Ottawa’s Parliament Hill, topped with the imposing Gothic Revival building that houses the House of Commons, was the scene of a major show of force on Saturday, January 29, by everyone the country is counting on, anti-vaccination and anti-vaccination Health measures taken since the beginning of the health crisis.

Several thousand truckers had decided to gather in the Canadian capital to cancel the vaccination requirement imposed by Ottawa on January 15 for all truckers returning to Canada after crossing the American border. An obligation that also applies to the American side. The self-proclaimed “Freedom Convoy,” the largest procession, had left British Columbia six days earlier.

A 4,300km west-to-east crossing interspersed with rallies in support. The same was observed on Highway 50, which connects Montreal to Ottawa. At every bridge, every viaduct, a few dozen citizens would gather to salute their crossing. A sister in a cornet held up a sign that read: “God bless the truckers, Liberty!” “You are fighting for our freedom” another supporter congratulated them.

Under the bright sun, but with a polar cold of – 30 ⁰Celsius, the crowd gathered around the shiny and humming trucks at the foot of Parliament Hill on Saturday tirelessly chanted the same slogan ” Freedom ! “, interspersed with insults directed at Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Colorful coalition

under the slogan “Kim Jong Trudeau”Taped to his hockey stick, John, 40, unvaccinated from Shawinigan, Quebec, screams in the middle of a horn concert. “We can’t take their damn obligations anymore to let us live normally. » A few streamers “Make Canada Great Again” American Confederate flags, white supremacist emblems and even a swastika flutter at the foot of Parliament.

A motley coalition is emerging behind this protest movement, the first of this magnitude in Canada since the pandemic began. The popular support from which it has benefited is a testament to the snout of part of the population in the face of the health restrictions imposed for twenty-two months. Social media has widely reflected this, with Facebook groups like Convoy to Ottawa 2022 or Freedomconvoy having several hundred thousand members.

But the initiators of the convoy, grouped in Canada Unity, belong to the country’s ultra-conservative political movement. One of them is the Alberta activist patrick king, Co-founder of the Wexit Canada movement (now the Maverick Party), a political organization campaigning for independence for the western provinces of Canada. A far-right activist previously involved in the Yellow Vest Canada movement. In January 2019 he had organized public meetings denouncing Canada’s carbon tax and the United Nations Global Compact on Migration, and occasionally defending the thesis “great replacement” and “white genocide”.

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