The declaration of the state of emergency did not make them give up. The anti-sanitary measures protesters there were still thousands on Saturday in the streets of Ottawa and they kept blocking a border bridge with the United States despite police intervention.
The movement, which enters its third week, inspired others beyond the borders, especially in Paris, where, despite the ban, thousands of people marched against the health passport.
For the first time since the protests began, the police were deployed around the Ambassador Bridge, which connects Windsor (in Canada) and Detroit (United States), after the Ontario Superior Court ordered the evacuation of the demonstrators who had been occupying it for five days.
The blockade of this axis led Washington to intervene with the government of Justin Trudeauwho promised on Friday to increase the police crackdown because “border can not remain closed”. And a state of emergency was declared in Ontario.
But as of Saturday afternoon, police were still unable to completely clear the bridge after hours of confrontation with protesters. Although most of the trucks and vehicles that were blocking the road were removed, hundreds of people remained in the area, according to an AFP journalist.
The goal is to “peacefully defuse the situation,” Jason Bellaire of Windsor police told reporters. There have been no arrests at the scene at this time.
The closure of this bridge has caused disruption to the auto industry on both sides of the border. More than 25% of goods traded between the United States and Canada they pass through there.
Two other border axes are also blocked. One in Emerson, which connects the province of Manitoba with North Dakota, and another in Alberta.
Support on the rise
On Saturday morning, for the third consecutive weekend, a crowd gathered in the streets of Ottawa, the epicenter of the movement.
With music, beeps, dance floors and coffee stalls, thousands of demonstrators protested in the streets of the city center, where few police were seen, an AFP journalist said.
“I am not vaccinated and I am not dead,” said Marc-André Mallette, 38, noting that he has supported the cause “from the beginning.”
John Pacheco, who goes three times a week to demonstrate, took his 15-year-old daughter Sofía on Saturday. This “Catholic activist” is convinced that the movement will last: “They are not going to crack down, they are not going to bring in the army, they do not have the equipment to move all the trucks. So we can be here for months.”
The protest started from truckers who opposed the obligation to be vaccinated to cross the border with the United States, but now encompasses broader claims against all health measures and also against the Trudeau government.
The latter has been heavily criticized by the opposition for its inaction in the face of protesters. Trudeau has called the protest a “fringe and noisy minority.”
But in a country where sanitary measures are in most provinces more restrictive than in other parts of the world, the movement received broader popular support than anticipated by the authorities.
According to a survey, a third of Canadians support it and 44% of those vaccinated understand “the cause and the frustrations that the protesters convey”.
Since the beginning of the movement, several provinces in central Canada have announced the abandonment of the vaccination passport and the mask in the coming weeks.
However, the two most populous provinces in the country, Ontario, the epicenter of the protest, and Quebec, have leaned in the opposite direction.
– Demonstration in Paris –
In Paris, some of the thousands of opponents of the vaccination passport managed to reach the Champs-Élysées on Saturday to join the demonstrations. The police quickly intervened with tear gas to disperse them.
Following the model of the Canadian mobilization, opponents of the president converged on the streets of the French capital Emmanuel Macronto sanitary measures and “yellow vests”, giving shape to a movement calling itself “freedom convoys”.
The same thing happened in The Hague, where protesters from all over the Netherlands managed to block the city center for a few hours.
