Truckers in Ottawa block a key border crossing, as their protest morphs and drags on

An Ottawa City Councillor says the protest has morphed into a more far-reaching and hostile demonstration against the government than was originally planned.

• By Joe Hernandez/NPR

(Washington) — A massive protest in Ottawa, Ontario, that began with truck drivers opposing a cross-border vaccine mandate continues to snarl traffic and disrupt everyday life in the Canadian capital more than a week after it began.

Officials from the mayor to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have called on the protesters to leave, saying residents in the city of just over 1 million don’t deserve to be harassed. Yet the protesters show no signs of relenting, and some have moved into other areas of the city, which is under a state of emergency.

On Monday, some drivers blocked traffic on the Ambassador Bridge, a key crossing between Windsor, Ontario, and Detroit, CBC reported. They also got the backing of more than 100 Alaska truck drivers who rallied in support of the convoy, according to the Anchorage Daily News.

What is the protest about?

The “Freedom Convoy” began last month as a caravan of truck drivers who planned to drive to Ottawa to voice their opposition to a government mandate that requires them to be vaccinated against COVID-19 to cross the U.S.-Canada border.

That’s despite the fact that the Canadian Trucking Alliance says the “vast majority” of the country’s trucking industry is vaccinated.

But the narrow focus of the protest quickly grew as more people joined the demonstration to voice their own grievances against Canada’s government.

Some protesters say they’re staying until all public health mandates are lifted, while others have called for the dissolution of the current government, as NPR’s Emma Jacobs reported.

In addition, signs for QAnon, right-wing militias and Confederate and Nazi flags have also appeared among the protesters, Jacobs said.

Ottawa City Councillor Matthew Luloff told NPR’s Morning Edition on Tuesday that the protest has morphed into a more far-reaching and hostile demonstration against the government than was originally planned.

“Some of the most well-known radicals in this country have now descended upon the capital. Some of them are calling for violence. Some of them are threatening individual politicians,” said Luloff, who also noted the presence of hate symbols and antisemitic flyers at the protest.

“Now at the same time, there are people within this group that are demonstrating downtown with legitimate concerns,” he added, “but you don’t have a productive conversation at the business end of a gun or the grill of a semitruck.”

With a note of frustration, Luloff said that although protesters are calling for Trudeau and other government officials to resign, Canada just had an election several months earlier.

The protests have been largely peaceful — with some exceptions

Protesters have largely remained peaceful. Much of the criticism of the protest is focused on the disruptions to city life for those residing and working in Ottawa.

Mayor Jim Watson previously told CBC that residents feel like “prisoners in their own home” as crowds amass downtown, block traffic and at times harass people on the street.

Law enforcement authorities didn’t confront the protesters at first, but they’ve begun to crack down on demonstrators in recent days.

Ottawa police made several arrests over the weekend, seized fuel from some protesters and issued more than 450 tickets. The city is also under a state of emergency, and a judge ruled that truckers couldn’t sound their thunderous horns for 10 days.