Juno News - The double standard when it comes to protesting in Canada

In this episode, I sit down with former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper to talk about his response to anti-pipeline protests in the late 2000s and early 2010s, and how he handled the situation in the face of Indigenous and environmental protest.

00:00:00.000 I want to ask you again though about Canada's institutions. Do you think we're in a good shape

00:00:05.520 as a country? What do you think of the charter at 40? What do you think of the broader constitutional

00:00:10.400 structure? How can we make these institutions more robust? What needs to be done?

00:00:16.160 Boy, that's a very big question. We're in bad shape. We have a breakdown in the rule of law.

00:00:23.200 It was just striking and disgusting to see how the difference in 24 months between the

00:00:32.880 Aboriginal and environmentalist protesters in February and March of 2020, so right around the

00:00:39.680 time that COVID was starting to become an issue, we had people blockading railway lines,

00:00:46.160 making it impossible for ships in Halifax and Vancouver to unload, and the cause they were

00:00:51.520 fighting for was it was anti-pipeline in the name of traditional Aboriginal territory,

00:00:57.920 even though the elected chiefs in those areas were pro-pipeline and were looking forward to

00:01:04.400 the job creation and getting their 80% unemployment rates, which you see on some reserves, getting that

00:01:10.400 down and getting people working. But in the name of Aboriginal rights, in the name of the environment, 0.85

00:01:14.720 in the name of anti-pipelines, we had these protesters that blockaded railway lines in Canada

00:01:21.840 and the Prime Minister's response was to negotiate and to say, we have to be patient,

00:01:26.960 even though that was definitely criminal conduct, to blockade a railway line, to blockade a highway

00:01:33.840 and prevent any traffic, not just slowing down traffic, but an outright prohibition on train travel.

00:01:41.680 So then fast forward to 2021, we've got vandals in Manitoba at the legislature tearing down and

00:01:50.560 vandalizing a statue of Queen Victoria, which is criminal conduct, and police just stand by and watch.

00:01:57.200 And then we get the truckers in Ottawa, not a single trucker charged with any crime in the first three

00:02:07.440 weeks that they're there, which tells you just how not illegal their behaviour was when there wasn't a

00:02:13.520 single criminal charge. There's no charges laid, no arrests made. And then you get this crackdown where

00:02:20.800 the Prime Minister imposes martial law on the country, the Emergencies Act, and declares a national

00:02:28.320 emergency. And next thing you know, we've got police horses trampling women, you've got unarmed 1.00

00:02:34.960 protesters getting beaten by police clubs, and you get this aggressive physical repression of a peaceful

00:02:42.000 protest. So the double standard is glaring. Where we're at in Canada is that if you're demonstrating

00:02:49.440 for a cause that the Prime Minister is sympathetic to, even if you're blatantly breaking the law,

00:02:56.480 you're not going to get in trouble. Conversely, if you're protesting for a cause that the Prime Minister

00:03:01.920 disagrees with, like our charter rights and freedoms that have been taken away from us the past two

00:03:07.040 years, well then we're going to have a ruthless physical suppression of peaceful protest. That

00:03:15.440 double standard is a violation of the rule of law, and it's very, very scary.

Juno News - April 26, 2022

The double standard when it comes to protesting in Canada

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