Canadian police on Wednesday threatened to arrest trucker-led protesters who have shut down central Ottawa and disrupted cross-border trade in anger at COVID-19 health rules, while Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called the movement “unacceptable.”
With more people joining the blockade of the Ambassador Bridge between Windsor and the Michigan city of Detroit in solidarity with the two-week-long truckers protest in the Canadian capital, Trudeau said that the action threatens the country’s economic recovery.
“Blockades, illegal demonstrations are unacceptable, and are negatively impacting businesses and manufacturers,” Trudeau said in the House of Commons. “We must do everything to bring them to an end.”
Photo: AFP
To the protesters, he said: “You can’t end a pandemic with blockades... You need to end it with science. You need to end it with public health measures.”
“The reality is that vaccine mandates, and the fact that Canadians stepped up to get vaccinated to almost 90 percent, ensured that this pandemic didn’t hit as hard here in Canada as elsewhere in the world,” Trudeau said.
Earlier, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that US officials were “in very close contact” with Canadian border agencies about the bridge blockade.
Psaki also expressed concerns about the impacts of the protests on the US economy, saying that the action “poses a risk to supply chains, to the auto industry.”
The Ambassador suspension bridge is a key trade corridor, with more than 40,000 commuters, tourists and trucks carrying US$323 million of goods across the span each day.
Several Canadian and US chambers of commerce and industry associations, in a joint statement, demanded that the bridge be cleared, saying: “As our economies emerge from the impacts of the pandemic, we cannot allow any group to undermine the cross-border trade.”
Another trade link between Coutts, Alberta, and Sweet Grass, Montana, has also been blocked by protesters for several days.
By Wednesday evening, the atmosphere on the streets of downtown Ottawa was one of protest and celebration.
“We’re not going anywhere,” said trucker John Deelstra, smiling from behind the wheel of his big rig, which has been at the demonstration since it began.
Not far away, Ontario trucker Lloyd Brubacher offered up the same steely resolve: “I’m not going anywhere,” he told reporters, adding that he planned “to fight to the bitter end.”
About 400 vehicles are still camped on Parliament Hill below Trudeau’s offices, against a backdrop of barbecues, campfires and music.
“This is a dramatic situation that is impacting the well-being of Canada’s relationship with the United States and impacts immensely how business is able to conduct its operations,” University of Ottawa professor Gilles LeVasseur told reporters.
The “Freedom Convoy” began last month in western Canada — launched in anger at requirements that truckers either be vaccinated against COVID-19, or test and isolate, when crossing the US-Canada border.
Ottawa police warned protesters that they could face criminal charges and their trucks could be seized if they continue their “unlawful” clogging of downtown streets.
However, the truckers remained defiant.
“We’ve got guys here — they’ve lost everything due to these mandates, and they’re not giving up, and they’re willing to stand their ground and keep going until this is done,” said protester John Vanreeuwyk, a feedlot operator from Coaldale, Alberta. “Until Trudeau moves, we don’t move.”
At a news conference in Ottawa, Benjamin Dichter, one of the protest organizers, said: “I think the government and the media are drastically underestimating the resolve and patience of truckers.”
“Drop the mandates. Drop the passports,” he said.
Conservative leader Candice Bergen said in parliament that countries around the world are removing restrictions and Canadian provinces are, too.
She accused Trudeau of wanting to live in a “permanent pandemic.”
“Many of the reasons that were previously to keep Canadians under restrictions are vanishing before our eyes,” Bergen said. “The prime minister needs to put his ego aside. He needs to do what’s right for the country. He needs to end the mandates. He needs to end the restrictions.”
Additional reporting by AP
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
Three sisters from Ohio who inherited a dime kept in a bank vault for more than 40 years knew it had some value, but they had no idea just how much until just a few years ago. The extraordinarily rare coin, struck by the US Mint in San Francisco in 1975, could bring more than US$500,000, said Ian Russell, president of GreatCollections, which specializes in currency and is handling an online auction that ends next month. What makes the dime depicting former US president Franklin D. Roosevelt so valuable is a missing “S” mint mark for San Francisco, one of just two
RSS