On this episode of the Ezra Levant Show, host Ezra sits down with lawyer Keith Wilson to look back on the first anniversary of the single largest human rights demonstration in modern Canadian history, The Truckers' Freedom Convoy.
00:08:45.620The feds are sort of buzzing around like they might get involved.
00:08:48.560What's the first thing you do as a lawyer to try to bring some order out of chaos, I guess, is the right way to put it?
00:08:55.520Well, we had a long plane ride there because we're in this twin thing and we went up and down, up and down because we flew to Medicine Hat to pick up Tamara Leach's husband, Dwayne.
00:09:09.560And then we flew to two locations in Saskatchewan to pick up lawyers and the accountant and then we flew to Winnipeg and then we were so heavy and full we had to stop at Thunder Bay for fuel.
00:09:18.660So we left at eight o'clock in the morning and we landed in Ottawa at 10.30 at night.
00:09:24.320So we developed a plan and I sort of built, allowed the team to get to know one another on that flight.
00:09:32.240We made the decision that we'd go in in two waves.
00:09:36.920I'd go in a taxi with Dwayne because that would get me to the leadership group immediately going with Tamara's husband.
00:09:43.660And when I arrived, the first thing I noticed when we got downtown to the hotel was that we drove downtown to the hotel because I had this image from the legacy media that we'd get stopped eight or 10 blocks out.
00:09:59.700And then I was psychologically prepared for a long walk to get to the hotel and we pulled up right to the front door just like you can today.
00:10:09.960Anyway, so that was the first sort of, wow, this is weird.
00:10:12.620And also going past all the trucks and the people and the protesters and the signs and the encampments was, my eyes were pretty wide.
00:10:23.000But the other thing that was really notable, Sheila, was when I went into the lobby of the hotel, the supplies were stacked everywhere, like too high against the wall because so many Canadians were just pouring in supplies.
00:10:38.220And I could also, you could cut the tension.
00:10:40.720It had this feel of, I imagined what it might have been like, say, during the Yugoslavian war when the enemy had advanced significantly and all the civilians were like holed up in this hotel and were surrounded.
00:10:55.840It had that kind of super high tension to it.
00:10:58.600And we went up to a hotel room where the key leaders were there, the key original convoy leaders and road captains and so on, Tamera Leach, Chris Barber, Sean Tyson and others, Miranda Gracer.
00:11:13.520And I had to work very quickly to understand who they were and to earn their trust.
00:11:21.380None of us had met one another before.
00:11:25.120And it wasn't until the next day that I discovered there was all these other groups that were there and some had great intentions and others not so much.
00:11:37.560You know, it's funny that you would explain the first thing you notice is how much the mainstream media was lying about what was happening in Ottawa.
00:11:51.360Now, you, was it almost immediately that you sort of got to work, working with the city to sort of uncork some of the pressure that was happening in the downtown?
00:12:02.580What are the first steps there of your engagement with the city?
00:12:37.480And so I reached out to former Premier Peckford and my phone logs, which were in evidence in the inquiry, confirmed this as early as the Saturday.
00:12:47.640And the first Saturday that I was there arrived on the Wednesday night.
00:12:53.460Um, and I said, Hey, do you have any contacts, both at the city level and the federal level so that, that we can try and open up a dialogue?
00:13:17.100And I said, well, what you do is you establish a back channel, you build some trust, and then you negotiate the terms for which you go and have your sit down with the cameras and all that.
00:13:27.560Uh, that's what they instructed me to do.
00:13:29.600Um, and Premier Peckford had contacts and he reached out to those and I got the first call that turned out to be the former chief of staff to Premier Doug Ford in Ontario, Dean French.
00:13:42.220And he reached out to me on the Saturday.
00:13:45.240Um, that was very quick and, uh, him and I talked about what was possible.
00:13:51.000I kept, uh, Tamara and the other keyboard members, uh, briefed at all times.
00:13:55.980And, uh, one thing led to another and eventually, um, uh, almost two weeks later or more than two weeks later, um, Tamara and the mayor reached an agreement on how to de-escalate and allow the protest to focus on the federal government and allow the protest to go longer.
00:14:14.920Of course, Trudeau and his government sent in the goons and, uh, violently beat up and arrested, uh, hundreds of Canadians.
00:14:24.880Yeah, you know, and that was one of the things that really struck me from the Public Order Emergency Commission, what we call the Trucker Commission here at Rebel News, is once we started seeing evidence about, you know, the, the, the mainstream media and the liberals, although I probably repeat myself by separating the two.
00:14:45.120Um, they, uh, they, uh, they became, the narrative was that the invocation of the Emergencies Act was the means of last resort to deal with the convoy, uh, which was violent, which was terroristic, seditionist.
00:15:04.440Nobody's ever been charged with sedition, um, but they, the police didn't have the tools that they needed, so they had to use these extraordinary tools that suspended civil liberties to give the police the tools that they needed.
00:15:17.500But as it turns out, they had mused about invoking the Emergencies Act before they even knew, knew the full extent of the convoy, like upon the day of arrival of some truckers, they were, they were talking about, is this an Emergencies Act level thing?
00:15:32.740And then, as it turns out, they didn't need these additional tools.
00:15:37.260They had negotiated a deal to move the trucks out.
00:15:41.080Um, there were, uh, tow trucks available from places that were, you know, that, you know, they had people that had turned them down, but they were able to get access to tow trucks, which is one of the reasons they said they needed to invoke the Emergencies Act.
00:15:56.180And, and as it turns out, the invocation of the Emergencies Act caused a redeployment of police away from the convoy's efforts to move trucks out of the downtown core, because you couldn't move those trucks out without police stopping and redirecting traffic.
00:16:12.860But once the feds invoked the Emergencies Act, it, it stopped those efforts, which sort of locked the congestion downtown for longer.
00:16:21.400Yes. Well, and so, you know, what was really remarkable about the evidence that came out in the inquiry from all of the government officials, the police officials, and we know we're talking about the highest of officials, is that it was clear.
00:16:38.560So remember the timeline, the Emergencies Act was announced on Monday, Valentine's Day, February 14th.
00:16:44.400The deal, Tamara's deal and the deal between the board to relocate the trucks with the mayor was approved by the board through an emergency board meeting of the trucker leadership on the Friday night before.
00:16:58.860Letters were exchanged from the mayor to Tamara and Tamara sent a letter back to the mayor confirming the agreement on the Saturday, all the trucker leadership went out, 850 flyers were printed to explain the deal and the plan to the truckers handed out by hand because we couldn't trust any form, other forms of media.
00:17:22.160And there was significant buy-in from the truckers, you got to remember that a lot of people never planned to stay that long and a lot of people were resolved to stay, but some needed to go home and wanted to go home, but needed a graceful way out.
00:17:36.620And so this idea of moving the majority of the vehicles out to these three base camps that had been set up just outside the perimeter of the city and having shuttle bus, we'd already started doing that and it was working really well.
00:17:49.280So the idea was to expand it, but infill Wellington as tight as we could because there was still quite a bit of space to put another hundred or more trucks up there to spread it along further to the east or to the west rather.
00:18:03.540So the plan was to do that, there was a logistics meeting with senior police officials, Eva Chipiuk, several of the truck captains and Tom Marazzo on the Sunday night at City Hall, everything was good to go.
00:18:19.460And it was at that night, Sunday night, the cabinet actually voted to invoke the emergencies act.
00:18:26.860But what came out was that Cootes border was open at that point on the Sunday, Windsor was open, Emerson was open.
00:18:34.540So all the border protests were resolved and the only thing left was Ottawa, but the truckers, their leadership had reached this agreement with the mayor that they were about to implement it.
00:18:46.000One of the real unfortunate and controversial things that happened was on Sunday night, a person who you've interviewed, BJ Dichter, logged into Tamara's Twitter account and sent out a tweet, even though the board had approved the deal with the mayor and said there is no deal.
00:19:06.680And unfortunately, the prime minister, when he testified at the inquiry, Mr. Mendocino, relied on Mr. Dichter's tweet that he sent from Ms. Tamara's account without her consent.
00:19:21.400Eva and I and the other board members were with her all that night, so we knew she hadn't sent the tweet.
00:19:26.880And unfortunately, it really sabotaged the Freedom Convoy and played right into the government's hands.
00:19:31.600So this is the kind of thing we were constantly managing.
00:19:34.540You know, there was divisions and infighting.
00:19:36.300There was different groups or individuals trying to run out on point on their own.
00:19:40.160But overall, no matter how you look at it, even with that quirk, because Tamara immediately sent out a tweet correcting that the deal was going ahead.
00:19:50.020And on the Monday, we moved as all the mayor testified, the chief of staff, the police testified at the inquiry.
00:19:56.200We moved over 100 vehicles out of the residential area of downtown.
00:19:59.900We pushed 23 trucks up into Wellington.
00:20:03.680Most of the trucks went out to the base camps that were set up on the perimeter or went home.
00:20:09.780So we proved and we also got stopped that morning by the police.
00:20:13.780Their communications were terrible, just terrible.
00:20:18.160So anyway, it was it was a crazy adventure.
00:20:20.880But I think all in all, it was a remarkable display by Canadians of their patriotism and their willingness to come forward and take a stand when they were clear in their minds to the core of their being.
00:20:35.720The government had gone too far with these mandates, that, you know, that the charter was just being trampled in every respect.
00:20:44.860And it was such an uplifting experience to be there to see the hope and the pride and the determination of so many Canadians who came together, who never knew one another before.
00:20:57.580Yeah, the show of restraint to by Canadians in the face of that violence that so many of them faced at the hands of the police, it really speaks to the level of commitment.
00:21:12.400They had to remain peaceful, to not be that thing which the government was going in the media and saying they were, that they were these fringe radicals, they were terrorists, they were seditionists.
00:21:22.360They were being beaten by clubs, by police and tear gassed and hauled out of their vehicles and their windows smashed in and threatened to have their kids and their dogs snatched from them.
00:21:32.860And they didn't react once with violence.
00:21:34.920And I think at any given point, all along the way, the police were vastly outnumbered by protesters.
00:21:42.700And those protesters are the country's useful people.
00:21:59.320You know, and the restraint was, wasn't it remarkable?
00:22:03.520You know, even the, I've told this before, one of the things that really struck me, Sheila, is each time I would go up onto Wellington and tour the areas and interact directly with the truckers and the protesters.
00:22:15.940And I didn't have as much chance to do that as I would have liked, because as you can imagine, I was going from one meeting room to the other with Eva and I constantly dealing with so many different issues and, or being in court on injunction and defending injunction applications and so on.
00:22:29.800But is when I'd walk past the prime minister's building, you know, that big brown stone building right across from parliament, sort of towards the war memorial, and there wasn't any graffiti on it.
00:22:41.860And it says, prime minister of Canada's building or office, like, you know what it is.
00:22:51.480It was just like, you know, we're going to do absolutely nothing to give the prime minister and his paid legacy media the opportunity to further smear us and create false propaganda against us.
00:23:07.020Like, that sense of awareness that they had, because no one ever said, Tamara never said, or Chris Barber or Tom Marazzo never said, or Danny Bulford never said, don't put anything on that building.
00:23:18.400It was that, it's the point you make about how self-aware they were and how restrained.
00:23:27.120And the other thing I need to say, because I get this now that I've been to a few events since I've back to the closest thing I can describe to a normal life after that rollercoaster ride of 2022, is the number of people that up until the Freedom Convoy trusted the legacy media.
00:23:49.240It was really them realizing the extent to which the legacy media was force-feeding them the government's line, the government's propaganda, and them seeing live streams in their Facebook friend group, or seeing a live stream on Twitter, or seeing a live stream on YouTube, and going,
00:24:17.900hmm, those people look pretty diverse ethnically, and to me, they're dancing, hugging, singing, oh, those kids on the Jumpy Castle don't seem very threatening, certainly don't look like terrorists.
00:24:33.900So it really, it was one of the most damning things for the traditional profession of journalism, and people now, on a scale that I've never seen before, question everything from the legacy media, or have just turned it off completely, and now realize they have to work very hard, and look to alternative and newer streaming and media sources,
00:25:03.140such as rebel news, such as rebel news, if they want to get any accurate sense of what's really going on in the world around them.
00:25:08.840Yeah, that was one of the things that really struck me, is how in this city that's teaming with journalists, right, like Ottawa, if you're not a bureaucrat, you're a journalist, or a politician there, that's it.
00:25:20.980And the media would not go down to the convoy and actually talk to the convoyers, but they would talk to the politicians about the convoy.
00:25:34.680And I think it was because they knew, if I actually talk to these people, it will debunk the narrative of the government, so we can't do that.
00:25:42.620And for us here at Rebel News, we saw enormous viewership growth over the convoy, and all we had to do was turn on our cell phones and show the world that which the mainstream media wouldn't come out of their cubicles to do.
00:25:58.980All they had to do was show the world the reality, and they wouldn't do it because I think it would hurt their paymaster, Justin Trudeau.
00:26:06.760Well, let me give a very vivid example of what you just said.
00:26:56.140And Rosemary Barton is the newsreader that's so excited about the dear leader, right?
00:27:01.940But the other point, though, is I get, I only respond to about a third of the legacy media requests that I get.
00:27:13.260And I did one actually with the Toronto Star, and to their credit, it wasn't too bad of a story.
00:27:20.720But what I found, and I discussed this with the journalists, because, you know, I'm 58, I've been involved in high-profile cases all my career.
00:27:29.200So I've had lots of cases that are in the media over the years.
00:27:32.980And normally when I talk to a reporter, I have, in the old days, I had no idea where they were on the issue.
00:27:39.360I had no Twitter, I could go to see what their politics were.
00:27:41.840And when I wrote, read the story, I still didn't know where they were, whether they supported my clients or supported the opposing party or supported the government that I was defending somebody against.
00:27:58.280I'll even say to the reporter, I say, look, you know, why are we even doing this?
00:28:03.060You know that if I say anything bad about the government, and you decide to, first of all, you're probably not going to put it in your story.
00:28:09.540And if you do decide to put it in your story, your editor is going to pull it out.
00:28:13.320Because your editor is going to look at you, particularly the Toronto Star, you've got two owners, they're fighting once another in court.
00:28:19.380One wants to sell off all the real estate and the printing presses and everything else and cash out.
00:28:26.740The only reason that the Toronto Star makes payroll is because they get part of the $600 million in subsidies from the federal government.
00:28:34.800So the editor is going to look at that reporter and say, you know, Mr. Wilson might be right in criticizing the government on this.
00:28:42.440But if we print this, the government might not give us the Toronto Star the check, then I'm going to have to lay you off, says to the reporter.
00:28:52.040And you're not going to be able to pay your mortgage and make your car payment.
00:29:05.620And I sense they're trying to fight back a little bit because I think they realize they've drank the poison and they've done a deal with the devil.
00:29:16.320And it's only a matter of time before I think we see them hopefully fade away or we're going to see more money go in from our tax dollars and we're going to get even more extreme propaganda.
00:29:27.660And Rosemary Barton is going to up her enthusiasm level when she talks about dear Justin, you know.
00:29:33.780You know, it's funny because they've nuked their credibility, but now they're in a position where they will not ever receive the market correction they so rightly deserve for nuking their credibility from the public who is who will not buy their product anymore or watch them because it doesn't matter.
00:29:52.840Because as long as they're saying the things that are friendly to the government, the government will continue to bail them out.
00:29:57.240So it's just this hideous feedback loop where the only people who really lose out are the Canadian public who are forced to pay for this unwatchable batch of lies.
00:30:07.220Now, I can talk about how terrible the mainstream media is forever.
00:30:11.880However, as long as they remain terrible, I will have job security for as long as I want it.
00:30:16.960But I wanted to talk to you about the Public Order Emergency Commission because the commission has examined everything insofar as they've – the evidence before them, I should say.
00:30:28.880And it sounds like they've made their decision and they are passing the decision on to the federal government to look at before everybody else, which I think is probably normal practice.
00:30:42.100I think the government usually gets a call.
00:31:03.880When we know that when the War Measures Act was replaced with the Emergencies Act,
00:31:11.240the parliamentarians of the day wanted an additional check and balance.
00:31:16.200So they added this provision that expressly directs the ruling government that invoked it to appoint a commissioner within a set number of days and for that commissioner to hold a public inquiry.
00:31:29.740And it expressly directs what the commissioner shall do.
00:31:34.040It doesn't say he can do whatever he wants.
00:31:37.000It doesn't say the prime minister's office can ask him to do whatever they think he should do.
00:31:42.160It expressly directs in section 63 sub 2 that that report shall be laid before the parliaments within 360 days of the revocation.
00:31:54.820OK, so that works out to February 18th or the 20th, rather, because 18th is a Saturday.
00:32:00.580So you bump it over to the Monday because of the Interpretation Act.
00:32:03.820So what they're going to do in contravention of the direction from parliament is they've announced that they're going to give the report secretly to the prime minister's office in the cabinet.
00:32:18.280So they'll have it two weeks on February 6th or 9th.
00:32:39.840This is not how the law works, first of all.
00:32:43.460Again, if they want to, you know, strike an inquiry into, the provincial government wants to strike an inquiry into the management of the wildfires at Fort McMurray from 10 years ago, they can say whatever they want in there, right?
00:32:57.840Because there's no statutory limitation or direction on it.
00:33:07.000The parliament has said what he shall do, and he's about to do something, along with the prime minister's office, that's contrary to what the parliament has directed.
00:33:17.240You know, I'm glad you made that distinction because this is different than a normal commission.
00:33:22.720This is, it's built as a fail-safe into the law.
00:33:26.420And I think the intention of building it as a fail-safe into the law is to make the government explain itself.
00:33:33.800And so why would you give the government an advance copy so that it can continue to make excuses for doing the thing that which it's being forced to, you know, be examined for doing?
00:33:50.500Let me be clear because this is very controversial.
00:33:52.540If I ever had a court case and the judge, I found out that the judge gave the opposing party a copy of the decision two weeks before I got it, the first thing that would come to my mind is, did they pressure the judge to change something in the decision?
00:34:30.680And so it's really unfortunate that this has come to be.
00:34:35.140It's still open for the commissioner to follow the law and to only provide it to Canadians and the parliament and the cabinet and the prime minister all at the same time.
00:34:46.000And I guess we're going to see what's going to happen.
00:34:48.940Now, I was going to say there's an additional problem with all of this.
00:34:52.960The legal opinion that the government relied on to invoke the Emergencies Act, so their justification for the act, which we are examining with the Public Order Emergency Commission itself, that is to remain secret.
00:35:09.200So this exercise in transparency, the one most important part of it all, will not be on the table for everybody else to see.
00:35:18.920Yeah, and so, you know, when you look at a number of the parties, the police committee, Brenda Luckey, the commissioner of the RCMP, the inspectors and the superintendent of the OPP, police chiefs, political officials, government officials, and then the Freedom Convoy themselves.
00:35:41.620Because of the unique nature of an inquiry, we all opted, at the instruction of our clients, to waive privilege.
00:35:52.180I could have sat there when I was subpoenaed to testify.
00:35:54.780And by the way, that's why I was there.
00:36:00.120I would have been arrested had I not gone.
00:36:02.120Is everybody realized what was so important here, because no, there's no criminal sanction or anything coming out of this, is that everybody be transparent as possible.
00:36:14.880So all the parties instructed their counsel and their witnesses to where they could decline to answer a question on the basis of solicitor-client privilege, to waive that and get the truth out.
00:36:27.640Except for one party, the federal government, Justice Minister Lamenti.
00:36:38.060The Prime Minister's office last summer had said that he was going to testify, that they were going to waive cabinet privilege, parliamentary privilege, all these other privileges.
00:36:49.200They redacted things left, right, and center.
00:36:51.140You remember, Sheila, we had endless battles, motions.
00:36:54.360It was the reason Brendan Miller got removed from the hearing room one day, is that we kept making these motions on redactions that were clearly not proper redactions by the federal government.
00:37:04.420And the Justice for Law wouldn't rule.
00:37:09.380I don't want to interrupt you, but I saw this firsthand, because I was sitting right behind the lawyers in the commission room, and as a witness was testifying, you guys would get a document dump from that witness.
00:37:22.340So you couldn't, you didn't even have time to read the documents to examine the witness who was on the stand.
00:37:29.680And so what documents you did get were late, like as the witness was testifying, or they were excessively redacted with redactions that once you appealed them were revealed to be, you know, relevant to the case and not something they should have redacted.
00:37:45.580I watched this firsthand in the room happen to you, and I thought it was strange that none of the other journalists would walk across out of the media room to see what was actually happening over in the commission room.
00:37:55.860But again, there's that credibility problem.
00:37:59.400Yeah, and the clearest example of what you say, it happened all the time.
00:38:03.480And that's the other thing, like, you know, we were so exhausted.
00:38:06.280We were working day and night, seven days a week.
00:38:10.000We took Friday nights off to blow off some steam and build the team.
00:38:13.700But it was because we were constantly, the federal government was supposed to disclose its documents in July.
00:38:20.480And we were receiving massive amounts of documents from the federal government, as well as other parties.
00:38:26.480But the biggest culprit was the federal government.
00:38:28.700As the hearing was underway, each week, a couple times a week, we'd get two or five or ten or thousand documents thrown at us.
00:38:38.180All four lawyers, we would be in our working room until one, two in the morning, going through these documents, in addition to all the other prep we were doing for the next day's witness, the witness after that, after that, prepping our witnesses, everything else.
00:38:51.740So, but the best example of this, this game that the federal government was playing, who was the last witness, the prime minister, Justin Trudeau.
00:39:02.760He took the stand and was sworn in at 9.30.
00:39:06.760We received documents to council table by email at 10.30 while he was still on the stand and on redactions.
00:39:17.400And one of them was remarkable because they had put up handwritten notes from, it was one of the cabinet ministers, and they had blacked out the middle part of the sentence.
00:39:28.300And it was communications they were having with the White House down in Washington, D.C.
00:39:32.840And the way the sentence read with the blackout was that Washington was super concerned about what was going on with the truckers in downtown Ottawa.
00:39:40.580Once you pulled the redaction out, the sentence was completely different, and it was them saying, and we have tow trucks available for you.
00:39:49.200It was Washington offering tow trucks.
00:39:51.660You know, so the only reason they redacted that was so that they didn't look bad and to create a negative narrative towards the truckers.
00:39:58.900So we received that at 10.30, and fortunately, Rob Kettridge with the Justice Centre was able to redo his cross and actually put that to the prime minister about two hours later when we were up.
00:40:13.480So it was, and that's when, you know, the early days of the inquiry, we really felt that it was a credible process and that there was lack of bias, and it was meant to be a transparent process.
00:40:29.100But as time went on and more and more federal, we got into the federal witnesses, and we saw the games the federal government was playing, we followed the rules and made proper motions in writing, supported by evidence and affidavits, and we wouldn't get rulings on them.
00:40:44.560And it was like, okay, wait a minute here, something's going on.
00:40:48.100So it was, it was, it started to, a dark cloud moved over the hearing process the further it went along.
00:40:55.620Now, what sort of recourse, if any, do you have to this early release of these documents, should it happen, to the feds before everybody else sees them?
00:41:08.640Is there any sort of pushback that you can do on that, or is it just, it is what it is?
00:41:18.160We made a formal demand that it not occur, and that we get a response from the commission that they're not going to do it, and they ignored that, like, they ignored many things we asked of them in writing properly.
00:41:31.080We put it in our written submissions, our comprehensive written submissions that were filed a few weeks after, along with all the other parties.
00:41:38.140Some other parties also raised the concern, and we've heard silence from the commission on it.
00:41:43.220We did consider bringing a judicial review application to the court, but the time's limited for that.
00:41:51.680There's not an endless supply of legal donations to fund all of these different things.
00:41:58.580There's still, the truckers and the trucker leadership are still facing huge mountains of legal trouble with the class action lawsuit,
00:42:06.120that they're facing, the $300 million one, with outstanding criminal charges and trials coming up this year that they need to fund legal representation for.
00:42:16.640So we have to be conservative as to where we expend our limited legal resources, and, you know, it's widely known now that this is going on,
00:42:30.340and there's a role for the opposition political parties to say something about this, and it's really disappointing that so far they've been largely silent about it.
00:42:40.660Just doesn't leave a good feel about the level of integrity that exists in the institutions in Ottawa at all.
00:42:47.080Now, tell us, what sort of consequences are there, if any, for the government if it is determined that the Emergencies Act was found to be illegally or improperly invoked on peaceful protesters in the nation's capital?
00:43:05.300Is it going to be just another slap on the wrist, a la $300 ethics violation for Justin Trudeau again?
00:43:11.420Or, you know, is it just maybe a public relations scandal that the mainstream media will just gloss right over?
00:43:19.620What will come of this if it is found to be illegally invoked?
00:43:27.200The first is, with respect to the inquiry report, I think the expectation of the parliamentarians that drafted that act when the Emergencies Act was developed and became Law of Canada was that if it turned out the inquiry concluded that there wasn't proper justification for the invocation,
00:43:49.800I think the expectations of the parliamentarians of the parliamentarians of the day was that we would have ethical standards and that our politicians and elected officials would have ethical standards and perhaps the prime minister might resign or cabinet ministers resign or something in shame for them not handling it properly.
00:44:10.460Um, I just don't think this government's going to do that, I mean, it's just stunning the extent to which when I talk to retired cabinet ministers and politicians from various stripes, various political backgrounds, they're all astounded.
00:44:26.460You know, Premier Peckford is just like, if he had a cabinet minister that did a quarter of any one of the thing that the Trudeau cabinet ministers have done, he would have demanded their immediate resignation.
00:44:38.760But he said, I wouldn't have needed to because they would have come to me with it in hand before I called them, you know, and the nostalgia of the past, right, where politicians actually had some integrity.
00:44:50.220So I don't think that's going to happen.
00:44:51.480But there's another side to this, uh, the, the justice center, a number of other groups, um, initiated, uh, uh, judicial reviews right after the proclamation of the emergencies act where they've gone to federal court and it's currently before the federal court.
00:45:08.300And they've said, look, the federal government did not meet the requirements for invocation.
00:45:13.120So the court can issue a declaration of invalidity or other technical legal rulings that will declare the action of the federal government to invoke the emergencies act to have been unlawful.
00:45:26.480If that's the case, then that potentially creates an opportunity for those who were harmed by the invocation of the emergencies act.
00:45:34.980And here I'm thinking of the many people I represent, my clients who had their bank accounts frozen and received other harms and from the economic measures and still are being deprived banking and other merchant services that the rest of us enjoy to bring claims against them and provincially the government as well.
00:45:54.500So there could be some legal ramifications.
00:45:56.100My best guess as to what the Rouleau report is going to say is, um, is it's going to be right up the middle.
00:46:05.260It's not going to be definitive either way.
00:46:07.580It's going to talk about the things that, um, people who didn't think the emergencies act was properly required, such as the head of intelligence for the OPP who said there was no evidence of insurrection of terrorist activity of ideologically motivated extremists, all of the criteria.
00:46:24.000And all the other police officials, and then they're going to say, but the prime minister and his cabinet kind of thought that they had met the test and, you know, we didn't really see the legal opinion.
00:46:39.580My concern is that at the end of the day, the liberals still have the power to rewrite this law and to add amendments to it, to make it easier to invoke next time somebody embarrasses a foppish idiot that we call a prime minister in the nation's capital.
00:46:56.640Um, that's my concern is that they are going to take what came out of the public order emergencies commission and create a roadmap for an easier invocation of the emergencies act going forward.
00:47:09.880Um, and I think that should be concerning to all Canadians if that's the route the liberals are going to try to take.
00:47:16.140Well, and I don't even think they need to amend the act.
00:47:18.400If there's no consequence to invoking it for jumpy castles and extremely restrained, peaceful, law-abiding Canadians, you know, as some people commentated in some of the police and other officials, the truckers, and we've talked about this in this interview, they were self-regulating.
00:47:39.680They were feeding the homeless, right?
00:47:41.920They were having dance parties, um, uh, without people, without fights.
00:47:47.420Uh, that normally happens in a bar or a party environment occasionally, you know?
00:47:53.160So they, if they get away with this politically, they will know going forward that if they encounter dissent or political opposition from Canadians standing up, my fear is they'll just say, wow, that freezing of the bank account things worked really well.
00:48:15.580Uh, the foundations, the foundational principles and beliefs of what I've always thought, and to be a Canadian, have just been pulverized by this liberal regime.
00:48:28.240They're a cabal as far as I'm concerned.
00:48:30.280They're no different than an organized crime ring.
00:48:32.180I know that's a provocative comment, but look at the evidence.
00:48:34.920Look at how they spend our money, uh, and, and the lack of accountability and so on.
00:48:40.200So, uh, you know, the, the, the, the optimistic thing with all that doom and gloom is this so many, the, so many people I met in Ottawa and since, and I bet you had this experience as well.
00:48:53.760I haven't asked you this, but we'll see is they tell me they were never politically active ever, you know, they never, maybe never voted, never paid attention to political parties, never did any of that stuff.
00:49:05.100And they now realize so many Canadians realize that didn't before that if they want to control the future of this country and what it looks like for them and their children and their neighbors and their grandkids and their communities and their economy, they need to become politically involved.
00:49:20.380So maybe that's the positive here is I think there's a big awakening that's occurred in Canada, uh, that, that engaging in, in, in politics and being involved in, in what's happening in government is really important and has a huge impact on the life that you will lead and your children will lead.
00:49:39.660I've seen that from people too, that, um, even they're realizing that even if politics, if you don't care about politics, politics will come to care about you.
00:49:48.120So you better get involved and I, and I think that, um, as Ezra put in his speech to the truckers, when he was there, that it really doesn't matter what comes of all of this because the truckers already won by being there because the act of going to Ottawa and standing up to Justin Trudeau, not only did it expose Justin Trudeau as the fragile ego driven idiot that we all know him to be, but he showed it to the world.
00:50:16.980Finally, the world was looking at them and looking at him and looking at him and the truckers exposed him.
00:50:21.820He was no longer the cool guy with the cool socks, but more importantly, it shook off this mind virus that Canadians were suffering from that.
00:50:32.160A lot of people knew that restrictions weren't working.
00:50:36.600It's crazy for the government to tell you to keep people out of your home for Christmas.
00:50:41.460And it's crazy to tell people that you can't get on a plane or a train if you haven't taken this medicine that you don't want to take.
00:50:48.500And it's crazy to tell people that you can't go to job, to your job, unless you get this medicine that you don't want to take that as it turns out, isn't all that effective.
00:50:56.160Anyway, it was crazy, but media was telling people to shut up.
00:51:01.080And if you felt differently, you were the crazy one.
00:51:04.360But as the truckers rolled across this country and people poured out to those overpasses and along the roads, and it didn't matter if they had voted NDP or liberal or whatever.
00:51:12.980When they turned up outside on those roads and waved to those truckers and said, thank you, truckers, it shook off that fog and that mind virus that a lot of Canadians were suffering from.
00:51:25.900It ended the gaslighting for a lot of people.
00:51:28.500It helped them realize, no, I'm not crazy.
00:52:07.640What the truckers did and all the Canadians who came out to support them on the highways and the overpasses and all the Canadians who went downtown to support the truckers and be there in protest and solidarity with them is they gave one another hope and they gave millions of Canadians hope.
00:52:25.840And as it turned out, they gave millions of people around the world who are also under that same psychological nightmare, hope.
00:52:37.280Keith, I think that's a great place to leave this interview.
00:52:42.520Like I say, if the truckers have done nothing else, they gave not just Canadians hope, but they became a symbol of resistance to government tyranny all over the world.
00:52:51.240I want to thank you so much for your participation in that, but also your advocacy for truckers and normal people during these dark and terrible times.
00:53:00.240You're representing people who are up against the full force of the government.
00:53:28.460I'll be happy to come back on and share with you what's in the report and any other events that might occur between now and then or thereafter.
00:53:45.120As always, unceremoniously read by me up after the break.
00:53:56.580Well, friends, this brings us to the portion of the show where we invite your viewer feedback.
00:54:03.900Unlike the mainstream media, we actually care about what you think about the work that we're doing here at Rebel News and the stories that we cover and the people that we speak to.
00:54:11.160Now, today's letters come by way of a story I did yesterday when I was guest hosting for Ezra.
00:54:17.960I sat down and I spoke with our Rebel News Pacific Northwest-based journalist, Katie Davis Court.
00:54:33.820They stole her cell phone and all of her footage.
00:54:35.840Well, this time she went out to cover an Antifa march in Seattle and she had four incredible professional security guards standing around her thanks to your generous crowdfunded donations to journalistdefensefund.com.
00:54:51.020And it heartens me to know that you care about the safety of our journalists as much as we do here at Rebel News.
00:54:56.560And because of those security guards, Katie was actually able to talk to Antifa and ask them questions.
00:55:02.580It was quite astounding to see a sneak peek into their mind.
00:55:06.020Now, Antifa is out on the march because they are protesting in solidarity with people who are protesting the police-involved killing of Tyree Nichols, a black man who was allegedly killed by five black police officers.
00:55:24.100And a sixth police officers and a sixth police officer has so far been relieved of duties.
00:55:28.500I think that, as though it matters, I'm not sure it does, but that sixth police officer, he's white.
00:55:34.840Anyway, B3AR007 says, it literally has nothing to do with this poor man's life.
00:55:45.920They're just looking for any reason to be domestic terrorists.
00:55:50.620Antifa, they need a catalyst to be out on the street causing mayhem, but they don't really actually believe so much in the cause that they are protesting against.
00:56:03.760I mean, how does, you know, burning down a neighborhood or rioting or smashing windows do anything to protest police violence?
00:56:14.620In fact, it probably invites police violence.
00:56:17.180They just need a reason to be out there causing mayhem and anarchy.
00:56:20.540But that's their only ideology, really, anarchy, lawlessness.
00:56:24.740Rolf Muller, 54, says, I think they should make a law that it is forbidden to cover the face in protests.
00:56:30.880They do this stuff because they're hidden.
00:56:38.880You know, it's funny, kind of unrelated, but it's also funny, too, is that during the pandemic, I think it was Edmonton or maybe Calgary police,
00:56:47.960they put out a police sketch of someone who had committed a robbery and he was wearing like a COVID mask.
00:56:54.780And it was ridiculous because how is anybody supposed to ID that guy?
00:56:59.920He looks like every other man during the time of COVID.
00:57:59.520But that's why we have courts and that's why we have open courts so people can see the evidence as it's entered into evidence for themselves and that the whole process is transparent.
00:58:34.920Thank you to Olivia behind the board in HQ in Toronto for working so hard to put the show together.
00:58:41.840And everybody who works behind the scenes to make sure the show is there when you want to click on it and watch it.
00:58:46.420And special thanks to Keith Wilson, trucker lawyer, for that extended long-form interview where I got to pick his brain a little bit and sort of dig a little deeper into the things that the mainstream media sort of just gives a shallow acknowledgement of.