Freedom Convoy protesters, some still around Ottawa and ready to return, see the Trudeau government’s withdrawal of emergency measures on Wednesday as a “victory”.
“With the announcement that came at the end of the day [mercredi], we see this as a great victory. But the problem is that Trudeau is still prime minister. So it’s not over. »
In the darkness of the passenger compartment of a car parked “in the Ottawa region”, Frédéric Pitre is in his fourth week on the road to support the convoy of truckers opposed to sanitary measures. The man, whom a radicalization expert described as “fairly well-known in the conspiracy”, rather believes that the convoy’s mission is to stop the alleged establishment of a “dictatorial regime” at the head of Canada.
“There are a lot of people who are still here. There are several camps on the outskirts of Ottawa. I know from a reliable source that there are people who are on their way to Ottawa. I won’t go into details. »
Like two other sympathizers of this movement who agreed to talk with The duty after the end of the emergency measures, Mr. Pitre is convinced that it was a small group of participants in the convoy who succeeded in pushing Justin Trudeau back. His government is believed to have been shaken by “the pressure” caused by their appeals to foreign governments to intervene.
The Trudeau government on Wednesday revoked its use of the Emergencies Act. This law had been applied for about ten days, during which time the occupation of several streets in downtown Ottawa ended, pushing several trucks and vans towards the outskirts of Ottawa. The duty was able to see that a camp had been erected, then emptied, in Vankleek Hill, in Eastern Ontario, between Sunday and Monday.
“Even if the emergency is no longer there, the threat of roadblocks remains,” warned the Prime Minister on Wednesday. However, his government considers that the current laws are sufficient to ensure the safety of the population.
declaration of freedom
Gathered near the Ottawa baseball stadium in what became the last rally emptied by police last weekend, a handful of anti-sanitation protesters ratified a “ declaration of freedom of the canadian people “. The document, signed by eleven people and published on social networks, specifies the intention “to expropriate[er] the power of the federal government of Canada”, while giving “the order” to the police services “to cease the repression of peaceful demonstrators”.
The duty met its author, Kim Tsoj, a 55-year-old chemist from Montreal. The man, born in the Soviet Union and attached to the freedoms of Canada, explains that the document is “a pact of French-speaking, English-speaking and First Nations”, which would give it, he says, a symbolic value.
“That is a proclamation. All great democracies started with these great declarations. The great declaration of the founding peoples of the United States, it was also the same [genre de] paper, even a little smaller than that, ”says the activist, who has already returned to the Quebec metropolis for a medical appointment.
Mr. Tsoj says he has delivered his manifesto to four embassies, and he intends to submit it to the UN Security Council. “Our hope is that they [les pays puissants] will make a move here to stop police brutality. In his view, his letter is the source of China’s comments on the events on Sunday.
Two experts in Canadian constitutional law contacted by The duty indicated that the text had neither legal nor political value. “At the political level, in the end, it only has value that is granted to the signatories”, affirms the constitutional expert of the University of Ottawa Benoît Pelletier. “At most, it is a way of claiming ‘natural law’ [si on y croit] and it has no formal legal value”, deciphers his colleague Patrick Taillon, from Laval University.
Asked about the real validity of his statement, Mr. Tsoj acknowledged that, “legally, perhaps it is not quite right”.
Libertarian extremism
The existence of this kind of talk comes as no surprise to two academic disinformation experts, who warn that it does not represent the position of the majority of people who have supported Freedom Convoy for the past month.
“Beyond the health measures, for some people, what we really want is the resignation of the government. This is a well-documented trend among organizers,” explains the holder of the UNESCO Chair in the Prevention of Radicalization and Violent Extremism, David Morin.
He adds that, although present in the convoy, this movement is not perceptible for some of the participants. “The government should still take note of this extremist thinking,” he said. Protesters believed, for example, that the Governor General could oust Justin Trudeau if she received enough requests to do so.
“I would call them radical libertarians,” analyzes Alexandre Coutant, professor in the Department of Social and Public Communication at UQAM. According to him, several types of speech were observed within the convoy, including this one “hostile to all governments” and inspired by movements from the United States.
Among the supporters of the Freedom Convoy still in the vicinity of Ottawa, Joël Hamel rejects any label of extremism. He says he is offended that Prime Minister Trudeau has associated his movement with racism and the far right.
“Among the demonstrators there, I did not hear any racist remarks or see any gesture of violence. There were blacks, there were whites, there were yellows, there were reds, Native Americans,” he said.
Like the other supporters of the convoy joined by The duty, he insisted on the non-violent character of the movement. “All I saw were handshakes, fist bumps with the Ottawa City Police in the early days. »
At least one person was reportedly injured by police during the multi-day operation. A parliamentary committee must be created next week to examine the justifications for invoking this law, but also the decisions of the police, the financing of the convoy and the misinformation which could have motivated its participants.