Occupying the North
11 days ago, I received a video from my cousin, captioned “a beautiful Saturday in Ottawa.” I opened the video and my speakers blasted with a choir of unharmonious honking horns. Shocked, I quickly shut the video off and she told me that it was a nuisance, but surely it would be over by Sunday so she could return to work undisturbed. Unfortunately, Karina was not that lucky, and her peace would continue to be disturbed.
The “Freedom Convoy”, a movement that started with Canadian truckers protesting the federal mandate that required them to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 to cross the US-Canada border without quarantining, has occupied Ottawa’s Centretown for a week and a half. The noise from the horns is so unbearable that a Ottawa judge granted an injunction to silence the horns for the next 10 days, and the residents of Centretown have launched a $9.8 million lawsuit against protest organizers for mental and emotional damages from the occupation. While many claimed that this “demonstration of rights and freedoms” was peaceful, those who live in Ottawa have disagreed. The convoy is no longer peaceful, but now an occupation. GoFundMe has not only taken down their fundraiser, but is refunding the $10 million raised to donors. Pictures of protestors carrying Nazi and Confederate flags have now been widely circulated on social media and news outlets. On Sunday evening, heavily armed officers descended upon the baseball stadium that has served as a base for protestors, and removed fuel that was being stored there. In Game of Thrones fashion, protestors yelled “shame, shame” at the police. Worst of all, Twitter user @TiMunoz posted a thread last night with details of an attempted arson (with some labelling it an attempted mass murder) where two men, who claimed to be protestors, entered an apartment building with fire starter bricks and taped the door handles shut.
Yesterday, Ottawa’s mayor Jim Watson declared a state of emergency, stating the protest is the most serious emergency the city has ever faced. An occupied city must be addressed by all levels of government (and their policies), including federal, provincial and municipal levels of police service. Ottawa-area liberal MPPS are urging Premier Ford to enact legislation that would enable the cost of policing this protest to be recouped from the Freedom Convoy organizers. The legislation is known as section 1 of the Comprehensive Ontario Police Services Act, 2019. Watson also asked Prime Minister Trudeau and Premier Ford for an additional 1,800 law enforcement officers to “quell the insurrection.” Adding to the response, Public Safety minister Mendicino agreed to deploy 275 additional RCMP officers to the city.
While the protestors have invoked change in terms of how many law enforcement officers have been deployed into Centretown, their actions should not effect public policy. Thousands of adults occupying a small minority and throwing a tantrum cannot be enough for a federal mandate to be lifted. There are other effective, respectful ways to bring about policy change — ones that do not involve flying Nazi flags, depriving families of sleep for nights on end, and occupying our law enforcement agencies. Canada must stand strong in the face of insurrection.
