OTTAWA – As Ottawa prepares for protests from the movement opposing Covid-19 restrictions over the weekend, interim Conservative leader Candice Bergen says her MPs are free to participate in the demonstrations. “I support peaceful and legal demonstrations, and if my MPs want to participate, they are free to do so, they will answer to their constituents,” Bergen said in an interview with CTV’s Question Period aired Sunday. “Conservatives fully support Canadians who were, and are still opposed to, mandatory vaccines,” the interim leader of the CP added.
The events of the Freedom Convoy will take place in Ottawa during Canada Day, in protest against the remaining restrictions put in place by the government to counter the Covid pandemic.
Participants in this winter’s Freedom Convoy, the occupation of Wellington Street and the parliamentary district, are expected to return to the city. One group, Veterans for Freedom, has indicated that it intends to set up a camp throughout the summer on the outskirts of Ottawa, to continue protesting against the remaining restrictions for Covid-19.
Ottawa police said they intend to seek rcmp support and set up a motor vehicle control zone in the center for the national holiday: they also assured that they will not allow the recurrence of protests against the vaccination obligation and against the government that in January and February blocked the streets of the center and made life difficult for residents.
Last week, prominent figures in the convoy returned to Parliament Hill and met with more than 20 Conservative MPs, to whom they presented reports against vaccines and restrictions.
James Topp, a soldier who marched through Canada to protest the vaccination obligation will return to the capital to complete his march reaching the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on June 30: his arrival should coincide with the planned Canada Day protests.
Bergen did not attend the recent event and has no plans to be in Ottawa for Canada Day, but last winter he met with freedom convoy participants. An email obtained by CTV shows that at the time, fresh from the post of leader of the Progressive Conservative, Bergen advised Conservative MPs to “not ask truck drivers to leave Ottawa” and instead of “letting the protests be a prime minister’s problem”.
After expressing support for truck drivers and people involved in the Freedom Convoy protests that blocked Ottawa’s roads and border crossings this winter, the federal conservative caucus was also highly critical of the government’s invocation of the Emergencies Act.
Meanwhile, Bergen continues to ask Public Security Minister Marco Mendicino to resign because, in her opinion, he lied about the Ottawa police’s request for emergency powers. “There is a very high threshold for invoking the Emergencies Act. We have always said that we do not believe that that level had been reached – said Bergen – what comes to light now is that the government has misled canadians”.
