Juno News - Ontario declares state of emergency after freezing trucker convoy donations

00:00:00.000 welcome to canada's most irreverent talk show this is the andrew lawton show brought to you by true north

00:00:08.720 hey welcome along this is the andrew lawton show and as you can see there i have turned into an

00:00:18.840 eight and a half by 11 sheet of paper there we go actually to be honest i think the eight and a half

00:00:23.120 by 11 sheet of paper was more attractive than what you're seeing now maybe we'll just do the

00:00:26.560 whole show in paper form, get some Hewlett Packard sponsorship. I don't know, do they even make paper?

00:00:32.180 They're just printers. This show is already a train wreck. I'm just like the federal and

00:00:36.240 provincial governments combined now. It's great to have you tuned in to another, if you can't tell,

00:00:41.420 live edition of the Andrew Lawton Show. We did one of these a couple of days ago and had such a grand

00:00:46.920 time. We are doing it again now because we're live. That means we are going to be taking your

00:00:51.700 questions throughout the show. If you want to chat away, you can do so on our Facebook stream,

00:00:57.340 on our YouTube stream. If you're watching on YouTube and you do a super chat, it goes right

00:01:03.580 to the top of the list. So we'll try to get to as many of your questions as we can. We also have

00:01:08.300 some clips, musings, observations, thoughts, perhaps rants, whatever else comes up about

00:01:14.400 what we're seeing happening in the last couple of days in Ontario, federally, and across the country

00:01:19.180 as the convoy wages on.

00:01:21.840 So I do thank you very much to those of you tuning in.

00:01:25.260 And if you're watching the tape,

00:01:26.260 you can't submit your live questions,

00:01:27.920 but you can very much enjoy the show in all its splendor.

00:01:30.840 So thanks again for that.

00:01:32.560 A big story last night, of course,

00:01:34.000 was the Ontario government moving to freeze

00:01:37.180 the GoFundMe replacement fund.

00:01:40.160 So Give, Send, Go. 1.00

00:01:41.280 This is a American Christian company 0.76

00:01:43.640 that the organizers of the Freedom Convoy switched to

00:01:47.200 after about a week ago, GoFundMe decided to capitulate to pressure from the Canadian

00:01:53.140 government, the Ottawa city government, Ottawa police, and yanked that. I think it was like

00:01:58.200 $10.1 million that had been raised. And they went and went to another company. That's the free

00:02:04.440 market, right? So the organizers say, we're going to find another platform. They found another

00:02:08.480 company that said, yeah, we're gung-ho about this. We're all about freedom. We're all about free

00:02:12.680 speech we're going to let your donors contribute through us and in less than a week this give send

00:02:18.940 go i'm just going to check it right now because every time i do it's gone up it is right now at

00:02:24.620 eight million eight hundred sixty six thousand seven hundred and forty seven u.s dollars now i

00:02:32.080 don't know what the exchange rate is right now so i'm going to get this in real time if we do

00:02:36.580 8.866 million USD in Canadian dollars. That is 11,284,575 Canadian dollars and 91 cents. There's

00:02:47.300 no penny, so we have to round it down to the 90 cents now. So 11.3 million dollars almost that's

00:02:54.040 been donated in less than a week after the GoFundMe big tech government cabal tried to, well, not tried

00:03:01.680 to, but zapped the $10.1 million. And now this money has been effectively frozen by court order

00:03:09.080 based on an application by the Ontario government yesterday. Now, this is something that government

00:03:14.060 has confirmed, that they took an application to court and they had a closed door hearing.

00:03:21.180 So behind closed doors, or as they call it in legal terminology, ex parte, which means the only

00:03:26.460 people in the room were the government and the judge no defendants no convoy organizers they

00:03:31.840 weren't allowed to defend themselves they weren't allowed to see the case against them and respond

00:03:35.780 to it it was behind closed doors and the reason they do that is because in an asset freeze they

00:03:40.920 don't want you to know it's coming and move the assets around that's what they do when they go

00:03:45.160 after gangsters and organized criminals not freedom-loving activists nevertheless they have

00:03:51.300 this closed door hearing and the judge just looks and says yeah i think the government makes a good

00:03:55.220 enough point. So they've now criminalized the usage of these funds. And if I use the specific

00:04:02.420 wording here, I want to put up the court order. This is the restraint order that the judge in

00:04:07.480 the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, you may recognize this. This is how I looked for the

00:04:11.060 first five seconds of the show. So this is the restraint order. And it just says that this is

00:04:15.540 an ex parte application. And the judge has been satisfied that he doesn't need to give the

00:04:21.060 application, notice of it to the Freedom Convoy, because then it would result in, quote, the

00:04:26.200 disappearance, dissipation, or reduction of value of the property sought to be restrained. He says

00:04:32.380 specifically it's involving the Give, Send, Go campaign. You see the links there. And let's go

00:04:37.720 to the next page of this. So this part of the order specifically says what it's prohibiting.

00:04:44.100 And if you look, I think it is graph one. This court orders, sorry. Yeah, yeah, there it is.

00:04:50.120 graph one, line four, that the Freedom Convoy organizers are prohibited from disposing of

00:04:56.180 or otherwise dealing with in any manner whatsoever any interest in the property.

00:05:02.160 So that's what they're saying. So you can't dispose of or use in any way any of the money

00:05:08.840 that's being raised in connection with the Give, Send, Go campaign. So what we know from this is

00:05:15.500 that the money is still flowing. Give Send Go has said that Canada has no jurisdiction over how it

00:05:21.600 runs its finances. And we don't actually, I mean, that's not necessarily true because Canada and

00:05:28.420 the US do have agreements and treaties and partnerships on things like this. So while

00:05:33.020 the Ontario Superior Court of Justice doesn't inherently have jurisdiction, it could extend to

00:05:38.300 Give Send Go. And Give Send Go is specifically named in this. But nevertheless, what we're seeing

00:05:43.300 here is that Give, Send, Go is still taking donations and still processing them and still

00:05:47.660 passing them along, it says, directly to the Freedom Convoy organizers. And there's been

00:05:53.320 another $1,000. Just in the time span since I last told you how much was there, there's been

00:05:59.860 another $1,000. So that's what we're seeing here happening. So the problem is, I don't know how

00:06:06.060 the government's going to enforce it. They've frozen the assets. They've made it a criminal

00:06:10.680 offense to do anything with it. So if the convoy organizers go and take $100 out to refill a jerry

00:06:17.920 can of diesel and buy a few sandwiches for some truckers, technically that is now a criminal

00:06:23.340 offense. So how long it takes to enforce this, the mechanisms to do it? I was actually trying

00:06:29.280 to get on the show today a legal expert because there are a lot of people who are very entrenched

00:06:33.420 in their positions because they're trying to project what they want to happen on what the law

00:06:38.820 is. And as we know, in the last two years, the law really doesn't care about your ideological

00:06:44.600 persuasion. So all the people saying the government can't do this, well, the government is doing it.

00:06:48.780 And conversely, all the people that just want every dollar seized by the government, again,

00:06:53.720 are probably not going to get what they want. But the whole point is the Freedom Convoy money

00:06:58.540 has become mired in bureaucracy now, court order, government seizure. And it's amazing how this

00:07:05.420 group that Justin Trudeau said just a couple of weeks ago is a fringe minority. Remember that

00:07:11.860 famous line, a fringe minority with unacceptable views, a group that was just, yeah, it's just a 0.93

00:07:16.520 bunch of crazy, angry people tired of pandemic restrictions. You fast forward to now, and this

00:07:22.080 is somehow a group that is so powerful and threatening to the state that the government

00:07:27.040 has to seize $11 million in cash, or should I say freeze? The government hasn't seized it just yet,

00:07:33.460 but don't mistake for a moment that they aren't going to try. Again, I don't know the legalities

00:07:40.040 of that process, but I made a point in my newsletter, which just went out, I don't know,

00:07:43.600 an hour ago, that what the government is doing here is confusing the money for the momentum.

00:07:51.400 And they're forgetting or just painfully ignorant to the fact that the money is a reflection

00:07:55.940 of the convoys power and influence and support. The money is not the support. This is not

00:08:00.740 a movement where one person is bankrolling it and all the people are there for the money no

00:08:05.040 the millions of people around the world including across Canada of course that are supporting the

00:08:10.860 convoy the millions of people are donating because they support the convoy they're not supporting the

00:08:17.460 convoy because they have this giant war chest of cash and that's why after GoFundMe refunded all

00:08:24.520 those contributions that went to the original campaign they were able to make more money in

00:08:29.140 less time. And I have no doubt that in the next week, they're going to find another way to get

00:08:33.960 $11 million. What I said in my newsletter is that they're either going to do it by Bitcoin transfers

00:08:39.420 or bags of cash or just gold bars being thrown down the Rideau Canal like curling, which would

00:08:45.040 be a very Canadian way to do it. But no matter which way you slice it, this is not going to end

00:08:50.380 just because law enforcement and government are going after the money. It's only going to grow.

00:08:55.260 it's only going to make people more emboldened in their support and the needs are very few i mean

00:09:02.540 what do they need really they need food and they need fuel both of those things can be very easily

00:09:08.060 provided without traceable currency as we've seen in the last little while i mean jerry cans have 0.99

00:09:14.060 just become like the most popular accessory in ottawa right now because everyone just man woman

00:09:18.380 child everyone's walking around downtown with a jerry can because after police started seizing

00:09:23.500 them, everyone said, okay, I guess we're going to bring all these jerry cans full of gas and diesel

00:09:27.520 to downtown Ottawa. And eventually they won out. It became impractical or impossible for police to

00:09:34.780 start going after the fuel, which for, you know, three hours on the weekend was like their big

00:09:38.980 master strategy to take the wind out of the sails of this convoy. And I think we're going to see

00:09:45.280 more of that with the funding. And again, I'm not at all ignorant or blind to the fact that the

00:09:51.920 Convoy's tactics here are very much disruptive. It's a peaceful protest, yes, but it is an incredibly

00:09:59.460 disruptive process. If you are going across the border for whatever reason and you can't for work

00:10:06.740 or for leisure, yeah, this is going to be annoying as all heck. And I get that. And I don't know how

00:10:13.340 much staying power this has because now you've got America involved. And Justin Trudeau, we were

00:10:19.440 going to start this at about two o'clock and then Eastern time. And then Justin Trudeau was going to

00:10:23.500 have a press conference. And I said, okay, well, I'm not going to make the poor people have to

00:10:26.760 watch him live. So I'll watch it. And then I'll summarize what was said. And at the end of it,

00:10:30.960 nothing was really said. He started doing what I'm doing. He just went to like reader email and

00:10:35.200 started just reading emails from people that are magically aligned with the position that he wants

00:10:40.600 to take, which is that, oh, I don't like this convoy. And I'm sorry to like Helen in Toronto,

00:10:45.080 who wrote to Justin Trudeau,

00:10:46.640 but Helen in Toronto's voice

00:10:48.780 does not get to trump 0.99

00:10:50.280 the millions of people

00:10:51.900 that believe in what the truckers

00:10:53.840 are trying to achieve,

00:10:55.100 even if they might not agree

00:10:56.400 with each particular tactic.

00:10:58.500 Because I agree,

00:10:59.220 there is a fundamental difference

00:11:00.740 between the blockade

00:11:03.100 at the Coutts border crossing in Alberta

00:11:04.680 and the Ottawa demonstration,

00:11:07.820 which has become the main hub of it all.

00:11:09.720 And also the border closures themselves.

00:11:12.660 There's a big difference between Coutts

00:11:14.160 where you've got a couple of other options that aren't that far away and Blue Water Bridge in

00:11:19.080 Sarnia, Port Huron and Ambassador Bridge in Windsor, Detroit, because you've got these giant

00:11:24.620 lakes in Southern Ontario and you've also got major, major traffic on there. I can't remember

00:11:31.560 the number, but a significant portion of all cross-border trade between Canada and the U.S.

00:11:36.740 is crossing by truck on that bridge in any given day. But it was interesting just before we came

00:11:43.500 on. Justin Trudeau did say something that I found fascinating. He said that we're seeing here a

00:11:49.800 situation in which we cannot and will not let the border remain closed. This is the guy who shut

00:11:57.160 down the Canadian border for a year and a half. And now he's all high and mighty about the fact

00:12:02.080 that we cannot stand for the border being closed. Now, again, I don't like the idea of this trucker

00:12:08.460 blockade shutting down this border. I don't. But it is a little bit rich from a government that had

00:12:14.380 no issue doing that for so long, talking about it as though this is going to cripple the economy.

00:12:19.820 Well, if border closures are crippling the economy, perhaps you shouldn't have done them.

00:12:25.540 Perhaps you shouldn't have done them. Perhaps you shouldn't be stopping

00:12:28.200 cross-border truckers from being able to do their jobs. So that's the problem that we're seeing here

00:12:35.420 is that we have these conflicting narratives.

00:12:37.580 Anything the government says

00:12:38.860 about all the damage being done by the protesters

00:12:42.160 is a reflection of what government itself

00:12:45.340 has been doing for the last two years.

00:12:47.800 Like when people are saying,

00:12:48.740 oh, how dare these protesters disrupt businesses

00:12:51.520 in downtown Ottawa from people that closed down businesses

00:12:54.060 in Ottawa and everywhere in the province

00:12:56.640 and have kept them in an intermittent state of closure

00:12:59.440 for much of the last two years.

00:13:02.000 And I've been talking about the financial aspect here.

00:13:04.580 I haven't talked about the big news, which came out today, courtesy of Doug Ford.

00:13:08.800 Let's hear it in Premier Ford's own words.

00:13:13.680 I'm using my authority as Premier of Ontario to declare a state of emergency in our province.

00:13:20.560 And I will convene Cabinet to use legal authorities to urgently enact orders

00:13:26.080 that will make crystal clear it is illegal and punishable to block

00:13:31.920 and impede the movement of goods, people, and services along critical infrastructure.

00:13:40.040 This will include protecting international border crossings, 400-series highways,

00:13:47.320 airports, ports, bridges, and railways.

00:13:50.800 It will also include protecting the safe and essential movement of ambulatory and medical services,

00:13:58.180 public transit, municipal and provincial roadways, as well as pedestrian walkways.

00:14:05.380 Fines for noncompliance will be severe, with a maximum penalty of $100,000 and up to a year imprisonment.

00:14:15.400 We will also provide additional authority to consider taking away the personal and commercial licenses of anyone who doesn't comply with these orders.

00:14:25.040 This will not impede the rights of Ontarians to peacefully protest.

00:14:31.080 It will provide additional tools to help stop the illegal occupation of Ottawa and the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor.

00:14:39.960 While these emergency orders will be temporary, we have every intention to bring new legislation forward that will make these measures permanent in law.

00:14:49.280 so that was just a little while ago ontario premier doug ford declaring a state of emergency

00:14:57.060 and also threatening just to give you the upshot there 100 000 fines or one year in jail

00:15:02.960 for anyone involved in any of these illegal blockades as he's called them and that's

00:15:08.640 significant 100 000 fine one year in jail and the other punishment was a suspension or revocation

00:15:17.000 of your personal or commercial driver's license.

00:15:19.900 So again, they're throwing out the big guns,

00:15:21.660 which you don't need to do

00:15:22.720 when you're going after a so-called fringe majority

00:15:25.520 or to use Doug Ford, or fringe minority rather,

00:15:28.140 or to use Doug Ford's previous term, 0.97

00:15:30.340 a bunch of yahoos, 0.99

00:15:31.560 which is a group that has grown quite significantly 0.91

00:15:34.380 in scope in the last two years.

00:15:38.120 Now, as I mentioned at the top,

00:15:39.460 I'm gonna be taking some of your questions.

00:15:41.280 If you're on YouTube or Facebook

00:15:42.940 and you have something about this

00:15:44.080 or even anything else in the general vicinity

00:15:46.420 of what we've been talking about.

00:15:47.700 Do post those in the comments

00:15:49.100 and we'll try to get to several of them

00:15:51.520 as the show goes on.

00:15:52.780 A lot of questions people are asking generally

00:15:55.520 about the forfeiture, seizure, freezing of funds.

00:15:59.260 And again, I'm not a lawyer.

00:16:01.000 And if you get legal advice from me,

00:16:02.480 I don't recommend you take it

00:16:03.540 because I'm in no position to give it to you.

00:16:06.080 But I do have questions.

00:16:08.400 I do have questions myself about this

00:16:10.520 because I know that they got this behind closed doors

00:16:13.320 in an ex parte hearing.

00:16:14.900 So it's only when it was released publicly that the convoy organizers even learned about it because they weren't there. They didn't know what was going on. They did not get the ability to defend against this. Now, practically, I don't know how long it takes for the government to get to a bank and get the bank to enforce this and deny the access to the funds. I don't know if it's already happened.

00:16:38.660 I do know that one of the organizers who I had on the show not that long ago,

00:16:42.540 Benjamin Dichter, had talked about how basically it was just like a big boon for Bitcoin.

00:16:48.720 Like my Twitter feed, the last 12, 16, however many hours,

00:16:52.160 has all been about Bitcoin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin.

00:16:54.700 Look, I'm a tech savvy person and I have no idea if I even wanted to send Bitcoin to someone how to do it.

00:16:59.540 I'm not saying I couldn't learn, but I'm saying that this is not a real solution.

00:17:03.660 but it is showing the resilience of a lot of people that are not going to let government tell

00:17:09.100 them they cannot support the convoy. And again, this is just an analytical point. This is not a

00:17:15.680 normative point. Whether you agree or disagree with a convoy, you have to understand that the

00:17:19.820 momentum that's carrying it is not coming from the money. The money is a reflection of the momentum,

00:17:25.500 not the other way around. Nicole or Nicola, I apologize if I'm getting this wrong, says,

00:17:31.960 How does the Ontario government even have authority to take the truckers cash?

00:17:36.140 Well, again, they've done it under this section of the criminal code.

00:17:39.320 I think it's like 490 or something.

00:17:41.300 And this section of the criminal code allows them to go after resources that are connected

00:17:46.960 to something that is illegal, that are connected to an offense.

00:17:50.500 And all they had to do was convince that one judge in one room that this money was connected

00:17:56.060 to illegal activity and they could go after this.

00:17:58.960 Now, like I said, I don't know, practically speaking, what it's going to look like in them trying to enforce that order on Canadian bank accounts, on an American company, which is what Give, Send, Go is, and what happens to the money in that time.

00:18:12.600 For all we know, the government could be trying to seize the money to make sure that it doesn't just hold it in place, but collects the money itself.

00:18:21.160 Treating the convoy organizers like, again, there's organized crime.

00:18:24.260 You see this in the U.S. all the time.

00:18:26.260 It's called civil forfeiture, where what you'll see is police that are just taking like a

00:18:32.160 Hummer that's owned by some drug lord and slapping their logo on it and saying, ha ha,

00:18:36.900 we found a new Hummer.

00:18:37.940 Or people that are seizing property like, you know, Hell's Angels Clubhouse or whatever

00:18:42.480 and saying, oh, I guess we've now found a new real estate.

00:18:45.480 And you get governments and police that without criminal convictions even are seizing assets.

00:18:52.060 Now, this is not civil forfeiture, which is something different.

00:18:55.140 This, though, has not even had the benefit of a trial.

00:18:57.860 It was just, like I said, a closed-door hearing.

00:19:00.960 And it is real.

00:19:01.940 Just because you can keep donating to the Give, Send, Go,

00:19:04.220 just because Give, Send, Go says that it's still sending money along

00:19:07.580 doesn't mean that the government isn't going to win.

00:19:10.540 So we'll be monitoring it closely.

00:19:12.580 But again, all the people that have responded and said,

00:19:14.760 well, this is fake news.

00:19:16.140 The fundraising page is up.

00:19:18.220 The government hasn't shut down the fundraising page.

00:19:20.320 they've just made it illegal to use the money they've made it illegal for anyone give send go

00:19:25.980 or the convoy organizers to do anything with the cash so that's the the offense how it manifests

00:19:33.040 in reality still stands to be seen but I want it to be very clear what was actually at stake here

00:19:38.500 it wasn't about shutting down the page it's just that if you're donating to that page I mean for

00:19:42.900 all I know that could end up in the Ontario government coffers I have no idea at this point

00:19:46.920 and no one else does.

00:19:48.800 So we'll follow that.

00:19:50.180 I don't want to get too in the weeds on it.

00:19:51.640 I'm just trying to understand the complexities of it

00:19:54.460 because the government certainly

00:19:56.080 doesn't seem to understand them.

00:19:57.900 They've just decided to go rogue on this.

00:20:01.640 And just interestingly enough,

00:20:02.780 this is a complete sidebar.

00:20:04.800 It's just an amusing thing I discovered yesterday

00:20:07.000 because I'm going back to Ottawa

00:20:08.580 probably in the next couple of days

00:20:10.140 to get a refresh on what's happening on the ground.

00:20:13.620 And I was trying to find a hotel,

00:20:14.900 which is very difficult to find

00:20:16.140 because all of the hotels across the city

00:20:18.840 are being booked up quite significantly.

00:20:21.780 But then I found this, which was hilarious.

00:20:24.120 And I remember when this was announced,

00:20:26.280 the Ontario government was trying to throw a bone

00:20:29.440 to the tourism industry

00:20:30.500 after shutting down the province for so long.

00:20:32.720 So they launched this thing,

00:20:34.200 it's called the Ontario Staycation Tax Credit.

00:20:38.580 And you can see it on the screen there.

00:20:39.940 You can get up to 20% of your eligible

00:20:42.520 2022 accommodation expenses back on your income taxes. And if you look at the next page there,

00:20:48.900 it deals specifically with lodging. So on this website, you can get your hotel, motel, resort,

00:20:54.400 lodge, bed and breakfast, cottage, or campground expenses back. And it's for short-term stays of

00:21:00.640 less than a month at an Ontario hotel, motel, resort, lodge, et cetera. So anything you spend,

00:21:07.560 if you're in Ottawa to join this protest, you can actually get back up to 20% on your taxes.

00:21:14.420 And then when I booked my hotel for this coming, uh, whenever I'm, I forget the dates, actually,

00:21:19.280 I should probably check on that. Maybe I was like my, I'm supposed to be leaving right now. Who

00:21:22.720 knows? When I booked my hotel though, for when I'm going back to Ottawa, I also saw there was

00:21:27.540 an Ottawa promotion on, and this, I just saw that is a $100 Ottawa tourism credit on your hotel

00:21:35.220 that is applied for stays up to March 31st, 2022.

00:21:40.460 So you can actually get an Ottawa tax credit

00:21:43.140 and an Ontario tax credit.

00:21:44.740 So you can get some of your money back

00:21:46.040 for joining any of these protests,

00:21:47.780 which I find is hilarious

00:21:49.080 because on one hand,

00:21:50.160 you've got Doug Ford using language

00:21:51.860 like this is a siege on Ottawa.

00:21:53.720 And on the other hand,

00:21:54.620 you have the government partially subsidizing people

00:21:57.400 that want to be there in it,

00:21:58.620 which is like probably like my favorite story

00:22:01.020 of just like the little insignificant oddball stuff.

00:22:04.200 probably my favorite story of the protest so far rick says negative government response to the

00:22:10.640 protest amplifies the importance of the protest i i hugely agree with that rick there's a certain

00:22:17.160 point at which people just dig their heels in even more and become more emboldened and we saw that

00:22:22.780 with the jerry cans ottawa says it's illegal to bring fuel in and what does everyone start doing

00:22:27.940 bringing fuel in gas diesel empty jerry cans just to throw them off and that's what happened with

00:22:32.940 money gofundme says no we're not having your campaign more people donate on give send go

00:22:38.840 the government says no that's not going to fly people are going to find a way to support the

00:22:43.080 convoy another way because they've already decided it's worth supporting someone said that and i wish

00:22:49.880 i saved the tweet and caught the name but someone mentioned this on twitter to me earlier today and

00:22:54.420 it stood out they said you know the why or the how is not as important as the why once people have

00:22:59.980 decided they're going to support it, the how is irrelevant. They'll find a way. And all governments

00:23:05.320 are doing are playing whack-a-mole and trying to deal with all of these things, which is what's

00:23:09.960 happening right now at the borders. They're trying to deal with the Ottawa situation and then the

00:23:14.020 Ambassador Bridge and then Cootes and then maybe the Peace Bridge and maybe Queen's Park and maybe

00:23:18.520 hospitals. And then we've been hearing schools. And I think anyone who is driving around this

00:23:23.400 heavy machinery around schools, I think needs to seriously check themselves. I have no time

00:23:28.220 for anyone who wants to bring these protests to schools.

00:23:31.020 You're talking about places where children are running around

00:23:33.880 and that should be off limits.

00:23:36.200 But the whole point is what I'm saying

00:23:37.980 is that police and law enforcement really have no idea

00:23:41.000 where the protest is going to go.

00:23:44.320 They just don't know where it's gonna go.

00:23:46.960 And I feel that anytime they suppress one aspect of it,

00:23:51.000 it's going to make two in its place.

00:23:53.820 And that's gonna be the trend that we're seeing here.

00:23:56.040 and I realize we're at the point where it only ends one of two ways, violently or voluntarily.

00:24:02.520 That's it. Those are the only options. It has to end with force or without force and there's a

00:24:08.320 spectrum of force and there's a spectrum of without force. Obviously, threatening charges, threatening

00:24:13.060 jail time is something that could trigger people to voluntarily leave, but the ones that don't

00:24:19.380 eventually are going to get handcuffs thrown on them and at that point, I don't know what's going

00:24:24.560 to happen. What I do know is that the convoy effect is real. We talked about this on the show

00:24:29.660 a couple of days ago, how all of these governments are miraculously coming around to the position

00:24:34.120 that the convoy supporters have been advocating for weeks and claiming it has nothing to do with

00:24:39.780 the convoy. It was Alberta, Saskatchewan the other day. This morning, it was Manitoba and Ontario.

00:24:46.440 Doug Ford, seconds before he announced the state of emergency, said that he's putting a plan in

00:24:52.220 place to get rid of the vaccine passport. And that's going to be coming out in a couple of days. 0.97

00:24:55.940 Now, totally fair to say it's too slow and it's not enough and it's not quickly enough.

00:25:01.120 I get that. I am not disputing that at all. But I think that when all of these politicians who

00:25:06.640 have been, even as recently as a few days ago, very resistant to lifting restrictions are coming

00:25:12.680 out and saying, we've got to say something about it. It's clear that the convoy is having an effect.

00:25:19.300 the convoy is mainstreaming opposition to pandemic restrictions and that was something

00:25:27.260 that even Justin Trudeau couldn't avoid his press conference that he had just I don't know an hour

00:25:31.780 ago or so he was talking about it and he was trying to drive a wedge between opposing the

00:25:37.280 pandemic and the convoy and he was starting to speak slightly more sympathetically to people

00:25:44.280 that oppose COVID restrictions because he's trying to say oh yeah you you may oppose COVID that's

00:25:48.620 or oppose lockdowns. That's fine. But, but you're not like those truckers. So he's noticing that

00:25:53.820 this movement has become massive and he has to find a way to just shove that like Trudopian wedge

00:25:59.540 in between it so that the movement divides in on itself. But I don't think it's going to work

00:26:05.480 because people don't really have much time or patience for him and how his government has

00:26:10.440 handled this. So I'm just looking at a couple of your comments here. One, George has asked about

00:26:16.360 the woman who had the cop come to the door for being a part of the convoy. I'm going to get to

00:26:21.100 that one in a second, George, and I'm glad you brought that up here. But first, I want to take

00:26:25.000 this question from Judy and Jim who ask, can't the truckers legally fight Doug Ford's enforcement

00:26:31.120 of these rules? They can, and they will. They've got lawyers. The Justice Center for Constitutional

00:26:35.980 Freedoms has staffed up a legal team for them, the Democracy Fund. There are other lawyers involved

00:26:41.820 as well the question is about how much time that takes and what happens in the meantime

00:26:46.380 because the government's trying to starve them out the government is trying to say that your

00:26:50.620 money is frozen and the and not just your money being frozen but we are going to do this preemptively

00:26:58.640 before you can defend it before you can defend against what we're doing before you can make

00:27:03.640 arrangements that's the whole point so they can fight it but the cards are being held by the

00:27:09.240 government right now if they're able to get that freeze enforced because they get to hold on to

00:27:14.520 the money. Well, this thing takes however long it takes, months, weeks, years, who knows? But this

00:27:20.180 is a very complex area of law. And all the lawyers that we reached out to, to ask if they could come

00:27:25.080 on the show today and explain a little bit about it, all of them were saying, oh, this is too

00:27:29.460 complex. They didn't want to get involved because it is a very specialized area of law. So it's not

00:27:35.240 just enough to say, well, free speech, peaceful protest. We're talking about a cross-border

00:27:39.600 financial transaction worth 11 million Canadian dollars here involving different jurisdictions,

00:27:46.540 different people, and activity that the government is trying to call a violent insurrection, despite

00:27:52.080 how untrue that characterization is. So that's, I think, where we are right now, and we're going

00:27:58.720 to see a lot more of that. Let's talk a little bit about the mainstreaming aspect, because

00:28:04.920 we are seeing for the first time, not just all these changes in provincial legislation, but also

00:28:10.220 some real political leadership, some real political leadership on this. Candace Bergen,

00:28:16.940 who I know a lot of people in our audience have criticized for telling the convoy to go home,

00:28:21.220 but she's been very clear on this and standing up against how Trudeau has been viewing all of this.

00:28:27.240 And I want you to take a look at this clip. This was from the House of Commons. I think it was

00:28:31.840 yesterday uh my producer can correct me if i'm wrong but i think it was yesterday candace bergen

00:28:36.640 calling out justin trudeau for expecting the conservatives to be the official

00:28:40.800 opposition of canadians rather than of himself and his government

00:28:48.800 you know this is just typical of obviously the prime minister's direction to

00:28:53.120 many in his caucus they keep keep stigmatizing keep dividing call names as he walks out he's

00:29:00.240 calling names. Madam Speaker, we believe our job on this side of the house is to listen to all

00:29:06.120 Canadians, to represent them, to hear them, not call them names, not try to divide them.

00:29:13.160 In addition to that, hold the Prime Minister to account. We are not here to hold Canadians

00:29:19.500 to account. We are here to hold the government to account. We are not here to hold Canadians

00:29:28.580 to account. What a concept. Justin Trudeau, he fancies himself the official opposition of

00:29:33.520 Canadians, which is why he has not been interested in hearing any of the concerns. And all of the

00:29:40.060 opposition leaders, including the NDP, which I think I said on the show the other day, miraculously

00:29:45.280 managed to find a spine for its leader, which is a tremendous victory for the healthcare system.

00:29:49.880 I think all the delays of non-essential surgeries prevented Jagmeet Singh from finding a spine,

00:29:55.620 But but he finally found it. Surgeries are back in Ontario. And he was able to take a stand. And after calling everyone who opposed restrictions, racist, Haiti, Haiti, Trump lovers for the last few days, finally said we need to get a plan in place to exit the pandemic.

00:30:10.720 But even him and Candace Bergen were saying to Justin Trudeau, we've got to talk about

00:30:15.740 how we're going to handle this, and Trudeau wasn't interested.

00:30:18.620 He finally, finally decided to convene the opposition leaders together for a phone call

00:30:24.540 last night.

00:30:25.260 He did a little Zoom, and I want you to see the tweet that he posted about it, because

00:30:29.880 he was talking about all the stuff that he had done, and then he said, finally, I have

00:30:34.300 seen the opposition leaders.

00:30:36.020 I briefed the opposition parties on the current situation and the latest developments.

00:30:40.720 I stressed how important it is for all members of parliament from every party to denounce these

00:30:46.040 illegal acts and to call for an end to these blockades. Just to go back to the first line

00:30:50.340 there, I briefed the leaders of the opposition parties. So he didn't even bring them to listen.

00:30:58.020 He brought them to lecture them. He brought them to tell them all the things that he thinks about

00:31:04.060 it without actually listening. Because he's not interested in the growing movement of Canadians 0.85

00:31:09.440 that have had enough of how governments at many levels,

00:31:13.220 federal, provincial, municipal, county, regional,

00:31:16.060 how governments at many levels have treated them during the pandemic.

00:31:20.940 And this is true of the state of emergency in Ontario as well.

00:31:25.360 This is a state of emergency.

00:31:27.160 How is that different from the life that we've been living for the last two years

00:31:30.320 in which governments just without any sort of democratic oversight,

00:31:34.360 without any political opposition,

00:31:36.340 pass these unconstitutional edicts that all of us have to live by?

00:31:39.440 State of emergency doesn't mean all that much when you've been living in the permanent emergency, which is the very backbone of the convoy movement.

00:31:49.680 And the right to assemble, the right to peaceful protest, which all of these politicians are kind of saying just to check the box, yeah, yeah, yeah, you have a right to protest, but.

00:31:59.260 Well, let's look at what happens when you want to use that right.

00:32:03.240 This video I'm about to play was shared by a woman in Ontario

00:32:07.200 who had been a part of a convoy Facebook group

00:32:11.440 and got a doorknock from a local OPP officer.

00:32:15.320 Let's take a look.

00:32:19.380 Sorry, since you're at my home,

00:32:21.200 can I just get your name and your badge number, please?

00:32:23.260 I have a card here.

00:32:24.340 It's Erica Ingram.

00:32:25.860 Thank you.

00:32:26.320 And this is just some information about peaceful protests.

00:32:29.320 That's all it is.

00:32:30.020 okay so you saw something on my facebook no on the facebook group okay and decided to come to

00:32:37.760 my personal residence to give me information about peaceful protest yes okay so are the

00:32:45.000 peterborough police no you're with opp um are you guys now monitoring people's facebook pages

00:32:52.040 or facebook groups to who comments as to what their um uh status updates are or what they're

00:33:00.920 doing or within the group like because of the protest happening province-wide yes we have been

00:33:06.220 monitoring the protests okay so there's a protest coming up i'm simply providing you with information

00:33:11.980 about a peaceful protest and now i'm leaving oh okay that is all so the ontario provincial police

00:33:19.820 are watching what people are doing on Facebook in different groups, whether or not they're

00:33:23.800 commenting, participating, liking, and you guys are now doing service calls to give people

00:33:29.260 information about peaceful protest. It's just a proactive measure to make sure you understand

00:33:33.940 your rights about peaceful protesting. Absolutely. I have a copy of the Canadian

00:33:37.700 Charter of Rights and Freedoms, so I'm well within that and very understanding of that.

00:33:42.420 I appreciate that. I'm hoping that you guys aren't going to waste our tax dollars continuing

00:33:47.260 to do this to everybody but uh now it's nice to know that uh we're we're being watched

00:33:53.900 so if you have any questions my cell phone number is on the card thank you okay

00:34:00.860 did you hear that just uh just a friendly little visit to to make sure you know your

00:34:05.340 rights to peacefully protest now i should say the officer the police officer who's with the

00:34:10.700 opp in peterborough county the ontario provincial police that is sorry i forget not everyone is

00:34:15.420 is from Ontario. And it's like the, it's the East, the Eastern Canada curse. We think the world

00:34:19.140 revolves around us. I'm so sorry about that, especially to the Albertans that, but this

00:34:24.580 officer again was very polite, was very friendly. I don't think there was anything wrong with what

00:34:28.500 she said. There was nothing wrong with what she said, which was, there's a protest coming up.

00:34:34.620 You should know what your rights are. And I'll show you in just a moment, the little handout

00:34:38.240 because they come with pamphlets. They don't just come empty handed. The problem is the existence

00:34:44.440 of the visit. The problem is the existence of the visit. Now let's look at the pamphlet

00:34:50.400 because this is clearly not the first time the OPP have done this. So it's from the Ontario

00:34:55.640 Provincial Liaison Team and they say that they work with individuals or groups to help facilitate

00:35:01.600 peaceful events and they're a great resource for those planning or organizing or attending an

00:35:05.960 event. Our job is to dialogue and work with all those affected by an event and you can visit

00:35:12.140 demonstrator rights to get more information. And then they say, what you have to know,

00:35:16.260 your rights, the role of police, consider your actions, communicate with police pre-event

00:35:20.720 when actions could result in charges, know the bylaws, understand the consequences,

00:35:26.740 ask questions, working together is better for everyone. So that's the pamphlet. Again,

00:35:31.660 there's nothing wrong with the text on that pamphlet. And if you go to the website,

00:35:36.120 it's very benign. In fact, it's based on the premise that yes, you have a right to peacefully

00:35:40.000 protest. So I'm not objecting to content. I'm objecting to form. When a police officer knocks

00:35:49.160 on your door and says, I found your name in this Facebook group of this protest that I'm monitoring.

00:35:57.060 And I want to tell you about your rights. What the police are telling you is that

00:36:00.340 we're watching you. That's what they're saying. They're saying, we are watching you.

00:36:04.580 We knew who you were. We found your name on Facebook. We looked you up at our little database.

00:36:08.700 we found your address. I drove out here, not because I'm knocking on every door

00:36:13.020 in the neighborhood and saying, Hey, just, you know, making sure, you know, whatever,

00:36:17.160 but we found you, we targeted you. We want you to know that we know what you're up to. We know

00:36:24.940 what you're talking about online and we know what you're planning to do on the weekend.

00:36:30.200 And it doesn't matter how nice and friendly you are and how benign and neutral the text on the

00:36:35.920 pamphlet is, oh, you just want to make sure you know your rights. What they're telling you,

00:36:40.300 there might as well just be a giant eyeball on that that says, we see you, we know who you are,

00:36:46.360 and we are watching you. And I mean this with no disrespect to the officer, because the officer

00:36:51.840 was given a list of names and addresses, and she was very professional, very courteous.

00:36:56.320 Some people have pointed out she wasn't wearing her mask. So I'm not going to read too much into

00:37:00.380 that. But the officer herself was immensely reasonable. But this is a police program that

00:37:05.680 is predicated on the idea that we need to not just engage with organizers. Because I've hosted

00:37:10.940 events before where you have a conversation with police about what are you doing and what are we

00:37:15.420 trying to organize and how can we ensure everyone's safe. That's not what this is. This is not police

00:37:21.780 and organizers talking because the organizers initiated it. This is police canvassing based on

00:37:27.600 a list they're putting together from social media surveillance. And this is not dissimilar to things

00:37:32.980 we've seen in the last year and a half in england and australia where police start knocking on

00:37:37.340 people's doors and threatening them because oh we saw this tweet that you posted and we didn't think

00:37:41.500 it was civil so very much the police are watching what you're saying and doing and these little

00:37:48.540 benign friendly warnings are not at all benign and i'm glad i forget who it was i think it was

00:37:54.020 george earlier that asked about that and i'm glad we had that i'm glad we had that video and i'm

00:37:58.440 glad that woman shared it because again this is not a new program clearly those glitzy glossy

00:38:02.820 pamphlets already existed that website already existed how many other people are being coerced

00:38:08.380 into staying or threatened or fearing it i mean especially not that i like playing the identity

00:38:14.220 politics game but especially if you talk about immigrant communities where a knock on the door

00:38:18.740 from police means something very different people that have come from parts of the world

00:38:22.980 where that is a direct overt threat so that is a huge huge problem for a lot of people and again

00:38:31.060 you don't need to come from East Germany to fear that. You don't need to come from some part of the

00:38:36.560 world where the police are your enemy to be concerned about that. So again, I'm not taking

00:38:41.680 aim at the officer. I'm taking aim at the program itself and that idea that you have to be preemptively

00:38:46.920 told of rights that we all have, which almost makes you think, are they just sending the message

00:38:51.940 that we know what you're up to? And that's what's happening here. That's precisely what's happening

00:38:57.320 here. And there's a permanence to this. And that's why the right to peacefully protest.

00:39:03.720 That does not mean that everyone's going to like your message. That doesn't mean that everyone's

00:39:08.840 going to agree with you. A peaceful protest can be, as we're seeing, quite disruptive.

00:39:13.580 And we can talk about whether it's effective or ineffective. But this has not actually crossed

00:39:19.780 the threshold from being a peaceful protest to being something else entirely, despite what Doug

00:39:24.700 Ford and Justin Trudeau are trying to say. It still is a peaceful protest. It's a peaceful

00:39:29.560 protest that is bringing parts of the economy to its knees, yes, but it is still done peacefully,

00:39:36.120 and that's quite significant because when it is no longer peaceful, the state unlocks a huge

00:39:41.040 arsenal of other tools it can use to go after the protest, and that's why the language here

00:39:47.020 very much matters. Let's get a couple more questions here. Brandon writes, why are they

00:39:52.820 not doing this to Antifa? Well, maybe they are. I don't know. I've never heard of anyone from

00:39:57.060 Antifa saying it. I feel if any environmental protesters were hit with this, they'd be

00:40:01.660 screaming even louder to defund the police because they would see it rightfully so as a threat

00:40:06.900 against their right to peaceful protest because it comes in language from someone with a badge

00:40:11.560 and a gun who, again, no matter how nice, is inherently in a position of authority.

00:40:17.620 asher writes how much was that pamphlet to uh to produce do we pay for that i don't know how much

00:40:23.700 it was but the answer to do we pay for that is always yes no matter i mean it doesn't even matter

00:40:28.120 what the question is do we pay for it yeah that is the question lynn writes why is candace asking

00:40:33.880 the truckers to stand down what is her motivation for doing so you know that's a good question uh

00:40:39.500 lynn and i i thank you for asking i don't have the answer we've invited candace bergen to come

00:40:44.660 on the show. I've known her for many years. I've encountered her socially and professionally and

00:40:49.540 I've had only good interactions. There are a lot of conservatives that take that traditionalist

00:40:54.620 law and order view. And I get that view because I've espoused aspects of that when we've talked

00:40:59.460 about anti-oil blockades, when we've talked about other lawless protests. So there is a significant

00:41:06.340 challenge, I think, for a lot of people on the right to be consistent. If you've condemned

00:41:10.360 blockades of this nature or smaller blockades and said that they should be busted up.

00:41:15.120 How do you justify not saying the same thing in this case? 0.97

00:41:19.600 But I also think I'm going to give Candace Bergen a bit of slack here because

00:41:23.180 her whole point is that she can say with a straight face to the protesters, we've heard you. 0.61

00:41:29.980 She's been advocating for freedom. She's been advocating for an end to mandates. 0.95

00:41:34.940 She's been advocating for an end to the passports. So she can say to the truckers, yeah, because 0.67

00:41:39.100 remember when the convoy started and this is an important point when the convoy started there was

00:41:44.360 no one in the house of commons really that was taking a vocal stand against vaccine passports

00:41:50.760 and against vaccine mandates you had the ppc you had a couple of backbench conservative mps

00:41:57.400 but all of the mainstream party leaders in the house of commons were united on this no one was

00:42:02.740 speaking up. The convoy succeeded in the ousting of Aaron O'Toole. I very much attribute that to

00:42:11.660 the convoy in large part, at least the timing of it. And Andrew Scheer, former Conservative leader,

00:42:18.320 has been very clear in supporting the convoy. Pierre Polyev, a leadership candidate, has been

00:42:23.160 very clear in supporting the convoy. Candace Bergen, Conservative interim leader, has been

00:42:27.800 very clear in supporting the convoy. The convoy filled a vacuum that was created by the absence

00:42:35.200 of political leadership. So now there is some political leadership, and I'm not saying Candace

00:42:39.800 Bergen can single-handedly take down this house of cards that is Canada's pandemic response and

00:42:45.140 all the COVID theater, but I think she can say with a straight face to the protesters,

00:42:49.020 I've heard you and I'm picking up the fight in my way now. Now, to a lot of the convoy protesters,

00:42:54.300 that won't be enough. And I get that. But if I were to guess, that's how she's rationalizing,

00:42:59.620 telling them to stand down because she's saying that I am now prepared to take up your fight.

00:43:03.580 Whereas two weeks ago, the conservative leader was not prepared to do that. That's my thought

00:43:09.000 on that. Take from that what you will. As I said, I'm going to be heading back to Ottawa in the

00:43:13.180 coming days to talk about the story. And again, tell dimensions of this that are not being told

00:43:18.160 in other ways.

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Juno News - February 11, 2022

Ontario declares state of emergency after freezing trucker convoy donations

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