Justin Trudeau's evidence at the Emergency Act inquiry was telling

On cross examination he was caught in an inconvenient truth

Trudeau gave evidence for five hours during the last day of the Emergency Act inquiry on Friday. It was fascinating.

Trudeau was well prepared, charming, articulate and made a diligent effort to persuade anyone watching that a peaceful protest in Ottawa was a national emergency equivalent to war, the underlying basis for the Emergency Act (EA) which is little changed from its origin as the War Measures Act. Trudeau handled the cross-examination well, almost expertly, although he stumbed a bit when he tried to hang on to his suggestion that the inability to secure tow trucks to move the semi’s was one basis for the invocation of the Emergency Act only to be confronted with evidence that his government had been advised the Americans would provide tow trucks on request. Trudeau was clever enough to say that the “tow truck issue” was just part of the whole ball of wax that supported invocation of War Measures, however labeled.

But his answers to why he did not meet with protesters were more telling. He said the truckers did not want to negotiate, they wanted to be “obeyed”. Give that a bit of thought. The truckers wanted an end to vaccine mandates and Trudeau was clear that he was not going to let protesters set Canadian government policy. It is clear that whatever the truckers wanted, Trudeau wanted to be “obeyed”.

Powerful stuff, but it begs the important question raised by this and every protest - was the policy under protest simply wrong?

A real leader would have the self-confidence and maturity to ask himself whether he had made a mistake in mandating vaccines and interfering with freedoms of Canadians to choose or refuse medical interventions. That leader would revisit the underlying issue and seek the inputs of his advisors. And, that leader would have the courage to revise policy if warranted. Trudeau was transparent enought to admit that many Canadians supported the truckers and shared the truckers concerns. That should have caused some retrospection. Were all the people who supported the truckers Nazi sympathizers, misogynists and racists as Trudeau described unvaccinated Canadians? Or were many of them just ordinary people moved to react to draconian policies that served no one but government?

The subsequent steps tell the tale. By June of 2022, Ottawa started to dismantle its vaccine mandates. Not much later, the evidence mounted that vaccines did not stop the spread of COVID, and that masks (also mandated) had little or no effectiveness in the case of the typical cloth masks Canadians wore. Few Canadians were able to get N95 makes which did offer some protection but were best used in a clinical setting, not in general use in the population. In Collingwood, where I live, N95 masks were reserved for hospital use and simply not available to residents of the Town.

Simply stated, the mandates were bad policy.

The truckers wanted their freedoms restored, their livelihoods back and a government that respected their right to choose or refuse medical treatment. And Trudeau made it clear that no protest was going to change any policy he had enacted, and more importantly, regardless of whether that policy was wrong.

This was little more than a clash of the Prime Minister’s ego with the desires of the citizens he pretends he represents. That is the inconvenient truth that will dog Trudeau for the rest of his (hopefully short) political career. Canadians will eventually wake up to the reality that they do not want a leader in Ottawa who puts his own ego ahead of the interests of Canadians. and that is what they elected.