A showdown appeared to be shaping up in Ottawa’s nearly three-week siege by truckers protesting the country’s COVID-19 restrictions as police in the capital warned drivers Wednesday to leave immediately or risk arrest. The big rigs parked outside Parliament represented the movement’s last stronghold after demonstrators abandoned their sole remaining truck blockade along the U.S. border. With that, all border crossings were open for the first time in more than two weeks of unrest, centering attention on the capital, where drivers defiantly ripped up warnings telling them to go home. Authorities in yellow “police liaison” vests went from rig to rig, knocking on the doors and handing truckers leaflets informing them they could be prosecuted, lose their licenses and see their vehicles seized under Canada’s Emergencies Act. Police also began ticketing vehicles. One protester shouted, “I will never go home!” Some threw the warning into a toilet put out on the street. Protesters sat in their trucks and honked their horns in a chorus that echoed loudly downtown. Police delivered a second round of more explicit warnings just before Wednesday evening, spelling out what charges and penalties could face those who stay. The city’s interim police chief indicated officers might move in soon to clear the hundreds of trucks. “We are going to take back the entirety of the downtown core and every occupied space. We are going to remove this unlawful protest. We will return our city to a state of normalcy,” interim Chief Steve Bell told city leaders in a statement. “You will be hearing and seeing these actions in the coming days.” Protest leaders braced for action on Wednesday. “If it means that I need to go to prison, if I need to be fined in order to allow freedom to be restored in this country — millions of people have given far more for their freedom,” said David Paisley, who traveled to Ottawa with a friend who is a truck driver. The warnings came two days after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked the emergency law to try to break the protests. “It’s not for politicians to tell police when and how to do things. What we have done with the emergency act is to make sure the police have the necessary tools,” Trudeau said Wednesday. “It’s something that I, like all residents of Ottawa, hope to happen soon.” The crisis has become one of the most serious tests yet for Trudeau, the boyish-looking 50-year-old who has long channeled the star power — if not quite the political heft — of his father, Pierre Trudeau, who was prime minister a generation ago. Some lawmakers are faulting the younger Trudeau for not moving more decisively against the protests, while others are accusing him of going too far in assuming emergency powers. Since late January, protesters in trucks and other vehicles have jammed the streets of the capital and obstructed border crossings. The demonstrations by the self-styled Freedom Convoy initially focused on Canada’s vaccine requirement for truckers entering the country but soon morphed into a broad attack on COVID-19 precautions and Trudeau himself. On Wednesday, protesters who had stopped traffic and trade for a week along the U.S. border at Emerson, Manitoba, opposite North Dakota, pulled away in tractors and trucks without any arrests. Within hours, the crossing was […]

The post Tensions Mount In Ottawa As Police Warn Truckers To Leave appeared first on The Yeshiva World.