NDP calls for safety zones to protect patients from protests

QUEEN’S PARK — As a violent protest continues to rage in Ottawa, and another convoy heads for Queen’s Park and the hospitals alongside it, Official Opposition NDP Leader Andrea Horwath is calling for Premier Doug Ford to urgently implement Safety Zones, prohibiting protests near hospitals, schools and clinics.

“Patients and health care workers should never have to walk through a gauntlet of hate to get into a hospital or vaccine clinic,” said Horwath. “And there are growing concerns that access to some hospitals could be blocked. Doug Ford has the option right now to prevent that from happening, and I’m asking him to take it.”

Ford appears to be encouraging more convoys to come to Ontario, telling radio station 900 CHML: “People want to come down and protest, god bless them. I understand their frustration, I really do,” adding that he’d like protests to be peaceful.

But Horwath said the occupation of Ottawa has not been peaceful.

“The desecration of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the statue of Terry Fox is not a peaceful protest. Marching confederate flags and Nazi swastikas through the streets cannot be considered a peaceful act. Forcing the closure of businesses and preventing thousands of people from working for days on end is not a peaceful protest,” said Horwath.

For months, Horwath and the NDP have been fighting for her Safety Zones legislation, which would ban anti-public-health protests from designated zones around places like hospitals, schools and vaccine clinics and other health facilities.