Canada deals with images of truckers and others defiantly protesting against COVID-19 mandates
Andre Landry said he wasn’t worried about a threatened police crackdown on truckers whose rigs have blocked the streets of the Canadian capital, turning the stately government district into a boisterous protest strip and block party.
Truckers and other protesters who have essentially shut down part of Ottawa for almost three weeks in protest of COVID-19 mandates and restrictions responded with defiance as authorities seemed poised to evict hundreds of illegally parked vehicles. Truckers honked their horns repeatedly in an emphatic rejection of police warnings.“You must leave this area now,” Ottawa police demanded in leaflets handed out on Wellington Street, the main drag fronting Parliament.
The protest began as a rejection of a Canadian government requirement that cross-border truckers be vaccinated. But the demonstrations in the capital and at Canadian-U.S. border crossings have spurred a global copycat movement against all pandemic restrictions and morphed into a protest against the Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
“Does anyone know what the hell is going on anymore?” columnist Kelly Egan wrote Tuesday in the Ottawa Sun. “Monday certainly had the feel of the city, the province, maybe the country, going madly off in all directions— a law never previously used — in a bid to give authorities additional legal tools to evict the truckers and other blockaders.
Many protest participants reject the notion that the demonstration in Canada is a anything other than a homegrown phenomenon, not some kind of knock-off of U.S. right-wing politics. Last weekend, residents from one protest-battered neighborhood — exposed to weeks of horn-honking, diesel emissions and what many call harassment — set up their own blockade and counter-protest to block vehicles seeking to join the convoy.Ottawa police have been harshly criticized for allowing the truckers to park outside Parliament weeks ago and remain there.
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