^ can I get a short TLDR of the fuss over there?
So, a small amount of people are really upset with the vaccine mandates. Many businesses have made vaccination against COVID mandatory, and have dismissed people who refuse to get vaccinated. So they consider themselves persecuted as they are being pushed out of society. The trigger to this was the announcement by the USA that unvaccinated truckers wouldn't be allowed to cross the US/Canada border. Yes, the US government triggered this.
The hard right, run by sovereign citizens, Nazis, white nationalists, etc, have mobilized that anger. They drove about 400 heavy vehicles into downtown Ottawa to protest. They then parked the vehicles in such a way to form barricades, and refused to leave. And the police service did nothing.
They have many different calls. Some call to end vaccine mandates, some call to get rid of vaccines. There are lots of fringe groups, like neo-Nazis and anti-trans/anti-gay protestors, lots of that shit. One of the key organizers has called for non-whites to go back to their own country, another declared herself the Queen of Canada and demanded Trudeau resign and allow her followers to form government. Some of it is truly insane.
Several other protests occurred around the country, blocking the US/Canada border. Eventually these escalated to blocking the Ambassador Bridge between Detroit and Windsor, the largest and most economically relevant border crossing. So the feds decided that was enough and invoked the Emergencies Act for the first time ever to break up these blockades and evict the protestors from Ottawa.
So they've pulled in something like 1200-1500 cops from around the country. Ottawa Police Services, Toronto, Hamilton, Peel, York, Sudbury, Ontario Provincial Police, and Surete de Quebec (Quebec provincial) + the RCMP (some of whom are actually on horses) are there. They set up a perimeter around the protestors encamped for 22 days downtown, and they are slowly pushing them out and arresting them. Been at it all day and likely all night.