New Brunswick MP defends his support for truckers protesting COVID rules
CBC
New Brunswick Conservative MP Jake Stewart is defending his support for protesting truckers in Ottawa, saying he didn't encounter any of the "repugnant and despicable" behaviour that marred the movement.
The former provincial cabinet minister and first-term MP for Miramichi-Grand Lake said he only met about 20 truckers on the outskirts of the capital leading up to the start of the protest.
"Pretty much all of the ones I met were actually vaccinated and they were more interested in mandates and lockdowns than they were vaccinations," he said in an interview with CBC's Information Morning Fredericton on Monday.
He said he didn't see any swastika-bearing protesters that have been shown in news reports.
"I didn't notice anything like that where I was, but I obviously know some of those things happened," he said.
"Negative ideology will always find a way to attach itself to something like this."
Stewart and Ottawa-area Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre posed for photos with truckers on Jan. 29, the day before the protest began in earnest. The two MPs also joined crowds on highway overpasses supporting drivers as they headed into the city the next day.
Stewart said it's "never a bad idea to stop by a demonstration" and hear what people have to say, recalling his encounters with anti-fracking protesters when he was a Progressive Conservative MLA.
One spit on him and another started contacting him at his home.
"There might have been 400 people in that protest, but there were only two or three that I actually worried about."
He said being "a good public figure" means listening.
"You don't have to support it. You don't have to think it's 100 per cent accurate. You just have to understand what people are saying."
Stewart at first questioned the fact some of the protest organizers espoused white nationalist and Islamophobic views. "Has that been proven?" he asked.
Stewart said he did not agree with racist or Islamophobic views and said truckers he knows in Miramichi-Grand Lake are good people.
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