Trucker protests in Canada, what's going on?

The carriers decided to begin demonstrating in this way against the new regulations that, since January 15, toughen the requirements against Covid to cross the border with the United States and that, above all, oblige to be vaccinated against the coronavirus and to accredit the complete vaccination schedule as an essential requirement to be able to change country.

Since they began, the protests have not stopped in Canada, a country that has almost 9,000 kilometers of border in common with the United States, to the point that last Sunday, February 6, after eleven uninterrupted days of mobilizations and With 5,000 protesters blocking downtown Ottawa, the city's mayor, Jim Watson, declared a state of emergency after admitting that they were "losing the battle" and that "the situation is out of control."

Authorities have deprived truckers of fuel and are focused on cutting off the massive funding that the Freedom Ride is receiving, especially so far through the GoFundMe crowdfunding site.

Watson asked the federal government to send 1,800 police officers to Ottawa to deal with the "siege" of the truckers and many others who have joined them, the vast majority deniers of the pandemic. Canada does not know how to deal with a situation that has gotten out of hand from its rulers from the beginning and that is no longer focused only on Ottawa, but also on other large cities such as Toronto and Quebec.

Following the protests that began in Canada, truckers have followed suit elsewhere, such as in the Netherlands on January 30 or a day later in Australia, where a caravan formed and ended in a multi-day rally in front of to the Parliament of Canberra. There were also protests against the measures against covid in Wellington, the capital of neighboring New Zealand, one of the corners of the Earth where the pandemic has caused less damage.

But the protests have also activated the fake news of profiles on social networks and denial media, to which it seems that the images of caravans of truckers protesting in all those countries have not been enough. That is why images that do not correspond to protests are being used to ensure that such a country has joined the protests.

This is the case of Italy, where a Twitter user with 9,500 followers shared a video of the Raduno Truck Carmagnola 2021, a meeting of trucks that was part of the cultural programming of the San Michele, in Carmagnola, a town in the Turin region. In his tweet he claimed that they were current images of protests in Italy.

An Argentine digital medium also assured that the Brazilian truckers had started protests similar to that of the Canadian truckers, with the only proof of images that, later, the Associaçâo Nacional de Transporte do Brasil confirmed that they corresponded to Brazilian trucker protests but from 2015.

The United States Department of Homeland Security has put the country's police on alert about plans, still confused but worrying, to extend the Canadian anti-vaccine protest here. The project of this other Freedom Convoy, scheduled for the next few days or weeks and encouraged by Donald Trump, has grown through social networks. With tens of thousands of followers, its Facebook and Telegram groups are disseminating organizational and logistical guidelines for a grand march from California to Washington DC. The move unsettles the White House, primarily because of the damage the Canadian convoy is inflicting on the auto industry.

The promoters of the US version of the anti-vaccine caravan, connected to far-right movements and radical Republicans, have different dates and objectives. Although everyone points to the capital as a goal, some plan to start this weekend with a boycott of the sacred American football final, the Super Bowl, which takes place on Sunday in Los Angeles. There is also talk in the convoy forums of blowing up President Joe Biden's State of the Union address on March 1.

The latest country in which protests have started against anticovid measures is France. On Wednesday, February 9, several groups mobilized in different parts of the country, with the intention of converging on Saturday, February 12, in Paris and then continuing on to Brussels.

Inspired by Canadian truck drivers, the French protesters have also called themselves the Convoy for Freedom, but in this case they are people who move with their private cars, and do not have the support of the associations of carriers, which in France are not subject to the same restrictions as in Canada, where they are required to be vaccinated against covid to enter the country.