A staring contest with Justin Trudeau

I am not usually apt to gloat about a small concession without, in its truest sense, any permanent respite from the crushing boot of government overreach. All things considered, it would have been better if victory had been achieved when the court cases against the mandates finally hit the docket in September. For now though, a round of celebration is in order as (most of) the travel rules for domestic travel within and departures from Canada have ended.

Surprisingly, some of the impetus to end the mandates ended up being industry pressure on the federal government. Struggling airlines, who had once been so happy to discriminate against a not insignificant segment of their consumer base, became increasingly vocal in recent months. Indeed, it seems inefficiencies surrounding the mandates has overwhelmed Canadian airports costing the aerospace industry millions of dollars.

We should not be surprised that our victory is not entirely our own. While we may have had science, logic, morality, and the Charter of Rights on our side (even if the institutions abandoned us), it turns out that economics, and Trudeau’s propensity to be beholden to big industry, carried the day. A valuable lesson we should keep in mind in the future.

At least, though, the terms were not Trudeau’s own. It is quite apparent that he would have been happy to keep the mandates forever. Being a vain, childish man, he is clearly driven by his spite against the dissidents who embarrassed him so thoroughly on the world stage with the Freedom Convoy.

Moreover, many of the mainstream cheerleaders of the mandates were among those complaining about the mild inconvenience caused by the passport system remaining in place. While the skeptics have remained steady in our resolve not to get vaccinated, the inconvenience at the airport became too much for the mandate cheerleaders—at least one of whom was the CEO of a major Canadian airline. Apparently, they are so wholly without resolve that they cannot even live with the splash caused by the punishments they were so happy for the government to dole out.

Regardless of how it happened, the staring contest that the skeptics have been engaged in against Trudeau and his cheerleaders has ended. They blinked first. Congratulations to all those who did not. While air travel may not seem like a huge victory, I am sure this has been one of many times when you refused to blink. There may have been times at work, in public, or in private where you have been discriminated against. I say, take pride in following your conscience this far. Most people will never do so in their entire lives when faced with pressure.

I will leave you all with an excerpt from Henry David Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience as we get ready to dig in for the next punishment the government is dreaming up for us.

“I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through, before
they could get to be as free as I was. I did not for a moment feel confined, and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar. I felt as if I alone of all my townsmen had paid my tax. They plainly did not know how to treat me, but behaved like persons who are underbred. In every threat and in every compliment there was a blunder; for they thought that my chief desire was to stand the other side of that stone wall. I could not but smile to see how industriously they locked the door on my meditations, which followed them out again without let or hindrance, and they were really all that was dangerous. As they could not reach me they had resolved to punish my body; just as boys, if they cannot come at some person against whom they have a spite, will abuse his dog. I saw that the State was half-witted, that it was timid as a lone woman with her silver spoons, and that it did not know its friends from its foes, and I lost all my remaining respect for it, and pitied it”