00:00:17.540This is another edition of Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show here on True North.
00:00:22.180The 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.
00:00:34.500And I'll let you fill out the local listings on all of those in between time zones.
00:00:38.920The time zone recitation is a little trick that Mark Stein does on his podcast.
00:00:44.000And when I guest hosted for him on several occasions, I made sure to include the time zones.
00:00:49.100And I actually kind of enjoyed it. It's a lot of fun. But in any event, for all of you watching
00:00:54.360this or listening to this after the fact, you're like, what the? That was like five seconds of my
00:00:58.020life. I'll never get back. A lot like Jim Watson's testimony before the Public Order Emergency
00:01:03.380Commission. That's what we call a segue, my friends. This is now day five of the Public
00:01:10.160Order Emergency Commission. I did a bit of an experiment on yesterday's show, and I spent the
00:01:15.220entire program talking about what had been happening in the first several days, playing
00:01:19.700some of the key clips and highlights. I'm going to do a little bit of that today, but
00:01:23.680I'm also going to take a lot of the bigger picture view. Tom Marazzo, who has been on
00:01:28.900this show before, he was quoted in my book. He was a Freedom Convoy volunteer, big logistics
00:01:34.420guy. He'll be on in just about 12 minutes time to talk about the negotiations taking
00:01:40.180place behind the scenes between convoy organizers and the City of Ottawa. Negotiations that are
00:01:46.600quite critical to this idea of whether or not the Emergencies Act was justified. We have heard a lot
00:01:54.200of testimony to this point. In fact, it's just after four o'clock right now, and since 9.45 this
00:01:59.780morning, with a couple of breaks there notwithstanding, former Ottawa Police Services
00:02:04.920Board Chair Diane Deans has been testifying, talking about all of these calls that she was
00:02:10.360putting and the police service was putting to get more resources, more officers, calls that
00:02:15.720effectively went ignored. And I want to play just a couple of the highlights that have come out
00:02:21.420from Diane Deans' testimony so far. One of them I found kind of interesting here, and I want to pull
00:02:27.560up the clip. It's actually two clips because she was, it seemed like surprised that the police
00:02:34.560service didn't want to give her, a city councillor who's responsible for basically the ways and means
00:02:41.140of policing, keeping the lights on at Ottawa Police Headquarters, surprised they didn't want
00:02:45.740to give her like the detailed breakdown of what their tactical plans were to go after convoy
00:02:52.800protesters. This was an exchange from just about an hour and a half ago. In your witness statement,
00:03:00.700you say that when you requested to see the plan you would receive wiggle words can you explain
00:03:06.940what you mean by that well i think just what i've been describing here this morning that
00:03:12.620we'd see parts of a plan we'd hear little bits about um you know there's going to be some form
00:03:18.940of an operation but um you know i recall at one point chief slowly telling me that he couldn't
00:03:25.100share the details because you know it obviously the element of surprise is important in these
00:03:31.180operations we heard a lot of evidence this morning about the plan so you testified that there is
00:03:39.460always some tension between the police and the police services board about the sharing of
00:03:45.820operational planning details right right um and we spoke before the break about the sensitivity
00:03:55.340of intelligence information and i suggest to you that there are very similar sensitivities
00:04:01.740involved in sharing operational information yep the information of police operations is considered
00:04:11.020highly confidential for safety reasons right uh including the the the safety of officers right
00:04:17.500and as chief of police the safety of officers would be of the utmost importance right of course
00:04:24.180and like in the case of intelligence reports it was not the practice of the board to demand
00:04:34.920operational planning information prior to the convoy right um i don't think we demanded
00:04:45.400operational planning information i think we you know inquired about operational issues in
00:04:54.040accordance with what we understood that limit to be under the act fair so prior to the convoy
00:05:04.760you wanted some high level operational information but you weren't asking for tactical plans for
00:05:09.880example no you agree with me on that i do okay so it was a bit of an odd exchange in some regards
00:05:22.200because we we had on one hand the police services board saying she wanted more information she
00:05:26.920seemed a little bit perturbed she wasn't getting that but also an admission that no the police
00:05:31.800services board who are bureaucrats and counselors would never have access to just that minutiae of
00:05:40.280where the police are going to position and all of this other stuff so i i think that there's a bit
00:05:46.020of a weird dynamic taking place now that this is a woman who when the convoy was underway
00:05:50.120accused them of being terrorist she said that i can't remember if it was during a meeting or in
00:05:55.680an interview, but called the convoy protesters terrorists. Yet oddly, Diane Dean was actually
00:06:01.900treated as an asset by convoy leaders and convoy organizers. They were being very nice.
00:06:08.860Brendan Miller, who's been the lead lawyer representing the Freedom Convoy,
00:06:13.060was thanking her for her service on the police services board, was complimenting her. They were
00:06:17.880all laughs and it seemed like there is a little bit of a sense of trying to pick the enemy of
00:06:25.640your enemy and I think that there's a lot of issues that Diane Deans had with Jim Watson they
00:06:32.400played and I'm not gonna make you suffer through it but they played this 10 minute long surreptitiously
00:06:38.300recorded conversation Diane Deans recorded it it's a teams meeting between her and Jim Watson
00:06:44.960and it's about her decision to appoint an interim chief to replace Steve Bell when there was this
00:06:50.560point at which Ottawa had like three police chiefs in the matter of 24 hours and Jim Watson was
00:06:55.880expressing his dislike of that decision and the police service lawyer was really going after
00:07:02.600Diane Deans for recording this and it was kind of an odd dynamic about you know like nothing to do
00:07:09.720with the Emergencies Act, nothing to do with horses trampling over an Indigenous woman,
00:07:14.720nothing to do with the suspension of civil liberties, nothing to do with anything except
00:07:18.700perhaps a little bit of palace intrigue at Ottawa City Hall. Not that intrigue and Ottawa municipal
00:07:25.120politics have ever been used in the same sentence before. I want to play another clip for you here,
00:07:31.860and this is a bit of an interesting one that came about today in which Diane Deans accused Jim
00:07:37.320Watson of using the convoy to score political points. And I should say, this is perhaps why
00:07:43.780the convoy lawyer might have thought that she was a better ally as far as legal strategy is concerned
00:07:50.080compared to Jim Watson. Let's roll that. There was never an intention to hire anyone to be the
00:07:57.880ongoing chief of police in Ottawa without a process. And I was frustrated that it was
00:08:04.860characterized i mean the mayor's office got ahead of that story in the media by leaking it
00:08:11.980which it was confidential information it was leaked and they got ahead of that story and
00:08:18.300characterized it as something quite different than it was intended to be you felt they're playing a
00:08:24.700bit of politics with you in the midst of this crisis in the city yeah i guess i guess to a
00:08:30.540certain extent that old maxim about never wasting a good crisis it also presents an opportunities
00:08:38.140to settle some old scores and i guess that's the way i i view that yeah that's how you felt yeah
00:08:46.140accusing mayor jim watson of using the convoy for political gain to force her out of her role
00:08:52.700as police services board chair and so on but i want to get outside of the municipal politics
00:08:58.300here for a moment because one of the big revelations that came wasn't even through
00:09:02.220uh testimony necessarily but through documents so anyone can do this you can head to the public
00:09:07.820order emergency commission website right now and you can find the documents that have been
00:09:13.180uploaded as exhibits and and there's a bunch of them there's video there's email records
00:09:17.580handwritten notes text messages i haven't gone through all of them yet or even close to all of
00:09:22.540them but in these documents there are some very revealing details and one of them is not even
00:09:28.940groundbreaking because anyone with half a brain knew this any canadian knew this any convoy member
00:09:35.020or supporter knew this everyone but justin trudeau and cbc knew this but it bears repeating because
00:09:41.500now it's in the official evidence for the public order emergency commission ceases confirmed that
00:09:48.140there was no foreign funding behind the convoy that foreign actors were not behind the convoy
00:09:55.100that this was an organic grassroots movement and more importantly a domestic grassroots movement
00:10:03.420now this comes from meetings of a minutes of a meeting held on February 6th so the convoy is
00:10:08.700well underway here and the CSIS director David Vigneault says there are no foreign actors
00:10:15.660identified at this point supporting or financing this convoy. Now, obviously, a few days after that,
00:10:21.960there would be the leak of donors to Give, Send, Go. And people would find that, yes, there were
00:10:26.600some donors from there that were from the United States or from the United Kingdom or from, I don't
00:10:31.400know, Swatiland or something. I think, no, they changed the name. It's now Eswatini. There's a
00:10:36.580little bit of African geography trivia for you. But I don't know if there were any Eswatini donors
00:10:42.280to the Freedom Convoy. But nevertheless, people from around the world that resonated with this
00:10:47.680did donate. But by and large, foreign funding was a minority. And also, it was downstream.
00:10:54.920It was downstream of the organic momentum and organic support that the convoy had.
00:11:00.920And that part is so critical here, because there's a difference between some guy sitting
00:11:05.380in the Kremlin, putting this huge chunk of change towards this protest movement,
00:11:10.160and an organic movement, the people around the world say,
00:11:13.520you know what, I like the cut of those truckers' jibs.
00:12:30.400And remember, the federal government has to be able to prove
00:12:33.780that there were no other means available to them under law to deal with this problem.
00:12:39.980If, by the way, if a national emergency even existed, which I highly doubt it did,
00:12:45.940but they need to prove that there were no other lawful means available to them.
00:12:49.380And I go back to what we heard a lot of this week about the negotiations
00:12:53.700between the city of Ottawa and convoy organizers.
00:12:57.340And there's a whole chapter in my book dedicated to this.
00:13:00.500So if you want to go into that level of detail, I would encourage you to.
00:13:03.120But I wanted to bring into the discussion Tom Marazzo, who we had on the show shortly after the convoy was disbanded.
00:13:10.700He was instrumental in those very discussions between convoy leaders and police, and he joins me now.
00:13:18.340Tom, it's good to talk to you again. Thanks for coming on today.
00:13:25.040Now, first off, you're in Ottawa right now. Is this your first time back in some time?
00:13:30.180no i was actually here when james top arrived on the uh the the 30th of june and also uh
00:13:39.240approximately two weeks before that when james and i and dr paul alexander had the meetings with
00:13:44.040the federal members of uh parliament which by the way were all conservative members of parliament
00:13:49.800so yeah oh yes i did i did remember that so so so you've been back since the the big events of
00:13:57.400January and February here. How's it been these first few days listening to all this testimony
00:14:02.040and reliving, admittedly, some of the more boring aspects of it, but reliving some of this?
00:14:08.620You know, I have to say it has been incredibly challenging to sit there in the audience and
00:14:15.660listen to people talk about you and the convoy and everybody that participated in the convoy
00:14:24.160in January and February and literally regurgitate the mainstream media talking points that we heard
00:14:31.760nine months ago. In fact, not only did they regurgitate just the mainstream media talking
00:14:36.740points, but they even amplify it. They even further exaggerate the stories from the mainstream
00:14:45.340media that we heard. So when you're sitting there in the audience and you're listening to them
00:14:49.640actually say it in real time, it's a little bit disheartening because, you know, I think they've
00:14:55.880said it so many times in their minds that they actually believe the lies themselves. I don't
00:15:01.540think they can distinguish between the lies and the truth anymore. Truthfully.
00:15:07.080There have been a lot of details, especially today, that I really don't think are all that
00:15:11.980relevant to this use of the Emergencies Act. I mean, if you're an Ottawa City Hall watcher,
00:15:16.900it may be fascinating to hear about, you know, the infighting between Diane Deans and Jim Watson,
00:15:21.780but it really doesn't apply to this overarching question of, was Justin Trudeau right to suspend
00:15:27.580civil liberties? Was this a national emergency? And all of these other things. But we are going
00:15:32.300to get into some of that more critical testimony. I know you are on the preliminary list of witnesses,
00:15:37.440so you'll have your opportunity to testify later on. But what is it that you feel you really want
00:15:43.720to learn from this? Because you had your own vantage point in the midst of this. And I think
00:15:47.640obviously all of the people connected to the convoy want an acknowledgement that the Emergencies Act
00:15:53.140was wrong. But as far as things you'd like to learn, what is the information you want to take
00:15:57.980out of this? Well, that's a great question because I know me personally, what I would like to learn
00:16:05.540was the decisions, the steps that every level of government that was involved in this. And
00:16:13.560we're talking the local government for the city of Ottawa, the provincial government and the federal
00:16:19.400government. I'm very interested to hear, even myself, what were the steps that you took to
00:16:29.420put decisions that you made? You know, what were the processes that you had in place to deal with
00:16:35.200this? Because we heard testimony at the end of, I think on the second day with Councillor Flurry,
00:16:40.860i believe where he had said you know in his 12 years as a counselor on average the city of ottawa
00:16:46.860deals with 99 protests per year and so if i look at that he's got experience as a as a ward counselor
00:16:55.260with 1200 protests in his time in council so he's quite an experienced yeah yeah he's a he's a very
00:17:03.420experienced politician when it comes to you know that i mean to break it down it's a third of your
00:17:07.740year almost where you're dealing with protests in your ward and so my my question becomes well
00:17:14.940what things in your 12 years have you done to put into place to assist law enforcement into
00:17:21.660uh you know putting yourselves in a position where should there be you know um a protest
00:17:27.580to this magnitude how can you help local law enforcement what steps did you do like
00:17:32.860Like, 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.
00:17:41.220I 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.
00:17:57.000What 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.
00:18:12.100And 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.
00:18:21.460but their immediate default setting was to go towards giving themselves extraordinary powers
00:18:28.460so that they could physically remove the convoy from the city of Ottawa there was never I have
00:18:35.080yet to hear any dialogue or discussion of having dialogue with us nothing well on that note one
00:18:42.800exhibit that did come up yesterday when Mayor Jim Watson was testifying was a attack or it might
00:18:49.560have been two days ago with someone else. I get them all mixed up, but it was a text exchange with
00:18:54.260someone from the federal government where it was the Ottawa chief of staff to the mayor, Serge
00:18:59.960Arpin, I believe, or the city manager, Steve Kanellakis, who had said to the federal government,
00:19:04.800like, you know, you guys are just coming out and denigrating them and you expect us to meet with
00:19:09.320them. So even when the city was engaging with you, there was this frustration from them that the
00:19:14.180federal government was just trying to vilify and demonize uh continuously and that was the
00:19:19.380federal government's only real strategy here yeah and you saw even in the testimony i mean we haven't
00:19:26.420really heard from the ontario government um and i don't even believe doug ford is on the list and
00:19:31.740nor does he have any desire to participate in this in any meaningful way um even though he is the one
00:19:38.640who got his attorney general to use ex parte meaning yes to get uh the the the funds that we
00:19:46.640we fundraise you know two occasions 10 million dollars each time um he went after that knowing
00:19:53.660that we had legal counsel on the ground he knew who they were but yet he got into a courtroom with
00:19:58.420his attorney general and froze that money as proceeds of a crime without any legal representation
00:20:04.640from us. So that's the premier of this province that's doing that, right? You've got Justin
00:20:10.880Trudeau, who was making the circuit on media, calling us misogynist. And I saw in the media,
00:20:15.820he's still using that word, you know, to target anybody that he, at least he's using it on Pierre
00:20:22.580Poliev instead of us for a change. But, you know, we're seeing all this infighting. And to be
00:20:28.840perfectly honest, I've been sitting in the crowd listening to all this testimony for five days now.
00:20:34.640Um, and what I hear is gross incompetence and, uh, power grabs.
00:20:42.320It is a bunch of children that can't get along with each other in the sandbox.
00:20:46.940And I, I'm not hearing anything, but just really a lot of, uh, unprofessionalism.
00:20:52.500Uh, and I think that if the public at large tuned in to listen to what was actually being
00:20:57.620said, they would be beyond disgusted in the behavior of the government.
00:21:03.680at even the city of ottawa level um it is it is just uh it's a sight to see and to listen to day
00:21:10.720after day how they they just tear each other apart so i i mean i it's i'm not a sophisticated lawyer
00:21:18.000i don't have the experience to see it the way the lawyers do it but as a general public um i see this
00:21:23.680and i think how do you guys even keep the lights on in this city it's amazing yes and and i i also
00:21:30.400go back to a point that i may have actually made when you and i were speaking on this program last
00:21:35.280about how this convoy came together in the matter of a couple of weeks and it's a wonder how the
00:21:40.640odd city of auto even manages to put canada day together with the whole year given the
00:21:44.880level of dysfunction we we have here but i i want to go to those crucial negotiations because i
00:21:51.200think these things are are really one of the the silver bullets of the case against the emergencies
00:21:57.200act because they were bearing fruit trucks were being relocated onto wellington street the impact
00:22:02.480on residential neighborhoods was being diminished by the day the federal government knew about that
00:22:08.960and this we did get pretty clearly from testimony this week that it wasn't just that briefing before
00:22:14.560cabinet but uh the chief of staff to minister marco mendicino was actively engaged acknowledged
00:22:20.800that minister marco mendicino knew about these negotiations and knew about this process i know
00:22:26.160you were were integral to those uh in your view would this have if you had been given that full
00:22:33.680three days without the emergencies act to move these trucks would the protest look very different
00:22:40.160from how it did a few days prior absolutely it would have we would have relocated the trucks
00:22:47.840and i want to i want to put out a caveat with this too every truck driver that was there was
00:22:53.280an individual owner operator of their own their own vehicles so would we have done everything in
00:22:59.680our power to try and convince the individual owner operators to relocate up onto wellington which
00:23:05.920we were all working towards that objective and you know i think that that would have very
00:23:12.240very likely been the case had the the government not meddled not interfered and and um you know
00:23:19.600really really tried hard to angle themselves in a position where they could try to invoke the
00:23:24.400emergencies act um i think you would have seen a very much uh different looking outcome i believe
00:23:32.080we would have got those trucks on there i mean chris barber was there you know trying to relocate
00:23:36.320vehicles i know myself and eva chippy were actually in a truck talking to truckers trying to
00:23:44.400lay out a case for why this was good for us and we were getting buy-in and you know you would see
00:23:49.520the um you know the the i i there was a time that i felt bad once for my my ottawa police uh liaison
00:23:58.080officer uh because we kind of it's to use the football analogy we kind of got to the five yard
00:24:03.680line and then all of a sudden the chaos that was happening behind the scenes with the uh police
00:24:10.640department themselves um they pulled the the rug right under this guy's uh feet and the entire deal
00:24:17.360broke down and you know and it was we we had a clear objective for what we wanted and you know
00:24:22.960what that objective was always always first and foremost was to end the federal mandates but the
00:24:28.480other thing was always to be safe and responsible for the residents of ottawa and for the truckers
00:24:35.920and for the police and all emergency services vehicles that was a stated clear objective
00:24:41.840amongst all of us to be safe and responsible and yet at every turn it would seem that the
00:24:48.880the the so-called local government um in federal government would would have their own agendas and
00:24:54.640they would interrupt that and then they would go on to the media and blame us for it one thing that
00:25:02.240I have to ask because there was a fair bit of testimony about the group of truckers that were
00:25:07.640at Rideau and Sussex. And the way that this was described by some of the people connected to the
00:25:13.620city of Ottawa who have testified is that they were a Quebec group and they were a lot more
00:25:19.000stubborn. They were, I think there was someone even made an implication that there was some
00:25:23.040organized crime connection, but they didn't really extrapolate on that. But basically that this group
00:25:27.580really wasn't interested in the deal. And I was wondering if you could give a little bit of
00:25:31.360context on that? And was that an accurate characterization of this group? And for people
00:25:36.060that aren't familiar with Ottawa, this is basically that intersection where the Shadow
00:25:39.640Laurier and the Rideau Centre are. So, so that is a very true statement. And I mean,
00:25:45.680the government did acknowledge that, that there was some, some difficulties with that particular
00:25:51.440group. And, you know, this is, this goes back to what I was saying earlier, that each individual
00:25:57.380owner operator was free to always make their own decisions right they were there voluntarily
00:26:02.580there was no chain of command that was you know lawfully giving orders to all the truck drivers
00:26:08.020what we had was a an established intersection of um of truckers from all various backgrounds
00:26:15.540it wasn't just truckers from quebec there was polish uh truck drivers that were there polish
00:26:20.980canadians that were there and i don't believe they were from from the province of quebec so we had
00:26:25.620a mix of different groups that were actually on that corner i know because i personally talked to
00:26:30.500them and so what we did like we did with every other um different sort of group because we we
00:26:38.260tried to structure it in a way to just just for ease of of communication to make uh truck captains
00:26:45.460to sort of just for passing information right we wanted to be a little bit organized and we would
00:26:50.820go and make them all we've oh we have lost tom marazzo it appears we will get tom back on in
00:27:00.100just a moment but that point that he mentioned is a very crucial one and interestingly enough
00:27:05.540i think we have tom back on so once uh once tom's on put him there but that point about where the
00:27:12.020lack of organization took place it was interesting because the government's kind of been using that
00:27:17.540as a criticism of the convoy that not everyone was was there under this one banner and one
00:27:22.820hierarchy but anyone i've ever interviewed or spoken to whether it's you or some of your
00:27:28.020colleagues there that's like the selling point of the convoy because it speaks to that organic
00:27:32.660grassroots nature of it and to go back to that ridiculous claim that we've heard from the
00:27:36.820government and from cbc that this was foreign funded and that foreign actors were behind it
00:27:41.700i mean yes there were people from poland and people from india but they weren't representing
00:27:45.940any foreign interest they're there as as truckers and this idea that this was grassroots i think
00:27:51.300it's where the magic of the convoy really came from because there was no head of the snake if
00:27:55.940you will because everyone was there as an individual because they bought into the message of the convoy
00:28:03.300yeah and you know what's a really interesting thing is i had heard uh the story about the
00:28:07.220foreign funding and everything and in somebody that i know that actually was in canada in in
00:28:12.900rich like is a polish canadian person as well as indian canadian uh people had actually traveled
00:28:19.460back to their uh their other countries and from there were because of their affiliation of being
00:28:25.460canadians as well and who were in canada went back to their to the other countries and were making
00:28:31.380donations and that's how they ended up getting classified as being foreign funded it's like
00:28:37.380you're kind of that's like me taking a trip to florida and watching back here and saying well
00:28:42.580I'm going to donate from Florida. And now that's counting as foreign funding. No, it can't.
00:28:46.980Whatever happened to diversity being our strength. We're supposed to celebrate
00:28:50.020that we have all of these different cultures in Canada.
00:28:53.780But it's here or there because I mean, the reality is the CSIS acknowledged that, hey,
00:28:58.740this is not a foreign funded or controlled or run operation by an outside government.
00:29:04.580This is a grassroots movement. They've said it themselves. They've proven this.
00:29:08.660and it's as far as i'm concerned a done deal right this was this was canadians let me just ask you
00:29:16.180to go back to those negotiations for a moment you had uh we heard this week jim watson really
00:29:23.140expressed a little bit of skepticism and even some of the documents that ottawa has put forward have
00:29:27.780said they really felt like they had nothing to lose so it wasn't like they were taking this
00:29:32.340moral stance that you know these are canadians and we want to sit down and we want to talk to them
00:29:36.420when you were in the room, what was your sense of their motivation? Did you feel like they were
00:29:42.360trying to pull the rug out from under you? Did you feel like they were just desperate and trying
00:29:47.560to do something? Like what would you characterize as their motivations when they did eventually
00:29:51.740agree to talk with you and then also through Dean French to talk with the broader Freedom
00:29:56.580Court board? Well, I want to say this. My impression of listening to the testimony of
00:30:03.360jim watson yesterday the the only word i could describe for that particular set of testimony was
00:30:09.300hubris um you know which is is excessive pride um and and i i'm sorry but listening to the to
00:30:18.400the mayor characterized the way he did was very very bizarre to me um i'm not even sure he was
00:30:24.280he was in the same city that the rest of us were in but i you know to go to your your original
00:30:28.700question, you know, my dealings with, um, the city manager, Steve Kay, uh, and then later we
00:30:35.020had subsequent meetings with, um, with Steve Kay, Kim Ayotte, um, inspector Drummond, um, and
00:30:42.500members of the, the truck board, uh, you know, we had very productive meetings. It was a very
00:30:48.760meaningful dialogue. And, and that was interesting because I don't think that that was, that was
00:30:54.660conveyed strongly enough now i will say i was you know i was quite appreciative of the uh the the
00:31:03.400forthrightness in the honesty and i think the integrity that came from steve k and um uh mr
00:31:11.380when he was speaking as well the chief of staff to the mayor it was it was absolutely refreshing
00:31:16.520to hear their testimony and and i mean to say that they were against the convoy yes that's true
00:31:22.020but they were against the convoy but they were always very respectful and they clearly stated why
00:31:27.300uh they were taking the actions that they were taking so they weren't they weren't against us
00:31:31.780because they didn't like us but when you look at some of the other testimony they were against us
00:31:36.540because they didn't like us right and so there's a big difference between doing something because
00:31:42.520it's the right thing to do versus i'm going to do this because i just don't like you and that to me
00:31:48.000was very very clear yeah and we go back to the federal government's role in this there no one
00:31:53.120lives on wellington street there are no businesses on wellington street it's government government
00:31:57.360government and if this operation had been had been seen through to completion this would have been
00:32:03.200the federal government's problem entirely and i think it was actually quite brilliant on the city
00:32:07.600of ottawa's perspective to say listen we can't make the convoy go away our issue is that we want
00:32:13.280ottawa residents and businesses to have as minimal disruption as possible and i don't think the
00:32:17.760federal government wanted to to then have this squarely on its lap yeah and you know we prepared
00:32:26.240a a live stream uh statement and we said we specifically said many times uh i know myself i
00:32:35.040i said it once i know the other members had all said it on various forms of uh of live streaming
00:32:40.800that our intention was not to put pressure or disrupt the city of Ottawa our our our grievance
00:32:48.820was with the federal government and that we wanted to work with the city we knew we identified and
00:32:55.380if you listen to Diane Dean's testimony today after that police services board meeting that
00:33:00.300she had with Peter slowly we listened to that testimony or sorry we listened to the recording
00:33:06.260of that meeting and we knew immediately that the situation had just fundamentally changed for for us
00:33:13.140and we took immediate steps to recreate a strategy to take the pressure off of the residents thereby
00:33:19.940taking the pressure off of the chief of police thereby taking pressure off of the entire city
00:33:26.500of ottawa the entire situation we were trying to de-escalate the tension that was a deliberate
00:33:31.860objective that we had based on that police services board meeting where we saw all this rhetoric
00:33:37.620uh in and quite frankly unhinged um discussions coming out of diane dean it was just incredible
00:33:45.060to watch and we knew we had to make immediate steps to get peter slowly help we were actually
00:33:52.340actively trying to help peter slowly which is which is incredible um when you think that the
00:33:58.180the amount of disrespect we were seeing we were actually trying to help them and you know when
00:34:03.920you're listening to the testimony you're not seeing that come out right because their response
00:34:08.700is hey from day one we just wanted to break the backs of these people break their will to continue
00:34:13.840to protest and you know they say on one hand hey we we believe in free speech and protesting or
00:34:19.180peacefully assembling but we're going to do everything in our power to go after you and to
00:34:25.100break your will to stay in our city you know so it's it's really a lot of double speak i i am very
00:34:31.500glad actually that people like you and tamara leach and chris barber are so far down in the
00:34:38.620witness list because you actually get the benefit of hearing this and you can be responding to this
00:34:44.540and and questioned on things that have come up earlier whereas if you were earlier on and you
00:34:49.420You wouldn't necessarily know where Jim Watson was going to go or where Kelly Ayotte was going to go and so on.
00:34:56.000So I'm actually quite glad that you are going to be a little bit later in the running order, as you will.
00:35:00.940And you can deal with this on the record under oath.
00:35:04.380Tom Marazzo, we'll check in with you, I'm sure, later on in this six, seven weeks.
00:35:08.480But thank you so much for joining me today.
00:35:16.280Army Tom, as he's called by Keith Wilson, who was just on the show last week, takes a very,
00:35:22.360very significant logistical mind to just go and keep emergency lanes open and talk about
00:35:28.360truck repositioning. And he did that. And I think it was very much an endorsement of him that he
00:35:33.080was invited to have that meeting at the city of Ottawa initially. And then, of course, the
00:35:38.160negotiations got more complex as you had Dean French start brokering it. Interestingly enough,
00:35:43.820Dean 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.
00:36:03.160And I know that there is a work in progress, possibly, that more witnesses could be added.
00:36:08.660But I really do think this is something we need to see more of.
00:36:12.020People 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.
00:36:21.480So we'll keep you in the loop on this as the days and weeks progress.
00:36:26.560I just want to, before we wrap things up here, tell you that we are so close to our 100,000
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00:37:11.540each for all of you uh thanks to tom marazzo and all of you folks for tuning in to the program
00:37:16.720today uh we will be back next week with more of canada's most of everyone talk show and a brand
00:37:21.720new edition of Fake News Friday on, as the name suggests, Friday. Have a good weekend, everyone.
00:37:26.900Thank you. God bless and good day to you all. Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:37:33.460Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.