ottawa truckers arson false accusation suspects
© Twitter/Ottawa Police ServiceSuspects are seen on security camera footage allegedly attempting to set fire to an apartment building in Ottawa on Feb. 6, 2022.
The attempt to burn down an apartment building in Ottawa, which was so widely and wildly heralded during the Freedom Convoy protest, had nothing to do with the truckers

This week, we found out that the attempt to burn down an apartment building in Ottawa, which was so widely and wildly heralded during the Freedom Convoy protest, had nothing to do with the truckers.

Please let this sink in. At the time, such was the volume of assumption, innuendo and outright allegation that everyone from Nanaimo, B.C., to Nain, N.L., formed the impression that this despicable action, an outrage by any standard, was the work of the truckers.

Not true. False. Nothing to do at all with the protesters. It was allegedly the work of two Ottawa miscreants who were working alone.

You will easily remember that the most grisly feature of this attempt to set the apartment building alight โ€” the affair was caught on security cameras and made it all over the internet โ€” was that the handles of the exit doors were taped shut, so that, had they been successful, residents would not be able to escape the inferno.


Comment: From Global News, February 7, 2022, replete with anti-protest rhetoric:


Though some weren't buying it:



Those who saw that could not forget just how vicious the deed was meant to be and could not help but deplore the type of person who would contemplate such a thing. A lot of the contempt and anger it stirred was directed toward the innocent protesters. It's important to note this.

By Wednesday, however, we knew that all suspicions about the truckers, all the condemnations that showered forth from the House of Commons, all the fulmination from the mayor of Ottawa, all the jaundiced comments on Twitter were wrong, after Ottawa police arrested a second person in relation to the arson who was not known to be connected to the protest in any way. Keep in mind that the Ottawa police themselves had never alleged that the crime had anything to do with the Freedom Convoy. All who did, did so on their own.

Also keep in mind that, as one of the most dramatic incidents of the entire protest, it offered a very convenient contributing pretext for the declaration of the Emergencies Act. These two malicious gits allegedly attempting to light the whole apartment building on fire and locking everyone inside certainly contributed to the atmosphere in which calling down the full power of the emergency legislation was easy to do.

Consider the words of our current coalition co-prime minister, Jagmeet Singh, on this event. Singh had no doubt who was behind the arson. Here he is, in his own extravagant and completely erroneous words, speaking on the convoy protest in the House of Commons:
"This convoy protest is not a peaceful protest.... Violence is commonplace. We saw an example of this violence with an attempted arson of a downtown apartment building, where people started a fire and taped the doors closed when they exited. I ask members to take a moment to think what that means. They had the forethought to set a fire and then tape the doors so no one could escape. This is not isolated. There are ongoing examples."
You add Singh's incendiary charges to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's brutal descriptions of the protesters โ€” racists, homophobes, misogynists, etc. โ€” and the alarmist rhetoric coming from MPs and the mayor of Ottawa, and it's easy to see how the Emergencies Act found so much support.


Comment:


Well, now that the central act, the biggest scare of the whole ordeal, has been established as having nothing to do with the maligned truckers, will there be apologies from all those concerned? Will there be statements of regret about hastily maligning a largely peaceful protest?

One other key point: does this kind of wild accusation, made without proof, fall under the government's newfound concern for misinformation? Will the government work to prevent such malignant mistruths from being spread among its own ranks with the same vigour with which it will surely go after its foes? Let me use an old and possibly faded expression: not in a month of Sundays.

Clearly, we desperately need a public inquiry into why the Emergencies Act got called into play. We need to know the assumptions on which it was based. And we need to know why it was hauled down before the Senate had a chance to vote on it.

We need to know, in essence, if the Trudeau government wielded such a big hammer for its own convenience, on a protest it had demonized, and that had been perhaps fatally slandered by the most outrageous allegation of all: that its members were willing to burn a building, while barring the exit.

Whether, given the recent NDP-Liberal nuptials, we are ever likely to see a real inquiry is a point I shall leave up to honest readers to determine.