The brutes of Belleville

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This article was published 22/07/2023 (819 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

“REACTING to the protesters, one (Belleville) city hall worker said the chaos was a shame.” Canadian Press, July 20.

It is a shame that we are not the Canada we were just a few years ago — a shame that the prime minister cannot go anywhere without a small army of people protecting him in a way that would surprise no American.

This week in Belleville, Ont. — with a Brandon-sized population of around 50,000 — about 100 people created a national news story and it’s a shame they did.

They descended on this pristine Canadian town, a two-hour drive from Toronto, for only one reason.

They wanted to hassle and harass the prime minister, and prevent him from to doing a meet and greet with vendors and others in the town. This was after he attended an indoor event to celebrate the seventh anniversary of his government’s Child Care Benefit.

He met with the mayor and then wanted to visit the farmers market, to shake hands with hard-working people who rise before the sun does. They’re known as vendors.

But the band of ugly, loud and vile protesters prevented that from happening. They wanted to swarm and surge the PM and shout at him. There were some Trump flags. They were outnumbered by F-Trudeau flags.

Many epithets were hurled at the PM including the favourite of the right wing crowd these days — pedophile. I don’t have to tell readers what a pedophile is.

But I do want to ask some questions on this Saturday visit. If I were in the food court at Polo Park and I was shouting pedophile at a person or people, would security call the Winnipeg police? Might I be charged with disturbing the peace and possibly assault?

I don’t have to physically lay a beating on a person to be convicted of a criminal offence. If I shove and push and get in their face and call them names, I could be charged and convicted of assault. But because Canada is Canada, I can do the same thing to the prime minister of this country and get away with it, because I’m considered a political protester, free to express an opinion.

Let’s think about that.

I am free to go to downtown Belleville or the Duckworth Centre at the University of Winnipeg and assault our prime minister with violent language and pay no price.

How on earth does anyone get away with saying we don’t have freedom in this country? Imagine what would happen if a citizen of China approached President Xi Jinping, got within inches of his face and screamed pedophile in his ear? The protester would disappear faster than a dust bunny meeting a Swiffer.

Some sophisticates get on those TV news panel shows almost nobody outside of Ottawa watches, and says things like “Freedom for many Canadians is difficult to define.”

Well, with all due respect to the experts on sophistry, freedom is ridiculously easy to define.

When you’re free to get in the face of a prime minister and scream pedophile in his ear and not find yourself in hand cuffs faster than you can say f—-, that’s a darn good definition of freedom.

In the opinion of this Canadian columnist, the words Canada and freedom are synonymous. I don’t need brutes in Belleville to win my freedom. The moment the Adler family’s promised land allowed two Hungarian adults and their baby to land on Canadian soil, we were free for the first time in our lives.

I don’t need goons screaming F-Trudeau and pedophile to win my freedom. I have it, courtesy of a Canadian government installed in a democratic election, more than half a century ago. Canadians don’t need the thugs of Belleville to keep us free.

Only months ago, the PM was at the University of Winnipeg’s Duckworth Centre, doing a town hall. There should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that security was thick because the head of our government was there and everyone who is paid to protect him is aware that every PM visit contains the possibility of a Belleville. There were plenty of Bellevilles during the election campaign two years ago.

Fortunately the Winnipeg town hall went off without a hitch.

It’s a shame that the opposition leader of this country, Pierre Poilievre, doesn’t have the inclination, political courage or both to deliver a substantive message to the brutes of Belleville. It’s a crying shame that he thinks chaos is his stairway to power.

Charles Adler is a longtime political commenter and podcaster.

charles@charlesadler.com