Months ago I talked about the COVID Travelling Medicine Show – with its flashy promotion of dubious products, fervent if ill-informed media endorsements and the omnipresent ‘experts’  animatedly and enthusiastically working to frighten a gullible public. The show has moved on – only to resurface as a travelling circus, diseased monkeys and all.

But maybe we are finally putting the COVID disgrace to bed. ‘Experts’ who had controlled our lives for over two years finally slunk away, not willing to admit they were so very wrong, but at least finally removed from our public (and social media) presence. They aren’t likely to apologize (or even to be held to account) because, as they asserted, they are indeed experts and those who disagree with them are uninformed, confused, misled (and, as one local expert in my part of the world out it, ‘likely even Trump supporters)’. And of course all the leadership capacity of this government was summed up in the Great Leader’s words when our illustrious Prime Minister maliciously declared that out there somewhere 10 million Canadians who dare to think independently were ‘extremists who don’t believe in science, misogynists and racists.’ As he put it, ‘It’s a small group that muscles in, and we have to make a choice in terms of leaders, in terms of the country. Do we (even) tolerate these people?’ Could a leader have said anything that is more corrosive or reckless, more likely to cause people to take to the highways and biways to object to his arrogance? It was completely appropriate that these comments received world wide mockery and condemnation.

This government has been COVID clueless from the beginning. Every reaction seemed to be the wrong one – We saw it time and again in the failed purchases of protective gear, the redirection of taxpayers money to Liberal friends, the inability or unwillingness to put in early border control, excessive health protocols, the complete refusal to promote any alternative immune system benefits, and the massive overspending on unreliable and unproven vaccine products.

Vaccine promotion became a contentious farce as infection and fatality rates in the vaccinated public rose to be virtually parallel those in the unvaccinated community. And public confidence was eroded when that same data began to be obscured by health authorities, who were still required to promote the narrative that those same vaccines were your (and your kids) only way out of COVID.

Positions were locked in and misinformation was pervasive. It’s still around. We saw it this week as Justin Trudeau tried to use his third ‘reinfection’ as evidence that vaccines were effective. There must be something in his immune system that makes him susceptible every time there is another crisis in his leadership. Or maybe, just maybe, COVID is now, as many scientists are saying, degraded to where it is similar to the common cold or flu.

Justin Trudeau’ s COVID stubbornness has had its apex in his approach to the unvaccinated third of Canadians. This government’s approach has been to intimidate at every point through exclusion and segregation. For a crew that is supposedly so fixated on diversity and inclusion, they have worked so hard to marginalize a large number of Canadians. Prohibiting people from crossing the border, putting in unfair and unequal quarantine requirements and banning 8-10 million Canadians from flying or rail traffic has permanently inflamed the issue. And lately it was obvious that Trudeau’s only reason to hold on to them was to punish the one group of Canadians who dared to disagree with him.

It has taken a successful peaceful nationwide protest, Opposition MPs, the travel industry, international mockery and finally even a few impudent Liberal MPs to bring this PM to the reality that it is a losing strategy to make bullying an official government policy.

There is a bigger issue here and that is that Justin Trudeau has set a precedent – attacking and demeaning anyone who disagrees with him. It s not just COVID – it’s a whole host of issues. Dividing Canadians has become an integral part of the Liberal tool kit. It shows up in virtually every policy area that this government has prioritized. Even today there are unrelenting attempts to use COVID dissent (and other contentious issues) as an excuse to restrict freedoms  of speech, movement, private property and even internet access. We will talk about this more but the one thing we need to do is to be just as vigilant in other areas as we have been in this one. The next time, government overreach may be more successful. It is our reponsiblity to make sure that doesn’t happen.