00:00:00.000It was shocking that they would go from trying to figure out who has to do what to implementing this for the for the Americans watching Canada's version of martial law for some parking infractions.
00:00:14.360Our media is all fake PR press releases at this point, trying to promulgate this fiction and sell it to people like use your eyes and she'll show you the pictures and videos.
00:00:25.400And luckily you were there and you witnessed it in in real time.
00:00:47.160Like I said, I mean, I just didn't anticipate just how incredible it would be.
00:00:52.400And I'm glad that I was there, you know, right place at the right time, to be honest with you.
00:00:56.840And, you know, and it just so happened that I live blocks away from where it all went down.
00:01:02.100So, OK, so when you were when you were living blocks away, I was sleeping in downtown Ottawa in the Sheridan Hotel.
00:01:10.520You were sleeping in downtown Ottawa in the Sheridan Hotel.
00:01:14.580The first night is when everybody was coming in the first couple of days.
00:01:17.960So you would hear honking, you know, during the day, there was some honking at night closer to Parliament building, the Parliament buildings.
00:01:26.360And then it trailed off by the time that the night that I broke my ankle.
00:01:30.440I was in the middle of the street in front of the Ark Hotel, like in complete silence in the middle of a road that was completely empty, full of ice.
00:03:53.060I saw the trucks parked right outside my building.
00:03:55.260And it was nothing like what these people are describing.
00:03:57.680Um, uh, but, you know, unfortunately, uh, people like that, uh, you know, we, the mainstream media just wasn't interested in reaching out to someone like that.
00:05:24.020If they don't do what I want, I'm going to use the legal system to destroy the lives of these people who many of them have already had their lives destroyed.
00:06:06.220And I remember during that first press conference, I remember you saying, you know, let's, you know, I'm open to having a coffee with Jerry Butts.
00:06:13.820You've been saying that from the get go.
00:06:15.640What if, what if the prime minister actually walked among the people, walked, you know, went, had visited the protesters and spoke to them?
00:06:55.760And there's so many hypotheticals in there.
00:06:58.060I mean, we're making the assumption that the prime minister could do that on his own accord without just coming out and calling people names.
00:07:07.460But, I mean, I know if, you know, from years of life and business negotiation and getting, like when I was on a university campus, I wasn't exactly surrounded by conservatives.
00:07:28.100So I think that him coming out and being, I don't know, a leader and doing what politicians are supposed to do and talk to people probably would have been a good start.
00:07:52.160It's they don't understand they are public servants.
00:07:57.240They're the servants, not the other way around.
00:08:00.500And if there was a little bit of humility amongst the political class, which is what that would require, which is why I could, I don't know that, I don't know, you hope that it would happen.
00:08:10.620But he only does that amongst people he knows, apparently.
00:08:14.180But if there was a little bit of humility to come out and say, you know, these, the measures are very important.
00:09:31.060How about talking to us, doing something?
00:09:33.480But they're so incompetent that they're dangerous because they didn't even have the skill set required to engage in a conversation with people who may disagree with them.
00:09:43.780That's why I genuinely tried to communicate, come for coffee, not to be adversarial.
00:09:59.160That's what the country needs right now.
00:10:01.280It needs right and left and progressive and conservative or liberal.
00:10:06.580However, whatever labels you want to smack onto people, which I don't particularly like these labels, but we need to start to come together and talk.
00:10:14.200We've just been through two years of decimating our economy and destroying people's lives.
00:10:19.160Some of us need some help, and some of us who live in Ottawa can actually help them if you listen to them.
00:10:27.900But the fact that they didn't even have the humility to listen made things so much worse, and I think that's why Justin Trudeau's reputation around the world is permanently damaged beyond repair.
00:10:40.620Yeah, I mean, obviously one of the hypocrisies here from the prime minister is that there was a similar kind of protest that took place in India a year earlier.
00:10:53.140And he, in fact, I mean, he did something that was incredibly, it backfired because the Indian government didn't take that, you know, didn't like that very much.
00:11:04.000And he was basically telling the prime minister of India to dialogue with the protesters and that it was important in a democracy, the right to protest.
00:11:12.740And the protests were actually very similar to the convoy protests because you had farmers, it was the farmers who were protesting against a very controversial agricultural bill.
00:11:25.380And they brought in like tractors and trucks to the nation's capital and blocked highways and roads.
00:11:30.220And Justin Trudeau weighed in and said that it was important for the Indian government to speak, to talk to the protesters and have a conversation with them.
00:11:43.320Is that kind of sort of what you were, I mean, was that idealistic, you know, to expect Trudeau to actually engage with the protesters here in Ottawa,
00:11:58.300given how, you know, given what we know about him, that he says one thing in one context and does something else that was, that's totally different.
00:12:06.800I didn't imagine necessarily that he would come out and lead the conversation and reaching out to us.
00:12:12.140But, you know, there's a communication structure in all political parties.
00:12:58.260But there's always these mechanisms and there's multiple people involved in communications in the political structure that could have reached out to us.
00:13:06.260If he was a leader, if he had any strength, it would have started with him.
00:13:10.840I know if I was in his position, I would have just walked out of the office and say, okay, let's talk.
00:13:19.040But, okay, if he doesn't have the strength to do that, there's enough of a team around him to do it.
00:13:24.300So I would have hoped that there would have been something, something from the government in the, you know, just remember, this is the same guy that during Black Lives Matter went out and then he kneeled down in front of Black Lives Matter like a slave.
00:13:41.820But you have some middle class and working class people protested, which is unprecedented.
00:13:47.700The only other time I've seen that was in Venezuela when I lived in Colombia during the years that Chavez was doing exactly to Venezuela what Trudeau is doing to Canada right now.
00:14:00.400And it was just, it was, it's such a, such a shift from the behavior, the behavioral approach they took to, you know, their own base toward, as opposed to us, you know.
00:14:13.540And also, you know, he came out since then for China.
00:14:33.800You know, one of the, one of the fault lines that, that emerged during the public inquiry into the Emergencies Act was whether to make a deal with the authorities and leave town or just stick it out until the mandates were lifted.
00:14:52.400I recall in my conversations with you that you were very much of the view that, you know, warmer weather was approaching, so you, so you ought to stay.
00:15:03.460And my sense is also that many devoted supporters of the protests were unhappy at the prospect of leaving while the federal vaccine mandates were still in place.
00:15:12.000But in retrospect, given how brutally the government suppressed the protests, do you think that was the right thinking?
00:15:20.320Would it have made sense to make a deal and avert the use of emergency powers, which is, in fact, what ended up happening?
00:15:30.860We've seen a little bit of revisionist history by a small group of people trying to say that, oh, you know, there was people communicating a deal.
00:15:39.260Yeah, there's people linked to Doug Ford's office trying to do a deal on the side, had nothing to do with us, which was the whole point of my testimony, right?
00:16:18.760I think the idea to stay longer, although it was, I mean, it's sort of heartbreaking.
00:16:25.280I met with Candice Saro last week, the woman who was trampled, the woman in the walker who was trampled by the horses, who, by the way, had her bank accounts frozen.
00:16:41.780So, you know, the whole decision, was it better to stay or leave?
00:16:45.860Yeah, it was better to stay because look what the government has done to themselves.
00:16:50.700They're now completely illegitimate on the world stage.
00:16:53.980You know, and I explain in my book, this book, Honking for Freedom, that on the 18th of February, when we decided to leave, it was because the police got violent the night before and drew guns on somebody and smashed his windows in on his truck and pulled him out and arrested him.
00:17:12.320And the road captains came in to me the next morning.
00:17:28.080And so because they knew me and Tamara were talking many, many times frequently throughout the entire protest, I guess it was just a natural, OK, well, let's go see Ben and talk to him, tell him what's happening.
00:17:39.220And when they told me that the truckers are that this what happened, the trucker and the police are getting violent.
00:17:45.660And I said, OK, well, listen, I'll do what you want.