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“If we’re going to shut down that highway, we’re going to shut it down completely — and not just for one day,” he said, warning that “every major highway across the country” would fall to a similar fate. “It’s escalated to a point where people’s frustrations are beginning to run out, and when people’s frustrations run out, things happen.”

In Southern Ontario, Grand Chief Gordon Peters of the Association of Iroquois and Allied Indians warned that Wednesday’s planned disruption along Highway 401 near Windsor is just a taste of what could come if the Harper government does not acquiesce.

“We want to demonstrate some of the things we have the power to do,” he said, adding that he plans to raise the issue of a longer highway blockade at a chiefs assembly sometime in the spring. “There would be chaos.”

In an interview with the National Post, Ontario Provincial Police Commissioner Chief Chris Lewis agreed that there would, indeed, be chaos if protesters shut down Highway 401 for days on end, though he emphasized the force’s commitment to avoiding another Ipperwash — the 1993 standoff that saw First Nations protester Dudley George shot and killed by police.

“There would be a point where we’d have to take action,” he said. “How we do it and when we do it is critical.”

That fact is not lost on the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples, which sent letters to all the major police forces across the country on Monday asking them to avoid using “unnecessary force or tactics.” Nor is it lost on Rob Clarke, an aboriginal Conservative MP and an 18-year veteran of the RCMP, who said he is “worried” about the looming protests, or Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Duncan, who on Monday told Postmedia News that he expects police to step in if demonstrations lead to “things being shut down.”