Juno News - Premiere of The Freedom Occupation

00:00:00.000 It became pretty clear that these folks were not going to leave in a day or two.

00:00:15.480 I think that people were being told to be a lot more worried than the situation warranted.

00:00:21.080 In fact, it was excessively intimidating.

00:00:30.000 People were coming out and supporting this because they knew they had to.

00:00:36.660 And the potential for destruction was huge.

00:00:42.920 So our original plan was to stay until all mandates were lifted.

00:00:50.080 The folks who lived in the downtown core were terrorists.

00:01:00.000 It was clear there was no justification.

00:01:12.740 Well, they really misjudged the moment.

00:01:16.080 I think that's going to be a big problem for the government.

00:01:19.140 It's clear that Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergency Act as a political tool.

00:01:30.000 It became pretty clear that these folks were not going to leave in a day or two.

00:01:40.940 I think that people were being told to be a lot more worried than the situation warranted.

00:01:46.560 In fact, it was excessively intimidating.

00:01:48.600 People were coming out and supporting this because they knew they had to.

00:02:02.040 And the potential for destruction was huge.

00:02:08.760 So our original plan was to stay until all mandates were lifted.

00:02:12.520 the folks who lived in the downtown core were terror

00:02:19.020 it was clear there was no justification

00:02:31.660 well they really misjudged the moment i think that's going to be a big problem for the government

00:02:43.280 it's clear that justin trudeau invoked the emergency act as a political tool

00:03:01.660 It became pretty clear that these folks were not going to leave in a day or two.

00:03:05.660 I think that people were being told to be a lot more worried than the situation warranted.

00:03:10.660 In fact, it was excessively intimidating.

00:03:22.660 People were coming out and supporting this because they knew they had to.

00:03:26.660 And the potential for destruction was huge.

00:03:31.660 So our original plan was to stay until all mandates were lifted.

00:03:41.080 The folks who lived in the downtown core were terrorists.

00:03:54.220 It was clear there was no justification.

00:04:03.220 Well, they really misjudged the moment.

00:04:06.540 I think that's going to be a big problem for the government.

00:04:09.640 It's clear that Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergency Act as a political tool.

00:04:24.220 We'll be right back.

00:04:54.220 We'll be right back.

00:05:24.220 We'll be right back.

00:05:54.220 Transcription by CastingWords

00:06:24.220 Hello, everyone, and welcome to a very special presentation by True North.

00:06:36.100 It's not often that we get to roll out the virtual red carpet and premiere a film.

00:06:41.520 In fact, I don't think we've ever done that, either the film or the red carpet, virtual or otherwise.

00:06:46.660 But we are doing exactly that tonight.

00:06:49.140 and I am so very thrilled to have one of my colleagues in particular taking a front and

00:06:55.980 center role in telling a story that is near and dear to my heart and to those of many in our

00:07:01.320 audience and I would say to those of Canada as well and the one thing that I want to just say

00:07:08.260 before we get into the meat of what we're all here for which is the premiere of the documentary

00:07:13.140 the freedom occupation is that this is coming coincidentally at on the eve of the release of

00:07:20.500 the public order emergency commissions report into a lot of the things that are going to be

00:07:25.080 discussed in the film and discussion that you're going to see tonight so all of that is to say

00:07:29.820 that we have a fantastic discussion planned for you this evening i'm joined by filmmakers rachel

00:07:36.240 Emanuel and Johnny Emanuel, who are the producers of this and really the stars of the evening

00:07:43.140 program, and also my colleague at True North, Rupa Subramanya, who, like me, has the great

00:07:48.980 privilege of being featured in the documentary.

00:07:52.080 Both Rupa and I were interviewed for this, although I deliberately have not seen it yet,

00:07:57.860 and we're going to have a discussion beforehand.

00:07:59.740 We're going to watch it all together, and we're going to have a discussion afterwards,

00:08:02.900 and it will be very authentic on my part.

00:08:05.180 So if they've taken me out of context and photoshopped me into something very weird, I'll be seeing it for the first time alongside you.

00:08:12.660 But you can watch this all at the Freedom Occupations website, which is freedomoccupation.ca.

00:08:18.760 And you can see tonight in full, in just about 25 minutes or so, the Freedom Occupation, the movement that fueled a nation.

00:08:26.540 So without further ado, let's get this discussion going.

00:08:29.600 And I want to start with you, Rachel, and you, Johnny.

00:08:32.740 Now, I should say True North is distributing this. We're thrilled to be doing that.

00:08:36.540 But this was an initiative that you both took on on your own to tell this story.

00:08:41.720 So I don't know which one of you wants to take this first, but why did you do it?

00:08:46.840 Well, I'll jump in. And John, if you have anything to add, you can certainly add that afterwards.

00:08:51.500 Initially, it was just because a couple of months after the Freedom Convoy had ended, I actually was living in Alberta at this time.

00:08:57.460 And at this point, I started to hear there was a couple of groups that were working on documentaries.

00:09:01.240 and I was just thinking about all the really amazing footage that I had on my phone I was one

00:09:06.440 of the arguably few reporters that was at the very front when police actually came and pushed

00:09:10.960 protesters out of Ottawa and off of Parliament Hill and I had some really incredible footage of

00:09:15.560 that now I wasn't actually very well known as a reporter at that time I was still working

00:09:19.480 in the mainstream media for a pretty small and unknown outlet iPolitics and that that those

00:09:25.420 videos actually didn't get very much traction online if I posted them now with the following

00:09:30.020 that I had I think they would have certainly taken off and gone viral so they actually hadn't been

00:09:34.340 seen very much and I just thought man like it would be great if I could do something with this

00:09:38.380 and conveniently my brother Johnny was studying film and he was just about to finish at Fanshawe

00:09:43.200 with a degree in film studies which was something that he is very passionate about and had been

00:09:47.580 learning about for years so I just reached out to him and I said hey would you be interested in

00:09:51.660 working on this project with me I don't think we really realized how big it was going to get or

00:09:55.800 how much work it was going to take but it was kind of convenient that he had all this necessary

00:10:00.600 skills and i had some footage but also a lot of the contact the contacts that we needed to really

00:10:05.860 get this project underway yeah why was why were you wanting to get involved in this well it was

00:10:13.120 really convenient in the sense that as rachel mentioned i was just coming out of school i

00:10:16.580 just wrapped up some solo projects of myself um that i had done in school and i was kind of

00:10:21.300 thinking like what next what what's the next challenge and it was actually at our end of the

00:10:26.620 year film festival where rachel shot me a text it was like hey i have an idea like i have this

00:10:31.840 footage what do you think of making this a possibility and it was just like like the stars

00:10:36.260 aligned it was like absolutely let's make it happen and here we are i i know that you've seen

00:10:41.100 this yourself and i've certainly seen it so let's just deal with the elephant in the room right away

00:10:45.520 the name so as you well know occupation is a somewhat of a loaded term and i've seen some

00:10:51.640 people that are probably supportive of the convoy that have that have said they they question or in

00:10:56.780 some cases might not like that choice so what is it you're trying to convey and what do you mean

00:11:00.640 when you come out with the title the freedom occupation yeah that's a great question andrew

00:11:05.480 when jonathan and i discussed this project and agreed that we were going to do it it was very

00:11:09.780 important to us that we get both sides of the story now obviously working in center-right

00:11:15.740 conservative media you know I obviously have a bias and I don't hide that to viewers or to my

00:11:21.160 audience it's very obvious where I'm coming from but to me it was very important that we do get

00:11:25.720 both sides of the story and really talk to people who are impacted on both sides of your people who

00:11:30.620 lived in Ottawa and businesses and business owners as well as people who had had their

00:11:34.200 rights stripped away from them and were a part of the convoy so I think for me the name is really

00:11:38.920 a conversation starter i want people to see this documentary and be interested they know that true

00:11:44.600 north is distributing it obviously my name is attached to it people know who i am you know some

00:11:48.920 people not everybody so i think it's a conversation starter i think people look at this name and be

00:11:52.920 like huh what do they really mean by that and i think the name really pays homage to the fact that

00:11:57.320 we did want to show both sides of the story i think when you watch the documentary you'll see

00:12:01.160 that we actually had some people come back to us who watched it and said they thought we were too

00:12:06.200 too hard on the convoy at times or we portray too many people who are anti-convoy you know of

00:12:10.440 course we had other people who said the opposite it's been very interesting actually getting

00:12:13.880 feedback on this project how different opinions people have so far so i'm really excited to see

00:12:18.440 how it goes over but you know and i think the other interesting thing is also just sort of the

00:12:22.200 unique word play within the word occupation you know these are people and my brother was actually

00:12:26.840 the person who pointed this out who said they made it their job to go to ottawa and be heard

00:12:31.720 for the fact their restrictions and their liberties were taken away and andrew i 100 agree with you

00:12:36.360 that the term occupation has become a very loaded term but i think it's also worth asking the

00:12:41.320 question that if we're talking about a breach of civil liberties to the magnitude that we are where

00:12:46.120 people are actually being forced to put a foreign substance into their body that they were not

00:12:50.200 comfortable with and certainly we've learned a lot about what that substance is in recent days

00:12:54.600 and there's a lot of cause to be concerned would an occupation not be worth it at that cost then

00:12:59.960 to go to ottawa and to be heard so i think really for us it was a conversation starter

00:13:04.280 and i think the funny thing is that it also kind of annoys both groups because you can't use the

00:13:08.840 word freedom around people that are left-wing nowadays without them being triggered it's like

00:13:12.600 a dirty word to them now which is super funny and like you mentioned occupation has become a very

00:13:17.480 loaded dirty word for people in right-wing circles now yeah that's a great point so by the end of it

00:13:23.160 you'll have either alienated both sides or perhaps you'll have found the sweet spot and both sides

00:13:27.480 will love it. Let's discuss this from the film perspective for a moment, because Johnny, you know

00:13:34.000 better than anyone with your background that there was so much in the way of compelling visual

00:13:39.100 in the convoy. And you had so many people that were actually filming video that were

00:13:43.620 just on their own as streamers, as citizen journalists, as people that were there for

00:13:48.000 that were filming these things. And even in our little pre-roll intro, we have some footage from

00:13:52.460 my walkabouts there and some other things that happened in Ottawa. And it was just,

00:13:56.560 so there was so much to see so how do you use that to tell a visual story when there is just

00:14:02.880 so much that you can choose from as far as available footage plus what you filmed yourself

00:14:07.360 making it i think it comes down to incorporating the the footage at the right point i mean you gotta

00:14:12.680 you gotta lead them to it so you'll find we we try to set the stage and like because it's impossible

00:14:18.440 to recreate that atmosphere that's one thing i definitely caught in the footage it's just

00:14:22.200 the the magnitude the size of the crowd and the the amount of different activities going on you

00:14:27.380 know there were stages bouncy castles it was just it was a carnival that just sort of just

00:14:31.640 flooded the streets and so i mean it was very important that we try to encapsulate the atmosphere

00:14:37.400 without trying to do so in a way that seemed overly biased in its presentation and so yeah

00:14:42.860 i think it's just uh you know fluttered in delicately and appropriately the convoy was

00:14:48.960 three weeks in Ottawa, plus the week it was on its way to Ottawa, plus you had the spinoff events

00:14:55.580 that took place in Cootes and Windsor and Emerson and Surrey. You had the Emergencies Act. You had

00:15:00.660 the Public Order Emergency Commission. You have so many different threads here between the legal,

00:15:06.020 the political, the cultural, the chronological, the media bias. Which angle is it that you're

00:15:12.640 exploring? And I don't mean in terms of which perspective, but I guess which strain of this

00:15:17.940 story were you trying to follow yeah that was something we struggled with because there was

00:15:22.920 just so much to cover and I think initially we went into it a little bit blindly and tried to

00:15:26.940 ask our sources about a lot of different things we definitely only focused on the freedom convoy

00:15:31.560 within Ottawa we didn't touch on any of the spinoff stuff those are all well worth their own

00:15:36.260 you know full-length documentaries there was so much material here to cover we really covered you

00:15:41.680 know the mainstream media job of covering the freedom convoy and if they did an adequate job

00:15:46.580 of covering that. We also covered the police's work on pushing protesters off of Parliament Hill

00:15:52.380 and what that looked like, and also, you know, how that was spurred by the Emergencies Act and sort

00:15:56.740 of raised the question, was the Emergency Act justified its invocation? So I think really the

00:16:01.840 mainstream media job of covering the Freedom Convoy and how that went about, and maybe some

00:16:06.220 of the misinformation or bias that was caught in there. I mean, obviously we'll have some sources

00:16:10.720 within the docs say they think the mainstream media did a very adequate job of covering the

00:16:14.200 convoy, as well as some of the violence that we saw in protesters actually being pushed out and

00:16:19.380 really what the next step is moving forward. Let's broaden this discussion a little bit to

00:16:25.180 include my colleague at True North, Rupa Subramanya, who also is a co-guest, a co-interviewee

00:16:31.380 of the documentary. And if you're just tuning in, the premiere is going to be coming in about 15

00:16:36.220 minutes or so. So you haven't missed it. We're going to have a little bit more in the sense of

00:16:40.400 pre-discussion. We'll premiere the documentary for you, and then we'll have some post-analysis

00:16:46.040 as well. Rupa, you and I have spoken about this before. You were one of the only journalists that

00:16:51.760 came up with this revolutionary concept of talking to people, which before the convoy wasn't a

00:16:58.040 revolutionary concept, but during it, no one but you seemed to be interested in doing it. So how

00:17:03.620 do you feel now that this story is being told by more people and in a different way than when you

00:17:08.760 were just walking around alone having conversations and tweeting about them basically

00:17:13.040 it's a it's a real uh pleasure that uh you know it's a privilege that we're able to um

00:17:24.040 premiere this documentary and that i was part of it uh and along with you andrew uh well you know

00:17:30.780 that's interesting you know basically what i did was you know i was just chatting with people you

00:17:35.960 I had no agenda. I was just having a conversation with people, and I ended up speaking to a whole

00:17:40.560 bunch of people over the course of three weeks. And it's important that the story gets told over

00:17:46.920 and over and over again, especially those of us in the independent media space, because

00:17:54.880 it was such an important point in our history. It was one of the world's greatest protests,

00:18:04.080 in my opinion um uh for various reasons and and i think uh the fact that rachel and johnny have

00:18:11.440 this amazing documentary out is uh as you know you know one important way of chronicling what happened

00:18:18.320 uh uh in february of 2022 january february of 2022 and uh and i i know there are other

00:18:25.600 documentaries out there as well i know there are people working on books and documentaries and

00:18:30.000 films and and that's uh and that's pretty amazing and the more the better in my opinion

00:18:35.140 uh johnny i i know that there's this perception and i think it's perhaps a little bit deserved

00:18:40.740 maybe not as much as people think that the film industry is this overwhelmingly left-wing

00:18:45.840 environment and i'm just curious i know you're starting out your career but if

00:18:49.620 any of your colleagues in the film industry just kind of had their backs up against the wall when

00:18:53.920 they learned you were working on this sort of project well i mean i didn't have anyone's back

00:18:59.320 to the wall but i did try to preview it across a couple of colleagues of mine and unfortunately

00:19:03.800 those i mean you're not you're not wrong it is a very left uh left-leaning industry

00:19:08.980 and uh there were some turndowns unfortunately some people just felt too uh you know politically

00:19:15.440 charged or it was too triggering for them to even reopen the uh the can of worms so to speak so uh

00:19:21.460 yeah i mean i would say those um those reservations that you have of the film industry are absolutely

00:19:26.340 accurate is what it is though we're trying to challenge that what do you make of that rachel

00:19:30.700 that there are some people that whether they're in the film industry or not that just have this

00:19:35.260 baked in narrative where they don't even want to learn more about it i mean with my book i

00:19:40.000 encountered that people that said no i know everything i need to know i don't want to read

00:19:43.400 the book and you know there are going to be some people that say no i already know i don't like

00:19:47.100 them i don't need a documentary to tell me anything about it but do you think they're the

00:19:50.780 minority and and that most people actually could have an open mind about this

00:19:55.140 yes i do think they're the minority and i think that it's important for us not to get so held up

00:20:02.900 on these people that don't want to give us a time of day and don't want to have discourse and these

00:20:08.500 conversations that we don't forget that there are a lot of people who are critical thinkers

00:20:12.460 and are willing to hear both sides of the stories and not forget to appeal to those people as well

00:20:17.160 and sometimes we can get so turned off by the other side so to speak that you know we kind of

00:20:22.120 forget to stop trying and just kind of exist within our own worlds but politics is downstream

00:20:27.160 of culture and I think it's important and this is just I think a general life rule that when you go

00:20:31.260 around in your society that you're the type of person that is willing to engage with other people

00:20:35.520 from all walks of life and I think that if we want to see change in our political sphere it needs to

00:20:39.700 start with us and how we interact in our communities and just to sort of add to what

00:20:43.160 Jonathan was saying there it was actually quite a funny instance because he had asked someone to

00:20:46.940 review the project for us and I think they got about seven minutes into it um and then they

00:20:51.720 turned it off and said they just couldn't watch it it was just apparently too biased um which was

00:20:56.700 hilarious thinking about it now but at the time I think we were both like what are we gonna do

00:21:00.920 and I think it actually led to a whole reworking of the intro so um but yeah I mean I think probably

00:21:07.320 in retrospect I don't know how much it is really worth to appeal to these type of people that

00:21:11.380 obviously are not interested in having the conversation to begin with let me ask you this

00:21:16.940 question Rupa because you like me are going into this a bit blind so you don't you know the story

00:21:21.400 of the convoy through the lens that you've approached it with but you haven't seen the

00:21:24.780 documentary what are the questions that you would have as a viewer that you would like this

00:21:29.400 documentary to answer or at least contribute to the discourse around well you know I think I think

00:21:35.720 you started off by asking a very interesting question and this is a question I've been getting

00:21:40.000 from many people from you know in anticipation of this of the documentary premiering this evening

00:21:47.620 is that why the word occupation in the title, and Rachel's answer to that was, I think, struck the

00:21:54.640 right balance. And I sense that that's what the documentary is going to be doing. I think it's

00:22:00.500 going to be a conversation starter, which is a great, which is what I would like to happen.

00:22:07.940 Look, unfortunately, we're all in this echo chamber. We all agree with each other. We all

00:22:13.480 agree that the Freedom Convoy was one of the greatest protests. It was a legitimate right.

00:22:18.500 They had a legitimate right to civil disobedience, to protest. They were peaceful. Andrew, you and I

00:22:24.280 spoke to, you know, hundreds of people during the protests over those three weeks. And since then,

00:22:30.800 we've spoken to many more and we've covered this quite extensively. So there's no question that

00:22:37.200 you and I agree that the, you know, what the protests were about. But I really think it's

00:22:42.000 important for us to get out of our echo chamber um and and and for and invite more people into

00:22:48.440 the conversation because that's what's lacking right now in my opinion it's become so incredibly

00:22:53.440 polarized um uh that uh you know everybody seems to just be in their own corner when in fact what

00:23:00.740 i want people to do is i want them to um you know you know come to the middle uh on the issue uh you

00:23:09.260 know yes I mean people were inconvenienced in Ottawa I live in Ottawa I live in downtown Ottawa

00:23:13.440 um I for that first weekend I certainly uh was inconvenienced it was quite loud there was no

00:23:19.500 question about it I am 100 honest about it uh but at the same time um I think that the right to

00:23:26.060 a protest and civil disobedience is integral to a well-functioning democracy without that we don't

00:23:32.360 have anything. And these are people who are standing up for our basic rights, and courageously

00:23:41.920 so, and I applaud them for it. But I think it's also important, and I'm hoping that Rachel's

00:23:49.000 documentary, if she says it's going to be a conversation starter, I'm hoping that that's

00:23:54.220 precisely what it what it does because we need to bring in more people onto it to the middle and see

00:24:02.460 the protest for what they were these were not a bunch of Jagmeet Singh these were not people who

00:24:07.200 are here to overthrow the government FYI even the public order the commission into the the public

00:24:13.900 inquiry into the emergencies act you know all of the top police chiefs the OPP the RCMP every

00:24:20.740 ceases everybody agreed that this was basically a peaceful protest um and there was no security

00:24:28.900 threat to the country um and and i think that needs to be established firmly and uh and then

00:24:35.080 and then and invite more people into the conversation yeah i mean you mentioned rachel

00:24:40.140 that you wanted to start a conversation about it and my colleague tells me that in the comment

00:24:45.040 section you've certainly done that because there's a very raucous debate going on about the word

00:24:48.980 occupation now so before they've even seen it I think you've achieved part of your mission there

00:24:53.740 I don't know Rachel or Johnny if one or both of you wants to take this specifically but

00:24:58.700 one question that I would ask because you've been working on this for such a long time the

00:25:02.800 convoy was 13 months ago that it began you started working on this not long after it so you've had

00:25:09.040 let's say almost a year here has your perspective or approach either on the event itself or how to

00:25:16.600 cover it changed in the time that you've been working on it? Oh, that's a really good question.

00:25:23.640 I wouldn't say so. I think there was a period in the summer where we had done our first half of

00:25:29.340 filming in Ottawa. I had flown back to Ottawa. I'd already been living in Alberta at this point.

00:25:34.680 Jonathan met me there. We did our first half of filming and I think that was in the early stages

00:25:38.420 of the project and things at that point were coming together really well. And then there was

00:25:43.880 a lull where summer got really busy here in alberta we had the united conservative party

00:25:48.200 leadership race that i was pretty busy with and jonathan was pretty busy and we kind of like put

00:25:53.240 it to the side for a pretty long time and i think we both had a moment of is this actually going to

00:25:58.140 happen is this going to get finished but jonathan had looked over a lot of the footage at this point

00:26:02.220 and he said no we have something really good here we need to make sure that we use this but it was

00:26:06.800 extremely complicated and difficult to find sources that were not like pro convoy to come

00:26:12.980 the documentary i would say that was actually one of the biggest challenges that we had because i

00:26:16.900 was reaching out and asking people to do the interviews and you know people knew who i was

00:26:21.140 and there was a lot of people on the left who if i had asked them a couple months earlier while i

00:26:25.060 had still worked within the mainstream media i'm sure they would have agreed to an interview but

00:26:28.900 you know a few short weeks later i had made my position known and so that was really challenging

00:26:32.740 and we had a moment where i think we were going to maybe just do the documentary in a different

00:26:37.140 style because we didn't think that we could get the interviews and then sort of at the last minute

00:26:41.300 we were able to secure a couple and get that balance that we were looking for but i think

00:26:45.860 you know other than that brief law we were pretty focused on what we were wanted to what we wanted

00:26:50.020 to do and then the only thing was just what footage to include and what topics to cover

00:26:54.660 because as we've mentioned there was just it was there's so much and i'm glad there's so much being

00:26:58.900 made about it because there's so many unique aspects to the convoys and so many unique stories

00:27:04.020 even within this one broader story that needs to be told and you know rupa was one of those people

00:27:08.020 who was on the streets interviewing truckers all the time and i think it's great we got so

00:27:11.460 many of those stories out there but there's still a lot we don't know and there's still a lot to be

00:27:15.060 told does that track with your experience johnny as well yeah it's similar i'd say like you know

00:27:21.540 when i initially the the mindset has always kind of been the same in terms of why we set out to do

00:27:26.340 this um but how we wanted to say it i think was what actually evolved in the sense of originally

00:27:32.820 the idea was to sort of keep our voices out with out of the film as much as possible we wanted to

00:27:38.340 go with a completely objective approach in order to sort of appeal to both sides but further on as

00:27:43.220 the project progressed i sort of realized you know like this a that that loses the artistic touch

00:27:48.260 that uh filmmakers bring to their their craft you know your voice needs to be at least shared in a

00:27:55.060 in a in a artistic way and you know if you have something to say then you should say it i think

00:27:59.940 think it's how you go about saying it which is really important so uh yeah i mean originally it

00:28:04.740 was like try to stay as unbiased and objective as possible but then it sort of came down to it's

00:28:08.960 like no there's a message behind this and we do stand behind the trucker convoy and that should

00:28:13.060 be that should resonate with viewers i do think that issue you identified rachel is a fascinating

00:28:19.520 one of having difficulty finding sources coming that wanted to criticize it i i know justin ling

00:28:25.200 the freelance journalist is in this and he and I despite drastic different drastically different

00:28:31.560 approaches to the world have gotten along and have interviewed each other and and without issue and

00:28:36.360 every time we have each of our respective supporters is mortified that we dare talk to the

00:28:41.320 other so when he had me on to talk about my book his audience are like I'm unsubscribing you're

00:28:45.620 platforming that terrible person that convoy propagandist and I had people saying how dare

00:28:50.060 you talk to him you're a sellout and and I do think that that's been one of the problems with

00:28:54.420 the convoy is that there have been a lot of people that have their baked in perspective. They refuse

00:28:59.440 to not even just agree with the other side, but just respect that there is another side. And I get

00:29:06.100 from what you've said, Rachel, that you're not trying to force people to believe a certain thing,

00:29:09.660 but do you want people to at least say, you know, I understand the other perspective a bit more. I

00:29:14.540 understand where they're coming from a bit more. Yeah, absolutely. And as we spoke about earlier,

00:29:19.480 just that need to still be willing to have dialogues with people that you don't agree with.

00:29:23.340 And, you know, you mentioned some of your subscribers saying, oh, I'm subscribing, like, I'm disappointed that you would have an interview with Justin Ling. But I think that's kind of what we don't want to lose. We don't want to lose that ability to have dialogue with one another. I don't think we're going to see the progress in our country that we want to see if that's the attitude that we have. And, you know, I actually reached out to Justin Ling on Andrew's sort of suggestion.

00:29:44.380 I mentioned I'm having a really hard time finding you know someone who's going to be critical of the

00:29:48.660 convoy and you know Andrew mentioned Andrew suggested Justin and he agreed to it which I

00:29:53.220 was pleasantly surprised to I think that our viewers will also be you know a bit surprised

00:29:57.860 I felt that there were I felt he actually gave you know really reasonable at you know at times

00:30:02.960 really reasonable sort of perspective on things he gave a really good analysis of mainstream media

00:30:08.380 coverage of it a lot of times so I don't think people will be too I think people might be pleasantly

00:30:13.540 surprised at times you know there was other things that he said that i know people will be really

00:30:16.900 upset by but i i felt like he was actually a pretty strong voice um for the middle for the

00:30:22.580 middle throughout throughout the convoy and maybe you have a different perspective jonathan but we

00:30:26.180 did have another voice in the project who was much more against the convoy but it felt like justin

00:30:30.820 did a good job of sort of presenting what people in the middle would have felt jonathan did you

00:30:36.420 want to pick that up no no yeah i think she nailed it i mean he was a very balanced voice

00:30:41.060 yeah, no. Oh, you've called Justin Ling balance now. I don't even think Justin Ling wants that

00:30:46.300 endorsement from True North. Rupa, one thing that we mentioned earlier was your conversations with

00:30:54.300 people and putting a human face on this. And I think that was always one of the big challenges

00:30:59.020 for people in the country that wanted to get news about the convoy is that you had the media that

00:31:04.500 was saying Pat King is the face of the convoy or James Botter is the face of the convoy.

00:31:09.260 and you had thousands and tens of thousands and if you extend it to people that were just supporters

00:31:14.460 or observers millions of people who were never in the news their faces were not known their names

00:31:20.280 were not known their stories were not known but they were a big part of this and I would actually

00:31:24.560 say they were the real backbone of the convoy the not the people at the top that are the people the

00:31:30.360 media like to say were at the top but the real people that aligned with this movement and it's

00:31:34.840 been very difficult for those people's stories to be told. Yeah, absolutely. And that was what

00:31:40.980 made the protest for me. You know, I did interact with some of the convoy organizers over the course

00:31:48.900 of those three weeks. I went to some of their pressers. But, and to be fair to them, they

00:31:55.620 didn't really, they also kind of stayed in the background, you know, and let, you know, the

00:32:03.380 protests speak for itself and uh and and i thought that was very interesting because oftentimes when

00:32:10.100 you have um when you have a large protest movement like this you have organizers who

00:32:16.260 want to just basically hijack the movement and they become the face of the protests and

00:32:20.820 nobody cares about the protesters themselves or even the cause for that matter but what ended up

00:32:25.940 happening here was that it was actually focused on the average canadian who showed up to protest

00:32:31.220 and that's uh those are the people that i spoke to uh from the first day i stepped out of my

00:32:36.500 apartment here in ottawa uh to the very end to the you know i was there till the very end till when

00:32:42.580 when law enforcement was you know they were pushing the protesters back i stayed um until

00:32:48.900 till that that last day and it was all about them it was all about these people who had journeyed

00:32:55.060 all from all over the country from alberta from new brunswick from newfoundland from quebec from

00:33:00.660 everywhere and they all spoke one common language and that language was a freedom um you know and

00:33:06.580 it was an extraordinary moment in this country and uh and what what was um sad and disappointing uh

00:33:13.860 well there were many sad and disappointing features uh aspects of uh those three weeks uh

00:33:18.820 one of them being the media coverage of it um you know i didn't think any of it was really balanced

00:33:24.100 um uh and uh you know they had an agenda right from the get-go and they kept doubling down on

00:33:29.540 that agenda and of course what led to uh you know and what led to the invocation of the emergencies

00:33:35.860 act uh which was um unnecessary and uh it was uh highly problematic um but but through through it

00:33:43.860 all through it all it was a very canadian protest and that needs to be emphasized over and over

00:33:49.060 again because these were peaceful people um coming you know doubling down on love and joy

00:33:56.820 and peace and hope and freedom uh whereas the other guys were doubling down on hate um

00:34:04.180 vilification of the other um and uh and denigration of the other and uh and that contrast

00:34:11.220 uh was was quite striking to me and that's still going on to this day i mean i

00:34:16.100 if i say anything positive about the freedom protests um a year later i still get a lot of

00:34:23.140 hate uh saying that you know this was an occupation and the these were terrorists and they were here to

00:34:28.180 overthrow the government uh but you know that just shows you how polarized everything has become in

00:34:34.180 this country how divisive everything has become and this is why uh it's extremely important that we

00:34:40.020 um you know we we strike a balance somehow and it's great that you and rachel reached out to

00:34:45.540 justin ling um and you know and and you know and you've had a conversation with him or more than

00:34:51.700 in a conversation uh here and there but you know i i think that uh that kind of um reaching across

00:34:58.800 the aisle so to speak is extremely important as we go forward um uh because i i don't think it's

00:35:04.760 sustainable the way things are right now where you know everybody is just uh hating the other

00:35:10.020 um i don't think that makes for a good um future as far as i'm concerned all right well very very

00:35:18.140 wonderful note to uh wind down our pre-show discussion here just before we get to the main

00:35:23.500 event i'll go back to the filmmakers here rachel and johnny anything you want to say to set the

00:35:28.920 scene before we roll your documentary for the first time i think is that a no enjoy sorry i

00:35:41.020 can't actually see you for where i'm looking right now so if you were shaking your head i uh

00:35:44.740 I missed it, but hearing no comments, as they say in the House of Commons,

00:35:49.840 it is my great privilege on behalf of the True North team

00:35:52.780 and the filmmakers from Emanuel Productions here to present for the first time

00:35:56.980 the freedom occupation, the movement that fueled a nation.

00:36:14.740 I've got to step away for like half a second, but you can reach me on Slack.

00:36:33.020 Growing anxiety this morning

00:36:41.720 about the COVID-19 trend in Canada

00:36:44.320 as we take a look at the numbers.

00:36:48.280 The CDC said it is working on new guidance from mask wearing.

00:36:52.160 Before you go anywhere, you're going to need a poll.

00:36:54.140 The federal government is warning the rules may change again.

00:36:57.360 Mayor Jim Watson is declaring a state of emergency

00:36:59.980 to give the city more flexibility.

00:37:01.680 Ottawa has declared a state of emergency.

00:37:04.120 The city of Ottawa has declared a state of emergency.

00:37:07.100 That's because of ongoing protests there by truck drivers and their supporters.

00:37:10.640 It's being blocked by truckers protesting vaccine rules.

00:37:13.980 But what's currently happening there is unprecedented.

00:37:18.640 So over the last two weeks have tried tactics never seen before in Canada.

00:37:23.820 People were coming out and supporting this because they knew they had to.

00:37:28.180 All Canadians must act now.

00:37:31.680 And the potential for destruction was huge.

00:37:35.680 The convoy is attracting supporters with a wide range of views.

00:37:38.680 And I thought to myself, well, they really misjudged the moment.

00:37:41.680 The folks who live in the downtown core were terrorized.

00:37:50.680 It was clear there was no justification for it.

00:37:53.680 You don't just show up with all these trucks and take over downtown.

00:38:00.680 I don't believe it became illegal until the Emergencies Act was actually put in place.

00:38:05.460 They needed to use the Emergencies Act to declare the protest illegal.

00:38:30.680 Yeah, I can describe what it was like pulling into Ottawa with a convoy.

00:38:40.040 It was unbelievable.

00:38:41.860 The emotions were crazy busy, trying to be organized.

00:38:46.860 Not knowing how many trucks, cars were behind you was an awesome feeling.

00:38:51.360 The excitement level was really high for everybody.

00:38:54.860 I had my son in the truck with me and yeah, he wanted the horn being honked all the time.

00:39:02.860 It was just an emotional wow in the fact that there were so many people with flags standing on the bridges.

00:39:10.860 And yeah, it brought emotions out that my wife and I will never experience again.

00:39:18.860 It was a beautiful, exciting time.

00:39:24.860 Thank you.

00:39:54.860 the freedom convoy happened because you had this growing segment of the population that was

00:40:11.580 absolutely tired of covid restrictions not just from the federal government and the provincial

00:40:17.660 government but i think a lot of the narratives around them that we saw increasingly with the

00:40:22.220 convoy even i mean justin trudeau calling them a fringe minority uh going back early in ontario

00:40:27.500 to being called a bunch of yahoo so people felt like they were increasingly being excluded from

00:40:32.780 society and the convoy wasn't just a protest against the restrictions themselves but i think

00:40:38.220 also the media's depictions of the people that were forming the convoy i'm here because on january

00:40:44.460 26 2022 i lost my nursing job after 12 years yeah when the truckers first arrived uh it was more of

00:40:53.660 a novelty and and the reason is is i think most people were under the impression i wouldn't say

00:40:58.860 to what extent they've been led to believe but they were under the impression that this was going

00:41:03.580 to last a weekend i really didn't know if it was going to last more than a weekend or not from my

00:41:07.500 mind it was 50 50. there were folks who seemed a little bit less committed to the cause who wanted

00:41:13.820 to come out and protest against vaccine mandates,

00:41:16.060 in cases against vaccines, against lockdowns,

00:41:18.700 against masks, mask mandates, and it wasn't clear

00:41:22.060 whether or not the majority were folks who were more dedicated,

00:41:25.260 more hardcore, more willing to sacrifice,

00:41:27.420 or whether it was folks who just wanted a big public demonstration,

00:41:30.860 a protest, some civil disobedience,

00:41:32.940 but really could have gone many different directions.

00:41:35.340 A lot of people are losing their jobs and their livelihoods.

00:41:37.340 That's not okay, so.

00:41:38.860 I'm here because I would like to see change happen,

00:41:40.780 and I want to see it done in a peaceful manner.

00:41:42.540 I think this is a great way to do it.

00:41:44.480 This is democracy.

00:41:45.600 This is what democracy is all about.

00:41:47.740 People believe that the government has overstepped with mandates

00:41:52.120 and they're here to exercise their democratic right.

00:41:57.320 Yeah, I joined the convoy because we've been having a frustrating two years.

00:42:03.540 Society has been, COVID definitely has been tough on society

00:42:06.440 and the restrictions have been tough as well.

00:42:09.880 As the information comes out, we can see that they're not working.

00:42:13.880 They actually are doing more harm than good.

00:42:16.880 So that's why we decided to join the convoy,

00:42:19.880 thought it was a protest that we could support.

00:42:22.880 That was incredible.

00:42:23.880 It's hard not to look back and just smile about that, right?

00:42:26.880 There was joy, peace, kindness.

00:42:31.880 Canadians are just beauties.

00:42:33.880 I mean, at the end of the day, that was like Canada Day on steroids.

00:42:39.880 This is affecting all of us, so it's a widespread thing.

00:42:43.640 It's not just one community.

00:42:45.980 I think a lot of Canadians are worried about what's happening with our country

00:42:48.620 and are worried about the direction that policies are heading.

00:42:51.640 Don't be controlled by the government.

00:42:54.480 We are the ones that control ourselves.

00:42:57.200 Because if it's lost, you know, the next generation won't be around.

00:43:01.600 That's all it is.

00:43:04.100 This is not what happened.

00:43:05.780 These people came with very big machines.

00:43:07.940 They came with huge trucks. Most of them had big, they were transport trucks. They were big and the potential for destruction was huge.

00:43:17.940 Like I remember thinking that if ever anything happened, if ever any of these people decided that they were going to be violent, the damage would have been enormous.

00:43:28.940 And what I mean is if you have these trucks, they can easily be destroying buildings, destroying Parliament Hill, they could destroy anything.

00:43:35.940 Nothing will stop these trucks.

00:43:37.940 And I remember walking from my car where I was parked

00:43:41.940 because obviously I couldn't come downtown.

00:43:43.940 So I was parked in the market and I would walk.

00:43:46.940 And I was walking and I remember, and it didn't take very long,

00:43:50.940 that it was tantamount to a war zone.

00:43:56.940 I don't know if it's fair to say that Ottawa residents were genuinely concerned for their safety,

00:44:02.940 I think certainly there was an uncertainty when this all started of what it was going to look like,

00:44:08.000 because you had the media that was advancing this narrative of a January 6th-style insurrection, of some violent protest.

00:44:15.180 Look at what happened in the States on January 6th, what happened.

00:44:18.760 A bunch of people decided they were going to storm Congress, which is what they did.

00:44:25.940 Now, what is the difference between that situation and ours?

00:44:29.460 At first they came for the pastors, and then the owners of the businesses, and then the frontline workers, and now they have touched the nerve because here are the truckers.

00:44:38.180 I tend to agree with CSIS' assessment, the Integrated Terrorism Assessment Centre, which is kind of an open source reporting mechanism that reports to police, reports to domestic law enforcement agencies.

00:44:48.220 It basically said there was no concrete threat, there was nobody proposing an attack, but that the possibility of an individual going rogue, an individual committing attack was present.

00:44:58.860 At no point did I see any of the organizers, any of the organizations at the core of this

00:45:05.060 talk about any sort of direct state violence or start putting together the pieces that would

00:45:12.860 be necessary to carry out an attack like that. Nothing I saw there led me to believe that an

00:45:17.140 attack was imminent, but the conditions were right for someone to lose it.

00:45:21.240 Freedom! Freedom! Freedom! Freedom! Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!

00:45:26.440 And I remember that there were these individuals, these individuals that were on different corners, all of a sudden they'd step out of a car, and their purpose was to intimidate me.

00:45:36.660 I remember them looking at me, trying to give the impression that they were sort of in control. To what extent did I have a right to be there? And that was scary. It was scary because when that would happen, I was always thinking it wouldn't take much and it wouldn't take long.

00:45:54.140 And I mean that, because when you look at all the violence that has occurred, great moments of violence in the history of Canada and North America, it all starts with a little something happening.

00:46:06.380 And that little something could have happened any time, and the consequences would have been huge.

00:46:11.660 Yeah, the residents of Ottawa feeling unsafe, I just have a hard time understanding where that came from.

00:46:18.260 I feel like they should have come to the protest and seen it for themselves.

00:46:24.140 They must have been listening to too much of the legacy media because you couldn't have been there and felt there wasn't a sense of peace.

00:46:35.880 Lord, we ask that you would undertake. Father, you are able to do it, dear Father. Help her, dear God.

00:46:42.420 They should have showed up.

00:46:44.420 When I got to Ottawa, I flew into Ottawa because I just didn't know if I'd be able to drive in or drive out.

00:46:50.160 with the traffic my taxi driver was nervous about driving downtown because he had heard

00:46:55.120 and he was listening to CBC radio which may have contributed but he was nervous and said well I

00:47:00.220 might not be able to drive you up there not because of traffic but because of safety so

00:47:04.240 I think that people were being told to be a lot more worried than the situation warranted

00:47:09.800 One of the big frustrations I had is that the media's coverage of the convoy went through

00:47:20.480 different stages. At first, they just completely ignored it. And then they were speaking about it

00:47:25.360 in a way that made it clear they didn't really understand what it was about. I mean, some of the

00:47:29.680 early coverage, anti-vaccine protests, which was never the case. It was an anti-vaccine mandate

00:47:35.720 protest, and then the violent narrative.

00:47:38.820 So large sections of the mainstream media failed to cover the protests objectively.

00:47:44.940 They were pushing a narrative, an agenda, which was contrary to anything that I had

00:47:51.240 experienced for the three weeks of the protestors were here.

00:47:55.760 There was a dereliction of duty.

00:47:57.740 This was an important moment in this country's cultural history, and they were not covering

00:48:02.760 it.

00:48:03.100 They were covering something else.

00:48:04.500 In this current crisis with Russia, I don't know if it's far-fetched to ask, but there is concern that Russian actors could be continuing to fuel things as this protest grows, but perhaps even instigating it from the outset.

00:48:21.800 So it was clear that they were missing the mark at every stage of it.

00:48:25.700 When I started covering it and was comparing what I was seeing on the ground with the media coverage I'd see when I went back on my computer, I was astonished at how two people could look at the same situation and draw such vastly different conclusions.

00:48:39.560 And I think one of the biggest examples of this is the media's focus on these little outliers that really didn't characterize the convoy story, like the Terry Fox statue or, you know, the so-called stealing food from the homeless incident or the stuff at the war memorial or this attempted arson in an apartment building.

00:48:57.680 All of these things that either did not happen or did not happen in the way that they were reported.

00:49:02.900 So the attempted arson story was, I think, a turning point in the protests because a few days later, the prime minister decided to invoke the Emergencies Act because the incident spoke to the safety aspects of the protests where residents said that they were afraid of stepping out of their homes.

00:49:26.360 And they attributed this to the protesters in very explicit terms.

00:49:32.280 And very quickly, as soon as this post became viral, the politicians, including the mayor of the city, several journalists,

00:49:40.860 also gave oxygen to this allegation that the protesters were behind this attempted arson.

00:49:48.020 The police hadn't even begun their investigation at this point.

00:49:50.920 It was still very early days, but already this narrative had taken hold that residents

00:49:55.820 of the city were unsafe and that the protesters were going around setting buildings on fire.

00:50:01.400 Yesterday, we learned of a horrific story that clearly demonstrates the malicious intent

00:50:06.740 of these protesters occupying our city.

00:50:10.080 At 5 a.m., and this was captured on the building's video, on Sunday morning, two young guys

00:50:15.320 in the lobby of the building on Lisker Street, where they proceeded to light fire starter

00:50:19.660 bricks near the elevators before taping up the door handles so residents would struggle

00:50:25.020 to get out during a fire when the police concluded their investigation they said that the alleged

00:50:30.460 arsonist had nothing to do with the protesters or the truckers so that story was effectively

00:50:35.340 debunked and i can think of several other such stories that just uh you know were debunked in

00:50:41.020 very similar ways there was a story early on i think it was like the first day or the second day

00:50:46.060 when the convoy had arrived in ottawa that there was a report that convoy protesters had been

00:50:51.580 stealing food from a homeless shelter and i mean certainly it's entirely possible that a couple of

00:50:58.380 people that arrived at the convoy went to a homeless shelter and and caused damage but what

00:51:02.780 was missing from that story is that as soon as convoy organizers learned that there was a

00:51:08.540 supposed incident they flooded this shelter with food they brought so much food that uh to this

00:51:14.380 and other shelters that they said we can't accommodate all of this and then they were

00:51:17.820 firing up grills on the street and feeding the homeless for weeks and in some cases

00:51:21.820 even housing homeless people so it was a very significant misrepresentation of the atmosphere

00:51:28.300 that the convoy supporters and organizers tried to cultivate which was one of giving not taking

00:51:33.900 oh peace and love out here absolutely nobody's been disrespectful at all you got people walking

00:51:39.900 around picking up garbage that's on the ground everybody's fun smiling enjoying seeing people's

00:51:45.420 faces think about the terry fox story what the media did with the terry fox story is just

00:51:51.740 indescribable really they somebody put a sign on him and a canadian flag how many times have

00:51:57.420 we not seen terry fox dressed in other protests it's a bit of an unfair yeah i guess description

00:52:09.900 There was times when the coverage lacked curiosity, where you had reporters who would hear one of the organizers say, I'm not against vaccines, and then the mainstream press would go and say, well, the organizers aren't necessarily against vaccines.

00:52:25.160 We know that's nonsense.

00:52:26.480 Without fail, every single one of the organizers, the main organizers, the main influencers in this convoy were anti-vaccines and spread anti-vaccine misinformation.

00:52:34.320 So I think in some cases, the mainstream media was not critical enough of the convoy, the organizers, the influencers.

00:52:40.940 But there was also a ton of instances where mainstream coverage was critical to a lazy degree.

00:52:48.180 You saw this rhetoric that foreign money, that maybe Russian disinformation was feeding the convoy.

00:52:54.400 There's virtually zero basis for that.

00:52:57.100 I don't think we've identified a single dollar of Russian money that wound up anywhere around the convoy or the occupation.

00:53:03.860 I've seen nothing since the mainstream coverage of the media to lead me to believe that what was being covered was not true.

00:53:13.760 In fact, what I've seen is I've seen more of an attempt by the organizers, and I use the word organizers loosely,

00:53:23.640 those that were the face of the protest, trying to, in fact, change the narrative

00:53:30.640 as to what was actually being said and being done at the time the convoy was in place

00:53:37.700 or was basically anchored here in Ottawa.

00:53:40.820 There was also instances where it was reported, sort of without caveat,

00:53:45.820 that the whole movement was leading insurrection,

00:53:48.820 or that the entire occupation was there to overturn the government.

00:53:52.820 There's a lot of nuance required when you introduce an idea like that,

00:53:55.820 because yes, at the core of the convoy was a document that basically sought to supplant the democratic government of Canada.

00:54:03.820 That is accurate. There are individuals who wanted to remove the government and try them for treason.

00:54:07.820 there is a running theory inside the convoy that the government was illegitimate or undemocratic

00:54:13.940 or ought to be deposed. You can report on that. But to just say, writ large, the entire aim of

00:54:20.200 the movement is to overturn the government, to lead an insurrection, it's not factually accurate.

00:54:24.980 People give the government the power to act in accordance with their values.

00:54:30.800 Nobody should be forced to take an experimental treatment. And, you know, it's a matter of

00:54:36.040 personal choice. The government does not have any independent power. It is us that confer the power

00:54:42.560 on the government. And where they overstep, the people have a right to voice their opinions.

00:54:47.940 So there's a lot of questions need to be answered about public health in this country.

00:54:51.600 And the people have had enough.

00:54:53.040 When I think about the Nazi paraphernalia that came to the protest is

00:55:08.980 you're going to have a bad apple in every crew. 0.96

00:55:12.400 I cannot imagine a single protest where you don't have a goofball. 0.63

00:55:18.320 I have a hard time believing that it was a true protester.

00:55:24.420 I believe it was probably a plant.

00:55:26.860 I'll never be able to prove that.

00:55:28.800 But they didn't stick around long.

00:55:31.660 So you have to imagine that it was there for the photo op and carry on.

00:55:37.700 They're almost under the impression, it seems to me,

00:55:40.560 and that's what they're trying to portray,

00:55:42.020 that what we're looking at in this whole,

00:55:44.720 in the hearings under the Emergency Act,

00:55:46.760 is we're trying to determine whether or not what they did was justified.

00:55:51.020 That's not at all what's going on.

00:55:52.740 It's clear that what they did was not justified.

00:55:54.780 The question becomes, was it sufficient what they were doing

00:55:58.980 that was not justified to invoke the Emergency Act?

00:56:01.980 That's the question.

00:56:06.700 After discussing with Cabinet and caucus,

00:56:11.500 after consultation with premiers from all provinces and territories,

00:56:16.760 After speaking with opposition leaders, the federal government has invoked the Emergencies Act

00:56:25.160 to supplement provincial and territorial capacity to address the blockades and occupations.

00:56:36.620 So on that Friday of the last weekend, basically the last Friday of the convoy,

00:56:41.720 I was quite taken by how slowly it was moving in the morning.

00:56:47.460 Obviously, police were showing up from all across the country.

00:56:50.700 They were moving themselves into formations.

00:56:53.760 And starting a few blocks east of Parliament Hill, down at the Rideau and Sussex area,

00:56:59.600 police were moving forward, but it was ever so slowly.

00:57:02.460 They'd advance, you know, maybe six, eight feet every 10 to 15 minutes.

00:57:06.760 And they would do this all morning, so much so that it took hours and hours.

00:57:11.380 and they had barely covered any ground at all.

00:57:14.040 The people who hate you and want police defunded

00:57:16.140 and they'll Monday morning quarterback every arrest you ever make.

00:57:19.500 So looking at that, a lot of the protesters were saying,

00:57:22.360 well, we've got all weekend.

00:57:23.780 I mean, they're not going to even get to Parliament Hill this weekend,

00:57:27.160 let alone break it up.

00:57:28.380 Obviously, we know that wasn't the case.

00:57:30.080 Hold the line!

00:57:30.900 Move back, move back, move back, move back, move back, hold down, hold the line.

00:57:39.680 On the Friday morning, most of the interactions I saw between police and protesters were fairly normal.

00:57:48.020 Police had their line, they were moving people forward.

00:57:50.440 Every now and then you'd get a protester that didn't want to move back and they'd get pushed back with a baton at least.

00:57:55.560 but it looked fairly standard for you know riot policing and I don't mean riot describing it but

00:58:07.980 just the the way that police call it and that by the afternoon had changed more people had shown

00:58:14.920 up in Ottawa there had been more tension there was more law enforcement it stopped looking like

00:58:20.280 a standard policing operation and to a lot of people started looking like a military operation

00:58:25.500 just because of the formations and the uniforms and the refusal by a lot of police to even,

00:58:30.860 you know, speak to protesters. There was just this stone-faced approach.

00:58:43.740 Police in Canada are too quick to use force in crowd control situations.

00:58:56.240 No, No!

00:59:06.360 No, No, No!

00:59:22.160 Thank you!

00:59:22.960 Come back!

00:59:27.960 Move back!

00:59:29.960 Come back!

00:59:32.960 Come back!

00:59:37.960 More! 0.98

00:59:41.960 Move! 0.89

00:59:43.960 Move, move, move!

00:59:49.960 I think the use of mounted units, officers on horseback, 0.99

00:59:55.280 is one of the most stupid and dangerous things a police service can do 0.98

00:59:58.480 in a volatile crowd situation like this. 1.00

01:00:01.240 It was incredibly dangerous.

01:00:02.760 It was done to try and push back a crowd in a way that was completely not warranted

01:00:08.120 and it led to a woman getting injured. 1.00

01:00:09.920 Oh, come on through. Come on through. 1.00

01:00:12.960 What is happening here?

01:00:14.820 Wow. What is this lady doing? 1.00

01:00:17.000 Traffling. Traffling horses. 1.00

01:00:18.920 Stop it! Stop it! 0.99

01:00:20.920 Stop it!

01:00:22.920 Oh my God! 0.63

01:00:24.920 What the hell is that?

01:00:26.920 I mean, we've all seen the viral video 1.00

01:00:28.920 of Candace Serrow getting trampled by the horses. 0.93

01:00:32.920 She had her mobility walker knocked down

01:00:34.920 and she was trampled and she sustained injuries.

01:00:37.920 My office is looking into that matter

01:00:39.920 and there's more details that we have to uncover

01:00:42.920 before I can comment further.

01:00:44.920 I can tell you that the police in Ottawa,

01:00:46.920 Ottawa, while not perfect, used force at a significantly lower rate than I've seen most

01:00:52.820 police forces in this country use force against large crowds.

01:00:55.960 I don't think peacefully protesting warrants being pepper sprayed.

01:00:59.580 I think anyone that was being violent with police, anyone that was pushing back against

01:01:03.560 police, obviously is fair game for police to respond and try to de-escalate that situation.

01:01:09.480 But the reality is people who were doing their best to get out of the way were getting caught

01:01:14.580 up in this.

01:01:15.240 And that's the problem.

01:01:15.980 These tactics are supposed to be used when police are trying to clear a space.

01:01:20.380 If people are already moving, people are already walking back,

01:01:22.940 there's no justification to deploy them.

01:01:25.260 Certainly there was police violence and I mean people can argue about whether it was justified

01:01:48.380 or unjustified but we know from the incident of you know police horses trampling a woman from 0.95

01:01:53.500 protesters getting pepper sprayed from tear gas being fired into the crowds absolutely there was

01:01:59.580 violence and i know personally that you didn't need to be committing violence to be targeted by

01:02:04.620 it it's hard to answer that question because i think the police have their training and they

01:02:10.940 know how they would normally act but in addition to having their training and their judgment and

01:02:15.100 their discretion they also have their marching orders from from the higher ranking officers

01:02:20.500 There was virtually no, in fact, I think zero use of tear gas by the Ottawa Police Service.

01:02:28.020 In fact, there was tear gas used by the protesters against the Ottawa Police Service.

01:02:32.720 Pepper spray was used relatively limitedly.

01:02:36.400 There were instances where officers used, I believe, the butt of the rifles or batons to hit people who were not moving along the front lines.

01:02:44.900 There were some takedown and arrests.

01:02:46.480 There were some projectile, I think, bead bag rounds fired into the crowd.

01:02:50.480 I think each one of those instances should be investigated about whether or not that was an appropriate use of force.

01:02:55.480 Because I think we should hold the Ottawa Police Service to the highest possible standard and use this event as the baseline.

01:03:00.480 This isn't about the police. This is about the politicians.

01:03:03.480 This is about Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his failure.

01:03:06.480 Not the police's failure, but his failure.

01:03:16.480 I do not believe that the government had any right to remove protesters at all.

01:03:22.240 It's a democratic society.

01:03:24.400 We have the right to protest, especially in our capital.

01:03:28.860 And the narrative that the government and the media wanted to push that businesses couldn't be open is absolutely nonsense.

01:03:37.280 There was not a business that was blocked from being open if they had a desire to be open,

01:03:42.800 other than the police's own concrete barriers.

01:03:51.480 Where we were at by the second week of February needed serious action.

01:03:58.500 Was that the Emergencies Act? I think that was the thing available.

01:04:02.520 I think the way it was deployed was relatively reasonable.

01:04:05.400 I think the orders the federal government wrote to go with the Act were irresponsible.

01:04:09.360 They went too far. They allowed far too much latitude and jurisdiction for the federal government to seize and freeze assets.

01:04:16.360 It was so geographically wide that I think it gave them nearly limitless power to break up demonstrations anywhere in the country.

01:04:24.360 So I think there's bad things about it. I think at the end of the day we're going to conclude that it was the right thing to do.

01:04:29.360 I don't believe it became illegal until the Emergencies Act was actually put in place.

01:04:34.360 They needed to use the Emergencies Act to declare the protest illegal.

01:04:38.360 because in Canada, a protest is not illegal until it becomes a riot.

01:04:43.340 And that could have been covered under the Riot Act of the Criminal Code.

01:04:47.140 The fact that they couldn't use the Riot Act in the Criminal Code

01:04:49.540 indicates to me that it was not an illegal protest

01:04:52.080 until they invoked the Emergencies Act.

01:04:54.700 Also, it's important to note that during the protests,

01:04:57.240 Ottawa police actually said that street crime had come down in Ottawa.

01:05:01.220 And that makes a lot of sense to me,

01:05:02.660 because you had a lot of people walking around in the city.

01:05:06.700 and it wasn't desolate like it usually is in the dead of winter.

01:05:15.860 One of the requirements to invoke the Emergencies Act

01:05:19.460 is that the existing tools, laws, enforcement agencies,

01:05:22.940 that those existing tools had to be inadequate

01:05:25.180 and incapable of addressing the so-called emergency.

01:05:28.980 So there needed to be an emergency

01:05:30.120 and the existing laws needed to be inadequate.

01:05:32.600 it and yet every single charge that has come from the arrests laid that weekend have all been under

01:05:39.880 existing laws and powers that the police officers used were existing powers well to me the the

01:05:48.120 protest was always legal in the fact that when we first got there that it was the ottawa police that

01:05:54.840 escorted us onto these streets it was the ottawa police that ensured that we kept roads open which

01:06:02.520 we did at all times there was always lanes open for emergency vehicles to get through

01:06:08.600 and even on the monday which i believe was valentine's day i helped with a couple other

01:06:16.440 of the organizers with the ottawa police escort 15 more trucks up onto wellington

01:06:23.480 so that was the monday before the friday where they said we were illegal so to me

01:06:29.000 we were legal the whole time the issue is finished so we now know what happened nobody knew what

01:06:36.880 happened or what was going to happen when we started when we invoked the emergency act it

01:06:42.440 ended up being that finally there wasn't as much violence as might have been anticipated but if

01:06:49.440 when we start when they started when the police started to basically remove the protesters if

01:06:58.160 If the protesters would have decided to put it in high gear and be as violent as they

01:07:04.940 could, all of the powers that had been given to them by the Emergency Act would have been

01:07:11.160 needed.

01:07:12.300 And that's why, to me, it's clear there's no issue the government had to invoke the Emergency

01:07:18.180 Act.

01:07:19.180 Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act for political purposes.

01:07:23.940 The purpose of the Emergencies Act, again, is to have a tool when existing tools don't work.

01:07:30.540 And Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act basically to appear strong in the public eye.

01:07:36.340 But as you could see that a few days after he invoked it, he didn't follow through with having the Emergencies Act ratified in the Senate and ultimately withdrew his use of the Emergencies Act.

01:07:47.560 So clearly it was a political tool.

01:07:49.760 we were not playing a game but it seemed like the other team was not playing again within the rules

01:07:57.400 so then there's no use anymore um saturday morning the police started smashing windows on trucks and

01:08:03.740 really beating people up and we said we've made our point it's it's over there's no use

01:08:10.460 more people getting hurt so we decided to leave and we did end up having a couple trucks stuck in

01:08:16.220 and getting towed and window smashed and everything.

01:08:22.720 I think at the time that the Prime Minister rescinded the Emergencies Act,

01:08:28.480 it was clear there was no justification for it.

01:08:32.240 And not that there had ever been a justification, but certainly days later,

01:08:36.020 the supposed blockades that were in place to justify the Emergencies Act had been disbanded.

01:08:41.860 The crisis was gone. The money ceased to be an issue.

01:08:44.820 and I think he was very worried about what the Senate was going to do which hadn't voted on it

01:08:50.320 at the time and also what Canadians were going to do because it's one thing if you concoct an

01:08:54.320 emergency to justify all sorts of measures that the government put forward it's another thing

01:08:59.300 when you indefinitely keep that in place when there's nothing that even resembles a crisis.

01:09:04.740 More and more often I'm coming to the conclusion that the evidence that the government used to

01:09:09.600 justify invoking the act is news reports from the public sphere that are public information.

01:09:16.560 And if they didn't have some sort of smoking gun evidence to justify the use of this act and

01:09:21.340 we're basing it completely off of news articles, many of which have had to be retracted since we

01:09:27.360 found new evidence that indicates that it was false information, false allegations,

01:09:32.360 I think that's going to be a big problem for the government if that's the evidence that they relied

01:09:35.780 upon.

01:09:39.600 I think it certainly was upsetting in a country like Canada where, you know, we have a lot of freedoms to see police, you know, pushing protesters out on the streets.

01:10:02.040 And I think what a lot of Canadians, certainly what I think, is how could we have let this get to this point in the first place?

01:10:07.780 There was a point where I think a lot of people, myself included, were hopeful that the government would look at the truckers and say, maybe we miscalculated, maybe we misjudged this.

01:10:23.980 But the federal government doubled down.

01:10:25.820 some of these people are living in a fantasy land of constructed conspiracies and i don't know if i

01:10:35.980 hope that maybe they had broken out of some of those between the end of the convoy and today

01:10:40.240 but they certainly haven't yeah how did i feel driving home to be honest um at that time you're

01:10:51.700 You're tired, you want to go home.

01:10:55.700 It didn't feel like the job was done.

01:10:58.700 Yes, we did accomplish something.

01:11:00.700 We woke up the world, first of all,

01:11:03.700 and it actually still was giving people hope

01:11:07.700 that something would change, that things would get better.

01:11:12.700 But then the reception that we got in Niagara

01:11:16.700 was unbelievable.

01:11:21.700 Yeah, the support that we got from the community meant an awful lot.

01:11:27.500 Oh, sorry. I can't think about that.

01:11:34.120 And having all these people on the side of the road standing there waving the flags again,

01:11:40.220 saying thank you for doing what you did, gave me a little bit of closure,

01:11:43.980 but you still wish that things would have gone different.

01:11:49.980 Yeah, I do feel like the convoy accomplished actually more than what we set out for.

01:11:57.060 Obviously, the mandates, the federal mandates are still there.

01:12:00.560 But the community, at least here in Niagara region, is super unified.

01:12:07.020 The support is amazing.

01:12:11.100 I believe the mandates were there to try to disunify our country and keep people apart.

01:12:16.160 And it's done the exact opposite with the convoy. 0.71

01:12:19.980 Thank you.

01:12:49.980 It's deeply concerning that we have a significant number of people in this country who have

01:12:57.100 detached from reality, but again, I get why people wind up there.

01:13:02.260 They lost friends to suicide, they lost family members to illnesses, and they couldn't go

01:13:05.900 visit them in the hospital, they couldn't go to their family member's funeral, their

01:13:09.380 friend's funeral, and that was really tough on them, and I get that.

01:13:12.260 I've been there too.

01:13:13.260 I think a lot of us have been there.

01:13:14.860 And they've been looking for explanations for how we got here.

01:13:19.020 they look at somewhere like the federal government where the prime minister frequently attacks his

01:13:24.860 critics as being you know conspiracy theorists and frequently belittles and demonize people who

01:13:30.940 you know are not settled on the science and i think they tend to pull back

01:13:41.260 our media the health experts they're not interested in what's good for every canadian

01:13:48.220 they're just interested in what's good for their narrative and there's a lot of things going on

01:13:54.540 that we as canadians need to realize you can't trust the media let alone your own government

01:14:01.020 anymore.

01:14:31.020 I mean, Trudeau, anytime someone has thought that he was just done and going to lose the election, he's won.

01:14:44.240 So people shouldn't underestimate Justin Trudeau.

01:14:46.640 He may not have the massive, massive Trudeau mania 2.0 popularity he had in 2015, but he's still resonating with voters. 0.72

01:14:54.860 And even if you look at the 2021 election, a big part of what he was offering Canadians was more restrictions on the unvaccinated.

01:15:03.760 He campaigned on firing public servants if they didn't get the COVID vaccine.

01:15:07.880 He campaigned on banning unvaccinated Canadians from air and rail travel. 0.99

01:15:13.120 So he's been quite transparent about what it is that he wanted to do, and Canadians rewarded that. 1.00

01:15:18.900 Now, you can talk about whether this is because the Conservatives didn't put up their best and brightest,

01:15:23.080 But clearly, the scandal and frustration that a lot of people see in Trudeau isn't necessarily representative of how Canadians as a whole have seen him up until the last election.

01:15:35.380 And whether that's changed since then is a different story.

01:15:40.780 You know, that's a good question.

01:15:42.860 And I think a lot of it is going to ride upon the inquiry and the parliamentary review.

01:15:48.360 and I think if it can be proven that the government inappropriately used the

01:15:52.760 Emergencies Act I think it's going to be remembered as as a time when the

01:15:57.240 government overreached on Canadians rights and it's going to look very bad

01:16:01.080 on the current Liberal government.

01:16:03.480 I think the Freedom Convoy is going to be fairly divisive for a lot of people in

01:16:09.120 how they remember it. Certainly I've talked to a lot of people in my own work

01:16:12.920 on this that think it was just the greatest moment of their lives. It was

01:16:15.680 this time when the you know the peasants took over the castle in a way and ordinary people stood up

01:16:20.700 and said we're not going to take it anymore but still the narratives that were being passed off

01:16:26.800 by the government by the media are still baked into a lot of people's perceptions of the convoy

01:16:32.320 and those people as we've seen in a number of other stories that have come up since are still

01:16:38.020 very committed to this idea that it was a violent protest that it was a lawless rebellion which just

01:16:44.100 wasn't the case and the facts don't support that, but the stubbornness has persisted among some.

01:16:50.660 I think the gun boy is going to be remembered very negatively. You know, I think it will be seen

01:16:56.700 as an outgrowth of the intense frustration and alienation that we all experienced during the

01:17:02.320 pandemic, right? I don't think this will be our January 6th, right? I think that will be remembered

01:17:08.460 very particularly in the U.S. I think this is going to be remembered as the sort of culmination

01:17:13.520 of a kind of, you know, intense anger and disenchantment and disaffection

01:17:24.100 that, you know, came to a head in 2022.

01:17:30.040 And that in some cases is understandable, in some cases is really up to lunch.

01:17:34.720 But I don't think it's even remembered particularly well.

01:17:36.680 I think the Freedom Convoy will be remembered by most Canadians as a very important moment

01:17:46.560 in this country's history. But it also depends on who you speak to. The people who obviously

01:17:52.980 supported the protest will romanticize the protest and the people who oppose the protest

01:17:57.520 will try to delegitimize it and denigrate it. But I hope that there's a mass of people in the

01:18:04.780 Center who will objectively sift through the facts

01:18:08.140 and make up their own minds.

01:18:09.460 And I personally think that it was an important moment

01:18:12.880 in the fight for individual liberty and freedoms.

01:18:14.920 That's what it was all about in the end.

01:18:17.200 And we've lost a bit of that during the two years

01:18:21.580 of the pandemic.

01:18:34.780 Thank you.

01:19:04.780 Thank you.

01:19:34.780 Thank you. 0.53

01:20:04.780 For the first time, that was The Freedom Occupation,

01:20:29.340 a documentary that was produced by Rachel Emanuel and Johnny Emanuel.

01:20:34.060 We are very proud at True North to present it to you now.

01:20:39.000 And I was so glad to see that, like I mentioned at the beginning, I was seeing that for the first time here.

01:20:44.680 So this reaction is all very authentic.

01:20:47.100 We'll bring back our superstar panel now with Rachel Emanuel and Johnny Emanuel, as well as Rupa Subramania.

01:20:55.260 And to both you, Rachel and Johnny, firstly, congratulations.

01:20:59.840 I went in, I will say with high expectations, but you met them and exceeded them.

01:21:06.160 So very well done.

01:21:08.900 Thank you very much.

01:21:10.060 Too kind.

01:21:11.580 So let me start with just a question about, I'm not going to nitpick and be like, well,

01:21:15.800 why did you keep that frame up?

01:21:17.220 No, it's nothing like that.

01:21:18.340 But just as your approach, why did you decide to do this without a narrator, without, you

01:21:24.820 know, perhaps you, Rachel, you are on camera all the time, without you sort of driving

01:21:28.680 the story along?

01:21:29.360 Why did you decide to just let your guests be the only voices in there?

01:21:33.740 Well, I think part of what Jonathan had said earlier in the pre-show was just initially maybe this desire not to include too much of our voices in it.

01:21:40.400 I think also just the idea of having like a narrator talking underneath is maybe a bit of a, it is a technique that you can use in documentary making, maybe at times a bit more of an old-fashioned technique.

01:21:50.120 I like the way that we do it.

01:21:51.180 I think it was really progressive and I think the pace moved really well throughout it.

01:21:55.080 There was also just so much different types of footage that we had to include, like interviews, but also, you know, some of the standalone interviews that you did while you were in Ottawa.

01:22:03.020 And then, of course, some of the more aggressive footage when police were pushing protesters out.

01:22:07.120 So we had had the conversation and we both immediately decided that we weren't interested in having a narrator, so to speak.

01:22:13.520 There was a conversation about whether I was going to be in the documentary.

01:22:17.240 We felt like we needed to fill in any gaps.

01:22:20.200 I think I would have maybe sat down for an interview and filled them in.

01:22:22.920 but we just felt like we would have lost a little bit of credibility on the bias if I had been in

01:22:26.960 the film so we had so much footage to use and I really wasn't needed so we decided it was just

01:22:31.380 easiest to leave me out um because it wasn't needed and I think we would have just lost a

01:22:35.540 little bit of credibility on that and most importantly when you mentioned that it was an

01:22:39.260 old-fashioned tactic that was like the kindest way possible for you to say Andrew you're an 0.98

01:22:43.000 idiot that doesn't know how documentaries are produced in the last 20 years so thank you for 0.97

01:22:46.820 uh for putting on the uh the kid gloves there but it was interesting and even seeing my own 0.98

01:22:51.560 comments which i had you know forgotten what i said uh because we sat down so long ago it was

01:22:56.820 fascinating to see that juxtaposed with things that your other guests were saying like you know

01:23:01.840 the lawyer kaza or justin ling and same with rupa's comments and and getting the jonkers in

01:23:07.160 there and and putting those together and having in some cases drastically different perspectives

01:23:12.140 about the same events and you know at the end of it i was reading some of the comments that

01:23:16.340 came as the the documentary was going and some people are very offended by

01:23:20.180 oh I don't like that Justin Ling said that

01:23:22.360 I don't like that the lawyer said that

01:23:24.220 but other people I think were very

01:23:26.360 it seemed like just from

01:23:28.300 what I was reading trying to keep up with it

01:23:30.080 very grateful just to have that

01:23:32.180 balance in it and I hope that if people can

01:23:34.180 get by their initial reaction

01:23:36.380 that might be a bit more visceral if they

01:23:38.220 don't like the convoy they can see that this story

01:23:40.120 is being told in a very fair way

01:23:42.240 here

01:23:42.560 Sure and I think something that we mentioned for people who didn't

01:23:46.240 tune in for the pre-show was just that

01:23:48.200 idea of wanting to be able to keep the dialogue open and how much we lose as a society when we

01:23:52.640 become unwilling to speak to the other side and when I said that I thought you know Justin Ling

01:23:56.860 some of his comments were very reasonable I mean some of the stuff he said arguably a lot of people

01:24:01.300 wouldn't agree with I myself wouldn't agree with but he did make some points that I was like you

01:24:05.500 know what I totally agree with that you were bang on about that when he talked about the use of 0.99

01:24:09.160 mounted units being used and that was being you know that was an incredibly stupid move I think 0.82

01:24:13.640 was actually maybe his specific wording um and other things he said those are points of his that

01:24:19.000 i agree with and i think that i've just become accustomed to looking for things that people say

01:24:23.160 that i agree with and that being the point of context that we can take the conversation for

01:24:26.920 there we might not have the same conclusions we might not come to the same outcomes but if you're

01:24:31.160 so focused on that you'll never be willing to have discussions with people so if you're willing to

01:24:35.080 hear what they say and you're usually able to find something you agree on or some point of contact

01:24:39.400 and start the conversation from there you might be surprised with how far you can get in dialogues

01:24:43.560 with other individuals. At the beginning of this discussion, before the documentary, I had asked

01:24:49.480 Rupa if she had any thoughts on what she as a viewer would like to see. And I was sort of asking

01:24:54.820 myself that question as well. And you answered a question I didn't have, and one that I've never

01:24:59.580 really talked about, even when I was interviewing truckers for my book and on my show and other

01:25:04.660 points. You asked a question in that documentary that was answered, which I think was a tremendous

01:25:10.260 one which was about the drive home and i think so often we talk about the drive to ottawa we talk

01:25:15.380 about what happened in ottawa but for a lot of those truckers they then had i mean in the case

01:25:20.420 of the jonkers a drive through ontario for other people a drive across the country back to bc and

01:25:25.860 it was it was actually quite moving to see how he tried to reconcile what he was feeling after that

01:25:32.980 driving home with in his words a mission not accomplished yeah i felt like that was a really

01:25:39.700 impactful moment of the dock as well and it was really important to include that because we know

01:25:44.260 that truckers had a really hard time with that i personally know a couple truckers and that was a

01:25:49.060 really devastating moment for them i think some of them really felt like they had failed and i

01:25:52.420 think for a long time the question was should we go back and i love that he gave a little shout

01:25:56.740 out to niagara there because i'm from niagara and i love niagara moving to alberta you know

01:26:01.380 people rag on ontario a lot but niagara is truly one of the most incredible places on earth it's

01:26:06.100 in many ways a little slice of alberta right there in ontario you know great christian community a

01:26:10.900 lot of conservatives and so the freedom movement there was alive and well throughout the entire

01:26:15.460 covet 19 pandemic and there is a very strong freedom movement there so when they drove back

01:26:20.100 to niagara he sort of mentions you know the community was great and there was just people

01:26:23.380 lining the streets ready to welcome the truckers home the same way they sent them off because

01:26:27.940 really what the convoy did accomplish it did unite people we didn't lose all the mandates you know

01:26:32.900 know some of the provinces were a bit more successful in seeing movement than others

01:26:36.340 but people were united and they realized for the first time in almost two years that

01:26:40.260 they weren't alone in having these concerns and i think that changed a lot of people's lives

01:26:44.500 certainly it changed mine you know earlier we talked a little bit about why i wanted to do

01:26:48.420 the documentary but you know one of the things i didn't mention was i was working in the mainstream

01:26:52.820 media at the time the convoy happened and i was really i felt very sort of bootstrapped with what

01:26:57.940 i was able to write about and how i was able to cover things and so this was my opportunity to go

01:27:02.340 back and redo it in the way that i wish that i had done it while it was actually going on and

01:27:07.220 maybe set the record straight and also sort of clear my conscience in a sense because i feel

01:27:10.740 like i didn't do an adequate job of covering it while it was in ottawa and while i was a reporter

01:27:14.900 in ottawa let's get your first review here from rupa subramania she is untarnished by not having

01:27:22.100 seen it before although a little bit biased because i think she bears a very close resemblance to

01:27:26.420 someone who was featured in the documentary but rupa first time seeing it what were your thoughts

01:27:32.340 uh well um well a flood of emotions uh um you know it came came back to me um um you know i'd

01:27:40.420 be lying if i said that the freedom convoy protest uh didn't change my life uh it did in in personally

01:27:48.740 and professionally and i've spoken about that quite quite a bit um and um um congratulations

01:27:57.140 rachel and johnny i think um you know on a job well done um uh you know i think you brought it

01:28:02.980 all together um you know people are going to object to um you know having certain voices in

01:28:09.220 the documentary or even with the use of the term occupation in the title but i think that you had to

01:28:16.740 you know it goes back to the point that i was making earlier which is you know we don't want

01:28:20.820 to be stuck in these echo chambers i mean if you want to um do a documentary on the protests i think

01:28:26.980 it is important to have voices who don't agree with those of us who had a different take right

01:28:34.900 um and and i think it's important to um i think it's important to include those voices we don't

01:28:40.420 want to be uh the people on the left you know who are always trying to cancel the other side just

01:28:46.180 because they disagree with a certain point of view um having said that i will say that i don't think

01:28:51.060 uh justin ling is balanced um that minor quibble in the uh you know uh when you when you when you

01:28:57.460 said that i disagree with a lot of what he's saying now see uh someone like uh justin ling

01:29:03.060 um was was very prominent in promoting this narrative that these people were violent the

01:29:09.860 protesters were violent that they were here to overthrow the government and he kept that up and

01:29:14.900 And then he's surprised that the that that that certain things happen later where, you know, the RCMP had to, you know, where, you know, where, you know, there was this law enforcement came out in full force.

01:29:30.800 Look, you can't have it both ways. Right. You're you're you're you're you're on the one hand, you're saying like this is like the you know, these people are violent and something needs to be done.

01:29:40.560 And then on the other hand, you can't criticize the excessive use of force.

01:29:45.680 And that's, you know, you're trying to have your cake and eat it, too.

01:29:49.320 And I don't think you can do that.

01:29:51.660 And so that's where I, you know, just a minor quibble there.

01:29:54.560 But I think it's still important that he was part of the documentary.

01:29:58.720 And the other voice and the, I think it was a professor or a lawyer, if I'm not mistaken,

01:30:04.460 who also felt threatened by the protesters.

01:30:07.540 I mean, that that was that was representative of the kind of sentiment that people who opposed the protests were saying at that time that they didn't feel safe stepping out of their apartment, out of their homes in Ottawa.

01:30:22.800 So I think that was that it was important to include that voice.

01:30:26.220 But what can I say? I mean, you know, it just was a very emotional experience for me.

01:30:31.920 um you know i um i know i know friends who are um you know who who who suffered during the pandemic

01:30:39.360 in in more than i ever did to be honest with you you know uh these are uh you know people who were

01:30:46.560 on leave without pay and uh you know and they took this principle courageous position uh to

01:30:52.800 not take the vaccine and uh and we may not understand their reality but i don't think you

01:30:59.440 can denigrate their reality and and that's what ended up happening during the protests we um you

01:31:07.840 know we we we denigrated their reality and we we said that our reality is somehow superior to their

01:31:13.840 reality but we all live in our you know we we all have our challenges and you know all of that has

01:31:20.000 to be taken into account and um and i just want to get to johnny here because he's been very silent

01:31:26.800 since the documentary wrapped.

01:31:29.160 And just, I mean, this was a very,

01:31:30.600 I love the pacing, by the way, Johnny.

01:31:32.300 You kept this moving, Rachel, you kept this moving.

01:31:35.000 I never felt it was dragging.

01:31:36.780 You covered a lot of ground,

01:31:37.920 but I also didn't feel it was lacking.

01:31:39.660 But I know when we spoke,

01:31:41.140 it was probably for like, I don't know,

01:31:42.580 45 minutes to an hour.

01:31:43.820 I assume it was very similar with your other guests.

01:31:46.340 You would have had, I mean, 0.98

01:31:47.320 even just forgetting the B-roll

01:31:48.840 and the footage you wanted to incorporate

01:31:50.520 from the protest itself,

01:31:51.580 just hours and hours and hours of interviews.

01:31:54.380 How do you decide what makes it in?

01:31:56.500 I mean, how did you, what, what was the process like to really pare this down and say, no, this is the, this is the essential 30 seconds we need.

01:32:04.880 That was definitely a challenge.

01:32:06.620 And there's multiple drafts that we took to, there was like, you know, in the structure of the story, at what point do we want to introduce what events, what is the through line here?

01:32:14.720 And there's so much stuff that I would have loved to include into the doc, but we just had to sort of like say like, you know, we can't be branching off on little tangents, especially if we can't sort of solidify what we're trying to say about it.

01:32:25.380 It's more of a, what do we have as concrete

01:32:27.080 and what are we really trying to put forward?

01:32:29.180 And so like what really resonated with the stories

01:32:31.320 and the answers that we had,

01:32:32.280 it was more or less the mainstream's misperception

01:32:34.840 of the convoy itself.

01:32:36.680 I think that's really resonated throughout the film,

01:32:38.320 just these accounts of what they claimed

01:32:40.560 versus what it was like.

01:32:41.460 And I think it's very obvious in the B-roll

01:32:43.500 that it was just nothing to the degree

01:32:46.280 of what it was being described as.

01:32:48.520 And so, yeah, I mean, deciding on what to keep

01:32:51.980 really just became down to like,

01:32:53.760 what are the important facts what do we really want to make sure we got through and that was more

01:32:58.160 or less the the trucker's account of the story the media the media's perception and then how the

01:33:03.200 violence ensued and what that really um meant for the occupation what it meant for canada as a whole

01:33:09.360 and so i really like how rupa uh ends the film with that that idea of like you know it's important

01:33:14.560 that we objectively sift through the facts ourselves and make up our mind not just take

01:33:19.440 the opinion that is given to us and stated as fact well and i also think on that point ending

01:33:25.360 with the question of legacy is a really i think it's a fantastic artistic choice but i think even

01:33:31.440 just in the the current climate in canada it's a valuable one i wanted to read a comment i saw

01:33:36.560 uh that now in our group chat is like 300 pages behind uh from here it is uh k luciano writes

01:33:44.080 there will be a bronzed Kenworth on Wellington Street one day market.

01:33:48.780 So I don't know if like right next to the Terry Fox statue,

01:33:51.120 they're going to just make a little space and put a statue of a truck there.

01:33:54.500 I thought that was a beautifully put comment.

01:33:56.700 So I thank you, Kate Luciano, for that,

01:33:59.020 because it does suggest that at a certain point in time,

01:34:02.400 and it won't necessarily be within the next year,

01:34:05.400 the truckers will be remembered in history favorably.

01:34:09.080 And I was talking on my show a little while ago about,

01:34:11.580 I don't want to, this is going to be when the audience tunes out.

01:34:13.520 so I'll make it very short. The Upper Canada Rebellion in 1837, and William Lyon Mackenzie

01:34:19.440 goes from being a tyrant living in exile two years later being a member of Parliament. So

01:34:24.880 the renegades and the traitors and the terrorists eventually can become the heroes in the story of

01:34:31.420 Canada. And I was wondering if you had any thoughts on even if that dynamic has changed

01:34:36.280 a little bit in the time you've been working on this, Rachel or Johnny?

01:34:43.520 it's tough to say i think like we've all kind of talked a little bit about how the emergencies

01:34:50.840 act commission is coming out at this point you know and i think i'm excited to see how that

01:34:55.300 what happens with that it's hard to say if you've really seen people's perspective on the convoy

01:34:59.980 change at this point you know i think in our interview something we felt was people had kind

01:35:05.120 of dug in and they had kind of come to their own facts already and you know i think there is those

01:35:09.700 people in the middle who are still kind of coming to their own conclusions but it's tough to say at

01:35:14.300 this point and I still am interested to see how the convoy will be remembered it's still relatively

01:35:18.780 recent in Canadian history um and I think there's just as I mentioned earlier there's a lot to know

01:35:23.840 about it but I don't know if you have anything you want to add to that Johnny yeah I mean I'm

01:35:27.580 hopeful that it's remembered in a respectful manner just because I mean I want to repeat

01:35:32.860 something that Rupa mentioned earlier just the the national pride that I felt when the convoy

01:35:37.940 actually took place that was something that I hadn't really you know felt in a really long time

01:35:41.800 and I mean we were at the heat of COVID and lockdown so it was really tough but when that

01:35:45.680 convoy started I remember I was driving on the on the highway I intersected a piece of it and yeah

01:35:51.440 it was just really rejuvenating I felt that sense of being proud to be Canadian and I really hope

01:35:56.860 we can you know come back to that point let me go to you on on one part of the documentary Rupa

01:36:02.960 one of the guests was talking about how it was a war zone and using these really dramatic,

01:36:09.680 emotive terms. One of the points that you had made as someone who spent a great deal of your

01:36:15.660 life in India, and you mentioned this back in January of last year, is that this was like a 1.00

01:36:21.060 pale Mickey Mouse version of chaos. And you had, I believe at one point said to me, just look at

01:36:27.160 a day on the streets of India and this looks like a cakewalk. So you've seen crisis, you've seen

01:36:32.840 chaos this was not it um i mean the the you know i have a fairly high tolerance for noise uh having

01:36:44.280 lived in mumbai a city of 16 million people this that was pretty much my experience every time i

01:36:51.280 open the windows of my of my apartment and you know you you'd hear cars uh honking all the time

01:36:58.860 The streets are always bustling with life and that sort of thing.

01:37:03.260 And, you know, and I've said this many, many times.

01:37:06.460 I originally come from the land of civil disobedience, the land of Mahatma Gandhi.

01:37:11.900 And this was, you know, you see a protest like this all the time in India and the farmers protest.

01:37:19.400 And it's important to bring this in because the farmers protests in India, which went on for a year and a half,

01:37:26.160 which Prime Minister Justin Trudeau supported, they had a very similar approach.

01:37:36.820 They blocked highways and roads with tractors and trucks and other vehicles.

01:37:43.480 And this went on for about a year and a half.

01:37:45.860 And Justin Trudeau defended the protesters' right to protest, as did I, by the way,

01:37:51.420 even though i disagreed with um with their cause because i actually believed in the indian

01:37:56.140 government's uh uh you know uh decision to um uh carry out this reform so my point is that the

01:38:04.140 what i saw here in ottawa yes it was it was tame it was it was i don't even want to say it was tame

01:38:11.660 but it was it was not like anything that i hadn't seen before but it was truly canadian it was you

01:38:17.900 You know, it was it had that Canadian spirit, which was part of it, which and as Johnny mentioned earlier and as many immigrants have mentioned to me that this was the first time in their entire time in India, in Canada, that they felt really proud to be Canadian, that they had a strong sense of what it meant to be Canadian.

01:38:38.160 And and that that was very, very striking to me.

01:38:42.120 here's a question that uh may infuriate you rachel and johnny but i'm gonna ask it anyway

01:38:49.320 because i asked you at the beginning if there was anything you didn't want to talk about and you

01:38:52.220 didn't take the opportunity to give me something so what almost made it in if there was one more

01:38:57.720 scene or one more section or 10 minutes more what would have been in that wasn't i would have loved

01:39:04.880 to dive deeper into the financial aspect of the convoy i think that was a real hot topic that

01:39:09.820 people really want to learn more about I myself included but we just didn't take the time to fully

01:39:14.620 polish off that end of the of the narrative and so putting the piece that we had in there would

01:39:20.280 have felt like it was like just it wasn't enough you know it would have just been a sprinkle when

01:39:25.960 we really needed the full the full meat so it's funny you mentioned that because when I wrote my

01:39:30.720 book I had the same thought whereas I really wished that I had had access to a bit more and

01:39:36.540 I think I did as good a job as I could.

01:39:39.040 A lot of that didn't really come out until the Public Order Emergency Commission

01:39:44.560 because there were so many different strains

01:39:47.000 and tracking the cryptocurrency donations and Bitcoin donations.

01:39:50.780 So I think on your part, you're forgiven for not doing that

01:39:54.440 because it's only been so recently that you could even tell that story.

01:39:58.620 And it is a complex one.

01:40:00.620 Rachel, what would yours be?

01:40:03.100 Perhaps very selfishly, mine would be something totally different.

01:40:06.180 when we were in ottawa filming the second time it was in november and it was one of those days

01:40:11.700 where it felt like negative 20 with wind chill and we decided for to do a segment for a while we

01:40:16.520 decided we were going to spend a lot more time on the on the dock of the police being pushing

01:40:21.840 protesters off of parliament hill so we spent about two hours it was i think like negative 20

01:40:26.680 with wind chill outside in the streets of ottawa basically filming where basically i had all the

01:40:32.200 footage and we were going to then go to shots of me basically doing streeters and explaining what

01:40:36.440 was happening in the tussling and and sort of just throw back to what the streets look like

01:40:40.780 on a regular day and then throw back to the tussling and so we spent a good two hours out

01:40:45.360 there like it was painful i was so cold and then of course we didn't even end up using any of that

01:40:49.940 so all that worked for nothing so selfishly selfishly that was maybe the one thing but um

01:40:56.500 yeah i guess the other big thing was we didn't spend any time on the public order emergency

01:41:00.200 Commission, there was a lot of thought and plans that we were going to go back and have another

01:41:04.360 interview. But it ended up being that we had so much footage and there wasn't really a need to

01:41:09.340 cover that. So we decided to leave it out in the end. Yeah. And just on the note of my own little

01:41:16.180 role in this, we didn't talk about it. Well, we talked about it in the interview and it wasn't in

01:41:19.820 the documentary, specifically me getting pepper sprayed. But the fun fact of that is that it

01:41:24.180 could have been you, Rachel, because you and I were chatting like 30 seconds before it happened

01:41:29.400 and you had the wherewithal to get out of Dodge

01:41:31.280 because I think you had to go back to work

01:41:32.640 or go to do an interview.

01:41:34.360 And then like 30 seconds later, I am pepper sprayed.

01:41:37.180 So if you had any advanced knowledge of that,

01:41:39.000 you could have looped me in,

01:41:40.500 but it might've just been fortuitous timing on your part.

01:41:43.220 But this raises an important point though,

01:41:46.120 because I was there, I was not doing anything wrong.

01:41:48.800 Other journalists were there as well,

01:41:50.660 exactly where I was.

01:41:51.820 I wasn't there protesting, I was there reporting.

01:41:54.520 And I ended up getting pepper sprayed. 0.93

01:41:56.440 Alexa Lavoie of Rebel News got hit in the leg with a canister of tear gas.

01:42:02.000 This happened.

01:42:02.720 It's seen on camera.

01:42:04.380 And that was one thing that I felt in the comments people were really calling out Justin

01:42:09.780 Ling for, which is saying that there was no evidence of tear gas being used by the Ottawa

01:42:14.760 Police Service.

01:42:15.660 Now, I don't know if that was a technicality on his part, because maybe the tear gas came

01:42:19.940 from one of the visiting police forces, or if he was just challenging that that incident

01:42:24.640 took place.

01:42:25.200 But Rupa, what was your thought on that?

01:42:28.220 My thought on?

01:42:29.980 Well, on the comment that we get from people that there wasn't tear gas or pepper spray was not used indiscriminately.

01:42:37.940 Yeah, no, I look, I mean, this is a very difficult question to answer.

01:42:42.880 I, you know, while I disagree with the invocation of the Emergencies Act for sure,

01:42:46.940 And I disagree with the, you know, with the kind of, you know, the force that we, you know, the full scale of law enforcement, you know, right here in downtown Ottawa.

01:43:01.220 I would say that the that the that law enforcement by and large, I mean, it could have it could have ended really badly.

01:43:07.420 I think it could have been really bad. But I think everybody was, you know, I think I think more or less there was a balance struck.

01:43:15.260 I do know that that on the final day, there were a few people who had a few hundred people had gathered on Spark Street and they were, you know, just wanting to hang around and party.

01:43:30.560 And and I remember trying to go to that event, actually, that evening, but I was I almost made it.

01:43:38.860 But then I saw all of these people coming back from the event, returning from the event.

01:43:42.560 And they said they'd just been sprayed. They'd just been tear gassed and and rubber bullets had been fired on them.

01:43:49.460 And in fact, I I one of them even pointed them to me.

01:43:54.920 You know, he'd collected them in his in his hand.

01:43:57.400 And so, you know, I think that, I mean, you know, I wasn't there.

01:44:03.140 I don't know.

01:44:03.680 I don't know what the full facts are here.

01:44:05.440 You know, I don't know what exactly happened.

01:44:07.400 Was there an indiscriminate use of force?

01:44:10.700 I hope there wasn't.

01:44:13.000 But, you know, I'm just conjecturing that given just how big the presence was in Ottawa,

01:44:22.040 how big, you know, you had cops from Quebec, from Calgary, from everywhere.

01:44:26.540 And it could have gone the other way, but it didn't. In fact, I think a lot of the cops were just, you know, very reluctant to do this. You know, as many of us have pointed this out, they had tears in their eyes. You know, they didn't want to do this. You know, they felt very guilty doing this.

01:44:46.560 and uh and so there was a lot of restraint i think on the part of law enforcement as well

01:44:51.440 it's unfortunate unfortunate andrew that you got pepper sprayed in fact i think i was very

01:44:56.400 close to you and as shortly after you got pepper sprayed you came up to me and you said you got

01:45:00.240 pepper sprayed and i could i could see how red your eyes had become uh it was right next to the

01:45:04.800 chateau laurie if you remember and um and and so it's that that's very unfortunate and what happened

01:45:10.320 to alexa rebel news that was uh equally unfortunate uh but you know um as as far as

01:45:16.800 protests go and a protest that went on for three weeks um you know it was relatively all very

01:45:24.640 peaceful uh from both sides i i it's funny you mentioned the law enforcement angle because

01:45:30.880 one aspect of this that's i think quite interesting and i would love to explore it further is that a

01:45:36.480 but a lot of protesters genuinely felt like the police were on their side.

01:45:40.560 And some of them felt very blindsided or very betrayed

01:45:44.180 when police eventually started moving in and making arrests and whatnot.

01:45:49.520 We are coming to the end of our time together

01:45:52.300 in the post-premier discussion of the freedom occupation.

01:45:56.260 But I want to give the final words to the filmmakers,

01:45:58.660 especially since they, as we were discussing earlier,

01:46:01.120 kept their own literal voices out of the documentary.

01:46:05.040 so any final thoughts we'll start with you johnny and then we'll we'll wrap it up from rachel

01:46:09.240 well i just want to say thanks everyone for taking the time uh i hope we were able to you know

01:46:14.620 uh cause you to you know re-evaluate your perceived notion of the doc and um yeah hopefully we have

01:46:22.080 more projects to bring you guys in the future yeah absolutely i second that i think sort of

01:46:27.900 to arupa's comments on police violence i think one of the interesting thing that dane lloyd

01:46:31.940 mentioned was, you know, the responsibility for that really lies with the government at the end

01:46:36.280 of the day. The police were just doing what they were ordered. So ultimately, you know, that police

01:46:40.820 violence that we saw or didn't see, you know, that's up for discussion. You can have a debate

01:46:44.280 about that. But ultimately, you know, that does lie with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. He's the

01:46:48.220 one that needs to answer to that. But yes, I echo Jonathan's comments. Thank you so much, everyone,

01:46:52.940 for tuning in. I'm sure over the next couple of days and weeks, we will build up the courage to

01:46:57.600 read all of your comments. I'm going to have to come up with a much more succinct explanation for

01:47:02.760 our documentary title to put in the comments because, yeah, my full explanation I don't think

01:47:09.560 is going to fit. But yeah, thanks so much everyone for tuning in. You know, I would also just mention

01:47:13.800 I had the fun part of this doc. I got to sort of organize interviews and request people,

01:47:19.040 but Jonathan was really the person who spent maybe, I don't know, two to three months doing

01:47:23.240 all the editing work. So, you know, the fantastic visuals that we saw and all the clever editing

01:47:27.540 that Foley is his doing. So, you know, a big shout out to him who definitely did a lot of

01:47:32.240 the live work on this project. Well, it is the first Emanuel production and hopefully not the

01:47:37.300 last. And I think I speak on behalf of Candice Malcolm and the True North team that we're so

01:47:41.620 thrilled we get the opportunity to distribute this. And again, this is something that we're

01:47:46.280 obviously connected to as far as the story is concerned, but this took on a life of its own

01:47:50.480 before True North got involved, and I was just a lowly participant, as was Rupa. And now I get to

01:47:56.020 be emceeing the premier. So thank you very much for including me and including my good side. I

01:48:02.200 don't really have a good side, but not the really bad side, I guess. And to all of you who tuned in

01:48:07.220 tonight, thank you so much for that. And you can check out the full documentary once again. We are

01:48:13.680 going to upload it as a standalone, so you don't need to worry about me. Well, I guess you do in

01:48:17.520 the documentary, but not this part of me. And that's going to be at freedomoccupation.ca and

01:48:22.500 lots more details about the project there. But congratulations again to Rachel and Johnny. Thank

01:48:27.840 you everyone so much. God bless you and have a great weekend.

01:48:47.520 Thank you.

01:49:17.520 Thank you.

01:49:47.520 Thank you.

01:50:17.520 You

Juno News - February 17, 2023

Premiere of The Freedom Occupation

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