Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, has invoked the Emergencies Act. This as the convoy failed to turn up at the Super Bowl.
Yesterday, we reported on the news that, after a second attempt, Canadian police liberated the Ambassador Bridge from the terrorists. Of course, the immediate question was when is it going to be re-opened? Well, it turns out, it didn’t take long to restore trade flow. CTV noted late yesterday that the bridge is re-opened:
The Ambassador Bridge has fully reopened following a week-long closure caused by a border protest.
The Canada Border Service Agency announced the reopening on Sunday night.
A statement from the Detroit International Bridge Company Sunday night said the reopening will allow the free flow of commerce between the Canada and United States economies again.
“Throughout the protest, the bridge company supported truck drivers by providing meals and coffee to keep them going during the unpredictable wait time,” said the statement.
Word of the bridge re-opening is excellent news for a multitude of sectors. Truckers have been stuck because of the blockade that terrorists set up. The shut down might have cost the Canadian economy upwards of $2.8 billion. While damaging the Canadian economy was something that some of the organizers gleefully cheered on, it hurt many Canadians in the process. It meant the shutdown or curtailment of shifts at various auto manufacturing plants. There is also long term damage which saw rumours that some of the manufacturers were considering leaving Canada altogether. Something like that could cost tens of thousands of jobs, depending on the situation.
Currently, the bridge is being guarded by a heavy police presence. Obviously, authorities do not want to see the terrorists re-capture the bridge. That would only further damage their reputation – whatever reputation they have left that is that is even remotely flattering at this stage.
Of course, the situation is still very fragile. Will the police be able to keep the bridge open over the longer term? What’s more, what about the remaining occupations across Canada. Indeed, there have been many attempts by terrorists to claim more territory, but only a few of those attempts have been successful outside of Ottawa.
As we also noted yesterday, counter protests were also on the streets. Ottawa residents, feeling abandoned all the way up to week three in this, have felt abandoned with police services not wanting to enforce either the law or the injunction. Yesterday, we saw reports of 24/7 horn blasting – a violation of the injunction brought by what some call “Super Woman”, a resident in the area wanting to be able to sleep at night.
So, you have residents who are angrily counter-protesting the terrorist occupation and a terrorist occupation who still seem to operate without any repercussion of breaking the law (or injunctions these days). With terrorists blocking the path of ambulance services still, it has been a downright miracle that no one has been killed or that fist fights haven’t broken out on the streets up to this point.
Trudeau Planning on Invoking the Emergency Services Act
Update: See bottom of article. The Emergencies Act has been invoked
The most Trudeau has been doing is saying that he is providing resources to the province and the city. Otherwise, he’s been doing everything he can to punt the issue down to the lower level governments. Despite more resources being poured in, the situation has largely remained unchanged in the streets of Ottawa. Well, save for bigger groups of socializing between officers as terrorists walk right by them with fuel and supplies that is. Police said they tried to cut off the supply chains, but that lasted all of one raid and two afternoons before that “effort” was, once again, ignored.
With residents at a boiling point for well over a week now, and the situation continues to remain unchanged, it really was only a matter of time before you start seeing, at least, brawls on the streets. Bill Blair recently responded to the situation, saying that it was inexplicable that more isn’t being done to finally end this occupation. From the CBC:
The federal government has discussed invoking special emergency powers to deal with ongoing protests in Ottawa, Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair says, calling a lack of enforcement in the nation’s capital “inexplicable.”
The government’s Incident Response Group and cabinet have had “daily” discussions about potential use of the Emergencies Act, Blair said in an interview on Sunday on Rosemary Barton Live.
A cabinet meeting was added to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s itinerary late Sunday, and CBC News has learned that a meeting with the prime minister and premiers has been called for Monday morning.
Blair described the attitude around use of the law, which has never been implemented before, as “appropriate caution” rather than “reticence.”
For many Canadian’s, the comment that the lack of enforcement being “inexplicable” ultimately showcases a level of naivety about the situation. There’s been a flood of video’s on social media showing police doing selfies with the terrorists, helping them, not enforcing the law, and giving them fist bumps among other things. The explanation for the lack of enforcement is obvious for Canadian’s: the police are on the terrorists side. It explains almost everything about the situation: the lack of enforcement of by-laws, the hands off approach, and the fact that the nations capital is still under siege after all of this time.
While there was only talk about evoking the Emergencies Act, it has been only in the discussion phase. As it turns out, that has now escalated to an outright eventuality. From the CBC:
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has told his caucus he will invoke the never-before-used Emergencies Act to give the federal government extra powers to handle anti-vaccine mandate protests across the country, sources say.
Those sources, who were not authorized to speak publicly, said the prime minister informed the premiers of his decision this morning.
The Emergencies Act, which replaced the War Measures Act in the 1980s, defines a national emergency as a temporary “urgent and critical situation” that “seriously endangers the lives, health or safety of Canadians and is of such proportions or nature as to exceed the capacity or authority of a province to deal with it.”
It gives special powers to the prime minister to respond to emergency scenarios affecting public welfare (natural disasters, disease outbreaks), public order (civil unrest), international emergencies or war emergencies.
NDP leader, Jagmeet Singh, responded to this by saying that this represents a total failure of the government. Singh rightfully pointed out that Trudeau had basically tried to punt this whole situation over to the province while trying to hide behind jurisdictional issues. While jurisdiction might be a bit more messy when it comes to the city of Ottawa, the Canadian border is much more easily in the hands of the Federal Governments jurisdiction. So, at this point, the government basically, for the most part, sat on their hands and did nothing until they absolutely had to act.
The NDP said that they intend on supporting the invoking of the Emergencies Act. So, at this point, the numbers are there to see this passed. While some people are confusing this with the now defunct War Measures Act, chances are, this law being invoked will be more about logistics and resources. The Prime Minister has said repeatedly that involving the military is an absolute last resort. Invoking this law is just one step up from the current level of action.
In so many ways, this move is just necessary at this point. Though it is the first time this law was ever invoked, the timing of it is very much reasonable. Right now, you have citizens and occupiers about ready to go to war with each other. That could lead to injuries, people getting killed, property damage, reputation damage internationally, and potentially inflaming the situation in other jurisdictions as well. That simply can’t happen. Right now, Ottawa is a tinder box ready to explode at any time. While the response was a disaster up to this point, invoking this law is probably one of the few moves from the Federal government that is actually very much reasonable.
Terrorist Donors Data on GiveSendGo Has Leaked Again
GiveSendGo went offline after a list of donors to the terrorist occupiers was leaked. The data set was obtained by secret leaking site, Distributed Denial of Secrets. From USNews:
A website devoted to disseminating leaked data says it has been given reams of information about donors to the Canadian anti-vaccine mandate truckers after the fundraising platform popular with supporters of the movement allegedly suffered a hack.
Distributed Denial of Secrets announced on its website that it had 30 megabytes of donor information from Christian fundraising site GiveSendGo, including names, email addresses, ZIP codes and internet protocol addresses.
At the same time, GiveSendGo appeared to be offline.
Visitors to the website were met with a message that it was under maintenance and “we will be back very soon.” Messages seeking comment from the site’s operators were not immediately returned.
A journalist at the Daily Dot digital news outlet said on Twitter that the site suffered a hack overnight and had its front page briefly replaced by a clip from the movie “Frozen” and a manifesto accusing it of supporting “an insurrection in Ottawa.”
DDOSecrets says that, because of the nature of the personal information on those lists, it would not be making the data set publicly available. Instead, they say that they will only be giving the leaked information to journalists and researchers. While 30MB doesn’t sound like much, a 30MB text file is actually a lot of data.
Some might be looking at this and asking if this is a repeat story from earlier which saw security researchers finding an exposed Amazon Bucket containing donor information. This is, in fact, a completely different security incident. In fact, this is apparently the third time GiveSendGo had the terrorists information compromised. So, the books of who is donating to these “people” is very much wide open if we are talking about GiveSendGo.
Second Injunction Granted Against Honking in Ottawa
While the famous injunction against honking has been going on for a while, the city of Ottawa apparently sought an injunction of their own. It looks like the injunction was seeking a much broader range of actions being taken by the terrorists. Beyond the non-stop honking, they are looking to put a stop to idling, fireworks at night, and more. We are learning that a judge has granted that injunction. From CTVNews:
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau consulted premiers about using the Emergencies Act Monday, while an Ontario judge granted an injunction to enforce noise and idling bylaws related to the ongoing anti-vaccine mandate protests in Ottawa.
City solicitor David White requested the injunction Friday, saying the protesters were flagrantly violating bylaws against relentless noise, idling of trucks, setting off fireworks, and open air fires.
The injunction, which does not have an end date, was designed to give the police and bylaw officers an extra tool to enforce city bylaws, lawyers acting for the city of Ottawa said Monday.
The Attorney General’s office intervened in the court hearing to make it clear that the injunction would also apply to federal property in Canada’s capital city.
No doubt Ottawa residents will adopt a “we’ll believe its enforcement when we see it” approach. The first injunction wasn’t being followed in the first place, so the question of whether police will bother enforcing the injunction remains to be seen.
Super Bowl Convoy Fails to Materialize
With so much going on in Canada, there has been a development, or lack of one, going on in the US. For quite some time now, there had been rumours and a push for the terrorists to disrupt the Super Bowl. Some were dismissive about the threat and basically said, “good luck with that” sarcastically. Yesterday, we reported on the White House saying that there is already a surge in manpower flowing in to the Department of Homeland Security. Right wingers were getting riled up by Fox “News” actively encouraging the disruptions in general, so, unsurprisingly, the White House wasn’t leaving anything to chance.
Luckily, those efforts didn’t go anywhere and the only thing that seemed to come out of the Super Bowl was racists getting upset that some stage performers were showing respect for black people via taking a knee.
So, what happened? Well, as it turns out, many of the problems facing terrorists operating in Canada, such as internal conflicts, also plagued their US counterparts. From Reuters:
But while protests and traffic blockades inspired by the Ottawa protests have gained steamed in Australia, New Zealand, and Europe, similar rallies in the United States have been slower to take off despite plenty of chatter in extremist circles and favorable coverage by right-wing outlets such as Fox News. On Friday, U.S. organizers, including Penny Faye of an organization dubbed “Convoy to Save America,” told Reuters they were planning convoys for this weekend or early next month.
“I think they ran out of time,” Welton Chang, whose Washington-based firm, Pyrra, has been following online talk about the plan to protest the Super Bowl, said Saturday. He also cited the lack of consensus around whether the marquee sporting event was an appropriate target.
A Reuters review of social media has also found little support for a Super Bowl plan.
There was scant mention of a Super Bowl protest on TruckersForFreedom, a popular Telegram channel devoted to sharing news from the protests in Canada and abroad, for example.
So, between tight timelines and a lack of consensus, it simply didn’t happen. No doubt, for American’s that is a relief. While the terrorists in Canada seem to be falling apart, it’s hard to draw a connection to their American counterparts that this is a sign that we might finally be seeing the end of them all. At this point, time may be all they really need – and the March 1st date we’ve seen earlier is still possible.
On the plus side, it looks like American media are looking deeper into these terrorist activities than Canadian media. The Canadian media has been largely just walking up to the terrorists with a microphone and asking what they think. Actually listening in on the conversations online was not something they seemed at all interested in doing even though there was plenty of value to obtain from those communications. The Reuters report suggests that the American media are all too happy to listen in on their conversations and get a much clearer picture of what is going on. So, American’s might not have to rely on smaller independent media such as our site to get that intel.
Harrassment Directed at High School Students
Back in Canada, a new video is circulating showing at least one terrorist hurling verbal attacks and other abuse on a visible minority going to high school. From Castanet:
A group of about 30 protesters showed up at Oliver’s Southern Okanagan Secondary School Friday afternoon and yelled at students about their masks, leading to a “very heated” confrontation.
Kai, a Grade 11 student at the school, says the group showed up to the school around 2:45 p.m. – about 30 minutes before the end of the school day. The group pulled into the area where school buses and parents would pick up students, honking their horns and blocking off the area.
“My friends and I were sitting in class and we could hear all the honking and stuff and we all looked out the window and … we looked outside and we were like ‘why are they here?’ At first it was just a couple, we didn’t think it would be a whole convoy,” Kai told Castanet.
“We thought it was just people picking up their kids who just happened to have Canada flags and then it ended up just being dozens of trucks just lined up across the street, blocking off the street, it was a lot of them.”
After school, as the students were leaving, Kai and a group of students went to see what they wanted. Kai said the protesters went to “huddle” in an area where people wait after school to be picked up by their parents.
“There were like 50 kids there after school. We were just like ‘what do you guys want?’ Because they were yelling at us to take off our masks, this lady spat at me, she spat at me and walked away,” said Kai.
For some, this is a case of “just throw this evidence on top of the rest of the pile of evidence of abusive behaviour these people are inflicting on Canadian’s. Still, it doesn’t make it any less disturbing that these people would act this way towards high school students on the school grounds.
So, while there was a positive resolution to this huge story (with the reopening of the Ambassador Bridge), this story is still far from over.
Update: It appears that the Emergencies Act has, in fact, been invoked. It is a moment for the history books because this is the first time in history that Canada evoked this act. From the CBC:
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he has invoked the Emergencies Act for the first in time in Canada’s history to give the federal government extra powers to handle ongoing blockades and protests against pandemic restrictions.
“It is now clear that there are serious challenges to law enforcement’s ability to effectively enforce the law,” Trudeau told a news conference Monday afternoon.
Trudeau said the measures will be geographically targeted and “reasonable and proportionate to the threats they are meant to address.”
The unprecedented deployment of the Emergencies Act gives police more tools to restore order in places where public assemblies constitute illegal and dangerous activities, such as blockades and occupations, he said.
The government is also designating and securing critical areas such as border crossings and airports. Invoking the act will also allow the government to make sure that essential services — such as towing services to remove trucks — are rendered, said Trudeau.
The act also permits the federal government to direct financial institutions to render essential services to address the situation, and to prohibit the use of property to fund or support illegal blockades.
Trudeau said the act also will enable the RCMP to enforce municipal bylaws and provincial offences where required.
So, a historic day, but one that seemed necessary at this stage given the state of affairs in Canada right now.
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Facebook.
