Trudeau invokes emergency powers to quell Canada protests

AFP

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday invoked rarely used emergency powers to bring an end to trucker-led protests against COVID-19 health rules, after police arrested 11 people with a "cache of firearms" blocking a border crossing with the United States.

It marked only the second time in Canadian history such powers have been invoked in peacetime, and came as hundreds of big rigs still clogged the streets of the capital Ottawa, as well as two border crossings.

"The federal government has invoked the Emergencies Act to supplement provincial and territorial capacity to address the blockades and occupations," Trudeau told a news conference.

The prime minister said the military would not be deployed at this stage, but that authorities would be granted more powers to arrest protesters and seize their trucks in order to clear blockades, as well as ban funding of the protests.

"We cannot and will not allow illegal and dangerous activities to continue," Trudeau said.

"This is about keeping Canadians safe, protecting people's jobs and restoring confidence in our institutions," he added, noting that the scope of the measures would be "time-limited" and "geographically targeted," but without providing specifics.

As the threat of violence lingered, federal police said they arrested 11 protesters with rifles, handguns, body armor and ammunition at the border between Coutts, Alberta and Sweet Grass, Montana, just a day after another key US-Canada border crossing was cleared in Ontario.

"The group was said to have a willingness to use force against the police if any attempts were made to disrupt the blockade," the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said in a statement.

The protests by Canadian truckers and their supporters – opposed to mandatory coronavirus vaccines and pushing a wider anti-establishment agenda – have triggered copycat movements from France to New Zealand, with US truckers mulling similar rallies.

Under pressure to act, Trudeau on Sunday convened a special federal response group on efforts to end the occupation of Ottawa and the remaining, economically damaging, blockades of border crossings in Alberta and Manitoba.

The Emergencies Act was previously used by Trudeau's father, former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, during the October Crisis of 1970.

It saw troops sent to Quebec to restore order after the kidnappings by militant separatists of a British trade attache and a Quebec minister, Pierre Laporte, who was found strangled to death in the trunk of a car.

Protests spreading

Canada's so-called "Freedom Convoy" started with truckers protesting against mandatory vaccines to cross the border with the United States.

But its demands now include an end to all COVID-19 health measures and, for many of the protesters, for the toppling of Trudeau's Liberal government – only five months after he won reelection.

The truckers have found support among conservatives and vaccine mandate opponents across the globe, even as COVID-19 measures are being rolled back in many places.

In Paris on the weekend, police fired tear gas and issued hundreds of fines in an effort to break up convoys coming from across France.

The Netherlands, Switzerland and Austria have also seen copycat movements, and Belgian authorities said on Monday they had intercepted 30 vehicles as police scrambled to stop a convoy of trucks.

Canadian police over the weekend cleared a blockade on the Ambassador Bridge, which handles an estimated 25 percent of trade with the United States, and had disrupted business in the world's largest economy.

But on Monday morning in Ottawa, as a deep freeze rolled in, protesters remained defiant despite threats of jail and fines of up to C$100,000 (US$80,000).