Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his family have left their home in the nation’s capital Ottawa for a secret location as up to 50,000 truckers gather to protest against the country’s vaccine mandate and Covid lockdowns.
The truckers drove their giant rigs into the Canadian capital Ottawa on Saturday as part of a ‘Freedom Convoy’ which started as a protest against vaccine mandates required to cross the US border.
Days earlier, Justin Trudeau had called the truckers headed for the city a ‘small fringe minority’ before the convoy of hundreds of vehicles grew up to 45 miles long as it made its way to the capital .
The movement received an endorsement Thursday from Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk, who tweeted, ‘Canadian truckers rule.
There was an enormous clamor as hundreds of big trucks, their engines rumbling, sounded their air horns non-stop. Estimates of the number of truckers range from 10-20,000.
Closer to Parliament, families calmly marched on a bitterly cold day, while young people chanted and older people in the crowd banged pots and pans in protest under Trudeau’s office windows.
Canadian media said the prime minister and his family had been escorted out of their home and taken to a secret location in the capital, with much of the protesters’ wrath directed at Trudeau.
‘I want it all to stop — these measures are unjustified,’ said one demonstrator, 31-year-old businessman Philippe Castonguay, outside the Parliament building.
He had driven seven hours from northern Quebec province to make his feelings known: “The vaccination requirements are taking us toward a new society we never voted for,” he said.
Trudeau said Friday that the truckers’ views — which he described as anti-science, anti-government and anti-society — posed a risk not only to themselves but to other Canadians as well.
