Canadian Prime Minister loses control, opts for Emergency Powers against anti-COVID restrictions protesters

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada has lost control of governance following weeks of unrestrained mass protest of series of CVOID-19 restrictions and threats of vaccine sanctions imposed on citizens and residents in the country. The protesters insisted they want their freedom back.

The protest had been led by trick drivers who abandoned their vehicles on the highways, took over major spaces in the capital city, including other big cities in Canada.

The State of emergency declared by the Mayor of Ottawa last week was not enough to get the angry protesters off the streets, despite police arrest. Ontario and Montreal were not left out of the protests.

The U.S. government had last week urged Canada to enforce emergency powers to clear the protesters from the streets. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, accordingly, opted on Monday to invoke emergency powers, which is unusually adopted in Canada, to tame the mass protests led by truckers, who are resisting Covid-19 restrictions. The police said they arrested 11 people with a “cache of firearms” blocking a border crossing with the United States in Alberta.

It has been revealed that “Prime Minister Trudeau will invoke the Emergencies Act to give the government extra powers in a national crisis to bring an end to the trucker-led protests now entering a third week.”

Heavy duty trucks have been abandoned in hundreds on the streets of Ottawa, causing serious obstructions in the Canadian capital.

Propensity for more violence escalated after federal police announced the arrest of 11 protesters with rifles, handguns, body armor and ammunition at the border between Coutts, Alberta and Sweet Grass, Montana, a day after another key US-Canada border crossing was cleared.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police in a statement, explained: “The group was said to have a willingness to use force against the police if any attempts were made to disrupt the blockade.”

The persistent mass protests, however, compelled Canada to immediately announce the scrapping of vaccine passport requirements, being resisted by the truckers and other protesters. The protesters are vehemently opposed to “mandatory vaccines and a wider anti-establishment agenda” which instigated similar protest movements in France and the Netherlands, Australia, and New Zealand, while some truckers in the U

Prime Minister Trudeau had last Friday threatened that all options “were on the table” for ending the “unlawful” demonstrations that are hurting the nation’s economic recovery.

The Prime Minister held a meeting with Premiers in Canada, followed by a press conference on Monday at 4.30 pm (2130 GMT), a day after convening a special federal response group on efforts to end the occupation of Ottawa and remaining blockades of border crossings in Alberta and Manitoba.

It was noted that the Emergencies Act has only been used once in peacetime; and was only used  by Trudeau’s father, former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, during the October Crisis of 1970.

Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau deployed troops to Quebec to restore law and order after the kidnappings by militant separatists of a British trade attache and a Quebec minister, Pierre Laporte, who was found strangled to death in the trunk of a car.

Truck drivers in Canada started the “Freedom Convoy” mass action to resist mandatory vaccines before crossing the border between Canada and the United States. The protest expanded and spread to resist all Covid-19 health measures. The protest generated threat to ending Trudeau’s Liberal government, which is just five months in office after winning re-election.

The truckers were supported by the conservatives and the vaccine mandate resistance movement across the world. In several European countries, Covid-19 restrictions are already being rolled back.