leadership campaign. To their surprise it was under 5%. That means the truckers are just the tip of the iceberg of Canadians who are disillusioned with our current government. Liberal leaning Jean Charest only had 16 percent of the vote in the leadership campaign while the media told us it was a close race.

#TrudeauMustGo showed us on Twitter how Canadians feel about having a prime minister speak of them as people with “unacceptable views.” The hashtag quickly garnered over 500,000 posts and there were more. Prime Minister Trudeau underestimated how many people felt violated by the mandates and cooperated reluctantly.

Ironically, one beautiful thing has come of the Emergencies Act. It has united many Canadians. Until we saw the Emergencies Act in force, we thought we were only imagining the tyranny of our Liberal Government. Now we have irrefutable evidence. The sad thing is that reality was even worse than we imagined.