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Police clear out border blockade as Ottawa seeks deal with convoy to start rolling

Published

3 years ago

8 minute read

Protesters decrying COVID-19 restrictions and the federal government itself were moved from the mouth of a crucial trade route with the United States on Sunday, while confusion reigned over whether a group stationed in Ottawa would reduce their footprint in the capital’s core.

Officers in Windsor, Ont., arrested some two dozen protesters and moved others from the busy Ambassador Bridge spanning the Detroit River, towing five vehicles on Sunday at the site where protesters brought traffic to a halt for nearly a week and barring others from arriving on scene.

Windsor Police Chief Pamela Mizuno said officers are working to reopen roadways, but did not provide a timeline as to when that would occur. The reopening would allow the resumption of hundreds of millions of dollars in daily cross-border trade between Canada and the United States.

But despite the show of force as a line of officers marched on demonstrators who had clogged traffic on the key trade corridor, protesters opposed to COVID-19 restrictions and the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau continued to wave Canadian flags and holler the word “freedom,” with one shouting into a megaphone, “This is a peaceful protest.”

Wearing a Canadian flag around her shoulders, Windsor resident Karen Parrinello said she’s been coming out to demonstrate since Thursday evening and plans to be there for the long haul.

“As long as it takes, I’ll keep coming back. I can’t stay here all day, but I’ll come back here a couple hours a time every day until it’s better, until all the mandates are gone and we have our freedoms back,” she said.

Police in Windsor had negotiated with protesters over the weekend to get them to leave, warning of arrests if they kept bridge traffic at a standstill.

Police said between 25 and 30 people were arrested, many of whom are now facing mischief charges. Mizuno said roughly a dozen vehicles were also seized or towed over the weekend.

“There are steps we need to take in order to open the roadways so that we don’t encounter the same issues,” she said at an afternoon news conference. “Please note we are moving as fast as we can, however, we need to make sure this is a safe and sustainable solution.”

While Windsor Mayor Drew Dilkens expressed his thanks to police, he issued a similar statement to residents of his border city who “respected the process needed to find a resolution.”

“Canada is a nation that believes in the right to freedom of speech and expression, but we are also bound by the rule of law,” Dilkens said in a statement.

Hours later, his counterpart in Ottawa, Mayor Jim Watson, released letters he said were between himself and organizers of the so-called Freedom Convoy about a deal to move some of the 400 vehicles encamped downtown to Parliament Hill and away from residential neighbourhoods.

The correspondence between the two sides suggested convoy organizers agreed to start moving trucks to Wellington Street, which runs in front of Parliament Hill, as well as a host of parliamentary buildings including the Prime Minister’s Office. Those moves, according to the letter, will get underway Monday.

If moves happen before the noon deadline Watson set in his letter, Ottawa’s mayor agreed to meet with the protesters who, on Sunday, turned intersections once busy with traffic into dance floors with loudspeakers and draped themselves in the Canadian flag as they wandered downtown streets amid idling vehicles and semis.

In a note to city councillors, Watson’s office said any movement of trucks wouldn’t be “a long-term solution to the occupation,” but a step to reduce the impact on those who live in the area.

On Sunday night, convoy board president Tamara Lich tweeted that plans to relocate trucks would go ahead on Monday, posting the note hours after denying any deal and vowing to stay downtown until federal vaccine mandates are eliminated.

Residents who have become frustrated with a lack of movement on the situation joined with a local city councillor and provincial politician to block a convoy on its way to join up with demonstrators downtown.

Sean Burgess said the spontaneous counter-protest, organized late Saturday evening, should be a clear signal to federal, provincial and local leaders about ending what even Watson has described as an illegal occupation of the capital’s core.

“Ottawa is not the dull city all of Canada thinks, but it’s certainly not a city of people who get out in the street and become activists, particularly spontaneously,” Burgess said by the line of counter-protesters.

“So when you see people in a neighborhood like Old Ottawa South, who would rather complain, and litigate, so to speak, rather than take direct action on the streets, standing in front of trucks saying to the cops, ‘fine, arrest me,’ then you know that something has gone really too far.”

In a statement, Ontario Premier Doug Ford called anew on protesters in Ottawa to leave, while praising the Windsor police, Ontario Provincial Police and RCMP officers who worked to reopen the Ambassador Bridge.

The developments in Ontario came as protests continued around the country in support of the convoys that set up camp in Ottawa.

Police contended with demonstrations at other border crossings, including in British Columbia where four people were arrested near the border crossing in Surrey. That crossing remained open as of Sunday, the Canada Border Services Agency said.

The ongoing protests spurred Trudeau to meet with senior officials and cabinet members. He said in a late night tweet that his “incident response group” covered further actions the federal government can take.

“We’ll keep working urgently on this – to protect jobs, public safety, our neighbourhoods, and our economy,” the tweet said.

Trudeau was also to invite premiers to a meeting Monday about the protests, according to a government source, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 13, 2022.

– With files from Justin Tang and Marie Woolf in Ottawa, and Brieanna Charlebois in Vancouver.

Noushin Ziafati and Jordan Press, The Canadian Press

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COVID-19

Sen. Rand Paul: ‘I am officially re-referring Dr. Fauci to the DOJ’

Published on July 15, 2025

By

Fr0m LifeSiteNews

By Doug Mainwaring

‘Perjury is a crime,’ Sen. Rand Paul declared on X. ‘And Fauci must be held accountable.’

Sen. Rand Paul announced Monday that he is again pressuring the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to launch a criminal probe of Dr. Anthony Fauci after The New York Times revealed his 11th-hour pardon by the Biden administration is likely invalid.

“Today, I will reissue my criminal referral of Anthony Fauci to Trump DOJ!” declared Paul, later adding, “Perjury is a crime. And Fauci must be held accountable.”

By late in the afternoon on Monday, the Kentucky senator had composed a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi citing the times he believed Fauci had lied under oath during congressional hearings and urging the DOJ to finally investigate Fauci.

“In July 2023, I referred Dr. Anthony Fauci to the Department of Justice for lying under oath to Congress. His own emails directly contradicted his sworn testimony,” Paul wrote X.

“NYT reports Fauci was quietly pardoned by an autopen, operated by Biden’s staff. If the President didn’t authorize this pardon personally, then the Department has a duty to investigate and prosecute as it would any ordinary citizen,” Paul said.

“Fauci has been sainted by the extremist Left, but it doesn’t erase his lying before Congress,” Paul said. “I am officially re-referring Dr. Fauci to the DOJ.”

Sen. Paul concluded his letter to Bondi by explaining that his autopen pardon is now seen to be illegitimate:

On January 19, 2025, Dr. Fauci was issued a full and unconditional pardon for any offenses that he may have committed or taken part in since 2014. Dr. Fauci was included among a group of individuals granted unprecedented preemptive pardons on President Joe Biden’s final day in office. However, new information has revealed that these pardons were executed via autopen, with no documented confirmation that the President personally reviewed or approved each individual grant of clemency.

According to reports, White House staff authorized the use of the autopen to issue the clemency documents. This raises serious constitutional and legal concerns about the legitimacy of Dr. Fauci’s Pardon.

President Donald Trump told reporters on Monday that the constant reliance on the autopen by the Biden administration is “one of the biggest scandals that we’ve had in 50 to 100 years.”

“I guarantee (Biden) knew nothing about what he was signing,” Trump asserted.

Fauci’s mendacious relationship with Congress 

The senator from the Bluegrass State and Dr. Fauci have long had a combative relationship.

In 2021, Sen. Paul alleged that Fauci, who then served as director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) and as medical adviser to former President Joe Biden, “lied to Congress” when he claimed that the National Institutes of Health (NIH), of which the NIAID is a part, was not funding and had never funded “gain-of-function” research in Wuhan, China.

Then in 2023, Paul again filed a criminal referral to the DOJ against the White House COVID czar for lying to Congress about his role in subsidizing controversial gain-of-function (GOF) research that was suspected of contributing to the COVID outbreak.

“We have him dead to rights, the problem is this: we have Merrick Garland who I think is a pure rank partisan,” Paul said at the time. “I don’t think he’ll ever be prosecuted. We also have a Democrat Party that is happy to have paid him more than the president, more than any president makes and he actually got a million dollars from a private foundation while he was still a public servant. Everything about this is rotten to the core and if we don’t bring him to justice we’ll never get the control we need on this type of research to try and prevent it from happening again.”

Paul has said multiple times that Dr. Fauci should “go to prison” for lying to Congress.

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Business

Conservatives demand probe into Liberal vaccine injury program’s $50m mismanagement

Published on July 15, 2025

By

From LifeSiteNews

By Clare Marie Merkowsky

The Liberals’ Vaccine Injury Support Program is accused of mismanaging a $50-million contract with Oxaro Inc. and failing to resolve claims for thousands of vaccine-injured Canadians.

Conservatives are calling for an official investigation into the Liberal-run vaccine injury program, which has cost Canadians millions but has little to show for it.

On July 14th, four Conservative Members of Parliament (MPs) signed a letter demanding answers after an explosive Global News report found the Liberals’ Vaccine Injury Support Program (VISP) misallocated taxpayer funds and disregarded many vaccine-injured Canadians.

“The federal government awarded a $50 million taxpayer-funded contract to Oxaro Inc. (formerly Raymond Chabot Grant Thornton Consulting Inc.). The purpose of this contract was to administer the VISP,” the letter wrote.

“However, there was no clear indication that Oxaro had credible experience in healthcare or in the administration of health-related claims raising valid questions about how and why this firm was selected,” it continued.

Canada’s VISP was launched in December 2020 after the Canadian government gave vaccine makers a shield from liability regarding COVID-19 jab-related injuries.

However, mismanagement within the program has led to many injured Canadians still waiting to receive compensation, while government contractors grow richer.

“Despite the $50 million contract, over 1,700 of the 3,100 claims remain unresolved,” the Conservatives continued. “Families dealing with life-altering injuries have been left waiting years for answers and support they were promised.”

Furthermore, the claims do not represent the total number of Canadians injured by the allegedly “safe and effective” COVID shots, as inside memos have revealed that the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) officials neglected to report all adverse effects from COVID shots and even went as far as telling staff not to report all events.

The PHAC’s downplaying of vaccine injuries is of little surprise to Canadians, as a 2023 secret memo revealed that the federal government purposefully hid adverse effect so as not to alarm Canadians.

The letter further revealed that former VISP employees have revealed that the program lacked professionalism, describing what Conservatives described as “a fraternity house rather than a professional organization responsible for administering health-related claims.”

“Reports of constant workplace drinking, ping pong, and Netflix are a slap in the face to taxpayers and the thousands of Canadians waiting for support for life altering injuries,” the letter continued.

Regardless of this, the Liberal government, under Prime Minister Mark Carney, is considering renewing its contract with Oxaro Inc.

Indeed, this would hardly be the first time that Liberals throw taxpayer dollars at a COVID program that is later exposed as ineffective and mismanaged.

Canada’s infamous ArriveCan app, which was mandated for all travelers in and out of Canada in 2020, has cost Canadians $54 million, despite the Public Health Agency of Canada admitting that they have no evidence that the program saved lives.

Details regarding the app and the government contracts surrounding it have been hidden from Canadians, as Liberals were exposed in 2023 for hiding a RCMP investigation into the app from auditors.

An investigation of the ArriveCan app began in 2022 after the House of Commons voted 173-149 for a full audit of the controversial app.

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