Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson described the presence of children playing in bouncy castles at the Freedom Convoy demonstration as “disturbing” in a video interview with CTV News on Sunday.
Watson is 60, unmarried, and without children.
Ottawa residents living near the demonstration on Parliament Hill and nearby downtown areas are enduring “a living hell,” Watson claims. He emphasized that they “have been through hell.”
He stated, “It’s disturbing when you see the protest turning into what looks like some kind of a fun carnival, where they’ve got bouncy castles and hot tubs and saunas, a complete insult to the people who are putting up with this nonsense for the last seven days, and it shows great deal of insensitivity.”
Breitbart News recorded video of a bouncy castle with playing children on Saturday. Dozens of children were observed with parents attending the demonstration on and around Wellington Street adjacent Canada’s federal legislature.
CBC, the left-wing state-funded broadcaster, reported on the presence of saunas and bouncy castles at the protest.
“They shouldn’t be bringing in hot tubs, and they shouldn’t be bringing bouncy castles,” Watson repeated. “That’s just ridiculous. That should have been stopped.”
Bouncy castles have been set up for the kids in Ottawa. The "small fringe minority" is out of control. pic.twitter.com/yZ62VUeb7d
— The Vigilant Fox (@TheVigilantFox) February 6, 2022
This proves how out of touch the mainstream media and @JustinTrudeau is. Kids playing on bouncy castles. Bring in the military. #TruckersConvoy2022 https://t.co/8hpC710hZK pic.twitter.com/LiQWKRAgqb
— Lincoln Jay (@lincolnmjay) February 5, 2022
Record-breaking supporters today at #TruckerConvoy2022 in Ottawa. GoFundMe-effect?
Highlights today: a newly-built community kitchen with free sandwiches & hot soup for everyone, kiddie fun on bouncy castles & bundles of hay, lively DJ & friendly smilespic.twitter.com/BDXJlbF4I1
— Kulvinder Kaur MD (@dockaurG) February 6, 2022
CTV News framed Watson’s sexuality as newsworthy in 2019. It reported, “After nearly 40 years, Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson has officially come out as gay.” Watson wrote a column in the same year titled “Mayor Jim Watson: After 40 years, I’m opening the closet door.”
Katie Griffin, the CTV anchor, invited Watson to call for military suppression of the protest by repeating Ottawa Police Chief Peter Sloly’s claim that local police have insufficient resources to fulfill their duties. She claimed people are “losing faith in the city’s ability to [restore] some sort of order.”
She asked, “What options do we have right now? Are you at the point where you have to request the military to come in?”
Watson used military terminology in describing the nation’s capital as “under siege” by the Freedom Convoy.
The mayor said local law enforcement is using traffic tickets as a tool to end the Freedom Convoy protest. “We started to see the police issue significantly more tickets, traffic tickets as well as Highway Traffic Act tickets. That has to be done, it hits them ni the pocketbook.”
Government must block fundraising for the Freedom Convoy truckers and supporters, he said, referring to GoFundMe’s freezing of funds raised by the “Freedom Convoy 2022” campaign. Breitbart News reported on GoFundMe’s eventual return of the funds to original donors following a reversal on its stated intention to seize and redistribute the money to “charities” of its choosing.
Watson said money for the Freedom Convoy crowdsourced through digital fundraisers should be “cut off.”
“We negotiated with GoFundMe, where that service rejected the protesters and [is] sending the money back to the individuals, so that hopefully will help, although I know there are other services that are going to try to help, and we’ll go back to them, and try to get that money cut off, because that’s one the ways of trying to bring this to an end, financially.”
He concluded by warning that the demonstration in Ottawa is “now spreading across the country.”
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