Canadian police on Wednesday issued an ultimatum to protesters who have been choking Ottawa streets for 20 days to leave the capital, as provincial and US state leaders called for an end to the cross-border COVID-19 vaccine requirement that sparked the trucker-led movement.
Meanwhile, officials announced a negotiated end to the last of several recent blockades by protesters of border crossings between Canada and the US.
“You must leave the area now,” Ottawa police said in a notice distributed to truckers outside parliament.
Photo: AFP
Anyone blocking streets or assisting others in doing so will be arrested and face charges, as well as fines and seizures of their trucks, the statement said.
Police also warned that anyone charged or convicted for taking part in the demonstration might, in addition to criminal penalties, be barred from traveling to the US.
As the notices were handed out, journalists saw hundreds of trucks continuing to occupy streets in the parliamentary precinct, blaring horns — despite an extension on Wednesday of a court order against the noises obtained by an area resident.
“We’re still a lot of trucks holding the line,” trucker David Shaw, 65, told reporters.
If arrested, “I’ll keep coming back,” Shaw said.
Fellow protester Jan Grouin, 42, decried Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s decision earlier this week to impose a state of emergency, calling it “a little overreacting maybe to think that we are terrorists.”
In a statement, Interim Ottawa Police Chief Steve Bell said that “a methodical and well-resourced plan” would be carried out over the coming days “to take back the entirety of the downtown core and every occupied space.”
“Some of the techniques we are lawfully able and prepared to use are not what we are used to seeing in Ottawa, but we are prepared to use them... to restore order,” Bell said.
Meanwhile, Montana Governor Greg Gianforte asked Canadian and US leaders in a letter signed by 16 US governors to exempt truckers from vaccine and quarantine requirements when crossing the Canada-US border.
They were joined by Alberta Premier Jason Kenney and Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe, who has endorsed the truckers’ convoy.
“The timing of your decision to terminate the vaccine and quarantine exemptions could not have been worse, as North America already faces grave supply chain constraints,” said the letter addressed to US President Joe Biden and Trudeau.
“These constraints, combined with increasing inflation, place significant burdens on the residents of Canada and the United States,” the letter said.
After failing to convince the protesters to leave, Trudeau invoked the Canadian Emergencies Act, which gives the government wide new powers to end the demonstrations over COVID-19 restrictions and vaccine mandates.
The move marked only the second time in Canadian history that such emergency powers have been invoked in peacetime.
Trudeau told reporters on Wednesday that with police now getting help from other law enforcement units, they should “be able to begin their actions.”
“It’s time for this to end,” he said, adding that it was up to “police to decide when and how.”
On Wednesday, Canadian Minister of Public Safety Marco Mendicino said that people who joined the protest might tie themselves “to dangerous criminal activity.”
The demonstrations “are not about vaccines mandates,” Mendicino said.
Rather, he described the core protesters as “a small number of individuals with a steely resolve, driven by an extreme ideology that would seek to overthrow the existing government.”
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