Protest convoy to roll into town today
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 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’ve just had a night of sleep before driving to Wellington Street for 11 a.m., 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 with this newspaper 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, referencing federal legislation seeking to change the environmental review process for energy projects and ban oil tankers from British Columbia’s north coast.
The latest downturn in Alberta’s oilpatch has left workers hurting, Corbeil said, many of whom had moved from across Canada hoping to get ahead by doing this work. Now, they’re struggling, and the federal Liberal government’s 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 shows 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, far-right extremism, and anti-immigrant 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 farright including most extreme anti-Muslim 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.”
But he denied the suggestion that the convoy is a place for white nationalist or racist views.
“We’ve met a lot of radicals, extremists that are trying to take this to a whole other level and we want nothing to do with those people,” he said. “The yellow vests that we do have — and you guys are going to see that in Ottawa — it’s the peaceful, respectful side that want that same message across that we have — the people need to stand together.”
Clearly, audiences along the convoy’s route are connecting with their interpretation of what United We Roll stands for, and things really started to pick up steam when the convoy hit Ontario, Corbeil said.
Six hundred people turned up in Sudbury on Monday, according to Carritt, some having driven hours to meet the convoy outside the city of just over 160,000. Earlier, what was supposed to be a drive through Dryden turned into a one-and-ahalf-hour stop. In Sault Ste. Marie, 15 new trucks were expected to join the convoy. Instead, it left with an extra 40. In Arnprior Monday night, they were expecting to be joined by a contingent of 40 more from the Atlantic Provinces and Quebec.
Some of the country’s most prominent Conservative politicians have also voiced support for United We Roll, from Ontario Premier Doug Ford, to federal Conservative leader Andrew Scheer. A GoFundMe campaign has raised nearly $125,000.
“We’ve got flags on the side of the road, we’ve got things written in snow, we have fireworks,” said Carritt. “What draws people to what we’re doing is that they’ve got something to latch on to. It’s a convoy that’s driven all the way across the country and it gives them hope that somebody can fight and give Canadians a voice, a strong voice, on Parliament Hill.”