Canadian Freedom Convoy 2022

Many have probably heard by now of the Freedom Convoy in Canada, and the planned protests in Ottawa this weekend. 

First, what is it? The Freedom Convoy is a nationwide protest by truckers in Canada. They have gathered convoys of vehicles, trucks and smaller cars, all over Canada, driving from as far away as British Columbia, to Ottawa, passing through many towns and cities and attracting large crowds of supporters. The truckers are threatening to strike, and stop the logistical flow of goods into Canada from the US (a good time to remember, just how underdeveloped Canadian industries are, and how reliant we are on the US!). They are protesting the Canadian Government’s Covid Vaccine Mandates and Passports.

Now, Prime Minister Trudeau has dismissed the truckers as “the small fringe minority of people who are on their way to Ottawa, who are holding unacceptable views that they are expressing, do not represent the views of Canadians”. But is that statement really true – or is he just trying to downplay the situation, and hope that he can get good Canadian citizens who would otherwise support these people to distance themselves from the alleged “right wing extremists”, racists, bigots etc? Let’s look at some facts

First of all, we can see large news agencies like CBC trying to downplay the number of protestors at the convoy stops. We can see in the video below that the cameraman is filming only a small portion of the protesters, while behind him, there are 1000 times more people who support this protest. Interesting choice of camera angle! It’s like the news media wants people to think that it’s just a small, fringe minority – but if that was true, why would they need to use such tricks? 

Then there is the official GoFundMe page to support this Convoy that has already reached $7 million Canadian, from 100 thousands donors (as of the writing of this article). Now, 100 thousand donors doesn’t seem much in a country of 38 million. That’s only 0.2% of the total population. But you have to remember – not everyone who supports this movement is going to donate. Think – how many people that do not want the mandates would donate 50$ (or could afford to, given the sorry state of our economy right now)? 1 in 10? That makes the number of actual supporters 2%. 1 in 100? That’s 20%, and to me that seems like a more reasonable number, because I know many people who are against these mandates but they either don’t know about the convoy or don’t have the money to chip in. Given the size of the crowds you can see from videos shared on social media, I think the actual percentage and numbers are much higher. If you are having trouble finding such videos on Twitter or Facebook (probably because they delete them, in order to censor the flow of information), you can view it on Telegram channels like this one. Telegram is a platform you can install on your phone or PC, and it works a lot like Watsapp, except that unlike Watsapp it’s encrypted and not selling your personal data.

Trudeu tries to downplay the number of truckers and the threat of a strike, saying that 90% of all truckers are vaccinated. But if that is true, why do we need the mandate? According to the wikipedia article on herd immunity, even 80% of all people being vaccinated should be good enough. Even with Omicron’s supposed requirement of 89%, Canada should be good! According to all official statistics, we have reached and surpassed this threshold – then why do we need the Vaccine Mandates and Passports?  

You can show your support of the trucker convoy, and your dissatisfaction with how Trudeau is handling this situation – apply the support sticker to your phone case, laptop, car back window etc (we can make it customized as per your request):