From the Foreign Desk: Sir John A MacDonald

What Now, Fearless Leader?

Canada-Citizen of Canuckstan: To my surprise, it happened. After only 2 days of the Emergency Act, Trudeau rescinded it. Why? Well, that’s where the speculation comes in. To several people, the fact that Canadians were withdrawing their money from banks led the banks to pressure Trudeau to back down. Others hold that the “emergency” really was over after....two days. I find that hard to believe. Did the polls suddenly change? I’ve seen no evidence of that. Ditto that Trudeau was intimidated by the international condemnation in the press. The Canadian media didn’t really have a problem

I think it’s more likely Trudeau realized that he didn’t have the votes in the Senate. Ordinarily, the appointed Canadian Senate is little more than a rubber stamp for the House of Commons, but in this case there were several (Liberal) Senators saying that they thought the Emergency Act went too far. As well, the Senate was upset that they were pressured to pass an Act when no one could really explain what the emergency still was.

This hasn’t ended. The banks that froze accounts now have to face the fact that the Emergency Act was technically never truly in force. And many accounts are still frozen. Truck protester leaders are still in jail. And a number of lawsuits, including one by the province of Alberta are heading for the courts. This will take a long time to unscrew this mess. And the fact that Putin has invaded the Ukraine using the same language that Trudeau used to condemn the truckers is not going over well.

Hold the line. It looks bad now, but I think things will get better. Eventually. It just may take years.