Juno News - Foreign actors weren't behind Freedom Convoy, commission evidence confirms

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.

00:00:05.520 This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:00:14.620 Hello and welcome to you all.

00:00:17.540 This is another edition of Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show here on True North.

00:00:22.180 The Andrew Lawton Show on Wednesday, October 19th, just after 4.03 p.m. Eastern Time, 5.33 in Newfoundland and Labrador, 1.03 in British Columbia.

00:00:34.500 And I'll let you fill out the local listings on all of those in between time zones.

00:00:38.920 The time zone recitation is a little trick that Mark Stein does on his podcast.

00:00:44.000 And when I guest hosted for him on several occasions, I made sure to include the time zones.

00:00:49.100 And I actually kind of enjoyed it. It's a lot of fun. But in any event, for all of you watching

00:00:54.360 this or listening to this after the fact, you're like, what the? That was like five seconds of my

00:00:58.020 life. I'll never get back. A lot like Jim Watson's testimony before the Public Order Emergency

00:01:03.380 Commission. That's what we call a segue, my friends. This is now day five of the Public

00:01:10.160 Order Emergency Commission. I did a bit of an experiment on yesterday's show, and I spent the

00:01:15.220 entire program talking about what had been happening in the first several days, playing

00:01:19.700 some of the key clips and highlights. I'm going to do a little bit of that today, but

00:01:23.680 I'm also going to take a lot of the bigger picture view. Tom Marazzo, who has been on

00:01:28.900 this show before, he was quoted in my book. He was a Freedom Convoy volunteer, big logistics

00:01:34.420 guy. He'll be on in just about 12 minutes time to talk about the negotiations taking

00:01:40.180 place behind the scenes between convoy organizers and the City of Ottawa. Negotiations that are

00:01:46.600 quite critical to this idea of whether or not the Emergencies Act was justified. We have heard a lot

00:01:54.200 of testimony to this point. In fact, it's just after four o'clock right now, and since 9.45 this

00:01:59.780 morning, with a couple of breaks there notwithstanding, former Ottawa Police Services

00:02:04.920 Board Chair Diane Deans has been testifying, talking about all of these calls that she was

00:02:10.360 putting and the police service was putting to get more resources, more officers, calls that

00:02:15.720 effectively went ignored. And I want to play just a couple of the highlights that have come out

00:02:21.420 from Diane Deans' testimony so far. One of them I found kind of interesting here, and I want to pull

00:02:27.560 up the clip. It's actually two clips because she was, it seemed like surprised that the police

00:02:34.560 service didn't want to give her, a city councillor who's responsible for basically the ways and means

00:02:41.140 of policing, keeping the lights on at Ottawa Police Headquarters, surprised they didn't want

00:02:45.740 to give her like the detailed breakdown of what their tactical plans were to go after convoy

00:02:52.800 protesters. This was an exchange from just about an hour and a half ago. In your witness statement,

00:03:00.700 you say that when you requested to see the plan you would receive wiggle words can you explain

00:03:06.940 what you mean by that well i think just what i've been describing here this morning that

00:03:12.620 we'd see parts of a plan we'd hear little bits about um you know there's going to be some form

00:03:18.940 of an operation but um you know i recall at one point chief slowly telling me that he couldn't

00:03:25.100 share the details because you know it obviously the element of surprise is important in these

00:03:31.180 operations we heard a lot of evidence this morning about the plan so you testified that there is

00:03:39.460 always some tension between the police and the police services board about the sharing of

00:03:45.820 operational planning details right right um and we spoke before the break about the sensitivity

00:03:55.340 of intelligence information and i suggest to you that there are very similar sensitivities

00:04:01.740 involved in sharing operational information yep the information of police operations is considered

00:04:11.020 highly confidential for safety reasons right uh including the the the safety of officers right

00:04:17.500 and as chief of police the safety of officers would be of the utmost importance right of course

00:04:24.180 and like in the case of intelligence reports it was not the practice of the board to demand

00:04:34.920 operational planning information prior to the convoy right um i don't think we demanded

00:04:45.400 operational planning information i think we you know inquired about operational issues in

00:04:54.040 accordance with what we understood that limit to be under the act fair so prior to the convoy

00:05:04.760 you wanted some high level operational information but you weren't asking for tactical plans for

00:05:09.880 example no you agree with me on that i do okay so it was a bit of an odd exchange in some regards

00:05:22.200 because we we had on one hand the police services board saying she wanted more information she

00:05:26.920 seemed a little bit perturbed she wasn't getting that but also an admission that no the police 0.82

00:05:31.800 services board who are bureaucrats and counselors would never have access to just that minutiae of

00:05:40.280 where the police are going to position and all of this other stuff so i i think that there's a bit

00:05:46.020 of a weird dynamic taking place now that this is a woman who when the convoy was underway

00:05:50.120 accused them of being terrorist she said that i can't remember if it was during a meeting or in

00:05:55.680 an interview, but called the convoy protesters terrorists. Yet oddly, Diane Dean was actually

00:06:01.900 treated as an asset by convoy leaders and convoy organizers. They were being very nice.

00:06:08.860 Brendan Miller, who's been the lead lawyer representing the Freedom Convoy,

00:06:13.060 was thanking her for her service on the police services board, was complimenting her. They were

00:06:17.880 all laughs and it seemed like there is a little bit of a sense of trying to pick the enemy of

00:06:25.640 your enemy and I think that there's a lot of issues that Diane Deans had with Jim Watson they

00:06:32.400 played and I'm not gonna make you suffer through it but they played this 10 minute long surreptitiously

00:06:38.300 recorded conversation Diane Deans recorded it it's a teams meeting between her and Jim Watson

00:06:44.960 and it's about her decision to appoint an interim chief to replace Steve Bell when there was this

00:06:50.560 point at which Ottawa had like three police chiefs in the matter of 24 hours and Jim Watson was

00:06:55.880 expressing his dislike of that decision and the police service lawyer was really going after

00:07:02.600 Diane Deans for recording this and it was kind of an odd dynamic about you know like nothing to do

00:07:09.720 with the Emergencies Act, nothing to do with horses trampling over an Indigenous woman,

00:07:14.720 nothing to do with the suspension of civil liberties, nothing to do with anything except

00:07:18.700 perhaps a little bit of palace intrigue at Ottawa City Hall. Not that intrigue and Ottawa municipal

00:07:25.120 politics have ever been used in the same sentence before. I want to play another clip for you here,

00:07:31.860 and this is a bit of an interesting one that came about today in which Diane Deans accused Jim

00:07:37.320 Watson of using the convoy to score political points. And I should say, this is perhaps why

00:07:43.780 the convoy lawyer might have thought that she was a better ally as far as legal strategy is concerned

00:07:50.080 compared to Jim Watson. Let's roll that. There was never an intention to hire anyone to be the

00:07:57.880 ongoing chief of police in Ottawa without a process. And I was frustrated that it was

00:08:04.860 characterized i mean the mayor's office got ahead of that story in the media by leaking it

00:08:11.980 which it was confidential information it was leaked and they got ahead of that story and

00:08:18.300 characterized it as something quite different than it was intended to be you felt they're playing a

00:08:24.700 bit of politics with you in the midst of this crisis in the city yeah i guess i guess to a

00:08:30.540 certain extent that old maxim about never wasting a good crisis it also presents an opportunities

00:08:38.140 to settle some old scores and i guess that's the way i i view that yeah that's how you felt yeah

00:08:46.140 accusing mayor jim watson of using the convoy for political gain to force her out of her role

00:08:52.700 as police services board chair and so on but i want to get outside of the municipal politics

00:08:58.300 here for a moment because one of the big revelations that came wasn't even through

00:09:02.220 uh testimony necessarily but through documents so anyone can do this you can head to the public

00:09:07.820 order emergency commission website right now and you can find the documents that have been

00:09:13.180 uploaded as exhibits and and there's a bunch of them there's video there's email records

00:09:17.580 handwritten notes text messages i haven't gone through all of them yet or even close to all of

00:09:22.540 them but in these documents there are some very revealing details and one of them is not even

00:09:28.940 groundbreaking because anyone with half a brain knew this any canadian knew this any convoy member

00:09:35.020 or supporter knew this everyone but justin trudeau and cbc knew this but it bears repeating because

00:09:41.500 now it's in the official evidence for the public order emergency commission ceases confirmed that

00:09:48.140 there was no foreign funding behind the convoy that foreign actors were not behind the convoy

00:09:55.100 that this was an organic grassroots movement and more importantly a domestic grassroots movement

00:10:03.420 now this comes from meetings of a minutes of a meeting held on February 6th so the convoy is

00:10:08.700 well underway here and the CSIS director David Vigneault says there are no foreign actors

00:10:15.660 identified at this point supporting or financing this convoy. Now, obviously, a few days after that,

00:10:21.960 there would be the leak of donors to Give, Send, Go. And people would find that, yes, there were

00:10:26.600 some donors from there that were from the United States or from the United Kingdom or from, I don't

00:10:31.400 know, Swatiland or something. I think, no, they changed the name. It's now Eswatini. There's a

00:10:36.580 little bit of African geography trivia for you. But I don't know if there were any Eswatini donors

00:10:42.280 to the Freedom Convoy. But nevertheless, people from around the world that resonated with this

00:10:47.680 did donate. But by and large, foreign funding was a minority. And also, it was downstream.

00:10:54.920 It was downstream of the organic momentum and organic support that the convoy had.

00:11:00.920 And that part is so critical here, because there's a difference between some guy sitting

00:11:05.380 in the Kremlin, putting this huge chunk of change towards this protest movement,

00:11:10.160 and an organic movement, the people around the world say,

00:11:13.520 you know what, I like the cut of those truckers' jibs.

00:11:16.040 Is jib plural or is jib singular?

00:11:17.980 I like the cut of their collective jib, we'll say.

00:11:20.880 And donating a bit of money because they support it.

00:11:23.560 But CSIS acknowledged and the government knew

00:11:26.620 this was not a foreign-funded operation.

00:11:30.520 This was a grassroots movement.

00:11:32.860 And that's so key because if you go back to those criteria

00:11:35.540 to invoke the Emergencies Act that we were talking about

00:11:38.560 at a fairly granular level yesterday.

00:11:41.180 We're not talking about espionage.

00:11:43.020 We're talking about sabotage.

00:11:45.080 We're not talking about foreign interference.

00:11:47.840 We're not talking about threats

00:11:49.360 to Canada's national security.

00:11:52.040 So it's not even groundbreaking.

00:11:54.520 It's not even this huge giant leap to say,

00:11:58.440 yes, there was no foreign funding

00:11:59.620 because everyone knew that except for the liberals.

00:12:01.560 But I think it's important that we acknowledge

00:12:03.560 this is now in the record.

00:12:05.960 And there's gonna be a lot of narrative busting

00:12:08.040 that takes place over the next six weeks

00:12:10.540 as we hear live testimony in real time

00:12:12.720 from so many people that are connected to this at various levels.

00:12:16.840 And even people that certainly aren't on the convoy side

00:12:19.240 have been giving evidence and giving testimony

00:12:21.500 that is fairly supportive of the convoy narrative,

00:12:25.100 which is that this was a peaceful, perhaps disruptive, yes,

00:12:28.200 but a peaceful protest.

00:12:30.400 And remember, the federal government has to be able to prove

00:12:33.780 that there were no other means available to them under law to deal with this problem.

00:12:39.980 If, by the way, if a national emergency even existed, which I highly doubt it did,

00:12:45.940 but they need to prove that there were no other lawful means available to them.

00:12:49.380 And I go back to what we heard a lot of this week about the negotiations

00:12:53.700 between the city of Ottawa and convoy organizers.

00:12:57.340 And there's a whole chapter in my book dedicated to this.

00:13:00.500 So if you want to go into that level of detail, I would encourage you to.

00:13:03.120 But I wanted to bring into the discussion Tom Marazzo, who we had on the show shortly after the convoy was disbanded.

00:13:10.700 He was instrumental in those very discussions between convoy leaders and police, and he joins me now.

00:13:18.340 Tom, it's good to talk to you again. Thanks for coming on today.

00:13:25.040 Now, first off, you're in Ottawa right now. Is this your first time back in some time?

00:13:30.180 no i was actually here when james top arrived on the uh the the 30th of june and also uh

00:13:39.240 approximately two weeks before that when james and i and dr paul alexander had the meetings with

00:13:44.040 the federal members of uh parliament which by the way were all conservative members of parliament

00:13:49.800 so yeah oh yes i did i did remember that so so so you've been back since the the big events of

00:13:57.400 January and February here. How's it been these first few days listening to all this testimony

00:14:02.040 and reliving, admittedly, some of the more boring aspects of it, but reliving some of this?

00:14:08.620 You know, I have to say it has been incredibly challenging to sit there in the audience and

00:14:15.660 listen to people talk about you and the convoy and everybody that participated in the convoy

00:14:24.160 in January and February and literally regurgitate the mainstream media talking points that we heard

00:14:31.760 nine months ago. In fact, not only did they regurgitate just the mainstream media talking

00:14:36.740 points, but they even amplify it. They even further exaggerate the stories from the mainstream

00:14:45.340 media that we heard. So when you're sitting there in the audience and you're listening to them

00:14:49.640 actually say it in real time, it's a little bit disheartening because, you know, I think they've

00:14:55.880 said it so many times in their minds that they actually believe the lies themselves. I don't

00:15:01.540 think they can distinguish between the lies and the truth anymore. Truthfully.

00:15:07.080 There have been a lot of details, especially today, that I really don't think are all that

00:15:11.980 relevant to this use of the Emergencies Act. I mean, if you're an Ottawa City Hall watcher,

00:15:16.900 it may be fascinating to hear about, you know, the infighting between Diane Deans and Jim Watson,

00:15:21.780 but it really doesn't apply to this overarching question of, was Justin Trudeau right to suspend

00:15:27.580 civil liberties? Was this a national emergency? And all of these other things. But we are going

00:15:32.300 to get into some of that more critical testimony. I know you are on the preliminary list of witnesses,

00:15:37.440 so you'll have your opportunity to testify later on. But what is it that you feel you really want

00:15:43.720 to learn from this? Because you had your own vantage point in the midst of this. And I think

00:15:47.640 obviously all of the people connected to the convoy want an acknowledgement that the Emergencies Act

00:15:53.140 was wrong. But as far as things you'd like to learn, what is the information you want to take

00:15:57.980 out of this? Well, that's a great question because I know me personally, what I would like to learn

00:16:05.540 was the decisions, the steps that every level of government that was involved in this. And

00:16:13.560 we're talking the local government for the city of Ottawa, the provincial government and the federal

00:16:19.400 government. I'm very interested to hear, even myself, what were the steps that you took to

00:16:29.420 put decisions that you made? You know, what were the processes that you had in place to deal with

00:16:35.200 this? Because we heard testimony at the end of, I think on the second day with Councillor Flurry,

00:16:40.860 i believe where he had said you know in his 12 years as a counselor on average the city of ottawa

00:16:46.860 deals with 99 protests per year and so if i look at that he's got experience as a as a ward counselor

00:16:55.260 with 1200 protests in his time in council so he's quite an experienced yeah yeah he's a he's a very

00:17:03.420 experienced politician when it comes to you know that i mean to break it down it's a third of your

00:17:07.740 year almost where you're dealing with protests in your ward and so my my question becomes well

00:17:14.940 what things in your 12 years have you done to put into place to assist law enforcement into

00:17:21.660 uh you know putting yourselves in a position where should there be you know um a protest

00:17:27.580 to this magnitude how can you help local law enforcement what steps did you do like

00:17:32.860 Like, I mean, one of the biggest things that I'm most baffled about is I've yet, I have yet, we're on day five of hearing testimony.

00:17:41.220 I have yet to hear one single member of any level of government that has testified actually make even the most slightest remote suggestion that anybody come and actually meet with us and talk to us.

00:17:57.000 What they did, what they have been doing, is they've immediately moved to give themselves extraordinary powers so that they could use physical force to remove this convoy.

00:18:12.100 And it's strange to me because they both, on one hand, they'll say, hey, we believe in free speech, we believe in the charter, we believe in the right to peacefully assemble under Section 2 of the charter.

00:18:21.460 but their immediate default setting was to go towards giving themselves extraordinary powers

00:18:28.460 so that they could physically remove the convoy from the city of Ottawa there was never I have

00:18:35.080 yet to hear any dialogue or discussion of having dialogue with us nothing well on that note one

00:18:42.800 exhibit that did come up yesterday when Mayor Jim Watson was testifying was a attack or it might

00:18:49.560 have been two days ago with someone else. I get them all mixed up, but it was a text exchange with

00:18:54.260 someone from the federal government where it was the Ottawa chief of staff to the mayor, Serge

00:18:59.960 Arpin, I believe, or the city manager, Steve Kanellakis, who had said to the federal government,

00:19:04.800 like, you know, you guys are just coming out and denigrating them and you expect us to meet with

00:19:09.320 them. So even when the city was engaging with you, there was this frustration from them that the

00:19:14.180 federal government was just trying to vilify and demonize uh continuously and that was the

00:19:19.380 federal government's only real strategy here yeah and you saw even in the testimony i mean we haven't

00:19:26.420 really heard from the ontario government um and i don't even believe doug ford is on the list and

00:19:31.740 nor does he have any desire to participate in this in any meaningful way um even though he is the one

00:19:38.640 who got his attorney general to use ex parte meaning yes to get uh the the the funds that we

00:19:46.640 we fundraise you know two occasions 10 million dollars each time um he went after that knowing

00:19:53.660 that we had legal counsel on the ground he knew who they were but yet he got into a courtroom with

00:19:58.420 his attorney general and froze that money as proceeds of a crime without any legal representation

00:20:04.640 from us. So that's the premier of this province that's doing that, right? You've got Justin

00:20:10.880 Trudeau, who was making the circuit on media, calling us misogynist. And I saw in the media,

00:20:15.820 he's still using that word, you know, to target anybody that he, at least he's using it on Pierre

00:20:22.580 Poliev instead of us for a change. But, you know, we're seeing all this infighting. And to be

00:20:28.840 perfectly honest, I've been sitting in the crowd listening to all this testimony for five days now.

00:20:34.640 Um, and what I hear is gross incompetence and, uh, power grabs.

00:20:42.320 It is a bunch of children that can't get along with each other in the sandbox.

00:20:46.940 And I, I'm not hearing anything, but just really a lot of, uh, unprofessionalism.

00:20:52.500 Uh, and I think that if the public at large tuned in to listen to what was actually being

00:20:57.620 said, they would be beyond disgusted in the behavior of the government.

00:21:03.680 at even the city of ottawa level um it is it is just uh it's a sight to see and to listen to day

00:21:10.720 after day how they they just tear each other apart so i i mean i it's i'm not a sophisticated lawyer

00:21:18.000 i don't have the experience to see it the way the lawyers do it but as a general public um i see this

00:21:23.680 and i think how do you guys even keep the lights on in this city it's amazing yes and and i i also

00:21:30.400 go back to a point that i may have actually made when you and i were speaking on this program last

00:21:35.280 about how this convoy came together in the matter of a couple of weeks and it's a wonder how the

00:21:40.640 odd city of auto even manages to put canada day together with the whole year given the

00:21:44.880 level of dysfunction we we have here but i i want to go to those crucial negotiations because i

00:21:51.200 think these things are are really one of the the silver bullets of the case against the emergencies

00:21:57.200 act because they were bearing fruit trucks were being relocated onto wellington street the impact

00:22:02.480 on residential neighborhoods was being diminished by the day the federal government knew about that

00:22:08.960 and this we did get pretty clearly from testimony this week that it wasn't just that briefing before

00:22:14.560 cabinet but uh the chief of staff to minister marco mendicino was actively engaged acknowledged

00:22:20.800 that minister marco mendicino knew about these negotiations and knew about this process i know

00:22:26.160 you were were integral to those uh in your view would this have if you had been given that full

00:22:33.680 three days without the emergencies act to move these trucks would the protest look very different

00:22:40.160 from how it did a few days prior absolutely it would have we would have relocated the trucks

00:22:47.840 and i want to i want to put out a caveat with this too every truck driver that was there was

00:22:53.280 an individual owner operator of their own their own vehicles so would we have done everything in

00:22:59.680 our power to try and convince the individual owner operators to relocate up onto wellington which

00:23:05.920 we were all working towards that objective and you know i think that that would have very

00:23:12.240 very likely been the case had the the government not meddled not interfered and and um you know

00:23:19.600 really really tried hard to angle themselves in a position where they could try to invoke the

00:23:24.400 emergencies act um i think you would have seen a very much uh different looking outcome i believe

00:23:32.080 we would have got those trucks on there i mean chris barber was there you know trying to relocate

00:23:36.320 vehicles i know myself and eva chippy were actually in a truck talking to truckers trying to

00:23:44.400 lay out a case for why this was good for us and we were getting buy-in and you know you would see

00:23:49.520 the um you know the the i i there was a time that i felt bad once for my my ottawa police uh liaison

00:23:58.080 officer uh because we kind of it's to use the football analogy we kind of got to the five yard

00:24:03.680 line and then all of a sudden the chaos that was happening behind the scenes with the uh police

00:24:10.640 department themselves um they pulled the the rug right under this guy's uh feet and the entire deal

00:24:17.360 broke down and you know and it was we we had a clear objective for what we wanted and you know

00:24:22.960 what that objective was always always first and foremost was to end the federal mandates but the

00:24:28.480 other thing was always to be safe and responsible for the residents of ottawa and for the truckers

00:24:35.920 and for the police and all emergency services vehicles that was a stated clear objective

00:24:41.840 amongst all of us to be safe and responsible and yet at every turn it would seem that the

00:24:48.880 the the so-called local government um in federal government would would have their own agendas and

00:24:54.640 they would interrupt that and then they would go on to the media and blame us for it one thing that

00:25:02.240 I have to ask because there was a fair bit of testimony about the group of truckers that were

00:25:07.640 at Rideau and Sussex. And the way that this was described by some of the people connected to the

00:25:13.620 city of Ottawa who have testified is that they were a Quebec group and they were a lot more

00:25:19.000 stubborn. They were, I think there was someone even made an implication that there was some

00:25:23.040 organized crime connection, but they didn't really extrapolate on that. But basically that this group

00:25:27.580 really wasn't interested in the deal. And I was wondering if you could give a little bit of

00:25:31.360 context on that? And was that an accurate characterization of this group? And for people

00:25:36.060 that aren't familiar with Ottawa, this is basically that intersection where the Shadow

00:25:39.640 Laurier and the Rideau Centre are. So, so that is a very true statement. And I mean,

00:25:45.680 the government did acknowledge that, that there was some, some difficulties with that particular

00:25:51.440 group. And, you know, this is, this goes back to what I was saying earlier, that each individual

00:25:57.380 owner operator was free to always make their own decisions right they were there voluntarily

00:26:02.580 there was no chain of command that was you know lawfully giving orders to all the truck drivers

00:26:08.020 what we had was a an established intersection of um of truckers from all various backgrounds

00:26:15.540 it wasn't just truckers from quebec there was polish uh truck drivers that were there polish

00:26:20.980 canadians that were there and i don't believe they were from from the province of quebec so we had

00:26:25.620 a mix of different groups that were actually on that corner i know because i personally talked to

00:26:30.500 them and so what we did like we did with every other um different sort of group because we we

00:26:38.260 tried to structure it in a way to just just for ease of of communication to make uh truck captains

00:26:45.460 to sort of just for passing information right we wanted to be a little bit organized and we would

00:26:50.820 go and make them all we've oh we have lost tom marazzo it appears we will get tom back on in

00:27:00.100 just a moment but that point that he mentioned is a very crucial one and interestingly enough

00:27:05.540 i think we have tom back on so once uh once tom's on put him there but that point about where the

00:27:12.020 lack of organization took place it was interesting because the government's kind of been using that

00:27:17.540 as a criticism of the convoy that not everyone was was there under this one banner and one

00:27:22.820 hierarchy but anyone i've ever interviewed or spoken to whether it's you or some of your

00:27:28.020 colleagues there that's like the selling point of the convoy because it speaks to that organic

00:27:32.660 grassroots nature of it and to go back to that ridiculous claim that we've heard from the

00:27:36.820 government and from cbc that this was foreign funded and that foreign actors were behind it

00:27:41.700 i mean yes there were people from poland and people from india but they weren't representing

00:27:45.940 any foreign interest they're there as as truckers and this idea that this was grassroots i think

00:27:51.300 it's where the magic of the convoy really came from because there was no head of the snake if

00:27:55.940 you will because everyone was there as an individual because they bought into the message of the convoy

00:28:03.300 yeah and you know what's a really interesting thing is i had heard uh the story about the

00:28:07.220 foreign funding and everything and in somebody that i know that actually was in canada in in

00:28:12.900 rich like is a polish canadian person as well as indian canadian uh people had actually traveled

00:28:19.460 back to their uh their other countries and from there were because of their affiliation of being

00:28:25.460 canadians as well and who were in canada went back to their to the other countries and were making

00:28:31.380 donations and that's how they ended up getting classified as being foreign funded it's like

00:28:37.380 you're kind of that's like me taking a trip to florida and watching back here and saying well

00:28:42.580 I'm going to donate from Florida. And now that's counting as foreign funding. No, it can't.

00:28:46.980 Whatever happened to diversity being our strength. We're supposed to celebrate

00:28:50.020 that we have all of these different cultures in Canada.

00:28:53.780 But it's here or there because I mean, the reality is the CSIS acknowledged that, hey,

00:28:58.740 this is not a foreign funded or controlled or run operation by an outside government.

00:29:04.580 This is a grassroots movement. They've said it themselves. They've proven this.

00:29:08.660 and it's as far as i'm concerned a done deal right this was this was canadians let me just ask you

00:29:16.180 to go back to those negotiations for a moment you had uh we heard this week jim watson really

00:29:23.140 expressed a little bit of skepticism and even some of the documents that ottawa has put forward have

00:29:27.780 said they really felt like they had nothing to lose so it wasn't like they were taking this

00:29:32.340 moral stance that you know these are canadians and we want to sit down and we want to talk to them

00:29:36.420 when you were in the room, what was your sense of their motivation? Did you feel like they were

00:29:42.360 trying to pull the rug out from under you? Did you feel like they were just desperate and trying

00:29:47.560 to do something? Like what would you characterize as their motivations when they did eventually

00:29:51.740 agree to talk with you and then also through Dean French to talk with the broader Freedom

00:29:56.580 Court board? Well, I want to say this. My impression of listening to the testimony of

00:30:03.360 jim watson yesterday the the only word i could describe for that particular set of testimony was

00:30:09.300 hubris um you know which is is excessive pride um and and i i'm sorry but listening to the to

00:30:18.400 the mayor characterized the way he did was very very bizarre to me um i'm not even sure he was

00:30:24.280 he was in the same city that the rest of us were in but i you know to go to your your original

00:30:28.700 question, you know, my dealings with, um, the city manager, Steve Kay, uh, and then later we

00:30:35.020 had subsequent meetings with, um, with Steve Kay, Kim Ayotte, um, inspector Drummond, um, and

00:30:42.500 members of the, the truck board, uh, you know, we had very productive meetings. It was a very

00:30:48.760 meaningful dialogue. And, and that was interesting because I don't think that that was, that was

00:30:54.660 conveyed strongly enough now i will say i was you know i was quite appreciative of the uh the the

00:31:03.400 forthrightness in the honesty and i think the integrity that came from steve k and um uh mr

00:31:11.380 when he was speaking as well the chief of staff to the mayor it was it was absolutely refreshing

00:31:16.520 to hear their testimony and and i mean to say that they were against the convoy yes that's true

00:31:22.020 but they were against the convoy but they were always very respectful and they clearly stated why

00:31:27.300 uh they were taking the actions that they were taking so they weren't they weren't against us

00:31:31.780 because they didn't like us but when you look at some of the other testimony they were against us

00:31:36.540 because they didn't like us right and so there's a big difference between doing something because

00:31:42.520 it's the right thing to do versus i'm going to do this because i just don't like you and that to me

00:31:48.000 was very very clear yeah and we go back to the federal government's role in this there no one

00:31:53.120 lives on wellington street there are no businesses on wellington street it's government government

00:31:57.360 government and if this operation had been had been seen through to completion this would have been

00:32:03.200 the federal government's problem entirely and i think it was actually quite brilliant on the city

00:32:07.600 of ottawa's perspective to say listen we can't make the convoy go away our issue is that we want

00:32:13.280 ottawa residents and businesses to have as minimal disruption as possible and i don't think the

00:32:17.760 federal government wanted to to then have this squarely on its lap yeah and you know we prepared

00:32:26.240 a a live stream uh statement and we said we specifically said many times uh i know myself i

00:32:35.040 i said it once i know the other members had all said it on various forms of uh of live streaming

00:32:40.800 that our intention was not to put pressure or disrupt the city of Ottawa our our our grievance

00:32:48.820 was with the federal government and that we wanted to work with the city we knew we identified and

00:32:55.380 if you listen to Diane Dean's testimony today after that police services board meeting that

00:33:00.300 she had with Peter slowly we listened to that testimony or sorry we listened to the recording

00:33:06.260 of that meeting and we knew immediately that the situation had just fundamentally changed for for us

00:33:13.140 and we took immediate steps to recreate a strategy to take the pressure off of the residents thereby

00:33:19.940 taking the pressure off of the chief of police thereby taking pressure off of the entire city

00:33:26.500 of ottawa the entire situation we were trying to de-escalate the tension that was a deliberate

00:33:31.860 objective that we had based on that police services board meeting where we saw all this rhetoric

00:33:37.620 uh in and quite frankly unhinged um discussions coming out of diane dean it was just incredible

00:33:45.060 to watch and we knew we had to make immediate steps to get peter slowly help we were actually

00:33:52.340 actively trying to help peter slowly which is which is incredible um when you think that the

00:33:58.180 the amount of disrespect we were seeing we were actually trying to help them and you know when

00:34:03.920 you're listening to the testimony you're not seeing that come out right because their response

00:34:08.700 is hey from day one we just wanted to break the backs of these people break their will to continue

00:34:13.840 to protest and you know they say on one hand hey we we believe in free speech and protesting or

00:34:19.180 peacefully assembling but we're going to do everything in our power to go after you and to

00:34:25.100 break your will to stay in our city you know so it's it's really a lot of double speak i i am very

00:34:31.500 glad actually that people like you and tamara leach and chris barber are so far down in the

00:34:38.620 witness list because you actually get the benefit of hearing this and you can be responding to this

00:34:44.540 and and questioned on things that have come up earlier whereas if you were earlier on and you

00:34:49.420 You wouldn't necessarily know where Jim Watson was going to go or where Kelly Ayotte was going to go and so on.

00:34:56.000 So I'm actually quite glad that you are going to be a little bit later in the running order, as you will.

00:35:00.940 And you can deal with this on the record under oath.

00:35:04.380 Tom Marazzo, we'll check in with you, I'm sure, later on in this six, seven weeks.

00:35:08.480 But thank you so much for joining me today.

00:35:10.020 Good to talk to you as always.

00:35:11.500 Yeah.

00:35:12.420 Thank you, too, Andrew.

00:35:13.480 Thank you.

00:35:14.100 Thank you.

00:35:14.600 That is Tom Marazzo.

00:35:16.280 Army Tom, as he's called by Keith Wilson, who was just on the show last week, takes a very,

00:35:22.360 very significant logistical mind to just go and keep emergency lanes open and talk about

00:35:28.360 truck repositioning. And he did that. And I think it was very much an endorsement of him that he

00:35:33.080 was invited to have that meeting at the city of Ottawa initially. And then, of course, the

00:35:38.160 negotiations got more complex as you had Dean French start brokering it. Interestingly enough,

00:35:43.820 Dean French is not on the witness list, and I can't remember if I mentioned it yesterday. He's someone that I really think should be on there. Other people as well that would have very unique perspectives that aren't on the witness list, like the police liaisons that were on the ground talking to convoy organizers and protesters throughout the week, they aren't on the list.

00:36:03.160 And I know that there is a work in progress, possibly, that more witnesses could be added.

00:36:08.660 But I really do think this is something we need to see more of.

00:36:12.020 People that have not just official responses and official lines, but people that were actually there, that were actually on the ground, that can speak to what was happening.

00:36:21.480 So we'll keep you in the loop on this as the days and weeks progress.

00:36:26.560 I just want to, before we wrap things up here, tell you that we are so close to our 100,000

00:36:33.060 subscriber goal on YouTube. So if you are a YouTube user and perhaps you're watching this

00:36:37.980 on YouTube right now, click that subscribe button. I think it's red. It's like just below the video

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00:37:07.300 after we get to a hundred thousand but that's it or a cat we don't discriminate we can do one of

00:37:11.540 each for all of you uh thanks to tom marazzo and all of you folks for tuning in to the program

00:37:16.720 today uh we will be back next week with more of canada's most of everyone talk show and a brand

00:37:21.720 new edition of Fake News Friday on, as the name suggests, Friday. Have a good weekend, everyone.

00:37:26.900 Thank you. God bless and good day to you all. Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:37:33.460 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - October 19, 2022

Foreign actors weren't behind Freedom Convoy, commission evidence confirms

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