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Truckers brace for a police crackdown in besieged Ottawa

Published:Thursday | February 17, 2022 | 9:25 AM
Ontario Provincial Police officers speak with a man in a transport truck during a protest against COVID-19 measures that has grown into a broader anti-government protest, in Ottawa, Ontario, Wednesday, February 16, 2022. The big rigs parked outside Parliament represent the movement’s last stronghold after demonstrators abandoned their sole remaining truck blockade along the US border. (Cole Burston/The Canadian Press via AP)

OTTAWA, Ontario (AP) — Hundreds of truckers clogging the streets of Ottawa in a protest against the country's COVID-19 restrictions braced for a possible police crackdown Thursday, nearly three weeks into the siege that has shaken Canada's reputation for civility and rule-following.

Work crews in the capital began erecting fences outside Parliament, and police appeared to be out on the streets in greater numbers than usual in the morning.

Ottawa represented the self-styled Freedom Convoy's last stronghold after weeks of demonstrations and blockades that shut down border crossings into the U.S., inflicted economic damage on both countries and created a political crisis for Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Trudeau was scheduled to address Parliament on Thursday morning, not far from where the protesters were parked.

On Wednesday, Ottawa police handed out leaflets warning the truckers to leave immediately or face arrest and other sanctions, and the city's police chief declared his intention to break up the protest and take back downtown “in the coming days.” But many of the protesters reacted to the warnings with scorn.

“We want the mandates over for the whole country. End the mandates,” one of the protest leaders, Pat King, said outside the prime minister's office Thursday morning. As for the rigs parked bumper-to-bumper, he said: “There's no tow trucks in Canada that will touch them.”

King warned his fellow protesters at daybreak that police were about to move. “It's going down,” he said in a Facebook video. “Truckers, get up. Get on your radios. Get on your horns. One long blast. Let's go, guys.”

The warnings from police came two days after Trudeau invoked Canada's Emergencies Act, empowering law enforcement authorities to declare the blockades illegal, tow away trucks and punish the drivers by arresting them, freezing their bank accounts and suspending their licenses.

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