Editor's note: Andrew Korybko is a Moscow-based American political analyst. The article reflects the author's views and not necessarily those of CGTN.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau harshly condemned protesting truckers and their sympathizers who are rallying against their government's COVID-19 vaccination mandates. They've swarmed the capital of Ottawa and even shut down three border crossings with the U.S. According to Trudeau, the protests are driven by people who promote "antisemitism, Islamophobia, anti-Black racism, homophobia, and transphobia" despite on-the-ground video footage contradicting this.

His stance towards the visibly peaceful protesting truckers and their sympathizers is completely different from the one that he espoused during the dark days of foreign-backed unrest that victimized China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR). At that time, he criticized the Chinese authorities' legitimate and proportionate tactics for ensuring the safety of its citizens. Trudeau was also against the national security law for Hong Kong and even encouraged emigration from there.

These positions were in spite of the documented evidence that Hong Kong's protest movement had been hijacked by foreign-backed radicals who'd resorted to terrorism and other forms of hybrid warfare against China. They're incomparable in all respects to the peacefully protesting truckers and their sympathizers. This makes it all the more curious that Trudeau doesn't support his people and won't engage in dialogue with them despite having previously urged China to do so with terrorists.

The reason for this is obvious. Trudeau isn't the "liberal democrat" that he claims to be nor is his country the picture-perfect "democracy" that he pretended it was when he participated in the U.S. "Summit for Democracy" last December. Like all countries, Canada is imperfect and its citizens sometimes feel compelled to publicly express their grievances against the authorities. Its COVID-19 vaccination mandates have incensed some people and provoked them into doing this.

Instead of practicing the policy that he preached to China under much more violent circumstances, Trudeau still refuses to talk to the truckers and their sympathizers. He'd rather falsely malign them all as antisemites, racists and whatever else. To an outside observer, he seems to be panicking. Nowhere is this more apparent than when he fled his own capital for supposed safety in the face of the approaching "freedom convoy," as its supporters describe their movement.

By the same standards that Canada and other U.S.-led Western governments apply towards Global South states like Ethiopia and Syria, one would have wondered whether he'd "abdicated" or at the very least "lost his legitimacy" as his country's leader. After all, that's exactly what Canada and its so-called "fellow democracies" would have said if Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and Syrian President Bashar Assad fled their capitals in the face of actual approaching terrorists, to say nothing of peaceful protesters like Canada's.

Trudeau doesn't like that Canadians are protesting en masse all across the country in increasingly strategic ways that are imposing actual costs on the economy, nor are his senior American partners happy about this either. In fact, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas and U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg spoke to their Canadian counterparts and urged them "to use federal powers to resolve this situation at our joint border.”

This development very clearly proves that a hierarchy exists between the U.S. and Canada whereby the former is certainly the senior partner while the latter is unquestionably the junior one. It's very likely that Trudeau will comply with the Biden administration's demands out of fealty to Canada's much larger and more powerful neighbor that's now openly meddling in its affairs. This is ironically the same thing that Canada itself attempted to do to China but Beijing, of course, rebuffed Ottawa and others' demands.

The takeaway from all of this is that Trudeau exemplifies the typical Western leader in that he preaches so-called democracy abroad but doesn't perfectly practice it at home. Moreover, just like all his Western peers, he won't dare push back against his senior American partners' open meddling in his country's affairs. To be sure, he's likely in full agreement with what they demanded but it still goes to show that Canada is a junior partner. It's also an imperfect "democracy" and Trudeau is a hypocrite.

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