Juno News - Convoy organizer blows off legacy media after Emergencies Act testimony

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show. This is The Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by TrueNord.

00:00:13.520 Hello everyone and welcome to another exciting edition of Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.

00:00:20.280 I hope it's exciting anyway. It is Wednesday, November 2nd, 2022.

00:00:24.940 Hope you are all having a wonderful day wherever it is just after 6.46 here in Ottawa where I am coming to you live from just a couple of blocks away from Library and Archives Canada where the Public Order Emergency Commission hearings have been taking place.

00:00:41.720 And it's funny because the whole point of this commission is looking into Justin Trudeau's invocation of the Emergencies Act.

00:00:48.220 And in that little pre-roll intro, if you're watching the program live, you'll see a lot of footage from our coverage and specifically from my coverage at a couple of points of the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa.

00:00:58.960 And whenever I see it, I get chills.

00:01:01.060 And I don't mean that in an emotional way.

00:01:02.880 I mean, I actually get like post-traumatic freezing from just remembering how bloody cold it was in downtown Ottawa when we were out there.

00:01:10.160 And you can just see the condensation coming whenever I'm talking to someone or doing an interview.

00:01:15.220 But this is what we do because we love you and believe in the work that we're doing.

00:01:18.700 And it is worth withstanding the minus bajillion degree cold to do it.

00:01:22.720 And that's been one of the themes that's come up, I should say, from some of the convoy organizers who have been testifying.

00:01:29.440 They've been talking at length about the love that they felt, the unity they felt, the peacefulness they felt,

00:01:36.620 And how all of that really triumphed over their frustrations with vaccine mandates, their difficulties with the cold and all of these other hurdles and adversity things that were standing in their way.

00:01:49.540 And we heard from more participants of the convoy today, I don't want to say organizers, because that term doesn't actually fully apply to what was happening.

00:01:59.820 Keith Wilson, who is a convoy lawyer, spoke this morning.

00:02:02.940 Now, I've interviewed Keith and spoken to him on a number of occasions.

00:02:06.620 he was planning, as I understood it, to be representing convoy organizers in this commission

00:02:13.660 process that's going on right now. And there was a change that took place at some point,

00:02:18.820 and he kind of hinted at it when I had him on my show a few weeks back, just before the commission

00:02:23.340 hearing started, where all of a sudden he's now a witness. Because again, he was in the thick of

00:02:27.900 this. He was on the front lines alongside Tamara Leach, alongside Chris Barber, alongside a lot of

00:02:33.140 these other players talking to police he was in on the negotiations with the city of ottawa

00:02:37.660 so he is as much a participant as anyone else and he offered a fair bit to that effect as a witness

00:02:44.800 after keith wilson tom marazzo spoke and again tom marazzo a guy i've had on the show on a number

00:02:51.060 of occasions a veteran of the canadian armed forces and i just realized a moment ago that my

00:02:57.420 poppy that i was wearing so dutifully and diligently all day i think fell off in the last

00:03:02.500 20 minutes as I was getting to my hotel room. So I'm going to put on my backup poppy once we're

00:03:07.720 playing a video clip here in a couple of moments. So don't be alarmed at the continuity error if I

00:03:13.020 don't have one one moment and I do the next. But I'll get to Tom Marazzo in a second. And then

00:03:17.760 later on, Pat King came. Now, Pat King is a very interesting figure. And I say interesting in the

00:03:25.780 course of understanding the convoy, the media's response to the convoy, and also understanding

00:03:31.480 in general the landscape of alternative media in Canada this has been the first time Pat King has

00:03:37.920 been able to speak since the convoy because he spent a lot of time behind bars and I've made

00:03:43.040 no bones about it I've made no secret about it I am not a Pat King fan by any stretch but I felt

00:03:48.760 that what happened to him at the hands of the state at the hands of the crown was unconscionable

00:03:53.280 whatever unpleasant comments he's made in the past I do not feel that he was being accorded due

00:03:59.340 process and it is still not exactly clear what he did that warranted his imprisonment. Now he'll

00:04:05.140 have to answer for those charges that's not what he was doing today but he has very similar to

00:04:10.660 Tamara Leach bail conditions that preclude him from speaking and you know as will become very

00:04:16.440 evident in this show in particular when witnesses go in and come out of the hearing room they are

00:04:22.000 oftentimes subjected to what are called scrums in Canadian political parlance and that's an

00:04:27.240 opportunity for a gaggle of reporters to get around and they just all yell and bark questions

00:04:31.840 at you and maybe you take one maybe you take 20 uh maybe you do what keith wilson did today and

00:04:36.220 just like keep taking questions for like 40 minutes and packing by a couple of comments

00:04:41.960 that i got from people that spoke to him wanted to speak but couldn't because he didn't want to

00:04:46.700 be arrested for violating or allegedly violating his bail conditions so he walked right by a couple

00:04:53.960 of people shouted out questions. He didn't stop. He didn't answer. His lawyer turned around and I

00:04:57.820 said no comment or no questions, whatever it was. Now, Tom Marazzo is in a bit of a different boat

00:05:03.000 here. Tom Marazzo is allowed to do interviews. He's done many. He's done alternative media. He's

00:05:07.740 done my show. He's done Rebel. In fact, we spoke to him today. Tom Marazzo did not want to scrum

00:05:14.660 with mainstream media. Take a look. Mr. Marazzo, can we ask you a couple of questions?

00:05:21.680 You guys have been lying for three years.

00:05:23.740 I don't want to talk to you.

00:05:30.360 Sorry, it's eight seconds.

00:05:32.900 I feel like we can play it probably five or six more times and still enjoy it.

00:05:37.000 But let's at least, let's just do one more here.

00:05:41.320 Mr. Marasso, can we ask you a couple of questions?

00:05:44.220 You guys have been lying for three years.

00:05:46.120 I don't want to talk to you.

00:05:51.120 there we have it him saying you guys have been lying for three years I don't want to talk to

00:06:01.980 you and there was a little I don't know if it was I don't want to talk to you right now

00:06:04.700 or why would I want to talk to you but the key part that you guys have been lying for three years

00:06:09.320 not talking and then what happened we he goes around the corner and if you if you don't know

00:06:14.520 the layout of the building you're not missing much but he goes around that corner you see my

00:06:18.440 camera follows him and then he proceeds to stop like eight feet later and take like five questions

00:06:25.580 from uh from William Diaz at Rebel and then takes a couple of questions for me which we'll play

00:06:32.140 shortly and then the part that you don't see on there is one of those guys that was shouting at

00:06:36.780 him when he came down the first way uh shouts out you know a question and Tom arouses who are

00:06:42.160 who are you with and the guy says I'm a reporter with uh Le Devoir and Tom just like throws up his

00:06:47.080 hand and turns out and walks away. So Tom Marazzo did what many of the Freedom Convoy participants

00:06:52.720 and organizers did back in January, February. He said, I'm not talking to legacy media.

00:06:58.220 And he said specifically to them, you guys have been lying for three years. I'm not going to talk

00:07:03.820 to you. Now, as far as media strategy goes, you can decide for yourself whether this is the right

00:07:09.040 course of action or the wrong course of action. What ended up happening, and I haven't been doing

00:07:13.300 a lot of news scanning because I was literally just until moments before I had to leave to come

00:07:18.300 do this show in the Public Order Emergency Commission hearing room. So I haven't looked

00:07:22.740 at a lot of news coverage, but they were filming his interview with Rebel and his interview with

00:07:29.580 me. So if they want to run clips of Tom Marazzo, they'll have to be running clips from Rebels and

00:07:35.660 my questions to Tom Marazzo, which I found a bit interesting. And one of the reporters who I get

00:07:41.980 along with from one of the legacy media outlets when Pat King was coming out, said, I don't know

00:07:45.920 if he'll talk to us. Maybe you'll have better luck again. So I didn't get better luck, though. I

00:07:49.900 wasn't able to get Pat King to stop. I've never actually met the guy before. But all of this is

00:07:56.280 to say that Tom Marazzo drew a line in the sand. He made a choice. He said, I'm not going to talk

00:08:01.240 to media that he says have been lying. And he brushed it off. And it was interesting because

00:08:07.360 this was a bit of a contentious point. If you talk to some of the convoy organizers, Benjamin

00:08:11.400 Dictor, who is going to be testifying tomorrow, had a very similar line. He did that press

00:08:17.880 conference infamously on the first weekend of the convoy. Rupa Subramanya was there. I was there.

00:08:23.440 I don't know if Rebel was there. Kian Bextie of Counter Signal was there. The National Telegraph

00:08:29.060 was there. Epoch Times was there. CTV, Global, Toronto Star, they weren't there. CBC, they weren't

00:08:35.400 there. CPAC, they weren't there. And they said, why would they give these people access when

00:08:41.180 they're not going to represent and fairly portray the convoy? That was their approach. That was

00:08:45.660 their attitude. Now, there's a more, I guess, romantic idea that, well, you know, if you invite

00:08:53.220 them in and you let them hear you, maybe you'll be able to win them over. But a lot of people just

00:08:57.880 see them as belligerents in a war and not ones that are all that interested in fairly portraying

00:09:03.080 the convoy thing and I haven't talked to Tom Arauzo for too long after his testimony today but

00:09:07.700 it may be that his position is look I said a lot of what I want to say on the stand under oath

00:09:12.980 I'll talk to a couple of people that I trust to be fair with me why would I bother what benefit

00:09:19.480 is it to me to talk to Radio Canada to talk to Le Devoir to talk to Canadian Press or whoever else

00:09:25.080 it was that was in that scrum wanting to talk to him so I'm going to move on in a moment but just

00:09:30.000 because it is so delightful to watch. There's only eight seconds. Here is again Tom Marazzo's

00:09:34.620 grand exit down the hallway after he testified for a few hours on the stand in Ottawa.

00:09:41.700 Mr. Marazzo, can we ask you a couple questions? You guys have been lying for three years.

00:09:48.120 There you have it. And if you want to keep watching it over and over again, like maybe

00:09:56.040 you make it into your ringtone or something when the media calls do. It is on my Twitter and you

00:10:00.880 can just watch it in all of its glory there. Now I will say so I spoke to Tom Marazzo afterwards

00:10:06.600 about something that didn't really come up as directly in his testimony but I felt it was an

00:10:11.200 important point because a lot has been made by protesters throughout these committee hearings

00:10:17.060 or commission hearings about the idea that the federal government wanted to vilify. We spoke

00:10:22.000 yesterday on the show about how the federal government was more interested in the narrative

00:10:26.360 than it was in any purported public safety crisis or national security threat that the convoy was

00:10:34.640 posing and I think that's relevant here because the federal government had a choice and even up

00:10:40.780 until the moments the moments leading up to when the emergencies act was decided they had an

00:10:46.560 opportunity to say we can go with negotiation or we can go with vilification demonization calling

00:10:54.580 in the police and all of that and they chose door number two they were completely uninterested

00:10:59.080 in discussion they were completely uninterested in negotiation but if you want to look at this

00:11:03.960 through the parallel universe in which Justin Trudeau comes out and says yes truckers tell me

00:11:10.160 what's your problem or they send Marco Mandicino or Christopher Freeland or someone else out that

00:11:14.780 parallel universe what does that actually look like do the convoy organizers say okay we've been

00:11:19.140 heard let's go home and I asked Tom about that and it's a hypothetical so you have to take it

00:11:23.880 with a grain of salt but a lot has been made of this idea of not getting a meeting what would it

00:11:29.920 have meant if they did get a meeting these were the questions I asked him when he wasn't speaking

00:11:34.460 to legacy media if Justin Trudeau or representatives of the federal government had met with you what

00:11:41.680 would your response have been or those of your colleagues I would have clearly articulated why

00:11:46.820 these mandates we believe were unjustified immoral illegal and that Canadians had spoken

00:11:54.080 and sent us to Ottawa to deliver that message and come up with a way to remove the mandates

00:12:02.320 and then plot a way forward if they heard that message but didn't change policy would that be

00:12:10.000 enough for the protests to have said mission accomplished and go home in your view no the

00:12:14.320 objective was to get rid of all federal mandates and leadership starts at the top so if justin

00:12:19.360 trudeau had decided to do the right thing the right moral thing uh and to listen to the the

00:12:25.520 wishes of canadians then maybe the premiers would have found their moral courage as well

00:12:31.760 and started listening to people in this country because two and a half or two years prior to the

00:12:38.320 convoy canadians were protesting all over this country and not one single politician heard those

00:12:43.680 concerns that was tom marazzo one of the uh it's funny he doesn't like the term organizer he when

00:12:52.240 i spoke to him for the first time uh on air i think it was like a week or two weeks ago or two

00:12:56.880 weeks after the the convoy wrapped up and he had said he just wanted to be a volunteer and then the

00:13:01.200 more i talked to people the more i learned how much of an integral he played in some of the

00:13:06.480 logistical operations some of the communications now again there was a bit of friction around that

00:13:12.480 and so on but there he is saying yeah i mean obviously the meeting alone wouldn't have meant

00:13:17.840 that we would all just pick up and go home but he said they wanted leadership and they wanted

00:13:23.280 someone to hear them out and his point i actually take as quite significant when he says that there

00:13:30.000 was no politician in canada willing to speak up and people are going to say oh but what about

00:13:34.800 randy hillier what about maxime bernier what about roman babber and sure you might find isolated

00:13:39.840 examples but no one in a mainstream political party no one in government and as we talked

00:13:46.400 about yesterday whether you're talking about liberals conservatives new democrats it didn't

00:13:51.280 really seem to matter who was in power in a province they all went generally speaking down

00:13:56.480 that same road as far as covid response so political leadership would be important and

00:14:02.000 And again, I mean, this has been one of the things that's come up a bunch of times.

00:14:05.160 Oh, well, you know, why do you care about mask?

00:14:07.200 I mean, mask mandates are provincial and Justin Trudeau is in Ottawa.

00:14:10.240 And, you know, you guys are so stupid.

00:14:11.700 You don't know how government works.

00:14:13.040 And Tom's saying that, listen, you know, a lot of provinces take their tone or take their leadership and their marching orders, not directly, but indirectly from the cues that the federal government is putting out.

00:14:24.520 And I mean, you could debate how true that is.

00:14:27.400 You know, I think certainly Doug Ford is taking a lot of cues from Justin Trudeau lately.

00:14:31.700 but take from that what you will and it's a bit of a different discussion. But the whole point is

00:14:36.940 is that this entire protest was really coming down to those two narratives. The one that was

00:14:42.020 being peddled by the media that Tom Marazzo wouldn't speak to this afternoon in the hallway

00:14:47.500 of Library and Archives Canada and the story that people felt who were there to see it for

00:14:53.740 themselves. And I want to play a clip that I found quite interesting from Keith Wilson's testimony

00:14:59.440 today and I can't remember offhand because I took the clip in earlier on and that was like I don't

00:15:05.680 know a bajillion hours ago now but he was being cross-examined by by someone it doesn't really

00:15:10.620 matter who and he tells a story that I found was very revealing about the grassroots nature

00:15:17.800 of this and the widespread national support that the convoy got even if the Ottawa bubble of

00:15:24.840 journalists and politicians were against them and it was a story about someone that wanted to do the

00:15:30.120 most fundamental thing which was donate fuel to the convoy uh but who was paying for all of that

00:15:35.960 fuel the big trucks uh at coventry i know there's we put into in it well you did in your uh in your

00:15:43.960 action with the marieva injunction uh there's details on that in the affidavits uh but i also

00:15:50.120 know that i was told by a businessman who wanted to donate fuel that he had contact or had his

00:16:00.700 office contact three different fuel suppliers in the bulk suppliers and he wanted them he wanted

00:16:10.400 to pay for a shipment of fuel from each of them they declined because they said the best they

00:16:16.140 could do was put him on a waiting list. They had so many people phoning from across the country to

00:16:22.320 pay for fuel to be delivered downtown that they actually didn't want his money and they said all

00:16:28.240 they could do is put him on a waiting list. That was the the lawyer was Paul Champ who is

00:16:34.080 representing the Coalition of Ottawa Residents and Businesses and I've got a Paul Champ story

00:16:39.400 to tell you a little bit later on about Pat King and all that and by the way just we didn't have

00:16:45.660 a guest today because I was doing some interviews and had a bunch of clips so if you have any

00:16:49.200 questions about the proceedings that you want me to answer about what's been happening or what's

00:16:54.040 coming up do let me know in the comment section I don't know how many I'll get to but if you have

00:16:58.400 any questions as they come up and you are curious and want some more details let us know and we will

00:17:04.360 try to get to a handful of those but what Keith Wilson is saying there is that you know there was

00:17:08.420 a guy who wanted to donate fuel and he wanted to go to the three major fuel distribution companies

00:17:12.620 in the area and say I'll order you know I'll pay for an order from each of them and their answer

00:17:17.700 is get in line because everyone else from all over the country wants to pay for these things too

00:17:22.080 which is quite significant and there was a line I don't have a clip of it but there was a line

00:17:27.300 that Keith Wilson gave in his testimony today where he was quoting Tamara Leach and it was

00:17:33.200 quite a moving line and he said that Tamara Leach understood that the money was a symbol

00:17:39.300 The money was not the cause of the convoy.

00:17:42.160 The money was not the fuel of the convoy.

00:17:44.040 The money was not the source of the convoy's power.

00:17:46.760 The money was a symbol and was a symptom, to use a not as nice a term, but it was a

00:17:52.960 symptom of the support that the convoy had, and it was a reflection of the support the

00:17:58.500 convoy had.

00:18:00.040 And I think that's quite exceptional.

00:18:02.200 and still to this day there has been such a tremendous lack of clarity surrounding this

00:18:08.780 question of when this became an illegal protest we hear the political rhetoric of this oh it was

00:18:14.980 an illegal blockade an unlawful protest an unlawful assembly there are things that exist in law that

00:18:21.460 actually qualify something as an unlawful assembly and no one has so far tabled any evidence of when

00:18:27.800 or how that came to be for the convoy protest until the government started handing or the

00:18:33.240 police started handing out those flyers saying get out of here or we're going to arrest you

00:18:36.940 no one said keith wilson testified and other convoy participants have testified yes this is

00:18:43.340 illegal you cannot be here and in fact police were the ones saying yeah you can park here when those

00:18:48.820 early trucks started arriving and this was a question that keith wilson raised in his testimony

00:18:53.460 again today and still didn't really get an answer. You note in the second bolded paragraphs that the

00:19:01.340 the intention is not to reimburse those for those committing unlawful acts or criminal acts and you

00:19:09.240 say the convoy has been clear it only supports peaceful assembly. At this point in time I take

00:19:17.720 you were aware that uh there were some officials that are were suggesting that some of the conduct

00:19:25.240 going on was unlawful um yeah and i've heard that a lot and uh what i've always struggled with is

00:19:34.040 at what point in time did those officials believe it became an unlawful assembly and on what basis

00:19:40.600 because it just seemed to be a terminology that started to morph and become adopted with no

00:19:46.280 particular triggering event or explanation as to what that individual or official thought

00:19:52.000 constituted an unlawful assembly? Not that linguistic precision is all that much a thing

00:19:59.500 lately. Just ask anyone what like a woman is and you'll find out. But I mean, up is down and down

00:20:03.820 is up and left is right and all of that. But his point, I think, is an incredibly important one.

00:20:08.120 When was this an unlawful assembly? Were police telling people, hey, you have to go home, you can't

00:20:13.180 be here. And there was one point, I think it was when the commissioner himself was asking Keith

00:20:18.820 Wilson some questions at the end of cross-examination and re-examination and all of that,

00:20:24.120 and he had asked a question along the lines of, you know, did you ever ask police if it was an

00:20:28.920 unlawful assembly? And Keith said no, and he said, did they ever ask you? No, sorry, I'm mixing up

00:20:34.060 sections. That was another point where someone was asking Keith, and I can't remember who it was at

00:20:39.680 this point uh you know if if this ever really came up and the answer was that he he didn't have it

00:20:45.180 the part that i'm thinking of right now that i was mixing it up with i think is also important

00:20:49.640 which is whether there was ever a discussion about an alternative protest zone and this is

00:20:56.300 interesting because the commissioner asked keith wilson about this at the end of wilson's testimony

00:21:01.780 and he said was there ever an opportunity that you understood where protesters could go even with

00:21:07.900 the emergencies act in place and they could protest there not with their trucks but but as

00:21:11.460 pedestrians and Keith said that was never offered and then the commissioner had asked him did you

00:21:15.760 ever ask and Keith said no but this one I find to be very unique because the commissioner has

00:21:21.640 asked this of a couple of people now he's asked it of police he's asked it of other convoy witnesses

00:21:26.740 and it's clear he's trying to get at something here which really deals with the nuances of it

00:21:33.060 because remember the emergencies act says it has to be subject to the charter the charter includes

00:21:39.040 the right to freedom of expression it includes the right to freedom of assembly trucks may not

00:21:44.140 have charter rights but people do so when police were all of a sudden removing people from city

00:21:50.020 sidewalks from areas where people who didn't even own trucks were assembling that raises the

00:21:56.820 question of why were they not offered an alternative area where they could go and continue their

00:22:01.620 protest and i keith wilson did he's like a machine he did like a 40 minute scrum after he had been

00:22:07.460 testifying for a good three hours and that was one of the things that i asked him about and

00:22:12.580 to get his thoughts on that and uh here here's that uh brief exchange

00:22:16.340 at the end of your testimony across examination today about whether police had offered any zone

00:22:25.160 to protest in and he's asked this of a couple of other witnesses as well where do you think that

00:22:29.700 question is coming from well I mean it's it's it's it's an important question from the commissioner

00:22:35.220 because it illustrates one of the ways in this in which this could be de-escalate de-escalated and

00:22:42.600 managed and I believe it's becoming more and more clear from the evidence that that's not what the

00:22:49.020 prime minister was interested in he was interested in escalation he was interested in confrontation

00:22:54.080 And by the commissioner asking and exploring this topic so thoroughly about alternative options to de-escalate things, indicates to me that he wants to ensure when he reaches his conclusion, is it the case that all these other alternatives were in fact not pursued?

00:23:15.880 if police had offered an option where you could continue to protest as individuals

00:23:21.080 but no trucks no vehicles allowed would that have been something you would have recommended

00:23:25.080 protesters accept i think that would have been a natural progression you could see how we were

00:23:29.560 already on a trajectory of removing significantly lessening the footprint and converting it into a

00:23:35.480 more traditional protest so i think the progress progression that we were on was to consolidate

00:23:40.120 wellington 75 of the vehicles leave to the remote locations with half of those going home

00:23:45.640 people being shuttle bused in the mayor talked about that and then i could have seen them saying

00:23:50.680 all right maybe we put up barricades like they have now on wellington street at this very moment

00:23:56.440 that the government put up and and turn it into a pedestrian protest i could have seen that a

00:24:02.040 progression that's what we were working towards this idea that you can snap your fingers and

00:24:06.280 and resolve this is not it was a complex problem as i testified required a complex solution with

00:24:11.160 phases to it we were on our way to implementing those and we got that was a lawyer keith wilson

00:24:20.100 responding to my questions as you can see a bit of a popular guy after his initial testimony there

00:24:25.260 and i i think what he's talking about there is a very important dimension of this and it's one that

00:24:31.480 I think is very critical and will hopefully come with a very clear determination or finding from

00:24:38.700 the commissioner. And I think that a very significant aspect here is how committed was

00:24:43.320 the government to de-escalation? Because remember, the Emergencies Act itself is abundantly clear.

00:24:48.580 It says for something to be a public order emergency, it has to satisfy a couple of

00:24:53.940 different criteria. Some of them are from the CSIS Act, and those criteria are an emergency

00:24:58.620 stemming from the presence of espionage or sabotage or foreign influence of some kind

00:25:05.560 and all of that stuff that there's really no argument in support of happening here.

00:25:10.800 And then the other thing is it has to rise to such a level that it meets one of a couple of

00:25:17.020 criteria. And then a third one, which is that the situation cannot be dealt with under existing laws,

00:25:23.920 It cannot effectively be dealt with under any other law in Canada is, I believe, the precise

00:25:28.860 wording. And this is so key because even if you could make a case that there was a public order

00:25:35.400 emergency by the CESIS Act, which I don't think you can, and the OPP intelligence officer went

00:25:43.040 line by line with convoy lawyer Brendan Miller last week or two weeks ago about that and said

00:25:48.040 there was no evidence of any single one of those criteria. But even if you could make a case for

00:25:53.360 that. You would still have to make an additional case for whether any other law in Canada could

00:26:00.940 deal with the problem. And it's not whether police incompetence was preventing you from

00:26:05.180 dealing with the problem. It's not anything like that. It is a question of whether it could have

00:26:13.680 been dealt with under existing laws and existing authorities. And this is what police officers have

00:26:18.640 said in the course of of this now i don't know so there was it's funny i i said i'd take questions

00:26:25.300 and there are two questions about paul champ here one is from ryan who says who is the ottawa city

00:26:30.700 of ottawa lawyer representing what percentage of downtown residents and businesses are actually

00:26:35.940 pressing this charge now i should say paul champ is not the city of ottawa lawyer the municipal

00:26:41.400 entity that is the city of ottawa has its own lawyer its own legal representation paul champ

00:26:47.620 is representing a an ad hoc coalition of Ottawa residents and businesses and he's also a guy

00:26:53.280 that is attempting to bring a class action against the well has brought a lawsuit against I mean he's

00:27:00.620 trying to make it into a class action he was the guy that filed the lawsuit on behalf of Zexy Lee

00:27:05.360 that got the horn honking injunction and all that and at the end of it and we're trying to get the

00:27:10.360 clip for you right now this happened very late it was literally the last thing to happen one of the

00:27:14.080 last things to happen before the proceedings wrapped for the day. Paul Champ was giving Pat

00:27:21.180 King the runaround and he was taking a fairly aggressive tone with Pat King and Pat King was

00:27:27.120 taking a fairly aggressive tone with Paul Champ and it got a little out of hand at the beginning

00:27:31.560 and then at the end it got really out of hand and there was a point and just to preface this a point

00:27:36.660 where Paul Champ kind of complained that convoy organizers are getting a whole week to talk

00:27:43.480 and Ottawa residents only got one or two days earlier on and he didn't seem to like that and

00:27:49.700 this triggered a bit of a chaotic situation that I'll share information about with you

00:27:55.300 in a couple of moments time when we have that clip ready but the reason I think it's relevant here

00:28:00.640 is that if you're talking about de-escalation you have to talk about what protesters were willing to

00:28:06.480 do and what the government was willing to do and there has been unrefuted undisputed

00:28:12.060 uncontradicted testimony from police and convoy organizers about all the stuff they were doing

00:28:19.480 to negotiate to move trucks onto wellington street to get the remainder out to try to work

00:28:24.760 with truckers that were being a bit more stubborn and a bit more entrenched and so on and there was

00:28:28.840 a great exchange between keith wilson and the government of canada lawyer today about wellington

00:28:34.040 street specifically because the government of canada they didn't like the ottawa deal that

00:28:39.080 would have gotten all the trucks out of the residential areas and on to Wellington because

00:28:43.560 that means the protest would have been concentrated on the street that federal government offices are

00:28:48.580 and Keith Wilson had a bit of a great gotcha on the Wellington Street question. Who were you

00:28:55.160 representing at the negotiations? Were you representing the leadership that you mentioned

00:29:00.600 that the directors of that company the non-profit company the Freedom 2022 and the President Tamara

00:29:07.960 leach and uh uh the vice president chris barber and the treasurer chad eros beyond those people

00:29:19.320 who were who were your clients uh you've described them that's accurate so you were

00:29:23.640 not acting on behalf of all of the truckers that's correct so you had faith uh i had faith and uh my

00:29:33.160 faith uh uh in the same way i would have quit practicing law sir a long time ago if i didn't

00:29:39.160 have faith in the ability of of of people having civil and respectful discussions to resolve

00:29:44.200 disputes but the objective of that agreement was to move 25 more trucks into the wellington street

00:29:53.880 area so it doesn't do anything to relieve that congestion it's fair but we've already established

00:30:00.600 sir that the road's blocked today so if i'm not sure if your concern is about the presence of

00:30:05.240 trucks and canadians or whether your concern is about the road being blocked it can't be

00:30:11.640 the road being blocked because it's still blocked to this day by the government

00:30:21.000 yeah and it's funny because i i've been to wellington street obviously since i've been

00:30:25.080 back in ottawa for this and you still cannot drive down wellington street so if their issue

00:30:29.000 is that there needed to be a thoroughfare.

00:30:30.560 People need to be able to drive down Wellington Street.

00:30:32.500 Well, it has been closed since the government has kept it closed

00:30:36.580 after the breakup of the convoy back in February.

00:30:40.780 And Keith Wilson, I think, very wisely pointed that out,

00:30:44.340 among other observations.

00:30:45.800 So I feel like I'm going through just like a laundry list of clips here,

00:30:49.360 but I want to give you a sense of what's happening at these sessions

00:30:53.120 because they have a very aggressive schedule.

00:30:55.280 They start at 9.30.

00:30:56.600 They go for a couple of hours.

00:30:58.520 they take a 15-minute break in and around 11.30, then they come back, then they go for a couple

00:31:03.580 more hours, and they take a lunch break at one for an hour, and then they come back and they

00:31:09.560 take another break like two and a half hours later, 4.30, and then after that they go, today it was

00:31:15.200 maybe about 6.30 that they went until, some days they've been pushing eight o'clock, there have

00:31:20.980 been rumors about them going later into the evening and perhaps even on weekends, and part of that is

00:31:26.560 if they start adding witnesses like you know they're battling in court to get Doug Ford and

00:31:31.080 Sylvia Jones there so that means they have to find time somehow to to do this so all of that

00:31:37.800 is to say that like it's a very aggressive and intense schedule but there's a lot and there's

00:31:43.060 a lot that you'll miss if you aren't paying attention so our goal at True North is to try

00:31:47.280 to like suffer through this whole thing so you don't have to and and give you the clips and

00:31:51.440 stuff and I mean yesterday I think there was a bit more of a story to it whereas today I'm just

00:31:55.100 like bombarding you with stuff but I also think it was very interesting because you had again on

00:32:01.400 one hand this narrative that was emerging of this being this illegal protest unlawful protest then

00:32:07.460 no one able to say when it became unlawful you had this position that the government put forward

00:32:12.880 that it was a fringe group and then you also had people that were calling from all over the country

00:32:17.600 saying I want to buy them diesel I want to buy them fuel and I think all of this is a little bit

00:32:23.760 curious don't you think so I will say just before I move on from Keith Wilson's testimony here

00:32:30.060 it was a little bit interesting to me that at one point the lawyer for I believe it was the

00:32:36.960 government of Canada again was like getting him to play legal scholar in a weird way and like

00:32:42.660 asking him as a lawyer your thoughts about this and as a lawyer your thoughts about the limits

00:32:46.800 of free speech and as a lawyer your thoughts on you know whether trucks have charter rights and

00:32:51.400 you know, honk honk and all that. No, sorry, you can't say honk honk, because apparently to liberal

00:32:55.840 members of parliament, that means Heil Hitler. So I denounce anyone who thinks that honking

00:32:59.980 is synonymous with a Nazi revolution. But I will say that Keith Wilson

00:33:06.920 had probably the line of the day when it came to his answer on hate speech. Take a look.

00:33:15.340 you agree hate speech has been codified in the criminal code right yes and i find the prime

00:33:23.980 minister's hate speech towards unvaccinated people and saying how do we deal with these people

00:33:28.480 deeply troubling right so you you don't agree then that threats against the life of somebody

00:33:36.240 is is is not a protected form of speech under the charter uh i do not believe that anyone

00:33:42.660 either morally or legally should be threatening anyone else's life, and I have received many

00:33:48.460 death threats myself since representing the Freedom Company.

00:33:57.360 The good part was the early part there about denouncing Justin Trudeau's hate speech against

00:34:03.040 the unvaccinated. I would drop the mic, but I need to get through the rest of the show here, so

00:34:07.080 I don't want to do that too, too much, but I think that was just a, I just, that one doesn't even fit

00:34:11.880 into the story I just like the clip and I wanted to share it with you but I did say I would get

00:34:16.440 back to Paul Champ so I was telling you we have the clip now we'll play it in a moment now this

00:34:21.220 is from Paul Champ's questioning of Pat King now this is again a very significant development Pat

00:34:28.940 King controversial guy and I will say interestingly enough I was expecting it to be a lot more of a

00:34:35.160 circus than it ended up being but a lot of the parties there didn't even have questions for him

00:34:40.520 and at one point I was in the hearing room so I could see Pat King looks quite shocked when he

00:34:45.260 found out that lawyers for the Ottawa Police Service and the Ontario Provincial Police and

00:34:49.980 all that didn't have any questions for him. They didn't care to ask him anything. Now Paul Champ

00:34:55.300 rose to it. Now Paul Champ rose to the challenge and said yeah I'm going to ask you questions and

00:34:59.600 he was asking very pointed questions about Pat King's bank account and there was a very tense

00:35:04.400 exchange where Pat accused Paul Champ of taking his money because of that lawsuit that got money

00:35:09.980 put an escrow and i you can watch the whole thing i think it was only like 10 or excuse me 15 minutes

00:35:15.040 if you wanted to go back but at the end of it it kind of just devolved into what i would say is

00:35:21.860 the more chaotic phase of the hearing take a now i i should say i was in the room i so i i lived

00:35:28.280 through it i have no idea what's in this clip or how it's cut so this is a bit of an adventure for

00:35:32.880 both of us but let's see how it looks uh they were all settled down by the time the convoy came and

00:35:38.840 there was no threats to anyone i've never seen anything more loving and peaceful in my life it

00:35:43.500 was woodstocks so the only person who's at risk in ottawa was pat king all the other threats to

00:35:48.980 anyone else in ottawa were all fake is that right i don't know i can't speak on those you know my

00:35:54.060 lawyer has been given death threats and bomb scares because she represents me do you know that

00:36:00.740 my friends have been their children have been threatened because of from ottawa do you know that

00:36:07.920 and i hate to say this but this town is full of a bunch of people who really don't like

00:36:14.880 people who speak out i don't i disagree uh mr king ottawa has uh dozens of large protests many

00:36:25.280 much larger than the one that you organized every single year i've been here for me i'm not sure

00:36:30.140 that question um so well mr commissioner can i just i'll just note mr commissioner i'll just

00:36:41.260 know for the record that the people of ottawa got one morning in this proceeding we've had a week

00:36:46.460 of all of these convoy organizers given a full platform to say whatever they want the people in

00:36:51.260 ottawa respect the right to protest and these folks are getting their time to tell it say

00:36:55.580 everything they want from you can i say one sorry i'm sorry just i'm going to stop this you'll

00:37:00.300 you'll get yeah hey hey please could you could you ask uh have him i'm going to take a break

00:37:08.220 while you remove the purpose i'm sorry sir the commission's in recess so i like the true north

00:37:23.580 flash there like that was the that chaotic outburst was brought to you by true north you're

00:37:28.040 welcome uh so they they end up once it's in recess they no longer play the feed it's not meant to be

00:37:32.940 a live interrupted feed of the room just of the proceedings but what ended up happening there was

00:37:38.340 they uh you know they they uh closed down the the feed the commissioner leaves the room that guy kept

00:37:45.000 going and a security removed him now he went out willingly but he was barking all the way there

00:37:50.480 and there was another woman as well that then started to perk up and it was the room just got

00:37:55.280 a bit raucous and to be honest it all and i'm not blaming paul champ here but it started when paul

00:38:00.680 champ did that little soliloquy near the end because he had finished his question he had shut

00:38:05.640 down his laptop with the tax the rich sticker on it and and they were i thought done and what was

00:38:11.600 interesting there and so i i said i didn't know what was on that clip i couldn't hear it in the

00:38:16.260 room but could hear it in that video pat king trying to shut that down and i i actually i mean

00:38:22.700 again whatever you think of pat king i thought that was very classy i did hear him say a little

00:38:25.840 bit later on imploring people after they had uh recessed to to be respectful but i didn't hear him

00:38:32.300 do what he did in that which was right into the microphone where he said uh to the guy something

00:38:36.540 like stop or don't or whatever and then he he said i'm sorry to the commissioner which i i thought was

00:38:41.900 was given the circumstances very gracious so uh he didn't want the the rambunctious audience though

00:38:47.240 that was the uh crowd he he got and and i think this is the the challenge of trying to put people

00:38:52.260 in in boxes and treat things like black and white uh my producer just said i wish he had responded

00:38:59.320 when paul champ said you know we have much bigger protests here too and do you invoke the emergencies

00:39:03.520 act over them so uh this is why you should be up on the stand there uh producer but i i'm not going

00:39:07.860 summon you to, I'm not going to give you a subpoena and make you fight it alongside Doug

00:39:11.960 Ford or anything like that. But I will say that there is a fascinating dimension of all of this

00:39:20.280 right now, which is that people are being confronted every day with hours and hours of

00:39:24.620 testimony. And some of it is stereotype affirming. I mean, like when Zexie Lee and that other woman

00:39:29.840 whose name I can't remember right now were going on about their phantom honking and stuff like

00:39:33.560 that. It was like, no one's mind was changed. When Pat King is talking, I don't think anyone's

00:39:38.140 mind has changed. When Chris Barber was, I don't know if he was breaking through to anyone. I don't

00:39:44.420 know if Tamara Leach will break through to anyone or not. I mean, there's a lot of, there are a lot

00:39:50.480 of preconceptions here that I think will be very fascinating for people. And one of them, which

00:39:55.420 I'll discuss now a little bit, it's going to come up later on in the week, Jeremy McKenzie, who is

00:39:59.940 the founder of this online movement group or meme, depending on what you think of it, called

00:40:05.080 Diagalon, is going to be testifying from behind bars. Now, the federal government's lawyer was

00:40:13.240 very, very interested in Diagalon, very interested in Diagalon. And when they had Tom Arazzo up on

00:40:20.200 the stand, they played this video clip of Tom speaking at some veterans event. And he said,

00:40:24.840 I'd like to, you know, acknowledge in this room, Jeremy McKenzie and Jeremy McKenzie stands up and

00:40:29.440 then everyone applauds him now I have had a run-in with Jeremy McKenzie which I will share

00:40:35.120 with you just for context here I had never heard of the guy until whenever it would have been

00:40:41.480 February of 2020 I think it was I was in Halifax because Omar Khadr was doing his first public

00:40:46.800 speech and there was this veteran he was there he was wearing his medals who did a very impassioned

00:40:52.960 interview outside of the venue and he spoke about just how outraged he was and this veteran

00:40:59.360 uh you know I saw doing the interview and he was live streaming he was you know on his phone all

00:41:04.000 night and he was outside and he was talking and doing whatever and my general rule if someone is

00:41:08.020 live streaming is I try to stay out of their way and people in his audience thought that I was

00:41:13.300 deliberately trying to avoid him which I guess was technically true but not because I I knew who he

00:41:18.000 was and was trying to avoid him but just because I I didn't want to get in the way of the guy's

00:41:21.220 live stream and people were saying you know how dare you not interview this guy and I said well

00:41:24.840 you know someone else had interviewed him and I didn't know who he was and I I've known since and

00:41:28.860 some of his fans have been have been very rabidly rude to me which i mean be be however you want i

00:41:35.080 don't really care um i've had a couple of just like i think social media interactions with him

00:41:40.040 and i i've never had any negative ones but he's said things that i i find absolutely abhorrent

00:41:45.580 like when he made that you know joke uh that he says is a joke a few weeks ago in some stream of

00:41:51.020 like wanting to uh rape pierre polyev's wife i'm like this is just it's vile it's disgusting and

00:41:57.420 At the same time, I could believe that someone's political discourse is not contributing anything positive, while also saying that I don't believe they should be strung up and treated as though they're a part of something that the evidence doesn't support them as being a part of.

00:42:15.240 And I think Diagilon is a great example of this. And if you've never heard of it, I mean, I'll play this clip because I think Tom Marazzo can explain it a little bit better than I can.

00:42:27.420 sir how do you know mr mckenzie he does he has a podcast and he does a lot of political satire

00:42:42.060 and comedy he does some serious videos sometimes he is the the creator of a fictitious meme on the

00:42:55.660 internet known as diagonal in which i assume what you're going to ask me about and uh the vice

00:43:01.120 president of diagonal being a time traveling cocaine addicted goat um that is just a internet

00:43:10.160 meme that has no meaning at all and uh i had spoken to jeremy the first time when i was in

00:43:16.600 ottawa on the phone and um the second time i spoke to jeremy was when the liberal government

00:43:23.700 was debating whether or not they should use the emergency act and they were citing this fictitious

00:43:31.400 goat that time travels as a domestic terrorist group and justification for invoking the emergency

00:43:39.360 act and i saw a video that jeremy and his friends were doing and they were laughing hysterically

00:43:44.720 showing clips of the government actually talking about diagonalon as being a real thing everybody

00:43:51.660 knew it was a joke when I saw the video I contacted Jeremy and I said tell me

00:43:56.080 everything there is to know about Diagon he said if you draw a diagonal line

00:44:00.660 from Alaska through Alberta to Texas it makes a diagonal line and that's why

00:44:09.160 it's called Diagon they're the only states and provinces that don't have

00:44:12.700 mask mandates and he used it as a joke he made the symbol for Diagon on in a

00:44:17.580 second on his cell phone because it's a joke and it it is meaningless he did it to attract attention

00:44:25.020 for people to come to a barbecue um and to have a lot of fun that were you know people wanted to

00:44:31.180 have a barbecue without masks on a bunch of strangers that didn't know each other and yet

00:44:35.740 here he was watching a you know members of parliament and liberal party actually joking

00:44:41.740 or actually seriously stating that the reason for invoking the emergency act was because of

00:44:50.220 diagonal like it was the most outrageous ridiculous thing i had ever seen and i think

00:44:54.940 this commission should be investigating that as the biggest intelligence joke of you know

00:45:00.940 the last decade um so that it's a joke diagonal is a joke it's not even a real thing

00:45:11.740 And I think that's very important. And I'm assuming Jeremy McKenzie will say something

00:45:17.320 very similar. I talked about it a bit in my book. And I get emails from people occasionally saying,

00:45:22.540 why are you not covering Jeremy McKenzie? And it's, again, I don't know him. I can't

00:45:26.780 offer any insights beyond what's in the public record. And there's a lot of what is in the

00:45:31.820 public record from him that I find deeply concerning. I'm not going to line up to defend

00:45:35.420 him as being this, you know, incredible example of, you know, a podcaster, broadcaster, or even

00:45:41.980 a human being. But I could still say that I have not seen any evidence that supports him being at

00:45:48.300 the heart of anything constituting a national emergency. And it shouldn't be controversial to

00:45:53.240 say that. And before, I don't know, like the, you know, freaking mainstream media just decided to

00:45:59.420 jump up and down and say, oh, you know, True North defending Jeremy McKenzie. No, it's not,

00:46:02.800 it's not about defending a person it's about just saying where is the evidence for this assertion

00:46:08.220 that you're making and I thought I didn't know about this you know cocaine addicted goat that

00:46:14.140 apparently is the vice president of fictitious country and in fact I when I say that I'm like

00:46:18.140 did I actually was there like acid in my coffee or something and I'm just you know having some

00:46:22.360 very bad reaction right now no this is exactly what's happened in this process people have just

00:46:28.840 made these unhinged assertions and they've been allowed to go for the better part of a year

00:46:32.720 completely and utterly unchallenged. And you have to hope that the truth is going to find its way

00:46:38.380 through this process. And I want to take just a couple of more questions before we wrap things up

00:46:42.800 here, because we had a couple of very good ones. Pat says, is Trudeau going to have to testify?

00:46:48.580 Trudeau is testifying. He is, I believe, the last name on the witness list. So he is going to be

00:46:54.520 the last one to testify. Now, I don't know how long he is going to be testifying. I don't know

00:46:59.160 if he's just going to like slip it in on his lunch break or if he's going to allow himself

00:47:02.280 to be examined for an entire day. Remember, Peter slowly, he spent two full days on the stand. He

00:47:08.160 was examined on Friday for the full day, and then he was cross-examined by the various parties

00:47:14.000 on Monday of this week for the full day. I would love to see Justin Trudeau go through the same

00:47:18.120 thing. Suze writes, if the commish, ah, we're getting very casual now, the commish, if the

00:47:24.700 commissioner finds it illegal to have been invoked could people charge parliament now i don't know if

00:47:31.160 you mean like charge or if you mean like file charges but either way the answer is no and i

00:47:36.260 should say at the end of this it's not actually clear yet what form of determination the commissioner

00:47:43.480 will publish so he he's not finding any legal fault he's not finding any criminal or even civil

00:47:49.840 liability. He is supposed to assess the basis of the Emergencies Act. Now he could say the

00:47:56.400 government was unjustified or he could just make a bunch of observations and not actually come out

00:48:03.080 with a clear determination that yes it was right and no it wasn't. And that I think will be very

00:48:08.060 frustrating for people because there may be an option here for the government to just say yes

00:48:12.520 you know we've learned some lessons but we weren't actually found in the wrong because no that's not

00:48:17.260 the point of the mandate. Nancy writes, how much longer will the inquiry go for? So the hearings

00:48:24.560 are going for, we're at the halfway point today. So the hearings will go for another 15 business

00:48:32.440 days. Now, the variable in that is, of course, if they decide to start adding more business days,

00:48:39.440 if they decide to start sitting on weekends or extending the sitting. And then the report has

00:48:44.760 to be tabled by february on the one-year anniversary of i believe the revocation of the

00:48:51.140 invocation of the emergencies act so basically the tuesday following the emergencies act um you know

00:48:57.000 that weekend it was when they revoked it so a year from that and what else barbara writes rupa or

00:49:04.000 viva testifying so i actually said rupa subramanya my colleague was there today we chatted a little

00:49:09.540 bit. And she is not, as far as I know, on the witness list. Neither is Viva. Is it Viva Fry?

00:49:16.420 Viva Free? Viva Frey? I'm sorry. I should know this. But I just I know how to spell it. But

00:49:21.220 Viva, I don't know if he's not on the witness list that's been public. Neither am I. But I

00:49:26.120 should say that today I was quoted twice. The lawyer for former Ottawa Police Chief Peter

00:49:32.880 Slowly was like asking witnesses about my book. And he like they had it up on the screen there.

00:49:37.620 And he's like, so you did an interview with Mr. Lawton.

00:49:40.060 And I'm like, oh, crap, what did I do?

00:49:41.380 But it wasn't bad, thankfully.

00:49:42.840 So with that, I am going to say farewell to you tonight.

00:49:46.980 Now, we will be back with Fake News Friday.

00:49:48.960 And some of the media reactions from this week will certainly bear scrutiny.

00:49:53.020 And I am going to continue my reporting of the Public Order Emergency Commission,

00:49:57.440 which you can catch on my Twitter at Andrew Lawton and also at TNC.news.

00:50:02.180 So hope you have a great rest of the week, everyone.

00:50:04.260 Thank you.

00:50:05.040 God bless and good day to you all.

00:50:06.780 thanks for listening to the andrew martin show support the program by donating to true north

00:50:12.120 at www.tnc.news

Juno News - November 02, 2022

Convoy organizer blows off legacy media after Emergencies Act testimony

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