Protesting the Protests

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HERE'S MY TAKE

Protest, it seems, is in the air. News coverage from the streets of Los Angeles shows protestors vandalizing property, looting businesses, and throwing projectiles to express their displeasure with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids and arrests of alleged illegal immigrants. When municipal and state officials did not seem to respond in a manner that satisfied US President Donald Trump, he deployed National Guard members to jump in with armoured vehicles, tear gas, and arrests. Trump’s demonization of the protestors is similar to former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s demonization of the convoy protestors in Ottawa a few years back—both examples of an increasing tendency among leaders who, rather than explaining and defending their actions, respond to citizens who disagree with polarizing and inflammatory language and force.

My purpose here isn’t to wade into the point of the recent protests, but rather to reflect on the nature of protest. Thankfully, most protests in a democratic system do not require placard-waving street marches. That’s not to underestimate their importance. Peasant revolts, the withdrawal of labour, marches on capital buildings, public burnings of documents as an act of defiance—history is filled with examples of new laws, institutions, and even countries emerging from the mass expression of support for a cause. That said, for every successful protest, multiple protests fizzle out.

I guess it was the backdrop of Los Angeles's violent images that prompted me to filter other news this week through a protest lens.

There was activist Greta Thunberg along with fellow protesters sailing in a “Freedom Flotilla” to challenge Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza. Israeli forces stopped the ship, arrested the protestors and showed them footage of the October 7^th Hamas terrorist attacks before deporting them. Thunberg and her fellow activists reportedly refused to watch the video. On Thursday, US Senator Alex Padilla showed up to heckle US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem at her news conference, only to have security handcuff and arrest him at the scene. In Canada, Supreme Court of Canada Chief Justice Richard Wagner's news conference this week included a protest of sorts against Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who had described Ontario judges in April as “bleeding hearts” who lack accountability. Chief Justice Wagner joined the critique of Premier Ford’s comments as a violation of judicial independence. Social media commentary on this brought to my attention a British debate in which both UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Opposition Leader Kemi Badenoch attacked a court decision they deemed unjust, only to have the judge respond that she was “deeply troubled” by the remarks. Legal analyst Yuan Yi Zhu interpreted the judge’s comments to mean she was “incandescently furious.” Zhu also argued that “if a judge cannot tolerate public scrutiny, they have no business being a judge,” which is a polite way of saying that a democratic society should value protest as well as legal decisions.

So, should politicians criticize judges? Should citizens criticize politicians? When should the state quell dissent with force? Where does protest fit in civil discourse?

The public expression of diverse views is essential to a dynamic democracy if the concept of freedom is to have any substance. Without protest, institutions become complacent, lose touch with their constituencies, and often lose a sense of their mission. Minority voices need to be heard, even after the majority has made a decision.

This isn’t the space to wax eloquent about the Christian roots and limits of legitimate exercise of authority. One can cite Augustine, Aquinas, and Calvin as recognizing that while political authority ultimately comes from God, it is mediated through the community. Recognizing the created dignity of every person as an image-bearer of God means listening to all voices, including minority voices. This is not just a positive expression of basic Christian truth, but also a recognition that human nature tends toward the abuse of power and that hearing minority voices can restrain the temptation to be tyrannical. Leaders do not need to agree with protesters, but listening and engaging seem to be principled obligations.

Affirming the importance of protest is quite different from supporting the current expression of protest. Candidly, it seems that few people today know either how to protest or how to listen well. So, allow me to offer a few reflections that, in combination, might be helpful in evaluating some of these current issues. Protest is an issue in which the “how” is almost equally important to the “what” if contentious issues are to be effectively managed. 

1. The purpose of a protest is to draw public attention to an issue in the hope of achieving change. The message needs to be clear. While protest can often be therapeutic—people can feel they’re “doing something about” the frustrating decisions of the powers that be—I fear too much protest these days is ineffective because it highlights problems without solutions. I would urge protestors to rally behind leaders who have coherent and articulate aims that advance the public understanding of their issue instead of participating in a self-satisfying rant about the problem.
   
   
2. Protest often occurs after a government decision in which some group feels it was not heard or its concerns were not properly considered. Disrupting the public and doing things that get you into the news is a way of amplifying your voice and getting an issue onto the public agenda. I get that and respect it to a point, but protest cannot become an excuse for lawlessness. Violence, destruction of property, and disruption of the public order in a manner that inconveniences our neighbours to the point where they cannot carry on with their lives are not justified by disagreement with a government decision. And in the rare cases where the issue is so egregious, your own respect for the law means that you can consciously engage in civil disobedience. Of course, that means being willing to accept the resulting punishment as part of your protest. Pushing for a law to be changed (and then respected) entails respecting the original law as well. The case of Linda Gibbons, a pro-life protester in Toronto, is a good example of exercising moral responsibility by rightly disobeying unjust laws (Dr. Martin Luther King would be a more famous example). Non-violence is an essential component of civil disobedience properly carried out as a means of protest.
   
   
3. While I understand that polemics and rhetoric are tempting in circumstances where protest is involved, I find myself frustrated by the one-sided presentations by many protest spokespeople. It does little for your cause when you present a “strawman” argument, misrepresenting an opponent’s position by exaggerating or oversimplifying it in a way that allows you to easily defeat it. If you want to be heard regarding your own viewpoint, you need to listen to the other side and take it seriously. Protests are more credible and likely to achieve their objectives when their spokespeople are heard as offering better solutions instead of just angrier rants.
   
   
4. Recognize the potential and responsibilities of different structures in society. The judges may have a point about judicial independence when politicians, elected to take care of the legislative and executive branches of government, wade into areas designed to be free of political interference. That said, when judges hide behind judicial independence to justify decisions that are seen to be politically deaf, both they and their decisions lose credibility. The judicial branch is one of the three branches of government. It cannot operate effectively if it ignores the realities of the other two branches and the effect of judicial decisions when applied outside of the courtroom.
   
   
5. Anyone in public life needs to focus on the common good when making a case for any change or decision. There are exceptions, but much of the protest these days seems focused on narrow interests rather than shared flourishing. The message is more “join our team in opposing the regime” than “there’s a better way to fix the problem.”

Of course, much more could be said, and nuance is necessary on each of these points. However, I couldn’t help but notice this week the lack of a coherent understanding of the function of democratic protest. Whatever your position on the issues—and most of us find ourselves with a minority viewpoint on some file—protecting the right of your opponents to protest, and even encouraging them to do so, is essential. At minimum, this is vital to protecting your own right of protest. It is also a feature of a healthy society. I wonder if our failure to cultivate the skill and practice of effective protest is at least one of the contributing causes to ineffective government. This week we saw more than our fair share of ineffective government and ineffective protest, reinforcing each other to produce conditions that are the opposite of common good flourishing.

WHAT I’M READING

Citizenship and Civilization

An opinion column with a title “The commodification of citizenship and the downfall of Western civilization” might seem pretentious. Still, Anthony Koch’s piece in the National Post this week is a valuable analysis of the technocratic reduction of Canadian identity. “The past is recast as shame,” Koch writes. “The present is a diversity marketing campaign. The future is a quarterly growth target. The only unifying myth is 'progress,’ and the only sin is nostalgia. This is not a sustainable vision of nationhood. A country cannot survive on imported customs and managed relativism. It cannot inspire sacrifice or loyalty if it refuses to define itself. It cannot hold together as a community of citizens if citizenship is treated merely as a right to access services, rather than a commitment to a shared moral order.”

Fixing the Charity Industry

The declining support for the charitable sector is well-documented and has long been a concern. (I co-authored a study entitled “A Canadian Culture of Generosity” in 2011.) John Hallward floated an interesting proposal in Policy Options this week, suggesting the establishment of a self-governed social sector fund that would get its revenues from all charitable foundations. I’m generally in favour of industry associations thinking about and promoting an industry independent of government. However, I’m not convinced that the centralizing pressures of such an agency would be offset by added value beyond what already exists in charitable industry organizations like Imagine Canada and the Canadian Centre for Christian Charities.

For Thee But Not For Me

The Liberal government’s proposed Bill C-4 is ostensibly about affordability, but its fine print includes a provision that effectively exempts political parties from complying with privacy legislation. University of Ottawa professor Michael Geist is my go-to source for commentary on legislation of this sort. His analysis provides good background and context.

Defending Defence

Prime Minister Carney’s announcement that Canada would meet the NATO requirement of spending 2 percent of GDP on defence in this fiscal year received mixed reviews from pundits. Susan Delacourt in the Toronto Star notes that former parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page has said that this level of defence spending would require “either big spending cuts, or a budget deficit or a tax hike, or some combination of these measures.” In the Globe, Andrew Coyne notes that the government's commitment comes twenty years late and just in time to be behind the 3.5 percent of GDP target that leaders are expected to set at the upcoming NATO summit. Tasha Kheiriddin, meanwhile, focused more on whether this would mark a continued commitment to the F-35 fighter jet program or whether the increase of budget would also translate into a changed procurement approach. Prime Minister Carney noted that the new spending will not only provide new equipment but a good portion of this will go to operational spending, meaning more personnel, better readiness, and maintenance of existing equipment since less than half our fleet and land vehicles actually works. 

Why Have Kids?

Sometimes the question is asked out of frustration while parenting but this week’s Comment offering is a discussion between my colleague Brian Dijkema and the authors of What Are Children For?—a book that grapples with the philosophical questions beneath a culture that is reproducing at below replacement rates. The book seeks to provide a secular perspective that affirms the value of human life and accepts “that a certain amount of dependence or interdependence is actually core to personhood.”

MEANINGFUL METRICS

The Boomers Did It

Pollster David Colleto offers “Four myths (and one truth) about the 2025 federal election” in The Hub. His insightful post-election analysis suggests that the common explanations of Donald Trump’s electoral influence in Canada, the gender gap in federal Conservative support, Conservative leader Pierre Pollievre’s personal unpopularity, and the decline of the NDP are not entirely accurate explanations of the April election results. Colleto argues that the most significant, but underappreciated, explanation for the election outcome is the 19-point increase in the Liberal vote among those aged 60+ (and the corresponding 8-point drop for the Conservatives.) “Part of it was the Carney effect: older voters viewed him as competent, steady, and safe,” explains Coletto. “Part of it was fear: Boomers were more likely to say Trump was a major factor in their vote, and they overwhelmingly thought Carney was better able to handle him.”

TAKE IT TO-GO

Pun-Inspired

What to do when you’re at the deadline to submit Insights, but no original puns come to mind to end off this newsletter? I know that a subset of Insights readers regularly groan to me about how the groaners that are usual for this space are unworthy of Insights. (How they are literate enough about this paragraph to cite specific examples when they insist they never read the wordplay is a mystery that requires a sleuth to solve, but my name isn’t Sherlock, so I’ll just drop the case.)

The usual Take It To-Go go-to when you’re cooking up schemes to get people out of their shells is to yoke about eggs. You have to be chicken not to collect the eggscellent supply of one-liners that crack most people up. However, I’ve done that a few times before in this space, so I think omelette it slide. The good news is it's 2025, so there is always AI to turn to when you get stuck. I just asked Claude, the AI friend I’ve been testing out these days, to give me the best puns about puns he could come up with. He offered up ten options and was pretty confident about his abilities.

“My puns are so good, they should come with a pun-alty warning for excessive groaning,” claimed Claude. I was punderwhelmed at his suggestions (confirming that punderful wordplay comes from real and not artificial intelligence).

So, I chided Claude. “Is this the best you got,” I asked him. “I hardly laughed and didn’t even groan.”

“Puns don’t just make me laugh—they make me pun-derstand the true meaning of wordplay,” the AI responded.

At the end, Claude admitted that “if these still don’t work, I might need to accept that I’m pun-employed as a comedian.” We’ll accept that, leave him unemployed, and look forward to having something better for you next week.

Until then.