“Ant Man” and “Lost” actress Evangeline Lilly issued an impassioned video plea urging Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to unify.
“You unify people by finding solutions together,” Lily said in her video, “not by vilifying those who say there is a better way. What we need right now from our leadership is unification and that requires being willing to see, recognize, and hear from the people sitting out in the cold at your door.”
The actress was referring to the prime minister’s handing of a weeks-long protest begun by truckers upset about Trudeau’s vaccine mandate issued to them. As the protest continued, the leader of the continent’s northmost country escalated tactics against them. The usual platitudes turned into labeling protestors bad neighbors, then criminals and racists and, finally, terrorists.
Armed Canadian authorities, many of whom were identified as police, finally cleared Parliament Hill occupied by the pesky, peaceful protestors after Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act for the first time in the country’s history. Reuters reported seeing at least one armored vehicle supporting heavily armed authorities. The invocation of the Emergencies Act that permitted men armed with semi-automatic rifles to clear protestors from the Ambassador Bridge and surrounding neighbors prompted a European Parliament member to liken him to a deposed Communist dictator.
Lilly suggested the country’s leader try a different method.
“If you are so convinced of your own reasons for the mandates, sit down and talk with the leaders of a group of 2.3 million protesters across the country who represent many millions more across the nation and explain it to them,” Lilly suggested. “And ask them to listen with open hearts and minds and then reciprocate.”
She said he should listen to what they have to say with a mind open to hearing things that might go against ideas entrenched in his mind. If he did, she believes the sides could possibly find solutions that could bring Canadians together, solutions he might not arrive at on his own. Lily said he should leave his government office to go outside and meet with protestors.
“That is what a true leader would do,” Lily said. “They would go out and meet their constituents, look them in the eye and treat them with respect.”
Watch:
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