Reports of the desecration of the National War Memorial, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and the Terry Fox statue, as well as open displays of swastikas and the Confederate flag on Parliament Hill by protesters, has sickened many Canadians.
By FAREED KHAN AND RABBI DAVID MIVASAIR February 7, 2022
The so-called “freedom protest” which has taken over Parliament Hill and occupied downtown Ottawa for more than a week is a movement that is a potential danger to Canada’s political stability, with its manifesto calling for insurrection and overthrowing Parliament.
Some of those involved with the protest and their allies have publicly advocated Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, racism, and incitements to violence in the past. When you add that history to some calling for the overthrow Canada’s duly elected government, you have a recipe for extremist violence and political instability. Given the threat posed by this call for insurrection, some involved with this movement need to face the full force of Canada’s justice system, since what some of them seem to want is no less than a repeat of the violence that happened at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
The demands of protest organizers are something more likely to be seen in “banana republics” rather than in an advanced democracy. Fortunately, the removal of their GoFundMe campaign by the platform, which had raised more than $10-million, means that financing for additional extremist protests is now unavailable.
What Canadians saw over the past week in Ottawa should not come as a surprise. In 2015, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) issued a report which concluded that right wing extremists and white supremacists posed a bigger security threat to Canada than Al-Qaeda- or ISIS-inspired terrorism. If the events in Ottawa this past week and the protesters’ manifesto are any indication, it seems the CSIS report was not taken seriously by federal leaders.
During a week when Canada marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day and the fifth anniversary of the Quebec City mosque shooting, witnessing the images coming out of Ottawa was deeply disturbing. Reports of the desecration of the National War Memorial, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and the Terry Fox statue, as well as open displays of swastikas and the Confederate flag on Parliament Hill by protesters, has sickened many Canadians. It displays the extremist nature of elements within this protest movement who have little respect for what a majority of Canadians hold dear, and the fact that the other protesters did not appear to challenge those carrying these symbols of hate makes them complicit.
There is also disgust being expressed from different quarters with Conservative politicians who have seemingly allied themselves with protest organizers. Social media is awash with posts by Canadians expressing outrage with Conservative interim leader Candice Bergen, Conservative MPs Pierre Poilievre and Michael Cooper, and other right-wing politicians, who are spitting in the face of fully vaccinated Canadians by joining the protesters. By standing shoulder to shoulder with them, these Conservative MPs have betrayed Canadians, and the 90 per cent of truckers, who have abided by pandemic restrictions and mask mandates, and done the responsible thing by getting vaccinated.
In addition, the actions of some Tory MPs smacks of racism when you compare their support for this protest to their response to past Indigenous protests. When Indigenous people have put up blockades in the past to defend their land or express dissatisfaction with government policies most Conservative MPs never defended their right to protest the way they are defending the rights of the Ottawa protesters. Instead they were quick to call for police to move in and break up those demonstrations, even when they took place on Indigenous lands. With this protest, which is holding an entire city hostage, the Conservatives have decided instead to enable the protesters.
There have also been egregious disruptions and violations of the rights of Ottawa residents to feel safe, with unmasked protesters threatening and intimidating retail workers and people on the street wearing masks. Now let us imagine these thugs similarly intimidating and threatening businesses and people across the country by refusing to follow mask mandates, not just for one week but for months on end, and imagine these unvaccinated mobs being walking COVID-19 variant factories spreading infections across the nation.
The threat that the protest organizers and their followers pose may not seem real, but then Americans never thought there would be an attempted insurrection in their country. To prevent something similar from happening in Canada federal leaders need to act decisively and put a stop to the occupation of Ottawa before things go horribly wrong.
Fareed Khan is the founder of Canadians United Against Hate, and Rabbi David Mivasair is a member of Independent Jewish Voices.
The Hill Times
© 2022 The View From Here. © 2022 Fareed Khan. © 2022 The Ottawa Citizen. All Rights Reserved
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