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.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
RSS