OTTAWA—After Prime Minister Justin Trudeau lashed out at protesters in Ottawa who have been demonstrating against COVID-19 mandates, suggesting they are racist or hateful, some protesters say they feel greatly offended.
Bal Tiwana, an Indo-Canadian who works in real estate in Calgary, said he drove 37 hours straight with his wife and young son to take part in the protest.
“I was really, really disgusted,” Tiwana told The Epoch Times regarding Trudeau’s characterization of the protests.
“I went back to the hotel and made a brand new sign to show that this isn’t about white supremacy,” he said, while holding a sign that mockingly says, “Do I look like a white supremacist to you?” and another sign that reads, “Freedom is not a minority opinion!”
Alberta business owner Dallas Reamey said the prime minister’s words and those of certain media outlets were “very disheartening.”
“This is a Canadian movement,” he said. “It’s not an anti-vax movement.”
Reamey described the tremendous support he saw for the protest convoy along the way from Calgary—a five-day journey.
“This is the most beautiful thing we’ve ever been a part of,” he said.
Accompanying Reamey was Jaylene Kosinski, who said the protesters are not the “fringe minority” that Trudeau said they are, and that she’s scared of where the pandemic restrictions are heading if people don’t stand up for their rights and freedoms.
“We all have to stand together until we get our freedom back,” she said. “It’s been an emotional journey.”
In a virtual press conference on Jan. 31, Trudeau said that “Canadians were shocked and frankly disgusted by the behaviour displayed by some people protesting in our nation’s capital.”Trudeau characterized the protesters as showing “Nazi symbolism” and “racist imagery” and accused them of desecrating the war memorial and engaging in other unruly and destructive behaviour, despite repeated statements from organizers that they condemned such behaviour.
The protesters on Parliament Hill for the most part have been carrying Canadian flags; no Nazi flags or signs were visible in the ongoing protests. Some images circulating on social media, however, showed Nazi or other hateful symbols on flags. Other videos on social media showed protesters telling those holding hateful signs to leave.
Bethan Nodwell, a coordinator of events at the protest, refuted Trudeau’s claim that those who oppose vaccine mandates are conspiracy theorists.
As far as conspiracy theories are concerned, they’ve turned into “conspiracy truths,” Nodwell said.
“The conspiracy theorists saw the mandates coming, they saw that people would be losing their jobs, and they saw passports and social credit system as an inevitability. And here we are landing at those conspiracy truths,” she said.
Trudeau repeatedly emphasized that almost 90 percent of truckers have gotten vaccinated, a figure Nodwell doubts.
“Most of those people are vaccinated because they didn’t want to lose their jobs,” she said.
‘It’s Not True’
Trudeau said he wouldn’t be meeting with the protesters, saying he wouldn’t go anywhere near demonstrations “that have expressed hateful rhetoric, violence towards fellow citizens, and a disrespect not just of science, but of the front-line health workers.”
“It’s not true anything that the PM said yesterday,” said Sorin Carjan, a truck driver originally from Romania. “It’s not true, look around.”
Tiwana said he’d been in Ottawa at the protests for days and hadn’t seen any expressions of hatred, anger, or racism.
Trudeau said he attended protests in the past when he agreed with the objectives.
“Black Lives Matter is an excellent example of that,” he said.The convoy protests, which converged in Ottawa on Jan. 29, had a strong showing over that weekend, with participants carrying flags and trucks honking their horns as part of the effort to end to COVID-19 mandates and restrictions. By Jan. 31, some truckers had left and the number of protesters had dropped significantly, but those who remained continued to mill around Parliament Hill, dancing to music and listening to rally speeches.
At various times over the past four days, The Epoch Times asked the police about any incidents but was consistently told that nothing untoward had taken place.
“They’re trying to spin lies, trying to squash the movement because they don’t know how to control it,” Tiwana said about the government’s response.
“They’re trying to get Canadian people to turn on themselves.”
Truckers and supporters of the “Freedom Convoy” continued demonstrating on Feb. 1, the fourth day of the protest. Some said they plan on staying in Ottawa until at least the coming weekend.
But many said they will stay until all vaccination mandates are lifted.“Until [Trudeau] does what’s right, we’re staying here,” Reamey said.
Limin Zhou contributed to this report.
