“This must stop,” hammered Mr. Trudeau, at the end of a week of isolation due to Covid, during an urgently organized debate in the House of Commons on Monday evening.

And as since the beginning of the protest, he minimized the movement which he describes as "marginal and noisy minority".

According to him, the country "came through this pandemic united, and a few people shouting and waving swastikas does not define Canadians".

In a letter to Justin Trudeau, Mayor Jim Watson describes an "aggressive and hateful occupation of our neighborhoods."

"People live in fear and are terrified," he said, referring to the "psychological warfare" of horns.

On Tuesday in the streets of Ottawa, truckers, who have been banned since the day before from honking after a court ruling, opted for a new tactic to make themselves heard: rev the engines of their heavy goods vehicles, making the air unbreathable, noted an AFP journalist.

"Dictatorship"

In the streets of the center of this city known to be very calm: signs against Justin Trudeau, Canadian flags, but also fires around which the demonstrators warm up.

On the sidewalks or in the middle of the roads: makeshift shelters, a few tents and around them, supplies of water and food.

"I don't agree with Trudeau's way of acting or with his dictatorship," Martin Desforges, a 46-year-old trucker from northern Quebec, told AFP.

Demonstration against sanitary measures in Ottawa, February 7, 2022 Dave Chan AFP

The latter lives with his wife in his truck parked since the beginning of the movement in front of Parliament and a few meters from the windows of the Prime Minister's office.

He is vaccinated having waited for the "last minute", even if he did not want it, and he opposes "wearing a mask, all distancing measures, the closing of restaurants".

“Getting vaccinated should be a decision between a person and their doctor. The government does not have to intervene,” adds John Hawley-Wight, who joined the protest two days ago.

This movement, called "freedom convoy", was originally intended to protest against the decision to oblige truckers to be vaccinated to cross the border between Canada and the United States.

But it quickly turned into a movement against health measures as a whole and, for some, against the government.

"Political Calculation"

Outside Ottawa, the movement continues to spread: the Ambassador Bridge, one of the busiest border points, which connects Windsor, in Ontario (Canada), to Detroit, in the United States, was Tuesday morning closed due to protesters.

It is a "vital trade artery between Canada and the United States," said Ontario Premier Doug Ford on Twitter, recalling that many health care workers cross it daily.

And for the past few hours, the movement has inspired beyond the borders: in New Zealand, where a convoy of trucks and motorhomes blocked the streets around Parliament in Wellington on Tuesday to protest against health measures and vaccination.

In France, thousands of opponents of the vaccine pass announced on social networks that they wanted to "roll over Paris" on Saturday as part of a citizen action called "freedom convoy".

In Canada, where health measures are in most provinces more restrictive than elsewhere in the world, the movement has received broader popular support than anticipated by the authorities, who have undoubtedly underestimated the determination of the political forces. right-wingers who started the movement, experts said.

According to a latest poll, a third of Canadians support the movement and 44% of those vaccinated understand "the cause and the frustrations conveyed by the protesters".

However, Justin Trudeau "is betting that the movement will run out of steam on its own," said Félix Mathieu, a political scientist from the University of Winnipeg.

"It's a political calculation, the government does not think that this movement represents a real political force in the making," he adds.

On Tuesday, however, a rare dissonant voice was heard in the ranks of the Liberals, the party of Justin Trudeau.

Denouncing more restrictive measures than elsewhere, Quebec Liberal MP Joël Lightbound explained “to feel uneasy with the direction that the government has decided to take in the management of the pandemic”.

He called for a "more unifying" and less "dividing" approach.

© 2022 AFP