Letter: Why did Freedom Convoy protestors choose to be outsiders?

By Letter to the Editor on March 9, 2022.

In response to March 3 letter to the editor, “Sadly, the Emergencies Act was clearly justified,” by Mr. Peter Mueller

Dear editor,

Mr. Mueller asks why the Ottawa protesters formed their convoy. That is not the question. Neither the forming of a convoy, nor a trip to Ottawa, nor a peaceful, lawful protest are troublesome. The real question is why did the convoy organizers and their followers conduct an assault upon our capital city and lay siege to it for three weeks?

To partly answer that question one must look to their published “Memorandum of Understanding,” which stated their goals and their method of attaining those goals. The organizers went to Ottawa to join with the Governor-General and the Senate to form a committee to overturn federal and provincial public health laws in effect to fight COVID-19.

Those are laws of the federal government and of 10 provincial and three territorial governments, all duly and properly elected in free and fair elections. The protestors said they would occupy Ottawa until they had their way. They had dreamed up an illegal, illusory, dangerously whimsical and wholly unconstitutional plan to get their way. The mere fact it was their belief that they should have their way was their justification to carry out that plan. In other words, the protesters are, of their own choosing, outsiders who have chosen to not participate in nor to understand our system of governance, and instead, to force their mere beliefs on 37 million other Canadians. This is not fighting for freedom; it is sedition.

To further answer the real question, above, one must ask why the protesters chose to be outsiders? The answer is they made that choice because they are motivated by resentment. Resentment negates good judgement. Lacking good judgement, they became shameless occupiers, impervious to societal norms like lawfulness and good conduct, and oblivious to the common good. They quit believing in something larger than themselves (the common good), resorting instead to disturbance, disorder and depravity. Their three-week siege in Ottawa proves this.

Gregory R. Côté

Irvine, Alta

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