The Daily - An American-Style Protest in Canada

Episode Date: February 16, 2022

Canada has employed strict restrictions in its efforts to fight the coronavirus pandemic. But unlike in the United States, such measures have received very little pushback or politicization — until recently.Truckers protesting a vaccine mandate have occupied the nation’s capital, Ottawa, for three weeks, leading Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to declare a state of national emergency.We ask how Canada got to this point, and hear what the protest is like on the ground. Guest: Catherine Porter, the Toronto bureau chief for The New York Times.Have you lost a loved one during the pandemic? The Daily is working on a special episode memorializing those we have lost to the coronavirus. If you would like to share their name on the episode, please RECORD A VOICE MEMO and send it to us at [e-mail]. You can find more information and specific instructions here.Background reading: The trucker protests seem to challenge the cherished image that Canadians are moderate, rule-following and just plain nice. But was that really a myth all along?The fractious coalition behind Canada’s protests include former law enforcement officers, military veterans and conservative organizers. Want more from The Daily? For one big idea on the news each week from our team, subscribe to our newsletter. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

We're entering the third week of illegal blockades that have been disrupting the lives of too many Canadians. The federal government has invoked the Emergencies Act to supplement provincial and territorial capacity to address the blockades and occupations. Invoking the Emergencies Act is never the first thing a government should do, nor even the second. The Act is to be used sparingly and as a last resort. I know that everyone is tired of this pandemic. We're hearing your frustration with COVID and even with the temporary

measures we had to put forward to keep people safe. I know people are frustrated. I hear it. You have a right to express that frustration, and even your anger, with the government or government policies. It's something we'll always defend in this free and democratic country. But blockading streets and critical infrastructure and depriving your neighbors of their freedoms is a totally different thing. It has to stop. From The New York Times, I'm Michael Bovar.

This is The Daily. For nearly three weeks now. We begin the program in Canada, where a standoff between truckers and the country's government over COVID restrictions shows no sign of ending. Hundreds of truckers and their supporters have occupied Canada's capital city of Ottawa. The truckers are protesting Canada's mandate

that requires them to be fully vaccinated against COVID or to quarantine. In an unprecedented act of protest that has shocked the country's government. Yesterday, for the first time in half a century, Canada's Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, declared a national emergency, granting him enormous powers to intervene. Today, I spoke with my colleague, Toronto Bureau Chief Catherine Porter, about a surprisingly American-seeming scene

unfolding in Canada. It's Wednesday, February 16th. Good morning, Catherine. Good morning, Michael. Nice to see you. Catherine, you look surprisingly rested and fresh for someone who has been out covering protests for a week. I'm not rested, but I am fresh, and I'm excited to talk to you. Me too. we got to this point where the Prime Minister of Canada is now invoking emergency powers to end this standoff with protesters in the country's capital?

Well, this started about a month ago. There was a new law put in place that required truckers who cross the border into the United States to be vaccinated in order to come back across the border. Before then, that rule had not been something they had faced. And this was going to, for some of them who had not been vaccinated, threaten their livelihood. So this all begins with what's seen as an overly restrictive policy requiring that truckers get a vaccine? In order to cross the international border and come back into Canada. Yeah. Overly restrictive. Well, some of these truckers obviously felt so, but I think the reaction in a lot of Canada was kind of a shrug because Canada's reaction to the pandemic,

Canada was kind of a shrug because Canada's reaction to the pandemic, particularly as opposed to Americans' reaction, was to follow science, to lock everything down, and to get vaccinated as quickly as possible. We're now 85% of the population, five and up, has been double-vaxxed. We're one of the most vaccinated countries in the West. We're also one of the strictest countries when it comes to restrictions. You know, it was only recently that Canada, or at least the part that I'm talking to you from, which is the biggest province here, allowed indoor dining again. And, you know, since the beginning of pandemic, it's only been a matter of months that they've allowed indoor dining. It's almost entirely been either outside in Canada, imagine, or takeout. It's cold.

It's very cold most of the, well, at least half the year is very cold. You know, and my kids, I have two kids, and they have spent the majority of the last two years on a screen learning. the majority of the last two years on a screen learning. In fact, the local papers repeat here that kids in Ontario have spent the least amount of time in classes, in classrooms, and anywhere in North America. Wow, the whole continent. Exactly. So the country's been under an extreme lockdown.

But at the same time, you really haven't seen that pushback you've seen in the United States. Polling has shown that consistently people support these type of strict public health measures to limit the spread of the virus. You know, if anything, people here tend to criticize the government for not doing enough, not for what they're doing, but what they're not doing. And so it's been a story of a largely compliant country where the national sentiment has been, let's take care of one another. And that's something we're all going to do. We're in this together. something we're all going to do. We're in this together. So you're saying ahead of this protest, not only were Canadians quite used to these kinds of policies and restrictions, they had been quite accepting of them.

Yeah, definitely. In Canada, the pandemic has not been politicized like it's in the States. It's not something that's pitted the political left versus the political right. Even in the more conservative parts of the country with conservative local governments, even there, they have mostly followed the science, followed public health experts, and put down fairly stringent rules. And, you know, in cases where politicians have broken the rules,

like, for instance, gone on vacation over Christmas when there was a lockdown in place, the repercussions from the electorate have been severe and they've lost cabinet positions over it. Mm-hmm. So we should not understand this to be a story of more conservative, working-class Canadians opposing this mandate on political grounds? Well, you know, we could look at it through that lens now, but before this, I don't think that was the case at all. And I want to be clear, around 90% of truckers in Canada are vaccinated according to the Canadian Truckers Alliance. So this is a small percentage of them. But for that group, they say that their livelihood is at stake and they wanted to bring their beef to the Capitol and let it be known. So in January, a group of truckers and other organizers began what they called the Freedom Convoy,

driving across the country, starting in the very far west towards the capital of Ottawa. Along the way, they get bigger and bigger. And, you know, interestingly, I'm talking to you right now from Toronto, which is the biggest city in Canada. And people were, you know, lining the bridges. Like they normally do when the bodies of soldiers come back. People line the bridges to wave flags at the convoy of hearses, historically. But people were lining the bridges with Canadian flags, mostly, with Canada flags, cheering them on. I believe in vaccinations. I'm not an anti-vaxxer, but enough is enough. Our kids,

my son, he's seven. And all he talks about is he wants his childhood back. He's sick of wearing a mask at school. He cries to go to school, but he loves school. So, you know, I want my Canada back. I want freedom. These weren't huge crowds of people, but there were crowds of people. So there was evidence along the way that they had tapped into something. You know, it wasn't just about the truckers. It wasn't just about their jobs. They had tapped into an undercurrent in Canada of frustration. So what happens, Catherine, when this Freedom Convoy arrives in the capital, in Ottawa? So first you need to know Ottawa is this sleepy capital of Canada.

It's generally a small city full of bureaucrats and politicians who fly in for business. One thing that it's used to, though, is protest. There's lots of protests, just like in Washington. So the fact that these guys come in doesn't take anyone by surprise. They roar into the city and they end up on the street, really in the political heart of the country, right in front of the legislature, really in the political heart of the country, right in front of the legislature, beside the prime minister's office, all of the elected representatives' offices, the Supreme Court. And they line up their trucks along the street and onto many of the side streets,

and they begin to protest. What I think surprised people was that I do know from local politicians that they had been briefed by the police and they thought, OK, these guys are going to come. They're going to make a lot of noise. It's going to be a typical boisterous protest. They'll be here for a day or two, probably for the weekend. And come Monday, they will roar out of town the same way they roared in, having made their point. And what happened on Monday? They stayed. And they kept honking. And they are allowed to stay for some reason. Yeah. I mean, I think a big debate went on, is still continuing to go on as to why the police did not try and move them.

But I think the biggest innovation of this protest, the thing that took everyone by surprise is you can move a bunch of protesters who are on foot, but moving a 30,000-pound tractor trailer takes something quite different. So these guys had moved in with these brilliant protest machines because they're super heavy. You know, they're really hard to move. I talked to tow truck operators who told me that it takes an hour just to hook one of these things up, let alone move it.

They come with really big noise-making machines that are like meant to tell the moose and whatever else is on the highway to get out of the way. So they have these huge protest sound machines built in. They have beds and heaters. I mean, it's like very cold in Ottawa. It's one of the coldest capitals in the world. And they come equipped with heaters too. So you can stay for as long as you want in one of these trucks. So, you know, were they allowed to stay? I think there's obviously going to be a post-mortem. The police will say that they kept telling them to leave, but they couldn't and did not make them leave. So, Catherine, how does this progress as these truckers really start to dig in?

Well, pretty quickly, there are a lot of questions of what's really going on here. Like, what's behind this? Ottawa residents were complaining about feeling terrorized by some of the protesters, that they're being followed, being chased. There's an attempted arson that they believe was by a protester. And there's this really threatening aspect that they at least feel to this. And then there are some signs of a more extremist alt-right presence that people are wondering, like, where did this come from? There were these reports of a number of flags from alt-right groups, like the Sons of Odin, but also flags with Nazi symbols, like the swastika on them

and Confederate flags. And this old Canadian flag from the time before our country's immigration policy had opened up beyond Europe, Australia, New Zealand, like in other words, largely white countries. And lots of the local reporting in Canada also started to reveal that many of the people who were declaring themselves the leaders of this protest were not actually truckers. In fact, very few were. Some were police officers. Some were army veterans. Some had direct ties to far-right groups. And they appeared to be helping to organize and to fundraise.

And fundraise, you mean for this protest on behalf of the truckers in Ottawa? Yeah, to fundraise for the protest and keep it going as long as possible. And so, you know, I was like, what is this? What's happening here? Whatever it is, it's not something I have seen in Canada before. So, you know, I packed my bags and I headed to the airport to get to Ottawa as quickly as I could to make sense of it. We'll be right back. Okay, Catherine, what do you find once you get to Ottawa?

I find a scene that is like nothing like I've ever seen in a Canadian city before. It's 11.15 on a Saturday night. It's very cold. It's well below freezing. Two bonfires burning, and people around me dancing to drums. The city has become one giant party, and the feeling really is... You know, the main street that runs through the power corridor of the country has been converted into this huge tailgate party filled with trucks. And the sense is just complete cognitive dissonance that you can't believe you're standing in front of the country's legislature.

And so, you know, there's this real sort of festival feeling of it. There's also just this sense, I think, like of people enjoying each other's company. Like we've all been in our homes for two years and not meeting strangers. So you see all these strangers hugging one another.

Like I really felt it myself as a reporter. My job normally, you know, is to be out in the world and understanding what's going on, but I've basically been stuck to my, like, house reporting from an office for the last two years. You know, it was odd, but even reporting on the story just felt so good to be outside and among people,

and that was really present in the atmosphere but at the same time there was some unexpected stuff that seemed unusual or at least un-canadian to me i'm amazed by the american flags there are people draped in canadian flags and you know american flags and don't tread on me flags and flags that tell Trudeau where to go. In fact, like there are signs all over telling Trudeau in a very politically like rude, I would say in Canadian, very rude way where to go. And that's everywhere, all over these trucks, all over people's signs, all over these flags. It's pretty astounding how many of them there are, right? There are signs all along these ornate fences

that separate the street from the parliament buildings. And they're full of like everything from like, we love truckers to like covid red pill there's also you know a real sense of like an alternate reality where you hear snatches of conversations about you know people being abducted by aliens literally heard that conversation to vaccines being used to track people by the government. And then the Cuban Queen of Canada's convoy is just up here on the left. And finally, there was this more menacing strain that I'd heard about. You know, I personally didn't see any Nazi flags or anything that overtly hateful. But in addition to those signs that

were telling Trudeau where he should go, there was more threatening stuff, like pictures of him with a noose, pictures of him behind bars. So alongside the street party atmosphere, there was definitely a menacing element, too, which, like I said, I've never seen before. And which certainly evokes images of what we have seen here in the United States as of late. Right. So it's a more complicated scene, perhaps than the one you had heard about before arriving. Yeah, and that became even more apparent as I started to talk to people. In the end, I ended up peeling off the main street, which is called Wellington, and going down the street called Kent, which surprised me because it was jammed with trucks,

like four across, for blocks going down, and there was a real, like, encampment feeling. Mm-hmm. I'm inside one of the camps. There's one, two, three, four tables with people eating, and there's a grill inside, and lots of tables with donations. You know, it's an impressive, fairly large building with heaters, portable heaters, three of them. I saw one truck that had a little post box

set up outside and there were fires burning, cords of wood and huge numbers of supplies you could see on the back of trucks from like tampons to blankets to sleeping bags and toilet paper that had all been donated. And so, you know, I went looking to talk to people there. And I met someone who presented himself as an organizer of that street and his name was Chris. Tell me, where are you from? I'm from just northwest of Toronto. Okay. And are you a trucker yourself? I'm a heavy tow trucker. So Chris is a heavy-duty tow truck operator. He tows the trucks, like these type of trucks himself.

I've been here since late the 28th to... So since the beginning, more or less. Okay. And what brought you here uh i'm here to fight for everybody's freedom and as canadian citizens we have the right to our own medical choices and he was there because a he hadn't been vaccinated he didn't believe in the vaccine so you don't trust him well you know what A good theory in life to have is trust nobody, right? Believe nothing what you hear and only half of what you see with your own eyes, right?

But he also really felt that he wanted the freedom to make his own choice. And he also talked about how he, and many people said this to me, believed that Trudeau should be... We just want the courts to deal with him for all the crimes that humanity has caused upon people. Tried and locked up for crimes against humanity, for basically, they believe, forcing people to take a vaccine. It's a war crime. They need to be...

Except for you're breaking the law. I mean, there's an irony of you saying it's a war crime. We're not breaking the law. There's a bylaw. You're parked in the middle of the street, which you can't do. You know, it's a bylaw. You can't park in the middle of the street. As Canadians say, since we have the rights to protest and whatever means necessary to protest,

and we must protest peacefully. So as long as we are protesting peacefully, then there is no problem. How do you square the things that someone like Chris is telling you with what you described as the sentiment of the vast majority of the country, which is to accept all this, not to view it in political terms, not to think of this as a question of freedom versus tyranny? He's using very different language than it sounds like most Canadians are when it comes to this pandemic. Yeah, it really, the language of all of it really

struck me because Canada is a country that our founding motto is peace, order, and good government. I mean, you really can't get much more like rule following than that, right? And yet here on the streets of Ottawa, the biggest thing you heard over and over again was freedom. And it came, you know, out of the mouths of truckers, the mouths of protesters, but also like it was echoing up and down the street. As a call and response, a way of people greeting one another, they would walk up and down the streets shouting, freedom, and responding to one another, freedom.

So this is a new thing that people are just generally screaming freedom. And, you know, freedom is, I think, really stitched into the American DNA, but it's not necessarily something you hear in Canada the same way. Clearly, we have freedoms that are protected in our charter too, but it's not necessarily, you know, a call to arms in Canada like it is in the States. So that struck me. Right. And there were a lot of people like that. And then there were people who just seemed done with the entire pandemic. Joseph Richard. Yeah. Okay, I better actually write that down. I met this guy named Joseph. And how old are you, Joseph? I'm 24. I'm actually a beekeeper. Are you? He was a beekeeper from the smallest province of Canada

called Prince Edward Island. We got here last Saturday. And he'd been there from the beginning and he was eating a hamburger that a volunteer had just cooked for him on the street. So why did you come? I was just hard, all the restrictions, the mandates, seeing what they're trying to do to kids in our schools now, forcing them to wear masks in class. And he said he was drawn, you know, not because the restrictions had really affected his life. Do you have kids? I don't. But for other people's lives.

Even like them not being able to go to school or see their kids or have a proper graduation, like they're robbing a lot of aspects of their childhood. And that really bothers me enough that I felt I had to come out and do something. And the thing that's made me stop to talk to him is that I heard him, you know, meeting some other people and he repeated something. And he said, you know, we're all a family here. When he said we're all a family. Can you talk to me a bit about that?

Oh, 100 percent. Like you just you walk up and down the streets. I'm sure you felt it for yourself. Like everybody welcomes you in. and it just feels like a big family. And we all, we are, we're all Canadian here. We're all brothers and sisters. So obviously this is a really different subset of people who had also shown up in Ottawa and very different from the earlier reports of a really scary and threatening crowd. And we're just trying to spread love and peace. And actually, Joseph talked about that, this feeling that the picture painted of them was just wrong. I've seen it for myself.

They're saying that we're violent and racist and white supremacists and terrorists and a lot of demoralizing things, but that's not it at all. And I can see how some residents, if they were... Welcome to Ottawa. Come to the right place. And I also met this guy, Johnny Rowe. Well, actually, I heard Johnny first. I was in my room working on a story, and I heard his voice echoing below the hotel.

Welcome to Ottawa. Stay as long as you want. He was saying, welcome to Ottawa. You're in the right place. Welcome to Ottawa. And because I'd heard so much that seemed unfamiliar to me as a Canadian, this was like such a quintessentially Canadian thing to do to welcome people to the city. I literally like got my snow pants on, got my boots, tied my massive mask and my thick gloves and went running down to the street to talk to him. But the welcome to Ottawa, thank you for coming is incredibly Canadian. So I wanted to ask you just like, I was like, I have to talk to this guy, find out what is he doing?

I've done many, many, many things. The last 10 years, I've been running a yoga school. Oh, yeah? What kind of yoga? Vikram yoga. I do Vikram. He owns a yoga studio, and the moment I asked him what he was doing there, he just got tears in his eyes and was all choked up. I'm trying to help.

Every single one of these people has been catastrophically hurt. They've lost a loved one or their business or their job or their house. Every one of them has had a catastrophic loss. And they're suffering. He said he needed to be there spreading love with people hurting so badly. And that included him. You can imagine Bikram yoga has not fared that well during the pandemic, right? Like it's yoga in a sauna.

And he had lost his business. I lost $100,000. All my students are suffering. We're having suicides. I bought a half million dollar building for my studio, and I'm going to miss it. I lost my house. I lost my business. I lost half of my savings. This is the first chance I've had in a long time to act like a real man. To come out and help people, there's nothing I can do but to give them the love that I have.

This was a man who was in a whole lot of pain and was also clearly finding some catharsis in being here with other people who he understood had also been through a lot. There's a very good vibration. People are happy. They're proud. They're proud to be Canadian. They're proud to be out there. They're not angry. They're hurt and they're suffering, but that's not how they're feeling while they're here. There's some Trudeau stuff, but most people are feeling good for the first time because they're like,

oh my God, there's people. So there was some real healing going on there too. I feel great. I feel so connected and re-energized and connecting to the humanity. It's real humans, right? Yeah. Like these people, You know, it's fascinating, Catherine. We started by talking about how different the U.S. and Canada have been in their responses to this pandemic, how nonpolitical it's been in Canada, and how kind of shocking it's been to see these more alt-right elements suddenly showing up. and how kind of shocking it's been to see these more alt-right elements suddenly showing up. But listening to you talk and describe the people you met, there's another aspect of this that also feels familiar to the U.S., that this isn't just the story of the alt-right. You're talking about a truck driver, beekeeper, a yoga studio owner.

And what we've seen in the U.S. is that the pandemic has helped to create a sort of new group, a group that doesn't really fit neatly into political categories that we're used to thinking about. A group where people on the right and people on the left are kind of coming together

to form something new, something that's united by their sense that something is wrong with how this pandemic is being handled and with the government's role in their lives. Yeah, I think you've hit on something for sure, Michael. You know, it struck me too that while some of the people at the protests had strong conservative libertarian views, there were others who normally might be considered pretty lefty. And while they might appear very different in so many ways, the thing that united them that I saw was a real distrust of government, a real distrust of institutions and science,

a sense also that they were being lied to and a frustration of where the country's at. And you know, that's real. That's something that started with the truckers, but clearly tapped into something in this country. It formed a crack in the ice in some way. And we've seen all this frustration and tension just come pouring out. Frustration and tension that maybe people didn't even fully realize they were feeling and that we might not recognize as Canadian, but maybe it's been there all along and it just hasn't aligned with our own narrative of ourselves. But what's also true and what we're still working to understand and report out, is that there appear to be groups who want to take advantage of all that frustration in the same way that we've seen

in the United States. And the questions are, like, are these more organized, more threatening elements looking to take that frustration that's been unleashed here and turn it into something else, something bigger? Is this the start of something new, like a new political movement? Or is it just kind of an outburst, something that will settle back down once the protesters have left the streets or been pushed off the streets. And Canada will settle back into a version of itself that feels more familiar to us. You know, we just don't know yet. Well, Catherine, thank you very much. We appreciate it.

Thanks, Michael. Thank you. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. On Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he had decided to pull back some troops from the border with Ukraine in a potential sign that he could be stepping away from the threat of an invasion. But... We have not yet verified the Russian military units

are returning to their home bases. The United States and its allies cautioned against taking Putin at his word. Speaking from the White House, President Biden said that Russia still has about 150,000 troops surrounding Ukraine. An invasion remains distinctly possible.

And the families of those killed in the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School said they had reached a historic settlement in their lawsuit against the manufacturer of the gun used in the attack. That manufacturer, Remington, has agreed to pay the families $73 million, the largest settlement involving a gunmaker and the relatives of victims of a mass shooting. the relatives of victims of a mass shooting. Today's episode was produced by Austin Mitchell, Aastha Chaturvedi, Rochelle Banja, and Michael Simon-Johnson.

It was edited by Mark George and Lisa Tobin, engineered by Chris Wood, and contains original music by Dan Powell. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.