SHEILA GUNN REID ｜ Andrew Lawton's new book on the Freedom Convoy is already #1 on Amazon Canada
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Summary
A small group of Canadian truckers, fed up with nearly two years of Canadian government restrictions and a new mandate for cross-border essential workers, decided to take their frustrations directly to the nation s capital. The Freedom Convoy quickly took on a life of its own as hundreds of trucks and thousands of protesters made the journey to Parliament Hill. For the next three weeks, the trucker convoy led a protest unlike any other, complete with bouncy castles, pig roasts, and late-night dance parties. But to the media and government, it was a hate-filled insurrection requiring the unprecedented invocation of the Federal Emergencies Act.
Transcript
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Andrew Lawton's new book on The Convoy is already a number one bestseller on Amazon.ca
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and it's not even released yet. I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed and you're watching The Gunn Show.
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The book by True North's senior journalist called The Freedom Convoy, the inside story of three weeks
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that shook the world, is set to be released on June 24, 2022. And as of June 13, 2022, it had already
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hit the top spot on Amazon Canada's international politics category. And by the morning of June 14,
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it was also the number one in the politics and government category. The book is described this
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way. A small group of Canadian truckers fed up with nearly two years of COVID restrictions
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and a new vaccine mandate for cross-border essential workers decided to take their
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frustrations directly to the nation's capital. The Freedom Convoy quickly took on a life of its own
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as hundreds of trucks and thousands of protesters made the journey to Parliament Hill. For the next
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three weeks, the trucker convoy led a protest unlike any other, complete with bouncy castles,
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pig roasts, and late-night dance parties. But to the media and government, it was a hate-filled
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insurrection requiring the unprecedented invocation of the Federal Emergencies Act. The book is based
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on Andrew's first-hand experience and his interviews with those involved in the convoy. And he joins me
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tonight to discuss the book, why he wrote it, and if he thinks the Liberals will pay any price for what
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they did to Canadians. So joining me now from his studio is Andrew Lawton. He's the senior journalist at True
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North. And this is our second run through because the first time I didn't hit record. But I wanted to have Andrew
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on the show today because he's got a great new book out. And I don't even know if it's great because I haven't been able to
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read it yet. Nobody else has either because it's a number one bestseller and it's not even been
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released yet. We're recording this on June 13th and the book doesn't even come out till the 24th. So 11
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days. And yet, Andrew's new book, The Freedom Convoy, the inside story of three weeks that shook
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the world, is already at number one in international politics on Amazon.ca. First of all, Andrew,
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congratulations. But what inspired you to write this book? Thank you, Sheila. Well, I was in Ottawa
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when the convoy got to Ottawa and I was there covering it for True North. And it was, again,
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there was just this momentous episode of Canadian politics and Canadian history that I knew was not
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just going to be a flash in the pan. And as we know, it ended up lasting three weeks. And I was there the
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last weekend as well in the last few days. And I saw just how wrong the mainstream media coverage of
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the convoy had been and had continued to be for the entirety of it. And I was seeing how much
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complexity there was to this operation. It wasn't just the trucks and the horns and the bouncy castles,
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but there was such a sophistication almost to the operation with these command centers and these
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organizers and the fundraising campaigns and the cryptocurrency and all of this. And I kept saying
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to a friend of mine, you know, I can't wait to read the book on this. I can't wait to read the book
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on this. And then I realized, well, who better to write it than me? I was there. I had talked to a
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lot of the organizers and I just decided, you know, I'm going to buckle down and make this my
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spring project. And because it is time sensitive, I made sure to work night and day to finish it very
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quickly. But I wanted to get it out to really start correcting the record as we knew there was
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going to be this review into the Emergencies Act. The media was going to continue to report on the
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trials of the organizers. And I thought it was important to really put on the record what this thing
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actually was. Yeah. And there's a real thirst, obviously, based on the fact that you're a
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number one bestseller on a book that hasn't even been released yet, which is kind of unheard of
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in Canada. And I'll say that as someone who has had three bestsellers, a pre-release hitting number
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one in politics in Canada. I think that's pretty indicative of the thirst from the Canadian public
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to get the full story from somebody they trust and they know you and they trust you. They saw
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your journalism from on the ground. But you've talked about the things that the mainstream media
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has gotten wrong. True North has been incredible at just documenting where the media gets things
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wrong, you know, with regard to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the lady that was dancing on
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there. And then she wasn't even associated with the convoy. Tell us some of the things that the
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mainstream media really got wrong. But so many of them are still part of the accepted public
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narrative of this stuff. Yeah, you mentioned a few. And that first weekend, there was just a
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bombardment of them. The Terry Fox statue, the apartment arson, the stealing food from the homeless,
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all of these things that were just patently untrue. And still, even months later, would get cited by
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politicians when they're debating this. So a lot of stuff like that is, I think, very much what the
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book is seeking to correct. But some of the bigger picture things as well. One notable example of this
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is the money. And this was an issue, not just that the media got wrong, but also the government and the
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police. They tended to think that money was the lifeblood of the convoy and that if they could just
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freeze the money and go after the money, that the convoy itself would dissipate. And that wasn't the
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case at all. In fact, anytime police or government tried to go after something that the convoy had,
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whether it was fuel or cash, they would get more the next day, because people would just bring more,
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they'd show up with more fuel, they'd show up with more money. And I think that the one overarching
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theme that really emerged from the book is that it was the people and the passion that fueled the
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convoy, not anything that the government could take away.
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Now, that was one of the things that I, one of my big takeaways from the convoy was this was
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so indicative of the difference between people on the left and people on the right. In that,
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and I think it goes to why we believe in smaller government, us people over on the right,
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is because so often we see these far left wing radical protests, they just,
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they do an occupation, and then it descends into drug abuse, violence and madness and squalor.
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But with the convoy, when left alone without government intervention, a community grew,
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the streets were being cleaned, they had community events, the homeless were being fed. And for me,
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I saw this and I thought, yeah, that's why. That's why people like me believe in smaller government is
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because the convoy demonstrated what happens when there's no overarching government and people are
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just left alone. They do form their own community. Is that what you saw? That was my, my viewpoint on
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the outside looking in is they, they created a community in three weeks on the streets of Ottawa.
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Yeah, it was interesting. I mean, we all saw, I think it was last summer when they founded Chaz or
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CHOP or whatever it was that the left wing autonomous zone in Portland or something like
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that. Or Seattle, they're all the same. Portland or Seattle. But, but yeah, I mean, it was when
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conservatives do that, it ends up being a more desirable place than the city around it. Whereas
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when the liberals do it, it ends up becoming this godforsaken hellhole that no one in a million years
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would want to go into. And that was the thing here. Like they had arranged their own garbage disposal
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routine where, you know, they would bring the, they would collect all the garbage from inside their
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little perimeter and then they drive it to the outskirts and then the Ottawa city police or the
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Ottawa city trash collection. People could pick it up from there. They were doing their own snow
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removal in this little section. So it is interesting that they did take care. And even those stories we
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talked about earlier, like the war memorial and the Terry Fox statue, when these stories emerged,
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the convoy then all of a sudden started protecting these places. They had a team cleaning up and
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dusting off the Terry Fox statue. They had a bunch of veterans that were shoveling the snow
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and making sure that the area around the war memorial was always tidy. And I remember the first
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thing I saw when I got there was how all of the garbage cans were full and there was no garbage
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anywhere else, which is not even like Canada Day in Ottawa, where there's just trash everywhere at the
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end of it. Yeah. It was, uh, I just remember those images of Chaz and they couldn't keep the plants
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alive in their community garbage. And then when you look at the convoy, they're feeding everybody,
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including the homeless. And I thought, you know, that's exactly, exactly the reason.
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They had a pig roast. They had a pig roast. They were frying chicken wings. They had hot dog,
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Now I want to ask you, cause we hear so much about how the people of Ottawa hated having the convoy there.
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I know there are some of those people out there, but I don't think they were really the overwhelming,
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uh, I don't think they were the mainstream or were they?
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It's tough to say. I mean, there were undeniably people whose lives were disrupted by this that
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lived in Ottawa, whether it was employees that worked at the Rideau center, which closed down
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or people who lived in, in some of the residential streets where the trucks had parks. But
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one of the things that was interesting that I learned in, in writing this, because I did just
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hours and hours and hours of interviews with organizers and other people involved in this
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was how the city and the convoy organizers were working very significantly to get the trucks off
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of the residential streets to downtown Ottawa, or even outside the city. And it was never the
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convoys intention to go to these streets. They ended up there because police had shut down
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access to downtown and there was no room to go. So trucks just kind of said, well, you know,
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I can't go anywhere. So let's just stop here. And it was really an accidental protest in some of
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these areas. So, so people on these streets were definitely disrupted, but the convoys and the
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truckers were, were trying to work with them and trying to mitigate that. And people were affected
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by the honking, but that was a problem that was really dealt with very quickly by that class
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action. And the one little bit from the book I'll give you that I found interesting, pretty much
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every organizer I spoke to was so grateful when the judge issued that injunction because they were
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fed up with the honking too. Oh no, I've attended some of these protests and you go home and you can
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still hear the honking. Yeah. You bolt up at like three in the morning because you heard like a
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phantom honk. Yeah. That happened even that night, the first night in Ottawa in the hotel,
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I like bolted up in the middle of the night and I was like, did I dream that or did that truck horn
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honk? I still don't know. Yeah. It's just a low, you know, like if you've been in the wave pool all
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day and you can sort of still feel the waves splashing on your face, it was like that with the
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honking. Now I wanted to ask you, you talked to some of the protesters. I'm assuming you probably
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talked to Tamara Litch. I don't know, because I haven't been able to read your book yet because it's
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11 days till it's released. Did you talk to Tamara Litch? And if so, what was her, did she tell you
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about her experience on the inside of the prison system? So I talked to a lot of organizers and
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volunteers and some of them I spoke to before I even started writing the book and I had access to
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those interviews and others I spoke to over the course of it. And one thing I'll remind you is that
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there are a lot of people that I would love to speak to that I just couldn't legally speak to
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because of their bail conditions. So I have had conversations with Tamara Litch. She is in the
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book, but because of those bail conditions, I haven't actually been able to do like a formal sit
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down with her since she was released from jail. You know, and that's really been terrible. Her bail
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conditions were recently just adjusted so that she can go to Ontario to deal with some family issues,
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but they are still treating her like she is a monster. She cannot go anywhere near the downtown
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core in Ottawa because the judge said it might be too traumatic for people to see her little blonde
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face wandering around. It would somehow bring back the phantom honks of yore.
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Yeah, it's a bizarre thing. And again, it speaks to one of the chapters is called dueling narratives
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because there really were throughout the course of the convoy, these two vastly different stories that
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were emerging from the same set of facts. You had Justin Trudeau in the mainstream media, this violent
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insurrection, the fringe minority, and then you had the people that saw the bouncy castles and the pig
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roast and saw this, you know, tiny Métis grandmother that just united a nation behind her. And it is
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interesting that this is apparently this fear inducing, trauma inducing figure in Canada now.
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You know, I wanted to ask you about the title of your book because it's called the inside story of
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the three weeks that shook the world. I think it inspired people around the world. Do you think
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the liberals fully understand how much they were harmed by their reaction to the convoy internationally
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speaking? You know, we saw members of the European Parliament speak out against Justin Trudeau,
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and he's used to being the darling of the international media. Do you think they get
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I don't know, because they have always been unrelenting in their vilification of the unvaccinated and of the
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protesters. There was zero humility whatsoever from the liberals before, during, or I would say
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after. But it was international. And that's very deliberate, that idea of saying it shook the world.
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And one of the points that I raised in the book is that I had never in a million years seen the term
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Canada-style protest appear in media coverage, but it was. It was in the Associated Press, the New York
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Times, the UK Independent, because Canada had exported this. The truckers had exported this idea
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of using a convoy to protest. There was a big convoy in the US. There was one in Europe to Brussels,
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where the EU capital is. And all of this happened. And I do think that, again, even if we didn't see
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immediate policy changes that you can attribute to the convoy, it very much inspired millions of people,
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not just in Canada, but around the world, most definitely.
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Yeah, I think we're underselling it when you say we're not sure if we can attribute immediate policy changes.
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I know once that convoy rolled into Ottawa City Limits, Scott Moe in Saskatchewan was like,
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you know what, we're done with the vaccine passport. There were a lot of politicians.
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Well, in Quebec, Quebec dropped the tax on the unvaccinated.
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Yeah, a lot of politicians did not want to get convoyed themselves, I think.
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Um, now, I also wanted to ask you about some of the things that have come out,
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I guess, likely since you wrote the book. And that is just how much Marco Mendicino has been
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caught lying about the circumstances around the invocation of the Emergencies Act. He has said
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repeatedly that law enforcement asked him for this tool to, I guess, at the end of the day,
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charge Métis grandmothers with mischief, as though that wasn't a tool under the law already.
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Um, what do you think is going to come of that? Is he going to face any sort of career ramifications?
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I mean, whether he faces any consequences for it, I don't know. But I can tell you this is not a new
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phenomenon. One of the most notable examples of Marco being Marco was when he got up and did a
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press conference to justify the Emergencies Act and said that there had been this violent conspiracy
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that had been uncovered of people in Ottawa connected to the convoy that were going to do
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violent things. And to their credit, the reporters in that press conference asked him for details and
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it took them like six, seven, eight tries. And eventually he walked back this idea of a violent
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conspiracy to the idea that, well, he saw some mean tweets. And that was basically, and you can watch
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that it was like five and a half minutes, you can watch the claim just get walked back further and
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further and further before it's not even, you know, recognizable to what he initially said.
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So he has a tendency to do this. And I don't know if it's that he's making stuff up, or he's just the
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least prepared minister in the Trudeau cabinet. But either way, I don't have much confidence in his
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ability to oversee Canada's public safety and national security. So I think we're seeing a trend here
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where anything he says is just not something that can be trusted.
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Well, and I don't want to tip my hand too much to what I've been working on lately,
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but I have a lot of the police communications with Mendocino's office, where they were advising him
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that things were completely peaceful. So when he was in the media saying that violent conspiracies
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were being uncovered, that was him reading his Twitter account. He wasn't getting that information
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from the police. But I do think it's interesting that the police didn't say anything at the time.
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That I think might be the most annoying part of all of this to me is Mendocino was out there in
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the media at the time saying the police asked for this. And the only time we're hearing the police
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say, no, we didn't, is later on. Yeah, when they're under oath, right? When they're under oath at the
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committee hearings, when Mendocino could have been proven to be a liar, and we could have saved a lot
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of damage to civil liberties in this country, if the police had just spoken up sooner.
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Yeah, it's unfortunate. I mean, my book very much focuses on the convoy organizer's side of the
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story, because that was the side of the story that was not being told through the media coverage.
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But I did try to get the Ottawa police chief to comment. I tried to get Peter Slowly, the
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deposed Ottawa police chief to do an interview, and I didn't have any luck with it. Because I did feel
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that their side of this would be very fascinating. Because I think that even if we don't like how police
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ultimately took those powers at the end of this, I do think that police were oftentimes stuck in the
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middle of what the liberal government were trying to make a political fight rather than a policing
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fight. And I mean, Peter Slowly himself said this early on, he said, there's not a police solution
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we need here. This is something you need of a political solution. And I think the liberals didn't
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want that the liberals wanted the police to be the ones that had to go in and get their hands dirty.
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Now, I want to ask you, is this going to impact civil liberties for Canadians going forward? Is
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this a one of event? Did we normalize having the banks seize your bank accounts and making protests
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illegal? Or is the pendulum going to swing back the other way going forward?
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I fear yes. I think a lot will depend on the lawsuits that have been filed by the Canadian
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Civil Liberties Association, by the Canadian Constitution Foundation, and the Alberta government
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has joined those challenges as well. Because if there is just a significant and sweeping rebuke of
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the government through the courts, then there's no way they can justify using as thin as evidence as they
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did to justify this in the future. I also think, though, that once you've popped that cork, you can't put
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it back in the bottle entirely. And I fear that, as we're seeing now, the fact that they could do this,
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and one thing I would point out especially is without Parliament endorsing it. Because you
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remember, they revoked the emergency before the Senate had time to authorize it. So technically,
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there has been no endorsement of this by anyone other than the liberals. And that in and of itself,
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I think, reveals a bit of an oversight in the legislation. I know Leslie Lewis, the Conservative
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leadership candidate has said, perhaps we need to look at having a vote within 24 hours rather than
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seven days. I think that's the sort of discussion we need to be having about this act.
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Yeah, I mean, I guess that goes to my next question is, what is the solution to make sure that this never
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happens again? Because the Emergencies Act was very clear that it's really only supposed to be invoked
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for 9-11 scale events, Pearl Harbor scale events, and not bouncy castles from people with whom you
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disagree politically. And even that was written into the legislation, but that didn't really seem
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to matter to the liberals at the end of the day. So I guess, is it Leslie Lewis's solution where there
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has to be a quicker examination of how this thing gets invoked, so that it's not a week's worth of
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civil liberties carnage next time? Yeah, I think that's one piece of it. I mean,
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but at the same time, there might also be a bit of a pyrrhic victory in that because the liberals had
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a majority in the House of Commons and quite easily passed it through the House. We don't know what
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would have happened in the Senate. But the ability for a majority government to rubber stamp it doesn't
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solve the problems just because they're doing it more quickly. I do think that an expedited time
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frame is one piece of it. I would also suggest that another thing that could be done is re-evaluating
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this idea of a public order emergency. Because the Emergencies Act has a bunch of different criteria,
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whereas before, under the War Measures Act, it was very clear you had to essentially be
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in a state of war. And even with the FLQ crisis, it was controversial for Pierre Trudeau to invoke it.
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So I think that we need to re-evaluate these different categories in the Emergencies Act and see if
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maybe we need to go back to only having the extreme criterias with very strict
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basically preconditions. And those are the only way that you could invoke it.
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Now, Andrew, I want to thank you so much for coming on the show today. I always feel so much
00:22:10.280
smarter after I'm done talking to you. Is it because I'm so dumb, you look smart by comparison?
00:22:15.380
No, I'm just soaking it all in. It's like I'm drinking from a fire hose.
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Now, I want to ask you, first of all, how can people get the book? And let's keep it at the top
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of the bestseller list on Amazon for as long as possible. I know that irks the people on the other
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side. So let's do that for you, but also for spite, because I'm motivated for spite. So how do people
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find the book? Well, yeah, if you want to help with the Amazon rankings, you can go to Amazon and search
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for the Freedom Convoy, the inside story of three weeks that shook the world. But also, I know not
00:22:47.980
everyone likes Amazon. You can also get it directly through my publisher at SutherlandHouseBooks.com.
00:22:53.720
And hopefully it will be in all of your local bookstores when it comes out on June 24th. So if
00:22:58.720
you want to give them a call and make sure they're carrying it, I know that would go a long way.
00:23:02.720
Oh, I can't wait. I can't wait to see your book out in the wild. I can't wait to see that. Now,
00:23:08.140
how else do people find the support or find and support the work that you do? I know you have a
00:23:12.000
sub stack. You're also on True North. So let us know. Yeah, I'm like the Travelocity gnome online
00:23:16.900
sometimes. I just pop up everywhere. But if people want to follow my show and the work that my fantastic
00:23:21.680
colleagues at True North do, you can head on over to tnc.news. And I am at Andrew Lawton on Twitter.
00:23:27.960
Great. Thanks, Andrew. And thanks so much for coming on the show today.
00:23:38.140
For those of you who want to purchase or rather pre-order Andrew Lawton's new book,
00:23:44.360
I will include the Amazon link in the website words for the show today. Now, this is the portion
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of the show where I welcome your viewer feedback. Unlike the mainstream media, we actually do want
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to hear from you. We leave the comments open and I even give out my email address. So if you want to
00:24:01.140
send an email to me directly to read on the show, you can send it to me at Sheila at rebelnews.com.
00:24:08.820
Just put gun show letters in the subject line so that I can easily search through and find them.
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And I choose them in no particular order. So today's letter is from Bruce Atchison.
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Hi, Sheila. Greetings from Radway where nothing happens. That's not true. Radway is a bustling
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berg north of Edmonton. And you have a really great army surplus store right downtown. And I haven't
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been there in a while, but my kids are really into airsoft lately. And so they could use some army
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surplus clothes. Anyway, don't sell Radway short. It's a great place. Let's keep going.
00:24:50.740
Celine did a great job. That's Celine Gallus, whom I interviewed on the show last week when I was in
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Calgary with her, teaching her the ropes of court reporting as we were covering the trials and
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tribulations of Pastor Art Poloski, who was on trial in Calgary and continues to be on trial in
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Calgary for the crime of throwing a Christmas event wherein he fed the homeless some steak and gave
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them Christmas presents. Because at the time, at least according to the Crown Prosecutor,
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gatherings were illegal. Now, a recent ruling has determined that public gatherings, including
00:25:32.100
protests, were not illegal at the time. So now the Crown is arguing that this open air soup kitchen
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Christmas party where everybody was invited to and nobody was turned away,
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that constituted a private Christian gathering. It's quite a stretch, a real leap. Don't hurt
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yourself stretching that hard, Crown Prosecutor. Anyway, Celine was learning the ropes of how to
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court report. And we did a pretty extensive interview about, you know, what it's like to be a rebel,
00:26:06.300
what it was like. Her first week here at Rebel News wherein we stuck her in a rental car and sent her
00:26:15.000
all the way to Ottawa from Calgary. And then when she came back, she didn't even get to go home. We
00:26:19.040
sent her straight to Coots. Anyway, we didn't break her. And she's no longer an intern. She's a valuable
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member of our team who's learning all different aspects of the business. Bruce continues and says,
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thanks for interviewing her. I admire her and the rest of the young rebels. Yeah,
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the young rebels sure give me hope for the millennials and the Zoomers. They're not all
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crazy, are they? Well, everybody, that's the show for tonight. Thank you so much for tuning in. I'll
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see everybody back here in the same time, in the same place next week. And remember,
00:26:49.200
don't let the government tell you that you've had too much to think.