Images of trucks rolling across Canada with crowds lining the highways, waving Canadian flags, were signs of hope a few weeks ago. These truckers, our essential workers, for months on end hauled loads, risking their lives, in the face of a pandemic when no vaccine was in sight.

I live in Surrey, BC which is sometimes referred to as “Little India” because of the large East Indian representation. For about a year we saw people on street corners with signs, “No Farmers, No Food.” They were supporting a protest in India. Trudeau even got behind them with his support.

On January 15 Prime Minister Trudeau passed a federal mandate requiring truckers to be vaccinated or forced to quarantine. About 10% of truckers in Canada are not vaccinated. Within a week the U.S. imposed a similar mandate, pulling an estimated 16,000 truckers off the road.

Shortages and delays were noticed almost immediately. But the real issue was that this happened as a result of men and women losing their livelihood due to a needless government mandate. Omicron is spreading without any regard for who is vaccinated and who is unvaccinated.

A convoy of truckers began to travel to Canada’s capital, Ottawa, at the end of January to speak with Prime Minister Trudeau. Trudeau has a history of not speaking to truckers and he didn’t entertain the thought of listening to the truckers for the entire three weeks they parked their rigs in downtown Ottawa. He had three weeks to make peace with his people.

This protest was of Trudeau’s making.

And then the Prime Minister of Canada made things exponentially worse by calling in what is equivalent to the National Guard, seizing private personal information, freezing bank accounts of protestors and their supporters, and arresting unarmed people who were peacefully exercising their democratic rights.

The lesson for Canadians is that you cannot, as an ordinary citizen, expect your prime minister to listen and you will be penalized for supporting a legal protest even if it is entirely within your civil rights. Authorities will look the other way while protestors are kneed in the back, trampled by officers on horseback, sprayed with rubber bullets and tear gas, butted with military rifles, and harrassed in their place of business for assisting protesters. I’ve watched too many videos to count that were posted by ordinary citizens and my heart is broken.

It does not cease to amaze me how a peaceful protest can be villainized by the press. But with millions of annual support by the Trudeau liberal government, I suppose the journalists had no other option, unless they wanted to face a fate similar to that of the truckers. Just last week a local radio personality, Kid Carson, found his position terminated. This is what happens if you step beyond the accepted narrative.

Gone are the days of freedom of thought and speech. Gone are the days of freedom of the press.

Gone are the days of freedom of peaceful protest. It is difficult to imagine a more peaceful protest than that of the truckers’ Freedom Convoy in Ottawa.

Trudeau has discredited himself on the world stage and lost the confidence of the Canadian people.