A Canadian trucker, a figure in the protest movement that shook the country in February, announced Monday, January 2, to give up organizing a new demonstration to celebrate the first anniversary of the blockages.
James Bauder, founder of Canada Unity, one of the groups behind the weeks-long occupation of central Ottawa last winter, said in a statement that he could not “ensure public safetyand that he feared prosecution for the participants.
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Force evacuation
This movement, started by truckers mobilized against health restrictions against Covid-19, had marked a country unaccustomed to such social movements. Their forced evacuation, made possible by an extremely rare recourse by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to a special law, had raised an important debate on public freedoms in Canada. James Bauder had recently announced his intention to organize a new event to celebrate the first anniversary, and had announced last week to move this new event to Winnipeg, in the center of the country.
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Residents – remembering the noise pollution in particular of this long-term blockage in the center of the federal capital – and political figures were worried about this call. The police, overwhelmed in 2022, had warned that they would ban demonstrations with a vehicle on the streets of Ottawa. And the province of the capital, Ontario, passed a law in April which makes it possible to punish with a heavy fine, or even a year in prison, the blocking of infrastructures.
James Bauder was one of about 200 people arrested during the evacuation, and was prosecuted. His renunciation does not make everyone agree, some having expressed their intention to demonstrate despite everything.