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Photo by Carlos Osorio / Reuters

But as tragicomic as this witch hunt became, it didn’t really affect ordinary people whose lives lay outside the fields of politics, journalism, arts and academia. Since the whole idea of decolonization — or “reconciliation,” if you prefer its focus-grouped stand-in — is confined almost entirely to performative rites of ideological compliance, it had little effect on the vast swathe of Canadians who produce useful goods and services instead of, say, newspaper columns, sad-settler poetry, and college seminar courses on white fragility.

All that is now changing, however, thanks to the shutdown of Canada’s rail system — because the people being affected are no longer just members of the same rarified cultural caste that’s been proselytizing decolonialization these last three years. The social-justice extremism that till now has been largely confined to campus life and obscure CanLit publications has metastasized to the world of normal human beings. And so the victims now include families going to weekend weddings and funerals, students trying to visit home on study break, blue-collar workers who don’t own cars and can’t afford plane travel.

Of course, most Canadians want to do the right thing for Indigenous people, despite the bad will produced by all this bien-pensant hectoring. But anyone who’s followed this controversy knows that the rail shutdown has nothing to do with Indigenous rights — because the B.C. pipeline that’s being protested already has been approved by democratically elected Indigenous bands that are prioritizing growth and self-sufficiency over environmental puritanism.