Juno News - New documentary combats persecution of Tamara Lich

00:00:00.000 you're tuned in to the andrew lawton show

00:00:06.000 trish wood and jacqueline bynan two incredibly incredibly accomplished and capable filmmakers

00:00:14.560 are telling the story in a documentary they're producing called the trials of tamara leach now

00:00:21.540 i want to share just a little snippet of the trailer of this we made a promise

00:00:27.160 i think we thought when the trucks left ottawa that was going to be the end of it

00:00:33.700 but we didn't realize that was just the beginning and i think me going back to ottawa in a couple

00:00:42.440 days to this trial is kind of poetic in a way because i'm going back to fight again

00:00:48.160 and i'll keep fighting and i'll keep fighting and i'll keep fighting because the people that made

00:00:54.300 these decisions and forced parents to die by themselves

00:01:00.460 and forced people to kill themselves need to be held accountable

00:01:07.560 that was a little bit from the trials of tamara leach trish wood and jacqueline bynan join me now 0.95

00:01:16.400 it's wonderful to talk to you both thanks so much for coming on

00:01:19.520 hi andrew how you doing great to be here well it's good to have you let's start with the question

00:01:25.720 of of why this and why now because there there are some people as i mentioned in in the media largely

00:01:31.540 that uh you know they they got this wrong and because of that they've never really wanted to

00:01:36.320 talk about it again and and you get people that sort of say well covid's over so all discussion of

00:01:41.340 anything related to the convoy is over as well why do you want to tell this now well from my

00:01:46.780 perspective as you know i've been doing a podcast called trish wood is critical which i started

00:01:51.660 at the beginning of the covid regime of the covidian times because i covered tony fauci

00:01:58.220 back in the day and i was really worried about some of the decisions being made not on risk benefit

00:02:03.100 data so i got very heavily involved very early on in this and i watched as we all did as the edicts

00:02:11.500 became more and more kind of authoritarian and yet there was no way for us to fight back we were

00:02:17.260 losing all the cases in the courts the media didn't seem to be on our side they weren't asking

00:02:22.300 people in positions of power to they weren't holding them to account or asking them accountability

00:02:27.500 questions so then you're left with this issue and this is where the convoy comes in what do you do

00:02:34.940 in a democratic society when you believe to the mirror of your bones as a citizen that what the

00:02:41.820 government and public health in this case is doing uh is wrong and not just wrong but harmful to people

00:02:48.620 what what opportunities do you have when the institutions like the courts aren't working

00:02:54.460 and i think the convoy answered that question and i think it answered it for a lot of canadians

00:02:59.820 jackie and i are old friends we were on the phone a lot uh during covet times very very frustrated

00:03:07.020 especially over the media coverage and the inability of them to ask hard questions and when the convoy

00:03:12.780 happened we said to each other wow maybe that's what has to happen now to get people to start paying

00:03:18.460 attention because remember they wanted to talk to the prime minister they went to ottawa not to be

00:03:25.580 bad or mean but because they wanted to open discussion on on the mandates and he refused

00:03:32.060 to talk to them after he spent a few days smearing them uh in the news media so by the time they got

00:03:38.860 there the city of ottawa was terrified about who these big you know galutes were going to be so so

00:03:44.860 that the question for me right now and i'll let um jackie pick this up because she heard a lot of this

00:03:49.660 out i was inside where she was outside with the people is what do you do when the institutions 1.00

00:03:56.380 that you've trusted all your life have stopped working for you and you believe that in the

00:04:00.540 marrow of your bone and if we lose the ability to protest uh on mass the way people did in ottawa

00:04:06.540 then i think we've got a real problem here jackie yes and that's we've talked about this ad infinitum

00:04:13.340 locked down and locked up and i agree with her and i will say that i think the the convoy in the

00:04:19.820 protest is probably the single most successful human rights some people say grassroots i say human

00:04:26.220 rights uh protest in a generation in this country something that canadians didn't normally do it was

00:04:32.380 not something we would see the average canadian do they're they're compliant they want government they

00:04:38.380 just want to have a nice life and for some reason a group of people decided this wasn't good enough

00:04:45.500 what they were hearing on the news which is largely controlled by the government was not what they were

00:04:51.100 feeling or thinking a lot of people now there were a lot of people who went along with that but there

00:04:55.900 were a lot and tamara leach and chris barber when we saw them we saw those trucks they became the face of

00:05:04.620 something we were thinking and it gave us gave us hope that we didn't feel powerless because we

00:05:10.460 believed in these institutions but they weren't speaking to us or listening to us or caring for us

00:05:15.020 and that's why we thought this is a very big moment in canadian history and we have to document it in

00:05:23.100 what way of being women we you know we're so compelling tamra leach is such a compelling uh character 0.59

00:05:29.820 whether you like her doesn't matter as a woman or just as a person who really cares about their

00:05:36.780 country you have to give her due she as she said she holds the line she has that temerity to say

00:05:45.980 this is my hill and that's what we were inspired by her one thing you mentioned character and i

00:05:52.780 actually was going to ask about this later on because a lot of your experience as a producer

00:05:57.260 jacqueline has been in in fictional work as well i i know you've done uh things that have kind of told

00:06:02.780 stories in a more dramatized way and and what people fail to realize about the convoy is that

00:06:07.420 i mean irrespective of the political implications of it which are vast there's a story here and there's

00:06:13.740 quite a riveting story of this and i'm wondering if you're going to capture that in in the story telling

00:06:21.420 oh we are we are this is it's very interesting you say that because trish and i talk about this because

00:06:25.420 we've both done this i mostly do crime true crime series that are that are investigative but there

00:06:31.980 is always some impressionistic drama as they say in it yeah i guess fiction i meant more dramatized

00:06:36.860 than fiction but i wasn't besmirching your work it's usually serial killers or people who do horrible

00:06:43.100 things yeah but this is apparently that's tamara if you ask the uh ottawa media yeah but this is uh this

00:06:49.180 is still a criminal case we're caught following here and what i saw outside the courtroom i could do

00:06:57.020 a whole documentary just on what was outside the con outside as trish and i were were texting back

00:07:03.020 because there were two groups of people there were the people there supporting tamara which were

00:07:09.820 you know we talked about trish and i talked to solitudes these were the working class people there was

00:07:14.700 the tinfoil hat man who has the tinfoil hat and he will be there outside with the canadian flag as

00:07:20.140 long as the trial goes on there were uh other people who used to work for the government or work

00:07:25.340 for rcmp and they were they just were incensed and then there was the the legacy media who were in the

00:07:32.060 little camp by themselves and we were there from about eight o'clock in the morning till the the end of

00:07:37.740 the day and there were these little skirmishes that would arise and it was a very interesting to see that

00:07:43.180 there were two different groups and we tried to capture that because i found the legacy media

00:07:49.020 wasn't talking to any of these people and you know once you get past the the look because they don't

00:07:54.060 look like the people who wear suits and go and go into work nine to five in ottawa they don't look like 0.92

00:07:59.820 them they're just your average person and once you start talking to them they made a lot of sense and

00:08:06.540 they they have more they were more insightful than a lot of things you heard on the news and that's what

00:08:12.300 i found interesting because i know when trish was inside she was telling a different story there 1.00

00:08:17.100 was two different groups in there in the courtroom it was a real sense of your background with

00:08:23.340 investigations has been incredible and and typically the media has always relished wanting to talk to

00:08:29.660 real people and and and not wanting to talk to commentators and and it's amazing how that sort of

00:08:34.700 has reversed like i've seen stories that have been published about the freedom convoy that interview a

00:08:39.660 criminologist often the same one uh that interview a criminologist from here and a professor from

00:08:44.700 there and don't actually speak to anyone involved in this yeah yeah because it's a grassroots movement

00:08:53.340 which i think it is that's what i think to your point that's exactly what we were we're talking about

00:08:58.140 it's a little bit of anthropology when they do that because i would frame this in a sense as a class

00:09:04.300 struggle um and it's almost as if now the laptop class some of the the legacy media people i'm not

00:09:12.300 slamming them they have hard jobs but they there is a suggestion that they view the convoy people the

00:09:19.020 people who attach themselves with the convoy people who protest with the convoy as this exotic species 0.87

00:09:25.660 right in the old days and i was there in the olden days the media used to love working class people we

00:09:32.140 wrote you know songs about coal miners and we rushed to support them against the man you know the

00:09:36.700 corporate man and the bad government and now it feels very much like the media which we all know is

00:09:43.260 you know select leaning now virtually all of them uh is not allied with the working people which is why

00:09:49.820 the smears from trudeau of them being racist and sexist homophobic and how can we tolerate them all that

00:09:54.780 stuff really landed because i think there is a huge divide between the laptop people the legacy media

00:10:04.380 people we saw it in the courtroom the the trucker people were lined up behind the defense table everybody

00:10:11.180 else in suits virtually was behind the crown table in the courtroom and it really felt like there was a

00:10:17.660 massive social divide and unless i'll say this to you andrew and jackie and i talk this about this almost

00:10:24.140 every day if we don't sort this out where we stop demonizing each other because we hold different

00:10:30.620 views i sat in the courthouse and i talked to a woman today she's an ottawa citizen hates convoy 0.67

00:10:35.980 thinks the work all kinds of terrible things none of them provable or or litigatable or are true but

00:10:41.340 there's a lot of folk folk stories out here right now about the convoy from local people just not true

00:10:47.980 we had a really pleasant conversation but she was saying things that i if i hadn't been kind of

00:10:55.420 hanging on to my seat the way i was i would have been angry about we cannot we cannot continue to

00:11:01.180 demonize each other this way and i feel that the the convoy trial and the way the convoy has been

00:11:07.340 treated by the media and the elites if we can call them that um is a harbinger of this country blowing

00:11:14.860 apart if we do not sort it out we are canadians canadians we share canadian values we all love

00:11:20.540 hockey we cried when the humble bush crashed we put the hockey sticks out that's the stuff that

00:11:25.980 binds us together if we disagree on cultural things that's fine we can disagree if we disagree on on

00:11:33.100 covet policy we can disagree about that too but we have to stop with the ad hominem attacks on each

00:11:39.340 other and the and the convoy trial is really really showing that and that's a bit of what jackie was

00:11:43.980 talking about outside the building yesterday i think whatever happens in this trial uh it will

00:11:50.620 go on the history will be many books there will be many documentaries of people doing this because

00:11:55.500 we haven't figured it out yet it this is a historic time in our in our in our country and this protest

00:12:04.380 and this trial i think is sort of where we're gonna that it may change and we don't know what's going

00:12:09.820 to happen but whatever happens things will never be the same and i don't know if it's going to be

00:12:15.020 good or bad but i do think the reason why we're fixated on this is because we all know no matter

00:12:22.060 what side of the coin you're on that this is a big moment and no one knows how it's going to end i hope

00:12:27.980 it ends well like trish said i hope it's where we can go like remember the old days when you didn't know

00:12:33.100 what your politics were you just you would just have a beer or a glass of wine when you make a

00:12:40.220 documentary about a serial killer for example i think you can fairly safely say that 99.9 of the

00:12:47.420 audience are going to line up with the the serial killer is bad at least i hope that maybe even a

00:12:52.300 hundred if you're lucky uh when you make something about a topic that people aren't familiar with and

00:12:57.900 i actually love watching documentaries about things i'm not familiar with because i can go in

00:13:02.220 kind of with a blank slate and i don't have a preconceived notion and then afterwards you look

00:13:06.220 into it and you have to sometimes separate out the the filmmaker's bias as you should from any product

00:13:11.100 but with something like this i mean anyone who knows about the convoy now probably has a pretty

00:13:15.980 strong opinion about it one way or another and i'm wondering how you or if you work against that

00:13:22.860 in the story you're telling and one example i've shared on my show is that my mother a lovely woman

00:13:29.020 uh very supportive of me and my work not the convoy demographic not a convoy supporter

00:13:33.900 and i kind of knew that public opinion was turning when she had said one day unprompted oh you know

00:13:39.900 what they're doing to tamara leach is terrible because that was for her the hook she maybe didn't

00:13:44.220 realize that she didn't agree with the convoy but she could agree with a mom that doesn't seem

00:13:48.620 like the model criminal or the poster child for criminality but i'm curious what your approach

00:13:53.660 to this is on how you break through those preconceptions whatever they are well bad you

00:13:58.940 know i the reason i like doing crime true crime is you know it's it you don't have to do any politics

00:14:04.380 there there's there's the bad guy and then they're victims and yeah i think that those stories have to

00:14:10.300 be told we have to make the bad guys the bad guys i think in this store and but it all all crime boils

00:14:16.780 down to good and evil and i think this story boils down to good and evil and it depends to use the

00:14:22.940 words of bill clinton depends on your definition of criminal and of good and evil and and i think

00:14:29.820 that's when we talk about the two solitudes i think we're you're either the convoy's good or the

00:14:35.580 convoy's bad tamara leach bad you know that's what i think this boils down to and it's really hard to

00:14:41.260 find anything in the middle that's why it's really it's easy in a way to do true crime because you

00:14:46.860 already know who the bad guy is and you all right let's let's get the tension in here trish go ahead 0.99

00:14:54.940 oh no i know she agrees with me i would just look circle back differently because there are facts facts

00:15:01.260 are things right right and and and ray mcginnis has done a brilliant piece on the poec that blows apart 0.96

00:15:09.580 all virtually every bad smear made against the convoy right arson no uh weapon load weapons no um money

00:15:19.740 from the proud boys and america no like all of that was wrong supported by russia cbc said that false

00:15:27.820 false false and so what i think jackie and i are experiencing here in the city of ottawa even in our

00:15:33.740 hotel one of the people in the restaurant had this wild story it was completely not true

00:15:39.260 about the convoy is that the facts actually support the convoy's own narrative that they

00:15:47.660 were here to protest and things went relatively smoothly without a lot of trouble and there were

00:15:53.020 a lot of bad there were a couple of fringy type people attached as there are to every massive protest

00:15:58.380 right but the virtually all of the terrible things that made headlines about the convoy are

00:16:04.620 demonstrably false and the poec found that that is out of the mouths of the financial crimes guys at

00:16:13.020 the rcmp the security folks they all said yeah no nothing to see here people really so

00:16:21.340 what we're left with is a massive hearing that made findings of fact that was not reported in the

00:16:28.860 mainstream media the way it should have been and why wasn't it it wasn't because they were complicit 0.99

00:16:34.460 in pushing those fake stories right i mean the arson story was absurd on its face only an idiot oh and 0.96

00:16:41.580 and literally repeated on the floor of the house of commons by people that have never apologized that 0.75

00:16:47.020 have never admitted uh that it was not just muddy or fuzzy or kind of two sides but demonstrably fictional

00:16:54.540 that's important too because that part of the story that trish is talking about

00:16:59.660 didn't get covered as enthusiastically as the actual protest with the truckers for example when i was

00:17:05.980 outside yesterday there was one guy there who obviously was a retired public service worker like i i i

00:17:12.780 would have bet my my my condo on it he was he he asked me why i was there and he said um

00:17:21.020 well they they ruined that they ruined ottawa they just they were they were terrible they were horrible 0.86

00:17:25.100 and it was illegal i said well it's my understanding that the judge ruled it was

00:17:29.260 a legal protest he goes no it wasn't illegal and i don't care what the judge said it was illegal

00:17:35.180 well how do you argue with someone like that there's that he just that and he didn't care what

00:17:40.380 what the facts that we had all that trish is talking about that all this stuff had been largely

00:17:45.340 debunked didn't matter he had it in his set this is the way it is i hope she goes to jail for 10 1.00

00:17:51.100 years oh and then he said he asked me a whole bunch of stuff well you seem like a logical person

00:17:55.660 do you like tucker carlson i said yeah i love him he was that's it we were running away that's a good

00:18:00.860 way to end the conversation with a retired bureaucrat in ottawa yeah you can use that anyone can use

00:18:05.420 that if you want to get out of it just say you like tucker and it goes all right can i add one

00:18:09.260 thing to that and that's what she said is really important because she's describing what i call the

00:18:15.740 invasion of the body snatchers moment and we have them when we confront certain people with irrefutable

00:18:22.780 facts that completely debunk their thought process right it happens on covid when you say the vaccines

00:18:29.580 don't prevent transmission you know these are the people writing i got covid thank god i've got two shots

00:18:35.740 and four boosters i got covid i'm so grateful i've had the shot and you're saying well so it doesn't

00:18:39.660 preventers well no that's we save and effective right that's how thing and so we've cr this world

00:18:46.460 has been created because people in this country now have bilateral siloed information systems they

00:18:55.180 curate their social media feeds to feed their own biases they're either watching legacy media or doing

00:19:01.980 totally the indie thing and so we live in two separate worlds and we hold on to those in the

00:19:08.540 context of a moral framework so somebody challenging with facts this happens in my own family my oldest

00:19:14.780 kid was a little bit like this a few years ago he's softening but he's like mom you've always got facts

00:19:19.980 stop you know stop attacking me with facts and and and i always thought as an investigator that's a good

00:19:26.140 thing right but but we live this is a dangerous world if if the trucker's legacy is constructed

00:19:34.620 out of these falsehoods that have landed so heavily on this very city that i'm in right now and used to

00:19:41.340 live in and used to love but has contaminated much of the thinking here we've got a problem it's no

00:19:46.940 different than the witch trials it's no different than any of the other kind of moral panic situations

00:19:52.940 in history where facts mccarthyism facts became irrelevant and belief systems fading tyranny took

00:20:02.620 over right that's i hate to say it but that's kind of where where we are right now here can i can i just

00:20:09.340 add i want to go back to why we're doing the doc okay let's go we're going to wrap it up after this

00:20:13.820 so let's hear why she's talking about that is tamra leach or tamera leach i keep calling her by the

00:20:20.140 it's tamera leach and chris barber they are not your typical canadian they are willing to despite

00:20:26.940 everything despite the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune they're willing to take arms

00:20:32.300 against that sea of fortune and sit there and take it and they are going to hold that line and as a

00:20:37.420 canadian you have got to admire their fortitude and i think that is one of the things that i find so

00:20:44.940 so hopeful and exciting about tamera and that's one of the reasons why we we wanted to to dig deeper

00:20:52.460 and do this documentary well i'm so certainly glad you are it is called the trials of tamera leach we can

00:20:59.180 put the graphic up on the screen there i know you are uh having the trailer available we played a little

00:21:04.460 bit of it and you're also doing a crowdfunding campaign which people can chip into uh not on gofundme

00:21:10.860 thankfully because then they'd freeze your bank accounts and seize the money so you've used uh

00:21:15.020 give send go which has proven to be more reliable uh trish wood and jacqueline vine and wonderful to

00:21:21.020 talk to you both thank you so much for coming on can i make one small comment before we say goodbye

00:21:25.100 yes of course you're doing dangerous the take up arms was metaphorical because i know how mainstream

00:21:31.580 media watches these shows right we all know but all right you know it's terrible that we've lost

00:21:40.860 metaphor now in this day and age with the way the media works so all right well now we have the context

00:21:45.980 to add if they uh if they take you out of context but good for the ratings anyway uh wonderful to talk

00:21:50.700 to you trish and jacqueline thank you and uh looking forward to your continued coverage in ottawa

00:21:54.700 thank you thanks for listening to the andrew ron show support the program by donating to true north

00:22:01.180 at www.tnc.news

Juno News - September 09, 2023

New documentary combats persecution of Tamara Lich

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