United We Roll protest set to reach Parliament Hill

OTTAWA • A Parliament Hill-bound protest convoy known as United We Roll has found such enthusiastic support for its pro-oil and assorted conservative messaging that on Monday its organizers expected trucks to rumble into Arnprior, Ont., more than 24 hours behind schedule.

The convoy’s trucks, drivers and passengers were originally supposed to spend Family Day resting in the small town an hour’s drive west of downtown Ottawa before heading into the capital for a planned protest Tuesday. Now, they’ll just grab a night of sleep before driving to Wellington Street for 11 a.m. ET, where they expect to park 200 vehicles and meet thousands of other people in front of the House of Commons, said head organizer Glen Carritt.

“Everywhere we go there’s people on overpasses, side of the road,” said Carritt, a town councillor in Innisfail, Alta.

He spoke by phone Monday while travelling with the convoy, and loud honks punctuated most of the call. “Everybody wants us to stop.”

“We get out and shake hands. They sign the hood of the truck. Actually the hood’s full. Now we’re signing the doors of the truck. People want to get involved. They want to be heard.”

United We Roll left Red Deer, Alta., on Feb. 14, intent on bringing a message to the federal Liberal government that “Pipelines need to be built. Bill C-69 and 48 are obviously a problem. And (so is), the carbon tax,” said Carritt’s fellow organizer Jason Corbeil, referring to federal legislation seeking to change the environmental review process for energy projects and ban oil tankers from B.C.’s northern coast.

The latest downturn in Albert’s oilpatch has left workers hurting, Corbeil said, many of whom had moved from across Canada hoping to get ahead.

Now, they’re struggling, and the federal carbon tax and pipeline inertia aren’t doing anything to help, he said.

“We’re about to show a country that we can unite and stand together against a government that isn’t listening to us.”

But Corbeil also acknowledged that United We Roll is a big-tent group that welcomes people from different places protesting different causes.

Coverage from the road showing Make Canada Great Again and Yellow Vests messaging alongside the pro-oil signage is stoking fears that United We Roll is bringing Trump-esque populism, farright extremism, and antiimmigrant sentiment to a very public stage — namely the country’s highways and the lawn of its house of government, with amplification by media coverage.

The Canadian Anti-Hate Network pointed out in a news release that United We Roll evolved out of an original convoy organized by the Yellow Vests, a Canadian version of the French “gilets jaunes” anti-fuel-tax movement that “has been entirely co-opted by the far-right including most extreme antiMuslim groups in Canada,” the network said.

While United We Roll has formally split from the Yellow Vests, some of its members have joined the convoy, Corbeil acknowledged. “If I tell them, ‘If you’re a yellow vest, you can’t join,’ is that really getting our message that we want to unite everyone? No.”

Six hundred people turned up in Sudbury on Monday, according to Carritt. Earlier, what was to be a drive through Dryden turned into a 11/2-hour stop. In Sault Ste. Marie, 15 new trucks were expected to join — instead, it left with an extra 40. In Arnprior Monday night, they were expecting to be joined by 40 more from the Atlantic provinces and Quebec.