Can’t get them to move. Neither with the hundreds of fines nor by the collective action currently launched by a handful of inhabitants against the heavy horns which resound in the heart of the city and the fireworks. For the past eight days, the streets in front of Parliament and under the offices of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Ottawa have been occupied by hundreds of trucks and demonstrators from the now famous “freedom convoy” (Freedom Convoy). “They terrorize our residents, torture them with incessant honking, threaten them and prevent them from living their lives,” summed up the chairman of the city’s police commission. The situation got “out of control”.
So much so that the mayor, Jim Watson, resolved on Sunday evening to declare a state of emergency in the capital of Canada. “We are losing the battle, (…) we must take back our city”. What will this “state of emergency” change? This should make it possible to better respond to the supply of city services, made very complicated by this occupation. Police reinforcements are also expected. A few arrests also took place. The battle could be played around the blocking of supplies of material and fuel to the protesters.
How did we arrive at this state of siege? The movement was originally intended to protest against the decision to oblige, since mid-January, truckers to be vaccinated to cross the border between Canada and the United States. But it quickly turned into a movement against health measures as a whole and also, for some, against the government of Justin Trudeau. Protesters say they want to continue their occupation until health restrictions are lifted, and wave slogans like “The media is the virus”.
The disputes are reminiscent of the form of those of the Yellow Vests, French, but also Canadian, because the movement had at the time extended across the Atlantic, under the name of “United We Roll” (We roll together, in French). Many truck parades took place in January 2019, in the west of the country, against the implementation of a new carbon tax, and against the personality of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
“United We Roll” 2.0
This convoy takes another much more important turn this time. The protests, which began in Ottawa on Saturday January 29, spread this weekend to other major Canadian cities, such as Toronto, Quebec and Winnipeg. In the capital of the French-speaking province, the protesters acted a little differently. City police said in the evening on Twitter that “all of the immobilized trucks” had left the city. They nevertheless intend to return in two weeks, once the current Quebec Carnival is over.
But according to several observers, and despite the different claims – sanitary today, rather economic in the past – the bottom line has not changed. “The Freedom Convoy that has paralyzed Ottawa since Friday doesn’t just look like the United We Roll movement: it’s its continuation,” notes the French-language daily. The duty. On the form, with these long convoys of trucks. But also by the characters who reappear during these events, such as Tamara Lich and Patrick King, already present during the first convoys in 2019.
The first is considered the “spark” that started the fire. Tamara Lich is asking the government, nothing more or less, to remove all restrictions related to Covid-19. She is behind a crowdfunding campaign on the GoFundMe site, which raised more than $10 million. The pot has since been frozen. A “small” million dollars has been released and will “go only to participants who traveled to Ottawa to peacefully protest,” GoFundMe said. The second, Patrick King, is notoriously known for his racist and anti-Semitic outings.
The Canadian Anti-Hate Network recently devoted several articles to the Freedom Convoy, believing that it was nothing more or less than an extreme right-wing demonstration. “If you look at its organizers and promoters, you will find Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, racism and incitement to violence,” writes the independent body. This would explain, in part, why the tensions are only growing. “The only way it’s going to be fixed is with bullets,” Patrick King said in December, in a video viewed by Radio Canada.
“As in 2019, the Freedom Convoy appropriates a popular and populist cause to generate support beyond its own networks”, continues The duty. The daily recalls that other attempts at “convoys” were launched this winter. In particular via the conspiratorialist James Bauder, ex-participant of United We Roll. This time the call took.
Trucking unions not convinced
And so it’s not necessarily thanks to the truckers. At the very beginning of the demonstrations, the director of the Atlantic Provinces Trucking Association (APTA) – one of the largest professional associations in the country -, Jean-Marc Picard, assured that his organization does not support the protest. The Canadian Trucking Alliance is on the same wavelength. This “does not support and strongly disapproves of any demonstration on public roads, highways and bridges”, it relays on its website, however asking for an alternative for truckers having to cross the border.
The Canadian Trucking Alliance (CTA), the Canadian association of truckers, has meanwhile affirmed that “85% of its drivers are vaccinated”, while estimating that a large number of demonstrators in Ottawa “seem to have no connection with our industry”. The challenge is nevertheless recovered politically. According to The duty, Conservative MPs raise the specter of shortages after the implementation of these new border rules between the United States and Canada. The Conservative Party is currently tightening around figures favorable to this “freedom convoy”, such as Leslyn Lewis and Pierre Poilievre.
Justin Trudeau, he remains silent for the moment in the face of the slippage of the “convoy”. The Prime Minister stands by his statements at the end of January, in which he described the demonstrators as a “marginal minority”. And swept away any legitimacy “of a movement which, according to the authorities, includes extremists and members of the far right, receives substantial funding from American donors, has been applauded by former President Donald Trump”.