Peter Sloly has resigned as Ottawa’s police chief and will publicly announce he is stepping down after the Ottawa Police Services Board meeting today, according to sources that have spoken to CBC News.
Sloly has faced criticism for his handling of a truck convoy protest that has caused major disruption to Ottawa’s downtown core.
Canada’s government seems to care only about maintaining control and saving face
It was the hot tub that did it. Photos of convoy supporters relaxing in a hot tub on a downtown Ottawa street last weekend were splashed all over the news. Now Justin Trudeau is mad and he’s gone and invoked war measures, known as the Emergencies Act. He wants that hot tub off the streets, pronto, and he needs wartime powers to get it done. Civil liberties remain “temporarily” suspended… just for two weeks, while we flatten the protesters!
There are some concerns about the federal government’s decision to invoke the Emergencies Act to end antigovernment blockades against COVID-19 measures that are being held across the country.
The Canadian Civil Liberties Association says it does not believe the “high and clear” threshold needed to invoke the act has been met, noting the law states it can only be used when a situation cannot be dealt with using any other law in the country.
Ontario reports 19 more COVID-19 deaths; 1,550 hospitalizations
Ontario is reporting 19 more virus-related deaths and more than 1,500 hospitalizations as the province prepares to lift all capacity limits in indoor settings this week.
A Ministry of Health spokesperson says the latest deaths occurred over the past 24 days with one death yesterday, six on Feb.13 and four on Feb. 12.
384 people are in ICU with #COVID19. 79.5% of patients admitted to the ICU were admitted for COVID-19 and 20.5% were admitted for other reasons but have tested positive for COVID-19.
There are 1,593 new cases of COVID-19.
— Christine Elliott (@celliottability) February 15, 2022
Why is Canada’s Covid death rate so much lower than US?
Images of Canada’s paralysed capital and of pandemic-rules protests have thrust the country’s Covid response under the spotlight.
What started as a trucker-led movement to demand the end of a vaccine mandate has escalated to include all kinds of public health restrictions.
But since the pandemic began, Canada has fared far better than the US, despite similar income disparities, territorial divides, and comorbidities such as obesity and hypertension as its southern neighbour.
The protesters who used semis, farm equipment, campers, and other vehicles to block access to and from the U.S.-Canada border at Coutts, Alta., wound down their demonstration Monday night, with the last holdouts planning to leave the area Tuesday morning.
… “I feel a little defeated,” Isaac Peters said while sitting around the fires Monday night. The mood of the protest changed Monday after RCMP said it arrested 12 people after finding a weapons stash. The Mounties said this cluster joined the protest in its early days but were separate from the larger group. The situation prompted RCMP to suit up in tactical gear, Mr. Peters said, and openly carry large firearms.
A little earlier today, my colleague Nick Arama posted on a Washington Post editorial about the futility of mask mandates, see WaPo Finally Says It: ‘Mask Mandates Didn’t Make Much of a Difference Anyway’ If this sounds a little strange given the fights raging across the nation, and the so-called Western world, about mask mandates, it should. It should be strange, even by Washington Post standards.
OTTAWA – Federal opposition parties say Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s decision to invoke the Emergencies Act is a “proof of failure” in dealing with convoy blockades across the country.
Trudeau’s proposal was also quickly dismissed by the premiers of Quebec, Saskatchewan, British Columbia, Alberta and Manitoba. It received support from Ontario, where the blockades paralyzed a major U.S.-Canada bridge in Windsor and part of the downtown core around Parliament Hill in Ottawa.
From the perspective of freedom-loving citizens in this country, the trucker convoys and blockades protesting mask and vaccine mandates are a stirring spectacle of patriotism, civic responsibility, and true grit. They represent the offset to heavy-handed and arrogant government that is using everything in its power to suppress their efforts: threats, fines, police coercion, theft of property, and the manifestly illegal sequestering of funds donated to the truckers by private individuals. A conflict of this nature is often framed as the state versus the nation, the authorities versus the people. Whether it applies to the current situation, as we will see, is problematic.
An American tech billionaire, two NASA employees and Canadian civil servants are among a leaked list of nearly 100,000 Freedom Convoy donors, according to information released by hackers responsible for taking down the group’s crowdfunding site.
… As the Ottawa police failed to disperse the truckers and their supporters, the media pressured a pathetic-looking Trudeau–who’d fled the city to hide in a still-undisclosed location–to crack down on the Freedom Convoy. The Emergencies Act would be a major escalation, allowing the government to take a degree of power reserved for wartime or for serious emergencies and disasters.
Trudeau himself, together with state-controlled (or elite-sympathetic) media, tried to prepare the ground for this unprecedented move by slandering the Freedom Convoy and its supporters for weeks as racists, white supremacists and fascists.
They’ve gone full Nazi.
OTTAWA — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is expected to announce the next steps the government will be taking to deal with the ongoing trucker convoy protests and blockades, after spending the morning consulting premiers on invoking the Emergencies Act which would grant exceptional federal powers.
Trudeau has scheduled a 4:30 p.m. EST announcement and media availability on Monday, alongside several key ministers including Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, Justice Minister and Attorney General David Lametti, Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino, and Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is expected to invoke the never-used Emergencies Act to give his government enhanced authority in response to the anti-vaccine mandate protests and blockades gripping Canada.
If enacted, the law will grant Mr Trudeau’s government extraordinary powers for 30 days – including the power to prohibit public assembly, travel and the use of specific property.
The speculation comes amid weeks of disruptive – and expensive – demonstrations against Covid-19 restrictions.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau consulted Canada’s premiers Monday about triggering the federal Emergencies Act to deal with blockades jamming border crossings and the nation’s capital, but faced push back from some First Ministers who were concerned about invoking sweeping powers.
Mr. Trudeau briefed the premiers about the options Ottawa is considering, including the never-used Emergencies Act. Alberta Premier Jason Kenney strongly objected as did Saskatchewan’s Scott Moe and Quebec Premier François Legault, according to two provincial sources.
… One of the sources said Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Andrew Furey were supportive but other premiers wanted to ensure that any response was proportional and worried about emboldening angry protesters.
All Junior needs is Dougie for Ontario alone to be hit.
Far-left Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is facing a popularity collapse, several polls published this weekend found, in the aftermath of his handling of the ongoing “Freedom Convoy” anti-mandate protests – with both supporters and opponents of the protesters.
