Canada Day in Ottawa is a familiar scene to CTV National News Senior Political Correspondent Glenn McGregor.
Born in Ottawa, McGregor has been to many Canada Day celebrations in the city throughout his life.
But this year, the air had a different feel, and not just because it was the first in-person Canada Day event since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The police presence was heavier than normal. Not far from the main celebrations, protesters marched through the streets chanting “freedom” and calling for an end to public health restrictions, a holdover from the Freedom Convoy demonstrations that paralyzed the city earlier this year and inspired similar movements across the country and around the world.
“This was a complex story to cover because there were so many issues – mainly the role of the government in implementing public health measures, the right to protest, weighed against the impact on the community and the economy, and the ability of the police and government to respond,” said McGregor.
His thoughts on Canada Day and the convoy protests that preceded it will be aired Monday night on a CTV News special, THE CONVOY: A Reporter’s Notebook by Glenn McGregor.
McGregor’s report harkens back to the beginning of the Freedom Convoy protests in Ottawa in late January, a movement that appears to have started as opposition to the federal government’s vaccine mandate for cross-border truckers but turned into a protest against all COVID restrictions -19.
Moving from the truck-filled streets of downtown Ottawa, McGregor traces the efforts to quell the protests, from the federal government’s use of the Emergency Act for the first time in the country’s history to the police crackdown that followed.
“It was also difficult to cover logistically because it was happening in several places at the same time, in the bitter cold,” he said. “The hostility many of the protesters felt toward what they called the mainstream media also made reporting more difficult.”
Now that the convoy has disappeared and some of its main organizers are facing criminal charges, the question McGregor ponders is how significant a political force the movement will be in the future.
“We don’t know if the movement will die out once the recent COVID mandates are eventually lifted, or if it will continue as the anti-government protest it mushroomed into,” McGregor said.
“The crowds that turned out on Canada Day suggest that this will continue for a while.”
You can watch the special Monday at 10:30 PM ET, immediately following each CTV National News broadcast on the CTV News Channel. It will also begin streaming on CRAVE that evening.
With files from CTV News
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