OTTAWA – Two months after a trucker-led occupation of Canada’s capital, police said yesterday that bikers planning another anti-establishment protest would be blocked from parading their motorcycles near Parliament.
“Rolling Thunder Ottawa” organisers say up to 1,000 motorcycles and other vehicles are expected to converge on the capital this weekend, raising concerns of a repeat of the disruptive trucker convoy protest in February.
Three city blocks in front of Parliament have been barricaded since the end of the protest known as the Freedom Convoy, leaving the area accessible only to pedestrians.
The group has not outlined what exactly it is protesting, but partners including veterans groups continue to rail against Covid-19 rules, even though almost all have been dropped in the past month.
In a statement, Ottawa police said it would enforce the no-go zone for vehicles, and prevent road access to other parts of the city’s downtown too.
“We will not allow for unsafe or unlawful conditions that could lead to another unlawful protest as seen in February,” Ottawa police said.
A heavy police presence would be deployed, it added, and social media would be monitored for “threatening or intimidating behaviours”.
Neil Sheard, an organiser of the biker protest, responded in a YouTube video lamenting the restriction on vehicles, saying “it’s going to be a free for all” and “a safety issue”.
Earlier this year, big rigs jammed Ottawa for nearly four weeks, filling the air with diesel fumes and incessant loud honking that triggered a backlash from local residents and shopkeepers.
The truckers were eventually dislodged by police using emergency powers invoked by the government for only the second time ever in peacetime.
Community groups such as Horizon Ottawa have expressed concerns that the bikers have “links to far-right groups’ and that this weekend’s event would be simply an extension of the trucker rally that had started as a protest against Covid-19 health rules but whose demands grew into a wider anti-establishment agenda.
Horizon Ottawa said in a statement that “the terror of the occupation cannot ever be repeated and that any efforts to do so must be stopped in their tracks”.
Also yesterday, a former judge was named to conduct a public inquiry into the government’s use of emergency powers against the truckers who had also blocked several border crossings, disrupting trade with the United States.
The commission has until February 6, 2023 to report its findings.
Several of the trucker protest organisers, meanwhile, are in court fighting mischief and other charges related to the illegal protest. – AFP, April 26, 2022
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