The convoy ended the career of a progressive police leader, reshaped the city’s mayoralty race, and may ultimately define the boundaries of acceptable protest in Canada.
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The convoy protest contributed to decisions by council veterans Mathieu Fleury and Diane Deans to end their fledgling mayoralty campaigns – decisions that set the stage for Sutcliffe’s eleventh-hour bid. In an interview, Fleury said several factors went into his decision to suspend his mayoral campaign. One of them was the convoy protest.
As bad as the convoy protest was for the people of downtown Ottawa, it was likely worse for Ottawa’s civic leaders, who faced unprecedented levels of hate and harassment from convoy supporters in addition to intense pressure from local residents to end the occupation. “There’s so much animosity towards elected officials and I got that in spades during the Freedom Convoy.”
The Emergencies Act inquiry has revealed Ottawa police expected the truckers to go home on Jan. 31, following the first weekend of demonstrations. The service did not have a plan in place to manage a scenario in which protesters and their rigs remained parked on city streets. Sloly acknowledged systemic racism in the police service, but his reform agenda faced criticism from some inside the force and from community activists unhappy with the pace of change.Article content
In downtown Ottawa, the spiritual heart of the movement, there were bouncy castles, hot tubs, fireworks and a sound stage. Truck drivers walked downtown with jerry cans of fuel in defiance of a police crackdown, built canteens in local parks and draped themselves and their paraphernalia on national monuments.
Li’s lawyer Paul Champ, who’s leading the class action lawsuit against the Freedom Convoy, said it was confusing and frightening for people to see police just watch as the law was ignored.While the psychological harm inflicted on the city is hard to quantify, it’s easy to see the physical legacy of the convoy protest: the cement barriers that block commuter traffic on Wellington Street.
Yasir Naqvi said Wellington Street’s fate should be decoupled from the convoy protest since it was a security and planning issue long before the truckers occupied it. Among the ideas on the table for Wellington is a 2.7-kilometre streetcar loop connecting the downtowns of Ottawa and Gatineau – a plan Naqvi favours.
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