Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is facing heat for not meeting with the Freedom Convoy organizers and truckers who are currently protesting against COVID-19 mandates in Ottawa near Parliament Hill.
In an emergency debate on Monday, Trudeau said that “this pandemic has sucked” and that everyone is tired of COVID-19 restrictions but that Canadians chose vaccines as the way to fight the pandemic.
“I know people are tired, but we’ve seen it through the various [COVID-19] waves and their receding over the past months [that] these pandemic restrictions are not forever,” Trudeau said while addressing Parliament, “but we have to make sure that our shared values and the idea of Canadians being there for each other, supporting one another, respecting each other, that has to be here to stay.”
Trudeau called out the Freedom Convoy protesters for going against Canadian values.
“Individuals are trying to blockade our economy, our democracy, and our fellow citizens’ daily lives. It has to stop,” Trudeau said while addressing Parliament. “People of Ottawa don’t deserve to be harassed in their own neighborhoods or deserve to be confronted by the inherent violence of a swastika on the street corner or a Confederate flag or the insults and jeers just because they’re wearing a flag. That’s not who Canada or Canadians are. That’s not what Canadians have demonstrated over the past two years.”
Trudeau’s comments have raised criticism regarding his approach.
“PM Justin Trudeau isn’t trying to calm the situation at all,” Toronto Sun columnist Brian Lilley wrote on Twitter. “He and his ministers are pouring gas on the fire and branding everyone protesting his government as a racist and a Nazi.”
Yet two years ago he was sounding very different with the rail standoff https://t.co/7SHmwxKWLM
— Grant Browning (@gbrowning101) February 8, 2022
CEO of Toronto Caribbean News Grant Browning posted video from a debate in which Trudeau promised he would listen to protesters in a rail company standoff that led to 450 layoffs and questioned why the prime minister could not listen now.
“I’m just curious Mr. @JustinTrudeau sir, what is the difference?” Browning wrote. “Why were you only interested in resolving this small standoff peacefully, yet you will not take the same effort to hear a major percentage of Canadians now?”
SEE IT: JUDGE GRANTS TEMPORARY HORN-HONKING INJUNCTION AGAINST FREEDOM CONVOY
During the emergency debate, Conservative Party leader Candice Bergen pushed back against Trudeau and questioned whether the prime minister regrets calling people names when they have been against vaccination.
Interim @CPC_HQ leader @CandiceBergenMP blames @JustinTrudeau for country being more divided than ever #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/xkYB0oiSaU
— Travis Dhanraj (@Travisdhanraj) February 8, 2022
“Does he regret calling people misogynistic and racist and just escalating and poking sticks at them and being so divisive to individual Canadians that he might [disagree] with, that he might have thought were wrong?” Bergen asked, “and will he agree to meet with the leaders here, the other opposition leaders and myself, so we can talk about a solution in the way he has described.”
Bergen referred to when Trudeau questioned how those against vaccines would be handled, saying, “We have to make a choice, as a leader, as a country: Do we tolerate these people?”
The Conservative Party leader added that the country is in a state of crisis.
“We are in unchartered territory,” she added. “We are at a crisis point, not only with what’s going on out the doors and across the country but the country overall. And so much of it is because of the things that [Trudeau] has said and done. Does he regret his words, and will he work with us so we can find some resolution?”
TOUGH TRUCKERS: CANADA’S FREEDOM CONVOY REFUSES TO BUDGE DESPITE ARRESTS AND CITATIONS
Trudeau would not answer Bergen’s question but only said that Canada is not divided and that Canadians are united over vaccines.
Conservative party member Dan Albas also tweeted questioning Trudeau’s shift in stance on engaging with people who disagree.
“The question PM Trudeau asked two years ago this month: ‘Do we want to become a country of irreconcilable differences, where people talk but refuse to listen, where politicians are ordering police to arrest people,'” Albas wrote.
The question PM Trudeau asked two years ago this month:
“Do we want to become a country of irreconcilable differences, where people talk but refuse to listen, where politicians are ordering police to arrest people…”
— Dan Albas (@DanAlbas) February 7, 2022
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The Freedom Convoy is currently in its second week of protests.
An Ontario, Canada, judge granted a 10-day injunction Monday to stop Freedom Convoy truckers from honking their horns after a lawsuit was filed against the group’s organizers and participating truckers.
The truckers have vowed to remain in place until vaccine mandates and other coronavirus-related restrictions are lifted.
