Not trucking around: Canada’s protests spread

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Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist. I'm your host, Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. Lawlessness and instability in Haiti keep getting worse. It's a country that suffered even more from natural disasters than it has from bad governance. And international aid has poured in for decades. So why hasn't all that cash improved Haiti's situation? And if you know it at all, you probably know it from doctor's offices. Reader's Digest has, as of this month, been around for a century. So far, defying the death spiral of so many print magazines. We look into how it got its start and why it stuck around. First up though, In the centre of Ottawa, Canada's capital, protests led by truck drivers are into their third week, keeping the city at a noisy standstill. It began as a gripe against a government requirement that truckers entering Canada show proof of COVID 19 vaccination. But it's grown into far wider anti government protests in Canada and elsewhere.

So are you guys truck drivers?

Yes.

All right.

Carly Wanna writes for the Economist and was in the freezing temperatures of Ottawa last night. Among those she spoke to was Sean, a trucker who said he'd joined the protest after a four day drive from the western province of Alberta.

We're gonna be here as long as we have to be here until we remove Justin Trudeau for non confidence, for not standing up for the people. We're not backing down. The government works for us. We don't work for them. The government is only supposed to be there to collect taxes and look after us that way, not to look after our health.

And there's been some talk too, that the Ottawa police might come in. What would you do in that case?

We're gonna hold our ground.

Many of those who've joined the protests on aren't truckers.

Can I get you a name?

Yeah, Brody.

Do you have a truck?

Do I have a truck?

Yeah.

No, I came in a car.

So what brings you out here?

What brings me out here is, well, to get our rights back, our freedoms back.

I'm enjoying myself.

This is.

This is beautiful.

This is one of the greatest things Canada's ever done.

The protests have spread beyond Ottawa. Over the weekend, authorities cleared the Ambassador Bridge from Detroit, the border's busiest road link. It's a blockade that throttled production at American car plants. And this so called freedom convoy has inspired demonstrations elsewhere in New Zealand's Parliament, In the Hague, and in Paris, where police fired tear gas to disperse protesters on the Champs Elysees.

These are some of the biggest protests that Canada has seen against Covid mandates and vaccinations.

Emma Hogan is our America's editor.

Initially, the truckers were based mostly in downtown Ottawa, which obviously had the impact of forcing some businesses to close. Prime Minister Trudeau left for a secret location with his family and initially dismissed the protesters fringe. Since then, the mayor of Ottawa has declared a state of emergency. But it really, it's been quite striking at how little the police have been involved. It's partly because Ottawa's police force is quite small. But there hasn't been arrests until recently after two weeks of protests. So it really started when the protesters also moved to blockade the Ambassador Bridge, which is one of the most important crossings between America and Canada. But elsewhere, they're really, you know, they've embedded in and they seem to be having, you know, quite a sort of decent time despite the dropping temperatures.

And what about popular support for this? How much are Canadians behind the truckers in this protest?

Well, the striking thing is that Canada is a country that is incredibly, well, vaccinated. More than four fifths of Canadians have had two jabs of a vaccine. And so initially it seemed that very few people were behind these protests. I mean, one poll found that two thirds of people who were surveyed felt they had very little in common with how the protesters in Ottawa see things. But then another poll also found that nearly half of Canadians, so about 46%, say that although they don'. Agree with everything that the people who've taken part in the truck protests have said their frustration is legitimate and worthy of our sympathy. And the thing that I find really striking is that among the proportion of 18 to 34 year olds, that was more than half. It was 61%. So I think that although there are counter protests in Ottawa, and although it does seem that even the trucking association has said very small minority of truckers are unvaccinated, there is potentially a feeling of deep discontent against very long lockdowns, which parts of Canada have had, and sort of, you know, a discontent with COVID mandates among a wider proportion of the population than perhaps, you know, might seem initially the case.

But there do seem to be indications this isn't just about trucking and this isn't just about COVID mandates of various sorts of.

Absolutely. And as the protest has continued, it has changed in terms of what people are demanding. Different groups have latched onto it, not least support from political right, including the former president Donald Trump and neo Nazis. So in many ways, although it might represent some discontent among Canadians, it's also been hijacked in some ways by American right wingers. The Ottawa police, for example, claim that many protesters came from south of the border initially. At the start of the protest, a few displayed swastikas and at least one carried a confederate flag. And there's also evidence of some foreign funding behind it. So when the convoy made its way across Canada, it raised 10 million Canadian dollars through GoFundMe, much of it apparently from American donors, although GoFundMe has now said that the protest is an occupation and shut down the appeal. So in many ways, this is not just a protest against this particular vaccine mandate, but, but potentially a larger anti government protest by people who are using drugs.

And there seem to be indications that what started as a Canadian protest has now an international dimension to it.

Indeed, somehow these convoys have sort of inspired international copycats. So in New Zealand, for example, there has been a group who are protesting against vaccine mandates. And despite being sprayed with sprinklers and also being played Barry Manilow songs, they're still there. Similarly, in France, it looks likely that people in cars and not trucks are looking to protest, perhaps a sort of echo of the Ghillet Jaunes a couple of years ago. So far, a lot of these protests are not as long lasting as those in Ottawa, but it's still early days.

So do you think that this is a sign of wider discontent, of American style polarization coming across the border?

I wouldn't want to predict that quite yet. I mean, Canada is a very different country from its southern neighbour in terms of inequality and levels of poverty and so on. But it is somewhere where in the past two years there have been incredibly long lockdowns in quite a few places. There are now vaccine mandates which have meant that some people who work in federal jobs have lost their jobs. And I think that the past two years have created a sense of division in a country which until now seemed remarkably united.

And as for these protests, currently more narrowly, where do you see this going?

No doubt Ottawa will regain its streets eventually, not least by the fact that it's very cold. I mean, it's about minus 20 degrees Celsius at the moment. But I do think that this suggests that Canadian politics will continue to become more divisive. And it really depends on how Prime Minister Trudeau, how he reacts to the protests and to this feeling of discontent in the weeks and months to come.

Emma, thank you very much for joining us.

Thank you, Jason.

For more analysis like this from our international network of correspondence, take out a subscription to the Economist. Get a great introductory deal@Equality.com IntelligenceOffer the link is in the show Notes. The Caribbean country of Haiti is one of the world's poorest nations. It suffers from natural disasters, political upheaval and chronic mismanagement. A massive earthquake struck in 2010, devastating the capital, Port au Prince, and killing hundreds of thousands of people.

When you look at the devastation in Haiti's capital city, there is no doubt that this was the big one. It's been called a catastrophe of major proportions.

The the Caribbean island nation of Haiti.

Has been rocked by its biggest earthquake.

In more than 200 years.

The International community has poured in enormous amounts of aid, but despite that, the country is still in a dire state.

So the southwestern part of Haiti has had two sizable earthquakes in the past six months.

Margaret Khedifa writes about foreign affairs for the Economist.

The president, Jovenel Moise, was assassinated in July of last year. The acting president is incredibly unpopular, so much so that he survived what many people believe was an assassination attempt in January. Elections for a new government have not been held and gangs, which were powerful before the assassination, have just taken over more of the country. And so there's been a rise in kidnappings. And all this lawlessness is compounding existing poverty in Haiti.

How is the poverty situation right now and what's being done about it.

So even before the pandemic, so things are probably worse now. Three fifths of the 11 million people who lived in Haiti were living on less than $2 a day. And the United nations has a Human Development Index that ranks countries based off of life expectancy and education. And Haiti ranks 170th out of the 189 countries on that list. Rich countries gave Haiti more than $17 billion in aid between 2000 and 2019. And that's about as same as the amount that the Haitian government spent over that period. But it seems like all of this aid money doesn't do much good in Haiti. For example, Haiti's economy has grown more slowly over the past decades than other countries that get the same amount or even less aid per person. And similarly, Haitians have lower life expectancy, and they're less likely to finish primary school than people in other countries that are getting similar amounts of aid per person.

Why is that then?

So the current explanation that is most used is corruption. Western donors have been very wary of the Haitian government since the 1950s. That's when a kleptocratic dictator named Francois Duvalier took power. And he was succeeded by his son named Jean Claude Duvalier, who may have stolen as much as 800 million in aid money during his 15 years leading the country. Haiti transitioned to democracy in the 1990s, but government hasn't really improved much. There are two presidents that are more recent, Moises and then Michel Martelli, who was elected after the 2010 earthquake, that have both been accused of diverting aid from a Venezuelan oil aid scheme called Petro Caribbe. They both have denied the accusation. And so foreign donors have looked at all of this dysfunction and have tried to steer aid away from government channels.

Which is where the non governmental organizations, the NGOs come in.

Yes. So in the decade after the earthquake, which was a really catastrophic event, donors said that they would give more than 13 billion to Haiti. But instead of giving it to the government, they gave it to other groups. So in the two years after the earthquake, less than 1% of all of that foreign money went to the Haitian government. And the United States Agency for International Development, which is Haiti's largest donor, has funneled 97% of its aid since 2010 through non Haitian organizations. And most of that money actually went to a handful of organizations that are based in Washington, D.C. so Haiti has been dubbed the Republic of NGOs. And that's because, like the day to day functioning of the country is run by Aid organizations.

And what's wrong with that, though, about getting getting aid through NGOs.

So if there is a functional government that is working constructively with those NGOs, nothing is inherently wrong with this. The problem is when NGOs sideline the government, then you can really run into issues. One of those issues is that foreign donors often fail to take local advice on what actually needs to be done. After the 2010 earthquake, there was a commission that was formed that would direct foreign aid to the places it was most needed. And that commission had Haitians on it. But Haitians have said that their voices were largely ignored. And so a second issue is that foreign donors, when they don't kind of ask for local opinion, can often focus on vanity projects. I spoke with one person who worked in urban planning after the earthquake, and she was trying to get a foreign NGO to expand a roadway into a really disconnected community. And instead that NGO ended up paying for cultural projects in the community. And the kind of biggest example of this is that USAID and the Inter American foundation decided to build an industrial park in northern Haiti. And this was built off of an idea from foreign economists that had preceded the earthquake that the way to make Haiti develop was to export cheap clothing. And what ended up happening is that this industrial park never reached full capacity. And then there was a port that was supposed to be constructed to help ship the goods out of Haiti, and that port was never constructed. Finally, working with foreigners can be very expensive. For example, after the earthquake in 2010, the American Red Cross raised $488 million to help victims. But the website ProPublica found that 40% of that money went to overhead costs.

So essentially, the reason for all of these kinds of shortcomings of NGOs, ways of being would be fixed if there were a functional government, but there's not. So what can be done?

So one thing that could be done is to accept that there isn't a functional government, but to perhaps give assistance to it. Anyway. There is some research that was done by the OECD between 2010 and 2014 that showed that seven governments in Africa actually became better at delivering services and did so more cheaply when they got what's called direct budget support. So money that was given directly to the government. And in those cases, graph did not increase. And sometimes ministries actually became more transparent because they finally had the budget to spend time documenting what they were working on. Now, if donors are very skeptical about working with Haiti, one possible solution is to find the parts of the Haitian government that are working and to send aid there. And then finally, if donors are going to fund groups that are non governmental, then donors should give money to groups that are not competing with the government, but that are complementary to the government. There are peasants organizations that do lots of work in the countrysides, including sort of helping farmers improve their farming practices. And those are parts of the country that would be hard for even effective government to reach. So funding those groups would be less problematic, perhaps, than funding a group based in the capital that's trying to compete with government services.

Margaret, thank you very much for joining us.

Thank you for having me.

In February of 1922, a new magazine was launched in New York. It had an elegant cover, which promised articles of enduring value and interest in condensed and compact form.

Henry Hitchings writes about culture for the Economist.

Reader's Digest enabled its first readers to meet two of the quintessential American moral obligations saving time and self improvement. The magazine consisted of 64 pages. Those pages were full of information and practical suggestions, all extracted from other publications.

I want you to to write me a piece that will do to the public what that garage man did to me.

The whole venture was the brainchild of a man called DeWitt Wallace. He was a former university dropout from Minnesota, and he had dreamt it up more than three years earlier while he was recovering from shrapnel wounds sustained on the Western Front. But when he'd had the idea For Reader's Digest, 18 companies rejected it, dismissing it as either dry, a bit quaint. So he had to set up on his own account, and he did so in a Greenwich Village basement alongside his wife. But within seven years, they had more than 200,000 subscribers. That figure would eventually grow to something like 18 million in 22 languages and across more than 40 countries.

If I write that, will you print it? I think I will.

If you say Reader's Digest to someone today, a century on, from that debut and almost 1200 issues later, it instantly conjures an image of idle moments spent in dentist waiting rooms. To its critics, Reader's Digest has long been a corny compendium of points to ponder, of real life survival stories of just fancy, that kind of pieces and suggestions for self improvement, such as how to enrich your vocabulary, which it would routinely refer to as your word power, but bridges. Digest has this noble history of campaigning against syphilis, for instance, and in favour of organ donation. As far back as 1924, it reproduced a story that linked tobacco consumption to premature death, and it was a theme that it would often return to notably in 1952 with an article headlined Cancer by the Carton. Indeed, in the very first episode of Mad Men, Sal, the ad man, ponders a cigarette billboard.

I love smoking.

I love smoking.

That's very good.

My wife hates it. Reader's Digest says it will kill you.

Originally, the magazine only reproduced pieces that appeared elsewhere. It ran its first wholly original article in 1933. Two years later, it printed was probably its most influential piece, and that was Joseph Furness's and Sudden Death.

In the past few months, 25 million people have read a magazine article on automobile excellence, an article which has startled the country, an article the inspiration for which lay in an everyday scene at a typical roadside garage near Pleasantville, New.

York, at a time when cars and driving were routinely glorified, Furness painted a grim picture of their dangers. The automobile is treacherous, he wrote. And he also wrote that driving at high speeds can instantly turn this docile luxury into a mad bull elephant. It was a piece that captured people's imagination, and within three months, 4 million copies of the article had been distributed to motorists via car dealerships, which prompted a national debate about auto safety.

We'll warn the readers that it's strong stuff for weak stomachs, but I'm going to print it. You get an awful kickback.

Reader's Digest was the first publication to document that. Khmer Rouge's Savagery in Cambodia did so in the form of excerpts from a book by John Barron and Anthony Paul. Its pages were also the platform for a confessional account by former first lady Betty Ford of her battle with addiction to alcohol and prescription drugs. Today, the influence of Reader's Digest is more modest than it once was, and it's published in only ten languages. Once upon a time, it was legendary for its army of fact checkers and for magnificent rates of pay. But like so many publications, it has suffered from the contraction of print journalism, and its parent company has filed twice this century for bankruptcy. Even so, one particular thing about it endures, and that is De Wit Wallace's enthusiasm for sharing other publications gems. You could say that that makes De Witt Wallace the granddaddy of content aggregators.

Henry Hitchings on Reader's Digest. Which turns one. That's all for this episode of the Intelligence. If you like us, leave us a rating and a review and see you back here tomorrow.