Trucker blockades in Canada
Trudeau declares a state of emergency
2/15/2022 3:12 am
The blockade of an important economic artery to the USA has been broken, but protests against the Corona policy are continuing elsewhere in Canada. Findings of weapons show that some of the truckers are prepared to resist violently. Now Prime Minister Trudeau is making a historic decision.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has announced that he will end the blockades of opponents of the corona measures by means of an emergency law. “The federal government has invoked the Emergency Act to supplement provincial and territorial capacity to deal with the blockades and occupations,” Trudeau told reporters. According to their own statements, the police had previously found a weapons cache during a blockade at a border crossing.
It is only the second time in Canadian history that a prime minister has exercised such powers in peacetime. According to Trudeau, the military is not deployed at this stage. However, the authorities now have more legal powers to arrest protesters, confiscate their trucks and cut off funding for the protests.
With so-called “freedom” convoys, truck drivers are currently blocking several border crossings to the USA and the capital Ottawa. At the weekend, the authorities had already cleared the important Ambassador border bridge, which connects the Canadian province of Ontario with the US metropolis of Detroit.
On Monday they discovered guns and handguns and “large quantities of ammunition” in several trucks at a blocked border crossing between Coutts in the state of Alberta and the US state of Montana. A total of eleven suspects were arrested. “The group is said to have been prepared to use force against the police if attempts were made to disrupt the blockade,” the police said.
In the beginning there was a protest against compulsory vaccination
The actions of the truck drivers had started in protest against the vaccination requirement at border crossings, which had been introduced by Canada and the USA in mid-January. Unvaccinated Canadian truck drivers must therefore go into a 14-day quarantine when returning from the USA, while US drivers without a vaccination are not allowed into the country at all. Several Canadian states have now announced that vaccination certificates will be lifted, including Ontario, Alberta and Saskatchewan.
The protests are now generally directed against the Corona rules and against the government of Prime Minister Trudeau. The protests have found imitators around the world, including in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, Israel and New Zealand.
Canada’s Emergency Act can be used in the event of a “national crisis”. It allows the federal government to take “temporary extraordinary measures”. It was last used in 1970 by the incumbent Prime Minister’s father, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, to send the army to Quebec after separatists kidnapped a British trade attaché and a minister there. The minister, Pierre Laporte, was later found dead in a trunk. Prior to Justin Trudeau’s announcement, several state premiers had expressed opposition to the law’s application.