Over the last three weeks, global watchers have been riveted to news updates by the ongoing troop deployments and ensuing tension escalations on the Russia-Ukraine border, and the Freedom Convoy of truckers who travelled from the West Coast of Canada and formed a blockade at Parliament Hill, in Ottawa, virtually bringing the country’s capital to a standstill.
These two developments may be occurring poles apart, but they bear similar messages — one blatant, the other more subtle — of the need to exercise control. Political observers are split over whether Vladimir Putin’s actions are a potential bluff to satisfy his fellow countrymen that Russia still retains superpower status or if it is that country’s desire to retain hegemony over former Soviet states by leveraging the buildup of a large number of armed forces on Ukraine’s border to extract agreements from the West.
It is quite unlikely that Putin, who revels in total control, is bluffing. Following his successful annexation of Crimea in 2014, he is apt to go for the jugular here, and aim for the return of the old Soviet USSR control of the populations of Ukraine and others. Among Putin’s control demands for redesigning the current security architecture of Europe are limiting (read halting) the deployment of US medium range missiles in southern and eastern Europe, NATO’s word that it will never accept Ukraine or Georgia or Moldova as members and Ukraine to relinquish its claim to Crimea. As the West continues to reject Putin’s ambitious plans, the more likely he is to push the envelope. How far is Putin willing to go in this real-life chess game? If Putin suspects that NATO is hesitant to restrict his geopolitical cravings, we can expect the reconstruction of the Eastern Bloc.
Putin’s ambitions are blatantly obvious, but the real reason behind the Freedom Convoy of truckers is not. The subsequent spin-off splinter protests, and revelations of the sources and amounts of its financial sustenance leads one to conclude that there is some other underlying goal.
Key developments in the protest timeline hint in this direction. On 15th January, the trucker mandate vaccine took effect, requiring all travellers to be fully vaccinated before crossing the Canada-US border. Convoy organisers announc-ed that the government had “crossed a line” with the Covid-19 passport and mandates, and that they planned to travel to Ottawa to protest. On 22nd January, the USA began barring unvaccinated drivers from Canada and Mexico entering the country. On 28th January, truckers began arriving in Ottawa and blocking key streets in the downtown core. The next day, the main rally took place, with police estimates suggesting 3,000 trucks and 15,000 protesters were present.
On 2nd February, the organisers issued a statement that they planned to remain in Ottawa “as long as it takes” for all Covid-19 mandates to end, as the Ottawa Police stated that the remaining protesters were “highly volatile” and the protest shifted to become an occupation. On 7th February, a day after declaring a state of emergency, Ottawa’s Mayor Jim Watson requested 1,800 additional officers to deal with the siege. On the same day a blockade started to form on the Windsor, Ontario, side of the Ambassador Bridge which connects to Detroit, Michigan, USA, and is the busiest Canada-US border crossing and a crucial link in the car manufacturing industry.
As the protests dragged on, the Ontario Pro-vincial Government and the Federal Government were forced to act as the siege of Ottawa paralysed the city and the Ambassador Bridge blockade resulted in the loss of millions of dollars for US car manufacturers. On 11th February, Ontario invoked new emergency measures with a state of emergency act aimed at ending the Ambassador Bridge protest. On Monday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, for the first time in Canadian history, invoked the Emergencies Act, which gives the federal government sweeping new powers to restore order and bring the ongoing trucker convoy protests and blockades to an end.
As this protest/blockade evolved, the startling amount of financial support being provided to the truckers was revealed. On 4th February, GoFundMe took down the Freedom Convoy fund-raiser page stating that it had violated its terms of service. At the time the fund had reached more than Cdn$10 million. This followed previous suspensions of the fund on 25th January and 2nd February. Meanwhile, by 8th February, a fundraiser on the American crowdfunding platform GiveSendGo raised another US$6.3 million.
The decisions by the Provincial and Federal governments might have effectively ended the blockades of the Ambassador Bridge and downtown Ottawa, but the questions ultimately remain as to who are the donors of all these funds, and what is their goal? Were the truckers being manipulated, and like the Russian troops deployed on the Ukraine border, being used to intimidate a government? In this case, a minority Liberal Government, whose resignation was one of the demands meted out by the Freedom Convoy.
As the truckers sat in their trucks in the freezing cold over the past few weeks, in many instances with their wives and children, honking their horns to no avail, no doubt they were reflecting on the deterioration of their standard of living since the inception of the pandemic. Perhaps the question they should have been asking was, how come during this same timespan the 745 billionaires just south of the border managed to increase their wealth by 70 percent, adding another US$1.2 trillion to their already burgeoning portfolios. Their donations to and increasing influence on federal politics resulted in massive tax cuts for the super wealthy by the Trump Administration in 2018.
The more the money filters to the top of the pyramid, the more protests we will witness, along with the tossing of crumbs by the super rich to the fundraising platforms from the warmth and comfort and security of their palatial homes. One hopes that by now the truckers would have removed their blinkers, looked around and examined the wider picture. It’s right in front of us all.
