To The Editor,

In my opinion, the blockade in Ottawa, at a border-crossing in Alberta and who knows where else in Canada simply has to end.

What is needed to end it is an intergovernmental (federal-provincial) agreed-upon response.

Our Constitution’s Peace, Order and Governance (POGG) provisions give  our Prime Minister all the legal authority needed to end the blockade by invoking the powers vested in his Office under POGG.

Trudeau has indicated he, at this time, does not intend to exercise his POGG powers to call in the Military.

This makes it clear to me that his intent is to see blockades end by way of an intergovernmentally agreed-upon response.

Given that some of the measures a response requires are a provincial responsibility and others that of our federal government, it is, IMO, the most democratically appropriate and responsible way of bringing these blockades to an end.

A means of doing so, without this Trudeau Prime Minister resorting to the military provisions that POGG enables him to exercise. Powers that his father resorted to during our country’s FLQ crisis and that this Trudeau may yet also well have to.  It’s a card he’s holding in his back pocket.

My guess is it’s a card he’ll only play if there is no federal-provincial agreed-upon response or if the blockades become violent.

The beauty of an intergovernmental approach is that it forces our elected federal and provincial governments to coordinate their efforts, to each play that part in the “end the blockade” response that falls under their respective jurisdictions to exercise in the peace, order and good governance common interest of all Canadians.

It forces all politicians to show their colours.

They are elected to govern and it’s high time they do so, in keeping  with their assessment of the democratically expressed wishes of the people that put them in office. A wish to see them work together and row in the same direction.

Time for these kids to wake up and show that, regardless of political stripe, they are committed to working together in agreement to what they collectively judge is the best way to proceed in the longer term best interest of the Common Good.

A “Just Transition Act” has been promised and a Just Transition to get us where we must be by 2030 on the Greenhouse Gas Pollution reduction front if the sustainability of life on this planet is important to us.

The COVID crisis is but the smallest of four tidal waves we have to contend with.  A COVID crisis, an Economic crisis, a Climate crisis and Biodiversity collapse. They are all interconnected and cannot be solved in isolation of one another.  They all require significant system change. And there is no time to squander.

While I’m amongst those who claim  that significant socio-economic system change is needed, it must be one focused on the need to address climate change – at wartime speed.

What was on the surface presented as a “Truckers Protest” regarding COVID border requirements, was from the start cleverly manipulated and taken over by a group of less-than-honest parties with a Trump-inspired intention and agenda to have this protest become Canada’s version of Washington’s January 6th, 2021. But this time, one that would succeed in toppling our government.

Democratic governance is quickly disappearing. The blockade is in many ways Canada’s Waterloo.

Regardless of how this blockade is brought to an end, the one thing its leaders will, IMO, have succeeded in guaranteeing us lies ahead, post-blockade, … is autocratic governance.

In a previous “Letter To The Editor” I referred to what we are presently living during these COVID-dominated times are days that I fear today’s youth will before long be sadly looking back upon as “their good old days”.

The need for a just transition to an ecologically sustainable socio-economic system change is a must.

I wonder if the Ship of Fools that is ours is capable of leaving our children a future where the reverence of the life of others yet to come extends beyond simply one’s own and one’s own tribe.

Gary Champagne, Ottawa