#makeottawaboringagain
The discourse around Ottawa has completely ignored the effects on the residents themselves
The occupation of Ottawa has largely been lifted by police action on February 18 and 19. My wife and I were glued to the TV watching the police inch down Rideau Street without engaging with the protesters, and then quickly retake Wellington. It was both exciting and surreal for us, as it must have been for many.
The scenes on TV were completely familiar to us. The Chapters in the background of the dramatic RV break in? I worked there for three years! I used to buy clothes at that H&M! I avoided the McDonalds at 99 Rideau like the plague! When I worked downtown Ottawa, I used to get off my bus at the Terry Fox statue in the plaza beside the Prime Minister’s Office, and I used to catch the bus going home right across the road. Someone online had named the capture of the stage on the corner of Metcalfe and Wellington the “Battle of Nick’s Bus Stop”.
I’ve moved out of the city itself and into the suburbs, so I have not been directly affected by the occupation. But I have a sense of ownership still. I have friends who live downtown, I still know people who work downtown and have been affected. I also spent a significant portion of my life living and working there. It’s my city, damnit!
I recognize as well that the fact that I live in Canada and have assumed that this couldn’t happen here is a privilege. I’ve heard a lot of commentators say that this isn’t “our Canada", but perhaps either it isn’t our Canada anymore, or it never was all of our Canada - some of us have been left behind.
What I really wanted to talk about here though was the online reaction to the convoy in Ottawa, and the (mostly Canadian) media’s reaction as well, and how this has largely just ignored the actual people who live in Ottawa.
Bad Takes Online
We have unfortunately captured the attention of the United States media, especially on the right wing. There are American politicans tweeting in support of the convoy. I don’t pay these people too much mind though, Since they are bad actors until proven otherwise. It’s a shame, but it’s par for the course. For example:
What I do care about instead is ostensibly smart people getting out of their lane and talking about things they don’t understand. Here are a couple of examples:
A Social Credit System Arrives in Canada:
On Monday, the rhetoric turned to action when Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act. This heretofore-unused 1988 law gives the government virtually unlimited power for 30 days to deal with a crisis. Invoking the law under the present circumstance would require the threat or use of “serious violence,” yet the vast majority of protesters have been entirely peaceful—playing “We Are the World” and waving Maple Leaf flags. - Substack
Justin Trudeau has done the opposite. First, he refused to meet them. Then, seizing on the fact that a few of the protesters appear to be bigots, he attempted to put all of them outside the boundaries of reasonable debate by condemning “the anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, anti-black racism, homophobia and trans phobia that we’ve seen on display in Ottawa over the past number of days”. The police already have ample powers to quell disorder. Yet on February 14th Mr Trudeau invoked emergency powers under a 34-year-old law that had never been used before. It would allow the government to declare protests illegal and freeze the bank accounts of protesters without a court order.
A number of hot takes on twitter:
Those two tweets are not super popular, but those two individuals I follow because their perspectives are often quite interesting - about what they are experts in. It’s not the first time that intelligent people have had opinions on things they really shouldn’t have opinions on.
Those are maybe not even the best examples. Those last few examples are from after the Emergencies Act was invoked, but similar people said similar things after the police forcibly opened the Ambassador Bridge. Fascism in Canada, preventing peaceful protest. This is the narrative online, and that Trudeau is a dictator.
Do people actually live downtown?
I try to be apolitical, caring more about policy and than any particular political position. I am willing to entertain essentially any position on the convoy. These positions can’t be taken seriously though because they don’t even attempt to deal with the residents who actually live in Centretown.
The debate over whether the convoy is peaceful, and whether Trudeau is a facist, ignores that there are actual people living downtown, whose lives were disrupted for someone else’s political cause. Estimates given on the news were somewhere in the ballpark of 20,000 people living downtown. 20,000 people whose lives were turned upside down because of the occupation. My friend who lives right downtown has been staying in the suburbs at a friend’s parents house. Why is it that the people who live downtown have to suffer because of the protest?
I would like any commentator who has an opinion on whether the protests are peaceful or not to state that it is okay for the residents of Ottawa to deal with:
These are particularly heinous examples. There are attempts to document everything that are underway. This isn’t even getting into the noise, the fumes, the yelling, the sexual harassment, etc. The list literally goes on.
I feel like any commentator who defends the protests needs to publically state that these things are okay. They need to put it out there that they believe that the motivations of the convoy are so important that it is okay that stores lose revenue, and that the residents of Ottawa shouldn’t be able to call 911, and that its important to drive by schools shouting obscenities. If these are only “a few bad apples” as I’ve heard many times who are doing the bad things, they’ve created a lawlessness in the city that is directly affecting residents, and not affecting these internet commentators.
Who has the skin in the game?
NNT would say that they have no skin in the game. There is no risk in spouting terrible opinions online and they have no exposure to any of the downsides of what they advocate. Writing about the position of the “interventionists” like Thomas Friedman who pushed for the invasion of Iraq in 2003:
What is crucial here is that the downside doesn’t affect the interventionist. He continues his practice from the comfort of his thermally regulated suburban house with a two-car garage, a dog, and a small play area with pesticide-free grass for his overprotected 2.2 children. - Skin in the Game, page 10
I believe he would have worse things to say I believe about a lot of these people, since because they have no skin in the game, they do not have the feedback from the consequences of their actions, and therefore do not have the learning that comes with it - see OODA loops that I wrote about a few weeks ago.
The residents of Ottawa have much skin in the game, and they have very exposed to the consequences of other’s actions. When someone like Zexi Li puts her own name and reputation on the line by being the lead plaintiff in a class action lawsuit against the convoyers, it means something much more than when Bari Weiss’ blog is talking about fascism in Canada. She’s even been willing to go on TV and talk about the residents themselves and the effects on her life. That is courage, and that is skin in the game.
So it’s really easy for some people to be online commentating about how awful Trudeau is. They look good for their audiences, they get to stroke their ego that the United States (because so many of them are American) is better for once than Canada, and then in a few weeks they will move onto another topic. The residents of Centretown and Ottawa as a whole will have to deal with the knock on effects of this potentially for years. Will the government put barriers up downtown to prevent movement? How much trauma is there that will need to be dealt with? Will businesses survive this lengthy closure, which ironically was ostensibly in support of them?
Oh, and the media
Canadian media hasn’t been any better. I watched a lot of CBC and CTV over the last few days and have seen a lot of talk about what the convoyers want, what the government wants, but who the fuck is thinking about the residents? It’s obscene that a group of mostly out-of-towners (not affected by their actions in Ottawa) are trying to pressure the provincial government who has put vaccine mandates in place (is Ottawa even in Ontario? No skin in the game) by annoying the federal government (most of who work from home and aren’t downtown) by terrorizing the residents of Ottawa (much skin in the game, no decision making ability in terms of politics). Because no one but the residents actually care, this has dragged on for so long, and then they are forgotten.
This isn’t even a right wing thing. The New York Times tweeted this:
As someone who actually watched it, the guns were used to clear the cabs of trucks where the police had no idea if there would be armed individuals waiting for them. The arrests were mostly done by people with sticks and batons. Canadian commentators called out the New York Times on their bullshit headlines, and they changed it, but left the tweets up.
This is yet another example of a disconnect between actions and the effects. NYT has no skin in the game, because there’s no direct link between this terrible article and anything in particular. They might lose some reputation, but reputation is ephemeral anyways and they’re clearly trying to go for a different audience than those who care about the truth. Subscribers are another thing they could lose, but there’s probably not that many Canadian subscribers who will see this and unsubscribe.
What to do
I don’t really have a good idea of what to do about any of this. Politics is clearly out of the control of Ottawa residents, and a lot of the commentariat don’t really care about what we think. This will pass, at least internationally, in the next few weeks. There will be weeks of reckoning in terms of licenses being revoked, insurance cancelled (this is something I’m probably going to write about at some point). Let’s learn at least from this that:
When you aren’t sure about something, figure out who has skin in the game, and that will tell you where to look.
Tyler Cowen made a good point that “Look for strong analytical abilities [in particular groups when you aren’t sure who to support], and if you don’t see it, run the other way.”
As I wrote about before, voting matters. Solve the crisis before it happens. Institutions probably matter more, but that’s another article as well.
Call out commentators for their bullshit. Ensure they know who has skin in the game, and who does not. Maybe they haven’t read Taleb (they probably should), but its a pretty simple concept that someone from out of town with no connection to the city probably doesn’t care if the city is destroyed.
Ask people to state their beliefs on whether or not Ottawa should be collateral damage. Do you believe that kids be screamed at because of your political cause?
Oh, make sure to tell anyone who disagrees what most non-Canadians don’t realize about this: Trudeau’s actions are really popular in Canada.
