DAVID MENZIES | Emergencies Act inquiry rolls on, and the red wave that never materialized
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Summary
The Emergencies Act inquiry continues to soldier along, and par for the course, some of the testimony has been downright jaw dropping, such as the information regarding the Ottawa Police Service hiring a crisis management firm, Navigator Limited, for help to bolster their public image. Yikes! Hey, OPS, how about carrying out proper policing instead of acting like modern-day Keystone cops? That might make for a PR solution. And stateside, the much anticipated Red Wave did not materialize, as so many predicted. So what went wrong? Our Seattle-based reporter Katie Davis Court will offer her analysis, and she will also speak about her undercover report in which a supposedly nonpartisan organization in Kent, Washington was bribing members of the Hispanic community with free tamales and backpacks.
Transcript
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Welcome to Rebel Roundup, ladies and gentlemen, and the rest of you, in which we look back at
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some of the very best commentaries of the week by your favorite Rebels. I'm your host, David Menzies.
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Well, the Emergencies Act inquiry continues to soldier along and par for the course.
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Some of the testimony has been downright jaw-dropping, such as the information regarding
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the Ottawa Police Service hiring a crisis management firm, Navigator Limited, for help.
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Help for what? To bolster their public image? Yikes! Hey, OPS, how about carrying out proper policing
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instead of acting like modern-day Keystone cops? That might make for a PR solution.
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Rebel News chief reporter Sheila Gunn-Reed has all the details. And stateside, the much-anticipated
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red wave did not materialize on Tuesday, as so many predicted. So what went wrong? Our Seattle-based
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reporter Katie Davis Court will offer her analysis, and she will also speak about her undercover report
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in which a supposedly nonpartisan organization in Kent, Washington, was bribing members of the
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Hispanic community with free tamales and backpacks. The quid pro quo being, wouldn't it be jolly if you
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folks, you know, voted Democrat? Ay caramba! And letters, we get your letters. We get your letters
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every minute of every day. And you had plenty to say about those striking education workers who
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descended upon Queen's Park last Friday. Question, why are so many education workers so angry and vulgar
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and completely unable to articulate their position? They are education workers, right? Or maybe they
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really need to go back to school. Those are your rebels. Now let's round them up.
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Do you know who or what Navigator is? If you've been paying attention to politicians in trouble in
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Canada for the better part of the last decade, then you've been exposed to some of Navigator's
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messaging sometimes, however, unwittingly. If you're a politician or a bureaucrat or a
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politically connected person in this country and you get into some sort of public relations
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catastrophe, you call in Navigator, the well-connected crisis communications firm.
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Now in Ottawa, the police service in the city did exactly that last winter when the Convoy for Freedom
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rolled into town to protest vaccine mandates and other COVID mandates. Those demonstrations,
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albeit annoying for some but still peaceful, went on for nearly four weeks.
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That is, until Justin Trudeau hit the nuclear button of the Emergencies Act and never before used
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counter-terrorism law on peaceful anti-regime demonstrators like he was some sort of
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Iranian mullah with especially delicate feelings. Trudeau pulled the old Ahmadinejad on the most
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effective political opposition he's ever faced in seven years. It was a reputational national
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emergency for Justin Trudeau, but really, nothing more. Anyway, as chaos unfolded and the Ottawa City
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police were engaged in internal power struggles and palace intrigue at the top when they were
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mishandling nearly every piece of operational intelligence that came their way from the RCMP
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and the Ontario Provincial Police, as the convoy rolled across the country toward Ottawa,
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the Ottawa City cops became increasingly less worried about actual policing and more worried
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about their reputations. So, they called in the slippery eels at Navigator to the tune of $185,000
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for allegedly 384.5 hours of work. We know this because right now the Public Order Emergency
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Commission is unfolding in Ottawa to examine Trudeau's actions in invoking the Emergencies Act,
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and documents are being entered into evidence. You can see and support our independent coverage at
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truckercommission.com. What do we need to do more? More arrests? Tickets? Use of force? Then what?
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Go to the politicians? Go into big lockdown mode? Massive show of police presence and then hold hands and
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come together? Or two? Bigger lockdown of city for weekend. And then you'll see Aaron at the bottom.
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Job is to keep the peace and keep people protected. When you take a hard line, citizens of Ottawa want
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this, but not everyone need to acknowledge not everyone represents or resonates as fringe group.
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This is a national problem and Prime Minister needs to get us out of it.
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Now, we know from other documents that Navigator was deeply involved in the grotesque and evil strategy
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to threaten parents within the convoy with seizure of their children by social services agencies.
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I take it, sir, that you are aware of the February 8, 2022 media briefing that the Ontario Police Service gave
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where it was said to the media and in the public that OPS had concerns for the children of the protesters in Ottawa
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and OPS wanted to discuss enforcement with the Child Aid Society of Ontario. You're aware that happened?
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So, you said the Ontario Police Service. I believe you mean the Ottawa Police Service?
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Do you have a document we can reference with that media release or is that a clip?
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So, I do recall. I don't specifically recall references to enforcement, but I do specifically recall the discussion
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around our concerns with children in the footprint, particularly as the situation there was becoming more volatile.
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And now, through documents again being presented to the Commission that apparently only a handful of journalists like me are reading,
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I can tell you that part of the work Navigator was doing for the City of Ottawa and the Ottawa Police Service
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was identifying sympathetic Trudeau colonized journalists who hated the convoy as much as the Mayor Jim Watson did.
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I'll show you right here in black and white. It starts on page 8.
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We can see that Navigator started a supportive stakeholder list of people who were not supportive of freedom,
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but rather of busting heads in the convoy, not supportive of free speech or free assembly or free expression.
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Amazing. The more we learn about the inner workings of the Ottawa Police Service,
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the more this law enforcement agency comes across as a real-life modern version of the Keystone Cops.
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But instead of improving their egregious policing,
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their strategy was to hire a politically connected crisis communications firm
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in order to help bolster the public image of the OPS.
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And the plan was to employ the useful idiots in the mainstream media to achieve this PR goal?
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Wow. For some reason, the phrase putting lipstick on a pig springs to mind.
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Oh, and check out the cost of that PR exercise.
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The OPS paid Navigator Limited almost $180,000 for less than 400 hours worth of work.
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As always, folks, your tax dollars hard at work.
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And joining me now for more on this jaw-dropping slice of testimony at the Emergencies Act Inquiry in Ottawa
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is our chief reporter, Sheila Gunn-Reed. How are you doing there, Sheila?
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David, I'm doing great. And unfortunately, this wasn't actually testimony.
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And there's a handful of people in the country who are going through it.
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And I'm one. I think Andrew Lawton at True North is one.
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And of course, our friends at Black Locks, they're doing the same.
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These documents are really a treasure trove of what happens behind the scenes
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You get to see the things that they say in quiet,
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that they think the world is never going to hear.
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It's one of the reasons I like access to information.
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But these are things that I think that these people never thought would see the light of day.
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And I'm able to go through it and see all of their opinions and things
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they probably should have kept to themselves and not put in writing for other people to see.
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You know, Sheila, thank you for the clarification.
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Because really, an inquiry, it's kind of like an iceberg, isn't it?
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That, you know, 10% of the iceberg is visible, but 90% is underwater.
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And these were just documents that there's a mountain of them
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that don't even make the light of day in terms of oral testimony.
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But nevertheless, I think this is stunning stuff, Sheila.
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In fact, I don't think I can ever recall a police force hiring a PR firm
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Now, call me a crank, Sheila, but shouldn't a law enforcement agency be more concerned with,
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oh, you know what, carrying out good and proper law enforcement
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So I'm not sure that was even remotely on their radar.
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As the convoy rolled across the country, they were ignoring or just failing to look at
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intelligence reports that were coming in to them from the RCMP and the OPP.
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They had those intelligence reports, although the plan to deal with the convoy,
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they admit, was not built around these intelligence reports.
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And the public started to notice and chaos ensued on the streets.
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It seemed like there was no real plan to deal with the convoy.
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The convoy seemed far more organized than the Ottawa Police Service.
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There was all kinds of backdoor dealings and palace intrigue within the Ottawa Police Service,
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where at one point the two deputy chiefs were sort of kneecapping Chief Peter slowly
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and appointing people and doing things behind his back.
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And they hired crisis communications firm, the slippery eels of Navigator.
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And they started doing reputational audits on the police service.
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And then they realized what we all know, but it was very interesting to see it in writing,
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that the Trudeau-polluted mainstream media are just full of, as you rightly put it,
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And they started going about the business of, as they say, identifying journalist targets
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And they were also identifying friendly stakeholders, friendly politicians.
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The journalists are supposed to hold the politicians to account.
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But Navigator realized there are helpful journalists to our cause out there.
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And while I was reading these documents, I thought,
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there's a bunch of journalists out there who are thinking,
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But you didn't get a big, fat scoop because you were a good journalist.
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You got a big, fat scoop because you're a terrible journalist.
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Yeah, I think in boxing, Sheila, they call that rope-a-dope.
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Before we get into Navigator and what they're all about,
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The Ottawa Police Service ignored intelligence reports by the OPP and the RCMP.
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Now, the question begs, why did they ignore those reports?
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Maybe they thought those reports were not credible.
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Here's what I'm going to propose to you, Sheila.
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If I was the chief at the Ottawa Police Service,
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what I would do, because clearly there was a huge convoy headed to Ottawa,
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I send an officer to go undercover, embed him in the convoy,
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and get my intelligence directly from that person.
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But I guess, is that too much of an out-of-the-box policing suggestion, Sheila,
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That's not an out-of-the-box policing suggestion.
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And CSIS was also giving their reports to the OPS.
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And besides the fact that the journalists were played for fools here,
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But one of the most stunning parts in all of this is that
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And they're not supposed to be political in Canada.
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That's why we don't have elected police chiefs.
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They're supposed to apply the law to you, whether you're left or right, equally.
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Justice is supposed to be blind in this country.
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And there's no means by which to hold a political police chief accountable
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the way you can in the United States through elections.
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The person, the cop who took the place of the police chief
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I don't know if it's me being a conspiracy theorist or not.
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who lost control of everything because of a lack of intel.
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that was the day after Alexa was shot by that canister.
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In fact, just an hour before the press conference,
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Alexa was getting interviewed by Russian television,
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And we went there and I asked Acting Chief Bell
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First of all, we have filed for access to information
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And I think that means after Judge Justice Rollo
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is because they don't want us to fact check them
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of his chief Bell's interim former police chief Bell.
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And if they really didn't have a clue about it,