Rupa Subramanya: Freedom Convoy dismantles stereotypes about who is opposed to vaccine mandates

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OTTAWA — Freedom Convoy 2022 has broken some important stereotypes. We were told it would be a small number of disaffected, potentially violent, far-right, middle-aged white Canadians, but walking around the protests over the weekend in Ottawa, one saw people in large numbers of all ages and ethnicities, no violence so far reported by police.

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Some estimates put the number of people on Saturday at between 8,000 and 10,000, remarkable for a day with an extreme cold warning and in the midst of a lockdown, where you couldn’t even sit in a cafeteria to warm up. While Sunday’s crowd was thinner when walking in the morning, numbers may have increased later. From where I live in Byward Market, I felt all day Sunday that the excitement or decibel level of the truck and car horns and the fireworks did not stop. Throughout the weekend, the mood was festive, with an obvious sense of catharsis after two years of heavy restrictions and repeated closures.

The protesters comprised both old and new Canadians, young and old, of all political persuasions. Additionally, while the stated goal of the convoy is to oppose federal vaccine mandates and other restrictions, such as lockdowns and mask mandates, two of the leaders and some of the protesters are vaccinated but believe vaccination should be a individual choice. Those leaders have distanced themselves from parallel convoy organizers who have outright opposed vaccination, promoted vaccine misinformation or made other hateful comments.

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One myth that was immediately busted was the surprising diversity of the protesters, beginning with the two main organizers, Benjamin Dichter, who is Jewish, and Tamara Lich, who is Métis. Far from being a uniformly disgruntled group of white Canadians, not that there’s anything wrong with being one, one saw Indo-Canadians, Arab Canadians, Chinese Canadians, Black Canadians, and just about every other ethnic Canadian under the sun.

People had different reasons for joining the protests. A couple from Cambridge, Ontario, whose nephew committed suicide due to depression during the lockdown, said they were here to make their voices heard for the children, including their daughter, who was with them, without access to schools, physical activity and social life. Remember, as I wrote earlier, Canada has had one of the most severe restrictions among advanced wealthy nations, and Ontario has been more severe on average than the rest of Canada, especially for children.

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An Indo-Canadian truck driver, Kamal Pannu of Montreal, whom I spoke with, was puzzled that the protesters were labeled as white supremacists when many of them, including himself, are ethnic minorities and people of color. Some Sikh Canadians who make up a large percentage of truckers in Canada seemed to be at various transit points on trucker routes to Ottawa to share food and blankets with truckers, says Pannu, who is Sikh.

There were those who lost their jobs because they didn’t want to get vaccinated or had friends or family who lost their jobs for similar reasons or because of the economic impacts of the closures. I spoke to Orlando, Barry and Ayesha, Black Canadians who drove from Toronto, protesting on behalf of those who lost their jobs, including Orlando, 43, who now works as an independent contractor, since he had a trade to fall back on.

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As vaccines rolled out, remember that surveys told us that vaccine hesitancy was greatest among black Canadians and other racialized groups who, for entirely legitimate reasons, have strained relationships with authority. Maybe that’s why there were so many black Canadians at the protest over the weekend? Of course, this does not necessarily imply that they are not vaccinated, but they certainly oppose government-imposed vaccination mandates. How did the Canadian elite’s view go from compassion for marginalized groups afraid of being vaccinated, to hatred and vitriol, that such people should be ostracized, jailed or fined, in just a few months? This growing extremism among the ostensible mainstream should give us cause for pause.

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What many observers have missed is the clear class divide that has been exposed by the protests. While public servants and others who can safely work from home on a series of endless Zoom calls are largely unaffected by the lockdowns, the impact on blue-collar workers has been devastating. For them, the restrictions on their freedom that emanate from lockdowns and mandates are existential, literally related to losing a job and not being able to pay rent or put food on the table.

On Sunday in Ottawa, Dichter and Lich laid out their goals, which is not to be a partisan movement but to galvanize the public against the usurpation of their freedoms that began with the first lockdowns in the spring of 2020. Ontario and Quebec are about to come out of harsh restrictions that are a throwback to the beginning of the pandemic, despite high vaccination rates and other therapeutic tools to deal with COVID19.

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Dichter and Lich say they are not involved, no pun intended, with any racist fringe elements that may have joined their movement. Some images of confederate flags and the swastika have been circulating, but as Dichter told me, since he is Jewish and Lich is metis, the idea that they would endorse such racism is “hysterical.”

It’s also worth noting that in a short period of time, the convoy raised $8.5 million through a GoFundMe campaign. For comparison, major political parties such as the Liberals and Conservatives raised this order of magnitude of money in a period of about three months. Anyone who dismisses this move as a lightning bolt or a few disgruntled people is underestimating the potential impact on Canadian politics. Whether someone likes it or not, there is a stir going on and it would be better to understand it than to bury your head in the sand.

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While almost everyone is upset about the lockdowns and restrictions, and this cuts across party lines, the impact of the protests is more existential for the Conservative Party, which is clearly divided on whether to embrace or reject the protesters. . While party leader Erin O’Toole has tried to maintain a studious neutrality, some, like Pierre Poilievre, have reached out to them.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has derided the protesters as a “fringe” whose views are unacceptable, but it is clear that the protest movement is much more than that. Tell the guy who lost his job or the family who lost his nephew to suicide that they’re just a fringe.

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