Three trucks paralyze traffic on a central Ottawa street to demand the end of sanitary measures against the coronavirus.
The long siege of anti-vaccine truckers forces a “state of emergency” to be declared in the Canadian capital and wears down the Government
Ten days after hundreds of truckers stormed downtown Ottawa to protest rules requiring all truckers working on both sides of the border with the United States to be vaccinated, Mayor Jim Watson declared a “state of emergency.” ». The decision was adopted on Sunday (early Monday morning in Spain) after the City Council and the Police concluded that the situation is “out of control”, with the center of the Canadian capital paralyzed and fear embedded in the body of the neighbors who report insults, harassment, theft and threats.
The deterioration to which the protest has reached causes anger and disbelief among Canadians, who wonder how the lack of police and institutional reaction has caused a “siege” that is beginning to be compared to the assault on the US Capitol on January 6 of 2021. Local and regional politicians in Ontario are already talking about a “national insurrection” and some prominent members of the Liberal Party, to which the Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, belongs, wonder what the Government is doing in the face of the apparent impunity of the camped protesters and of hundreds of trucks blocking the way to traffic.
Despite the increase in criticism of his management and the fact that the tractor heads even invade the avenue where the government headquarters are located, both Trudeau and the Defense Minister, Anita Anand, trust in a peaceful outcome and have ruled out a deployment of the Army, since “it is not a police force”. The Minister of Public Security, Marco Mendicino, prefers not to speak of the siege but of “worrying elements”, but admits that the population “does not feel safe”. Mayor Watson sees it with greater pessimism. “It is the most serious emergency that the city has ever faced,” he asserts, while he hopes that the declaration will allow “reducing bureaucracy”, increasing police assistance and better equipping the capital’s agents.
A hundred fines
So far, more than 1,500 regional troops have been sent to Ottawa and are occupying strategic areas awaiting orders. Local forces have arrested six people and charged another sixty with assault, robbery or destruction of private property. And they have imposed a hundred fines for blocking the streets, reckless driving or spinning trucks.
A newspaper dissected this Monday the keys to a fence that is beginning to wear down at all levels of the Trudeau Administration and concluded that two of the main ones have been the lack of preparation of the Police and their lack of reflexes to plan a response. Analysts also do not explain why no one has cut off the supply of food or gas cylinders to the campers. A councilman explained this Monday that in Ottawa there are already more protesters than police.
Thousands of anonymous people or those belonging to groups opposed to anticovid restrictions and vaccines have joined the ‘Freedom Convoy’ that made its entrance on the 29th. Radical groups are supposed to have infiltrated among them and have extended the protests to Toronto, Edmonton, Halifax and Vancouver. One piece of evidence is that they have received 1.4 million dollars through an online collection platform that also obtained income for the extremist group Proud Boys, a participant in the assault on the US Congress. On Sunday, while a police team was stationed in the stadium, a man perched on the roof of a truck waving the Canadian flag in front of Parliament dressed only in a thong in several degrees below zero.
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