Evangeline Lilly asks Justin Trudeau to speak with vaccine mandate protestors: ‘Why won’t you sit with them?’
Evangeline Lilly has urged Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau to speak with residents who are protesting against vaccine mandates.
“Dear prime minister Trudeau, I want to speak to you today about your current approach to and current treatment of our fellow Canadians who are protesting your federal vaccine mandates,” the 42-year-old actor said in a video posted to Bridge City News’s Instagram page.
“They have asked to meet with you, prime minister, medical experts, top scientists, doctors, nurses, parents, grandparents, intelligent, loving, concerned citizens.”
The Marvel star asked Trudeau why he would not sit down and have a conversation with his people.
Demonstrations have been underway in Canada for three weeks as the self-styled “Freedom Convoy” protested against vaccine mandates. Though the movement began as a niche anti-vaccine protest in Canada, a country with one of the highest vaccine rates globally, it has blossomed into a wider venue to voice dissatisfaction with Trudeau and his handling of the pandemic.
“If you’re so convinced of your own reasons for the mandates, sit down and walk 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 and ask them to listen with open hearts and minds, and then reciprocate,” Lilly said in her video.
However, on 30 January, Reuters fact checkers debunked an incorrect report attributed to Ottawa police that claimed 2.3 million people had participated in the protests.
“Listen to what they have to say with a mind open to hearing things that might go against the ideas you are entrenched in,” Lilly said. “You unify people by finding solutions together, 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, recognise and hear from the people sitting out in the cold at your door.”
Lilly’s video came after Trudeau said he will invoke the Emergency Act in order to stop the “Freedom Convoy” protests after weeks of demonstrations and blockades that shut down border crossings into the US and caused economic harm to both countries.
Last month, the Ant-Man star said she attended a rally supporting “bodily sovereignty” in Washington DC.
This was the same rally where leading anti-vaxxer Robert F Kennedy Jr compared vaccine mandates to life under the Nazis.
The 42-year-old actor shared photographs from the rally on her Instagram profile. The caption of her post stated that she believed nobody should be “forced to inject their body with anything against their will”.
Read more about the Canadian protests here.
