Prime minister of Canada Justin Trudeau called on emergency powers on Monday to calm down the paralyzing protesters by truckers and other anger over Canada’s Covid-19 restrictions, outlining plans not only to tow away their rigs but to strike at their accounts and their livelihood.
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He declared that ” These blockades are illegal and if you are still participating, the time to go home is now.”
In invoking Canada’s Emergencies Act, which gives the federal government broad powers to restore order, he ruled out using the military. Justin Trudeau government instead endangered to tow away the vehicles to keep essential services running; freeze truckers’ personal and corporate bank accounts; and also suspend the insurance of their rigs.
Deputy Prime minister Chrystia Freeland stated that ” Consider yourself warned. Send your rigs home.” Freeland, who is also the finance minister, said the government will also money-laundering regulations to target crowd-funding sites that are being used to support the illegal blockades.
He did not specify when the new crackdown would start. But he gave assurance the emergency measures “will be time-limited, geographically targeted, as well as very reasonable and proportionate to the threats they are meant to address.”
For more than two weeks from now, hundreds and sometimes for like thousand protesters in trucks and other vehicles have clogged the streets of Ottawa, the capital of Canada and besieged Parliament Hill, railing against vaccine mandates for truckers and other Covid-19 precautions and condemning Trudeau’s liberal government.
Members of the self styled freedom convoy have also blocked various US-Canadian border crossings, though the very important and the busiest bridge which is Ambassador bridge which connects to Windsor, Ontario, to Detroit was reopened on Sunday after police arrested dozens of demonstrators and broke the nearly-long siege that had disrupted auto production in both countries.
Wesley Mark, who is a University of Ottawa professor and national security expert, stated that ” This is the biggest, greatest, most severe test Trudeau has faced”.
He also stated that “Invoking the emergencies Act would allow the government to declare the Ottawa protest illegal and clear it out by such means as towing vehicles. It would also enable the government to make greater use of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the federal police agency.
one of the protest organizers in Ottawa vowed not to take her step back in the face of pressure from the government.
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