Corona protests in Canada: calls for evictions in Ottawa too

The trucker blockade on Canada’s most important border bridge has ended – the protest continues in the capital Ottawa. The residents are just annoyed by it. A minister also demanded that the police take action.

Traffic between Canada and the US metropolis Detroit should flow over the Ambassador Bridge again very quickly. Only a little security must first be provided so that what happened does not repeat itself, according to the police chief of the Canadian border town of Windsor, Pamela Mizuno.

“We know it had a big impact here – domestically and internationally. We had to ensure the safety of the public and our police officers at the same time and restore public order,” she said. The police wanted to do this peacefully.

The blockade affected the auto industry

A few arrests, a few towed cars. But there were no injuries or riots. The mayor of the border town triumphs. The national economic crisis at the Ambassador Bridge is over, says Drew Dilkens. 25 percent of trade between the economic partners USA and Canada is handled via the bridge. The blockade has hit the car industry in particular hard. US President Joe Biden was also relieved about the opening.

Continuous sound reinforcement from truck horns

The Prime Minister of the Province of Ontario, Doug Ford, also called on the demonstrators in the capital Ottawa on Twitter to withdraw now. 4,000 people from all over Canada had come there over the weekend to support the trucker protests in front of Parliament. They danced, they celebrated and they let each other celebrate in their self-proclaimed fight for freedom: the freedom not to be vaccinated against Corona. And no more rules.

Something the majority of Canadians object to: 80 percent of the people there are fully vaccinated. Ottawa residents, on the other hand, long for peace. They don’t like truck horns, music and firecrackers all the time. A taxi driver complains that nobody drives into the city anymore. He has never experienced anything like this in peaceful Canada.

The wall of monster trucks seems threatening to many people. “They’re bigger than tanks. How can you fight them when they’re in the center of the street,” he says. Many would have removed the wheels so that they could not be towed. “Nobody else can do this than the army.”

“Eviction could be an initial spark”

But Prime Minister Justin Trudeau does not currently see the use of the military as a means. His employees and the various police stations discuss the situation on a daily basis. Now they must finally act, demanded Canada’s Minister for Public Safety, Bill Blair, on the CBC TV channel: “Enough is enough. This must be ended. The situation in Ottawa is unacceptable and unacceptable.”

The police must restore order in the city. The successful clearing of the Ambassador Bridge could be a spark. “We saw at the Ambassador Bridge that the police have started to step in. They’re doing the job they have to do.”

And now you have to do that in other places too. But Blair isn’t the only one who knows that a clearance operation in the middle of a populated city center isn’t as easy as on a remote bridge.