VideosThousands of people have now arrived in the Canadian capital Ottawa on Saturday under the so-called Freedom Convoy. Some of them came by truck from Vancouver to protest against the Canadian government’s corona policy. The authorities expect about 10,000 demonstrators.
Foreign editors
Latest update:
21:22
The truckers’ protest initially started as a protest against the mandatory vaccination of truck drivers who want to cross the border into the United States, but has increasingly become a demonstration against the corona rules and vaccination in general. Both Canada and the US require drivers to be vaccinated.
Security Minister Marco Mendicino told Canada’s state broadcaster CBC that some protesters displayed “blatant extremism,” including calls for the government to be overthrown. Prime Minister Trudeau says the convoy is a protest by “a fringe minority,” which is not representative of Canadians’ thinking. The corona restrictions are compared with, among other things, fascism, Nazi symbols can also be seen. Conservative politicians hand out coffee in the cold.
Tom Pappin (52) is from near Ottawa. “I am locked up in my own country. I can no longer go on holiday, to a restaurant or a bowling alley. No more going to the movies. That made it all get out of hand.”
‘Trudeau has left home’
The demonstrators said on the CBC channel that they want to occupy the square in front of the parliament building in the coming days in order to force the abolition of the vaccination obligation. They also say that through their protest they want to frustrate the supply of food and other goods. Many protesters say they will not leave until Prime Minister Justin Trudeau resigns.
According to CBC, Trudeau and his family have left their downtown Ottawa home for security reasons, but a government spokesman declined to confirm. Trudeau himself is in isolation because of a positive test from one of his children. Earlier, the Canadian Prime Minister said the rest of Canada is not represented by this “very disturbing, small but very vocal minority of Canadians lashing out at science, government, society and public health advice.”
Of the drivers who regularly cross the US-Canada border, 90 percent are fully vaccinated. For the Canadian population, that percentage is 77. The employers’ organization The Canadian Trucking Alliance, to which some 4,500 transport companies are affiliated, disagrees with the convoy and says that ‘this is not the way to express dissatisfaction with the policy’.
Check out the images of the truckers on their way to Ottawa here:
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