Forget about a blockade, justice minister tells Dugald protesters

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This article was published 17/02/2023 (933 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Justice Minister Kelvin Goertzen has issued a warning that blockades will not be tolerated as the so-called freedom convoy reunion conducts a weekend protest in Dugald.

“We cannot accept blockades in cities. We cannot see disruptions of people’s lives in that way,” Goertzen said Friday.

The “World Unity Conference,” which has set up on land just south of Dugald, has been named “Camp Hope” and has been organized as a reunion for the convoy that blocked Broadway and Memorial Boulevard in front of the Manitoba legislature for three weeks in February 2022. That protest, complete with air horns and flags critical of the federal government’s COVID-19 mandates, was allowed by police. This time around, the Winnipeg Police Service says it will not be allowed to hunker down in the city.

“If they come in and do a ‘slow roll’ and go back to (Camp Hope), we can manage that,” Insp. Gord Spado said last month. “If they… stop and occupy and things like that, we’re not going to give them a foothold this time.”

While the group hasn’t said it will hold events in Winnipeg, officials are taking no chances. Barricades have been placed on the grounds of the legislature and Memorial Boulevard and “no parking” signs have been erected in the area.

Last year, Goertzen commended Manitoba law enforcement and called Manitoba “one of the only jurisdictions that hasn’t had to rely on arrests or seeing violence.”

However, this year is different.

“People have the right to protest, whatever it is that they’re protesting, and we see protests at the Manitoba legislature all the time for a variety of different reasons,” he said. “That’s part of a democratic society. People have the right to protest, but that right doesn’t extend to disrupting the lives of others through blockades and other things that disrupt their lives.”

On Friday, the Public Order Emergency Commission ruled the 2022 freedom convoy that blockaded downtown Ottawa and a handful of border crossings, including at Emerson, Man., warranted the use of the Emergencies Act by the federal government.

“Our position to the federal government, it remains, that in Manitoba, we did not need the powers of the Emergency Act, and that we thought, from the Manitoba context, it would be considered overreach,” Goertzen said Friday.

malak.Abas@freepress.mb.ca