Officials in Windsor, Ont., plan to ask for federal and provincial funds to pay for the costs of policing a border blockade, the mayor said Thursday as he lifted a state of emergency imposed after the protest.
The cost of managing and clearing the blockade at the foot of the Ambassador Bridge is still being calculated, but Mayor Drew Dilkens said the City and the Windsor Police Service will make a request “in the coming weeks” for the higher levels of government to foot the bill.
“We had hundreds of officers from out of town come to Windsor … That means meals, accommodations, equipment charges, benefit costs that are going to be charged back to the City of Windsor,” he said in an interview.
“It’s going to be a large bill and one that will put our budget right out of whack.”
He said it would be “unreasonable to expect the citizens of Windsor to shoulder the costs associated with this national security operation.”
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Protesters congregated at the foot of the bridge — one of the busiest border crossings in North America, which accounts for hundreds of millions of dollars in trade every day — on Feb. 7, blocking traffic, and they remained there for nearly a week before being cleared on Feb. 13.
In the interim, the City of Windsor acted as an intervener in a successful bid for a court injunction ordering the demonstrators to leave.
A lawyer for the city told the court that the protest had forced it to redeploy resources and move emergency apparatus.
And while the tally of costs has yet to be completed, Dilkens said the price of procuring and erecting barriers along a road alone has been pegged at $1.3 million.
Dilkens declared a state of emergency the day after the blockade was cleared to support an “ongoing security operation.”
On Thursday, he announced the state of emergency had ended.
“The immediate threat has been cleared and we have experienced about a week of cross border trade, unimpeded,” he said in a statement.
“At the same time, we continue to experience the ongoing price of protecting this vital national trade corridor. Many businesses and residents in west Windsor are still coping with the enhanced security presence and restricted access along Huron Church.”
The blockade was one of several across Canada in solidarity with protesters who set up camp in Ottawa for three weeks in what politicians described as an illegal occupation.
Dilkens’ move came a day after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau revoked the Emergencies Act, used to grant police extra powers to clear out the Ottawa protesters, and Premier Doug Ford lifted a provincial state of emergency.
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