{"id":406142,"date":"2022-02-16T03:16:07","date_gmt":"2022-02-16T00:16:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/the-coutts-blockade-and-controlling-the-narrative\/"},"modified":"2022-02-16T03:16:07","modified_gmt":"2022-02-16T00:16:07","slug":"the-coutts-blockade-and-controlling-the-narrative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/the-coutts-blockade-and-controlling-the-narrative\/","title":{"rendered":"#The Coutts blockade and controlling the narrative"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#The Coutts blockade and controlling the narrative<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n From Ottawa to the border blockades, everyone\u2019s fighting storyline battles. In Alberta, truckers realized the weapons arrests battered their cause.\n <\/div>\n
\n It\u2019s hard to say definitively what impact the federal Emergencies Act declaration had on the truckers and blockaders at Coutts, Alta., leaving fewer than 24 hours later. The roadblock\u2019s organizers maintain the invocation of the act wasn\u2019t behind their quick exit, though it\u2019s easy to imagine the prospect of federally compelled tow-truck operators, frozen bank accounts and de-insured trucks would figure into one\u2019s calculus on whether a continued illegal occupation would be the wisest way to spend yet another weekday.<\/p>\n

The group\u2019s stated reason for clearing the largest Alberta-Montana border crossing after two weeks was a reminder that these \u201cfreedom convoy\u201d actions are\u2014when you strip<\/a> the down beyond the tractor-trailer air brakes, massive trade disruption and disavowal of mainstream public-health science<\/a>\u2014public-relations exercises for their preferred cause. In that regard, they are not too different from that of a few dozen or hundred people waving signs in a public square against some foreign conflict or local budget cut.<\/p>\n

Monday\u2019s RCMP seizure of a massive cache of weapons and arrest of 13 people app<\/a>arently cast a pall over the Coutts blockade. \u201cWe were always here peacefully and to control that narrative, we wanted to leave peacefully,\u201d Marco Van Huigenbos, an organizer and town councillor in nearby Fort Macleod, told the Toronto Star.<\/em>\u00a0That\u2019s why they left.\u00a0To control the narrative. It\u2019s not as though this ballcaps-and-buffalo-check-jackets crew had done like the Ottawa Police and hired consultants with Navigator, but narrative framing was near the forefront of their ambitions all the same.<\/p>\n

Facts, whether real or in some funhouse alternative form, have to mesh with feelings to have any resonance.<\/p>\n

Echo chambers don\u2019t allow for a singular \u201cnarrative\u201d to form, of course. While much of Canada interprets this as a hardened anti-vaccine\/anti-mandate\/anti-Trudeau minority holding hostage a key economic corridor until policies bend to their wishes, the narrative the blockaders\u2019 believers have internalized is them as peaceful conscientious objectors who will be welcomed by most right-thinking Canadians as liberators and freedom fighters.<\/p>\n

The Coutts gang\u2019s problem, it appears, was that their small corps included a decent contingent that was armed to the teeth, and that threatened to overshadow all other narratives with a dark one. And hours after of the blockade ended, with group photos and a handshake-and-hugs receiving line<\/a> with police officers<\/a>\u2014oh, the narratives police have woven these last few weeks\u2014it emerged that three of those arrested were charged with\u00a0conspiracy to murder<\/a>, reinforcing the grimmest of assumptions that some protesters had intentions that had nothing to do with a vaccine mandate for truckers.<\/p>\n

By now, it\u2019s clear that the Coutts situation was a different beast from the Ambassador Bridge blockade, which is not the same as Ottawa\u2019s occupation. And within that group, many have bought into the vast right-wing narrative and funding flowing from United States activists, as evidenced by some protest boosters urging the Alberta group to \u201cstand your ground\u201d and await \u201chelp coming from the south<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ottawa\u2019s first-ever mashing of the Emergencies Act button certainly gives them a couple more tools to finally crack down on the law-breaking in that city\u2019s core, to eliminate from Wellington Street (and any future truck-squatting venue) those who have learned how to weaponize holding their breath until they turn blue.<\/p>\n

The new federal tactic\u2019s ambition contains its fair share of narrative-building, too. Part of that is as a provocative signal to the protestors, but to an anxious citizenry as well. After all, the last several hellscape years have featured one official state of emergency declaration after the other. There are recurring (or unending) local and provincial states of emergency for COVID-19, for the opioid crisis<\/a>, for climate disasters like floods and wildfires. They ostensibly serve to reorganize government\u2019s internal response and action systems, and equip officials with some tools unavailable in normal times. But for most of the public, it comes across as a politician\u2019s way of adding a double-underline to the situation.<\/p>\n

The public\u2019s ultimate reception of the Emergencies Act will no doubt come with how it\u2019s used and what the outcome is. Fifty-two years ago, the War Measures Act became synonymous in Qu\u00e9bec with military in their streets, but imagine how it would be remembered if Pierre Trudeau\u2019s \u201cjust watch me\u201d act had failed to defuse the FLQ terrorist threat and October Crisis? On the streets of Ottawa, this story is still being written.
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