Visual and sound survey
The stated intentions of the organizers of the Freedom Convoy to occupy the federal capital were not taken seriously enough by the authorities before their noisy arrival, show appearances by senior officials, an autopsy of social networks, documents filed at the Court and the testimonies of a dozen truckers involved collected by The duty.
These new elements make it possible to better understand how a convoy of heavy goods vehicles opposed to health measures was able to take root from January 28 to February 19, 2022 in the Canadian federal capital. This blockade made headlines around the world. He caused the resignation of the city’s police chief and contributed to the departure of the leader of Canada’s official opposition, Erin O’Toole.
Above all, the crisis served as justification for the federal government to invoke the Emergencies Act for the very first time. A political debate remains on whether these measures were really necessary, which is currently being examined by a parliamentary committee and soon also by a public inquiry. However, the cause of these various political consequences is first of all a police failure.
The duty plunges back into it, in three stages.
A “Western Convoy”, starting from British Columbia, is led by Tamara Lich, who heads the group Canada Unity and a crowdfunding campaign that will raise several million dollars in donations, but of which only one million will be given to them. Patrick “Pat” King, an influencer who has made extremist and racist comments online, also presents himself as an organizer. Canada Unity has regional “captains”, such as Joanie Pelchat for Quebec.
We can assume, when we organize a demonstration, that we have the right to organize it until an authority tells us that it is illegal. […] As long as the Ottawa police say the protest is illegal, well, it’s illegal. The Charter does not explicitly define the scope of freedom of expression. What the Charter will do is settle disputes on a case-by-case basis.
If the very illegality of the occupation of Ottawa is still not admitted by the truckers present as well as part of the political class, it is because it was not announced in a very comprehensible way, believe experts.
Police first mentioned the illegal nature of the rally on February 2, the sixth day of the downtown occupation. The chief repeated it in a press conference two days later. Before that, the Ottawa police said they were not issuing tickets “in order to avoid causing confrontations with demonstrators”.
A public inquiry, led by Judge Paul S. Rouleau, will begin this summer with a mandate to determine “the evolution of the convoy, the impacts of funding and misinformation, the economic consequences and the efforts of police forces and other stakeholders before and after the declaration of the state of emergency”.
No organizer of the Freedom Convoy has yet been sentenced by a court. Several of them, including Steeve Charland, Tamara Lich and Patrick King, spent time behind bars before their trial on various charges. As these lines were written, Mr. King was still there.
In an email to Le Devoir, the Ottawa Police Service declined to specify when the Freedom Convoy began to be considered illegal, “since a parliamentary inquiry is underway into this matter”.