On February 10, just over a week before police finally moved in to evict the nearly monthlong occupation of downtown Ottawa, Manitoba MP Candice Bergen stood up in the House of Commons and asked protesters to go home. “I am asking you to take down the blockades,” said the interim leader of Canada’s Conservative Party. “Protest peacefully and legally, but it’s time to remove the barricades and the trucks for the sake of the economy and because it’s the right thing to do.” While Bergen did take care to reiterate her party’s opposition to vaccine mandates and continued COVID restrictions, the statement still marked a pronounced shift in the rhetoric of Canada’s most powerful right-wing politicians — many of whom had quite openly sought to align themselves with the self-described Freedom Convoy that had spent much of January entrenched in the nation’s capital.

Bergen herself had posed for photos with demonstrators, as had other Conservative MPs, including former party leader Andrew Scheer. Ontario premier Doug Ford, meanwhile, initially offered an effective endorsement, remarking on February 4, “I understand their frustration. . . .  If people want to come down and protest, God bless them.” A week later, Ford would declare a provincewide state of emergency, brand the protests a “siege,” direct his attorney general to freeze access to millions in online donations made to the convoy, and make “crystal clear” (in his words) “[that] it is illegal and punishable to block and impede the movement of goods, people, and services along critical infrastructure.”

In parsing the timeline of events, the cause of institutional conservatism’s rather abrupt pivot is thus easily identified and deeply instructive. With key border crossings blocked, what conservative leaders had initially viewed as a venial sort of disruption suddenly became a different species altogether: namely, the kind that frightens markets and business interests and puts profits at risk.