If policing can't end Ottawa's protest, then what can?

It wasn't the most confidence-inspiring of news conferences.

On the sixth straight day of the protest that has immobilized the core of the nation's capital and harassed local residents, Ottawa officials still gave nothing approaching a timeline of when this all might come to an end.

"I can't give you a definitive, 'It's one day, it's two days. It's one week, it's two weeks,'" police Chief Peter Sloly told council members during a public briefing Wednesday afternoon.

No sense of an end date isn't what anyone wanted to hear. Even more disturbing, the chief floated the unsettling idea that policing alone won't end this mess.

The situation is fluid and potentially dangerous. Earlier this week, police apprehended and charged a man with a knife and baton.

While the number of protesters has shrunk to hundreds from thousands last weekend, those who remain set up on downtown streets with their vehicles seem determined to stay until they get what they want.

But what they want isn't exactly clear. Some insist the national vaccine mandate for truckers must be cancelled, others such as the organizers behind a Wednesday news release want general COVID-19 restrictions — largely the provincial government's measures — lifted.

Still others fantasize about overthrowing the Liberal government with the help of the Governor General and the head of the Senate.

Although police are in contact with some of the convoy "captains," these folks in no way represent all of the protesters in the city. The chief said participants are both associated with dozens and dozens of groups, not to mention the many "lone wolf" types who have attached themselves.

Police negotiations and finger-wagging from politicians at all levels of government haven't convinced the hardcore to roll out of town. So it may be understandable that Sloly, who's been open that his approach is to de-escalate and avoid violence, can't offer an end date to this situation.

What's far less understandable is why Sloly would float the idea that politicians need to get involved in this protest for it to end, without quite saying so or stating plainly what he meant.

Here's exactly what he said: "The longer this goes on, the more I am convinced there may not be a police solution to this demonstration."

WATCH | Ottawa's police chief on the hurdles to a solution:

In fact, he said that a number of times. He explained that this protest isn't a mere local event but provincial and national in scope. The demands being made by the protesters, however one may view them, are political.