At the Nov 5 public hearing, a retired downtown resident shared her experience of the occupation.
“The country seems to have forgotten or were unaware that downtown Ottawa contains more than just the parliament buildings and a canal of students, families, elderly folks, and young children actually live, work. and go to school on these streets. The truckers and their supporters pulled in and basically set up camp and behaved as if they owned our streets, they were aggressive towards masked residents and refused to mask themselves in shops.
I had to venture out of my apartment to buy food at the grocery on Metcalfe and Lisgar street, I don’t have a car so I walk there. As I approached Metcalfe, the fumes were choking from the huge trucks and the blaring horns were deafening. There were no police in sight. A group of truckers entered the grocery store and loudly proceeded to make their way through the store, a shopper approached them and asked them to mask, they proceeded to loudly harass her. I went to get the store manager who told me he could not do anything, the police were not responding to any of his calls.”
You can view the full testimony here.
