Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, notorious for comparing COVID-19 to the flu and triggering a devastating wave of infections and death by scrapping all pandemic restrictions last summer, claimed the vaccine mandate was creating “a crisis” in the food supply chain and solidarized himself with the convoy. The list of prominent Conservative Party politicians endorsing the convoy has grown throughout the week. They are deeply frustrated that despite their relentless efforts to promote the lie that there is no alternative to “living with the virus” and the elimination of most pandemic income relief, the majority of the population continues to support lockdowns to halt the spread of COVID-19. Rather they have rallied round the “Freedom Convoy” with the aim of using the far right as a battering ram in their push to end all pandemic restrictions. For the mainstream media outlets, opposition Conservative Party and business leaders who have backed the protest, the trucker vaccine mandate is not the real issue. This is why the protest is being trumpeted by broad sections of the ruling elite, who view any impediment to profit accumulation, no matter how small, as intolerable.
Canadian trucker strike full#
The only “freedoms” the protesters support are the freedom of the virus to run rampant and the “freedom” of big business to keep operating at full tilt, herding workers into unsafe workplaces amid a raging pandemic, so as to maximize profits. Arguments to the contrary are based on a combination of unscientific nonsense and social Darwinist and fascistic conceptions of “survival of the fittest.” To the extent that vaccines are freely available, there is no legitimate reason for workers to refuse them.
In truth, no individual has the “right“ or “freedom” to go around infecting others with a potentially deadly virus. Tamara Lich, an official in the far-right, western separatist Maverick Party and the organizer of a GoFundMe campaign that to date has raised more than $6 million to support the convoy (much of it from anonymous donors), rails against the government “overreach” and “tyranny” of elementary public health measures. The claims advanced by this unrepresentative minority, made up overwhelmingly of far-right activists, conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers, are fatuous and absurd. Egged on by other far-right and outright fascist forces, including the likes of Rebel Media, they launched their cross-country Freedom Convoy. Nevertheless, the vaccine mandate has been bitterly denounced by a small minority of owner-operator truckers, many already active in far-right politics and conspicuous in their opposition to all anti-COVID-19 containment measures, including mask mandates. Moreover, the Biden administration has imposed a similar vaccine mandate, barring Canadian truckers who are not fully vaccinated from entering the US. The mandate has little, if any, practical significance for most truckers, including those who own their own rigs, since close to 90 percent are already fully vaccinated. The protest targets a federal Liberal government vaccine mandate for truckers crossing the US-Canada border that came into force, after months of warning, on January 15. Leading politicians from the official opposition Conservative Party have made pilgrimages to the convoy as it passes through cities across the country, hailing it as a movement for “liberty” and “freedom.” Mainstream media outlets have breathlessly reported the progress of the “Freedom Convoy” as it has traversed the country from Vancouver on the Pacific Coast to Ottawa, where the protest concludes today. Anyone following the Canadian corporate media’s news coverage in recent days will have been bombarded by reports about a relatively small protest initiated and led by far-right, owner-operator truckers against a federal government-imposed vaccine mandate.
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