During a recent interview with CTV News, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau doubled down on his remarks regarding the trucker protest of 2022, referring to some of the activists as "tinfoil hat" conspiracy theorists who engage in "disinformation" and "misinformation."
The Canadian leader somewhat walked back his previous remarks, calling the people he referred to a "small minority" group within the "movements" that are spreading "harmful lies."
"Those people, and they were a small minority within the larger 'anti' movements who were really vocal, I don't and I won't apologize for calling out people who were harming their fellow Canadians," Trudeau said.
"So, 'tinfoil hats' comment, you don't regret?" asked CTV's Omar Sachedina.
"When someone believes that your government is trying to inject a vaccine in you to control your mind and track you and there's a microchip in it, that's almost the definition of a government conspiracy theory, that you wear a tinfoil hat to protect your brain from brain waves," Trudeau concluded.
However, this statement by the prime minister differs from his remarks during the onset of the protests, when he referred to the demonstration in its entirety as a "fringe minority."
In January 2022, Trudeau said that the views expressed by "a few people gathered in Ottawa" were a "continuation of what we have unfortunately seen in disinformation and misinformation online – conspiracy theorists about microchips, about God knows what else that go with the tinfoil hats.”
Also remarking that other Canadians were “watching in disgust and disbelief at [the] behavior" of the protest, "wondering how this could have happened in our nation’s capital."
At the time, Trudeau also pointed toward "Nazi symbolism, racist imagery, and desecration of war memorials" at the protests, the details of which were not exactly clear despite multiple investigations into a Nazi flag and a Confederate flag seen in the first few days of the city's standstill. Protesters allegedly urinated on a war memorial; however no charges were ever filed.
In late 2021, Trudeau said that the unvaccinated were "often mysoginists" and "racists," while also calling them "extremists" who "don't believe in science."
Justin Trudeau also boasted in the end-of-2022 interview that "people went out and got vaccinated to a higher degree than just about any other country," pointing toward a total vaccination rate of 80.5% for the entire country.
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