Some Canada truckers dig in, while others disperse amid new police powers

Ottawa – Trucker-led protesters occupying the Canadian capital showed no sign of backing down Tuesday, despite a newly invoked state of emergency granting wide new powers to end their weekslong protest over COVID-19 rules.

A day after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act, the truckers appeared undeterred — if anything hardening their stance to move their big rigs into positions tougher to dislodge, with signs that read “Hold the line.” Under the emergency powers, authorities could freeze their bank accounts and suspend their insurance.

“Truckers are not going anywhere,” said one protester who gave his name only as Tyler, sitting at the wheel of his truck parked outside Parliament.

Trudeau’s move marks only the second time in Canadian history that such emergency powers have been invoked in peacetime.

Authorities have been unable to end the trucker movement, which has paralyzed the Canadian capital for more than two weeks, snarling border trade with the United States and spawning copycat protests abroad.

Facing intense criticism over the failure to dislodge the protesters, Ottawa police Chief Peter Sloly abruptly resigned Tuesday.

Sloly had said repeatedly that he lacked the resources to remove the demonstrators safely, but in a parting statement said authorities were “now better positioned to end this occupation.”

The so-called Freedom Convoy started with truckers protesting against mandatory COVID-19 vaccines to cross the U.S. border, but its demands have since grown to include an end to all pandemic health rules and, for many, a wider anti-establishment agenda.

In the latest move to soften the tough restrictions, federal officials announced Tuesday an easing of COVID-19 checks and rules for vaccinated travelers arriving at its borders, including no longer requiring PCR tests.

“These changes are possible not only because we have passed the peak of omicron,” Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos said, but because Canadians are following public health guidance “to protect themselves, their families and their communities.”

Quebec, meanwhile, joined several other provinces in announcing it would, starting next month, no longer require proof of COVID-19 vaccination to shop, dine in restaurants and for other indoor activities — noting a drop in hospitalizations.

Despite some protesters and truck drivers mentioning a hardened resolve, others have been heading home.

In the House of Commons, Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino noted “significant progress” in bringing an end to border crossing demonstrations that he said were carried out by “a very small, organized group that is trying to upend our way of life.”

Police over the weekend cleared demonstrators from the Ambassador Bridge connecting Windsor, Ontario, and Detroit — arresting 46 people and seizing 37 vehicles. The bridge carries one quarter of Canada’s commerce with the U.S.

And on Tuesday protesters departed a border checkpoint in Alberta, while a crossing in Manitoba was expected to reopen Wednesday, according to federal police.

A day earlier, police had swooped in and arrested about a dozen protesters with rifles, handguns, body armor and ammunition at the border between Coutts, Alberta, and Sweet Grass, Montana, partially reopening the border crossing to traffic, Cpl. Gina Slaney of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said Tuesday by phone.

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

“People are going home,” Slaney said, noting traffic is moving slowly as there are still vehicles on the road. “Vehicles can get through north and southbound lanes right now and it seems that vehicles are crossing the border.”

Demonstrators at a border crossing between Manitoba and North Dakota are also preparing to leave in unison Wednesday with a police escort, said Jake Klassen, a truck driver who joined the protest out of frustration that he can’t visit his daughter, who is receiving palliative care, since he isn’t fully vaccinated. People are worried the government will seize their property and protesters plan to leave in a “slow roll” tomorrow, Klassen said by phone.

The Emergencies Act, formerly known as the War Measures Act, was previously used by Trudeau’s father, former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, during the October Crisis of 1970.

It saw troops sent to Quebec to restore 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.

The prime minister said the military would not be deployed at this time.

Rather, said officials, the law would be used to strengthen police powers to arrest protesters, seize their trucks and freeze their bank accounts, and even compel tow truck companies to help clear blockades.

Trudeau defended his use of emergency powers to get protests across Canada under control after the opposition Conservatives accused him of using an “unprecedented sledgehammer.”

Justice Minister David Lametti told reporters Tuesday, “We’re trying to break the financing, particularly foreign financing” of the convoy and its use of “heavy rigs to disrupt the Canadian economy and put people in a state of insecurity.”

Several provincial premiers denounced the use of the emergency measures, while the Canadian Civil Liberties Association accused the federal government of not having met the threshold for invoking the act.

Conservative leader Candice Bergen said the prime minister’s decision to use the emergency law is about an “ideological attachment to keeping COVID restrictions and mandates.”

Trudeau’s minority Liberal government, however, has enough support to push through approval of the measures when Parliament weighs in to decide whether to extend their use beyond one week.

Trudeau said the measures will be temporary and targeted to specific areas. “They are reasonable and proportionate to the threats they are meant to address,” he told lawmakers.

But details remain scarce, both in public and behind the scenes. Canadian bank executives still have numerous questions about the government’s orders, including which types of accounts it covers and how the banks will be indemnified, according to people familiar with the matter.

It will take time for banks to change their systems for screening transactions, Sue Ling Yip, a partner in KPMG Canada’s risk consulting and financial crimes practice, said in an interview. “For them to start monitoring for additional things and add additional criteria to what is deemed suspicious — it doesn’t happen overnight,” she said.

The financial system measures are designed to cut off the flow of funds to demonstrators, including foreign donations. Banks may be inclined to overreact in enforcing the mandate in order to avoid running afoul of the government, according to Andreas Park, a professor of finance at the University of Toronto.

Cryptocurrency exchanges and crowdfunding sites — used by the truckers to raise millions of dollars in Canada and the United States — must also now report large and suspicious transactions to a money laundering and terrorism financing watchdog.

“They may very well catch a lot of normal people in the process, like international students and snowbirds. We’re going to see some disruption, probably,” Park said. “Essentially what we’re doing now is deputizing the private sector to do monitoring of citizens on behalf of the government and act on the basis of suspicions without due process.”

Columns of big-rig tucks converged on the streets outside the Parliament buildings in Ottawa on Jan. 28. Offshoot demonstrations spread to U.S. border posts, including the Ambassador Bridge to Detroit and two major crossings in western Canada.

Trudeau initially dismissed the convoy as a “small fringe minority” and said it was up to provincial and local police to maintain order. That changed Monday when, flanked by his attorney general and finance minister, he announced he would use the Emergencies Act in a bid bring the protesters to heel.

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association said in a statement it doesn’t believe the situation meets the “high and clear” threshold needed to invoke the act, and voiced concern the move could result in the normalization of emergency legislation.

Francois-Philippe Champagne, the minister responsible for Canada’s auto sector, said the decision to use emergency powers is a message to the industry that the government is fully committed to keeping trade with the U.S. moving.

Champagne, speaking by phone Tuesday morning, said he assured auto executives in calls on Monday that the government’s “decisive action” aims to uphold Canada’s “great reputation for stability, predictability and the rule of law.”

The emergency powers “will go a long way in order to reassure our partners that we are taking the measures which are necessary to protect and maintain these very critical supply chains,” he said.

Mendicino told reporters the legislation was necessary because police are not just up against truckers protesting COVID-19 restrictions but also a hardcore group with more violent intentions. He pointed to the seizure of a cache of weapons at an Alberta protest as an example.

“What is driving this movement is a very small, organized group that is driven by an ideology to overthrow the government, through whatever means they may wish to use,” Mendicino said. “Yesterday’s arrests in Coutts should be a cautionary tale.”