As vaccine protests gum up Ottawa, Canada wonders, ‘How did this happen?’

Canada is accustomed to global accolades. But usually they’re from the international left: for its welcome of refugees, for example, or its state-funded health care system.

But now that a “Freedom Convoy” has occupied the capital, with hundreds of trucks occupying downtown and threatening not to leave until vaccine mandates are ended, Canada has found itself feted by the international right – and caught off guard.

The convoy, which arrived in Ottawa on Jan. 28, is composed, on the face of it, of people angry about vaccine mandates for cross-border trucking – the latest iteration in a series of demonstrations that started against masks, then lockdowns, then vaccines, and now vaccine policy. But it has attracted disparate groups – including far-right extremists and anti-democratic forces, experts say – that were once siloed around their own interests and have now coalesced around pandemic frustration.

Ottawa initially treated it as just another protest. It set up no bollards into the capital and for more than a week took a nonconfrontational approach, tolerating the protests even after some demonstrators desecrated national monuments, wielded swastikas and Confederate flags, destroyed property, and threatened that they will not leave until the democratically elected government is overthrown – veering far beyond their right to assembly.