The police warned them over the weekend that they would be cleared out. They never came. They handed out leaflets noting that at midnight on February 12—they were moving in. The protesters were defiant and stayed. Nothing came of it. The Freedom Convoy in Canada speaks for everyone who is sick of the authoritarian government regime that has been established over COVID. The virus has a 99-plus percent survival rate. We have therapeutics. We have vaccines. COVID isn’t going away. It’s endemic. It’s time to start treating it like flu and cold season. End the vaccine mandates. Torch the mask mandates. Reopen the country. This convoy has shacked up in the capital of Ottawa and they’re not leaving. They took over the Ambassador Bridge that leads into Michigan. They want a return to normalcy. It’s inspired American truckers to launch their own convoy which is reportedly being planned to end in Washington DC by the time of Joe Biden’s State of the Union.
As Super Bowl LVI was being played, the police did move in and clear out the bridge, arresting two dozen people (via NYT):
BREAKING: The busiest U.S.-Canada border crossing has reopened after protests against COVID-19 restrictions closed it for almost a week, the owner of the Ambassador Bridge announced. https://t.co/cqIyTDRlKc
— The Associated Press (@AP) February 14, 2022
NOW - Police, some in military-style gear, move in to remove the protesters blocking the US-Canada border crossing at the Ambassador Bridge.pic.twitter.com/eKaOLrYUbY
— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) February 12, 2022
Canadian law enforcement officials said Sunday that they had reopened a major international bridge that protesters had been blockading for almost a week, raising hopes for industries the unrest had slowed to a near-standstill.
As they announced that the Ambassador Bridge, which ties Windsor, Ontario, to Detroit, had been reclaimed after a series of arrests in the morning, some hailed it as a victory for a government shaken by the intransigence of anti-vaccine mandate protests that have mushroomed since they began.
But in Canada’s capital, Ottawa, hundreds of truckers were entering their third week of occupation of the area around Parliament Hill, where they appeared to be emboldened by a growing sense of impunity.
Late Sunday, the mayor of Ottawa, Jim Watson, revealed back-channel negotiations were underway with the truckers’ leadership to remove their convoy from residential neighborhoods, among other measures. The mayor’s office released an emailed letter dated Saturday from one of the protest leaders, Tamara Lich, in which she said, “We will be working hard over the next 24 hours to get buy in from the truckers.”
These people are not Nazis, though the liberal media has painted them as such. Shocker—the independent journalists spoke to this band of patriots and found out that a) they’re not crazy, b) they’re from all walks of life, and c) their aims are not insane. It’s not some right-wing plot. It’s a return to rational government policy that has grossly overreached for a virus that really isn’t all that big of a deal anymore.