Government offices surrounded, ports closed down, even the gates of the naval dockyard at Esquimalt engulfed by what appear to be angry ruffians, demanding military ID from people trying to get in. Elsewhere, as the Western Standard reported yesterday, hundreds of striking workers are causing disruptions in Ottawa by circling buildings, chanting, and playing loud music..Sound familiar? Meanwhile, at the Prime Minister's Office building and the Treasury Board headquarters, only one person is allowed to enter every five minutes, thanks to thuggish picket lines. .This of course is not the Freedom Convoy of winter 2022, which never denied access to any government office. Although the parallels are striking — can an anti-noise injunction be far off? — this is the PSAC (Public Service Alliance of Canada) strike now, and it’s been going on for a week..In the winter of 2022, that kind of behaviour was enough to upset the government applecart..But even public officials learn. And, thanks to the guys with the pocket-protectors down in the Western Standard basement, who jiggered-up the copper-bound ablative absolute machines and hacked the Cabinet e-mail server, we now know what they learned..The just-intercepted emails reveal as a result of what happened last year, the Liberals have a playbook for this kind of thing..We thought this exchange was particularly revealing: It appears to be almost word-for-word from messages that passed between Ministers Lametti and Mendicino in February 2022..Lametti: Do we have a contingency for these people to be removed tomorrow or the next day? What normative authority do we have or is some order needed? EA?.Civil servant: We have not been told of any contingency planning to remove anyone..Lametti: You need to get the police to move. And the CAF [Canadian Armed Forces] if necessary. Too many people are being seriously affected by what is an occupation. I am getting out as soon as I can..Mendicino: So, how many tanks are you asking for? I just wanna ask Anita how many we’ve got on hand..Lametti: Exactly. People are looking to us for leadership, not the stupid people..Of course, given the Esquimalt situation, there may be some issues getting the tanks out, or at least a few of Canada's obsolete frigates. But, as Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne said, “On one hand, they have the right to strike and demonstrate. On the other hand, we need to make sure the economy can continue functioning around the country.”.So c’mon guys. Times a-wasting. The citizens of Ottawa downtown are being harassed and, as for that one staffer every five minutes thing? Around the corner from the PMO are two coffee shops where staffers and civil servants drink the brew to the point of discomfort: Not only are your own snivel servants making fools of you, they won't even let you get to the washroom. At least the truckers brought and maintained their own porta-potties..Get to the playbook..Call out the mounted police. Trample some old ladies. .Monitor their phones. (They’re probably government-issued phones, anyway.).Have PMO coms draft some insulting language for the prime minister to utter, from an undisclosed location. If they’re acting like the Freedom Convoy, they must be like the Freedom Convoy right? So call them what you called the truckers. The words should just roll off his tongue..And by the way, don’t just freeze their bank accounts: Stop paying them while they’re not working..Seriously, according to the Globe and Mail, “striking federal public servants will continue to receive their regular salaries until at least May 10.” As Franco Terrazano at the Canadian Taxpayers Federation put it, federal bureaucrats didn’t have to worry about missing a paycheque during the pandemic; now they’re on strike, they still don’t have to worry about it. .Finally, invoke the Emergencies [War Measures] Act..Well, why not?.Well, probably because the Freedom Convoy was a spontaneous Western-based, freedom-loving movement. The Liberals couldn’t understand that and panicked..PSAC? The Liberals and NDP get them perfectly. They’re their own people. They understand them. And therefore they will not panic. Remember, they all feed from the same trough..Then they ask you to fill it for them.
