The Canadian trucker protests show the importance of public opinion polling to the democratic process

Societies need public opinion polls so they can develop an accurate sense of self

You have no doubt heard of the Canadian truckers who have been blocking the streets of Ottawa over the last month. They are upset that the government is mandating that they must prove they have received a vaccine for covid-19 if they are crossing the border from America. One of the larger groups of truckers blocked a highway bridge over which a quarter of US-Canada trade passes, costing some $300-400m dollars a day. (They were cleared from the road after a week.) Another group set up their camp on Wellington street, which fronts the building housing Canada’s Parliament. They have been honking their horns all day and night for the better part of two weeks.

On February 7th, some residents of Ottawa filed a class-action lawsuit for quiet. The members of the “freedom convoy,” as the truckers have dubbed themselves, responded by arguing that honking was just part of the “democratic process.” A judge disagreed, ruling with the Ottowans. He ruled that the noise was unnecessary and harmful. “Tooting a horn,” he said, “is not an expression of any great thought I am aware of.”

That is fair enough. The truckers’ demands are unreasonable; vaccine mandates for border-crossers are safe precautions meant to slow the spread of a deadly and highly infectious disease. Cross-border travelers pose unique risks to collective safety during pandemics. And there is no justifiable scientific basis for refusing inoculations against covid-19. Plus, it is hard to have a deliberative, democratic debate with someone who is honking a 100-decibel horn in your face — let alone dozens of them.

In another respect, however, it is easier to empathize with the truckers. They feel they do not have representation in their government and are resorting to a (massively disrupting!) form of speech to get their message across. And Justin Trudeau, Canada’s prime minister, has refused to meet with them at all. Citizens of democratic governments have every right to register their disagreements with that government, given certain conditions are met. (A month-long occupation of a capital city is admittedly a bit much. And contrary to the claims of some connentators, it is not what Henry David Thoreau or Martin Luther King Jr meant when they wrote about and practiced civil disobedience.)

Nevertheless, the drama with the truckers serves as a good example that not all speech is created equal. Technology and the media have made it easy for small, loud minorities to have their messages dominate the conversation and shape the public’s consciousness over an issue. It may seem innocuous for dozens of drivers of 18-wheelers to blare their horns outside the halls of government. But this actually carries a real risk of drowning out other members of the debate.

That is especially concerning given our modern media environment, which can magnify and disseminate messages to millions almost instantaneously—and incessantly. Fox News has made the convoy their lead story for most nights over the last 3 weeks. Right-wing internet commentators such as Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson have been publishing podcasts, videos, and tweets on the subject endlessly, disseminating the views of the truckers to their tens of millions of followers.

Meanwhile, an estimated 90% of Canadian truckers are vaccinated for the coronavirus! And 80% of all Canadians are. The truckers represent at best a few percentage points of Canada’s population. The media coverage of their disruption carries a real risk of distorting the true landscape of opinion in Canada.

. . .

This all has me thinking about the polls. Specifically, tha public opinion polling is instrumental in correcting these biases. Canadian truckers may henceforth be thought of as anti-vaccine bigots when that is inaccurate. In America, the plastering of the convoy’s crusade on Fox News, for example, may give the impression that the vast majority of the Republican Party is opposed to covid-19 vaccines. But the latest crosstabs from YouGov’s polling show a majority of both Trump voters and Republicans are vaccinated for covid! And most support businesses requiring customers wear masks or get vaccinated. Most Americans also support vaccine mandates for school kids.

These data are crucial for a society to develop an accurate conception of its collective self. Put another way, polls let us hold a mirror up to ourselves — and one that is less biased than most of the other information we consume.

In the case of these Canadian truckers, the data (the polls, but also the direct government-collected vaccine data) remind us that the majority of the country is in favor of both vaccines and vaccine mandates. The “silent majority,” at least in this case, is on the side of the scientists and the liberals. But the minority is very vocal. They have very large trucks with very loud horns.