“China eats weird animals disease”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will deliver remarks and hold a media availability in Ottawa Friday afternoon where he is expected to address the ongoing trucker protests and blockades set up across the country.

CTVNews.ca will carry the press conference live at 2 p.m. EST.

I’ve spoken to 100 of the protestors gathered in the Canadian capital. What’s happening is far bigger than the vaccine mandates.

For two weeks, the 18-wheelers, the semis, the tractors and the pick-up trucks streamed through the snow and ice into the center of Ottawa, the Canadian capital.

They came from across the country. Vaxxed, unvaxxed, white, black, Chinese, Sikh, Indian, alone or with their wives and kids. They huddled around campfires. They set up pop-up kitchens and tents with block captains doling out coffee and blankets. They honked (and honked and honked). They blasted “We Are the World.” And everywhere you looked, someone was waving the Maple Leaf.

h/t RM

The trucker convoy protest movement against COVID-19 vaccine mandates and restrictions that has paralyzed the Canadian capital and spilled over to key Canada-U.S. border crossings has the sympathy of many Canadians, according to a new poll.

An Ipsos poll published Thursday and conducted exclusively for Global News showed that nearly 46 per cent of Canadians say they “may not agree with everything” the trucker convoy says or does, but the frustration of protesters is “legitimate and worthy” of sympathy.

“Freedom convoys” of motorists that have set off from half a dozen French cities in protest against the country’s coronavirus restrictions will not be allowed to enter Paris, the capital’s police authority has said.

“The stated objective of these demonstrations is to ‘block the capital’ by preventing road traffic from circulating in order to further their demands … from Friday, before moving on to Brussels on Monday,” the authority said.

“Because of the risk to public order, these protests will be banned from 11 to 14 February,” it said, adding the penalties for blocking public roads included two years in prison, a fine of €4,500 and a three-year driving ban.

On January 15, the Canadian government announced a vaccine mandate for long-haul truckers. Over the days that followed, a convoy of unvaccinated and vaccinated truckers drove in solidarity across the country to protest against the measures. The convoy gathered in Ottawa on January 29 with a rally at Parliament Hill and Canadian PM Justin Trudeau promptly left town. Truck convoys were then joined by pedestrian protesters who have set up makeshift camps across the city centre.

The fact that it’s ordinary people behind the Freedom Convoy, rather than professional activists, has caused alarm among the ruling class

In the two weeks since the Freedom Convoy of Canadian truckers and their supporters began rallying in Ottawa to demand an end to all pandemic-related mandates and restrictions nationwide, it has become clear that this movement isn’t like other protest movements. And that’s a scary proposition for those in charge who thought that they’d manage and exploit this crisis on their own sweet time and schedule regardless of the actual science and reality on the ground.

The Canada truckers protest goes global — and it’s about more than just vaccines

We begin today in the Canadian Parliament, which has its own version of prime minister’s questions. And while it isn’t as entertaining as the famously unruly UK Parliament or the gem that is the Australian Parliament (“the honorable membah is a grub, Mistah Speakah!”), it can still get pretty rowdy.