By Rob Gillies and Wilson Ring | Related Press
OTTAWA, Ontario — Police poured into downtown Ottawa on Thursday in what truckers feared was a prelude to a crackdown on their practically three-week, street-clogging protest in opposition to Canada’s COVID-19 restrictions.
Work crews within the capital erected fences outdoors Parliament, and for the second day in a row, officers handed out warnings to the protesters to depart. Busloads of police converged on the realm within the morning.
“It’s excessive time that these unlawful and harmful actions cease,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau declared in Parliament, not removed from the place the greater than 300 vehicles have been parked.
“They're a menace to our financial system and our relationship with buying and selling companions,” he mentioned. “They're a menace to public security.”
Most of the truckers within the self-styled Freedom Convoy reacted to the warnings with scorn, and people parked in entrance of Parliament Hill blared their horns in defiance of a court docket injunction in opposition to honking. As of noon, the overwhelming majority seemed to be staying put.
“I’m ready sit on my ass and watch them hit me with pepper spray,” mentioned one among their leaders, Pat King. As for the massive rigs parked bumper-to-bumper, he mentioned: “There’s no tow vehicles in Canada that may contact them.”
Ottawa represented the motion’s final stronghold after weeks of demonstrations and blockades that shut down border crossings into the U.S., inflicted financial harm on each international locations and created a political disaster for Trudeau.
The protests have shaken Canada’s fame for civility and rule-following and impressed comparable convoys in France, New Zealand and the Netherlands.
Early this week, the prime minister invoked Canada’s Emergencies Act, empowering regulation enforcement authorities to declare the blockades unlawful, tow away vehicles and punish the drivers by arresting them, freezing their financial institution accounts and suspending their licenses.
On Thursday, Trudeau and a few of his prime ministers took turns strongly warning the Ottawa protesters to depart or face the results, in an obvious transfer by the federal government to avert a conflict, or at the least present it had gone the additional mile to keep away from one.
Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland mentioned the federal government had begun freezing truckers’ accounts as threatened. “It's taking place. I do have the numbers in entrance of me,” she mentioned.
Ottawa police likewise handed out leaflets on each Wednesday and Thursday telling the truckers to finish the siege, and in addition helpfully positioned notices on automobiles informing house owners how and the place to select up their vehicles if they're towed.
The occupation has infuriated many Ottawa residents.
“We’ve seen individuals intimidated, harassed and threatened. We’ve seen condominium buildings which have been chained up. We've seen fires set within the corridors. Residents are terrorized,” mentioned Canadian Public Security Minister Marco Mendicino. “And it's completely gut-wrenching to see the sense of abandonment and helplessness that they've felt now for weeks.”
The protests across the nation by demonstrators in vehicles, tractors and motor houses initially targeted on Canada’s vaccine requirement for truckers coming into the nation however quickly morphed right into a broader assault on COVID-19 precautions and Trudeau’s authorities.
The most important, most damaging of the blockades on the border befell on the Ambassador Bridge between Windsor, Ontario, and Detroit. Earlier than authorities arrested dozens of remaining protesters final weekend and lifted the siege, it disrupted the circulation of auto elements between the 2 international locations and compelled the business to curtail manufacturing.
The ultimate blockade, in Manitoba, ended peacefully on Wednesday.
The motion has drawn help from right-wing extremists and veterans, a few of them armed, and authorities have hesitated to maneuver in opposition to them, partly out of concern of violence.
Fox Information personalities and U.S. conservatives akin to Donald Trump have egged on the protests, and Trudeau complained on Thursday that “roughly half of the funding to the barricaders right here is coming from the USA.”
Some safety consultants mentioned that dispersing the protest in Ottawa may very well be tough and harmful, with the potential for violence, and that a heavy-handed regulation enforcement response may change into propaganda for anti-government extremists.
The vehicles have been parked shoulder-to-shoulder downtown, some with tires eliminated to hamper towing. Some have been mentioned to be chained collectively. Police have been particularly apprehensive concerning the youngsters among the many protesters.
“There may be probably not a playbook,” mentioned David Carter, a professor at Michigan State College’s College of Felony Justice and a former police officer. “I do know there are police chiefs within the U.S. this and creating strategic plans and partnerships to handle a protest like this if it ought to happen of their cities.”
As tensions rose on Thursday, Canadian Emergency Preparedness Minister Invoice Blair mentioned: “To those that have youngsters with them, that is no place for youngsters. Take them house instantly.”
Gillies reported from Toronto. Related Press author Robert Bumsted in Ottawa and Andrew Selsky in Salem, Oregon, contributed to this report.