On January 23, when federal judge Richard Mosley ruled that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his cabinet had overstepped their authority by invoking the Emergencies Act, I thought back to that terrible February when “angry fringe groups” sparked a national debate over how elected authorities should deal with widespread civil disobedience. I’m speaking, of course, of the Wet’suwet’en protests.
The “angry fringe” quote came from Jason Kenney, Alberta’s then premier, in 2020, two years before Trudeau used almost the exact same words to describe the “Freedom Convoy,” which had driven trucks and vehicles to occupy downtown Ottawa. The Coastal GasLink pipeline was being built through the heart of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation’s territory in central British Columbia, against the will of some of their hereditary chiefs. Tensions had been building for over a year; then the RCMP raided one of the Wet’suwet’en blockades on a remote access road, and images of peaceful Indigenous protesters being dragged off their land to make way for a pipeline were beamed across the world. Within hours, solidarity blockades began to spread across the country. Trucks and trains were blocked at Canada’s four largest ports—Vancouver, Montreal, Prince Rupert, and Halifax—and rail traffic was halted or disrupted in seven provinces. As the month wore on, then transport minister Marc Garneau voiced concerns that cities would soon run out of water-treatment chemicals and other critical supplies.
