Mr Gord Johns MP Courtenay-Alberni
March 8 2022
As a lapsed life long supporter of the NDP and as one of your constituents, I am discouraged by your party’s response to the Trudeau government, Covid mandates and the use of the Emergency Measures Act. During the implementation of the act I wrote you several times, receiving only automated responses. Recently a friend forwarded your response to his enquiries. Thank you for the detail in the email that allows us to see how you and the NDP thought it was necessary to support the suspension of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In addition, thank you for having enough respect for your constituents to respond to their concerns.
The Charter of Rights and Freedoms was embedded in our Constitution to prevent government overreach. If the Charter was easy to overturn there would have been no need for its existence, no need to debate, write, have it adopted by 9 of the 10 provinces of Canada and have it enshrined as an immutable part of our Constitution. Your email says “the NDP did not give Justin Trudeau a blank cheque” yet from my distant perspective I think you gave him the whole bank. Trudeau was able to act before parliamentary approval, label outwardly peaceful yet concerned Canadians as insurrectionists and then suspend money that had been donated to their cause. It was announced that if a Canadian had, even retroactively, supported the Truckers with as little as $20 donation, their bank accounts could be frozen. In wintry Canada, that meant that you and your family could also be frozen. Such cavalier sanctions undermined confidence in our banks and prompted many Canadians to withdraw their funds. For many people in the Western democracies the Trucker Convoy was a sign of hope and a return to normalcy; it has been your support of Trudeau’s EMA that has shaken confidence in Canada as a stable liberal democracy?
You then went on to say in your email that “There are many Canadians who want to discuss[] public health measures, including vaccine mandates and passport systems.” Absolutely true! and I am one of them. You then continue “There is room for these discussions in a democracy and the right to engage in these conversations must be protected.” Also true, but this goes to the heart of the matter. For the past two years of Covid, and in previous years on other awkward issues, people have not been able to carry on discussions let alone debates in public or in the media without fear of sanctions and loss of their jobs. Questions to elected representatives have had either no response or an automated response. I know, I’ve tried, and several people I am proud to call friends have also tried and continue to try without reply.
How do we get your attention when there are grave problems that need to be addressed? The election should have been a hint, but the controlling two parties have doubled down making onerous and scientifically unsupportable policies and labelling those that dare oppose as “misogynists”, “racists”, “white supremacists” who have “no place” in Canada. Not very new democratic of you.
What is left? The peaceful protests that have occurred across Canada for over a year have been largely ignored by both politicians and media. And if not ignored, hyperbolized in the media to label quiet, respectful Canadians as red in tooth and claw ‘white supremacists”.
You continue, “What we cannot accept is the use of intimidation or violence to affect public policy changes or depose the government.” True again! Three for three, but the Trucker Convoy was a mild mannered protest of Canadians who had every right to be angry but were trying to find a way to peacefully get your attention. They are Canadians who strongly opposed violence and said so many times. Only the gullible could assume they were trying to depose the government. However, the Truckers were there to change policy, such is the nature of peaceful protests and why they are allowed in democratic countries. They were there to have their concerns heard by unresponsive politicians and peaceful protests are a fundamental protection of the Canadian constitution. The protest was so peaceful that the only way to end it was to impose the EMA, suspending the right to peaceful protest so that force could be used against it.
Just in case you do think the protest was violent, those arrested and held without bail were charged with “mischief”. A protest that annoys people with honking horns, has children playing on bouncy castles and picks up its garbage doesn’t sound that intimidating or violent. The only violence I could see was Canadians trying to passively defend themselves from anonymous imported truncheon wielding bully boys, and Canadians being trampled by mounted police.
And before you think blockades were your justification for support of the Emergency Measures Act, remember that existing provincial laws were enough to end them. The blockades were peacefully dispersed before your collaboration with the Liberals, and the only physical interactions were hugs from the police, no trampling or beating required. How about all of those seized weapons? Justification for the EMA? Doesn’t it seem odd that it was the Truckers themselves who tipped off the police? And why has this supposedly serious incident conveniently been dropped from the news?
Your email continues that the NDP sees a “growing threat of extreme right wing and white supremacist radicalization”. This absurdly implies the protestors are racists, identifying with each other on the basis of shared skin colour rather than the logic of their cause. Calling the protestors racists is an illicit attempt to defame and dishonestly curtail the protests. The very use of this slur is a presumption that the protestors have similar purpose based on their shared skin colour and is itself a racism that is shameful and beneath you. Racism certainly cannot explain the many ethnicities that have joined the protests and are well accepted by all.
Your email also mentions “a flow of disinformation and foreign funding” that is negatively affecting Canadian interests. I agree that foreign funding is a large factor in the disruption of Canada but you should not narrow your scope to those equivocal “white supremacists”. There is very real evidence that foreign actors have been financing environmental extremists through the Tides Foundation. Remember those well dressed well organized gentlemen who hacked apart the machinery in northern BC and threatened the lives of the security detail. As you said there is a “clear double standard applied by law enforcement”, just not the double standard you think.
If you truly want an investigation into foreign influence and funding you should look into the affiliation of Justin Trudeau, Chrystia Freeland and Mark Carney with the World Economic Forum. No longer conspiracy theory, the WEF boasts of the allegiance of these three and Freeland and Carney are members of the WEF Board of Trustees. This is a huge conflict of interest, putting the wishes of this global body and their dedication to the infamous Great Reset ahead of the needs of Canadians who they have taken an oath to serve.
Confusingly you end your email with “the story of the pandemic is not one of division – it is one of solidarity”. Perhaps you misspelled ’stupidity’, otherwise I have difficulty understanding how you could be unaware of the coercion and segregation that has been tearing Canadians apart, the arbitrary rules that have split and isolated family and friends, the foolish destruction of small businesses and livelihoods. Perhaps you have forgotten but the NDP once supported the needs of working Canadians, not the needs of a pontificating elite.
I have now waded through several protests and spoken to many of the Canadians, who are protesting the Vaccine Mandates. With few exceptions these are not ill informed rubes but Canadians invested in the well being of Canada and concerned about the futures of their Canadian children and grandchildren. There are young and old, women and men, truckers, teachers, nurses, fishermen, many of whom have voted NDP in the past and now curse that the NDP has betrayed them and they will never vote orange again. These Canadians are not white supremacists or misogynists or haters … they are Canadians, Canadians who love Canada and proudly fly the Canadian flag hoping to again unite Canadians in a common ideal, a Canada where everyone is important and every voice is important, a Canada where every opinion even a dissenting opinion is heard. It’s called freedom.
Perhaps you, Gord Johns MP, should also wade through those same protestors, ask questions, actually listen to what they have to say and learn who they are and what it is to be Canadian. Perhaps you could could be the hero who begins the process of healing rather than the villain who continues the division. Perhaps you will be the one who brings back the old New Democratic Party that champions the democratic rights and freedoms of working Canadians.
R. McCarter H.BSc. MSc
Scico 
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