Truckers hold their ground despite threats of crackdown

By ROB GILLIES, WILSON RING and ROBERT BUMSTED Associated Press

OTTAWA, Ontario — Hundreds of truckers clogging the streets in Canada’s capital stood their ground and defiantly blasted their horns Thursday as police poured in for what the protesters feared could be an attempt to break up their nearly three-week demonstration against the country’s COVID-19 restrictions.

Busloads of police officers arrived near Ottawa's Parliament Hill in the morning, and workers put up extra fences around government buildings in what seemed to signal an impending confrontation.

Many of the protesters in the self-styled Freedom Convoy were unmoved by warnings from police and the government that they were risking arrest and could see their rigs seized and bank accounts frozen.

“I’m prepared to sit on my ass and watch them hit me with pepper spray,” said one of their leaders, Pat King. As for the trucks parked bumper-to-bumper, he said: “There’s no tow trucks in Canada that will touch them.”

Amid the rising tensions, truckers outside Parliament blared their horns in defiance of a court injunction against honking, issued for the benefit of neighborhood residents.

Ottawa represented the movement’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 Trudeau.

The protests have shaken Canada’s reputation for civility and rule-following and inspired similar convoys in France, New Zealand and the Netherlands.

“It’s high time that these illegal and dangerous activities stop,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau declared in Parliament, not far from where the more than 300 trucks were parked.

“They are a threat to our economy and our relationship with trading partners,” he said. “They are a threat to public safety.”

Early this week, the prime minister invoked Canada’s Emergencies Act, empowering law enforcement authorities to declare the blockades illegal, tow away trucks, arrest the drivers, suspend their licenses and take other measures.

On Thursday, Trudeau and some of his top ministers took turns warning the protesters to leave, in an apparent move by the government to avert a clash, or at least show it had gone the extra mile to avoid one.

Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said the government began freezing truckers’ accounts as threatened. “It is happening. I do have the numbers in front of me,” she said.

Ottawa police likewise handed out leaflets for the second straight day demanding the truckers end the siege, and also helpfully placed notices on vehicles informing owners how and where to pick up their trucks if they are towed.

The city’s interim police chief said that only those who live or work downtown would be allowed in the area.

The occupation has infuriated many Ottawa residents.

“We’ve seen people intimidated, harassed and threatened. We’ve seen apartment buildings that have been chained up. We have seen fires set in the corridors. Residents are terrorized,” said Canadian Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino.

The protests by demonstrators in trucks, tractors and motor homes initially focused on Canada’s vaccine requirement for truckers entering the country but soon morphed into a broader attack on COVID-19 precautions and Trudeau’s government.

The biggest, most damaging of the blockades at the border took place at the Ambassador Bridge between Windsor, Ontario, and Detroit. Before authorities arrested dozens of protesters last weekend and lifted the siege, it disrupted the flow of auto parts between the two countries and forced the industry to curtail production.

The final blockade, in Manitoba, ended peacefully on Wednesday.

The movement has drawn support from right-wing extremists and veterans, some of them armed — one reason authorities have hesitated to move against them.

Fox News personalities and U.S. conservatives such as Donald Trump have egged on the protests. Trudeau complained on Thursday that “roughly half of the funding to the barricaders here is coming from the United States.”

Some security experts said that dispersing the protest in Ottawa could be tricky and dangerous, with the potential for violence, and that a heavy-handed law enforcement response could be used as propaganda by anti-government extremists.

Trucks were parked shoulder-to-shoulder downtown, some with tires removed to hamper towing. Police were especially worried about the children among the protesters.

“There is not really a playbook,” said David Carter, a professor at Michigan State University’s School of Criminal Justice and a former police officer. “I know there are police chiefs in the U.S. looking at this and developing strategic plans and partnerships to manage a protest like this if it should occur in their cities.”

As a showdown seemed to take shape, Canadian Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair said: “To those who have children with them, this is no place for children. Take them home immediately.”