transcript
transcript
Canadian Police Arrest Protesters Blocking Vital Bridge
The police in Windsor, Ontario, made arrests and towed pickup trucks, clearing a road to a key border crossing to the United States. The authorities said the bridge would reopen once conditions were deemed safe.
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“Because it needs 20 officers to arrest him?” “Yeah, right?” “What’s the charge, defending freedom?” “Jesus.”
After protesters blockaded a critical economic link between the United States and Canada for nearly a week, traffic began making its way over the span again early Monday, providing some relief to Canadian authorities struggling to tame the protests and to industries disrupted by the unrest.
But any sense of accomplishment by law enforcement was offset by the tenaciousness of protests in the nation’s capital, Ottawa, which are now in their third week. Truckers have snarled traffic, disrupted normally serene residential neighborhoods and undermined the local economy. Virtually unchecked, they have also cut off access to the country’s Parliament, Supreme Court and the prime minister’s office.
The loosely organized “Freedom Convoy” demonstrations shaking Canada began as a protest against the mandatory vaccination of truck drivers crossing the U.S.-Canada border. But they have transformed into a battle cry against pandemic restrictions as a whole, and the leadership of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Mr. Trudeau was to meet Canada’s premiers on Monday to discuss the crisis. Over the weekend, Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair said the government was prepared to invoke the Emergencies Act to end the protests, describing a “critical situation.”
The invocation of the act confers enormous temporary powers on the federal government, allowing it to do what is necessary to restore public order, for example, banning public assemblies or restricting travel to and from specific areas. While the prime minister and the cabinet can invoke the act whenever they see fit if the security of Canada is deemed under threat, the decision must then be approved by Parliament within a week.
The political optics of invoking the act are fraught for Mr. Trudeau, given that the act allows the government to breach constitutional rights in the name of restoring public order.
At the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor, the logjam lifted, hours after the Canadian police began making arrests near the bridge on Sunday, clearing a roadway to a border crossing that became one of the most visible sites of an antigovernment protest movement that has roiled Canada for weeks.
“Today, our national economic crisis at the Ambassador Bridge came to an end,” declared the mayor of Windsor, Drew Dilkens.
While the reopening of the bridge that ties Windsor to Detroit has been hailed by some as a victory for a government shaken by the protests, the Canadian authorities continue to face pressure from a movement that appears emboldened by a growing sense of impunity.
As of Monday morning, demonstrations continued to disrupt service at border crossings in Emerson, Manitoba, and Coutts, Alberta.
The occupation in Ottawa has galvanized vaccine mandate opponents and others exhausted by pandemic restrictions, drawing protesters who have flocked to the convoy in a party-like atmosphere. Over time, the protests have spread across Ontario and Canada, with smaller ones popping up in other countries. Many among the protesters are on the fringe and some have links to far right groups. But there are also everyday Canadians who are irate about the toll of pandemic restrictions and their effect on liberty and individual freedom.
Canada has had among the toughest restrictions in the developed world, fanning growing frustration and fatigue as the pandemic has raged on.
The protests have infuriated Ottawa residents and other Canadians fed up with the disorder, spawning counter protests in Ottawa and Windsor by people fashioning themselves as “anti-anti-vaxxers.” On Sunday in Ottawa, thousands of counterprotesters, using a network of social media groups ordinarily dedicated to subjects like dog-walking and barbecues, coordinated to mobilize and take to the streets.
Among them was Suzanne Charest, a semiretired communication specialist, who said the protests, during which diesel engines have emitted pungent fumes and trucks have honked horns in quiet neighborhoods, had felt like “a bad dream.”
With the government struggling to ease tensions in the capital, officials have been trying to broker a deal for the truckers to pull out of some neighborhoods. The mayor’s office released an emailed letter dated Saturday from one of the protest leaders, Tamara Lich, in which she said, “We will be working hard over the next 24 hours to get buy in from the truckers.”
The mayor of Ottawa, Jim Watson, said there had been back-channel negotiations with the truckers leadership to remove their convoys from residential neighborhoods. But he said they would not be forced from the site of the legislative buildings.
“My preoccupation has been to give some relief to the people who live in these areas,” he said. “It’s not the politicians or the truckers themselves who are suffering, it’s the people who live in these communities.”
