Trucks towed, demonstrators arrested… The police had almost regained control of central Ottawa on Sunday, paralyzed for 24 days by truckers opposing the health policy of the Canadian government.
The authorities indicated in the middle of the morning that they had arrested 190 demonstrators and towed around fifty vehicles, which for weeks sounded their horns in this city usually known for its calm.
Spraying the protesters with cayenne pepper, destroying the makeshift shelters in which some had taken refuge, the police had raised their voices at the start of the weekend, believing that it was time for the truckers to leave.
Most of them have been dislodged.
“A police operation is still in progress”, however warned the authorities, specifying that they had installed fences around the Canadian Parliament to “ensure that the regained ground would not be lost”.
An Agence France-Presse journalist circulating in the area only encountered a handful of demonstrators on Sunday.
Refusing to admit defeat, many of them assured that they would continue to push for a total lifting of the anti-COVID restrictions in the country, which are among the strictest in the world. Some of them have been relaxed in recent days.
Ricochet effect
If calm finally seems to have returned to Ottawa, this historic protest movement, which began at the end of January, could however have lasting effects on political debates in the country.
The Canadian protest movement has also inspired others beyond the country’s borders, notably in France and New Zealand.
And the police in the American capital Washington were preparing on Sunday for the arrival of a convoy of truckers at the time of Joe Biden’s traditional address to the nation in the American Congress, scheduled for March 1. In anticipation, a fence could be installed around the Capitol.
Ottawa has not yet quantified the definitive economic impact of this crisis during which several key border routes between the United States and Canada were paralyzed, forcing many factories to suspend production.
Polls show that Canadians, once supportive of the trucking movement, have distanced themselves from them in recent days.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, heavily criticized by the opposition for invoking an emergency measures law, very rarely used in peacetime, did not comment and seemed to want to stay away from the evacuation operation.