As vaccine protests gum up Ottawa, Canada wonders, ‘How did this happen?’

Canada is accustomed to global accolades. But usually they’re from the international left: for its welcome of refugees, for example, or its state-funded health care system.

But now that a “Freedom Convoy” has occupied the capital, with hundreds of trucks occupying downtown and threatening not to leave until vaccine mandates are ended, Canada has found itself feted by the international right – and caught off guard.

The convoy, which arrived in Ottawa on Jan. 28, is composed, on the face of it, of people angry about vaccine mandates for cross-border trucking – the latest iteration in a series of demonstrations that started against masks, then lockdowns, then vaccines, and now vaccine policy. But it has attracted disparate groups – including far-right extremists and anti-democratic forces, experts say – that were once siloed around their own interests and have now coalesced around pandemic frustration.

Ottawa initially treated it as just another protest. It set up no bollards into the capital and for more than a week took a nonconfrontational approach, tolerating the protests even after some demonstrators desecrated national monuments, wielded swastikas and Confederate flags, destroyed property, and threatened that they will not leave until the democratically elected government is overthrown – veering far beyond their right to assembly.

Now, city and federal government officials are left struggling to figure out why they weren’t prepared for the protests, how things spun out of control so quickly, and what they must do to prevent this kind of multifaceted disruption in the future. Part of the disconnect is that Canada simply didn’t recognize itself in the angry convoy rolling across the country.

“We saw it coming literally down the highway for a week or so before it arrived in Ottawa. And the security agencies took a look at that and said, ‘Well, I’m sure it’s not as bad as all of that up here in Canada,’” says Michael Kempa, a University of Ottawa criminology professor. “Maybe there’ll be a few broken windows or something, but ultimately everybody will come into town, protest, stop by Harvey’s, and leave.”

“We weren’t prepared, because we’ve never seen this before in Canada,” Dr. Kempa adds. “There’s a definite shift in thought in that we have conceptually caught up to the threat that had plainly presented itself, but we were incapable of recognizing.”

“Convoy identity”

There are plenty of Canadians angry about public health measures, and many of them are exercising their right to protest against them in this convoy. Still, the Freedom Convoy itself does not reflect a majority in Canadian society – just as the Jan. 6 Capitol attack in the United States did not align with the vast majority of Americans’ values. Although an anti-vaccine movement exists here, almost 80% of Canadians have gotten vaccinated – among the highest rates in the world – and, though weary, have complied with pandemic restrictions.

Still, this protest has lasted longer than expected, and created more havoc than anticipated. It has gained outsize international attention: Right-wing politicians in the U.S., including former President Donald Trump, have called the protesters heroes as the occupation has moved into a 14th day and this week cropped up on the U.S.-Canada border, disrupting automakers in both countries, including Toyota, Ford, and General Motors. It has inspired calls for “convoy protests” – the use of large-scale vehicles to bring a seat of government to its knees – around the globe.

It has gotten significant funding. Some foreign, too – with tens of thousands of donors offering millions of dollars in total via GoFundMe, before that mechanism was shut down (earning the fundraising site threats from Republicans in the U.S., from Gov. Ron DeSantis in Florida to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton).

The international appeal owes in part to visuals – a cross-country journey of large-scale trucks and semis overtaking a capital. Its “success” has motivated those who share a “convoy identity,” says Ciaran O’Connor, disinformation analyst with the London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue. But it has also created opportunities for extremists around the globe.

“It provides far-right groups permission to protest and permission to mobilize offline, on the streets where they didn’t have such an open door prior to COVID,” he says. “For police or for security services or governments or even public health authorities trying to manage the pandemic, this does present a new kind of challenge.”

Kathleen Rodgers, an associate professor in the School of Culture, Media, and Society at the University of the Fraser Valley in British Columbia, says Canada failed to recognize the danger because Canadian intelligence has focused domestically for the past 75 years on threats it has perceived from the left, from communists to environmentalists and most recently Indigenous activists protesting natural resource extraction.

“And so the surveillance was really skewed to the left of the political spectrum,” she says. “I think the fact that intelligence and police services were not prepared for what we’re seeing today really reflects that bias, because they simply hadn’t identified this group of people as extremist threats.”

“This is a siege,” admitted Ottawa Police Chief Peter Sloly, who has been criticized for not confronting the movement from the start. “It is something that is different in our democracy than I’ve ever experienced in my life.”

Why did the police take so long?

The city of Ottawa declared a state of emergency over the weekend. Mayor Jim Watson on Monday called for 1,800 federal and provincial offers. But many are asking why it has taken so long. It has led to widespread anger among local residents who watched for over a week amid incessant honking – until a class-action suit was brought by a downtown resident and a judge ordered a temporary injunction against the noise – as well as the closures of businesses, vaccine clinics, and a school.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, for example, have in recent years violently dispersed anti-pipeline and logging protesters in British Columbia. Police in other jurisdictions, including in Toronto over the weekend, where the environment was politically pointed but otherwise cheerful, easily de-escalated a convoy that arrived.

“Protest policing in Canada is fairly well honed. And it’s quite confrontational,” says Jeffrey Monaghan, a criminologist at the University of Carleton in Ottawa. “When it comes to public order policing, there’s a lot in the toolbox that police regularly use against other groups that isn’t being used here.”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who has been the subject of much of the ire, condemned protesters in the House of Commons Monday. “This blockade, and these protesters, are not the story of this pandemic,” he said. “They are not the story of Canadians in this pandemic. From the very beginning, Canadians stepped up to be there for one another, to support their neighbors, to support the elderly, and to support our front-line workers by doing the right things, by wearing masks, by getting vaccinated, and by following public health restrictions.”

The work ahead lies in delineating where protest ends and occupation begins. “They are deploying deliberate, disruptive, and extraordinary tactics to extract what they want out of government and calling it free speech and the right to protest,” says Dr. Kempa. “Saying, ‘We will not leave until each and all of our political demands are met. Full stop. No negotiation. No conversation.’ That is extortion. That is not the expression of your ideas. I think government, frankly, should be explaining to Canadians precisely these legal distinctions.”

And precisely who gains from this kind of protest, he adds: the far-right or anti-state actors trying to attract new members to their radical, political cause. “We’re not talking about a coordinated global cabal of evil people that are pulling the levers in a coordinated fashion behind the scenes. They don’t have secret handshakes and knuckle cracks.” Instead he compares them to investors who see the pandemic as a “wonderful opportunity.”

Many of the more moderate Canadians – those angry about policy but not against democracy itself – would, he suspects, likely leave.

Abby Gainforth contributed reporting to this piece.