With the demonstration against Covid restrictions in Canada entering its third weekend, the government on Saturday said that the blockades “must be brought to an end”, warning that it will “continue working on every option to end” the so-called Freedom Convoy.
The protest, which began in the Canadian capital of Ottawa late January, has since spread to several locations across the country and even led to copycat demonstrations abroad, denting the image of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
The focus on Saturday was on clearing the blockade at the Ambassador Bridge, a major artery for trucking trade between Canada and the US, connecting Windsor, Ontario with Detroit in Michigan, across the border.
Some vehicles, including trucks were cleared by police, which included tactical teams of the Ontario provincial police and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), but protesters reconvened nearby — with reinforcements — resulting in a tense standoff.
A state of emergency has already been declared in Ottawa and the province of Ontario.
Trudeau convened a meeting of the incident response group on Saturday and a statement from his office said, “The Prime Minister stressed that border crossings cannot, and will not, remain closed, and that all options remain on the table.”
The protests are fast becoming a political albatross for Trudeau personally, with 45% of the respondents of a new poll from the agency Maru saying they “believed that Trudeau’s statements had ‘inflamed’ the situation” and 53% saying “he ‘looked weak in the face of threats to the country’,” according to a report in the National Post newspaper.
Canadians are not in favour of the protests, which are against Covid-19 vaccine mandates, and other related restrictions including lockdowns.
Nearly half of those surveyed (45%) blamed the Freedom Convoy 2022 for “for the incitement and escalation of the protests over the past two weeks”. But they were not the only ones to blame, with 48% respondents saying they felt Trudeau was not up to the job of being prime minister, while another 45% said they felt that he has demonstrated that someone else should lead the ruling Liberal Party.
Several provinces – including Ontario, Quebec, Saskatchewan, Alberta and Prince Edward Island – have announced a relaxation of restrictions since the agitation began or are in the process of doing so. These include lifting the vaccine requirement to enter certain establishments restaurants or movie theatres.
However, the federal government, which precipitated the crisis after imposing cross-border requirements for vaccine passports for truckers in mid-January, has yet to budge.
