Following the ouster of Ottawa Police Chief Peter Sloly on Tuesday over criticism of his handling of the Canadian truckers’ Freedom Convoy protest, the city has named an interim police chief, Steve Bell.
Bell addressed reporters on Thursday to discuss some of the new measures police will be taking to end the nearly three-week long protest. He emphasized they “won’t be allowing people to come down for the unlawful activities of engaging in demonstrations.”
Yes, in the wake of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s breathtaking invocation of Canada’s Emergencies Act on Monday, protest is now considered to be “unlawful.”
Bell told the press that police are “ready to use methods people are not used to seeing in the capital.”
“Our message has been pretty consistent around that. And, more importantly, the message from our community and our residents has been pretty consistent around that,” Bell said. “Do not come to our downtown core. We are tired of what’s been happening there. We’re sick of what’s happening in our streets, so leave our area. We will continue with that message this weekend. But you’re seeing an increased enforcement presence. And we won’t be allowing people to come down for the unlawful activity of engaging in demonstrations.”
"We won't be allowing people to come down for the unlawful activity of engaging in demonstrations". Never thought I'd hear these words in Canada. What a time to be alive. https://t.co/PwOrhgprnD
— Rupa Subramanya (@rupasubramanya) February 17, 2022
Reuters reported that two of the protests’ organizers, Chris Barber and Tamara Lich, were arrested on Thursday evening.
As Lich was being taken away by police, she said to the others, “Hold the line.”
Flouting a court order, protestors honked their horns and ignored the police warnings following the arrests. Some were seen “soak[ing] in a portable hot tub set up near a door to parliament.”
Another organizer of the event, Pat King, said, “I ain’t going anywhere. I haven’t overstayed my welcome. My taxes paid for me to be here.”
The protestors are determined to remain peaceful, according to Reuters. Chris Dacey told a reporter, “If the police escalate, we’re not going to escalate. We’re not going to respond to any type of aggression … We’re here (until) the prime minister talks to us.”
Another, who wished to remain anonymous, said, “I imagine most people are going to kneel down and stay peaceful. Nobody’s going to fight, nobody’s going to get violent if they need to be arrested.”
Reports indicate there are approximately 400 trucks parked outside parliament.
On Thursday, Trudeau told members of parliament, “The blockades and occupations are illegal. They’re a threat to our economy, the relationship with trading partners, they’re a threat to supply chains and the availability of essential goods like food and medicine. They’re a threat to public safety.”
“Canadians continue to have the right to free expression, the right to protest peacefully, but occupying the downtown of our major cities, protesting and blocking border crossings is unacceptable,” he said.
This is the same man who fully supported both the 2020 George Floyd riots and the 2020 farmer’s protests in Delhi, India.
In response to the Indian government’s anger over his position, Trudeau said, “Canada will always stand up for the right of peaceful protest anywhere around the world and we’re pleased to see moves toward deescalation and dialog.”
Yet, rather than making moves toward “deescalation and dialog” with the Canadian truckers, the cowardly prime minister skipped diplomacy entirely and took the extraordinary and unprecedented step of invoking the 1988 Emergencies Act, the most draconian alternative available to him.
The National Review’s Charles C.W. Cooke dug up a prescient quote from a 1991 Manitoba Law Journal article, which he said “warned that the law, as it had been passed, was ripe for abuse.”
University of Toronto Law School professor Peter Rosenthal in an essay entitled, “The New Emergencies Act: Four Times the War Measures Act,” wrote: “The Act creates the very real possibility that declarations of emergencies will be used to suppress demonstrations.”
Rosenthal raised the concern that a future prime minister “might say that such a demonstration seriously endangered the health of Canadians by threatening the supply of food and medicines, and exceeded the authority of a province since the demonstrations affected trade and commerce and property throughout Canada, not just within a province.”
Hmmm.
Trudeau has spoken admiringly of China’s communist government, so this move wasn’t entirely “out of the blue.”
Its timing, however, is concerning. It came on the heels of Trudeau’s phone call last Friday with President Joe Biden, who demanded he “use his federal powers” to end the protests, The Daily Mail reported. Biden clearly fears the coming U.S. version of Freedom Convoy.
Following their conversation, Trudeau said, “Everything is on the table because this unlawful activity has to end, and it will end.”
And the rest, unfortunately, is history.
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