Tension rose on Saturday, February 19, between the last demonstrators, who have been blocking the streets of Ottawa for more than three weeks to protest once morest sanitary measures, and the police, deployed by the thousands to dislodge them.
“Protesters continue to be aggressive and attack officers. They refuse to obey orders to move”, said in a tweet the authorities of this usually very calm city, where clashes took place in the night from Friday to Saturday. Faced with these demonstrators, some of whom threw smoke bombs at the police and formed a human chain, the authorities said they used “irritating substances”.
They regained control of the main street in front of Parliament on Saturday at midday, arresting 47 people, some of them carrying fireworks. Saturday morning, the police announced the arrest of more than a hundred people, and reported regarding twenty towed vehicles.
The police on Saturday rented “significant progress” in the evacuation of central Ottawa, but stressed that the operation was not “not finished”. “It will still take time to achieve our goals”underlined Steve Bell, the police chief of the Canadian capital, without giving a timetable.
“No turning back possible”
Moments before a new police assault, the demonstrators still on the spot were cleaning their signs denouncing the sanitary measures linked to Covid-19 covered in snow. Others tried to warm themselves near a campfire under the frantic horns of the trucks still present.
” I do not go “assures Johnny Rowe to Agence France-Presse, brushing aside the risk of arrest. “There is no going back”he said. “Everyone here, myself included, has had their lives destroyed by what has happened over the past two years. »
Many truckers, however, chose to leave on their own and take their trucks off the streets. “Anyone found in the area” from the center of the Canadian capital “will be stopped”, warned the police on Twitter on Saturday, accusing the truckers, many of whom came with children, of putting them in danger. Earlier in the morning, the authorities had already pointed out that they had equipped themselves “helmets and truncheons” faced with the increased aggressiveness of the demonstrators.
Initially minimized by the authorities, this movement, which began at the end of January, started with truckers protesting once morest the obligation to be vaccinated to cross the border between Canada and the United States. But the demands have extended to a refusal of all health measures and, for many demonstrators, to a rejection of the government of Justin Trudeau.
Crisis meeting around the Prime Minister
After an exceptional day of closure due to the security context, Parliament resumed work on Saturday on the use of the Emergency Measures Act decreed by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who also called a meeting on Saturday. of crisis.
Canadian parliamentarians are due to take a final vote on the Emergency Measures Act Monday at 8 p.m. (2 a.m. Tuesday, Paris time). This legislative provision, which is akin to a national state of emergency, was exceptionally invoked by Mr. Trudeau on Monday to end the blockages “illegal” underway in the country.
This is only the second time that this provision has been used in peacetime: the first time was during the crisis of 1970, when Pierre Elliott Trudeau, the father of the current head of government, was in power. It is highly contested by the conservative opposition.
Justin Trudeau assured that this law would not be used to send the army once morest the demonstrators or limit freedom of expression. The goal is simply “to face the current threat and fully control the situation”he said at the end of the week.