Ruminations: COVID Truckers' Mandate Insurrection

Police officers control camper vans on the Champs-ElysÃ©es avenue, Saturday, Feb.12, 2022 in Paris. (AP Photo/Adrienne Surprenant)

"The question as to what proportion of the support is sound and fury signifying nothing, versus the proportion that is a genuine, organic kind of groundswell of support for these movements is kind of an open one."
"[France has a strong protest culture and is experiencing political division, plus a] mildly ascendant far right."
"You also have them being adjacent to Brussels and a lot of anti-EU sentiment amongst a lot of people. You have a lot of resistance to vaccination."
"It's likely accurate to say that hundreds of thousands of people have expressed an interest in organizing protests similar to Canada. However, the pipeline of the funnel -- of people expressing an interest through clicking on Telegram that through people who are willing to spend days of their time getting into their truck and block out the streets, I think it's likely to be a leaky funnel."
Tom Squirrell, head, communications and editorial, Institute for Strategic Dialogue, United Kingdom

"I do believe there are individuals who are there who definitely are using their protest right and their freedoms to speak to their dismay and frustrations [with mandates]."
"But I think that in a lot of ways, it's been usurped by people who truly believe in conspiracy theory, and people who are a part of the right-wing extremist movement."
"[If you look at conversations on platforms like Telegram], there's no border [between Canada and the U.S.]."
"If there is an end to the mandates [as provinces loosen restrictions], even if they had nothing to do with it, they will claim victory to that."
Carmen Celestini, fellow, Disinformation Project, Simon Fraser University

Protesters in support of ending mask mandates and COVID-19 restrictions in schools hold signs outside of St. Michael Catholic High School in the Eastern Ontario community of Kemptville, Ont. on Friday, February 11, 2022. (Nick Iwanyshyn/THE CANADIAN PRESS)

Just as the third weekend of the truck convoy protest takes place in Canada's capital, demonstrations in sympathy are being planned in thirty other countries of the world. It appears as though the anti-mandate protesters thronging to Ottawa's downtown surrounding the Parliamentary Precinct have been inspirational to other countries' nationals who feel the same grievance with respect to their own countries' coronavirus mandates.

According to Tim Squirrell of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, some key countries to watch include France where authorities have refused to permit a truck convoy entry to the city centre which had planned to go to Paris then move off to Brussels. Paris police made it be known that the convoy's intentions would be hampered by banning it from entering the French capital on the weekend. Other countries are Germany where a lot of unrest has taken place over COVID[-19, and the Netherlands which has "had some of the most violent anti-COVID protests".

In Australia and New Zealand, protests have been underway, and in the United States, the Department of Homeland Security is monitoring a campaign where truckers have planned to disrupt the Super Bowl taking place this Sunday in Los Angeles. A convoy, according to Homeland Security, would begin in California and travel to Washington, D.C., with the express purpose of interrupting the president's state of the union addres on March 1.

Light snow begins to fall as protesters converse in the street on the 15th day of a protest against COVID-19 restrictions that has grown into a broader anti-government protest, in Ottawa, on Friday, Feb. 11, 2022. (Justin Tang/THE CANADIAN PRESS)

According to Mr. Squirrell's estimations, the U.S. convoy is likely to succeed, given political destabilization in the country, its strong trucker culture and its highway system. "The infrastructure is there for some degree of success", even while one question unanswered is whether the convoy would head to D.C. or remain decentralized, with demonstrations spread among state legislatures.

A lot of rhetoric has been appearing on social media around blockading the Super Bowl and music festival Coachella before the convoy turns to wending its way to D.C. Online chats planning the protests in some countries according to Mr. Squirrel, have tens of thousands of subscribers, but he doubts whether that would be an assurance that masses of people will turn out.

The first attempt in the United Kingdom, he pointed out, failed to materialize as planned. "They wanted to go down to London, and they said they're going to block the streets, but they had about five vans and a truck and it's quite hard to block the streets with five vans and a truck. And so they ended up just short of shouting at some people." Which is a far, far cry from what is transpiring in the country that originated the concept of the truck convoy, where streets are blocked and so many trucks and big rigs are parked it's not possible to tow them all away.

Where the atmosphere has been polluted by diesel fuel, impairing people's comfort and possibly future health, along with the confusion, the noise factor, the intimidation and harassment and closures of businesses for fear of violence, along with postponed hospital procedures relating to blocked roads. Where rowdy parties keep people living in the inner core from sleeping, where street hockey games amuse the protesters, and illegal structures keep popping up for kitchen services and even hot tubs.

The American and Canadian flags fly at the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor, Ont., on Feb. 9. GEOFF ROBINS/AFP via Getty Images

At the U.S.-Canada border, blockades have stopped the free flow of traffic, forcing transport trucks to park at the side of the highway, awaiting any opportunity to continue their trips delivering goods cross-border. Cross-border trade has certainly begun to be seriously affected. A quarter of Canada's trade with the U.S. passes across the Ambassador Bridge, closed off since Monday.

No protest with so many people and trucks involved can go on for so long without financial assistance. The initial GoFundMe appeal speedily amassed $10 million in the space of a week, before it was cancelled due to contractual 'bad faith' and will not go out to the truck convoy. The truckers' leadership was quick to go to an alternate fund-raising source which has itself lost no time in raising almost another $10 million. And questions have arisen of where the funding is coming from.

Christian Leuprecht, a professor at the Royal Military College and Queen's University, noted this is anything but typical for a Canadian campaign to raise that much so quickly. "It certainly suggests that the amount of money that's being raised, the pace at which it's being raised, raises serious questions about the source of the money."