Juno News - Public Order Emergency Commission defends use of Emergencies Act

00:00:00.000 Because this is a show that's taking place really just an hour and a half after this report came out,

00:00:06.100 a lot of people are still going through it.

00:00:08.700 Some mainstream media reporters in Ottawa have had most of the morning to go into this already.

00:00:17.180 But at the same time, we're still navigating this together.

00:00:21.540 And if you're watching me on this show, I've done, I think, what I think is a pretty good scan through,

00:00:28.040 but by no means an exhaustive one.

00:00:29.640 So my team and I are still looking through this report in real time, and there will be things that come up in the next couple of hours that will be new to me, and I'll share them with you as quickly as I can.

00:00:41.640 But all of this is to say that I want to have this discussion not only to weigh in myself and give my own reflections on this, but also to bring in a whole bunch of people that I know also have a lot to say about this.

00:00:56.060 We have folks like Keith Wilson and Tom Marazzo and Brendan Miller who will be on the show.

00:01:02.460 We've got lawyers and analysts like Bruce Party who will be here and Rob Kittredge and a whole bunch of other folks.

00:01:09.220 And we're throwing this together in real time, including a very special guest that I am so excited to bring to you.

00:01:16.460 And that's just going to be in a couple of minutes.

00:01:17.980 I'm not going to do that clickbaity thing where we save the best till last and just keep hyping it and hyping it and hyping it.

00:01:23.260 We're going to we're going to start with the good stuff right there, because I think that a lot of people are very much in need of some good stuff after this report.

00:01:30.640 But before we get into that, I want to just give you some of the preliminary observations that I think are important to point out here about what Commissioner Rouleau actually found.

00:01:43.420 And I was watching, against my better judgment, CBC earlier, and Janice McGregor, who was one of the reporters in the lockup reviewing the report, said that the finding was that as to whether it was justified was yes, but.

00:01:58.720 Yes, but.

00:01:59.880 So effectively, she was saying that, yeah, it supported in general the use of the Emergencies Act, but it wasn't a complete vindication.

00:02:08.540 It wasn't a complete exoneration.

00:02:10.040 And there are a number of reports cited in here that effectively, I would say, challenge the idea of whether the government overstepped in how it imposed these restrictions.

00:02:26.740 But at the same time, I also don't want to hold too much stock in that, because really, if you read the report, it was almost an entire endorsement of the fundamental goals that Justin Trudeau had when he invoked the Emergencies Act.

00:02:45.520 And that, I think, is the most important takeaway here.

00:02:49.020 Sure, there were little findings like the fact that the mainstream media amplified misinformation and disinformation about the convoy.

00:02:57.240 I thought that was a fair point, and I'm glad he conceded it.

00:03:00.200 Other things like saying it made no sense to suspend the driver's licenses of convoy participants because then how would they be able to drive home?

00:03:11.800 So that was something that, again, I think is a completely fair point, and I'm glad it was in there.

00:03:16.020 but really inconsequential in the grand scheme of things

00:03:19.060 when the commissioner is saying,

00:03:20.680 yeah, freezing the bank accounts was fine.

00:03:22.940 Yeah, it was fine to suspend the civil liberties

00:03:25.440 of people that wanted to protest

00:03:26.880 that didn't even have trucks.

00:03:28.460 That was all okay.

00:03:29.760 And when he talks about the account freezes,

00:03:32.360 he even references people

00:03:34.260 who might've had joint accounts that were affected.

00:03:37.460 And Tom Marazzo, who we've had on the show before,

00:03:40.200 has talked about this,

00:03:41.160 where his wife was affected.

00:03:43.880 She wasn't a protester.

00:03:45.140 She wasn't there.

00:03:46.020 at the convoy. And Commissioner Rouleau basically says, yeah, this is an issue and it's not a good

00:03:51.580 issue, but there's no real suggestion around it. So we're just going to move on from that

00:03:55.840 and not really address it. So he admits there is an injustice in aspects of this, but also says

00:04:02.040 that that is all basically subordinated to the fact that it was effective, that it was effective.

00:04:07.560 A lot in the report says, well, this measure was effective. So therefore we think it was

00:04:12.540 appropriate. And I think that the Machiavellian streak in some aspects of this is a very

00:04:20.000 concerning one, and one that I want to unpack with our guest today, because that was certainly

00:04:25.460 the federal government's argument. And a lot of the defenders in the pro-Trudeau camp that didn't

00:04:30.620 really care about the legality or the constitutionality or the morality, they just

00:04:34.860 took this approach that, well, you know what, it worked. The ends justify the means. And that is

00:04:40.440 not how the law is supposed to be. And that is not how fundamental justice is supposed to be.

00:04:49.340 So all of this, I think, is part of a bigger discussion we need to have in Canada.

00:04:55.060 Because we know that the courts have not been strong protectors of civil liberties, because

00:05:00.340 when it comes to the Constitution, there's that catch-all at the beginning, section one, that says

00:05:05.000 all of the other ones are subject to reasonable limits. So your right to freedom of assembly is

00:05:09.580 subject to reasonable limits. Your right to freedom of the press, freedom of association,

00:05:13.420 all of those are subject to reasonable limits. And in the pandemic era, courts have been very

00:05:18.800 deferential to government in limiting freedom. So I think a lot of people hoped that this commission,

00:05:26.480 which was not a judicial one, would actually be able to rise above that because there wasn't a

00:05:33.800 constitutional test per se to what Justice Paul Rouleau or Commissioner Paul Rouleau was

00:05:39.860 investigating. So I think that that is a big part of what is going on here and it's one of the big

00:05:47.920 themes when we get into the legal analysis that we will be touching on. But I said a few moments ago

00:05:53.680 we have a very special guest joining us and this person has been through a tremendous ordeal

00:06:01.360 and I'm so glad she's here today

00:06:03.880 and she has a bit of an entourage with her 0.92

00:06:06.040 which I think is more deserving with her

00:06:07.980 than it is to Justin Trudeau

00:06:09.540 when he shows up there

00:06:10.400 but the woman who united the country

00:06:13.160 who shook the world

00:06:14.100 as the subtitle of my book indicates

00:06:15.860 and who helped raise $10 million twice

00:06:19.100 for the Freedom Convoy

00:06:20.820 Tamara Leach is with me

00:06:22.680 Tamara, thank you so much for being here

00:06:25.100 I know it's not the best of occasions

00:06:26.800 but having you on brightens things up

00:06:28.680 just a little bit

00:06:29.340 Well, thank you. Thank you so much for having us, Andrew. Happy to be here.

00:06:34.320 Hey, us. Let's contextualize this. Who are you with right now?

00:06:37.920 I've got two fellow board members with me, Miranda Gassier and Ryan Mihillowicz.

00:06:44.580 All right. Well, they're a little bit out of frame when we have the two of us on screen together,

00:06:48.780 but when you're talking, we'll do it on full frame, so we get it in all the glory.

00:06:52.220 But let me just first ask how you feel right now.

00:06:55.180 well um it's been an emotional morning i uh have i i obviously tears um i i'm disappointed

00:07:09.520 but sadly not surprised i i don't think any of us were really surprised but we were really

00:07:14.980 holding out hope for um a different outcome when you look back at your participation in

00:07:23.580 the commission i i think the one thing that i i just having spoken to you on a number of occasions

00:07:28.080 socially and and privately felt is that it was the first and really only opportunity you've had

00:07:34.620 to tell your story and and to speak to canadians and and to speak beyond the mainstream media

00:07:41.240 depiction of you the you know the justin trudeau's depiction of you and and even with this result and

00:07:46.980 and with this report do you feel there was something positive in that experience or is

00:07:51.460 the whole thing tainted for you well well you nailed it exactly i felt um that was obviously

00:08:01.280 the first opportunity that i've had to tell my story and uh it was i literally left uh the

00:08:08.520 commission that day feeling like a weight was lifted off my shoulders um i really felt at that

00:08:14.680 time that the commissioner was really listening to me and um empathetic i guess to our our plight

00:08:23.260 um yeah i just i'm still a little shocked i guess i i um like i said this wasn't a surprising

00:08:31.520 decision but you know we were holding out hope for for something a little more

00:08:35.720 yeah i i will say just going back to the commission for a moment there there was

00:08:42.060 something that I actually felt was quite moving when Paul Champ, who's the lawyer representing

00:08:47.040 the residents and businesses of Ottawa, very much an anti, very much a figure against a lot of what

00:08:52.700 you've stood for and what you've done. But he actually took a somewhat sympathetic approach

00:08:57.240 in his questioning with you and saying, I know you're not a national security risk. I know you

00:09:01.360 didn't pocket all this money. I know that you're not, you know, all of these things. And, you know,

00:09:05.420 certainly when you see that and hear that, you have to wonder if it's legal strategy or if it's

00:09:10.180 that you had done just such a good job at presenting yourself in a good light

00:09:14.000 that he knew that trying to vilify you, you wouldn't work.

00:09:17.280 But it did seem like, even reading a bit of the commissioner's report now,

00:09:21.540 that the sense is that, okay, maybe Tamera Leach is fine,

00:09:24.480 but they couldn't control all these other people.

00:09:27.960 I, like you, I was quite surprised by Mr. Champ's cross-examination of me

00:09:32.980 because I'd watched him cross-examine so many people before,

00:09:36.080 so I was actually surprised when he came out and seemed to be a little softer with me.

00:09:42.240 I mean, he did ask some hard questions still,

00:09:44.180 but he didn't come out swinging like I anticipated that he was going to,

00:09:48.560 so I think that was good.

00:09:51.420 I think a lot of the testimony that was heard at the commission

00:09:55.860 really painted the other side of the story.

00:09:59.360 You know, there are so many stories out here,

00:10:01.680 and like I said, we heard them every day,

00:10:04.680 And at the very least, I feel that the testimonies that we heard at the POEC gave a voice to Canadians and Canadians' concerns, if that makes sense.

00:10:17.960 Right now, there are going to be a lot of people who, to go back to 2020, 2021, felt very pessimistic about Canada and very disheartened by everything that had happened in Canada.

00:10:29.980 and then a year ago felt very hopeful and very encouraged and you know for a lot of people that

00:10:36.020 chapter was the first time in a couple of years they they felt truly proud to be Canadian and

00:10:41.360 where are you now on this question I mean if you look today at how you feel and and looking around

00:10:47.080 at you know people you've made friendships with along the way how do you think they're going to

00:10:51.000 feel now? Well, what I'm hearing is a lot of disappointment. Obviously, my phone's been

00:10:59.840 buzzing since 10.50 this morning. There is some anger out there, but I guess my message has always

00:11:08.920 been we need to stay focused. We need to stay positive. I truly believe we can take this

00:11:15.780 opportunity or look at it as an opportunity and you know we'll be busy here today obviously

00:11:22.680 there's 2,000 pages in that document we'll go through it today with the lawyers and our team

00:11:28.060 have a good look at it but I really hope that this doesn't discourage Canadians it is so

00:11:35.460 disappointing and I'm gonna cry again but it's not like everyone hasn't seen me cry a million

00:11:41.280 times already i just i really hope that we can try and and take this and and um

00:11:49.200 steer it in a way that this can we can have a positive outcome or we can you know have a

00:11:56.000 common goal or try and make change you know we're going to meet with the legal team this afternoon

00:11:59.920 and and uh talk about next steps now this was in your view always as you've said time and time

00:12:07.760 again a peaceful protest and one of the things that the report has really done i think is tried

00:12:13.760 to cast doubt on that and and really redefine it seems what peace is and what a peaceful protest is

00:12:20.080 and you know about the disruption about the noise about things like that and and what would your

00:12:25.360 message be to the people of ottawa that felt you know what they showed up on our streets they

00:12:30.160 had these big trucks they had these big horns that was not peaceful to me

00:12:33.680 well like i said in my testimony we were never there to we never wanted to upset the ottawa

00:12:45.100 residents we really didn't but we did feel that we had a message and um you know i guess the honking

00:12:53.380 of the horns was unfortunate i mean i feel looking back there's a lot of things i guess we could have

00:13:05.780 done differently but i think we for the most part we did everything right i mean when we saw what

00:13:11.220 was happening we recognized the magnitude and our first instinct was to focus on safety you know

00:13:19.480 making sure that our people were safe everybody was going to be safe respecting the police um if

00:13:24.280 you saw any of the videos that i ever did or any of us did um even chris barber's tick tocks we

00:13:29.640 were all advocating for a peaceful protest and and following the law and respecting our police

00:13:36.360 officers and uh and trying to get along with ottawa residents because we needed the support

00:13:42.360 We were hoping for the support.

00:13:45.220 You know, the idea of freedom in January 2022, I think, was freedom from vaccine mandates, freedom from lockdowns and restrictions.

00:13:54.780 And I would say, from my perspective, on February 14th of 2022, it changed dramatically.

00:14:01.440 And now the Emergencies Act was in play.

00:14:03.860 And the idea of freedom was about something much larger than COVID.

00:14:08.360 And I think that was why you saw Canadians that might not have even supported the message that you were sharing a few weeks prior that were saying, OK, I really don't like what the government has done now.

00:14:19.120 I really don't like how the government's acting. And that's going to be the big question.

00:14:23.600 And I mean, obviously, this report says that there may have been a sound legal footing for Justin Trudeau to do that.

00:14:29.900 But that doesn't mean there was a sound moral footing.

00:14:33.220 And I don't think that means Canadians will, in three, four, five years, look back upon this favorably.

00:14:42.160 I think you're right. I don't think they will.

00:14:45.440 And same with when his father called the War Measures Act.

00:14:51.800 It was years later when that started to be condemned also.

00:14:56.200 You know, so I guess time will tell. Time will tell. I found it. I guess the one takeaway from what we watched this morning that really struck me was Commissioner Rouleau saying that he felt that it was appropriate that they enacted the Emergencies Act, but that the government could have done more.

00:15:15.260 so that kind of confused me i mean this is a dark day for canada in my opinion um but we have to

00:15:24.580 stick together and we have to keep working together we cannot make change in this country if

00:15:29.480 we are all divided one thing i i have to ask you about it and i found this to be quite disheartening

00:15:36.800 in commissioner rouleau's report and i don't know if you've come across it yet but he he talks about

00:15:41.320 the fringe minority comment, which I think now is so famous and everybody knows what I'm referring

00:15:45.740 to. And he basically makes excuses for Justin Trudeau there. And he says, well, he was not

00:15:50.320 really talking about them all. He was talking about just some of them and the media took him

00:15:54.980 out of context and so on. And you were one of the people that he was talking about there. So how do

00:16:00.820 you feel about that comment looking back on it and the effect that that had on the approach that

00:16:06.720 you've had to the government and that, you know, your friends sitting beside you today and around

00:16:10.260 the country have had to this government in the last year? Well, I thought it was quite

00:16:16.480 humorous, honestly, at the inquiry when Ms. Chipiak, you know, asked him about calling

00:16:24.360 Canadians' names and he denied it. And I've seen it. Like I said in my testimony, my prime minister

00:16:30.520 was calling me a racist and he was questioning whether or not I should be tolerated. And like I

00:16:39.340 said and I stand by it if you are going to lead a country you lead everybody in your country you

00:16:44.780 don't get to pick and choose who you get to look after and who you don't get to look after

00:16:49.640 um yeah I I that's quite stunning I know that and I I've been deliberately cautious about

00:16:59.720 which questions I ask you and how I word this because I know that you are still under

00:17:04.280 some bail conditions here which we've reported on in in the past and I think that's an important

00:17:09.640 point though for people is that even if the trucks are off the street the emergencies act

00:17:13.840 commission is over this is still very much an ongoing thing for you for for Chris Barber and I

00:17:20.340 I wanted to just ask if you have any updates you can share about this at all and if you can't

00:17:25.320 that's absolutely fine but about where things are and what you're expecting in the future

00:17:29.640 uh well we did have a i was in court yesterday morning um which was why i was late for the

00:17:36.180 documentary actually the irony is that we were we're in calgary right now that's why we're all

00:17:40.480 together we came up here and went to uh the the premiere of trudeau on trial last night which was

00:17:46.720 a documentary created about about the inquiry so it's kind of ironic that this is happening today

00:17:52.480 um i'm sorry i forgot your question i i forgot my question too now because i was so enthralled

00:17:59.060 with what you were saying but it was basically about just the status of your your legal ordeals

00:18:03.680 right now yes so so we were in court yesterday what was supposed to happen yesterday and today

00:18:08.560 was we were uh we had a motion for particulars to be heard as we're trying to get that information

00:18:14.480 out of the crown prosecutor what ended up happening was the deputy crown uh the deputy crown stepped

00:18:21.320 in and they are applying for a different judge they want an out of town judge apparently to

00:18:29.080 preside over next month's hearings because mr barber is obviously filed an application of a

00:18:36.200 charter breach when the crown prosecutor released all of his text message information so they're

00:18:42.120 looking to change the judge for that which would mean that we would be changing judges for the rest

00:18:47.000 of our hearings which would be which would cause a delay for everything so we're really hoping

00:18:53.240 that doesn't happen she's going to render her decision on that i think march 13th

00:18:57.640 well we'll certainly keep an eye peeled on that and just because your uh fellow your road captains

00:19:02.920 there have been so patient in in uh during this interview i just wanted to give the floor to them

00:19:07.880 for a moment and just any thoughts they have about the the movement right now about the commission

00:19:12.360 about tamara about anything the floor is yours

00:19:18.760 well what happened today i don't think i'm taking a positive out of it and um i'm hoping to bring

00:19:27.080 canada together and we can all create something and bring peace back into this country

00:19:37.160 that's about all i can say right now because i'm kind of

00:19:42.360 I think we're all stunned. I think we're all a little bit shell-shocked still, you know?

00:19:47.260 It comes from a place of, I was just talking about the first couple pages of my book,

00:19:52.860 I can't tell you how many times I said the words, how can any of this be wrong?

00:19:57.820 And I think that it's just, it's really hard to come to this place today and still feel that,

00:20:04.140 that we did nothing wrong, but, you know, stand up for our democratic right to protest.

00:20:09.940 and rouleau took that away in a sense today so it's it's it's a it's a step back and focus on

00:20:17.840 where we go next from here well thank you so much not only for for coming on but for taking such i

00:20:24.920 think uh i'm getting a little emotional now but but in spite of everything you've all been through

00:20:30.060 taking such a hopeful approach to something that i i think right now a lot of people are going to

00:20:35.400 feel very uh dark about and as i've said to you privately tamara that i want you to send me a text

00:20:40.900 the minute those bail restrictions are lifted and i'm going to be like on a plane to medicine hat

00:20:45.000 and we're going to do this properly and in person and then we're going to like drink until the night

00:20:48.720 is uh until the night is morning so i hope i can still uh i hope i can count on that spare room you

00:20:53.940 told me about there absolutely all right well thank you to all of you and uh seriously thank

00:21:00.680 you we really appreciate it thank you thank you so much andrew have a great day thank you that

00:21:05.040 was Tamara Leach and road captains, Ryan, whose last name I'm going to butcher. So Ryan and

00:21:10.460 Miranda. And I'm so grateful for them for coming on. And again, like I said, I've run into Tamara

00:21:15.600 Leach. She's not been in hiding. She's not been a hermit, but we've never been able to do

00:21:19.540 an interview. And we've never, because again, there are so many things that I have to balance

00:21:25.220 around and jump around here. And again, I also wanted to have her on alongside one of my next

00:21:30.440 guests, but they're not allowed to speak without a council presence. So that raises more and more

00:21:36.120 questions here. We're going to just continue along our breakdown of the Public Order Emergency

00:21:40.700 Commission's report here on the Andrew Lawton Show. Brendan Miller was one of the most prominent,

00:21:47.140 and I think I can say controversial figures in what was happening there. And Tom Marazzo,

00:21:53.380 as well, a key figure in the Freedom Convoy, is a volunteer who testified. We have both Brendan

00:21:58.620 and Tom with us so we will put them on now. Let's start with Brendan here who as many people may

00:22:05.720 know his questioning of witnesses became known as Miller Time online because oftentimes he was

00:22:12.340 going in there unafraid to put the hard questions to people. Brendan thanks for for being here today

00:22:17.600 what are your preliminary thoughts on this report that's just come out? Well it's disappointing

00:22:25.160 but also

00:22:27.280 itself

00:22:31.360 all of the

00:22:34.960 reductions

00:22:35.560 we're having some connection

00:22:45.000 issues there so I'm going to go to Tom

00:22:46.820 and hopefully we can work this out and get

00:22:49.040 back to you. Tom you are

00:22:51.100 one of the few people that right

00:22:53.100 now can speak your mind that were part of

00:22:55.080 that core group of protesters you don't have these bail conditions and you also went through

00:23:00.720 the bank account freezes which now commissioner Paul Rouleau has said were in his mind in his in

00:23:06.920 his view appropriate so that to me was very troubling but but especially and I don't know

00:23:12.680 if you saw it he said that you know sometimes there were people that had joint accounts with

00:23:16.660 folks unconnected to the protest and if that happened yeah it sucks it's not just but but

00:23:21.820 so be it and that happened to you and your your wife at the time yeah i you know i listened to

00:23:28.860 rulo uh his comments today and i all i can say really from what i got was that he was talking

00:23:35.980 out of both sides of his face the entire time um you know where he acknowledges the difficulties

00:23:43.100 of the bank accounts but then he says well you know there was no clear direction on

00:23:48.060 on how to unfreeze your bank accounts. So like every comment that he touched on seemed to be

00:23:55.180 he would give the counter argument to his own first original argument. And obviously I haven't

00:24:01.400 read the 2000 page final report, but I have to say, you know, there was a time

00:24:10.500 uh one of the lawyers uh i don't think it was our lawyer i don't think it was during miller time it

00:24:19.460 was one of the lawyers it was near the end and i can't remember which cabinet minister was uh

00:24:25.420 being crossed and they all blend into each other they all blend they do but it could have been

00:24:30.060 freeland and the lawyer uh i think it was adam who had asked the question and bruleau stopped him

00:24:38.260 and he says, you know, it's been well established that the government didn't meet the four conditions

00:24:44.420 of the CSIS Act, Section 2. Are you sure you want to waste your time going through all that again?

00:24:51.080 And I looked around the room, and I'm like, that's it. It's over. It is over. How could he possibly

00:24:57.040 now acknowledge that they didn't meet the criteria, and then basically ruled today that the government

00:25:05.640 met the very high threshold so I you know what they say about referees like you know referee

00:25:13.300 makes a bad call and you yell at me to say what game are you watching because you're certainly

00:25:17.960 not watching the same game I'm watching so I I'm very perplexed by what has happened today

00:25:25.700 and as far as I'm concerned you know I agree with what Chris or sorry with Tamara and Miranda

00:25:34.000 were saying and ryan but i from my perspective i think we have turned a very poor page in this

00:25:44.300 country i i do believe you know i just tweeted before we we got on that uh we now live officially

00:25:50.460 in a banana republic and and ironically that was one of the big concerns of christia freeland when

00:25:56.460 she testified was how international business was going to especially the americans was going to

00:26:01.920 view their investment in canada and we just basically from again my perspective of sitting

00:26:09.520 through the commission for seven weeks and also participating i was in those meetings i know the

00:26:16.080 lengths that we went through to make that safe and responsible to the best of our ability you know i

00:26:22.400 could go through a whole laundry list of things that we did to make that a successful safe

00:26:29.040 responsible event where we were just exercising our our fundamental rights under section two of

00:26:35.840 the charter and you know i i've i've been through all of this stuff i've seen the testimony and then

00:26:42.860 to see it come out and and for rulo to say this um yeah i'm disappointed um to be honest i'm not

00:26:53.220 sure i trust my own emotions right now um i'm i'm gutted uh and i know that you know i've been

00:27:00.020 tweeting that i think that it was basically going to go this way but now that it's actually happened

00:27:06.900 um i'm frustrated i'm frustrated beyond belief doesn't mean i'm i'm gonna give up uh doesn't

00:27:14.980 mean i'm going to stop pursuing other things to to put all the heat and light on on the government

00:27:20.980 of canada and ontario and and the other government uh i'll continue with veterans for freedom

00:27:27.620 uh because we're doing some some really great things and i and i think there's still a lot of

00:27:32.260 work to be done and and i'm hoping that i have a role to play in that and if not that's okay

00:27:37.940 uh but i still think that this country needs it deserves to correct itself and and i know

00:27:49.540 that sounds a little bit vague but i think the people need to step up and and be more proactive

00:27:55.860 and correct the course that this country is on um because we're on a really bad trajectory somewhere

00:28:01.780 awful you mentioned veterans for freedom and i guess that leads to a question that you may have

00:28:08.180 a unique perspective on uh beyond what tamara and miranda and ryan were talking about and that

00:28:13.380 you've actually worn a uniform for this country and you've actually served in the canadian armed

00:28:18.500 forces you've taken that oath of loyalty how does this feel for you having served this country and

00:28:24.900 and i i don't want to i don't want to put words in your mouth so i i won't suggest a premise but

00:28:29.140 i'll put it to you well i certainly feel that it's a a huge portrayal um you've got soldiers

00:28:38.740 that have this thing and it's the only profession in in canada you you undergo something called an

00:28:44.100 unlimited liability it means that you legally could be ordered to your certain death if if

00:28:51.940 in a combat situation and in exchange for that you are willing to lay down your life so that people

00:28:59.380 of canada can be free we justify all wars that we engage with for the freedom of people right

00:29:05.300 the freedom of the citizens that that you are there to fight for and yet we go to ottawa we

00:29:11.860 exercise our charter rights to protest and you know in particular the veterans if you remember

00:29:19.460 on that day that the police swept through and beat viciously uh canadian military veterans

00:29:25.780 wearing their berets their medals um you know that was a very very dark day in history and on

00:29:32.820 a personal level uh it's bad to see canadians being being beaten like that but man when you're

00:29:38.740 starting your police are beating your veterans wearing their medals and then we go a year later

00:29:45.700 a year later and the government of canada who investigated themselves found no wrongdoing with

00:29:52.900 themselves and so i think that you know this isn't about justice for me this is about accountability

00:30:00.500 and as a veteran as a former soldier i was accountable to everything that i did but we

00:30:06.500 seem to have lost the concept of accountability in this country you know if you look at the

00:30:13.540 managed decline of the canadian military and now they're they're warmongering to go to the ukraine

00:30:19.700 i mean you literally saw them invoke the emergency act they repealed it the next day

00:30:24.980 talked about the war in ukraine and i'm sorry but the ukraine is not a nato member i don't

00:30:30.420 understand why they're trying to convince our sons and daughters to go over there and die for

00:30:34.340 christia freeland's family that's not our fight uh our fight is at home and i think freedom starts

00:30:40.500 at home uh this is where our fight is and i would call upon all of the veterans across canada who

00:30:47.700 believe that i do not all of them do a lot of them support the regime but if you're a veteran

00:30:52.980 and you have skills and you're organized join veterans for freedom get involved in your

00:30:57.860 community uh we are not a right wing ex wing extremist group that's all a fallacy it's

00:31:05.380 ridiculous that's just smear we do things to support our communities because we all know

00:31:11.380 that local action has national consequence and that's what we try to do as a veterans group

00:31:17.140 we're not interested in in kinetic energy type of activity that's not what we do anymore veterans

00:31:23.540 are not the tip of the spear but they can be the shield for their communities and they don't take

00:31:28.500 that from tom quiggan who wrote that line but you know as a veteran i am unbelievably disappointed

00:31:35.620 in the direction that this country is going in and i certainly have no faith in the liberal

00:31:40.900 government or the ndp and you know there's a few shining stars in the conservative party but i i

00:31:48.340 don't know some days i feel like they're they're two sides of the same coin and and i think that

00:31:53.540 citizens of this country should get more involved politically. And maybe we wouldn't be in such a

00:32:00.660 train wreck of a situation. Yeah, well, I would agree with that. And I think citizen complacency

00:32:05.240 was probably one of the leading causes of a lot of the problems during the pandemic, because people

00:32:09.440 just gave the government a pass there. Well, Tom, thank you so much for your time and also for your

00:32:14.980 service, sir. I really appreciate it. Thanks, Andrew. All right. Thank you for that. We are

00:32:20.220 continuing along with our live reaction to the Emergencies Act report that came out from the

00:32:26.620 Public Order Emergency Commission and it's weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks of hearings of

00:32:33.060 testimony culminating in a 2,000 page report which was just tabled in Parliament this morning and now

00:32:40.620 published. I've said I haven't read through all 2,000 pages yet but we've certainly gone through

00:32:45.980 the top line, through the recommendations, and we want to pivot into some of the legal analysis now

00:32:50.600 that we've heard from a couple of the participants in this and how they respond from more of an

00:32:55.540 emotional level. Alan Hauner is here with the Democracy Fund. We also have Brendan Miller that

00:33:00.920 we're going to get to in just a moment who's rejoined us, and hopefully the internet will be

00:33:05.420 more cooperative this time. It's C11 in progress already. It's trying to interfere with our

00:33:09.520 ability to get the stellar legal guests on but alan the democracy fund was a party in this so

00:33:16.140 you were able to i think get like you know three and a half minutes every uh every little bit uh

00:33:21.100 with uh depending on who you were talking to and and do i think a lot of great work with it here

00:33:25.660 obviously the democracy fund's approach was that the emergencies act was unjustified and i think

00:33:32.360 that it's interesting that the commissioner has sort of couched what he said in the sense of well

00:33:36.160 this isn't a legal finding it's not a judicial finding i'm not finding wrongdoing but what's your

00:33:42.920 first perspective on what was in this report well i you know like like so many people andrew

00:33:50.960 i've only had this report for about an hour and a half i haven't had much time to read through it

00:33:57.540 but my my first impression when i heard commissioner rouleau speak today and and to address parliament

00:34:03.820 was that there were two things, at least, he said that I agreed with.

00:34:09.280 First, he said that the factual basis for coming to the conclusion that he came to,

00:34:15.980 specifically that conclusion that the government met this very high threshold

00:34:19.540 for invoking the Emergencies Act, was not overwhelming, right?

00:34:23.980 It wasn't overwhelming in its strength.

00:34:27.360 And then the second thing he said that I agreed with

00:34:30.740 was that reasonable and informed people could come to a different conclusion than the one he

00:34:37.540 came to. When I think about the legal parts of the test for invoking the Emergencies Act, what

00:34:49.700 really is at the forefront for me is that the standard is pretty low, right? You have to have

00:34:59.060 reasonable and probable grounds to believe this type of emergency exists and so it's a low

00:35:05.220 threshold right that's the threshold that police have to meet when they arrest you it's a little

00:35:12.020 bit higher than reasonable suspicion but it's lower than a balance of probabilities

00:35:17.700 um and and you know i i think if if you look at his report and and the only part of it i've been

00:35:24.980 really able to to to read through and and that only once is is this part which deals with threats

00:35:32.180 to the security of canada and whether or not there were reasonable grounds to believe that those

00:35:37.940 existed right and um and and that's where the commissioner really says well people can disagree

00:35:46.580 about this reasonable people can disagree and just as i was waiting to come on your show i was

00:35:52.260 reading the report and you know the commissioner himself acknowledges that there is a quote

00:36:00.420 a significant strength to the arguments which uh oppose the conclusion he came to and which support

00:36:08.180 the conclusion that the government didn't meet the high threshold so you're i mean basically

00:36:13.620 you're saying no one can look at this and say it's a slam dunk for the government

00:36:16.980 I don't think so. You know, I think my take on it so far, from what I've been able to see,

00:36:23.460 is that the commissioner said, okay, well, they met the threshold, but just,

00:36:30.420 and somebody else could come to a different conclusion that I came to, right? And, you know,

00:36:36.660 this invocation of the Emergencies Act is being challenged in federal court, and

00:36:44.260 And that court might come to a different conclusion than the conclusion that Justice Rulo came to.

00:36:50.620 One thing that struck me as well, because I know that in the latter days of the commission hearings,

00:36:56.220 there was this ongoing back and forth that was dealing with this very minute detail about the interpretation of the CSIS Act.

00:37:03.880 And this really, I think, threw a pretty significant question mark over the hearings.

00:37:08.980 and the government wouldn't present the legal advice it got that suggested it might have been

00:37:13.600 on firm footing. But if you read the report from the commissioner, he falls back on that other

00:37:19.060 really, I don't want to say ambiguous, but subjective term in the Emergencies Act of

00:37:24.800 when cabinet has a reasonable belief. So right there, we're not even talking about the existence

00:37:30.580 of a fact situation that supports it, but cabinet having a belief of a situation. And I'm wondering

00:37:37.520 if that is as relevant to his finding as i think it is which is to say that that's really what the

00:37:43.680 cabinet proved is that they believed there was a problem not that there was a problem

00:37:49.040 that's right so what they need to do is they have to have a subjective belief

00:37:54.800 that there is a threat to the security of canada and that subjective belief has to be

00:38:01.920 it has to be objective in the sense that a reasonable person would have to hold that

00:38:05.920 belief but you know we're talking about reasonable grounds here again right and again that's just

00:38:11.280 it's a little bit more than reasonable suspicion but it's less than a balance of probability

00:38:16.480 they have to have um you know a belief that's objective and that's based on on compelling and

00:38:23.360 and credible evidence that's what it is right but they don't actually have to be right um you know

00:38:30.320 and and there can be factors that that come up later which show that well well no that

00:38:37.200 you you were actually wrong that doesn't mean that the belief wasn't reasonable at the time

00:38:42.240 i think that's very fair and i know that there are a number of uh fights still yet to take place on

00:38:48.000 here there are the criminal fights against some of the people involved there's the uh injunction on

00:38:52.880 the horn honking and the class action that's been proposed on uh harm to or alleged harm

00:38:58.000 to the residents of ottawa we have constitutional challenges uh but beyond all of that there's

00:39:02.960 the political dimension as well in the canadians uh even though they've been pulled on this have

00:39:08.320 not actually really had their say at the ballot box about this so i i think that dimension i would

00:39:14.640 say is probably critical critical here and it's why public education is important and i i know

00:39:19.360 that the democracy fund does the legal battle but you also do the public education battle as well

00:39:24.000 we do and i think this this um this sort of public education battle will be one that will be

00:39:30.960 waged for years and you know your previous guest tamara lee she um she spoke about uh the invocation

00:39:38.160 of the war measures act um by pierre elliott trudeau and as i understand it i'm not a historian

00:39:44.960 but i was really interested in that area of history when i was a student um you know after

00:39:52.080 pierre elliott trudeau invoked the war measures act i think it was he was a pretty popular move

00:39:57.600 or he had quite a bit of support and it was only after after years of sober reflection on that

00:40:05.200 where where people began to to look at that a little bit differently right in our i i think i

00:40:12.160 i don't know what what do you think andrew is our what is our view of pierre elliott trudeau's

00:40:17.440 invocation of the war measures act nowadays well it's by no means gone down as something that

00:40:24.320 people universally support it's still contentious and in that case there was uh demonstrable violence

00:40:29.520 and even with violence it was contentious but uh the example i gave on a broadcast we did last

00:40:34.640 night was the the upper canada rebellion and how you know william lyon mckenzie went from being a

00:40:39.120 traitor to a few years later being a member of parliament so i think the needle does move on on

00:40:44.320 some of these things and i i don't meant i don't know if tamara leach is going to stand for parliament

00:40:49.440 but i certainly hope she does because i think she'd have a good chance and i think would be very

00:40:53.920 it would be very nice vindication and uh you know it just actually occurred to me this is the one

00:40:58.000 year anniversary of her being arrested so i it's probably good it didn't occur to me earlier because

00:41:02.960 i don't think that's like a happy anniversary moment that you wish someone but i think it

00:41:06.560 reminds us all of just exactly what happened a year ago alan honor i know that the fight continues

00:41:12.160 for you, litigation director for the Democracy Fund. Very grateful for you joining us today.

00:41:16.780 I really appreciate it. Thanks, Andrew. We are going to continue along. It is Miller time. Once

00:41:22.840 again, we are going to try and get Brendan Miller back on. And Brendan, I think that one thing I'll

00:41:29.460 point out here is that you had a very tense moment in the commission hearings where Paul

00:41:34.920 Rouleau actually ejected you from it for a time before readmitting you. But let me just ask in

00:41:40.880 general, did you feel that the process itself was a fair and reasonable one? Or do you feel that

00:41:46.600 there were really problems all along the way that should make us not all that surprised about what's

00:41:51.740 happened now? Well, first, there you go. So I'm here. Good morning. The process itself, in my

00:42:06.080 view and i hope you can hear me now yes we can now i appreciate it problematic on several fronts

00:42:13.200 yeah the the disclosure issues were of course paramount for me during the hearing and

00:42:23.680 you can't get a fair hearing unless you can get the actual disclosure of what happened and

00:42:29.200 And you have all of these redactions that the government of Canada put on to all of the records, essentially without question.

00:42:38.760 And the basis for all of those redactions had no factual foundation.

00:42:47.260 And yet, in the ruling that came out today of the report, Justice Rulo makes no mention of that.

00:42:55.060 He says that it was on precedent access.

00:42:56.880 Well, with great respect, it was not. You had the triggering of redactions on the basis of cabinet confidentiality under Section 39 of the Cabinet of Canada Evidence Act without a certificate actually being issued or even being cabinet documents.

00:43:14.240 You had redactions on the basis of irrelevance, which typically you are not allowed at all to do until the document itself has been disclosed.

00:43:25.500 And whether or not an irrelevant document can be redacted is dealing with whether or not it's redacted for the purpose of the public record, not for the purpose of counsel seeing it.

00:43:35.420 And then you have redactions on the basis of solicitor-client privilege.

00:43:39.120 You'll note I spent time when I examined the chief of staff and the prime minister on that issue

00:43:44.720 so that the public at large would understand what was going on.

00:43:49.880 The redactions had no legal basis, and that's problematic, extremely.

00:43:56.280 You also had a process that was set up essentially for provinces and municipalities to fight one another

00:44:04.140 as opposed to actually digging into the merits of the invocation,

00:44:10.860 which was really what it was supposed to be about.

00:44:12.300 For example, Chief Slally was on the stand for two full days,

00:44:17.040 yet ministers were on the stand for half a day or a day.

00:44:21.720 We had strict timelines with respect to cross-examination.

00:44:26.360 Sometimes Mr. Horner, for example, was only given five minutes.

00:44:31.360 So the whole process itself, in my view, was not procedurally fair.

00:44:36.760 But at the end of the day, the commission is a creature of parliament in the sense that it's an entirely parliamentary commission.

00:44:46.340 So there was no ability to judicially review or challenge anything that the commission was doing because it comes under what's called parliamentary privilege.

00:44:56.760 You cannot judicially review an arm of Parliament or anything like that, other than the passing of legislation for constitutionality, etc.

00:45:06.680 So the whole process, in my view, was not procedurally fair, and it wasn't procedurally sound.

00:45:14.840 And the rules were set up so that they ended up essentially being able to suppress information that was relevant to material.

00:45:21.560 Just on the note of the documents, there was also the alternative problem where they would give this giant dump of documents very shortly before you had to examine a witness, and you couldn't really go through and find all the things you wanted to ask them about in the documents in the time you were given.

00:45:39.820 So it was like the most opaque transparency imaginable.

00:45:44.180 Yeah, and so, you know, in my experience in litigating these things for the past 12 years, my background is constitutional law and public law, right?

00:45:55.320 So, understand I was a late person to the game with respect to the legal team on behalf of our clients.

00:46:05.240 I just got brought on due to the conflict issue that Mr. Wilson and Ms. Chipiak found ourselves in.

00:46:13.140 So this was very surprising to me that that was permitted.

00:46:17.560 They would dump hundreds, thousands of documents, the government of Canada, last minute.

00:46:24.140 A good chunk of them would be redacted.

00:46:25.980 And then they'd also dump documents that were relevant material to actual witnesses who had already testified.

00:46:32.900 Or we would get documents that were redacted and then that we were able to get unredacted after the relevant witness had already testified.

00:46:41.740 For example, the national security advisor who, and I brought this up during my examination of the chief of staff to the prime minister, she testified ad nauseum about how she thought that there was a Section 2 CSIS Act threat, yet there was a document that we got after the fact that recorded her saying that there was not.

00:47:04.800 So, you know, how the process is fair when it's set up that way makes no sense to me.

00:47:12.080 And for the government of Canada to say, well, we tried our best and we moved as quickly as possible, with respect, I don't agree.

00:47:19.640 They have the largest law firm, essentially, in the entire country through the Department of Justice.

00:47:24.980 All of those records and documents, they had a sufficient amount of time to provide them from the outset.

00:47:30.740 They didn't. And in my view, that made the entire process procedurally unfair.

00:47:36.020 And just talking about the parliamentary aspect here, one of the real, I'd say, shameful things that happened was Justin Trudeau writing into the Emergencies Act effectively an entirely new section that the commissioner had to investigate, which was investigating the protesters, investigating the Freedom Convoy.

00:47:55.060 And, you know, the Emergencies Act says there has to be a report that investigates the government and an inquiry that looks into that.

00:48:00.860 Justin Trudeau signs an order in council saying, yeah, but what you really have to do is look into the money and look into Tamara Leach and look into all these people.

00:48:07.600 And not only did it make, did it, I think, convolute the process, but it also then threatens the timeframe because all of a sudden in testimony, you are spending all of this time having witnesses to answer this stuff that has nothing to do with the core function of what the Emergencies Act says this inquiry is to be in.

00:48:27.680 And one, I mean, somewhat personal example of this, I know I had chatted with you and with Eva Chibiuk at one point about whether there might be value in calling journalists as witnesses to speak to some of the infringements of freedom of the press.

00:48:40.880 There was no acceptance of that by the commission.

00:48:44.500 And then in the report today, Paul Rouleau says, yeah, we had no evidence that freedom of the press was infringed, so if it were, I might have some issues with it.

00:48:52.440 But again, they didn't do that because they're hearing from people talking about things that have nothing to do with the Emergencies Act.

00:48:59.440 Right. And so there's two things on that.

00:49:01.580 One is under the Inquiries Act, under Section 4, the ability to call witnesses, unlike a regular court proceeding, rests solely with the commission.

00:49:13.160 I was not able to simply issue subpoenas for witnesses I wanted to call.

00:49:19.420 And in fact, I believe we actually asked to call you as well as a couple other journalists, and that was denied.

00:49:26.920 So that is problematic in and of itself.

00:49:30.520 The other thing in hindsight, of course, I wasn't on the case within 30 days of the Order in Council setting up the commission being passed.

00:49:40.560 But had I been, I would have filed a judicial review to that Order in Council.

00:49:45.360 You have 30 days to do that under the Federal Court Act.

00:49:49.420 That ordering of counsel was not, in my view, jurisdictionally sound because the Emergencies Act of Section 63 sets out what the commission is supposed to do.

00:50:01.840 what the executive did was essentially muddy the waters with respect to what the commission was to

00:50:09.320 look at and it created essentially a fight about you know who did what wrong as opposed to whether

00:50:16.520 or not the government of canada had the grounds to invoke the emergencies act itself and i completely

00:50:23.540 agree with you but unfortunately nobody challenged the ordering council passed in april 2022

00:50:30.420 they had 30 days to judicially review that and unfortunately nobody did well that might be uh

00:50:36.900 i mean again you you always want to hope these things won't come up but i i feel there has been

00:50:41.200 a licensing to government to use this tool in the future so if it does i i hope they heed your

00:50:46.300 advice there and and deal with those things early on uh brendan miller it was a delight to watch you

00:50:52.360 in those hearings and i think it was very necessary to have your voice in there and i know you got a

00:50:57.120 lot of grief online, especially from that one crazy woman out front. But you seem to get along

00:51:01.480 with her by the end of it. So you want at least one person over at the commission, if not many

00:51:06.540 more. But thank you so much for coming on today. All right. That was Brendan Miller, the lawyer

00:51:17.060 who represented the Freedom Convoy protesters in the Public Order Emergency Commission. And we are

00:51:22.760 going to be hearing from Keith Wilson on the show a little bit later on. We also have coming up

00:51:27.800 Justin Trudeau responding to this, taking a victory lap. That'll be coming up just after 3pm

00:51:33.120 Eastern. And at 3.30, Conservative leader Pierre Polyev will be speaking. So we will carry both of

00:51:39.760 those live when they come up. But let's do the obligatory I told you so, because Bruce Party,

00:51:47.140 who is one of the most tremendous legal minds in the country, and I think if we were a civilized

00:51:51.620 country would be sitting on the supreme court of canada right now has said that there's no legal

00:51:57.100 basis for the emergencies act but don't expect the public order emergency commission to find that so

00:52:02.680 i think he saw this coming from a mile away here and i will welcome you to the show bruce and say

00:52:08.160 why did you see exactly what was happening before everyone else did oh well thank you andrew and

00:52:15.040 thank you for that that that that intro listen the the commission is really like a ritual

00:52:22.660 it's not acting as a court in this situation it looks like a court it's headed by a judge

00:52:28.660 it has all the trappings of a court there's witnesses and cross-examination it looks like

00:52:33.680 a court it's supposed to look like a court but it's not a court it is a government appointed

00:52:39.800 inquiry. And it has its own rules and its own purpose. And in a sense, the purpose of the

00:52:47.240 inquiry is to show that it was done as opposed to the results that it comes to. So if people

00:52:54.660 were hanging on to this thinking, this is going to be like a court, the court's going to hear the

00:52:58.820 evidence and come to a conclusion that's in accordance with what we think the law says,

00:53:04.100 i don't think that was ever in the books uh in the cards and and so the result that we've seen

00:53:10.800 today is not a surprise to me at all is what i would would have expected even though even though

00:53:15.660 the evidence as i heard it at the commission was such that the the justification for the belief

00:53:24.080 that that that the implication of the act was justified simply was not there

00:53:30.420 when we talk about some of the ways in which this will be litigated there's the public order

00:53:36.980 emergency commission there are also going to be well there are constitutional challenges

00:53:40.940 in your view which one has the higher burden for the government to clear is it a constitutional

00:53:48.100 challenge in a court or is it the public order emergency commission oh it's definitely in the

00:53:53.740 court but even even in the court it's going to be a hard go because uh not for the government you

00:54:00.900 mean for no no for the people who are the people who are bringing the the the application it's

00:54:06.400 going to be a challenge because uh courts are now inclined to give deference to the executive branch

00:54:15.080 to make its calls. The best shot, I think, for a court finding that this was beyond the powers

00:54:25.180 of the government is actually not even a constitutional case, although a constitutional

00:54:28.900 argument should be part of it. But it's simply on the basis of a judicial review on the grounds

00:54:35.240 that the statute itself lays out for what the threshold is for invoking the act. And the report

00:54:44.260 of the commission goes through some of these and it will you know it reads as though it's supposed

00:54:49.380 to be a a decision of a court but it's not but but the court seized with this case this challenge

00:54:57.300 will go through the same kind of process and say all right now what what were the threshold

00:55:01.620 requirements for being able to trigger the act in this way a b c and d and where they met in in each

00:55:08.100 case. And I think in that analysis is the best shot for those who believe that this was overreach

00:55:17.720 to show that both factually and otherwise, those prerequisites simply did not exist.

00:55:24.720 When I was watching the hearings, especially when it got later on, and they were really debating

00:55:30.640 the minute details of Section 2 of the CSIS Act and this section of the Emergencies Act,

00:55:35.940 The overarching thought that I had is that the government had lost at that point, at least on a moral level, because they weren't coming into the commission hearings with this big binder of evidence of here are all the people threatening violence.

00:55:48.280 Here are the people that were burning cars. Here were the criminal acts that were taking place. They didn't come with any of that. There was nothing new added in that sense.

00:55:56.340 What they came in with was this novel legal argument, basically.

00:56:00.380 And my sort of view was, well, if we're spending this time debating the legal interpretation,

00:56:06.280 it means that they're just so close to the edge that it's really not a win for them.

00:56:11.640 Now, of course, they were, at least in the commissioner's eyes, on the right side of that fine line.

00:56:16.860 But this really did come down, it felt like, to legal gymnastics.

00:56:20.140 There wasn't a fact scenario that the government came up with that really made, in a meaningful way, the determination that this was a national emergency with no other recourse available to us but the Emergencies Act.

00:56:33.760 Well, that's fair.

00:56:35.520 That's fair.

00:56:36.400 But that also depends in part upon people watching the evidence.

00:56:40.580 That is true.

00:56:41.440 And those of us who actually...

00:56:42.260 Those people didn't suffer through...

00:56:43.320 I mean, I barely wanted to do it, and I get paid to do it.

00:56:45.840 Days upon days of watching people give testimony.

00:56:48.120 And it was quite it was quite interesting and telling, I thought.

00:56:51.800 But in order to get that that that impression, you sort of had to be watching and not very many people are going to be able to take that time to do exactly that.

00:57:03.540 And so what they're going to leave with is simply the impression about what the process was and what the what the what the answer now has been in the report.

00:57:12.780 And so the niceties of what happened in the room when this witness was asked this question, every once in a while, there's a highlight.

00:57:22.420 But for the most part, most people are not going to be aware of that.

00:57:25.820 And so they're not going to be aware, for example, that when the government witnesses stood up and talked about violence, they weren't actually talking about actual violence.

00:57:38.900 So, for example, the acting Ottawa police chief, Steve Bell, talked about the violence felt by the local community.

00:57:47.460 Yeah, the feelings of violence, which are really the new form of violence in 2023.

00:57:51.680 See, Brendan Miller, who you just had on, cross-examined him on that.

00:57:55.580 And Brendan said, well, you don't mean actual violence, do you?

00:58:00.480 And he said, well, no, I don't mean violence as defined in the criminal code.

00:58:07.620 I mean the violence that the people felt.

00:58:10.840 And so the bottom line was, he's not talking about violence.

00:58:15.060 There's no actual violence happening.

00:58:17.140 It's an impression that he's talking about.

00:58:20.260 And so if one of the grounds for invoking the act is the use of threats of serious violence,

00:58:28.240 which is the cause that the government itself notes in this declaration,

00:58:34.360 if that is one of the main causes for invoking the act the question is well okay well what are

00:58:40.820 you talking about show us the violence and the one of the important things about the the the

00:58:48.020 testimony that the commission heard at least as i heard it was there wasn't any of that

00:58:53.420 it was it was all sort of a a made-up uh impressionistic concern about what you know

00:59:01.080 What might happen, even though there's no threat to violence, there's no assault, there's no bombing, there's no rape, there's no property damage, there's no assaulting of parliament.

00:59:11.540 I mean, what is it exactly do you mean, other than the fact that there are people on the street embarrassing you and parked illegally that are opposing you in an ideological way?

00:59:25.860 I mean, that's the threat to the government.

00:59:28.380 It's a political threat, yes.

00:59:29.680 but that doesn't mean it's violence yeah a political emergency not a national emergency

00:59:36.420 by by any stretch bruce party queen's university law prof also the executive director of rights

00:59:42.100 probe and the legal nostradamus he called this from a mile away and he was absolutely right

00:59:46.920 bruce thank you so much always a pleasure thanks andrew appreciate it thank you we are continuing

00:59:51.820 our breakdown of the public order emergency commission report one thing i'll mention just

00:59:57.340 on the note of some of the findings that are a bit unique that jumped out at me. When I say that

01:00:04.160 the government did not produce any evidence of violence, any new information in the course of

01:00:10.420 the hearings, the commissioner's report did actually push back against a claim the government

01:00:15.260 had made previously. So Rouleau said, and I forget the page number, but I've posted a screenshot on

01:00:21.180 Twitter, that there was no meaningful connection and no coordination he saw between the people who

01:00:28.320 were arrested in Coutts, one of whom had a connection to the group founded by Jeremy

01:00:33.160 McKenzie Diagilon, and anything that was happening in Ottawa. So he said that, you know, yeah, there

01:00:39.320 might have been this loose connection, but there was no coordination between Coutts and Ottawa,

01:00:44.620 certainly not of these people that were accused of it and ultimately charged with violent offenses

01:00:50.400 or potentially violent offenses.

01:00:52.640 And what I think is interesting there

01:00:54.220 is that this directly contradicts

01:00:55.840 what Marco Mendicino said at that press conference

01:00:57.940 where he was selling the Emergencies Act

01:01:00.160 and said, oh yeah, we've found this violent network

01:01:02.920 that may have guns that wants to do these terrible things.

01:01:05.500 So that now has been proven to be complete nonsense

01:01:09.200 by the Public Order Emergency Commission's report.

01:01:12.460 So even defending the government,

01:01:14.260 the report still pushes back against,

01:01:16.380 it doesn't say Marco Mendicino's narrative,

01:01:18.860 but it pushes back against the narrative that Mendocino was peddling.

01:01:22.880 Let's talk about this with Keith Wilson, who is the, well, I'll let him describe his title

01:01:28.880 because it actually changed a little bit in the course of the hearings.

01:01:32.480 Originally, he and I spoke on this very show about how he was prepared to go in there

01:01:36.860 and be cross-examining and questioning and leading witnesses in testimony,

01:01:42.920 not like in the bad sense, I mean, guiding the process.

01:01:45.300 and then he ended up being a witness in this and had a wealth of information that he brought to

01:01:51.800 the table Keith Wilson from Wilson Law in Edmonton good to talk to you Keith good to be here so let

01:01:58.900 me just bring up people up to speed and hopefully you can as well about your role why did you

01:02:03.440 ultimately decide if it was your choice to come to this as a witness rather than as the lawyer

01:02:10.180 well you know the clients decide and and the freedom fighters and the the leaders of the

01:02:17.220 freedom convoy that i represented uh we all came to a realization that this inquiry was about

01:02:22.660 whether or not the prime minister was justified in using the most you know authoritarian statutory

01:02:28.540 tool in the arsenal on canadians and it really came down to in our view and many other knowledgeable

01:02:37.360 legal observers as to what were the facts on the ground on that weekend before valentine's day last

01:02:45.360 year and the facts on the ground were that the borders were all reopened and that tamara leach

01:02:52.160 and the other board members had negotiated a deal with the mayor of the city of ottawa

01:02:57.000 to move the trucks uh mostly out of the downtown residential areas concentrate onto wellington and

01:03:02.780 then move them to the these base camps just outside the city and and and so if it's true

01:03:09.440 that all these things were happening why then invoke the emergencies act and why did the deal

01:03:15.760 with the city not get completed so we realized that because i was involved in all those negotiations

01:03:21.440 and was the point of contact for the mayor's office and so on that the evidence that i had

01:03:26.180 about those conversations because there'd be two people on the phone serge opera and the mayor's

01:03:30.540 chief of staff, or Steve Kanellakis, the city manager, and myself, was crucial to understanding

01:03:36.700 whether or not the invocation was justified. So the clients instructed me to make myself available

01:03:40.620 as a witness. The commission had wanted me to be a witness. I ended up being there under subpoena,

01:03:45.560 compulsion of law, for seven weeks. I was not allowed to basically leave Ottawa in the fall.

01:03:50.980 So that's how I found myself there. And in our legal system, you can't be a fact witness and

01:03:56.200 a barrister at the same time. So the trade-off was I didn't get to do the cross-examinations

01:04:01.560 and the other podium work, but I was thrilled with the work that the team did, particularly

01:04:07.540 Brendan Miller. You may have had a cruel and unusual punishment claim against being forced

01:04:12.220 to be in Ottawa for seven weeks, but I digress on that. Let's talk about the Emergencies Act

01:04:18.740 itself here, because, and I don't, again, want to go through the letter of this again. I've done

01:04:23.220 this on the show in the past, but it talks about all of these different thresholds, the CSIS Act

01:04:28.140 definition of a threat to the security of Canada, the Emergencies Act definition of a national

01:04:32.540 emergency, and so on. And it says that even if you have a national emergency, a threat to the

01:04:38.480 security of Canada, even if you've done all that, it has to rise to the level that it cannot be

01:04:43.440 effectively dealt with under any other law of Canada. So the negotiations strike me as an option

01:04:51.300 that was on the table for the government that was outside the Emergencies Act that the federal

01:04:56.260 government didn't want to entertain, not to mention other options that were put together

01:05:00.180 by law enforcement that were ignored. So have you seen in the report how the commissioner explains

01:05:07.280 or if he explains why this couldn't be dealt with effectively by other means than the Emergencies

01:05:12.860 Act? As you can appreciate, like the rest of us, we're sort of skimming through it and jumping

01:05:18.220 from section to section um but you know i think what i want to emphasize right now andrew is

01:05:25.740 all of us and i mean everybody who's watching your program or who watched the the tape of it

01:05:31.180 in the playback in the future we all know what happened we know that we had almost three years

01:05:37.900 of extreme authoritarian measures imposed on tens of millions of canadians upon our children and

01:05:45.100 schools and playgrounds and sporting and social and family events now admittedly a number of

01:05:50.780 those were at the provincial level we had the travel mandates restricting over six million

01:05:57.420 unvaccinated canadians fundamental charter rate of travel so we know we know we can look at what

01:06:04.940 happened even with through the biased lens of the dying legacy media and if we just pause for a

01:06:12.140 a minute and think about what we saw tens of thousands of canadians of all ethnic backgrounds

01:06:18.300 religious backgrounds um uh demographics lining the highways and the overpasses and minus 20 minus

01:06:26.860 30 for hours because they didn't know when the convoy was coming through and waving flags and

01:06:31.100 signs the kids the excitement all of these things think about that for a second now do something

01:06:37.340 else put beside it the extreme reality that canadians would have faced during world war one

01:06:45.020 sending their sons off to war and many of them dying in battlefields not sure where the enemy

01:06:52.160 was uh enemy within you know different groups were rounded up and put in camps um the the fear

01:06:59.360 the paranoia world war ii and all of its horrors and then the flq crisis of the 70s where there

01:07:05.380 was bombings kidnapping of government officials diplomats murders right those are the instances

01:07:14.620 where as Canadians we have believed it was proper to empower our government without any form of

01:07:22.980 process to fundamentally strip us of our basic human rights our rights and freedoms and only

01:07:30.500 in those types of circumstances part of me doesn't care what's on thousands of pages of the 0.63

01:07:36.820 Rouleau report because we all know what we saw whether you were there or whether you were an

01:07:42.380 observer and there if it is true and according to Rouleau it is that civil disobedience that

01:07:51.540 Canadians coming together to protest concerns about government overreach to protest their

01:07:57.660 concern and their fears and their disapproval of government slipping into authoritarianism which

01:08:03.620 we saw in spades during covid and still exists to some extent to this day if that's the trigger

01:08:09.820 if that's all it takes for the government to freeze your bank account your personal bank account

01:08:16.560 to to freeze your business bank account there was companies that couldn't make payroll because

01:08:23.600 their business accounts were frozen if that's all it takes the reality is this is a dark historic

01:08:30.180 day for canada this is a dark historic day for canada because the rights and freedoms that we've

01:08:36.080 all cherished and fought for no longer exist or to be clear they exist at the whims of the ruling

01:08:44.880 party whoever that might be of whatever political ideology they might have so uh it's a sad day

01:08:52.560 i came into this room and you know the people who are off camera and when i i came into this

01:08:58.540 room out of another meeting as we were digesting and the emotion that i felt and observed

01:09:04.100 overwhelmingly was like going into a family gathering after tragic news had arrived of the

01:09:11.520 death of for example my brother i sensed loss and mourning loss and mourning for the country that we

01:09:18.400 had and what we were born and raised in and it's admiration Canada true north strong and free

01:09:26.220 right and no war so there's another aspect to this that's really important I've got to cut

01:09:34.420 you short there Keith because Justin Trudeau is about to speak and give his reaction but I'd love

01:09:38.520 to connect with you again on this so if you want to join afterwards you're welcome back or we can

01:09:42.740 touch base on next week's show but but thank you very much for your work on this and that

01:09:46.700 impassioned plea. We now go to Justin Trudeau for his response.

01:10:16.700 inquiry to look at how and why we got there. This was an essential step to ensure transparency

01:10:24.220 and accountability. During the inquiry, I welcomed the opportunity to appear and to answer the

01:10:30.300 Commission's questions, as did all my colleagues. The work of the Commission and everyone involved

01:10:37.100 was very important, not only to better understand what happened a year ago, but to have a roadmap

01:10:44.060 going forward for any future government. Today, the Public Order Emergency Commission stated

01:10:52.220 that the very high threshold to invoke the Emergencies Act was met. He found that what

01:11:00.700 we experienced last year was a national emergency that threatened the security of Canadians.

01:11:07.580 Our job as a government is always to keep people safe and invoking the Emergencies Act was

01:11:15.180 the necessary thing to do to remove the threat and to protect people.

01:11:21.580 We've all been through a lot over these past years. Canadians have been stressed,

01:11:28.500 faced real financial challenges and lost loved ones. Many people came to Ottawa because they

01:11:35.400 they were hurting and wanted to be heard. In our country, everyone has the right to

01:11:41.620 protest peacefully. That's a fundamental right that government will always defend.

01:11:50.040 Here in Ottawa, people are used to political activity and protests on Parliament Hill.

01:11:55.740 But as the Commissioner said, lawful protests descended into lawlessness culminating in

01:12:04.400 in a national emergency.

01:12:07.200 Streets were blockaded in our capital city for weeks

01:12:10.480 causing serious harm to families and small businesses.

01:12:19.540 Borders and several places,

01:12:22.520 there were roadblocks which were harming safety.

01:12:28.360 At the Ambassador Bridge every day,

01:12:30.300 $300 million worth of goods transit between Windsor and Detroit.

01:12:36.860 And thousands of people, families, jobs, depend on these goods transiting freely.

01:12:44.980 And blocking this bridge was unacceptable.

01:12:48.800 And this roadblock was threatening and jeopardizing our trade with the United States, and was also

01:12:55.520 harming the Canadian economy.

01:12:57.240 Guns were found at the blockade. There was a real risk that people promoting ideologically

01:13:05.160 motivated violent extremism could act out, or that they could inspire others to act out

01:13:12.280 against their fellow citizens. The situation was volatile and out of control.

01:13:19.900 The Emergencies Act provided us with more tools to safely bring the illegal blockades

01:13:25.900 and occupations to an end. Let's be clear. We didn't want to have to

01:13:34.180 invoke the Emergencies Act. It's a measure of last resort. But the risk to personal safety,

01:13:42.840 the risk to livelihoods, and equally the risk of people losing faith in the rule of law

01:13:50.020 that upholds our society and our freedoms, those risks were real.

01:13:57.020 Responsible leadership required us to restore peace and order.

01:14:07.020 After listening to the dozens of witnesses and studying the necessary documents,

01:14:12.020 the Commission on the emergency crisis has decided that last year

01:14:18.020 We were, indeed, confronted with a national crisis and emergency, and the very high threshold

01:14:27.080 which should be invoked in order to—respected to invoke the Emergency Crisis Act has been

01:14:35.300 respected.

01:14:36.880 Those measures—such measures should not be made lightly.

01:14:40.860 And we knew that there would be an inquiry commission that would guarantee transparency

01:14:50.620 for Canadians.

01:14:51.620 A comprehensive, objective account of what happened, and it also provides recommendations.

01:14:59.840 Within the next year, our government will issue a comprehensive public response to the

01:15:04.900 Commissioner's recommendations.

01:15:11.260 We all agree that we should never have reached such a tilting point.

01:15:16.060 And we all agree that there are important conclusions to be drawn.

01:15:19.840 There are lessons for everyone involved, law enforcement agencies, all orders of government

01:15:27.460 and elected officials.

01:15:29.740 We will take seriously what the Commissioner concludes and what he proposes.

01:15:34.660 Responsible leadership means that we are always striving to do the very best for Canadians,

01:15:40.800 in words and in deeds.

01:15:44.760 Two days ago, we were commemorating the day of the Canadian flag.

01:15:54.600 Fifty-eight years ago, we flew the Canadian flag for the first time on Parliament Hill,

01:16:04.000 And I see the symbol of opening, open-mindedness and compassion.

01:16:09.280 I celebrated the fact that 58 years ago, the maple leaf was raised over Parliament Hill

01:16:15.680 for the very first time.

01:16:17.240 When I look at the Canadian flag, I see hope.

01:16:21.920 I see people who work hard every day.

01:16:23.880 I see a country that has overcome tremendous challenges.

01:16:29.120 a reason why Canada is one of the most successful democracies in the world. It's because we

01:16:36.940 work at it. It's not always easy. Actually, sometimes it can be pretty hard. But it's

01:16:46.000 worth it. Here in Ottawa, this Parliament, the Senate,

01:16:51.280 the Supreme Court, these are not only old buildings. They're the institutions that

01:16:57.920 protect our rights and freedoms. This is something we must all continue to

01:17:04.740 care for and defend. Not just governments, not just elected leaders, but all Canadians.

01:17:14.920 Our democracy is the responsibility of all of us together. A healthy democracy is always

01:17:23.040 to make us stronger especially in this moment of change and global uncertainty so let's be there

01:17:29.600 for one another let's listen to and respect each other even if we don't always agree and let's

01:17:36.160 continue to build a better future for all canadians thank you so much we have 25 minutes for questions

01:17:53.040 the invocation of the emergencies act. I might have jumped the gun. I started mid-sentence,

01:17:58.900 I believe. That was Justin Trudeau responding, I was saying there. And there are going to be

01:18:03.940 some questions from reporters, but I expect we'll hear more of the same. And if anything

01:18:07.280 important comes up from that Q&A, we will share the clip for you. But if the comments are any

01:18:13.060 indication, people don't tune into the Enderlot and show to see extended tracks of Justin Trudeau.

01:18:18.040 So I will say Conservative leader Pierre Polyev will deliver his remarks in supposedly nine minutes.

01:18:24.980 I don't know if he's going to wait for Justin Trudeau to end the Q&A or whatnot, but we are going to continue our discussion here.

01:18:31.600 And just before I get to my next two guests, I want to give a few recap points if you're just tuning in here.

01:18:37.320 The overarching headline, if you will, is that the Public Order Emergency Commission has defended the use of the Emergencies Act as appropriate.

01:18:46.240 with a few critiques and criticisms though.

01:18:49.540 Paul Rouleau says that he reached this conclusion

01:18:52.580 quote with reluctance, unquote.

01:18:54.840 He also said that a reasonable informed person

01:18:57.940 could look at the same evidence

01:18:59.000 and actually come up with a different conclusion

01:19:02.000 from what he's drawn.

01:19:03.060 So he's admitting that this seemed to be close

01:19:05.840 and wasn't a slam dunk by any stretch.

01:19:08.880 But I think it's important to note here

01:19:11.540 that he has also defended

01:19:13.200 some of the most contentious parts of this

01:19:15.340 like the freezing of bank accounts he says this was appropriate and it was effective and he said

01:19:21.100 it actually worked in being a disincentive when it came to the conscription of tow truck drivers

01:19:27.360 he talks about this as being justified because he says without the emergencies act the tow truck

01:19:32.780 operators wouldn't want to do anything with the government because they actually supported

01:19:37.120 the convoy largely he also says though that it might have been unjust if someone who had a joint

01:19:45.020 account with someone who was in the protest had their account frozen but you know there's not

01:19:49.580 really a way around that so we just don't need to worry about that to which I'm like well hang on

01:19:53.880 doesn't that mean that there's a bit of a problem here he does say however that there should have

01:19:59.300 been a mechanism in place for people to get their accounts unfrozen so if someone is perhaps

01:20:06.700 implicated in this by the bank they should be able to say all right well I've left Ottawa now

01:20:12.900 can you unfreeze my account but there was no recourse available to anyone there one thing

01:20:18.960 that was interesting is that he writes invocation of the emergencies act is a drastic move but it is

01:20:27.640 not a dictatorial one he said in an emergency government may need to quote act now and ask

01:20:34.580 later unquote let's go to two folks that were instrumental in putting forward the position

01:20:41.060 critiquing the Emergencies Act before the Public Order Emergency Commission.

01:20:46.260 Joining me are Hatim Keir and Rob Kittredge from the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms.

01:20:53.700 Let's start with you, Rob, because I know that your preferred go-to in the line of questioning

01:20:58.560 was tow trucks. I think we probably heard more about tow trucks from you than anyone else here.

01:21:03.680 Any tow truck wisdom that you've drawn from the report before we get into the more serious stuff?

01:21:08.360 I mean, it's overall disappointing, but having spent so much of my time at the Commission on the issue of tow trucks, even taking, you know, some time with the Prime Minister of the few minutes that we had with the Prime Minister to talk about tow trucks, to have the Commissioner come to the conclusions that he did.

01:21:28.540 I think it was quite clear from testimony, not only that tow trucks were in fact available, but they were in Ottawa and available everywhere else where they were needed in time to execute the plan to remove the protests.

01:21:46.800 And I mean, it's just one of a number of greatly disappointing points in this report.

01:21:53.660 I think we had, I can be a bit of a Pollyanna sometimes about the cases that I'm involved with, but I was genuinely optimistic that this process was going to result in some real findings against the government here.

01:22:10.080 And I'm frankly, I'm pretty surprised that the commissioner was able to be as provide as much of an endorsement as he did on the facts that he was presented, which, in my view, don't really back them up.

01:22:27.200 Let's go to you, Hatib. Did you share that optimism going into this or were you a bit more of a skeptical? Were you a bit more of a skeptic?

01:22:34.620 uh i think we both got more optimistic as time went on uh we went into this with uh an understanding

01:22:41.700 that we may we we may be fighting an uphill battle trying to argue that the the invocation

01:22:48.520 of the emergency act wasn't justified but as it went on all the evidence just spoke to how

01:22:53.060 unnecessary the emergency acts were every police officer said they could have done this without

01:22:56.780 emergency powers uh there was evidence about how protests were being cleared up right before the

01:23:01.760 emergency act was invoked so yeah I think walking out of it I felt pretty confident as well so it

01:23:09.400 just makes the the report all the more disappointing. One of the things that we were talking about a

01:23:14.640 little bit earlier with Alan Hauner is how little time was given to some parties and obviously there

01:23:19.820 is this challenge you have a number of people that I think deserve to be at the table that all want

01:23:24.420 to get their kick at the can from the Ottawa Police Service to Peter Slowly to the Government

01:23:28.960 of Canada, the commission itself, the Freedom Convoy, the corporation representing them and so

01:23:34.520 on. And the JCCF had to share standing with two other groups. And I'm curious if you felt that

01:23:40.660 you were given as much time as you deserved, given the circumstances, or if you felt that you were

01:23:45.880 deliberately constrained by the process? I think it would have been nice to have more time. And I

01:23:51.900 think that both the TDF, well, all three of us really, it would have been justified to grant us

01:23:58.720 each individual standing. I mean, there's some question about the appropriateness of lumping us

01:24:04.780 all together. And I think at the end of the day, the three of us, the three groups that shared

01:24:13.080 our standing, us, the Democracy Fund and Citizens for Freedom, I think at the end of the commission

01:24:20.240 hearings, it was pretty evident that we had made a pretty serious contribution to the core of the

01:24:25.740 argument. I mean, there were only a handful of parties at the hearings that were actually

01:24:30.480 arguing about the Act and the legitimacy of the invocation of the Act and whether the

01:24:36.020 terms of the Emergencies Act were met when the emergency was declared. A large number

01:24:42.960 of the parties present were police officers or police organizations basically trying to

01:24:49.860 pass the buck to the next police officer or the next police organization as to who was

01:24:54.720 responsible for the policing failure all of which deserves a hearing and an inquiry like this but

01:25:02.240 we were among a small number of groups uh who were actually arguing about the meat of the issue

01:25:08.560 and it it definitely would have been nice to have a bit more time to have access to longer periods

01:25:14.800 of time to cross-examine um i think to be fair there are some real practical concerns about

01:25:21.600 trying to run an inquiry inquiry like this in as short a period of time that the uh uh commissioner

01:25:28.080 had to run it i mean practically speaking if all of the parties were able to have you know an hour

01:25:33.840 of cross-examination with every single witness uh as we may have liked or many hours as we may have

01:25:39.600 liked uh we would still be in hearings now and probably would be for a long time to come and

01:25:44.880 and that uh because the deadline for the report was set actually in the emergencies act and can't

01:25:51.440 be changed uh you know it was just practically impossible to give everybody as much time as they

01:25:56.720 wanted i think the important thing is that in the time that we had we clearly established that the

01:26:03.200 thresholds under the emergencies act were not met and we made the best use of the time that was

01:26:09.520 available to us and i think we made our case in the time that was available to us and it's uh

01:26:15.840 um without getting into the meat and potatoes of it too much it's disappointing that the

01:26:19.680 the commissioner didn't agree. One thing I would say going into it I go into all of these things

01:26:25.980 being very pessimistic just because anytime I've ever gotten my hopes up about a court case I've

01:26:30.420 been disappointed except for the one that I did where in which I won but the ones I cover never

01:26:34.480 go my way but I as the commission hearings went on I was getting more and more optimistic because

01:26:41.160 I was seeing the story was being told I was seeing police talking about all these different things

01:26:45.480 that they had proposed that were not the emergencies act that they thought would have

01:26:49.260 worked. And again, it wasn't meant to be a process indicting or implicating the convoy. It was meant

01:26:54.840 to be a process investigating the government. But I thought that, you know, even if the commissioner

01:27:01.220 upholds the Emergencies Act as appropriate, he might still be more critical of some of the

01:27:07.860 measures used, specifically the financial measures, which were insanely broad. I mean,

01:27:13.240 And one in particular is that it really allowed anyone who gave a $10 donation to the convoy

01:27:19.740 to have their accounts froze.

01:27:21.460 And if you read the way the text was worded, and the commissioner seems to say,

01:27:25.920 well, we don't know of donors where that happened.

01:27:29.540 So he says it's not really an issue.

01:27:31.480 But to me, that kind of skips over what is a pretty serious thing.

01:27:35.720 Just because the government doesn't use the full extent of the power it gives itself

01:27:39.120 doesn't mean it didn't give itself an extraordinarily excessive amount of power yeah and

01:27:45.380 with respect to the emergency economic measures we saw at the hearing there was a real lack of

01:27:51.760 accountability as to who is using the measures so we heard evidence from finance canada talking

01:27:57.000 about how they drafted the what eventually became those economic measures but then they sort of

01:28:02.720 washed their hands and said we didn't decide how they got used and then we heard from the rcmp

01:28:08.400 who sent lists of protesters to the banks saying,

01:28:13.420 well, we ultimately left it in the hands of the banks

01:28:15.760 to decide how they use the powers.

01:28:17.540 And then we didn't hear from the banks.

01:28:19.300 Yeah, and we also had government saying that they learned,

01:28:21.320 they just like kind of, or police saying

01:28:22.880 they just found media reports and sent those along to banks.

01:28:26.980 Yeah, and it came out at the hearing as well

01:28:29.420 that the banks had protection from liability

01:28:33.040 if they acted under the act,

01:28:34.500 but there wasn't anything if they didn't act.

01:28:37.020 So you can understand why they did what they did. And so to not find an issue in the way those powers are drafted, it just it highlights and amplifies the problems with the use of the Emergencies Act in the first place, because the idea is that under normal day to day life, there's limits on what the government can do.

01:28:52.880 The Emergencies Act allows them to lift those limits and to do extraordinary things.

01:28:58.940 And then we see the way the power was used was to create this very unfettered power to really mess with people's lives.

01:29:06.760 I mean, to freeze people's bank accounts.

01:29:08.960 I've heard stories from people talking about how they couldn't make their mortgage payments.

01:29:12.100 They couldn't buy groceries.

01:29:13.100 They were getting calls from their family, unable to just get by on the day-to-day.

01:29:17.860 And so to find that was appropriate is disheartening.

01:29:20.960 what would you say was going into this the the aspect that you thought was the uh the anti

01:29:27.840 emergencies act side strongest argument like what did you feel was the the thing you had the greatest

01:29:33.760 likelihood of success on and and where did the commissioner land on that issue we uh came into

01:29:40.080 this process with a pretty modest set of goals and actually we were much more pessimistic at

01:29:44.960 the start of it than we were by the end of it because as you said uh uh you know the evidence

01:29:50.240 came out and was very favorable to our side uh the commissioner and uh particularly commission

01:29:55.840 counsel seemed to be fairly even-handed about the way they were treating the evidence and

01:30:00.160 uh getting the story out but at the outset before the hearings began our goal was basically to put

01:30:06.480 down a clear record um we we were measuring success on the basis of uh if somebody was to look

01:30:15.120 at the record of evidence in the uh hearings and the cross-examinations they would see there would

01:30:20.880 be evidence there to show that the invocation of the act was unjustified even if the report

01:30:25.920 came out uh as it turned out to have done uh completely endorsing the uh uh the invocation

01:30:32.960 of the act our strategy at the start of of things was to um identify all of the behaviors that needed

01:30:40.400 to be purportedly needed to be controlled using emergency powers and to identify ways

01:30:46.940 that those that those emergency powers that those behaviors could have been controlled

01:30:53.220 without the use of emergency power so basically looking at the point of whether this could

01:30:58.540 have been dealt with under any other law of Canada and we we we started off working on

01:31:05.480 a very detailed list of all the behaviors that came up and what could have been done

01:31:10.540 in response and focusing on getting answers in cross-examination that would back up, that

01:31:15.720 would provide evidence that those other means were available.

01:31:20.420 As the hearings went on, I mean, the tow trucks was one of those issues, and that's kind of

01:31:26.080 why I was on tow trucks right from the very beginning.

01:31:31.740 as the hearings went on it just seemed so obvious that other uh means of dealing with these uh issues

01:31:38.780 uh were available speaking to uh minister anand on a cross-examination that i thought would be

01:31:45.180 a nice little throwaway where we could talk about cabinet confidence and at the very end of it uh

01:31:52.780 or sorry cabinet solidarity and at the very end of it address the fact that the national

01:31:57.340 Defense Act is actually a law of Canada and could have been used to send in the army to handle the

01:32:05.820 protests. While that might not be a desirable outcome, it is another law of Canada that could

01:32:11.100 have dealt with the circumstances. By the time we wrote our submissions, we were, you know,

01:32:19.140 unfortunately, maybe a little too optimistic about the commissioner's mindset on all of these issues.

01:32:24.620 And we spent more time on a technical argument about, you know, how to analyze the invocation of the Act and why that analysis should find that the invocation was unjust.

01:32:37.640 us and uh the commissioner on the issue of whether it could be handled by another law

01:32:43.560 uh of canada the commissioner made what appear to be um i i guess i i'm going to reserve my words a

01:32:51.680 little bit for uh once i we have a little more time to think about this but just to give you

01:32:56.560 one example uh the commissioner acknowledges in his reasons that the national defense act

01:33:03.220 is a law of Canada, despite Minister Anand's refusal to admit that, and that, in fact,

01:33:12.060 when the Emergencies Act was drafted, the intent was for the Army to be called in before

01:33:16.940 the Emergencies Act would be invoked.

01:33:19.320 That was the express intent of the drafters of the Emergencies Act, and he dismisses that

01:33:27.100 by saying, well, a lot has changed since the drafting of the Act, and I think that's

01:33:33.180 at page 237 I think of his volume three of his reason and you know so it seems like there's a

01:33:40.560 lot of very dismissive reasoning he's introducing living tree doctrine to the emergencies act which

01:33:46.520 is only like 30 years old right and I mean it seems to me that much has changed in that time

01:33:54.640 or whatever is hardly a an argument that really grapples with the with the tension that he's

01:34:00.160 that he's supposed to be dealing with so i you know disappointing but uh and maybe it's a shame

01:34:05.640 we didn't stick with our original strategy of just uh very um you know specifically and doggedly

01:34:12.640 addressing every single behavior but really we thought that the uh uh we thought that the

01:34:18.560 commissioner was uh paying more attention during the hearings i suppose adam one of the things that

01:34:24.000 struck me during the hearings and i actually thought it was quite astute of the commissioner

01:34:28.400 because he brought it up at a couple of points when he was questioning police, when he was

01:34:32.480 questioning Keith Wilson. I can't remember if he did it with Justin Trudeau, but I think he did it

01:34:37.040 with at least one of the cabinet ministers, was the idea of whether there was ever a lawful

01:34:41.980 alternative presented to protesters on how they could continue lawfully protesting. And maybe it

01:34:48.860 was that they could do it on foot if all the trucks were gone and that he was asking. And the

01:34:52.700 answer was basically, no, this never came up. This was never an option. And we know once the

01:34:57.340 emergencies act came into play that everyone was gone. Even if you were on foot, you were holding

01:35:02.580 a sign, you weren't honking a horn, you didn't have a truck, you were going to be arrested if

01:35:06.360 you didn't leave. And I didn't really see yet anyway, that line of questioning, which I thought

01:35:13.020 was a very useful one reflected in the report of why was there no alternative given on how to

01:35:18.940 continue a peaceful protest. It just seemed like he accepted that at one point the switch was flipped

01:35:23.940 and it became an unlawful protest and everyone had to get out so i actually did see i couldn't

01:35:31.040 give you a page number but i i did see a reference to that in the report where the commissioner talks

01:35:35.740 about the fact that protests were allowed to continue uh in front of the the war museum in

01:35:41.460 ottawa which is uh a little bit down the street from from parliament uh and then also uh the

01:35:47.840 coots protest that was broken up but then there was a protest that continued outside milk river

01:35:52.440 But I think even beyond that, there is this issue where peaceful protesters have been lumped in with whatever problems that there may be.

01:36:01.160 So to call the protest illegal, so does that mean that someone who's standing on the sidewalk holding a sign is committing an illegal act?

01:36:09.160 Or the trucks, for example, they may be illegally parked, but then to what extent do they get lumped in with threats of violence?

01:36:15.800 So the section of the report that deals with why the commissioner finds that there were threats of violence for the purpose of the Emergencies Act

01:36:23.500 references things like threats of lone wolf actors or threats that were made online or the guns that were found in Coots.

01:36:32.240 But Coots is thousands of kilometers away from Ottawa. There was no weapons found in Ottawa.

01:36:36.880 It's not clear that any of those threats referred to actually were coming from people in the protest.

01:36:42.360 So to just lump it all in together to find that there was violence and then to shut the whole thing down, I think, is a violation of people's rights to continue to protest.

01:36:52.980 This has been a theme throughout the show so far.

01:36:55.540 This is the end of, I think, a very significant chapter of this story, but it's not the end of the story.

01:37:00.720 There are a number of constitutional challenges.

01:37:03.420 There's the political dimension, the public education dimension.

01:37:06.600 Just in closing, if each of you could give, you know, 30 seconds on where you think the next battleground is on this issue,

01:37:13.020 either the broader freedom question or specifically the Emergencies Act.

01:37:17.680 I think in terms of, I'll speak to the legal end of it, I guess.

01:37:21.760 There is still a judicial review underway of the invocation of the Act.

01:37:26.600 And the Commissioner's findings, while disappointing, aren't binding on the court in that judicial review.

01:37:34.240 And we can hope that the court there will come to a better decision that, you know, corresponds more closely to my view on the issue.

01:37:49.200 But so in terms of legal battles, there are legal battles ongoing.

01:37:54.280 In terms of a greater freedom picture, I think it's unfortunate that this issue of protest has become so polarized and that so many Canadians are willing to, you know, we have such an us versus them mentality in every respect of our society these days.

01:38:17.280 And nobody is without sin on that on that point. But it really is a shame that Canadians who, you know, otherwise would respect freedom of speech and see an importance to the right to protest will write off those rights and be OK with curtailment of those rights.

01:38:38.460 as long as the people who are being affected are people whose opinions they don't agree with

01:38:43.460 or people who they don't like.

01:38:45.580 There was, you know, a huge amount of polarization about whether the protests were good or bad,

01:38:52.900 and those, you know, fell along party lines to a great extent.

01:38:57.620 All of this is unfortunate.

01:38:59.260 These are your friends and neighbors who have differing opinions from you,

01:39:02.100 expressing their opinions about government overreach peaceably in the capital of our nation

01:39:09.100 and we should all be concerned about defending their right to do that and preventing the government

01:39:14.880 from stifling that kind of protest. Yeah and I would also say that it was never a question

01:39:20.800 of agreeableness. You could dislike the Freedom Convoy and everything it stands for and still

01:39:25.900 accept that they have a legal right to protest and I think there were a lot of people that took

01:39:31.060 as i said earlier on the show a somewhat machiavellian approach here and that i don't like

01:39:35.420 them the emergency theft act is invoked and then a few days later they're gone so therefore i'm okay

01:39:39.680 with it and they don't think of the the longer term implications of it but i will give the last

01:39:44.280 word to you on this adam what are your thoughts on the next battleground here uh so since rob

01:39:49.380 addressed the the legal side of things i guess i'll address the the kind of the public the thing

01:39:53.300 that involves the people at home uh which is that the whole purpose of this inquiry is to hold the

01:39:57.680 government accountable but there's there's one more layer of accountability which is that all

01:40:02.380 the evidence was public all the arguments are public people can go onto the website and they

01:40:06.160 can look at these things for themselves they can see the coverage of uh you know like for example

01:40:10.520 yours andrew and and others and they can come to their own conclusions because at the end of the

01:40:15.140 day this report has no legal binding effect its its power is in its ability to persuade people

01:40:21.120 persuade the people in power persuade the people at home and so uh you know if the people at home

01:40:26.040 have any questions they should look past the report to the actual evidence themselves

01:40:29.480 look at things like the the video updates i did and other people's coverage and come to their

01:40:34.880 own conclusions at the end of the day you know and i think rob would agree sitting through all

01:40:39.100 the evidence and listening to what everyone had to say it seemed pretty clear to us that the

01:40:43.020 emergencies act wasn't needed or justified adam cure and rob kittredge of the justice center for

01:40:48.900 constitutional freedoms thank you both for your work on this and for coming on today great speaking

01:40:52.940 with you. Thank you. Thanks for having us. All right. Thank you. That was great. And just as we

01:40:58.060 said earlier, we're standing by for Pierre Polyev to do a press conference from Calgary. I believe

01:41:04.000 he was in Calgary today in which he'll give his response to this. But I wanted to go through a

01:41:08.320 few other observations from myself today because it was odd because at some points, Commissioner

01:41:15.000 Rouleau takes a very even handed view of things. And at other points, he tends to veer what I would

01:41:21.560 say is outside his mandate. In particular, one case, if you're following along at home, it is

01:41:26.820 in volume three, page 196 to 197. There won't be a quiz later, but if you want to play along from

01:41:33.760 home, that's where you look for it, in which he talks about the government messaging. And he

01:41:38.540 quotes Justin Trudeau's reference to, quote, the small fringe minority of people who are on their

01:41:45.060 way to Ottawa, who are holding unacceptable views. And he says that these comments inflamed

01:41:52.840 protesters. He says it hardened their resolve and embittered them towards government authorities.

01:41:58.380 But then he says this, I expect that the prime minister was intending to refer to the small

01:42:04.920 number of people who were expressing racist, extremist, or otherwise reprehensible views,

01:42:09.140 rather than to all Freedom Convoy participants. It may well be that his comments were taken out

01:42:14.820 context, including by some media. However, in my view, more of an effort should have been made

01:42:19.960 by government leaders at all levels during the protest to acknowledge that the majority of

01:42:24.500 protesters were exercising their yada yada yada. But what he says there is that, well, you know,

01:42:32.400 Justin Trudeau said that, but what he meant was he probably didn't mean it. Why didn't he say that

01:42:38.100 himself? And I don't mean during the commission hearing when he just tried to revise history and

01:42:43.740 say oh I've never called the unvaccinated names yeah you did everyone saw the video but why didn't

01:42:49.140 he in the course of the convoy say all of you have a right to protest I condemn the individual people

01:42:56.860 that are doing xyz no he painted them all with one brush he said they're stealing food from the

01:43:03.520 homeless he said they're white supremacists he said they are standing with people who wave

01:43:08.200 swastika flags. He said vile, reprehensible things about these protesters, and he did not

01:43:14.420 distinguish the good ones from the bad ones, the fringe minority from the overarching movement

01:43:20.600 that was peaceful and positive. No, because he didn't. So it's actually quite disgusting that

01:43:25.580 Commissioner Rouleau is running interference for Justin Trudeau here, when even Justin Trudeau

01:43:31.060 has not bothered to make this claim about what he said. And Paul Rouleau similarly tries to weigh in

01:43:37.840 on this idea of when the protest became unlawful, of when the protest became an illegal one. And he

01:43:44.540 calls it an occupation, which as you know, is a very loaded term. And he said, I don't consider

01:43:50.840 that the protest became an occupation as of the first Saturday. He said the protesters had basically

01:43:56.700 been invited. That's the word I was looking for. Invited to park their trucks for the weekend

01:44:03.840 in various locations in the downtown core.

01:44:06.780 By Monday, however, when they refused to leave,

01:44:09.340 the invitation was clearly revoked.

01:44:11.580 And he said, in addition, it was clear that the assembly

01:44:13.640 was no longer peaceful

01:44:15.500 given the widespread intimidation of residents.

01:44:18.100 Well, that wasn't actually clear

01:44:19.860 and that wasn't widespread and it wasn't demonstrable.

01:44:22.280 It was certainly the case that a lot of residents felt aggrieved,

01:44:26.120 but you also had residents that felt

01:44:28.020 they were very okay with this,

01:44:29.960 especially as the truckers increasingly tried

01:44:32.120 to consolidate their presence onto Wellington Street. One other point, Rouleau admits that

01:44:39.060 the legacy media amplified misinformation and disinformation. He says that there was

01:44:46.080 misinformation about the Freedom Convoy, which was used as a basis to unfairly discredit all

01:44:51.640 protesters. In one example, protesters were blamed for an act of arson in an apartment building,

01:44:56.920 which the police later confirmed had no links to the protest. This is the money quote,

01:45:01.320 where there was misinformation and disinformation about the protests it was prone to amplification

01:45:07.440 in news media and he quotes opp superintendent pat morris saying that often the media did not

01:45:15.320 reflect what police intelligence was showing about situations i mentioned earlier the distinction

01:45:22.540 between what uh marco mendicino said was happening in coots and what releau found which was that there

01:45:29.540 was no meaningful connection between the two. There was no coordination. So the idea that the

01:45:34.220 arrests of people in Cooch should translate to defending the Emergencies Act use in Ottawa

01:45:40.180 just doesn't hold water. One other observation that jumped out here that I found a little bit

01:45:46.700 odd is that Rouleau did not spend, in what I've read so far, a lot of time talking about the

01:45:53.960 civil liberties implications of the application of the Emergencies Act. Forget about what the

01:46:00.000 Emergencies Act was as far as justified or unjustified, but if it's in place, how constitutional

01:46:06.160 are the measures brought in under the Emergencies Orders? Because the core idea here was prohibiting

01:46:12.380 travel to downtown Ottawa. And he said that this was appropriate and it was reasonable. And he said,

01:46:20.480 my conclusion might have been different had there been evidence that the measure was intended or

01:46:25.820 used to limit access to the protest area by representatives of the media. In that case,

01:46:31.640 the measure would be limiting access to the protest by persons who were not engaged in any

01:46:36.100 unlawful activities. Well, you're kind of ignoring that that is what happened. And I just found on

01:46:44.640 Twitter in five seconds, a tweet from the Ottawa police where they say the following on February

01:46:50.860 18th, 2022. So one year ago tomorrow, all media who are attending the area, please keep a distance

01:46:58.460 and stay out of police operations for your safety. Anyone found within areas undergoing

01:47:07.200 enforcement may be subject to arrest. There will be a media availability later today at 474 Elgin

01:47:15.780 Street. So that part I don't think is the most relevant part, but the idea that media could be

01:47:20.600 subject to arrest if they're found within areas undergoing enforcement. So in that case, the

01:47:26.200 Ottawa police is saying directly that they will arrest journalists that in their words get in

01:47:32.840 their way. So then Paul Rouleau says, well, there's no evidence that press freedom was

01:47:36.680 interfered with. If there were, I might have a different position on this. Well, why didn't you

01:47:41.220 ask anyone? And that goes back to the discussion I had with Brendan Miller earlier, when Freedom

01:47:46.960 Corp wanted to invite several journalists, myself included, to testify. And that application was

01:47:53.280 turned down by the commission, even though I think, you know, again, how much I would have

01:47:57.900 had to add or how much it would have changed the report, probably very minimal. But this is now

01:48:03.060 something where the Rouleau is admitting there's a blind spot that his commission actually had the

01:48:08.580 option to work around. So those are just a couple of the observations that I plucked out. Again,

01:48:15.460 this is five volumes, 2,000 pages. Each volume is about 400 pages. And there are also academic

01:48:21.260 reports that have been put in there, some policy recommendations. It's going to take several days

01:48:26.220 to really go through this with a fine-tooth comb

01:48:29.000 and pluck out some other things.

01:48:31.100 But we are going to do that

01:48:32.780 and we are going to keep this discussion going

01:48:35.060 and have other folks on

01:48:36.560 that have had their own experience here.

01:48:39.320 I do want to share a clip with you from Paul Rouleau.

01:48:43.500 This is Paul Rouleau earlier

01:48:45.360 when he was introducing the report

01:48:46.980 and making that concession I shared with you

01:48:49.440 that a reasonable person might come up

01:48:51.620 with a different take on this than he did.

01:48:56.220 After careful reflection, I have concluded that the very high threshold required for the invocation of the Act was met.

01:49:06.840 in particular for reasons that i discuss in detail in the report i have concluded that

01:49:13.080 when the decision was made to invoke the act on february 14 2022 cabinet had reasonable

01:49:21.860 grounds to believe that there existed a national emergency arising from threats to the security of

01:49:30.600 Canada that necessitated the taking of special temporary measures. I do not come to this

01:49:38.960 conclusion easily, as I do not consider the factual basis for it to be overwhelming.

01:49:46.940 Reasonable and informed people could reach a different conclusion than the one I have

01:49:52.580 arrived at. I determined that the measures taken by the federal government were, for

01:49:57.680 the most part appropriate and effective and contributed to bringing a return to order without

01:50:03.360 loss of life or serious injury to people or property i also found however that in a number

01:50:11.640 of respects these measures were deficient these included important aspects of the emergency

01:50:18.800 economic measures order such as the absence of any discretion related to the freezing of accounts

01:50:26.160 or assets, and the failure to provide a clear way for individuals to have their assets

01:50:32.840 unfrozen once they were no longer engaged in illegal conduct.

01:50:42.220 That was Commissioner Paul Rouleau. He spoke for quite a significant period of time today. We just

01:50:48.240 took a little excerpt there, but I thought it was interesting how even though this report

01:50:52.460 is defending the use of the emergencies act it's not an outright exoneration of the government

01:51:00.020 in a really explicit unequivocal way and and there was a bit of couching of that and a bit

01:51:07.160 of nuance in what the commissioner was saying there and that he said this is not overwhelming

01:51:11.440 a reasonable person could come up with another perspective but even so he says that on balance

01:51:17.140 he thinks it was justified and on balance he thinks the measures were appropriate and the

01:51:21.260 only exceptions he really carves out to that are he thinks that the asset freezing was generally

01:51:26.420 fine, but I needed a little bit of fine tuning and needed a little bit of tweaking. And also

01:51:31.980 that we have the, I guess the flip side of that is the removal of licenses of commercial vehicle

01:51:41.000 insurance for drivers of trucks. He didn't think that that was also appropriate because he said,

01:51:46.840 then you're left with either a truck that cannot be removed from Ottawa, which defeats the

01:51:51.180 purpose or a driver who has to drive an uninsured truck from Ottawa back home, which again would

01:51:57.480 seem to defeat the purpose. So he said that was kind of stupid. It was counterproductive

01:52:00.960 and there's no evidence it really worked. So we've heard from Justin Trudeau. Pierre

01:52:06.060 Polyev was supposed to speak at 3.30 Eastern time. So about 25 minutes ago, and we haven't heard from

01:52:13.300 Pierre Polyev just yet. So I think we were going to wrap this at around four o'clock after Pierre

01:52:21.020 Polyev's remarks I think that if Pierre Polyev doesn't start within the next five minutes

01:52:25.020 we will bring an end to this edition of the Andrew Lawton show and I'll encourage you to check out

01:52:29.840 that on your own and we'll revisit it in the show next week although I'm told that Justin Trudeau

01:52:37.320 just finished wrapping questions so it's possible that Pierre Polyev was just waiting for Justin

01:52:43.140 Trudeau to exit stage left before he can come on stage right so we're feeling benevolent today

01:52:48.680 we'll give him five minutes and then we'll move on if he doesn't come not that he's on our calendar

01:52:53.400 but to set our own schedule here i want to read a couple of notes that i've gotten from people who

01:52:59.960 have been listening to the show and i haven't actually had a time to look at them yet one is

01:53:04.680 from sarah here who writes i am gutted i am heartbroken i am pessimistic and i don't know

01:53:11.880 what i feel about the future of canada anymore help me make sense of this well

01:53:18.680 When I first got the report at, I think like 12, 15, I immediately went to the section that I knew

01:53:30.140 was going to have the line in which you ignore everything and you go to conclusions and then you

01:53:34.480 go back to the start and knowing the conclusion, you work your way through it. And it was one line

01:53:41.900 that you saw in the report that jumps out, the decision to invoke the act was appropriate.

01:53:50.700 And when I read that, there was a moment in which my heart sank just a little bit.

01:53:59.860 I was prepared for it, but I also said even yesterday, and I've said on the show going back

01:54:07.080 to when the commission hearings were taking place that this was always meant to be one input but not

01:54:13.460 the be all and end all it was never going to be the final say on justin trudeau the final say on

01:54:19.620 the convoy the final say on the emergencies act and even if the judge came out and said the

01:54:26.000 government was wrong trudeau was despicable he shouldn't have done this how dare he it was

01:54:30.580 terrible even if he came out with the most like fire breathing fire and brimstone condemnation

01:54:35.760 it wouldn't matter. It wouldn't matter because there would be no official or even unofficial

01:54:45.680 response to that that would trigger any political accountability. I mean, Justin Trudeau said

01:54:50.700 earlier that there's going to be a response table to this in Parliament. The government

01:54:54.980 will respond to the recommendations. They'll propose reforms to the Emergencies Act. But

01:54:59.240 again, all of this was going to happen anyway. And Justin Trudeau, I predicted on my show last

01:55:05.240 week and now we'll never see if my prediction came to pass would have just come out and said well you

01:55:09.960 know lessons were learned and we hope this never comes up again and yeah we appreciate it and we

01:55:14.600 are all uh you know we're all in this together and diversity is our strength and yada yada yada and

01:55:20.040 you know here's my best al jolston impersonation and then just carry on like it wouldn't have

01:55:24.040 actually mattered and i think that probably would have been more infuriating to people

01:55:27.800 if the judge had come out with a scathing indictment of justin trudeau and then justin

01:55:31.560 and Trudeau just shrugged his shoulders and moved on. So to your point, Sarah, I think that

01:55:36.980 the idea of feeling that there was no recourse, the idea of feeling like there was no accountability,

01:55:45.560 the idea of feeling like there's no hope for the country is one that I totally am sympathetic to

01:55:52.540 because I've been through the pessimism of this country. I still am in disbelief at all the things

01:55:58.480 this government did to people, that 6 million Canadians were denied the right to travel across

01:56:03.520 the country, denied the right to leave the country, that millions and millions of Canadians were

01:56:08.380 denied basic fundamental rights. And then tens of thousands that decided they were going to stand up

01:56:13.480 against it were denied even more fundamental rights, the right to freedom of speech,

01:56:18.720 the right to freedom of assembly. But that is a reflection of Justin Trudeau. And it's a

01:56:24.480 reflection of a culture in this country that exists that does not value freedom, that does

01:56:28.700 not cherish freedom. And that culture was never going to be fixed by a quasi-judicial commission

01:56:35.940 appointed by the government. This is a fight that has to take place in the hearts and minds of

01:56:40.960 Canadians. And it's why I do this show. I was speaking back in November, I think it was, at a

01:56:49.280 Rebel Live event in Whitby, Ontario. And there were a lot of people there that were very disheartened

01:56:55.960 and very discouraged by everything. And a lot of the remarks from other speakers were feeding into

01:57:01.200 that. And I try to make people laugh. I try to give people a bit of hope. I mean, I'm an adherent

01:57:06.860 of Mark Stein and his old view that if the world's going to go to hell in a hand bath, you guys might

01:57:10.720 as well enjoy a laugh on the way there. But the message that I shared with people was one that I

01:57:18.840 was kind of convincing myself of as well, which is that I wouldn't do what I do if I didn't think

01:57:26.120 that freedom was worth saving and could be saved. I would just find some other job in which I didn't

01:57:32.340 have to immerse myself in the crap of most of the news media and listen to Justin Trudeau talking

01:57:39.140 and talking and talking and maligning people. I mean, I don't derive personal joy from living in

01:57:46.180 this world all the time, especially when it feels like you're fighting a losing battle a lot of the

01:57:51.220 time. But I do it because I love standing up for something that is meaningful to me and meaningful

01:57:59.260 to people that care about this and that I care about in return. But I do it because I believe

01:58:04.840 it's possible to fix this and to right this wrong and to right this shit. And I wouldn't do what I

01:58:12.180 do if I didn't feel there was hope. And that doesn't mean that you can tap into that same

01:58:17.620 hope. But all of the people that went to the Ottawa, they did it because they felt there was

01:58:22.540 a purpose. They felt there was a value. The people that have continued to align with the freedom

01:58:27.600 movement very similarly do so because they feel that there is something to that that makes it

01:58:33.820 worthwhile instead of just, you know, packing it in, going to live in the wilderness and waiting

01:58:38.520 out your dying days, just knowing that nothing can be saved. You do it because you believe

01:58:43.100 something can be. So that's been my approach to this. And I think that's how you have to take

01:58:49.560 this commission report and whatever Justin Trudeau says and whatever this court ruling

01:58:54.120 says and say, all of these are important, certainly. But none of them get the right

01:58:59.500 to take away your freedom. None of them have the right to do that. None of them have the right to

01:59:07.320 that you're a fringe minority with unacceptable views they may do it they may find other people

01:59:11.880 that do it the media may give them a pass the courts may give them a pass but you have a

01:59:15.720 fundamental human right to self-determination to individual freedom that exists at a far more

01:59:23.400 substantive and foundational level than any authority or power that the government claims

01:59:28.440 over you you have power and authority over the government they do not have real power

01:59:33.560 and authority over you on a fundamental human level.

01:59:36.420 And if you are a Christian, you believe this

01:59:38.820 because you know that law comes from God, not from man.

01:59:41.640 Even if you are an atheist,

01:59:42.960 you can enjoy the idea of natural law.

01:59:45.820 And I think these are some of the more philosophical points

01:59:48.420 that I would hope you adhere to on this,

01:59:51.240 or at least can draw some inspiration from.

01:59:53.940 So I went completely, completely wide on that,

01:59:57.400 but you asked me a philosophical question.

01:59:59.600 So I gave you a philosophical answer,

02:00:01.840 which is good because I don't need to give you a page citation for that. That was just coming from

02:00:05.540 my heart. It wasn't coming from, you know, page, you know, 972 of Commissioner Paul Rouleau's

02:00:12.000 report. But if you do want to look at page 972 of Commissioner Paul Rouleau's report, you can

02:00:17.900 because we have posted the whole thing up at tnc.news. And as I said, in the days ahead,

02:00:23.180 we'll have some more analysis about exactly what is in that and what the implications are and where

02:00:29.380 we go from here and let me just say before Pierre Polyev speaks I'm told there's movement so he'll

02:00:35.020 be coming imminently so I've given him a generous four-minute extension so far I the conservative

02:00:41.520 approach to this is going to be interesting because they were critical of the emergencies

02:00:45.160 act so are they going to come out and say we accept the finding are they going to come out

02:00:50.440 and say you know what he was still wrong or are they going to just find like the few lines of the

02:00:55.960 report that they feel justify their position and latch onto those. I think they're going to do that.

02:01:02.960 So there's one line where Justice Paul Rouleau says in the report that this was a failure of

02:01:08.880 many systems. It was a failure of policing, a failure of government. It was entirely preventable.

02:01:14.780 I think Pierre Paulieff is going to come out and say, this was preventable. The report proves it.

02:01:21.120 Justin Trudeau could have prevented this. Justin Trudeau inflamed this. I think they're going to

02:01:24.980 use the line about how Justin Trudeau's rhetoric contributed to this. They're going to use the line

02:01:29.340 about how it was police incompetence and government incompetence that allowed this to happen. I think

02:01:34.540 they're going to focus on those things and say that this is an indictment of Justin Trudeau.

02:01:39.760 To be honest, I think that's the bad call. I'll reserve judgment on the conservative approach

02:01:47.180 until we actually see the conservative approach, but that would be my prediction is that Pierre

02:01:51.480 is going to focus on a couple of little lines that will combat Justin Trudeau's narrative.

02:01:58.760 He'll say it's not a slam dunk. He'll say it's not an exoneration. And he'll kind of treat that

02:02:03.200 as though it actually reads into Justin Trudeau's actions, a level of failure that I, you know,

02:02:10.780 really that I don't think is there and that I don't think fundamentally people would draw from

02:02:16.320 that. But take from that what you will. And I've had so many, so many lovely comments from people

02:02:21.240 that I'm going to have to get through after the show, thanking me for having Tamara Leach on.

02:02:26.820 And I don't want to give you too much of a behind the scenes look at the show, because you'll

02:02:31.300 realize sometimes that we're flying by the seat of our pants. But that came up like just minutes

02:02:35.840 before the show. And I asked Tamara, and I've always been very conscious because I know that

02:02:40.100 she has bail conditions, but she was actually in the same room as Keith Wilson. So I think she was

02:02:44.300 able to make sure that, you know, if anything was asked that she really couldn't answer, he would

02:02:48.460 have been able to uh to tell her one way or the other but i was very glad she came i i know that

02:02:53.780 people are always asking how she is because she she isn't able to speak as openly and freely and

02:02:58.840 she's not able to uh be everywhere and and she still is facing a crown that may want to throw 0.96

02:03:04.040 her back in jail at the drop of a hat as they tried to do when she dared stand in the same photo

02:03:09.620 as tom marazzo so that was why i mean when my producer uh said in our little team chat here

02:03:15.960 Tom Arazzo's on. Do you want me to bring him on? I said, the love of all that is holy, do not bring

02:03:20.220 him on at the same time as Tamara Leach, because I don't want that screenshot to be admitted into

02:03:24.740 evidence and have her thrown back in jail of like the two of them on the same screen at the same

02:03:29.780 time, even if they're not talking. So that was why I think we had them on separately. And if anyone

02:03:36.520 is watching from the Crown office in Ottawa, you should know that there was no backstage where the

02:03:42.300 two talked. We kept them like a grade eight, like a 1960s school marm with like the meter stick

02:03:47.520 between them. There was no communication, no touching, no contact whatsoever. We didn't

02:03:53.100 violate any conditions here. So we have Pierre Polyev coming up in just a moment. I want to put

02:04:00.120 in a pitch here for True North's coverage of the Emergencies Act and of the Public Order Emergency

02:04:06.000 Commission and say, if you want to contribute to the work we're doing, please do head on over to

02:04:11.060 donate.tnc.news donate.tnc.news and you can do so in a different tab so you don't have to peel

02:04:18.640 away from this show but we are supported by the work of people that like what we're doing and

02:04:23.380 we are so grateful to you all and without further ado here is Pierre Paulyev

02:04:27.920 After eight years of Justin Trudeau, one on four Canadiens lack food and one on two

02:04:46.920 coupent leurs épiceries parce qu'ils ne peuvent pas payer les factures des épiceries.

02:04:55.460 Après huit ans de Justin Trudeau, il y a des gens qui vont aux banques alimentaires,

02:05:00.840 non pas pour manger, mais pour chercher l'aide médicale à mourir.

02:05:06.640 Pas parce qu'ils sont malades, mais parce qu'ils ont faim et misérable.

02:05:12.440 Après 8 ans de Justin Trudeau, les coûts de logement ont doublé. Le loyer a doublé.

02:05:23.440 Les paiements hypothécaires ont doublé. Et les maisons, le prix des maisons ont doublé.

02:05:30.440 Cela fait en sorte que 9 sur 10 jeunes qui n'ont pas une maison croient qu'ils ne

02:05:36.940 jamais en avoir une. Donc, on a des étudiants qui vivent dans les centres d'hébergement

02:05:44.620 parce qu'il y a un manque de logement. Il y a des sans-abri, des gens qui souffrent

02:05:51.880 avec la santé mentale plus que jamais après huit ans de Justin Trudeau. Ça a causé la

02:06:00.080 crisis, drugs, which has killed 30,000 people since the arrival of Justin Trudeau.

02:06:09.080 The criminalization rate has increased 32% since 8 years of Justin Trudeau.

02:06:16.080 Everything seemed to be broken.

02:06:19.080 People are suffering here in Canada after 8 years of Justin Trudeau.

02:06:27.080 Mais au lieu de prendre la responsabilité pour la souffrance qu'il a causée, Justin Trudeau essaie de diviser pour distraire.

02:06:39.940 Il essaie d'éviter la responsabilité en faisant peur d'un Canadien contre l'autre.

02:06:47.280 Il croit que si vous avez peur de votre voisin, vous allez oublier que vous ne pouvez pas payer vos factures.

02:06:55.620 que si vous avez peur d'un camionneur,

02:06:59.660 vous allez oublier que vous avez faim

02:07:01.960 après huit ans de Justin Trudeau.

02:07:05.320 Mais croyez-moi, ce n'est pas moi qui dis ça,

02:07:08.680 c'est le député libéral Joël Lightbound,

02:07:12.520 et je cite, il a dit ça envers le premier ministre.

02:07:18.560 Arrêtez de diviser les Canadiens.

02:07:20.920 Cessez de dresser une partie de la population contre une autre.

02:07:24.760 Je ne peux pas m'empêcher de constater, avec regret, que le ton et les politiques de mon gouvernement ont radicalement changé à la veille et au cours de la dernière élection.

02:07:38.980 D'une approche positive et unificatrice, on est passé à une décision de coincer, de diviser et de stigmatiser.

02:07:48.400 Je crains que cette polarisation de la pandémie ne risque de saper la confiance du public dans nos institutions de santé publique.

02:08:02.680 Ce n'est pas un risque que nous devons prendre à la légère. Il est temps d'en finir avec les divisions et les distractions.

02:08:11.660 Fin de citation. Les mots d'un député libéral.

02:08:16.880 Bill Morden, the former Minister of Finance of Justin Trudeau, said that the Prime Minister

02:08:25.640 used the issue of vaccines to divide people during the electoral campaign.

02:08:31.160 In doing this division, Justin Trudeau caused the emergency that we saw in Ottawa.

02:08:40.120 C'était lui qui a causé un problème et une manifestation qui n'étaient pas nécessaires.

02:08:47.120 Encore, le rapport de la Commission Rouleau a dit que les commentaires, les insultes que Justin Trudeau a versés envers la population ont servi, et je cite, à énergiser les manifestants, à dourcir leur détermination et à les rendre encore plus aigres envers les autorités gouvernementales.

02:09:11.480 Le premier ministre adjoint Chrystia Freeland a dit que la COVID était une opportunité politique, et c'est vrai, et Justin Trudeau l'a utilisé ainsi.

02:09:27.920 C'est malheureux. Moi, je prendrai une autre approche. Je vais unir les gens. Je vais écouter leurs histoires

02:09:37.240 and try to understand the pain they suffer, instead of attacking people who are in suffering.

02:09:45.240 Why not address their problems?

02:09:48.240 I'm going to eliminate the carbon tax to make the food and the food more affordable.

02:09:55.240 I'm going to control the expenses to eliminate the inflation that the government has caused

02:09:59.240 so that people can eat and pay the rent.

02:10:06.240 On va bâtir davantage de maisons pour que nos jeunes aient une place à vivre.

02:10:11.720 Et quand il y a une crise de santé, on va écouter toutes les voix et permettre le maximum de liberté personnelle dans les choix de santé personnelle.

02:10:22.820 C'est comme ça qu'on peut éviter ces genres de crises qu'a causé Justin Trudeau.

02:10:29.500 Speaking of crises, today, we know that our services of information have adverted the government

02:10:39.500 during the years of ingérence of a foreign and authoritarian government.

02:10:47.500 Justin Trudeau dit qu'il n'était pas au courant que nos services de renseignement ont rédigé l'un rapport après l'autre

02:10:58.620 et qu'ils ont partagé ces informations avec d'autres gouvernements alliés, comme la Grande-Bretagne, l'Australie, la Nouvelle-Zélande, les États-Unis,

02:11:11.320 mais sans avoir informé le premier ministre.

02:11:14.920 Il dit qu'il n'a pas jamais eu l'occasion de savoir.

02:11:19.060 Ce n'est pas vrai.

02:11:20.320 Justin Trudeau était au courant de cette ingérence.

02:11:23.860 Et il a accepté parce que l'ingérence était dans sa faveur.

02:11:28.880 Il est en faveur de l'ingérence des autres gouvernements de l'étranger

02:11:33.580 parce que ça l'aide dans les campagnes électorales.

02:11:36.540 Et c'est la raison pour laquelle il n'a absolument rien fait

02:11:40.000 to fight for other countries in our democracy, in our economy and in our population.

02:11:49.000 The Chinese people are friends.

02:11:55.000 The Chinese Canadians are one of the most patriotic,

02:12:01.000 working and honest.

02:12:04.000 Thank you.

02:12:26.360 After eight years of Justin Trudeau, the cost of housing has doubled.

02:12:32.200 of mortgage payments, rent, and home prices have doubled. It means nine out of ten young

02:12:39.520 people who don't own a home believe they never will. Think what that does to someone's psychology.

02:12:46.660 You're 30 years old. You're in your parents' basement. You can't start a family. You can't

02:12:53.080 save for your future. You can't build credit or collateral. And worse, based on today's high

02:13:00.220 interest rates and rising costs, you calculate that you never will. So you lose hope. Worse,

02:13:08.160 many homeowners are losing their houses because interest rates are going up after eight years of

02:13:13.240 Justin Trudeau, despite the fact that his government said they would stay low for long.

02:13:18.980 So those people lose their homes and on the street and addicted to drugs. After eight years

02:13:25.140 of Justin Trudeau, 30,000 people have died of drug overdoses. Crime rages as more and

02:13:34.980 more violent acts go unpunished, with a 32% increase in violent crime after eight years

02:13:42.180 of Justin Trudeau. Meanwhile, one in four Canadians skip meals, and one in two cut back

02:13:50.180 on groceries because food prices have gone up so fast under Justin Trudeau and his carbon tax.

02:13:58.420 People are walking into food banks asking help with medical assistance and dying not because

02:14:05.460 they're sick but because they're hungry and miserable after eight years of Justin Trudeau.

02:14:13.860 Veterans who go seek help are told by their own government they should consider getting

02:14:17.700 medical assistance and dying instead of getting the service they deserve and finally the government

02:14:22.820 says that all those people suffering from mental health understandably with how badly things are

02:14:30.100 going the government says they should use medical assistance in the dying this is the hopeless state

02:14:37.220 that justin trudeau has created in canada today after eight years of justin trudeau everything

02:14:44.740 feels broken but instead of fixing those things or at least taking responsibility for breaking them

02:14:52.740 the prime minister seeks to divide and distract see he thinks that if you're afraid of your neighbor

02:15:00.180 you'll forget that you can't pay your rent if you're afraid of a trucker you might forget

02:15:05.780 that you're hungry and take your eyes off of the guy who caused the problem in the first place

02:15:10.580 But don't take my word for it. This is what a Liberal MP said when he commented on the Prime Minister's conduct.

02:15:18.580 Stop dividing Canadians, and I'm quoting,

02:15:21.580 Stop dividing Canadians to stop pitting one part of the population against another.

02:15:27.580 I can't help but notice, with regret, that both the tone and the policies of my government

02:15:34.580 changed drastically on the eve of and during the last election, from a positive and unifying tone

02:15:41.720 to a decision that was made to wedge, to divide, and to stigmatize. I fear that this politicization

02:15:51.060 of the pandemic risks undermining public trust in our public health institutions.

02:15:57.220 this is not a risk that we should take lightly it's time to stop the division and the distraction

02:16:06.420 end quote the prime minister's own deputy prime minister christia freeland said that covid was

02:16:12.080 a political opportunity and and his former finance minister bill borneau says that the

02:16:18.180 prime minister used vaccines as a wedge issue to divide people and thus a lot of people were so

02:16:26.180 helpless and so desperate they ended up participating in a protest in ottawa this was an

02:16:35.700 emergency that justin trudeau created by attacking his own population by driving up their cost of

02:16:42.980 living by making it impossible for people to pay their bills and live their lives in peace

02:16:48.980 he caused the emergency that unfolded and then when he caused it he piled on he poured more

02:16:55.060 gasoline on the fire with nasty insults, jabbing his finger in the faces of his own citizens,

02:17:02.260 something that even today's report acknowledged contributed to the length and the intensity of

02:17:09.220 the protest. Everything feels broken in Canada, but we can fix it. As Prime Minister, I'll bring

02:17:16.260 people together. I'll listen to their concerns and understand the suffering that they experience.

02:17:21.460 In fact, I'll reverse the policies that caused that suffering in the first place by eliminating the carbon tax so that we can bring down heat, gas, and grocery bills by clearing away the bureaucratic gatekeepers to build more homes so our young people have a place to live.

02:17:38.060 I'll get off the backs and out of the way of our First Nations people so that they can supply themselves with a good quality of life.

02:17:44.780 In other words, instead of divide and conquer, we'll unite for hope in this country.

02:17:51.460 It's common sense. Now let's bring it home. Thank you.

02:17:58.640 I'll open the floor for questions. We have time for five questions.

02:18:03.240 Thanks. Carrie Tate from the Globe and Mail. I'm wondering if the story in today's Globe and Mail about China and the last election, whether that demonstrates the need for a foreign agent registry?

02:18:14.160 That was Conservative leader Pierre Polyev. And we are cutting short the Q&A as we did with Justin Trudeau just in the interest of time. But as always, we'll keep an eye peeled and share any clips with you from that that are relevant.

02:18:28.100 And I just want to say, first off, I called it.

02:18:31.100 I knew he would talk about the commissioner finding that Justin Trudeau's conduct and comments inflamed protesters.

02:18:38.540 But I will say Pierre Polyev, I think, focused on the bigger picture of this, which was ignoring the report almost entirely and just saying this is a country that is not working right now.

02:18:49.100 It's a country in which everything is broken, and it's a country in which people that went to Ottawa should not have been inflamed by the government but were there because things were broken.

02:18:57.880 And I think that there was a little bit more that he said in French, and I don't want to translate exactly without going back and confirming just because it's tough in real time.

02:19:08.860 And I'm not perfect at French, but I do think that he pushed a little further in French, as my understanding was.

02:19:16.240 But like I said, I'll go back and check just to make sure.

02:19:19.580 But again, he's not really dealing with the crux of the report.

02:19:22.560 He's talking about the bigger picture here.

02:19:23.900 He said the emergency in Canada did not come from the truckers.

02:19:26.880 It came from Justin Trudeau.

02:19:29.400 So perhaps that's something we can all agree on here.

02:19:31.960 I want to give a big thank you to all of my guests for coming on the program today.

02:19:36.100 Also, a huge thank you to Sean Thompson and Andrew Kozak for their work behind the scenes

02:19:41.360 and all of you for tuning into this live marathon edition.

02:19:45.240 I like didn't even bring a glass of water in.

02:19:46.880 So the first thing I'm going to do is run and grab a glass of water.

02:19:50.480 But it's been an absolute pleasure, even in dark circumstances.

02:19:53.980 and all of you have given me a little bit more hope

02:19:56.480 in the context of not wanting to get too dark

02:20:00.640 and too into the weeds on this.

02:20:01.960 So I thank you very much again.

02:20:03.700 Have a wonderful long weekend.

02:20:05.240 We'll be back next week

02:20:06.060 with more of Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.

02:20:08.800 Thank you, God bless, and good day to you all.

02:20:13.340 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

02:20:15.380 Support the program by donating to True North

02:20:17.940 at www.tnc.news.

02:20:23.980 Thank you.

Juno News - February 17, 2023

Public Order Emergency Commission defends use of Emergencies Act

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