Seated on camp chairs around a bonfire overlooking Parliament, sleepy protesters say they are more determined than ever to defend their “freedom” in the face of anti-virus health restrictions. covid-19 in forceafter almost two weeks of occupying the capital of CanadaOttawa.
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The streets around the seat of the Canadian federal Legislative Branch in Ottawa They are closed.
Instead of flowing traffic, hundreds of trucks with Canadian flags and banners against the government of Justin Trudeauwhich can even be glimpsed in the windows of buildings.
What sparked the protests?
The protest, which broke out at the end of January, began with the obligation to vaccinate against covid-19 for truckers who must cross the border between Canada and the United States.
But the protesters have raised broader demands amid the fed up of much of Canadian society.
The francophone province of quebeclike others in Canada, established severe restrictions against the coronavirus in 2021, even being one of the regions that experienced the most days of confinement in the world.
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What do the protesters say?
“I am here to get my life back, so that everyone can get their life back,” Sébastien Beaudoin, a Quebecois who grew up in Calgary (west), told AFP. Sitting around the fire, Sophie Leblanc came to Ottawa from Québec to support the movement and voice her frustration
“I’m not vaccinated, I don’t want a QR code and I want to be able to do my shopping,” said the 38-year-old, who lost her job as a waitress amid the pandemic and “retrained” in the forestry sector.
“For two years, everyone has been dead, we don’t have the right to see our families, our friends, anyone,” he complained, referring to the long quarantines imposed in Québec since the start of the pandemic.
Why do they say that there are excesses of the Government?
However, the protagonists of the demonstrations are the truckers, who have spent ten days honking their whistles day and night to make themselves heard, and since Tuesday they have been roaring their engines to challenge the ban on using their horns, ordered by a court in the town.
A strong smell of diesel spreads through the center of the city, where many businesses have closed and police groups, from afar, monitor the place.
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The government “cannot anchor itself and take control of our lives to the point of telling us what to put and what not to put on our bodies,” truck driver Jay VanderWier, who came from Smithville, Ontario, told AFP.
His truck, full of anti-Trudeau banners and against his sanitary measures, is parked on the road that separates the office of the Prime Minister and the Parliament of Canada.
“We have been told that it will take another two weeks to flatten the curve (of covid-19 infections), but how many months have passed so far?” he asks with irony.
This unvaccinated family man believes that “the excesses of the government have gone too far” and claims to be surrounded by people ready to do “everything for freedom.”
“How do Justin (Trudeau) and his team get to sleep at night?” He asks, faced with unemployment figures that indicate the loss of 200,000 jobs in January and an unemployment rate of 6.5% in all of Canada. , in addition to the record of suicides and an accumulated anguish in the population.
“All of this is the product of a decision made from above,” laments this protester who, without intending to move, removed all the tires from his truck.
What have the authorities done?
The Mayor of Ottawa, Jim Watsonurged the federal government to appoint a mediator to dialogue with the protesters and find a way to defuse the protests that irritate residents with their incessant beeping and smoke from trucks.
On Sunday, Watson declared a state of emergency in the city, indicating that the protests were “out of control”, and this Monday he asked the federal state for reinforcements to end the “siege” advocating the sending of 1,800 additional police officers.
“This must end,” said Trudeau, at the end of a week of isolation due to covid, during an urgently organized debate in the House of Commons on Monday night. As from the beginning of the protest, the president minimized the protest movement, which he describes as a “marginal and noisy minority.”
AFP
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