Border Vaccine Mandates Spark Protests in Canada
Benedetto Maniscalco | February 10, 2022
Special to The Echo | The Canadian Press | Justin Tang
People hold a sign against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and vaccinations during a rally against COVID-19 restrictions on Parliament Hill.
The Freedom Convoy in Ottawa, Canada's Parliament Hill, has sparked ongoing controversy. The Convoy is protesting vaccine mandates for international truckers to cross borders but was quickly criticized for Nazi symbolism present at rallies.
This news hits close to home for Warren Wilson College (WWC) alum Atewerines Mackenzie George. George grew up on the Akwesasne Mohawk reservation, an hour away from Ottawa. She describes Ottawa as a second home to her since she spent so much time in the city.
George details that she had initially heard of the Freedom Convoy from coworkers local to North Carolina who had heard of its initial conception and were in support of the motives. It came as a surprise to George when she saw her friends living in Ottawa posting about safehouses and protective measures when the convoy finally reached the city.
“It’s scary,” George said. “Especially seeing all the violence throughout the pandemic with all the racial violence and tension we’ve seen the past couple years, and the Trump era. Yeah there were Trump flags, too.”
Alongside Trump flags, Nazi symbology made an appearance during the protest.
“I think people should be able to speak their mind and protest mandates or whatever else, but if you have one Nazi and you don’t forcebly remove that Nazi, then something is going on,” George said.
The controversy of this protest continued as reports state people involved in the convoy demanded food from homeless shelters and were playing Iroquois drums, which was especially upsetting for George.
“There was this video of people playing Iroquois drums and just screaming incoherently, and these songs they are mimicking are prayers,” George said.
This is especially dark when put in contrast with the disproportionate way the COVID-19 pandemic has affected Native communities.
“Native communities during the pandemic have been hit really hard, people just going through the reservations bringing the disease,” George said. “They don’t get a lot of funding or healthcare which I think is an important thing to think about too, while they're going ahead and acting like it’s a fun joke.”
Some of the other controversial acts done by protestors involve defacing the Terry Fox statue, public defecation and desecrating the war memorial.
David Abernathy, WWC professor in the global studies department, pointed to the spectrum we see amongst people with vaccine hesitancy and the danger involved in anti-vaccine ideologies.
“I would hesitate to call it a single movement. Instead, it's more of a collection of people who have different reasons for being hesitant,” Abernathy said.
He includes that the range of these hesitations span from people misinformed that we have rushed into the vaccine with not enough research to people who believe that vaccines cause autism.
“A medical journal published an article showing some correlation, which turned out to be totally false,” said Abernathy. “But I think that planted some seeds in people who suddenly became more aware of what was going into their baby's bodies.”
Abernathy explained that we tend to see larger populations of low-income and right-leaning individuals who are vaccine hesitant. He also included that this is not a problem specific to the U.S.
“One of the top 10 threats to global health, according to the World Health Organization, is vaccine hesitancy.” Abernathy said.
Vaccine hesitancy isn’t the only reason to consider requiring vaccines for those crossing borders.There are legitimate concerns for mandating truckers to be vaccinated.
“Transportation is a big factor and in fact, different types of diseases in the past, we've been able to trace back to trucking routes sometimes,” Abernathy said. “Anytime you have a large number of individuals moving, who aren't vaccinated, therefore are more likely to be contagious, then you've got a higher risk of spread.”
Though both were in favor of vaccination mandates, Abernathy and George brought up ideas of free speech and rights to protest.
Neither were trying to push that individuals shouldn’t have the right to protest vaccine mandates and understood the initial planning for the convoy to be connected more to economic factors and concerns for workers rights.
“I think that's sort of how the trucker protests began,” Abernathy said. “They saw a mandate, they saw it as potentially harming their economic well-being and that really kind of snowballed into just an anti-government protest more than just an anti-vaccine.”
“Maybe it would have been done right if they’d removed these white supremacists and racists from the group, but I think now it's just getting too muddled because of all this awful stuff that’s happening,” George said.
The protests have mostly died down, but there are still reports of disruptive and unlawful behavior warranting tickets to be issued by the Ottawa police.