On this week's show, we have the latest from the Public Order Emergency Commission (POCE) hearing in the case against police officers Tamara Leach and Chris Barber, as well as a new interview with Eva Chibiuk.
00:14:53.360the one thing that even non-lawyers know
00:14:54.920is that, you know, proof beyond a reasonable doubt here. So that is a much higher bar that
00:15:00.520has to be met by the crown than in most of the other legal cases we've seen about the convoy
00:15:06.700that are all governed by the balance of probabilities, as it's called. Yeah. So again,
00:15:12.160I won't get too far down the line there because I'm not as familiar. But what I can say for sure
00:15:17.580is the crown is the the party that needs to prove the aspects of the charges that they've laid so
00:15:26.940it's all on the crown and so they have the obligation not and in a civil case it's very
00:15:33.340different so and a lot of criminal charges stemming from the freedom convoy have already
00:15:39.660um gone through the courts but you've got a very different case here in in the case of tamara and
00:15:46.460And Chris, in that when a lot of those cases had to do with when the police were trying to evacuate people, that's my understanding.
00:15:55.940At least, again, I haven't been privy to all of these cases.
00:15:58.500Yeah, I believe that's where the obstruction charge is based, that they basically were telling people not to leave when the police were saying leave.
00:16:05.360Yes. And ask yourselves now, where was Tamara Leach and Chris Barber when that was happening?
00:16:10.720What were their illegal actions? One was already in jail, Tamara, and Chris Barber was in jail and released on bail. So up until that point, they were communicating and cooperating, not only with the police, but the city of Ottawa.
00:16:29.180And this is the question I've had since the Freedom Convoy is what was illegal and when did
00:16:35.580it become illegal? And those obstruction charges are one thing with the Emergencies Act and police
00:16:42.860interactions. Tamara was in jail. What was her crime? And when did it become a crime? And same
00:16:51.180with Chris Barber. I like this is where I'm very interested to hear where the Crown is drawing the
00:16:58.140line. What was illegal? What actions of there were illegal? And that's, I think, what we're
00:17:05.860going to hear throughout this case. But so far, we haven't heard much. That's actually quite a
00:17:10.820fascinating point that I think escapes a lot of people, which is when much of the action was
00:17:14.880taking place, the two principal characters in this story were already off the streets. And again,
00:17:20.020I don't want to get too much into speculation, but I know there was a lot of anger in the crowd
00:17:25.520in Ottawa when those two people had been arrested, which probably caused some of the more
00:17:30.580tense situations that may have happened between police and protesters. But even then, that was
00:17:35.260after these two people were already behind bars. And it's not like the Hollywood movies where
00:17:39.680they're smuggling out their messages from the jail cell that are getting emblazoned in the
00:17:45.280sky or something. And again, I go back to the beginning of that week when the city of Ottawa
00:17:50.920and Freedom Corp, the corporation established by convoy organizers, had literally agreed and they
00:17:56.880had arranged these mutual statements from Jim Watson and from Tamara Leach of what was going
00:18:01.560to happen. How is that obstructing or working against police and the city when that was literally
00:18:07.540an agreement that involved working with police to move trucks? That was, I mean, just what,
00:18:13.360four days before the arrests? Dumbfounded, completely dumbfounded with all of this. And
00:18:19.500And that's where, again, if you go back to what I started with, is these were Canadian citizens that were escorted through the country into the nationals capital to protest.
00:18:29.800And they were every day corresponding, communicating and working with the police and city officials.
00:18:37.020And then all of a sudden one's in jail.
00:18:42.540So it it still is. And I'm very interested to hear what the Crown thinks and is alleging was illegal.
00:18:51.640So just looking at the broader legal landscape here, I know there it's difficult for someone who's observing this only casually to keep up with it because you've had, you know, constitutional challenges against the Emergencies Act and against the emergency orders.
00:19:07.120You have people that are taking their own charges and tickets to court.
00:19:33.480I mean, what's the big one of this, if there is a big one?
00:19:35.940Well, you know, there is so many things going on, and I'm glad you brought up the lawsuit, because that is something that the Crown is relying on and talking about here.
00:19:46.460Well, there was a disruption and harms to Ottawa residents from the Freedom Convoy.
00:19:52.580And again, not specific to Tamara Leach and Chris Barber.
00:19:56.180Tamara, who didn't even have a truck there, as I have to constantly point out to people.
00:20:00.140Yes, and Chris Barber's was off of a downtown area in any event, but they have an ability to go to court and sue civilly for any harms that were caused.
00:20:12.900That is their right, and they have taken that opportunity and venue.
00:20:18.060So when the Crown is making those allegations and charges, is that now their responsibility to ensure that there are no harms to people in general, in such a general fashion?
00:20:33.120So that's, again, it goes to what is illegal? When did it become illegal? And I think that the Crown itself is playing in this very gray area. And it'll be very interesting to see what the court decides on this one for sure.
00:20:47.400eva chipiuk always good to get your analysis and there's a project you're involved with i wanted to
00:20:52.460give you a chance just to speak about here for a moment thanks so much and it's because i've been
00:20:56.580involved in this for so long and uh like we're talking there it gets complicated but overly so
00:21:02.220what i what if you look at the freedom convoy in my opinion looking back at all of this again it
00:21:08.220was canadian citizens looking to um get some answers from their elected officials and i think
00:21:15.100they're owed that opportunity. And I think from what I've seen is a lot of Canadians just don't
00:21:21.120understand the legal system, their civic responsibilities, and the political systems.
00:21:27.960And I think that's complicated things in Canada. And it's hard to get into these more, you know,
00:21:34.000complicated setups and established systems if we don't know the basics. So I started an
00:21:40.980organization called empowered canadians with the goal of doing exactly that empowering canadians
00:21:46.820so that they can feel more comfortable when they want to ask questions about what's going on
00:21:51.700in our systems so that they feel that they're part of the democracy and especially after what i've
00:21:59.460what's happened in this last two years people are telling me all the time we're too scared to get
00:22:04.180involved they don't want to be made an example of like tamara leach and chris barber and that is
00:22:08.820just terrifying to hear in what is supposed to be a free and democratic society so I think as
00:22:15.280Canadians it's on us to get educated to learn and I encourage people to do that with me because a
00:22:22.580few people can't stand for the rest of Canada to make sure that we're we're all in and and and we
00:22:28.720are all in this together as well so well you say that but it always has to start with a few so
00:22:33.940good on those who take the leadership at first but everyone else has to stand behind them
00:25:29.820because the people that made these decisions
00:25:32.800and force parents to die by themselves
00:25:38.160and force people to kill themselves need to be held accountable
00:25:45.260that was a little bit from the trials of Tamara Leach Trish Wood and Jacqueline Bynon join me now
00:25:54.100it's wonderful to talk to you both thanks so much for coming on
00:25:57.240hi Andrew how you doing great to be here well it's good to have you
00:26:01.980Let's start with the question of why this and why now, because there are some people, as I mentioned, in the media largely that, you know, they got this wrong.
00:26:12.020And because of that, they've never really wanted to talk about it again.
00:26:15.040And you get people that sort of say, well, COVID's over, so all discussion of anything related to the convoy is over as well.
00:26:23.080Well, from my perspective, as you know, I've been doing a podcast called Trish Wood is Critical, which I started at the beginning of the COVID regime of the COVIDian times because I covered Tony Fauci back in the day and I was really worried about some of the decisions being made not on risk benefit data.
00:26:41.800So I got very heavily involved very early on in this.
00:26:45.860And I watched, as we all did, as the edicts became more and more kind of authoritarian.
00:26:51.900And yet there was no way for us to fight back.
00:26:54.800We were losing all the cases in the courts.
00:26:57.020The media didn't seem to be on our side.
00:26:59.080They weren't asking people in positions of power to, they weren't holding them to account
00:27:03.760or asking them accountability questions.
00:27:07.800And this is where the convoy comes in.
00:27:11.060What do you do in a democratic society when you believe to the marrow of your bones as a citizen that what the government and public health in this case is doing is wrong and not just wrong but harmful to people?
00:27:26.640What opportunities do you have when the institutions like the courts aren't working?
00:27:32.260And I think the convoy answered that question.
00:27:35.440And I think it answered it for a lot of Canadians.
00:27:39.060We were on the phone a lot during COVID times, very, very frustrated, especially over the media coverage and the inability of them to ask hard questions.
00:27:49.560And when the condo happened, we said to each other, wow, maybe that's what has to happen now to get people to start paying attention.
00:27:56.700Because remember, they wanted to talk to the prime minister.
00:28:00.000They went to Ottawa not to be bad or mean, but because they wanted to open discussion on the mandates.
00:28:09.260And he refused to talk to them after he spent a few days smearing them in the news media.
00:28:15.580So by the time they got there, the city of Ottawa was terrified about who these big, you know, galoots were going to be.
00:28:22.020So the question for me right now, and I'll let Jackie pick this up because she heard a lot of this.
00:28:27.400outside, I was inside the border, she was outside with the people, is what do you do when the
00:28:33.500institutions that you've trusted all your life have stopped working for you and you believe that
00:28:38.000in the marrow of your bone? And if we lose the ability to protest en masse the way people did
00:28:43.820in Ottawa, then I think we've got a real problem here. Jackie? Yes, and that's, we've talked about
00:28:49.420this ad infinitum, locked down and locked up. And I agree with her. And I will say that I think the
00:28:55.900the convoy in the protest is probably the single most successful human rights. Some people say
00:29:02.300grassroots. I say human rights protest in a generation in this country. Something that
00:29:07.760Canadians didn't normally do. It was not something we would see the average Canadian do. They're
00:29:13.340compliant. They want government. They just want to have a nice life. And for some reason,
00:29:19.440a group of people decided this wasn't good enough. What they were hearing on the news,
00:29:25.160which is largely controlled by the government, was not what they were feeling or thinking a lot
00:29:30.280of people. Now, there were a lot of people who went along with that, but there were a lot. And
00:29:35.200Tamara Leach and Chris Barber, when we saw them, we saw those trucks, they became the face of
00:29:42.380something we were thinking. And it gave us hope that we didn't feel powerless because we believed
00:29:48.660in these institutions, but they weren't speaking to us or listening to us or caring for us.
00:29:52.460And that's why we thought this is a very big moment in Canadian history, and we have to document it in what way of being women.
00:31:52.160There was the tinfoil hat man who has the tinfoil hat, and he will be there outside with the Canadian flag as long as the trial goes on.
00:31:59.580There were other people who used to work for the government or work for RCMP, and they just were incensed.
00:32:06.360And then there was the legacy media who were in a little camp by themselves.
00:32:11.080and we were there from about eight o'clock in the morning till the the end of the day and there were
00:32:16.500these little skirmishes that would arise and it was a very interesting to see that there were two
00:32:21.900different groups and we tried to capture that because I found the legacy media wasn't talking
00:32:27.560to any of these people and you know once you get past the the look because they don't look like the
00:32:32.540people who wear suits and go and go into work nine to five in Ottawa they don't look like them
00:32:37.820they're just your average person and once you start talking to them they made a lot of sense
00:32:43.660and they they have more they were more insightful than a lot of things you heard on the news and
00:32:49.400that's what i found interesting because i know when trish was inside she was telling a different
00:32:54.320story there was two different groups in there in the courtroom it was a real sense of your background
00:33:00.580with investigations has been incredible and and typically the media has always relished wanting
00:33:06.880to talk to real people and not wanting to talk to commentators. And it's amazing how that sort
00:33:12.420of has reversed. Like I've seen stories that have been published about the Freedom Convoy that
00:33:16.680interview a criminologist, often the same one, that interview a criminologist from here and a
00:33:21.740professor from there and don't actually speak to anyone involved in this. Yeah, because it's a
00:33:30.160grassroots movement, which I think it is. I think to your point, that's exactly what we're talking
00:33:34.940about it's a little bit of anthropology when they do that because i would frame this in a sense as
00:33:41.500a class struggle um and it's almost as if now the laptop class some of the the legacy media people
00:33:49.660i'm not slamming them they have hard jobs but they there is a suggestion that they view
00:33:55.100the convoy people the people who attach themselves with the convoy people who protest with the convoy
00:34:00.780as this exotic species right in the old days and i was there in the olden days the media used to
00:34:08.300love working class people we wrote you know songs about coal miners and we rushed to support them
00:34:13.180against the man you know the corporate man and the bad government and now it feels very much
00:34:18.780like the media which we all know is you know select leaning now virtually all of them uh is
00:34:25.100not allied with the working people which is why the smears from trudeau of them being racist and
00:34:30.140sex is homophobic and how can we tolerate them all that stuff really landed because i think there is
00:34:36.860a huge divide between the laptop people the legacy media people we saw it in the courtroom
00:34:44.140the the trucker people were lined up behind the defense table everybody else in suits virtually
00:34:50.300was behind the crown table in the courtroom and it really felt like there was a massive social
00:34:56.220divide and unless i'll say this to you andrew and jackie and i talk this about this almost every day
00:35:02.460if we don't sort this out where we stop demonizing each other because we hold different views i sat
00:35:09.280in the courthouse and i talked to a woman today she's an ottawa citizen hates convoy thinks the
00:35:14.180work all kinds of terrible things none of them provable or litigatable or are true but there's
00:35:19.400a lot of folk folk stories out here right now about the convoy from local people just not true
00:35:25.440we had a really pleasant conversation but she was saying things that I if I hadn't been kind
00:35:33.020of hanging on to my seat the way I was I would have been angry about we cannot we cannot continue
00:35:38.780to demonize each other this way and I feel that the the convoy trial and the way the convoy has
00:35:44.980been treated by the media and the elites if we can call them that um is a harbinger of this country
00:35:52.240blowing apart if we do not sort it out we are canadians canadians we share canadian values we
00:35:57.920all love hockey we cried when the humble bush crashed we put the hockey sticks out that's the
00:36:03.280stuff that binds us together if we disagree on cultural things that's fine we can disagree
00:36:09.520if we disagree on on covert policy we can disagree about that too but we have to stop
00:36:14.800with the ad hominem attacks on each other and the and the convoy trial is really really showing that
00:36:20.400And that's a bit of what Jackie was talking about outside the building yesterday.
00:36:23.520I think whatever happens in this trial, it will go on.
00:36:28.940There will be many books, there will be many documentaries of people doing this because we haven't figured it out yet.
00:36:36.220This is a historic time in our country.
00:36:40.600And this protest and this trial, I think, is sort of where it may change.
00:36:46.580And we don't know what's going to happen.
00:36:47.980but whatever happens, things will never be the same. And I don't know if it's going to be good
00:36:53.100or bad, but I do think the reason why we're fixated on this is because we all know no matter
00:36:59.800what side of the coin you're on, that this is a big moment and no one knows how it's going to end.
00:37:05.540I hope it ends well. Like Trish said, I hope it's where we can go. Like remember the old days when
00:37:10.440you didn't know what your politics were and you just, you would just have a beer or a glass of
00:37:14.640I mean, when you make a documentary about a serial killer, for example, I think you can fairly safely say that 99.9% of the audience are going to line up with the serial killer is bad.
00:37:28.560At least I hope that maybe even 100 if you're lucky.
00:37:31.420When you make something about a topic that people aren't familiar with, and I actually love watching documentaries about things I'm not familiar with, because I can go in kind of with a blank slate and I don't have a preconceived notion.
00:37:42.860And then afterwards, you look into it and you have to sometimes separate out the filmmaker's bias, as you should from any product.
00:37:49.060But with something like this, I mean, anyone who knows about The Convoy now probably has a pretty strong opinion about it one way or another.
00:37:56.620And I'm wondering how you or if you work against that in the story you're telling.
00:38:02.360And one example I've shared on my show is that my mother, a lovely woman, very supportive of me and my work, not the Convoy demographic, not a Convoy supporter.
00:38:11.220And I kind of knew that public opinion was turning when she had said one day, unprompted, oh, you know, what they're doing to Tamara Leach is terrible.
00:38:21.440She maybe didn't realize, she didn't agree with the convoy, but she could agree with a mom that doesn't seem like the model criminal or the poster child for criminality.
00:38:30.020But I'm curious what your approach to this is on how you break through those preconceptions, whatever they are.
00:38:35.160Well, the reason I like doing crime, true crime, is you don't have to do any politics. There's the bad guy and then they're victims. And I think those stories have to be told. We have to make the bad guys the bad guys.