Thursday, the contrast was striking: while outside, a tactical and police operation was organized around the parliament to dismantle the Freedom Convoy, inside the political enclosure, the different parties were warming up around the merits of the Emergency Measures Act, abusively invoked by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau earlier this week.
For “the good of the economy, families and workers”, Justin Trudeau called on Thursday to political parties and deputies to support an exceptional law never used since its adoption in 1988. Incredible but true, the conservatives of law and order want to reject this measure, which they consider disproportionate to the problem it wishes to contain; and the New Democrat progressives are supporting it (surprise!) under a threat to keep the government in check. The emergency debate in parliament was suspended on Friday — a serious but wise move — to let the police operation unfold without the simultaneous comings and goings of politicians. A vote was to be held on Monday evening, but ironically the convoy could then be dispersed. The passage of the law, already an abject project, would then be totally void.
A small contingent of federal ministers spoke on Friday to defend the imposition of this law, which they described as essential to preside over the dismantling in progress. There is nothing less true. As proof, the RCMP did not need the exceptional powers of a law to dislodge the truckers from the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor.
No one can predict how the removal of convoys of trucks and demonstrators, which has been going on for more than three weeks in the heart of downtown Ottawa, will end. After having allowed such a tangle to settle in without saying a word (what a police and political fiasco!), the dismantling is carried out in all likelihood following a strategy of “small steps”, calm and slow progression. More than 1,000 officers from seven separate police forces work together to both make arrests and tow the trucks. Two leading figures of the Freedom Convoy were arrested Thursday evening, symbols of the action finally started by the police. The arrests have been piling up ever since.
Friday, in a staging as outrageous as it is surreal, children found themselves in the center of a confrontation, calm but threatening in its only bill, opposing a line of police officers ready to intervene and demonstrators determined to continue their occupation. . In his late-day press briefing, Acting Ottawa Police Chief Steve Bell implored parents to get children out of this space. For several days, the presence of toddlers in this occupation clashes and creates a strong uneasiness. That we use them as a human shield is beyond comprehension.
Let us recall two of the absurdities coloring the circus we are witnessing: first, that all this would never have happened if the local police and the city authorities had not tolerated such a massive and widely spread installation around the political precinct, which literally led to the creation of a bustling little town; and then, after advocating a shameless political wait-and-see policy, Prime Minister Trudeau unleashed heavy artillery without convincing arguments, with recourse to the Emergency Measures Act.
Are we currently witnessing the beginning of the end? We don’t know what unexpected turn the police operation may take the closer it gets to the hard core of the resistance fighters. Let’s not forget that this “Convoy” gave its first shots on a vaccination obligation imposed on truckers crossing the American border, but it is now screaming for total “freedom”, i.e. the end of all health measures, whatever they are. The fact that these measures are slowly fading over the weeks and across Canada as a whole does not count in the minds of these resisters. They will remain stubborn no matter how little freedom is given here and there.
The immense quadrilateral defined by the police force is not yet freed, and it is hoped that the sequence of all these arrests and all these tows ends smoothly, as it began. At the time these lines were written, scuffles were not dominant. In this era of uncertainty, a guarantee dominates: at the time of the balance sheets, many will pay dearly the price for their total lack of political flair, strategic finesse and effective and prompt action.