Uncivil society: Ottawa's vaccine protest could be a sign of things to come

Call it a protest. An occupation. A siege.

Whatever your word of choice, downtown Ottawa continues to be the site of a huge demonstration. Its participants, those in the trucks and in the streets, are issuing conflicting demands, ranging from calls for the Trudeau government to capitulate on the vaccine mandate for cross-border truckers to demands for an end to all pandemic restrictions everywhere in the country — whether they're a federal responsibility or not.

"I haven't taken any vaccination or any medicine, not even a Tylenol, not even a cough syrup, not even aspirin, not even a Pepto-Bismol, nothing," said Maninder Singh, a truck driver at the protest who told CBC he's now unemployed.

"And today, someone is telling me to take something. That's a violation of my beliefs."

For city residents who've endured a full week of this now — the blocked roads, the constant cacophony of airhorns day and night, the verbal abuse from some people who refuse to leave — one of the biggest concerns is how authorities let it come to this state.

"This is an unprecedented and a new set of circumstances," Ottawa Police Chief Peter Sloly told a Friday news conference called to announce a new "surge and contain" strategy. Police say they're putting more officers on the street with strict orders to enforce a wider exclusion zone around Parliament Hill and to prevent crime.

Sloly described the protest as a well-funded, well-organized movement that includes multiple command posts — in Ottawa, across the country and even overseas — that finally compelled his force to adjust, one week after the protest started.

"We are literally learning lessons every day," he said.

One of those lessons-learned is that this protest is so big and so scary, police aren't even confident it could be controlled if they tried to break it up.

University of Ottawa criminology professor Michael Kempa is an expert on policing techniques. He joined CBC's The House this weekend for a panel discussion on how the Ottawa protest — now spreading to other cities — will shape both future demonstrations and how authorities respond to them.

"It came to this, largely, because this is the way that police agencies have been moving for the last 10 years," he said. "A strategy of containment and hoping the protests fizzle out enough that they can then be dealt with. So this has been very textbook."

But it didn't work.

"The problem is we've spent six days hiding, trying to pretend this isn't a confrontation and they're so far behind that we're going into another weekend where things will step up quite a bit," said Jeffrey Monaghan of Carleton University's Institute of Criminology and Criminal Justice.

The protest organizers haven't accomplished any of their goals either. Prime Minister Trudeau isn't bending on the vaccine mandates. Those in the crowd — some of whom have been spotted waving symbols of hate, such as swastikas — haven't forced him out of office.