Juno News - February 14, 2022The freedom convoy is a social movement
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
190.12851
Summary
In this episode, I talk about what I think is going on in the streets of Canada right now, and how establishment voices and the political class are failing to see what's truly going on on the streets, and why it's not a political statement.
Transcript
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Establishment voices and the political class in Canada are really failing to see what's
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truly going on in the streets of Canada right now as people protest COVID-19 restrictions
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and mandates. There's one big way of thinking about it that I think they've screwed up. They're
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not seeing it the right way. And an example of this is Doug Ford giving his press conference
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a couple days ago when he talked about bringing in a state of emergency to deal with most acutely
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what was going on at the Ambassador Bridge, the blockade there, but also what was going on in
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Ottawa and elsewhere. Doug Ford giving his statement said multiple times that okay guys you have made
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your political statement but your right to make a political statement doesn't mean that you can do
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this that and the other and therefore we have to bring in these these policies. He made other social
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media posts as well using this phrase political statement and I think that's rather telling and
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and I think that's part of the problem both right now and also speaks to a problem that we've had
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in our COVID response for quite some time now. Political statement. Whoa whoa whoa. This is not
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a political statement in the traditional sense. Yes there are some people waving the banners that say
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F. Trudeau. Okay a lot of people waving the F. Trudeau banners and they're clearly uh they would
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clearly prefer that Justin Trudeau not be Prime Minister anymore. So yes that's that's political in many
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respects but more broadly speaking what we're seeing here this this really kind of diverse collection
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of voices coming together it's not a political statement it's a social movement because yes we've
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got people with certain political views but we've also got people with other political views coming
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forward on this issue. A diverse array of individuals you've seen the polling numbers perhaps that show
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uh 50 percent of Green Party voters support what's going on in the streets of Canada right now. So a really
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diverse collection of voices diverse in all senses of the word religions and and uh and ethnic backgrounds
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and walks of life and and and professions I mean we're just seeing so many different people come
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together here. Disparate grievances in some sense they have particular concerns particular focuses on
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different aspects of the COVID-19 rules restrictions mandates but they're all coming together coalescing to
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say enough is enough we've had enough no more of these rigid rules no more of these rigid mandates and
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that's what's bringing these individuals together as part of a social movement as opposed to one
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particular political statement. There's a lot of people on the streets who vote actually different
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ways they're not all just you know conservative voters or People's Party of Canada voters uh they have
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a variety of perspectives in that regard and it is a social movement but the problem is Doug Ford and
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Justin Trudeau and others not just right now with the protests but for many months now they've been
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conceptualizing COVID-19 as as a run-of-the-mill political issue as if it's akin to whether or not
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you should ratchet up this tax credit by 50 bucks or lower the tax credit by 50 50 bucks as if this whole
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idea of all these big things we've done to people's lives shutting things down on and off again
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telling people your children must wear masks for two years straight who you can see who you can't see how
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far apart you have to stand from people as if these these very very visceral things that have proven
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quite traumatic for many people as if it's just some basic little politics as usual it's not a political
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statement when people say we've had enough with these things it's much more of a broad-based social movement