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‘Someone planted a gun’: In Canada, a village is raided, scary blames the police


COUTTS, Alberta – The village’s only restaurant that offers smiles and two pamphlets, one alleges a children’s Covid-19 vaccine, the other says the UN’s mission includes create a “microchip society” to “monitor and control”.

There is so much pervasiveness here that the belief that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is a dictator is growing to the point where even a top official in the village admits that she “may have” a flag that tells the government. Where is the Canadian leader supposed to go – rudely.

And many residents of the village, Coutts, Alberta, think the biggest event happened here in recent memory – when police raided a local home in February and revealed a terrifying event. weapon cache – was a police hoax intended to silence an anti-government protest.

“It could have been a conspiracy,” said Bill Emerson, who lived across the street from the house the police raided. The weapons gave the government a reason to suspend civil liberties, he said. “Maybe someone planted a gun.”

The police raid took place during Canada time Freedom Convoystarted as a movement of truckers to challenge the government’s mandate on vaccinations but has since spread to include a series of anti-government complaints.

Seven months after police made a dramatic arms seizure in Coutts, and after protesters who had been digging the village for 17 days were reluctant to be dragged away in their trucks and tractors, the Self-Convoy do still be here – in spirit and philosophy.

The stark contrast between the mainstream narrative of what happened – the police disarming a small group of protesters with violent intentions – and the story fueled by conspiracy – a political effort government to bring down the protesters – reflecting the growing polarization of Canadian society and deepening. – Right ideology and misinformation.

Both trends were supercharged by the coronavirus, but neither trend waned as the pandemic subsided.

The Freedom Motor Movement – which aimed to replace the federal government with a ruling committee made up of protesters, and which Mr. Trudeau dismissed because “The fringe minority” with “unacceptable views” – hardly a part. Months later, it has the support of a quarter of Canadians, according to to a recent polland some of its beliefs have gone into mainstream politics.

“We’ve passed one Rubicon round and won’t be back,” said Evan Balgord, executive director of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network. “Canada has not faced something like this, especially in a long time. How do we deal with a movement that wants to destroy democracy? “

Coutts is a small frontier village 185 miles southeast of Calgary, cut into fields of wheat, barley, and canola that glow fluorescent yellow in the summer.

Simple wooden houses, a handful of businesses and a large Mormon temple dot its dozens of streets.

Before last winter, the village’s lackluster popularity was a mention of President Obama Among its baseball fields, the nose is straight up international borders. “If you hit a home run,” he said, “there’s a good chance the ball will land in Sweetgrass, Montana.”

Then, on a cold day last winter, hundreds of tractors and trucks sped down the highway to the edge of the village and stopped, blocking all the lanes leading to the normally crowded border crossing. casting.

They are a small group of the Freedom Convoy, a lively protest occupied the capital of the countryOttawa, for three weeks.

Many of the movement’s organizers hail from Alberta, home of Canada’s oil patch and Conservative populism, where themes of freedom and distrust of government are made very clear. .

In Coutts, the village’s only bar, closed by the pandemic, has reopened to serve as their headquarters.

Meanwhile, the scores of the provincial police, members of the Royal Canadian Mount Police, are always on track. In 17 days, 552 officers were assigned to the village of just 224 people, according to the mayor.

On the fourteenth night of the protest, when a local church was holding a Sunday service in a bar, the police arrived fully armed, armed with automatic weapons, and arrested two men inside. crowd.

That evening, they executed a search warrant for a home where a local woman was hosting several protesters.

Within hours, the police arrested 14 people. Most were charged with mischief over C$5,000, or about $3,700, and possession of a weapon for a dangerous purpose. But the four men face a much more serious charge – conspiracy to commit murder, which could potentially carry a life sentence.

Undercover officers witnessed the setting up of what they believe to be gun delivery to the Coutts, the search warrant revealed. Police said the group was preparing for an armed battle with police. “It can be lethal to citizens, protesters and officers,” said Royal Canadian Mounted Police Deputy Commissioner Curtis Zablocki.

One weapon cache photo They seized included rifles, handguns, high-capacity magazines, ammunition and bulletproof vests.

All four men charged with attempted murder are middle-aged workers from Southern Alberta.

The day before the police raid, one of them, Jerry Morin, shot a video on Facebook, urging his friends to come to Coutts to help “stay the line”.

Mr Morin, 40, who installs and repairs electrical lines, said: “There is no excuse. “This is war.”

His sister, Tina Shipley, said he took part in anti-mask protests in the early days of the pandemic with his usual wife, who faces lesser charges related to the affair. protest.

“They see this as a violation of their liberties and rights, adding that they sincerely believe the pandemic is a government hoax,” Ms. Shipley said.

“He thinks he’s fighting for your rights,” she said.

After the arrest, it took less than a day for new conspiracy theories to begin to spread, according to weary mayor Jim Willett of Coutts.

Some believe that the radical protesters themselves are caused by the police, or the government. “Maybe they were paid to come and cause problems,” said Beth McCoy, a retired customs broker who sat in her yard this summer, sorting through Valentines for children are sent to the protesters. “Are they really in prison?”

Mr Willett, 74, who knows only four villagers who have been vaccinated against Covid-19, said: “There is an absolutely right belief that the police and the government are not to be trusted.

Particular dislike of the federal Liberal Party and the Trudeau family has been ingrained in Alberta’s political culture since the 1980s, when Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau – Justin Trudeau’s father – launched an energy program short-term country. shared the region’s oil profits with the rest of Canada.

“Trudeau hates us,” said Lori Rolfe, Coutts’ chief administrative officer.

But the distrust and conspiracy theories that have taken root in Coutts reflect the broader polarization of Canadian society.

Frank Graves, president of polling firm Ekos Research Associates, said that 25% of Canadians who support the Free Convoy tend to be rural men who don’t have a college degree and are identified. defined as working class or poor. They consume a lot of misinformation and disagree with the Trudeau government’s stance on climate change, immigration and reconciliation with Indigenous peoples, his company’s opinion polls show.

And they found a champion in the new leader of the Conservative Party, Pierre Poilievre, who commit to make Canadians “the freest people on earth,” echoing the language of the protests.

The men accused of conspiracy to commit murder are still in prison. Their trial is set for next June.

Many Freedom Convoy supporters see them as fallen.

Some say they believe no guns were found in Coutts, that police used a photograph from another raid to stir public opinion against protesters and to justify the steps Mr. Trudeau took to end the protest.

The day of the raid, his government passed a sweeping emergency billgranted police broad powers to arrest protesters, and directed banks to freeze accounts linked to the convoy.

Federal Minister of Public Safety Marco Mendicino pointed to Coutts as part of his justification.

“We are talking about a group that is organized, agile, knowledgeable and driven by a radical ideology, where the right thing can be done,” he told reporters.

Sandra Burrows, another protest supporter from Coutts, said: “It is to manipulate the public into believing this. “It ended a peaceful protest, by arming.”

Marco Van Huigenbos, the main leader of the Coutts protest, believes that at least two of the four men are not guilty, he is subsidizing their family 10,000 Canadian dollars a month. This amount is from remaining funds raised in Coutts – both from GoFundMe and from a donation box.

“They are using these guys to send messages,” said Huigenbos, a town councilor and business owner from nearby Fort Macleod. recently charged with mischief over $5,000 Canadian. “There’s political influence here.”

Vjosa Isai in Toronto and Taylor Lambert in Calgary contributed reporting.





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