Canadian official: Police must act now to stop truck protest

Canada’s top safety leader says it’s time for police to begin stamping out widespread protests by truckers who are blocking border crossings and streets in the capital city

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Across Canada and beyond, the question in the coming days will be whether Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's decision to give the government extraordinary emergency powers will stamp out the widespread protests by truckers and others angry with the country's COVID-19 restrictions.

Canadian Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino said it is time for police to begin using their broad authority conferred under Canada’s Emergencies Act, which allows the government to ban the blockades and begin towing away trucks.

“We need law enforcement to take the reins, to utilize the Emergencies Act and to enforce,” he said late Monday after Trudeau announced he was invoking the law. “We have given new powers to police and we need them to do the job now.”

Government leaders did not indicate when or where the crackdowns on the self-styled Freedom Convoy would begin. Mendicino said they were still working out the final details on where the prohibited zones will be.

The government will be able to ban blockades at border crossings, airports and in the capital city of Ottawa; freeze truckers’ personal and corporate bank accounts and suspend their licenses; and target crowd-funding sites that are being used to support the blockades.

It also can force tow trucks to move the big rigs out of intersections and neighborhoods. Up to now, some towing companies have been reluctant to cooperate because of their support for the truckers or fears of violence.

Since late January, protesters in trucks and other vehicles have jammed the streets of Ottawa and obstructed border crossings, decrying vaccine mandates for truckers and other COVID-19 precautions and condemning Trudeau’s Liberal government.

Trudeau's decision came amid growing frustration with government inaction and a day after the Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrested 11 people at the blockaded border crossing at Coutts, Alberta, opposite Montana, and seized a cache of guns and ammunition.

“What the operation revealed is that you got a very small, hardened core driven by ideology," Mendicino said.

The public safety minister said the nation can no longer tolerate the disruptions and threats.

“We have been fortunate thus far there has not been mass violence,” he said.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford, whose province includes Ottawa and Windsor, the site of a now-disbanded blockade at the Ambassador Bridge to Detroit, said: “Hopefully the police in the next few days, hopefully sooner, can move.”

Ford said the siege in Ottawa is complicated by the presence of children in the protest. "They have kids there. We don’t want anything to happen to kids. Bring your kids home,” he said.

The busiest and most important border crossing, the Ambassador Bridge, was reopened on Sunday after police arrested dozens of demonstrators. The nearly week-long siege that had disrupted auto production in both countries.

Authorities also said traffic was moving again at the Pacific Highway border crossing south of Vancouver. The Mounties said officers ordered demonstrators out late Monday and several were arrested.

One of the protest organizers in the capital vowed on Monday not to back down in the face of pressure from the government. “There are no threats that will frighten us. We will hold the line,” Tamara Lich said.

The protests have drawn support from right-wing extremists in Canada and have been cheered on in the U.S. by Fox News personalities and conservatives such as Donald Trump.

Over the past weeks, authorities have hesitated to move against the protesters, citing in some cases a lack of manpower and fears of violence.

The demonstrations have inspired similar convoys in France, New Zealand and the Netherlands. U.S. authorities have said that truck convoys may be in the works in the United States.

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Gillies reported from Toronto. Associated Press writer Ted Shaffrey in Ottawa, Ontario contributed to this report.