let's bring in now brian lilly he's a
political columnist for the toronto sun
to talk about what this could mean hey
brian if you're there um alexis mcadams
she had news about this agreement
between the mayor and the truckers tell
us what you know about this uh
communication
well it's quite sad that it fell to the
mayor of ottawa to negotiate not an exit
of the truck convoy which has you know
created a bottleneck in his city and
into residential neighborhoods uh that
it wasn't the prime minister um coming
out you know they're protesting against
him against his mandates he didn't come
out he um he's finally stopped calling
them names but it was the mayor of the
city who did this
as you heard from your reporter there's
been
next to no police or law enforcement
going in and and even enforcing
basic laws
they're not supposed to be getting
diesel fuel in to keep the protest going
but somehow the truckers keep doing that
they delivered a pile of porta-potties
just the other day now i don't know if
you've watched a porta-potty come into a
festival or a concert or anything in the
past but it comes in on a pretty big
truck
and then they need a crane type
operation to lift it off they put about
half a dozen of these right in front of
prime minister justin trudeau's office
right at the door that he would normally
be dropped off at by his rcmp security
detail and he'd go in
that's how little enforcement has been
happening in ottawa so the mayor crafted
this agreement to help get them out of
residential areas that will calm things
down somewhat because ottawa like
washington dc you can be in front of a
grand building that is at the seat of
government you turn a corner and
suddenly you're in somebody's home or in
their backyard that's what's been
happening with these protests
i mean you know how that goes if you
bring in too much force too soon
then the protesters are saying that
their right to protest is being stifled
i mean you know how do you win in a
situation like that
well i can't imagine uh this sort of
protest going on around the capital or
the white house for
going on three weeks now i think this is
day 16 where they've set up can uh
basically uh a truck shanty town where
they have their own law enforcement they
have bouncy castles to entertain the
kids they've got barbecues they've got a
dj dance party going and so i mean and i
hear you but i'm just trying to figure
out like you know
they shouldn't be they shouldn't they're
doing a lot so i'm not sure that they
should be doing all that uh themselves
they can protest but they really cut
down uh you know uh stopped a lot of
production but let's get into some
specifics let's start from the beginning
if we can brian uh you know the mandate
called for the truckers to be fully
vaccinated or they had to face a
two-week quarantine but according to the
canadian government you've got 90 of
truckers who are fully vaccinated so is
there anything behind the headline i
mean below the surface anymore to these
protests
it started
as a protest against that vaccine
mandate which the trudeau government
brought in on january 15th so any truck
driver or any essential worker entering
canada had to be double vax
but a week later on january 22nd the
biden administration brought in a
similar
mandate saying that for anyone crossing
in any essential worker including truck
drivers you had to be double vaxxed so
even if trudeau dropped this tomorrow
these guys couldn't go in this has grown
into a wider um protest movement that's
angered at the government they're fed up
with coveton generally they're fed up
with trudeau specifically and even
though
you know the the problems with
enforcement that i just mentioned do
fall at the the feet of the local police
the images that everyone sees across the
country day after day
uh is this lawlessness this protesting
in front of the parliament buildings
who's the guy in charge there justin
trudeau so this is starting to hurt
trudeau politically and that's why he's
starting to talk about it more trying to
look like he's doing something even if
he's not
so like i said if you've got 90 of the
truckers they're vaccinated so 10 are
the ones who are out there on that
corner in the in the snow right now and
meanwhile as you know canada has one of
the highest vaccination rates in the
world 80
uh they're fully vaccinated so you know
are canadians with
or or against these protesters
generally speaking
well there's sympathy and the poll came
out earlier this week um showed about 45
of people have sympathy towards the
issues that they're raising and and
remember like you said 90 percent of the
canadian population including truck
drivers vaccinated so why did trudeau
start bringing in new mandates he's even
looking at one that would say if you're
driving a truck across provincial
borders you have to be vaccinated i
don't even know how you enforce that
because it's like going across a state
line there's no checkpoint but he keeps
tightening the screws at the same time
as
our top medical officers um all the
scientists are saying you know what we
can start loosening up now we we're at a
good point hospitalizations are down uh
the spread of the omicron is going down
the vaccination rates are higher we've
got therapeutics so trudeau's trying to
tighten the screws as everyone else is
saying let's open back up and that's
part of what is driving and has driven
the anger towards him and
helped grow this protest movement from
one that was just truckers to a whole
bunch of other people
there okay yeah they're saying look
things are going looking good so let's
uh relax some of the restrictions all
right political columnist brian lilly
thank you for joining us take care thank
you hey sean hannity here hey click here
to subscribe to fox news youtube page
and catch our hottest interviews and
most compelling analysis you will not
get it anywhere else