DispatchesIan Profiri is JURIST’s Staff Correspondent for Canada. He files this dispatch from Calgary.
Trucker protests against vaccine mandates in Ottawa continue. The “Freedom Convoy” has now spent nearly a week occupying the streets surrounding Parliament Hill, and it is believed they intend to extend their stay for as long as possible. Frustration and discontent appear to be at overwhelming levels for everyone involved.
Life has not been easy for downtown Ottawa residents. The protestors have been continuously honking their horns, setting off fireworks, harassing local business owners and workers, including those at shelters, assaulting people perceived as against the protest, and generally being disruptive of the normal calm surrounding Parliament Hill. Those living in the area surrounded by truckers feel trapped by them. One Ottawa city councilor has called it a “living hell.”
Ottawa Police are struggling with the volume of protestors. There are fears that police action, such as ticketing and arrests, may cause the generally peaceful protest to erupt into violence. Police are just now, several days into the event, ticketing some vehicles and beginning to search for vandals, including those that desecrated the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
Locals, however, appear to have lost patience with the lack of positive action. Small numbers of counter-protestors have begun walking through the crowds holding signs promoting vaccine use, and there are plans to organize a larger counter-protest for Saturday.
The “Freedom Convoy” started in response to the Canadian federal government’s decision not to renew an exemption in the federal quarantine mandates for long-haul cross-border truckers that, up until mid-January, allowed them to cross the border without having to quarantine if they remained unvaccinated.
The convoy has since taken on a life of its own. Now, it stands as a symbol for right-wing activists who seek an end to all Covid-related mandates. It had also amplified calls from some conservative Canadian politicians to move the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) further to the right.
The CPC appears to be listening. The center-right Erin O’Toole was ousted as party leader in a secret ballot Wednesday by a vote of 73 to 45; MAGA hat-wearing MP Candice Bergen was later named interim leader of the CPC. Some of the front-runners for the position have endorsed the Convoy, while others have railed against their actions. The split among the MPs shows how divisive the protest has become for the now leaderless CPC.
Meanwhile, federal MPs of all parties met in Parliament Thursday and voted in favour of questioning GoFundMe, an organization supplying a platform to raise funds, over the particulars of its fund distribution system.
Proposed by the center-left New Democrat Party (NDP) MP Alistair MacGregor, the motion presented itself as a response to the various forms of “extremism, white supremacy, anti-Semitism and other forms of hate” that have been expressed by members of the Freedom Convoy and their supporters. The fear is that some of the over $10 million in funds donated to the campaign may wind up funding right-wing extremism, terrorism, and misinformation campaigns. GoFundMe recently put a hold on the donation page, for the second time in less than a week, to review the details provided by organizer Tamara Lich.
The Ottawa protests have also inspired smaller protests across the country. One of the most notable is happening in Coutts, Alberta, where several dozen long-haul truckers and supporters have barricaded the US-Canada border crossing with trucks and other vehicles. The barricades had stopped all traffic from passing, including other truckers from hauling supplies through the border, until RCMP officers finally negotiated a single lane of passage for traffic on Thursday.
Before negotiations could commence, however, a collision between one of the protestors and a local resident temporarily caused tensions to rise. A series of trucks were sprinting away from the blockade down the wrong side of the highway, colliding with an on-coming Coutts resident. A protestor then allegedly assaulted one of the passengers of the local’s vehicle before fleeing the scene. No arrests have yet been made, but the act highlights the disparity between the protestors and the locals that hope they soon leave.
Aggravating the situation, the Province of Alberta appears reticent to act on the controversial Critical Infrastructure Defence Act (Bill 1). The Act, which came into force in June of 2020, makes the blockage or prevention of movement through provincial highways illegal. It was passed after Indigenous protestors blocked railways and pipeline construction in an effort to bring attention to the provincial and federal government’s lack of acknowledgment of Indigenous rights.
Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation Chief and Council released a statement Tuesday admonishing the Alberta RCMP for their apparent leniency with the blockade protestors, a major discrepancy when compared to how they have treated Indigenous protestors in the past. The letter states that if “this blockade was being organized by Indigenous people, we have no doubt that authorities would respond quickly to remove the blockade and utilize the law that has been created to do so.”
“Instead,” the letter continues, “the Coutts blockade has been allowed to continue, even though it has at times become violent.” The letter reminds readers that it is “important to recognize the disparity between how Indigenous and non-Indigenous protests are approached by our government. It is shocking to see this blatant disparity”. Indigenous protestors were arrested at blockades within the traditional territories of the Wet’suwet’an and Unist’ot’en First Nations in 2020 while negotiations between First Nations leaders and RCMP were ongoing.
The Coutts blockade was eventually declared illegal; however, by Thursday a second blockade materialized along the highway crossing the US-Canada border and arrests have been non-existent.
Provincial mandates have also sparked the ire of protestors. These mandates effectively have a more immediate effect on Canadians than do the federal mandates which ignited the Ottawa protests in the first place as they impact the day-to-day lives of all Canadians. After almost a week of pressure, Alberta and Saskatchewan appear ready to begin loosening some restrictions, albeit against the advice of medical professionals.
Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe had previously penned an open letter to truckers championing the protests and thanking them for their services to communities across Canada. Moe then signaled that his office “will be ending our proof of negative test/proof of vaccination policy in Saskatchewan.”
The letter has been roundly criticized as containing and disseminating vaccine misinformation. Dr. Alexander Wong of the University of Saskatchewan, an infectious diseases physician with the Saskatchewan Health Authority, tweeted a thread scrutinizing Moe’s reasoning and providing studies disproving the falsities upon which Moe relies. Moe’s claims that being vaccinated does not prevent you from contracting Covid-19, and that vaccinations do not reduce transmission, have been widely discredited by scientists and medical professionals.
Alberta Premier Jason Kenny appears ready to follow Moe’s path. In a press conference on Tuesday, Kenny stated that he believed that Alberta would be able to relax public health measures “this month.” On Wednesday, Kenny released a video with the headline “Sick and tired of COVID restrictions? I’m with you,” in which he explained his government’s reasoning for restrictions while also provided support and encouragement for “those motivated by frustration” over the restrictions.
Kenny appears to be under the same party scrutiny as the now removed O’Toole. Thursday, Kenny’s Minister of Environment and Parks, Jason Nixon, released a statement calling for the end of vaccine mandates, including the federal border mandate. Nixon repeated the debunked idea that “mandates . . . are not as effective against the current COVID-19 situation,” and flexed the intuition that “keeping businesses open” should be the driver for mandate implementation.
At the same time, reports of an internal email calling for an end of vaccine mandates within Alberta signed and supported by several party MLAs came to light. The letter including party-member promises to continue pressing Kenny until he complies with their vision.
All of this, of course, is at odds with the information coming out of hospitals – cases continue to put Alberta’s hospitals and ICUs under intense strain. The strain on medical workers only increased the last time restrictions were lessened, and there are reasonable fears that the same result will materialize unless vaccination rates increase. The newly-elected mayor of Alberta’s capital city of Edmonton, Amarjeet Sohi, urged the Province to “continue to rely on science and evidence and continue to listen to experts before lifting restriction.” Sohi then hinted that Edmonton may have no choice but to implement their own measures if and when the provincial mandates end.
