Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday invoked rarely used emergency powers to bring an end to trucker-led protests against COVID-19 health regulations, after police arrested 11 people with a “cache of firearms” blocking a border crossing with the US.
It marked only the second time in Canadian history such powers have been invoked in peacetime and it came as hundreds of big rigs still clogged the streets of the capital, Ottawa, as well as two border crossings.
“The federal government has invoked the Emergencies Act to supplement provincial and territorial capacity to address the blockades and occupations,” Trudeau told a news conference.
Photo: AFP
The prime minister said the military would not be deployed at this stage, but that authorities would be granted more powers to arrest protesters and seize their trucks to clear blockades, as well as ban funding of the protests.
“We cannot and will not allow illegal and dangerous activities to continue,” Trudeau said.
“This is about keeping Canadians safe, protecting people’s jobs and restoring confidence in our institutions,” he said, adding that the scope of the measures would be “time-limited” and “geographically targeted,” but without providing specifics.
As the threat of violence lingered, federal police said they had arrested 11 protesters with rifles, handguns, body armor and ammunition at the border between Coutts, Alberta, and Sweet Grass, Montana, just a day after another key US-Canada border crossing was cleared in Ontario.
“The group was said to have a willingness to use force against the police if any attempts were made to disrupt the blockade,” the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said in a statement.
The protests by Canadian truckers and their supporters — opposed to mandatory COVID-19 vaccines and pushing a wider anti-establishment agenda — have triggered copycat movements from France to New Zealand, with US truckers mulling similar rallies.
Under pressure to act, Trudeau on Sunday convened a special federal response group on efforts to end the occupation of Ottawa and the remaining, economically damaging, blockades of border crossings in Alberta and Manitoba.
The Emergencies Act was previously used by Trudeau’s father, former Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau, during the October Crisis of 1970. It saw troops sent to Quebec to restore order after the kidnappings by militant separatists of a British trade attache and Quebec minister Pierre Laporte, who was found strangled to death in the trunk of a vehicle.
Canada’s so-called “Freedom Convoy” started with truckers protesting against mandatory vaccines to cross the border with the US, but its demands now include an end to all COVID-19 health measures and, for many of the protesters, for the toppling of Trudeau’s government — only five months after he won re-election.
Canadian police over the weekend cleared a blockade on the Ambassador Bridge, which handles an estimated 25 percent of trade with the US, and had disrupted business in the world’s largest economy.
On Monday morning in Ottawa, as a deep freeze rolled in, protesters remained defiant, despite threats of jail and fines of up to C$100,000 (US$78,711).
Leaving “is not in my plans,” Phil Rioux, behind the wheel of a large truck, said before Trudeau’s announcement.
“It’s by maintaining the pressure that we have a better chance of achieving our goal,” the 29-year-old said. “There are other customs checkpoints that are blocked, more will be blocked elsewhere.”
“We are not afraid... We will hold the line,” protest organizer Tamara Lich told a news conference.
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