Earlier this week, a convoy of 160 cars and trucks crammed with people left the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol in a bid to escape the indiscriminate Russian bombing that has reduced much of their home to rubble.
Mariupol has been the scene of heart-breaking images, like the pregnant woman being carried on a stretcher out of a bombed maternity hospital destroyed by Russian missiles. She and her unborn child would later die.
Thousands in the city of 430,000 have been killed or injured, according to Mariupol officials.
But this is not a column about Mariupol or the war in Ukraine. This is a column about those participating in the so-called “freedom convoys” and associated pop-up “freedom” rallies that have been occurring in Canada. In the context of what is happening elsewhere in the world they are, frankly, deplorable.
Anyone complaining about the lack of freedoms in this country is out of their mind. Anyone complaining about COVID-19-related restrictions is a privileged, pampered, self-indulgent idiot. And just because you wave a Canadian flag while doing it doesn’t make you any less of one.
In fact, it will take a while for our poor flag to recover from the damage these fools have inflicted on it.
A convoy of truckers associated with the group Canada Unity, the same organization that helped bring us the three-week-long Ottawa squat and associated border blockades, is planning to target Greater Vancouver this weekend and later make its way to the capital of Victoria. There are speeches planned from people representing outfits most of us have never heard of, like Make Canada Free Again and Union of People.
There will be people taking the microphone demanding that Canadians be given their freedoms back. Demanding government stay out of the lives of ordinary folk. There will undoubtedly be lots of horn honking.
The vast majority of Canadians lost any respect they might have had for these people as they watched the Ottawa encampment and border blockades drag on. Policing costs for the City of Ottawa were $35-million alone. Companies lost hundreds of millions revenue. The protesters had the gall to suggest they were standing up for the rights of the little person, those whose voices never get heard. While at the same time ensuring that hundreds of these same little people lost much-needed income because their place of employment had to temporarily close because of the insurgency.
In recent weeks, these so-called freedom fighters have been taking up the cause in the Beltline neighbourhood of Calgary. They have appropriated public parks as staging areas, denying access to parents and children who normally inhabit them on a weekend. The protests have affected businesses. Residents have had enough and have started to organize counter demonstrations. This has led to tensions between the two sides.
Calgary police, like their counterparts in Ottawa, have seemed unsure about what to do. Now they are pleading with people not to show up – a tactical response that’s unlikely to succeed. On Friday, the city successfully obtained an injunction against the protesters but it’s unclear what effect that will have.
Freedom is a pretty strong word, one that shouldn’t be thrown around lightly. And when you say your freedoms have been taken from you, that you are effectively prisoners in your own country, then you’d better have a convincing argument to make.
Mandates put in place to help curb the spread of a once-in-a-hundred-year pandemic that has claimed the lives of millions around the globe doesn’t quite fit the bill. Especially given that most of these orders have been lifted.
You know who has a right to complain about their freedoms? Russians. They can’t utter a single negative word about their government without fear of being thrown in jail. They can’t even hold up a blank piece of paper in front of a camera, as one woman recently did, without being carted away by police.
Meantime, our freedom fighters can hold rallies populated by people holding up signs that suggest our Prime Minister go copulate himself.
You know who else has a right to complain about their freedoms? Ukrainians. Their lives are being destroyed for no reason. Want to protest something, Canadian freedom fighters? Protest the vile monster that is Russian President Vladimir Putin. Protest what he is doing to millions of innocent people instead of wasting your time, and the time of your fellow citizens, with your pathetic, stupid rallies over what amounts to an inconvenience.
Think about the billions of people around the world who would change places with you in a Saskatoon minute.
The real freedom convoy is in Ukraine, where a cavalcade of people are fleeing for their lives. They are the ones who really have something to complain about.
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Gary Mason