The Canadian capital Ottawa is preparing for a parade on its streets on Saturday, attended by hundreds of motorcyclists protesting against government abuses in general, less than 3 months after the police arrested dozens of protesters who closed the downtown area near the parliament for several weeks.

The caravan organizers say that through the protests they aim to support "freedom" and veterans, but local media say that a number of participants in the protest were in Ottawa during the previous protest which was against vaccine mandates for truck drivers operating across the border.

Last February, the government of Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was forced to activate rarely used emergency powers to clear Ottawa of protesters, at which time protesters also closed a major border crossing with the United States.

The previous protest, which lasted 3 weeks early this year, caused tens of millions of dollars in losses for businesses in the form of lost sales, and taxpayers incurred costs for cleanup operations.

Last February, the Canadian police almost completely took control of downtown Ottawa, after it was paralyzed for 24 days due to truck drivers' protests opposing the government’s policy to contain the coronavirus pandemic.

At that time, authorities said they had "arrested 190 demonstrators and removed about 50 vehicles that had blocked the road for weeks in the city."

The police operation led to dispersing most of the protesters, and some Ottawa residents began to come down to the downtown streets, but authorities indicated that "the police operation is still ongoing," explaining that they had placed a fence around the Canadian Parliament building "to ensure not losing the reclaimed area."

Polls at that time showed that Canadians who were supportive of the truck drivers' protest movement distanced themselves from it in recent days.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also did not comment on developments in downtown Ottawa, in a step considered to be an attempt to distance himself from the evacuation process after being criticized by the opposition for activating the "Emergency Measures" law.

This was only the second time in Canada's history that this law was activated during peacetime, and it was used for the first time during the 1970 crisis in Quebec, when Pierre Elliott Trudeau, the current Prime Minister’s father, was governing the country.

Under the emergency law, the government introduced measures aimed at cutting off funding for protesters, and took steps to strengthen law enforcement.

Protesters had closed the Ambassador Bridge, a vital trade route linking Windsor in Ontario and Detroit in the United States, while others closed smaller border crossings in Alberta, Manitoba, and British Columbia.