It is day four of what started as an anti-vaccine-mandate protest convoy to Ottawa and, so far, the disgruntled truckers and their allies have the upper hand.
The centre of the capital, including the main street, Wellington, remains blocked to all traffic. Members of Parliament who attended the hybrid online and in-person session on Monday, the first of the new year, had to walk onto the Hill. Local daycares and schools had to close, as did public libraries, vaccination clinics, health centres and many small businesses.
And the impact of the protest has spread far beyond the city core.
Authorities have been forced to close a number of the bridges linking Ottawa to Gatineau, Quebec, while protesters and their vehicles have invaded and, in effect, occupied residential neighbourhoods kilometres away from Parliament Hill.
City Councillor Catherine McKenney, who represents the centre of Ottawa, describes multiple complaints from their constituents about the behaviour of the truckers and their friends.
In one tweet, McKenney reported:
“Illegal & disturbing activity continues throughout our residential neighbourhoods. I’ve heard from 100s of residents who are tired & frightened at what they are experiencing in their neighbourhoods. I am hearing reports of trucks driving through red lights without pausing.”
The councillor also said some demonstrators have used residents’ front yards as toilets, while drinking, partying and blaring their horns all night long.
The Ottawa police, with reinforcements from across the country, are claiming that they are doing their best to keep the peace, but are treading carefully in dealing with the protesters.
Never before has a protest movement in the Canadian capital been accompanied by hundreds of massive, multi-wheel rigs, spewing clouds of noxious diesel fumes, and blaring their oversized horns in a 24-hours-a-day cacophonic symphony.
In reality, although the protests have been notionally nonviolent, these vehicles constitute a kind of weapon. Their mere presence not only frightens people who live and work nearby, it intimidates the police.
Police say they fear provoking protesters and are giving them a wide berth
On Sunday evening, January 30, the Ottawa Police Service issued an extraordinary news release, which reads, in part:
“Throughout the weekend, the Ottawa Police Service and its partners have been actively and patiently managing a well-funded, major demonstration in the downtown core.
We have seen multiple cases of disruptive, inappropriate and threatening behaviour from demonstrators […]
Police are aware that many demonstrators have announced their intention to stay in place. This will continue to cause major traffic, noise and safety issues in the downtown core […]
Police have avoided ticketing and towing vehicles so as not to instigate confrontations with demonstrators. Still, confrontations and the need for de-escalation has regularly been required.”
On Monday morning, speaking to the media, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh took note of the police service’s commitment to de-escalation and voiced his approval. Despite the heinous actions of some demonstrators, Singh said, the police are showing a salutary measure of restraint.
But the New Democratic leader added that other groups who might have occasion to protest government policies – including racialized and Indigenous people – could be asking: Why not us? Where is the commitment to de-escalation when it comes to our demonstrations?
While upholding the right of assembly and free speech, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau expressed his vigorous disapproval of what he called the anti-science stance of most of the protesters, and, worse, what he called the “disgusting” behaviour of some of them.
Trudeau pointed to the protesters who stormed the downtown Ottawa homeless shelter and soup kitchen the Shepherds of Good Hope and demanded to be fed. As well, he condemned the confederate and Nazi flags a small number of protesters carried, and the demonstrators who disrespected the National War Memorial and placed protest signs on a statue of Terry Fox.
A number of Conservative MPs actively supported the protesters, including Ottawa-area MP Pierre Poilievre, who many grassroots Conservative activists favour to replace the more-moderate Erin O’Toole as leader.
For his part, O’Toole tried to find something resembling a middle ground. He supported the aims of the notional majority of demonstrators, on the one hand, while arguing that only a tiny minority of the protesters was responsible for the objectionable acts Trudeau, Singh and others condemned.
It is true that the swastika flag-bears and monument defilers are not typical of the majority of participants. That does not mean the other protesters were promoting a moderate and reasonable message.
This reporter witnessed a rather large proportion of the protesters carrying aggressive and obscene signs which featured an upwardly outstretched middle finger accompanied by the words F*CK TRUDEAU.
Score upon score of demonstrators displayed variations of that vulgar and hateful message: on placards, on their clothing, and on the sides of their giant trucks.
Hostile messaging directed personally at the prime minister, and not at government policies, was, indeed, the overriding theme of the multi-day protest.
In their actions, the protesters have, so far, avoided out-and-out violence. But when it comes to their words and their imagery, it is another story.
Nonetheless, the convoy’s de facto ally in Parliament, Conservative Leader O’Toole, wants the prime minister to sit down and talk with the protesters.
The prime minister firmly shut the door on that suggestion, both in a news conference from the undisclosed location where security forces moved him and his family out of an abundance of caution, and during the first question period of 2022, in which Trudeau participated virtually.
All those trucks upset the power equilibrium between authorities and protesters
But despite the federal government’s hard line, at this point it looks like none of the authorities, whether at the municipal or federal level, are able or willing to do anything more than encourage the protesters to get back into their pollution-spewing vehicles and leave town.
The presence of all those huge intimidating trucks, idling illegally all over the centre of Ottawa, poses a challenge the city has never before had to deal with. And this is a city that has experienced thousands of demonstrations.
Ordinary Ottawa citizens are beginning to express considerable chagrin at the disruption to their lives.
They know that if they parked their own cars in no-stopping zones for days on end – letting their engines run the whole time, to boot – they would be towed away and forced to pay heavy fines. It rankles them that foul-mouthed and angry invaders to their city can get away with flouting the law so flagrantly.
Those who want to destabilize social peace and the democratic process are learning a valuable lesson from this experience. You do not need firearms to cow the police and authorities. All you need are massive, multi-tonne trucks.
From south of the border, both billionaire Elon Musk and former U.S. president Donald Trump have expressed support for the Canadian convoy. Those two, and others in the U.S., could be the source of some of the millions of dollars in donations the truckers have received.
Trump and his supporters will also note that the next time they plan to invade the U.S. capital, or some other sacred site in their country, they should get all the big trucks they can find to join in the party.
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Nick Seebruch, editor
