Cohen: Truck convoy — An American-style protest, a limp Canadian response

As the language and messages are American, so are the goals. Freedom, freedom, freedom, the protesters cry, like Richie Havens wailing at Woodstock. That’s the best you can do, your loudest chant, in a country overwhelmingly vaccinated? Canadians don’t live in a gulag. According to the Human Freedom Index , we are the sixth-freest country in the world.

But freedom to choose, whatever the cost to the majority, is the ark of the covenant of this “freedom convoy.” You have to work hard to make that argument in Canada, where freedom matters less than security.

That is why Pierre Elliott Trudeau, a civil libertarian, could impose the War Measures Act against terrorists in Quebec in 1970. He knew what mattered.

So, surveying the protesters, you might conclude: this picture is American. But look more closely and you may think we are not so American. After all, with downtown shut down, with businesses, clinics and offices closed, all we do is wring hands and wag fingers.