Rex Murphy: Should Justin Trudeau be deciding what views are 'acceptable'?
The prime minister's scornful dismissal of the truckers convoy makes me wonder: have those who rule us forgotten the basis of their rule?
Rex Murphy
Jan 28, 2022
Supporters line the road waving flags and signs to cheer on a convoy of truck drivers in Rigaud, Que., on Jan. 28, 2022. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has dismissed participants in the "Freedom Convoy" to Ottawa as a "fringe minority" holding "unacceptable" views. PHOTO BY CHRISTINNE MUSCHI/BLOOMBERG
A couple of years ago Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was sending valentines to our noble truckers for keeping Canadians fed through their deliveries. Yet a couple of days before this weekend’s gathering of the aforementioned truckers, who have travelled half of Canada in midwinter, from both directions, to express their concerns and feelings in a peaceful protest, he shoved them to the margins, declaring them a “fringe” and their views “unacceptable.”
Trudeau, in perhaps his meanest public statement to date, scorned them. He dismissed and derogated their motives. He gave the dismissal in his best “I’m-a-real-leader,” determined voice. His “I-really-mean-it-this-time” voice.
He described them as “a small fringe minority.” A Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian, someone once said. But this “small fringe minority” can’t be Canadians. They have “unacceptable views.”
“Unacceptable views?” Are we in China now?
Trudeau isn’t Plato. He may even be a few steps down from that high intellect. But even if he were, I’d hold off on the prime minister of a democracy ruling on what is or is not acceptable.
'Unacceptable views?' Are we in China now?
That statement of his made me genuinely wonder: have those who rule us forgotten the basis of their rule? The leaders of a democracy do not have “excommunicatory” competence. They do not get to declare what is a “fringe minority.” Nor do they have their vassals — I think of Trudeau’s former adviser and close personal friend Gerry Butts — sprinkling Twitter with slurs regarding the integrity and purpose of a large-scale, grassroots reaction to this government’s extended and flawed response to the COVID pandemic, pumping vitriol on its behalf.
So, directly, I ask — who is Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister, to declaim on what is “acceptable” thinking? Does a prime minister of a democracy rule on what are “acceptable” responses to his very own government’s policies and practices?
This is a 33-per-cent-minority prime minister. So let me ask again what I have asked in other columns.
Has Trudeau had the courtesy to go and meet with a few truckers? Not just their leaders, if indeed they have formal leaders. Has he listened to any of the actual individuals who have thought it worthwhile to make this arduous journey? No cameras. No photo op. Just sit in a cab, or grab a coffee in a diner, and hear a few individual drivers out. It would be intensely enlightening.
There is a voice within this protest, a voice beyond the owner of the hands on the wheel, beyond the cheers coming from the side of the road or from the highway overpasses. A voice coming from the less comfortable in society, the perennially less seen or regarded. It’s the voice of dutiful, working citizens whom the past two years of shutdowns, loss of work or severe reduction of income, all kinds of pressures and anxieties, have worn them down. The truckers are emblems, stand-ins for these Canadians.
And because they usually make no noise, usually just go about their business, hardly ever stage even a small demonstration — until now — to the professional classes, these Canadians are just simply not there. That’s the real gap here. The political and commentating clerisy really don’t know, and have made no effort to know or appreciate, the lives and livelihoods of those on the lower end of the economic scale. How the other, less fortunate, half lives.
No one who has ever dealt with such wonderful people would dare to slander the great majority of them as “fringe” or “unacceptable.”
Salt of the earth, is by far the apt description.
The truckers are emblems, stand-ins for these Canadians
Our country, or our sense of country, is the accumulation of the temperaments of its citizens.
And the average, normal, typical — whatever the appropriate adjective is — Canadian individual is a very welcoming person. When in difficulty he or she simply wants a chance to speak, and a polite ear to listen.
Not to be brusquely hectored by their leader, in effect shunned before given the chance to speak.
This was a low moment in Canadian politics. A deliberately political and, let us be honest, very mean-spirited and calculated characterization of what I am sure is, by far in the main, a movement of honest Canadians caught in a hard time asking their government, and their PM in particular, to give them a just and respectful listen.
I’m writing the day before their full arrival in Ottawa. Let’s see who’s there to listen and who’s willing to give a fair hearing.
Press on truckers. I hope the long and hard ride was worth it.
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