Where is Your Sense of Common Good?
A News Commentary by Niagara At Large reporter and publisher Doug Draper
Posted February 16th, 2022 on Niagara At Large
How disheartening it was to learn that hundreds of Niagara residents donated ten-of-thousands of dollars to those who have been creating hell for the residents of Ottawa and wreaking havoc for Canadian workers and businesses at Canada-U.S. border crossings.
The stench of Trump’s destructive anger blankets so-called “freedom convoy” blockades in Canada.
According to a recent front-page story in The St. Catharines Standard, more than 600 Niagara residents – the bulk of them, not so surprisingly, from our rural areas that are fertile ground for alt-right conservatives – dug in to their pockets over the past few weeks and contributed more than $71,000 to these so-called “freedom convoy” protesters who made it abundantly clear that they could care less about the freedom of anyone else.
Indeed, just below that story in The Standard, runs another story about David Bylsma, the Niagara regional councillor and current mayor of the rural municipality of West Lincoln, who once again finds himself under the scrutiny of Niagara Region’s integrity commissioner for conduct and use of language many find off-putting and offensive around his grievances over COVID-19 mask and vaccine mandates.
“I have never been happier to donate to anything in my life,” the newspaper quoted one of the people who forked out for these protesters whose willingness to assault the lives and livelihoods of others is clearly driven by much more than simply not wanting to take a needle.
Too bad this same generosity for donating to this destructive bunch is not focuses on supporting homeless shelters or fighting the opioid crisis or climate change, just to name a few of the many real challenges we face as communities.
Or is that too much to hope for in these Trumpy times?
I leave you with a good column by New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman that you can read by clicking on – https://www.rsn.org/001/when-freedom-means-the-right-to-destroy.html
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Agreed, there are far better causes than supporting anarchy. Many of the demonstrators were complaining they were losing their charter rights. I wonder how many of them actually read the Charter?
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It is not surprising to me when I realize that politicians like Oosterhoff easily got re-elected in his Niagara riding. He, along with Lecce and Ford have attempted to pull back on public education. Oosterhoff has also shown his misogynist rally to support banning abortion. There does seem to be a huge right-wing force in the Niagara area.
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There is every evidence that Kenny Ford and MB premiers or organizations wound up this whole thing to embarrass the Liberals. You are correct about the right-wing faction but, we elected them. At stake is the movement of the Peace River south to the US. The plan was drawn up by Klein in Alberta under the name of “The Weatherford Project) after the engineering company that put the program together to move 2/3 of the peace River. South. When this river gets to 1/3, it will die. The US gets first dibs on the water in this plan, and Nestle will manage the marketing. It will take 6 provincial; governments and the federal chair to change the constitution. That is what the Truckers Riots were about and the US funding. We presently have 8 provinces. Conservative we have to change 3 provinces.
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The truckers who brought their children to the Ottawa siege are, in effect, using their own children as ‘human shields’!
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