Justin Trudeau’s Big Crisis As Covid Curbs Protests Go “Out Of Control”
Canadian authorities struggled on Monday to overcome truck protests against Covid restrictions that had paralyzed the national capital for days and threatened the snowball into a full political crisis for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson urged the federal government to appoint a mediator to work with the protesters and found a way to relieve demonstrations for 10 days that had made a barrier of an angry local population and diesel smoke.
On Sunday, Watson stated an emergency in the capital, called “work” protests and declare them “out of control.”
The demonstration of “freedom convoys” began January 9 in West Canada in protest by truck drivers angry with vaccine requirements when crossing the US-Canadian border, but has changed to a broader protest against the restrictions on Covid-19 health and the Trudeau government.
Tamara Lich protest organizer said on Monday that activists were willing to engage with the government to find a way out of the crisis, but insisted that the limitation of the pandemic was made easier.
“What we are trying to do now is to reach all the federal parties so we can arrange sitting,” Lich said during the meeting on YouTube. “So we can start this talk and see how we can move forward, ask for their mandate and restrictions are appointed, restore Canada’s rights and freedom and go home.”
Facing criticism for allowing the center of the capital to be blocked and many businesses must be closed, Ottawa Sunday police announced new steps to tame protests by prohibiting people from bringing fuel and other equipment to the demonstration.
“Anyone who tries to bring material support (gas, etc.) to demonstrators can be arrested,” police said on Twitter.
Officers have since arrested several people, seizing many vehicles and spending hundreds of traffic tickets.
Trudeau, who was in quarantine after testing positive Covid-19 a week ago, did not comment on weekend protests.
On Thursday he ruled out the possibility of mobilizing the army to dissolve the demonstrators “for now,” said that someone must be “very, very careful before mobilizing the military against Canadians.”
“Trudeau won’t get anything by talking to the demonstrators,” Genevieve Tellier, a political scientist at Ottawa University, told AFP.
But another political analyst, Boile Frederic from Alberta University, said that the protest could increase into a full political crisis.
“Justin Trudeau reacted badly at first,” Boily said. “He reacted too strongly and was too suddenly at the beginning of the protest when he tried to paint them in a distant protest.”
Boily added that Trudeau “added fuel to fire” by changing vaccination into political problems, especially during the campaign of the summer election.
