- The Canadian Prime Minister dismissed the truckers as a ‘few people shouting and waving swastikas’
- Jerry Eagles, 35, of Valley View, Alberta, said: ‘I would say [Trudeau] is so out of touch with the Canadian people. He doesn’t deserve to be our leader’
- The two-week protest at the Coutts-Sweet Grass border crossing has slowed commercial traffic at Alberta’s busiest port of entry to a trickle
Furious Freedom Convoy protesters have said ‘Justin Trudeau must go’ and vowed to stay put until he quits after the Canadian Prime Minister dismissed the truckers as a ‘few people shouting and waving swastikas’.
The Canadian premier, 50, made the comments during a debate in the House of Commons on Monday – sparking outrage among opposition Conservatives and prompting a member of his own Liberal party to resign.
Now protesters blockading the border in Coutts, Alberta, have told DailyMail.com Trudeau’s description of them is ‘preposterous’ and vowed to stay put until the former teacher resigns and mask and vaccine mandates are lifted.
Jerry Eagles, 35, of Valley View, Alberta, said: ‘I would say [Trudeau] is so out of touch with the Canadian people. He doesn’t deserve to be our leader.
‘Because to call us Nazis – there are so many kids here, people are laughing, so much generosity. To even think of saying such a thing is preposterous.
‘He’s not a leader. He was brought in by money and privilege and now he needs to go, quite frankly.’
Freedom Convoy protesters blocking the Alberta border have vowed to stay put until Justin Trudeau quits. The Canadian Prime Minister dismissed the truckers as a ‘few people shouting and waving swastikas’
Marcy, 38, of Stettler, Alberta, added: ‘He [Trudeau] is a liar and he’s not qualified to run a Dairy Queen’
At the Milk Valley protest, which sees a rotating cast of up to 1,000 people a day come and go, there was a festive atmosphere with truckers and supporters chatting amiably and sharing food donated by well-wishers
On Tuesday, protesters at a border blockade in Coutts, Alberta, told DailyMail.com Trudeau’s description of them is ‘preposterous’ and vowed to stay put until the former teacher resigns and mask and vaccine mandates are lifted
The two-week protest at the Coutts-Sweet Grass border crossing has slowed commercial traffic at Alberta’s busiest port of entry to a trickle
Electrical business owner Eagles added: ‘I’m going to dig in more and more. What he said, I shouldn’t say this because he might keep saying it or he might not, he might stop saying it – it’s fuel for the fire, it’s waking Canadians up to say, ”OK, this is not OK.”’
Marcy, 38, of Stettler, Alberta, added: ‘He [Trudeau] is a liar and he’s not qualified to run a Dairy Queen.
‘What qualifications does he have? He got where he is with money. I want to see him gone and nothing less.’ Trudeau is the son of former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.
The mom-of-four added: ‘We have no future with him in charge. I’m here for my kids – I want them to grow up how I did, with no restrictions.
‘I’m a law abider, I’ve never been in trouble. I don’t do things like this and I feel silly being here but I felt like I had to be.’
The two-week-old protest at the Coutts-Sweet Grass border crossing linking the Canadian Prairie States to Montana has slowed commercial traffic at Alberta’s busiest port of entry to a trickle.
Up to 1,200 trucks cross the border on a normal day – bringing goods worth up to $4.8billion with them.
But with between 50 and 300 truckers at any given time blockading the crossing in the 245-person village of Coutts and a second 400-strong protest 11 miles away in Milk Valley, the protest is crippling the local economy.
When DailyMail.com visited this week, Alton Duty Free was deserted – despite displaying signs supporting the truck protest – while no one but truckers could be seen in the rest of the village.
The only exception was the nearby Smuggler’s Saloon which was being used by the protesters as a dining room.
There, protest boss Peter Van Liere was holding court and told DailyMail.com that he is prepared to stay put for as long as it takes to see the mandates lifted.
He said: ‘We want to see all the mandates lifted and a change of government. For as long as it takes, we’re not moving.
‘Everybody’s in the same boat. We’ve all got families at home that we have not seen since this started.
‘We’ve all got jobs that are on the line, businesses we’ve had to shut down. Everybody is sacrificing for this and we are humans. We are fellow Canadians.’
Up to 1,200 trucks cross the border on a normal day – bringing goods worth up to $4.8billion with them.
DailyMail.com met Lethbridge, Alberta, high school student Olivia Skarra, 15, who was there with her younger brother Daniel, 10. She said she had come because of the negative effects of the mask mandates on school-age children and said she wants to be able to eat in a restaurant without vaccine checks.
Unlike Trudeau’s depiction of protestors waving swastikas, DailyMail.com saw families with young children taking part in the protests at the Alberta/Montana border.
‘I’m completely against the mandates and I had to come because I couldn’t look my kids in the eye if I didn’t,’ said one protestor
Van Liere told DailyMail.com that most of the truckers had voted for Conservative Alberta premier Jason Kenney, 53 – who on Tuesday evening announced he will begin lifting Covid restrictions in the state.
But that is not enough for Van Liere who described him as ‘a little dictator’. He said: ‘The reality is between Jason Kenney and Trudeau, they never delivered on the policies people voted them in for.
‘Most of the people here voted Kenny into office based on the policies he campaigned on and he’s never put them into place. He’s become a little dictator.
‘My wife grew up under communism and we saw pretty quickly we were heading into communism and we don’t want to go there. We still have the resources to do that.
‘The existing government in power must go and we’re not going to leave until that changes.’
‘My wife grew up under communism,’ said protester Peter Van Liere. ‘We don’t want to go there
At the Milk Valley protest, which sees a rotating cast of up to 1,000 people a day come and go, there was a festive atmosphere with truckers and supporters chatting amiably and sharing food donated by well-wishers.
DailyMail.com met Lethbridge, Alberta, high school student Olivia Skarra, 15, who was there with her younger brother Daniel, 10.
She said she had come because of the negative effects of the mask mandates on school-age children and said she wants to be able to eat in a restaurant without vaccine checks.
Skarra said: ‘I wanted to be here to support them because masks suck. Learning is hard with them and the mandates make it hard for me to just go to a restaurant with friends.
‘I have family in the US and I haven’t been able to see them for two years. Justin Trudeau is the Prime Minister, not my parents – he can’t tell me what to do.’
Scott Todd, of Wildwood, Alberta, told DailyMail.com that he was incensed by Trudeau’s comments and described him as ‘totally out of touch’.
Todd, who also attended protests in Edmonton over the weekend, added: ‘I’m completely against the mandates and I had to come because I couldn’t look my kids in the eye if I didn’t.’
Eagles, who arrived at the protest on Thursday after seeing news reports, told DailyMail.com he planned to stay until the mandates are lifted and he is allowed to go skiing with his unvaccinated daughter again.
Asked what Trudeau could announce that would end the protest, he said: ‘To end the mandates, to end the medical segregation and to start listening to the people and say, OK, the people have spoken, we’re done restricting people, we’re done with this program.Protests are ongoing at several points on the Canadian border.
The protesters, who are in support of the Truckers Freedom Convoy, have blocked traffic in the Canada bound lanes from the bridge since February 7. Approximately $323 million worth of goods cross the Windsor-Detroit border each day at the Ambassador Bridge making it North Americas busiest international border crossing
‘Making it so that you can’t go into restaurants – I was with my daughter, tried to take her skiing and they wouldn’t let me go.
‘The biggest thing is that people are losing their jobs over this, that’s where we need to draw a line.
‘People should not be losing their jobs over this. That’s really what we’re asking for. Stop it now. It’s got to be done.’
The Coutts protest is an offshoot of the trucker protests that have galvanized Canada. The original convoy set off from Prince Rupert on the Pacific Coast of British Columbia on January 22 which took a week to reach Ottawa.
Protests are still ongoing in the nation’s capital city.
James Doull, who is organizing truckers parked along Wellington Street where many of the parliamentary and government buildings are located, told DailyMail.com that Trudeau’s comments, calling the protesters racists and ‘swastika-wavers’ have enraged the protesters.
‘This is another of Trudeau’s lies where is attempting to demonize us truckers to the Canadian people. He’s trying to make us look like bad people, criminals and racists to our fellow Canadians and the world, so he won’t have to address the real issue. Freedom from Covid mandates.’
Doull scoffed at the Prime Minister’s accusation that truckers have stolen food from the homeless, ‘We have plenty of food, in fact we have fed and passed out clothing to several of them. You can walk up street and find truckers cooking out in the opening offering free food to not only fellow truckers but to anyone who wants it.’