A government spokesman declined to confirm the news from CBC. Trudeau himself is in isolation because of a positive test from one of his children.
The truckers’ protest initially started as a protest against the mandatory vaccination of truck drivers who want to cross the border into the United States, but has increasingly become a demonstration against the corona rules and vaccination in general. Both Canada and the US require drivers to be vaccinated.
‘Flagrant extremism’
Security Secretary Marco Mendicino told CBC that some protesters displayed “blatant extremism”, including calls for the overthrow of the government. Prime Minister Trudeau said the convoy is a protest by “a fringe minority” who are not representative of Canadians’ thinking.
Of the drivers who regularly cross the US-Canada border, 90 percent are fully vaccinated. For the Canadian population, that percentage is 77. “It’s not just about vaccines. It’s about ending the mandates of health care in general,” said trucker Daniel Bazinet, who was traveling from Nova Scotia on the east coast. He said he has not been vaccinated but only drives in Canada and therefore does not want to know anything about corona shots.
The demonstrators, often without a mask but with balaclavas against the cold, said they wanted to occupy the square in front of the parliament building in the coming days in order to enforce the abolition of the vaccination obligation. They also say that through their protest they want to frustrate the supply of food and other goods. In the course of the afternoon, the police said that the action, apart from the traffic nuisance, had been fairly quiet until that moment.
Employers’ organization The Canadian Trucking Alliance, which includes some 4,500 hauliers, disagrees with the convoy, saying that “this is not the way to express dissatisfaction with the policy.”