I haven’t heard of any violence. I haven’t heard of them forcing anything. They are obeying traffic laws. They aren’t coercing anyone or anything. They aren’t intimidating anyone unless you are one of those pu$$i&s that doesn’t pass big trucks on the highway because you are afraid...
How is that terrorism? Oh, right, the media is calling them terrorist so it MUST be true.
In America, we have the 1st amendment. Just in case you forgot...
If you haven't heard of any violence, then you haven't been listening. I will grant you that it hasn't been American-style violence -- nobody broke into Parliament, waved guns around and threatened public figures with death, but there has been desecration of public property, intimidation and other illegal acts. It certainly has not been lawful or peaceful.
Labelling this a protest by Canadian Truckers is a lie. The Canadian Trucker's Alliance has issued statements distancing themselves from this "protest" and in fact have been and continue to work towards providing vaccination opportunities for their members. The truth is the vast majority of Canadian truckers are already fully vaccinated. There are obviously some who are against receiving the vaccine, just as there are in virtually every segment of the population.
Claims of 50,000 trucks participating are ludicrous -- even if none of the trucks had trailers, that would be an uninterupted line of trucks from Ottawa to Toronto. Official estimates place the total number of vehicles (including cars and RVs) to be between 1,000 and 2,000. Stats Can shows somewhere around 630,000 heavy trucks registered in Canada, so even if every vehicle represented a trucker, and assuming the upper estimate of 2,000 is accurate, that would only amount to 0.3% of Canadian truckers participated.
The truth is that the number is even less than that. Many of the protesters have no affiliation with the trucking industry. There are a significant number that are just jumping on the bandwagon, protesting health measures and even other government policies that displease them in general.
This is Canada, the 1st amendment does not apply. We do however have the Charter of Rights and Freedoms enshrined in our Constitution, and it includes similar guarantees. Unlike the US version, the Charter applies to all persons, not just citizens. And the phrase "Freedom of expression" has a much wider interpretation by the courts. But the Charter does provide for limitations; as with any social contract, sometimes individual freedoms are contrary to the interests of society as a whole. Laws prohibit the personal freedom to fire a gun into a school full of children. Laws provide for imprisonment of criminals. Laws prohibit incitement to insurrection or inflammation of hate against others.
Your post notes that the convoy is obeying the speed limits -- ironically, another curb on individual freedoms. For some reason, society (in the form of legislation passed by duly elected representatives) has deemed it contrary to the public interest to have 100,000lbs of steel hurtling down the public thoroughfare at unlimited speeds. Arguably this has a much greater impact on the trucking industry as a whole than the requirement for the small minority of cross-border traffic to be EITHER vaccinated or be quarantined, yet we don't seem to have huge convoys protesting speed limits.
Covid is here to stay. We as a society have to develop ways to get on with our lives and our economies and live with the reality of covid for the future -- just as we have with every risk from the influenza virus to road traffic. One such measure -- enacted by both Canadian AND American governments -- is to blunt the spread through the use of measures such as vaccination OR quarantine. No one is forcing Canadian truckers to get vaccinated. They still have the freedom of choices. But with freedom comes responsibility -- the responsibility to respect the law of the land. The responsibility to participate in our societal norms in order to reap our societal benefits.
The responsibility to respect the rights of others.
