Juno News - September 09, 2023＂I was there for my kids＂： Freedom Convoy organizer speaks out in new book
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Summary
The People's Emergency Act, Freedom Convoy 2022 by Tom Morazzo is a new book that tells the story behind the story of the Freedom convoy and the events that led up to it. In this episode, Andrew Lawton sits down with the author to discuss his new book, The People s Emergency Act: The Story of Canada's Most Irreverent Convoy.
Transcript
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This is The Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.
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Hello and welcome to The Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.
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And I have often said on this program that anytime someone comes out with a book about the Freedom Convoy,
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I had the great privilege of telling part of this story myself in my own book,
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which came out a little over a year ago now, The Freedom Convoy,
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the inside story of three weeks that shook the world.
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But I always, always, always, always admitted that this was never going to be the entirety of a story.
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I could only tell the story from one particular vantage point.
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And I did my best to do justice to the stories of the people that were a part of this fantastic.
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But I was really eager to hear the stories of those who were in the midst of it,
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We spoke with Tamara Leach when she wrote her own book about this,
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despite some very stringent and strict bail conditions.
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And I've known for a while there's another book coming out,
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Now, I've spoken to Tom on this show and also off this program a great many times.
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He's always been a tremendously humble but a very pivotal participant,
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not just in the convoy and its day-to-day logistics,
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but also in the discussions that took place between the convoy and the City of Ottawa.
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Discussions which could have brought about a peaceful resolution
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and mitigation of the so-called harms that some of the people in the media were saying
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But those efforts were for naught when the Emergency Act came into play.
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Tom testified, as you likely heard, before the Public Order Emergency Commission.
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And let's just show this little great clip of Tom
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when the media wanted to ask him some questions
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on the way out of the Public Order Emergency Commission.
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Mr. Morazzo, can we ask you a couple of questions?
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Well, fortunately, he never gives us that treatment,
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The book is The People's Emergency Act, Freedom Convoy 2022 by Tom Morazzo.
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And yeah, that clip, I remember when that clip came out and you did a story on it,
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because I was watching your coverage of what I had said to the media.
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because I even thought it was funny from looking at it from the camera.
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So, yeah, I mean, like, I had no desire to talk to the legacy media,
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and I still feel that way today that, you know,
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we look at all the people that are on trial or incarcerated around this country,
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and I just, it's incomprehensible to me that the media are not the ones that are on trial.
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And, you know, like that day when I refused to talk to them,
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the harms that the media in this country have caused to ordinary Canadians,
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and just everybody, not ordinary Canadians, all Canadians.
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Well, I think that is a perfect segue into your book
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because the whole point of the Freedom Convoy at the beginning was,
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I mean, if we really go back to the genesis of it,
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it was really spawned as a result of this vaccine mandate for cross-border truckers,
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but a relatively small percentage of the overall population.
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But you compound that with general exasperation with COVID mandates
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And you and I have spoken about this in the past.
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By the end of it, when the Emergencies Act came in,
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I wouldn't even say the Freedom Convoy was about COVID anymore.
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I think in general, it was about the state's efforts
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And I wonder if you look back on it as someone who was in the midst of it,
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When did the mission of the Freedom Convoy, if you will,
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really morph from that more targeted resistance to COVID measures
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And you could see that there was this constant plea on our side
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to get something going with any government official
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because, you know, I wasn't really in the beginning
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I just thought it was kind of a waste of our time.
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The mayor of Ottawa had no power to overturn any of the mandates.
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But it became clear that when they stopped wanting to talk to us,
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and we finally got something going with the city,
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we were getting progress, but then something shifted.
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And the rumours about it were very strong just before he invoked it.
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And then he actually invoked the Emergency Act,
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and we said, okay, this situation has fundamentally changed now for us.
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And we need to choose our steps very carefully.
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And again, that's when the Board of Directors for Freedom Corps
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And that really was transformative in terms of the overall intent
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of what the convoy was trying to achieve with where we were on the third week.
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One of the things, and I don't mean this as an insult at all,
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because I think, if anything, it's a compliment.
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and you were first sort of presented in the way the media does
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which is, as people who have followed this closely know,
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because whoever just was quoted at a particular moment was a spokesperson.
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and I had never heard of a lot of the people that had spoken up.
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is that you had these people that were not part of the usual suspects
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of political organisers and political activists.
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But I know there was a bit of friction about this internally.
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wanted to really control and funnel all communications through him
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and didn't really have a tremendous amount of success
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it was a departure from what you had already anticipated,
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because you had wanted to be a behind-the-scenes guy,
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So what changed in you that made you more comfortable
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Well, the reality was is that I had no intention
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And I remember the day I was in the back of the room
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when Tamara gave the first press conference
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I'm like, oh, my God, like, we're in the house of Tamara here.
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And I remember saying to a friend of mine, Jack McClellan,
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And it was funny because Danny went up to the podium next,
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But something that's Danny Bulford, the former RCMP officer.
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And so, you know, the night that the police raided Coventry,
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what happened was a lot of the leadership, the board members,
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they said, look, we need to do a live stream because I came back.
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I went down to Coventry, and I reported that this had no impact
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whatsoever on our ability to continue doing what we're doing.
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It wasn't going to interrupt our sustainment whatsoever.
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And so people said to me, you're going to do a live stream
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And so my thought was, I don't know that I really want to be out there
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But then more and more people kind of jumped onto the idea,
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and they were like, okay, no, we're, okay, I'm going to do the live stream.
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And I was like, okay, this is going to get out of control.
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So my thought was just do a quick update, and then that'll be sort of the end of it.
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I didn't realize that that was kind of like my audition.
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But the next day, the board and several other members said,
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Now, I didn't know it was a live stream at the time.
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The very first thing, because I think Lincoln J was the one who was covering it
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from Rebel News, and I didn't realize this was going to be live.
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I actually looked over to the corner, out of the corner of my eye,
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I saw a phone that was on, and it was live streaming,
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and I could feel the bile coming up from my stomach.
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I almost threw up on the desk when I realized it was live.
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It wasn't my intention to be a spokesman of any kind for the convoy,
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but I was asked to do it, and you could see the first time I spoke,
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So it's not like I chose to do that all on my own.
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It was I was requested to do it, and I was supported by the board.
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And in fact, it's either the second time or the first time.
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But you saw, you know, I was either with Chris Barber or Bridget Belton.
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And in the next one, I believe I was surrounded by the entire board
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and several of the other trucking captains and some of the doctors.
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In fact, I really didn't have any interest in it.
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I was requested to do it because of the role that I was in.
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Just to turn to your book specifically here, Tom,
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you had originally, I know, wanted to have this book out on the one-year anniversary,
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I think it was, of the Emergencies Act coming in, so in mid-February.
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And I know that you've delayed this, I believe, a couple of times.
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And part of it, as I understood, was that you didn't feel you'd have the whole picture by then.
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You know, you wanted to actually see through the process of the Public Order Emergency Commission
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and then the final report and then, of course, get your own reflections down on paper.
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And I'm curious if your perspective has actually changed in that time.
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You know, if you were to have this book written and out in February of this year versus doing it now.
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Yeah, I think the decision to delay was the right decision.
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And when I originally started this project, it took me six months to even decide if I wanted to
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because I was concerned that it wasn't my, I didn't own the story.
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And so I wanted to be very clear about what was my intention to write this book.
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And so I began really wanting to make sure that I covered only what I participated in,
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that I wasn't drawing conclusions or I wasn't quoting other people.
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I didn't want it to be a historical report from that perspective.
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I jokingly said, I'm going to treat it like though, as if though I have a GoPro on my head.
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And if the GoPro camera didn't see it, it didn't happen in my book.
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And the second thing is I didn't want to, you know, there were some things that happened in the background
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that aren't very flattering to a lot of people that were involved.
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I didn't want to write a book criticizing the people that I interacted with because they were doing the best
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But as I was participating in the audience at the Public Order Emergency Commission,
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it became painfully clear to me that I couldn't tell this whole story accurately.
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If I wasn't able to sort of, to use the term from elementary school, compare and contrast
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what we were thinking versus what the government and law enforcement were thinking.
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And so I thought that that was an important thing.
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There are several chapters where I refer to the testimony.
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I read all of the, I downloaded and read all the stuff.
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So they are direct quotes from the people involved.
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And it was important to me to try to match up, you know, what we were aiming to do
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and what the government was aiming to do and then to illustrate what the result was.
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And so I agree still with my decision to delay the book and to try to capture that.
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So I thought, I'll just do the one and try to encapsulate everything into one.
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One thing that I found fascinating about the convoy in general, and I think it was Keith
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Wilson who first, when I was interviewing him for my book, had brought this up, is how
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you had all of these people who had these skills that they had developed over careers in law
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enforcement or medicine or military that were laid off.
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And they had time on their hands and they had a skill set.
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And it was those skills that really drove the Freedom Convoy because you had this military
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And I know you brought this with your own experience in the Canadian Armed Forces.
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But the other side of that is that there were a lot of people that really looked at law enforcement
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that were being called in to respond to and to reign in the Freedom Convoy with a level of
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And, you know, I talked to a lot of people on the right politically that are very pro-police
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But they sort of expected that, you know, there were some very heartwarming encounters
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where people had nice interactions with police during the convoy.
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But at the end of the day, the police took their marching orders and they went in and
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they did what they needed to do to contain a situation.
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And I'm curious how you view that with your background in military, where you understand
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chain of command, you understand authority, and you understand the natural order of things
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versus this movement that you were a part of, which was about what those efforts by law
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enforcement are supposed to be in pursuit of, which is the rule of law and freedom.
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And how do you reconcile those two parts of your life?
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It's a great question because in my military career, I have had the opportunity several times
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In fact, in one of my postings as an army officer, I was posted to a reserve unit.
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The commanding officer to the reserve unit I was with was a police officer in his full-time
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And so was the regimental sergeant major and a lot of the leadership of that unit.
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So I've worked with police through the military and, you know, I participated low level nighttime
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duty officer in the GHE 20 summit in 2010, you know, that happened in Toronto.
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So I've got a lot of experience, a lot of my friends in Niagara police.
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But when you look at what the goals of the convoy were, my, let's say my professional opinion
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was that we needed to, to abide by the law to the greatest extent possible.
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And I thought we had a responsibility to be responsible and to be safe, not only for the
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public, for the convoy participants, the supporters, the residents of Ottawa, we had a responsibility
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And the best way for us to have achieved that, and I do believe that until they invoked the
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emergency act, the best way to achieve that was to try to align our goals with what the
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responsibility of the police were to the public.
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And so we worked closely with the Ottawa police every single day.
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We had interactions, not just myself, but several people to always achieve a safe and responsible
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environment so that everybody could get what they wanted.
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And, you know, we saw during the commission, the police never asked for the emergency act.
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They didn't want it because they knew that they had the tools at their disposal.
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We were in constant communication with the police.
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And so the government, the political apparatus in this country made the decision to invoke the
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emergency act, not at the request of the police, but it was a political decision, pure and
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simple, in fact, to the point where they ignored police recommendations to continue doing engagement.
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And the OPP produced an engagement plan, and it was presented to cabinet, the IRG in Justin Trudeau's
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It was presented to him on the 13th of February to have an engagement plan with us.
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And there was people identified who the government could have us sit down and conversation with.
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The government ignored it, and the next day they invoked the emergencies act.
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So it was important to us to always keep safety lanes open.
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And no matter what the legacy media lies about, and, you know, detractors and people that are
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just nasty and want to vilify us, we always had safety lanes open.
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And even the fire department testified to that, and so did the police.
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You know, and the first thing I did when I got there on day one was identify vulnerable
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infrastructure like old age homes or retirement homes, hospitals, the police station, fire departments.
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We marked it on a map to make sure that we were not uncovering their ability to get the
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But that's never going to be the story in the legacy media or for the government.
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But we worked really hard to make sure that we were always safe and responsible.
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And make no mistake, the two days when the police invaded or sorry, not invaded, that's a
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terrible word, but attacked the public, those were not Ottawa police.
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Those were police departments from different jurisdictions.
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Because the convoy participants built a rapport with the Ottawa police.
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It was other police departments like the Serté du Québec, the OPP outsiders came in and did
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what they did to the public, not the Ottawa police.
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Because there's a line in your book where you say, I can't comprehend how a police officer
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in Canada could obey an order to attack peaceful protesters with such violence and ease.
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Now, this is specifically in response to the gentleman who actually testified before the
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Public Order Emergency Commission, Chris Durian.
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But in general, when you look at the individual officers that were involved in this operation,
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Do you believe that they were basically just casualties in a similar way of decisions that
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Or do you feel that they are complicit in what you view as being your grievance with the government?
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You know, it's a very fascinating question because, you know, they brought in something
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called a public order unit or, you know, traditionally called riot squads and stuff like that.
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Well, like you would have seen at the G20 and G8, right?
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And, you know, we're still 13 years later after the G8-G20 summit in 2010.
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And, you know, the police were supposed to have learned a lot of things about how they
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But I think the individual police officers were trained in public order tactics.
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Police officers have an enormous amount of individual discretion with what they're doing.
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And police officers are also trained in the concept of mob mentality.
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So there are psychological factors that do happen when you're in a riot or a protest or
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when you're putting a lot of people and there's potential for violence.
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Police are trained in these psychological effects that they may experience while they're on the
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I think some of them acted absolutely unprofessionally.
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The things that they did to Canadians, the things they did, for example, you mentioned Chris
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Deering, who notified the police before he was beaten by them that he was an injured combat
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And other veterans said, hey, this guy, this guy, and this guy, they're injured.
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And for his surrender, not only did they kick him where he was injured, but they were
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punching him in the head while he was on the ground.
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Completely unnecessary for somebody who surrendered.
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So I think the individual police officers have to go home and look in the mirror and say, did
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And I hope some of them reflect on it and say, I didn't have a good day today.
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And others say, tomorrow I'm going to do better.
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But I think individually, the police all know that police are always responsible for their
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individual actions, no matter what order they're given by their supervisors.
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Police that's drilled into police, that they're responsible for everything they do regarding
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interactions with the public, because they're susceptible to being personally sued.
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But you put them in a riot unit, and what happens?
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That's how they conducted themselves, despite their training.
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And again, I mean, even in military, one of the developments over international law and
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military conduct has been that you can't just hide behind obeying an order.
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It's obeying a lawful order, and that's a very important caveat, albeit again, it raises
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important questions on if you're an individual officer, how do you decide, how do you assess,
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how do you adjudicate the lawfulness of an order?
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Let's talk a little bit about your goals here, because I know that at this point we have,
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you know, 17, 18 months almost of canon, if you will, of people that have told versions
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of the Freedom Convoy through their own eyes, through a journalistic lens, through a legal
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By offering your book now, is your goal to offer just new information that's never really
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been entertained before, or is it to offer a new perspective on things that are already
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I'm just wondering what your motivation was more predominantly.
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Well, I was somewhat influenced by a lot of the repetitive questions that always come up
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You know, for example, this idea of putting all the vehicles up on Wellington, you know,
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But you have to understand, Canadians went there for a peaceful protest.
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They didn't go there to conduct tactical operations, right?
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So when we get a lot of people that say, oh, you put everybody all in a turkey shoot,
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you line them up, and tactically they were weaker, and like, no, then you're missing the
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We weren't going to Ottawa to conduct violent tactical operations.
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Putting everybody on Wellington, which I was very instrumental in that goal.
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This is what I was advocating for the first day I arrived, was because that was a strategic
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decision to put the pressure on the Prime Minister, to put the pressure on the government,
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take the pressure off of the city police, thereby the politicians, the residents, that would
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have, they would have aligned with us to put the government on Justin Trudeau to say, hey,
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you've got a problem, settle this problem in our city, would you?
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But in, you know, by doing this, yes, I strongly advocated for a strategic decision to put the pressure
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And so, you know, I did talk about that because that is a contentious issue amongst a lot of the
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supporters, people that didn't really understand what we were trying to accomplish.
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And I wasn't the only one who advocated for it, but I would say that I was largely responsible
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for that decision-making in the very beginning, or I was advocating for it and recommending it.
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But, you know, overall, I'm not trying to rewrite history in any way.
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What I'm trying to do is give people an understanding of why me personally, what I thought needed to
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happen, and the decisions that I thought needed to be recommended to the board.
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The individual truckers made their own decisions.
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We just wanted to put them in a position that was going to best accomplish the overall goal,
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which was to end the vaccine mandates in Canada at the federal level.
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And so these are the decisions, and these are the conversations and the stories.
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And, you know, for example, there's a lot of this rhetoric about these secret meetings
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I outline all of those in the book because I think they're important because there's a lot
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of lies being told about those particular discussions, complete untruths, you know,
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people spreading rumors and lies of things that never took place and never happened.
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And in the book, I go through great lengths to explain every step of, you know,
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those meetings that involve Dean French or Steve Kanellakis from the city manager's office.
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All of that stuff was spelled out in great detail in the book.
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Looking at your life post-convoy, I know that it's this tremendous high that a lot of people
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went through, and I still hear people that were a part of this that were so proud to have
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played a role, larger, smaller, even just to have seen it.
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You've gone from a guy that, like you said, never wanted any notoriety to being one of
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the most, I don't know if one of the most vocal is the way, but certainly one of the
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And I'm wondering what you want to, if anything, channel that into after this book, because
00:27:57.480
Is there a part of you that wants to keep this alive in some way, or do you feel this
00:28:01.740
was a chapter in history that's now closed and we open the next one?
00:28:05.180
Yeah, I think this is a chapter that we close the convoys over, and I would like to try to
00:28:22.560
It's also, I've also, my life has been enriched in many different ways as well.
00:28:27.480
And, you know, the convoy wasn't about Tom Mirazzo, not in the least.
00:28:33.780
I was there for my kids and for my family, and that was the motivation.
00:28:44.560
I didn't intend to play a significant role in the convoy like I ended up evolving into.
00:28:50.900
And now that the convoy is over, I'm just telling the story, and I'm going to leave
00:28:58.080
it up to Canadians to decide what they, if it aligns with them or not.
00:29:02.420
But I think my goal going forward is just to end that chapter, see what happens.
00:29:08.640
I'm not really thinking about another run in politics.
00:29:12.180
I'm actually, I've already started the draft on a second book, but it's fiction.
00:29:18.540
It's terrifying because I've discussed it with a few people, and they're saying, hey,
00:29:23.180
is this a fiction book or is it a prediction book?
00:29:30.500
I like to comment on current events that are happening in Canada.
00:29:36.120
But I think in overall, I'd like to just settle down, fade off into the distance, and get my
00:29:47.080
life back as best I can, or as much as the federal government will allow.
00:29:52.480
And if they don't allow it, then you might see a chapter two of Tom Marazzo.
00:29:56.440
But as far as I'm concerned, I've taken it as far as I think that I can take it.
00:30:05.000
And if there's a need for me, Canada will tell me.
00:30:07.700
If there's not, I'll be more than happy to ride off into the sunset.
00:30:13.140
The backdrop of our discussion this week is, of course, that Tamara Leach and Chris Barber
00:30:19.760
And I know you've maintained, as much as you're lawfully allowed to with bail conditions,
00:30:27.840
I'll ask you, because I know that there is this, tend to be somewhat conspiratorial among
00:30:32.900
people that are in the Freedom Conduit movement, where anyone and everyone is a Fed in some
00:30:37.340
It's like, oh, he's a Fed, she's a Fed, they're a Fed, I'm a Fed, you're a Fed, everyone's
00:30:41.700
But I know there was skepticism towards people that were not charged, or people that did not
00:30:49.740
Now, you did have the bank accounts frozen, but you actually never had, to my knowledge,
00:30:56.020
Even when you were speaking at that closing press conference, you had said, to your knowledge,
00:31:02.760
And you were fined, despite having been prominent, despite being important enough to the government
00:31:10.920
Why do you think that you and some others, that there was just as much of a case as, which
00:31:16.220
is to say, not much to charge as there was for Tamara and Chris, but didn't go that way?
00:31:27.660
I spoke to Danny Bulford yesterday at the first day of Chris and Tamara's trial, and
00:31:33.760
him and I had this same question, the exact same conversation we're having now about being
00:31:38.900
accused of being a Fed, and you didn't get charged, and all this stuff.
00:31:43.500
And the answer is, I don't know, but it doesn't mean I still can't be charged later.
00:31:48.840
And as we saw in April of this year, Harold Jonker was charged with the same charges that
00:31:55.980
Tamara Leach is now facing in her trial started.
00:31:59.580
So there's no statute on this, and I confirmed that with Keith Wilson, that there's no statute
00:32:06.220
I could be charged a year and a half from now with the same things.
00:32:09.980
And I think we will see what the outcome of Chris and Tamara's trial are.
00:32:14.980
And if they are convicted, I wouldn't be surprised if a whole group of us get round up and charged
00:32:23.120
Yeah, it's the test case for the overzealous prosecutors.
00:32:26.320
And all I can say is that I just don't know why I was charged.
00:32:35.800
And in terms of the allegations of being a Fed, I've been accused of being CIA, FBI, RCMP,
00:32:42.500
Ottawa Police, OPP, I think Mossad, and other stuff.
00:32:47.420
I mean, the allegations are all over the place.
00:32:50.120
You can go on my old YouTube channel when I was a teacher and watch all my software videos
00:33:02.260
Israel planted you at that college in 1997 or whatever.
00:33:12.200
If they're going to charge me, they're going to charge me, and I'll deal with it at the time.
00:33:15.540
But at this point, even I search for, you know, what's the indictable offense that I may have committed?
00:33:30.460
And this is why on the last five days, I called the Ottawa-
00:33:36.460
And I said, are there any warrants for my arrest today?
00:33:41.360
I said, okay, well, if there are, call me and I'll surrender myself.
00:33:47.620
And it doesn't make any sense why 15 months later they would charge Harold Jonker.
00:33:54.020
It's still, to this day, I don't understand why they're charging Chris and Tamara
00:33:57.760
or any of the other people that have been rounded up and charged.
00:34:03.500
Especially you're seeing all these charges being dropped all over the country.
00:34:06.400
Why Chris and Tamara's trial is proceeding is just, you know, the eighth wonder of the world, I guess.
00:34:18.580
Tom Marazzo has written his story of the Freedom Convoy in a fabulous new book,
00:34:31.940
That was Tom Marazzo here on The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:34:35.580
And on entirely different notes, we have a bit of an announcement to make.
00:34:40.700
This is the last show in this particular format, in this particular time slot,
00:34:45.780
because next week, The Andrew Lawton Show is going daily, Monday to Thursday at 1 p.m. Eastern,
00:34:53.980
Now, if you can't tune in live, you can, of course, catch the podcast or catch the archive video
00:35:03.540
We're going to focus on the live show as much as possible because it is that much more fun.
00:35:09.860
So hopefully that won't be too intolerable for you.
00:35:15.720
And we'll have over the course of next week footage from my coverage of the Conservative Party
00:35:21.300
of Canada convention in Quebec City, which is actually, I know I just talked about how
00:35:26.320
great live programming is, but why we've pre-taped this one, because I am actually going to be
00:35:31.860
in Quebec City by the time you see this, doing that coverage.
00:35:35.200
So if you see me tweeting away about that right now from there, I'm not in two places at once.
00:35:46.220
Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:35:48.580
Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.