Lambton-Kent-Middlesex MP Lianne Rood wants to see a plan to end COVID-19 mandates, so people can “get on with their lives.”

The MP, who recently became the deputy whip of the Conservative Party after the ouster of Erin O’Toole, made the comments after spending hours talking to protestors parked in Ottawa since Jan. 28.

The Freedom Convoy drew around 8,000 people to Parliament Hill that weekend according to Ottawa Police. They want Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to end all COVID-19 rules, including one which requires truck drivers to be vaccinated to cross the border. The group which organized the event, Canada Unity, also wants the senate and the governor general to overturn the current government and install leaders of the protest movement as an interim government – something not possible under Canada’s constitution.

Rood says she talked to the Canadians who gathered in Ottawa because “one of my fundamental responsibilities is to listen.” And she met over a dozen people who had come from her riding who were “peacefully showing their support for the premise of ending the mandate…I can tell you what the mainstream media, like what the CBC is portraying, is not really what’s happening here on the ground in Ottawa.”

Over the course of the demonstration there have been scenes of protestors with Nazi and Confederate flags, Ottawa residents being verbally and physically attacked for wearing masks and protestors dressing up a Terry Fox Monument and dancing on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier – all things which have drawn wide spread criticism.

Rood says there are always “bad apples” in a group but “Canadians want to see leadership and they want to see what the plan is so that they can start to get their lives back to normal, especially with the provinces opening up and dropping their mandates.”

Rood says she has had hundreds if not 1,000 phone calls, letters and emails about the issue “from many different angles…but the vast majority of the people who are writing to my office right now want to see an end to the mandate, they would like their lives back. We are one of the highest vaccinated countries in the world. “

And Rood accuses Trudeau of playing “divisive politics” and “politicizing” the pandemic by keeping the mandates in place.