[FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW] One year on, what is the legacy of the trucker convoy protests? Why have so many people bought into the idea that a society and its problems must be managed and controlled by so-called experts? And why are laws that pursue equity fundamentally at odds with a society based on the rule of law?
“If the government has a license to treat people differently depending upon their identity, then they now have a license to punish and reward as they wish,” says Bruce Pardy, the executive director of Rights Probe and a professor of law at Queen's University in Canada, in this episode of American Thought Leaders.
“In many ways, the most disappointing thing about this experience during COVID was the fact that a great many people supported the regime, and they didn't seem to have very much appreciation for the aberration that it represented,” says Mr. Pardy.
Interview trailer:
Watch the full interview: https://www.theepochtimes.com/epochtv/bruce-pardy-the-triumph-of-the-administrative-state-5429979
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Jan Jekielek: Bruce Pardy, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.
Bruce Pardy: It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me.
Mr. Jekielek: We first sat down to chat about a year ago, and we didn't end up publishing the interview. It was about the truckers' movement, of course. Just as we were about to publish it, the War Measures Act was pulled.
Mr. Pardy: Right.
Mr. Jekielek: I didn't get to have you on the show. It's a year-and-a-half now since we talked. I've come to believe that the truckers' movement was probably one of the most consequential protests in recent history. I want to get your thoughts on this.
Mr. Pardy: I agree with you, not just in Canada, but probably internationally. Now, it wasn't the biggest protest we've ever seen, and it was quite modest in size. It wasn't the most eventful protest, in the sense that they drove up, they parked, and that's all they did, other than dance in the streets, sweep and clear snow, and feed the hungry.
The truckers have done us all a huge service. They were protesting vaccine mandates, and that alone would've been enough. But what it really turned into was the first significant sign in Canada, a very polite, compliant country, the first sign from ordinary people that they didn't trust their government.
Canada is the land of peace, order, and good government. We emerged out of the revolution in the U.S. The Canadians were the ones that didn't want to revolt, and wanted to remain loyal to His Majesty. Peace, order, and good government runs through the history of Canada.
Here you have a bunch of truckers who took it upon themselves to drive all the way across a huge country to give a message to the government, "We don't trust you. We don't accept your authority. We don't accept your legitimacy." That is a significant thing to say.
Mr. Jekielek: I've interviewed a couple of young men who had embedded themselves in the protest to document it. One of them had previously been a political organizer. He asked them, "What are your demands?" They replied, "We're going to Ottawa. We've got to stop the mandates."
He was shocked to discover this was such a grassroots movement that these people didn't even really have demands, unlike some of the protests that we've seen. For example, many of George Floyd protesters had millions of dollars in backing. They were highly coordinated with very specific goals, perhaps diverging from the surface goals. Anyway, you get the idea. Here we had something that was very grassroots.
Mr. Pardy: Yes. It was organic, spontaneous, and disorganized in a good way. You had to try and figure out what was going on. I was in Ottawa for a good period of time when the protest was going on, and it was even difficult to know who was calling the shots. If you talked to one trucker and then the next, it was basically no agreed upon structure or leadership, and that was part of its charm. It was really a spontaneous thing. Some of them just picked up, got in their trucks and said, "We're going to Ottawa." Then the thing built up across the country.
Mr. Jekielek: What is the outcome here? Clearly, something changed, basically on those days when we filmed our interview. Suddenly, we thought, "Maybe this is going to be codified by the Canadian Senate, and what would that mean?" But then suddenly it was gone. There was a strong ripple effect across the world. Is that the reason you call it consequential, possibly internationally?
Mr. Pardy: It's hard to know exactly why governments rescinded the mandates. You make a good point, that some of them happened to be rescinded not long after the end of the convoy. You could make the case that one thing had a lot to do with the other, and it could well be. On the dark side, let's take a step backward