Editorial: Were there positive lessons from the convoy protest? Well, yes

Is it absurd to think there were any positives from the protest convoy that rumbled into Ottawa a year ago? Possibly, but let’s try. Sometimes, events that bring out the worst in people also highlight the best. We learned:

• Citizens can fight back. Yes, hundreds of disgruntled truckers and thousands of protesters occupied Ottawa’s downtown in unruly, threatening and sometimes violent ways. But residents — collectively and individually — understood they could act too.

Student Zexi Li and lawyer Paul Champ were among the first to do so, winning an injunction to smother the horn-honking. Another group of residents, fed up with police paralysis, organized to turn back wannabe convoy reinforcements trying to enter downtown from the south. The “Battle of Billings Bridge” sent a sharp message to protesters, police and the Prime Minister’s Office.

Three Centretown women physically blocked the truckers driving and honking on their street. A resident banged pots at the truckers daily, and even the fabled “Balcony Man” was a symbol that individual citizens would not be passive, even if police where.

• We’re finally talking about Wellington Street. “Canada’s main street” has always been an unimpressive clatter of cars, trucks and tour buses. This time, just maybe, there’s momentum to reinvent it as worthy of a national capital, what MP Yasir Naqvi calls a “once-in-a-generation” chance. Both city council and Parliament are focused on it.

• Democracy is, in fact, strong. Whether the Trudeau government should have used the Emergencies Act is rightly debated, yet consider: the act was not only time-limited, its use has also been exhaustively investigated by an independent commission — a requirement baked into the legislation itself. The very fact that all parties have had to admit to their embarrassing failures in public is both reassuring and a check on potential future abuse of power.

• Our assumptions have been reality-checked. The capital has always been a bubble of complacency, different from the rest of the country. The protest abruptly exposed us to the raw reality that not all Canadians are as comfortable as many of us. Ottawa is, broadly, a city of privilege and — dare we say it? — the truckers, for all their uncouth intentions and crude actions, were a reminder that not everyone in the hinterland has it good. If there were legitimate grievances among any of the occupiers (a big if), we need to hear them; separate the message from the mob.

OK, the jury’s out on that last bit. Still, Ottawa in 2022 rediscovered a strong sense of community. It’ll be much, much harder to mess with us again.

1. Where are they now? Fourteen public figures a year after the convoy protest

2. City of Ottawa vows 'increased enforcement' downtown on weekend of convoy protest anniversary