The protests that Canadian truckers and their supporters arranged against mandatory vaccinations and lockdowns in Canada has attracted global attention.
Similar movements appear in Australia, Great Britain, New Zealand, in France. The governments of many Western countries have turned their vaccination campaigns against COVID-19 into a war against the unvaccinated.
In Canada (where 90% of the population is vaccinated), employees get fired if they refused to get a jab. They also lose their unemployment allowance. Quebec even announced a plan to tax unvaccinated adults. The roots of the protest are completely ignored: people are not against vaccinations, they stand up against
Australia went even further than Canada in this war. Australia created special "quarantine complexes" for those people who enter the country. In Australia, they suspect that "quarantine camps" are in fact being created in order to bring Covid dissidents from among the locals and vaccinate them there.
Australia has been living from one lockdown to another. The most recent one was implemented in late December 2021. Today, even the vaccinated need to get a QR code to go out for a walk, or they may find themselves in a police station otherwise.
Demonstrations in Canberra in the context of the "freedom convoy" have attracted supporters of various ideologies, but the "sovereign citizen" movement dominates. The idea of the movement says that world governments have been illegally co-opted by corporations, therefore, "sovereign citizens" or "free people" must ignore their laws, oust politicians, and restore people's republics.
Let's go back to Canada. Instead of negotiating with the protesters, the Canadian government has been aggravating the crisis. On the 13th day of the protests, the Ottawa authorities confiscated gasoline, food and other supplies from the protesters without legal authority to do so.
The police threatened them with arrests and property confiscations. Anyone who would want to provide material support to the strikers (gas, food, etc.) can be arrested as criminal accomplices. Public nuisance fines were increased to $1,000 per incident. As many as 22 arrests have been and over 1,300 tickets have been issued so far.
However, truck towing companies contracted by the city refuse to tow the away the "striking" trucks.
The protests in Canada have thus been structured around both material and moral support. One of Freedom Convoy 2022 organizers, Benjamin Dichter, said at a press conference on Wednesday, February 9, that another "massive convoy" of 1,000-1,500 trucks was heading to Ottawa from Alberta. The demonstrators' morale in downtown Ottawa remains high, Dichter said.
Justin Trudeau's government ordered to portray the protesters in Canadian media as racists and bigots. It does not look like Trudeau's government is willing to compromise. No one knows what is going to happen in Canada next, but it appears that the story will unfold to the point of violent clashes between the police and the protesters.
In France, first convoys of trucks have already left their stations on Wednesday, February 9, to paralyse Paris on the weekend, February 12 and 13, before heading to Brussels to block the city already on February 14. This movement was launched by thousands of Internet users in Facebook and Telegram and was inspired by Canada's Freedom Convoy 2022 movement.
The requirements are the same as in Canada — the abolition of restrictions and mandatory vaccination. The protesters also condemn inflation and believe that one should restore
Representatives for the prefecture of Paris said on Thursday, February 10, making references to the risk of civil unrest, that demonstrators would be banned from entering the capital from February 11 to 14. Motorists who violated the ban on protests in Paris may face
Brussels City Hall announced similar measures.
It should be noted that France is holding presidential elections in April. Emmanuel Macron may not win the election if he stops the "convoy of freedom”. France is on the verge of chaos, and it is about time the French president should look into the causes of it.
The "convoy of freedom" that emerged in Ottawa on Jan. 28 started in response to a federal government decree requiring Canadian truck drivers crossing the US border to be fully vaccinated. It then turned into a protest against restrictive measures to curb the spread of the coronavirus infection. Organizers of the movement say that the protests are not going to stop until all the above-mentioned discriminating measures are lifted.