Canada: Key 'Freedom Convoy' Protest Organiser Arrested in Ottawa - Media

The wave of protests in Canada began in mid-January, with thousands of truckers and other demonstrators converging on Ottawa to demand the government scrap its COVID-19 vaccine mandates.

Ottawa police have detained one of the key organisers of the Freedom Convoy anti-COVID protests, Chris Barber, according to the CBC.

Barber was seen not far from Parliament Hill in handcuffs with two police officers.

According to the TV channel, the detainee is in the police station, it is expected that he will face criminal charges. Barber and two others, Tamara Lich and Benjamin Dichter, are the main organisers of the demonstrations in a class-action lawsuit that was previously filed in the Superior Court of Ontario over the noise from car horns flooding downtown Ottawa.

According to CTV, in addition to Barber, the police detained several other protesters.

The wave of protests across Canada began in mid-January, with thousands of truckers and other demonstrators converging upon Ottawa to express their strong opposition to vaccine mandates for truckers crossing the US-Canada border. The protest has since evolved into an anti-government demonstration, with various groups uniting in opposition to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

The Trudeau government has condemned the peaceful protests in Canada as "illegal" and an "occupation", and granted itself additional powers to deal with the protests in the national capital and across the country amid widespread criticism in Canada and abroad of significant government overreach.