It is the truckers and other workers who have felt the brunt of Covid restrictions, while the Zooming upper classes have been content to stay indoors and get their supplies delivered to them – by truckers. Until recently, the Canadian government had classified truckers as ‘essential’ workers and therefore exempt from vaccine mandates. Nevertheless, some 90 per cent of them got vaccinated voluntarily. Yet Trudeau picked this moment to order all truckers to be vaccinated if they want to cross back into Canada from the US. It’s not surprising the mandate triggered a backlash.

Throughout this crisis, Trudeau has played the role of an aloof elitist to a tee. He has dismissed the protesters as a ‘small fringe minority’ who hold ‘unacceptable’ views. By declaring them Nazis and Confederates, Trudeau has labelled the truckers as a foreign enemy within. Displaying a stunning lack of self-awareness, Trudeau tweeted that truckers ‘don’t have the right to blockade our economy, or our democracy, or our fellow citizens’ daily lives’ – when his restrictions over the past two years have done more harm to the economy and liberty than anything the truckers have done. One fellow Liberal Party MP, Joël Lightbound, rightly criticised Trudeau and Canada’s political class for being out of touch with working Canadians: ‘Those making the decisions seem at times to have been blind to the fact that we’re not all equal [under] lockdowns [and] that not everyone can earn a living on a MacBook at the cottage.’ (The ‘cottage’ is an allusion to the place where Trudeau escaped to when the trucker protests first flared up.)