The children of the 'Freedom Convoy’: Kids camping with protesting parents as police warn them to leave

All around are posters invoking the need to protect the children — a common refrain for anti-vaxxers — alongside signs calling for an end to all public health mandates and for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to be tried for various crimes, and worse.

Police have said roughly one-quarter of the protest vehicles here are occupied by families with children. Demonstrators say their presence underscores how peaceful their movement is.

But government officials and police say an illegal “siege” with car fumes and combustible fuel and that contains extremist elements is no place for kids — and vastly complicates their response to the crisis.

Police are prioritizing the “safest way to have children removed from the area prior to any sort of police action,” interim police chief Steve Bell said Thursday. He called the demonstrations “not a good place for children to be.”

Protesters have vowed to stay. Some have warned — some say threatened — authorities that if they try to intervene, children could get in their way.

The stakes rose this week when Trudeau invoked Canada’s Emergencies Act. The regulations bar bringing minors to unlawful demonstrations.

“The absolute safest way for this to end is for everyone to return to your communities,” Trudeau said last week. “It’s time to go home — especially if you have kids with you.”

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As police officers handed out fliers this week warning protesters to disperse or face arrest, the Children’s Aid Society of Ottawa urged parents to make “alternate arrangements” in case they were “unable to care for their children following potential police action.”

None of this fazed Dany Beauregard, a 34-year-old arborist from Quebec who since Jan. 28 has been living in a heated, one-room trailer parked in front of Parliament with his wife, Jessica, a former trucker, their two toddlers and a tiny dog.

Shortly after police distributed their message, Beauregard headed out — to buy artificial grass for a makeshift front lawn. He was doing nothing illegal, he said, and had no reason to leave.

“It’s like camping, but in winter,” Beauregard said Tuesday. “I know I’m safe here. We are all like a big village.”

The challenges and consequences of how Canada handles these protests and the children within them are immense.

The urban blockade set up by civilians — some with far-right and extremist ties — encompasses large swaths of the downtown core. No one wants to be responsible for images of police violence and children, which could galvanize support for protesters and radical movements.

“It is a dangerous and volatile environment that they are in,” said Barbara Perry, a criminology professor at Ontario Tech University. “And it’s exploitative [by the convoy] of the kids to prey on the public’s sympathy.”

Since the convoy rolled up in late January, aided in part by foreign funding and fringe organizers who aren’t truckers, it has become a historic test of Canada’s democratic institutions. With copycats spreading from New Zealand to Europe — fueled by pandemic frustrations and anti-vaccine movements, in which children play a central symbolic role — what happens in Canada could also shape the broader fate of these protests.

“One cannot underestimate how the presence of children — more than the fear some protesters might be armed — has paralyzed any tactical police response” in Ottawa, Canadian journalist Glen McGregor tweeted. “I don’t know how they get the kids out without scalding images of their removal.”

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Police, accused of taking too lax an approach to a protest that authorities have said is illegal, have cited the presence of children — and fears for their safety — as one reason they’ve been unable to resolve the crisis.

“We see children at protests all the time,” said Christian Leuprecht, a professor of political studies at the Royal Military College of Canada. “We don’t see children and youth at occupations, necessarily.”

Children have been most visible in Ottawa during the last three weekends, when thousands of protest supporters descended for a block party-like atmosphere — and, for many Ottawans, incessant noise, intimidation and harassment.

Hotels have filled with families. There’s a heated play tent for kids and near-constant music for dancing. Families opposed to face masks and vaccines mingle freely. Children draw supportive signs for truckers, who hang them in their windows.

“If you are heading up to Ottawa … bring bouncy castles or bubble soccer bumpers, consider contributing to the fun!” a Facebook page associated with Freedom Convoy 2022, one of the organizing bodies, posted Thursday, as police warned action to clear the protests was “imminent.”

When the weekend protesters go home on Sundays, a more hardcore group of several hundred vehicles and demonstrators remains.

Authorities worry that the vehicle fumes, loud horns, extreme cold and highly combustible jerrycans of fuel pose serious dangers. The Children’s Aid Society of Ottawa received “ongoing reports … regarding child welfare concerns,” police said last week.

A police spokesperson declined to say whether they were investigating related cases of child neglect. The Children’s Aid Society of Ottawa did not reply to a request for comment.

Several local hospitals in Ottawa contacted by The Washington Post said they had not received cases of children sick from prolonged exposure to cold or fumes over the last several weeks.

Some families come just for a few hours — Emergencies Act or no. On Wednesday, several parents walking with their kids along the main blockaded thoroughfare told The Post they came for the day to show their children this history unfolding. They declined to give their names.

Convoy organizers have warned police against intervening.

“We have countless vulnerable people in our crowd, including children, the elderly, and the disabled, who cannot be met with force by a genuine liberal democracy,” Tamara Lich, a key convoy organizer, said at a news conference Monday. She vowed to “hold the line.”

For Leuprecht, from the Royal Military College, that amounts to using children as human shields.

“It is clearly an effort to instrumentalize children for the purposes of political protest and to hamper police enforcement of the occupation,” he said. He likened it to antivaccine protests in Germany, where kids were put on the front lines. “It’s not by accident that so many people did bring their children.”

Stephanie Carvin, an associate professor of international relations at Carleton University in Ottawa, said she had “never seen anything like” the level of children at these protests. But she believes the police have options.

“There are so many other things” police can do, such as focusing on people providing protesters food, showers and other resources, she said. “I don’t think it’s you go in regardless, or you can’t do anything because there are children there.”

Beauregard said Tuesday that his kids are safe, and he is not making plans to evacuate them.

Beauregard is not vaccinated against the coronavirus and his children, aged 3 and 11 months, have not had childhood immunizations. Beauregard said they’re here “to end the mandates” around public health.

Inside their RV, they have a big bed, a bunk bed, a table, kitchenette and toilet. They shower and do laundry at an Airbnb his in-laws rented nearby. Food and propane come via donations. They’ve written the address “3 Wellington Street” alongside their family name on their door.

“If the cops were to come here and say, well you have to leave cause …” Beauregard said, his voice trailing off. He continued, cutting off the train of thought.

“Well, I don’t know why they want us to leave, as we can provide everything our children need,” he said.