Juno News - The Untold Stories Behind Canada’s Freedom Convoy

00:00:00.000 They were heroes during the lockdown. Then, overnight, they became criminals.

00:00:06.300 The Freedom Convoy was more than a protest. For many, it was a psychological jailbreak.

00:00:12.280 And the truckers who rolled into Ottawa in 2022 were cheered by Canadians from coast to coast to coast.

00:00:18.920 Then the government decided to crush them.

00:00:21.400 This episode of Disrupted isn't about Tamara Litch or Chris Barber.

00:00:24.820 It's about the forgotten individuals, people like Guy Meister or Robert Donnell.

00:00:30.540 Working-class Canadians still trapped in courtrooms years later, punished for honking the wrong way.

00:00:37.480 The Emergencies Act may have expired, but the political retaliation didn't.

00:00:42.960 My guest is journalist and author Donna Laframboise.

00:00:46.460 And her new book, Thank You Truckers, captures the movement as it really was.

00:00:51.020 It wasn't the threat to democracy that journalists and politicians would have you believe.

00:00:57.100 It was a celebration of freedom, of national unity.

00:01:01.220 Like Donna says, the real extremists weren't in the trucks.

00:01:04.860 They were in office.

00:01:06.540 I'm Melanie Bennett. This is Disrupted.

00:01:08.940 Donna, thank you so much for joining me today.

00:01:21.420 Thanks for inviting me. It's a pleasure.

00:01:23.160 Your book came across my desk, Thank You Truckers, Canada's Heroes and Those Who Helped Them,

00:01:29.620 which documents the 2022 Freedom Convoy protests and highlighting the public support of the movement

00:01:36.780 and also criticizing the government and the media response around the trucker convoy.

00:01:43.500 So I would love to talk about this with you today.

00:01:46.520 So why don't you first start, maybe give us an overview of your book and what you talk about in there.

00:01:54.960 Thank you. I'd love to.

00:01:56.580 So this is the only book so far that documents ordinary people's stories.

00:02:03.060 So there have been some really fabulous books written about the convoy up to this point.

00:02:06.900 And they've either been this big picture, this is what happened, then this is what happened,

00:02:11.120 then this is what happened, or they've been the personal stories of organizers or spokespeople.

00:02:17.000 And those are all really important historical documents and part of, you know,

00:02:22.360 a very important part of documenting what went on.

00:02:25.260 And my book, I just went out and interviewed ordinary people.

00:02:30.300 So they weren't famous and they just got in their trucks and I wanted to know why and then what happened next

00:02:37.580 and what happened in Ottawa and what happened afterwards.

00:02:40.740 So I went to Ottawa actually as a photographer because something historic was going on

00:02:46.600 and I wanted to just take my camera and document that historic moment.

00:02:51.300 And I spent a week there walking around and I talked to some truckers,

00:02:55.760 but most of the time actually I was standing back because I was photographing how the public was interacting with the truckers.

00:03:03.780 And, you know, it was a big love fest.

00:03:06.620 You know, the people were coming up and thanking the truckers and begging them not to go

00:03:12.680 and handing them cash and handing them, you know,

00:03:16.020 here's a donated barbecue so you can cook outside and here's a generator to run your lights

00:03:21.540 and here's food and here's mittens and here's hats.

00:03:25.860 And it was this huge love fest with all of these Canadians just saying,

00:03:32.720 we're behind you and we've got you back and can we do your laundry and we'll bring it back tomorrow

00:03:36.680 and it'll be clean and folded.

00:03:38.660 And, you know, when else has that ever happened in a protest when you have people coming to Ottawa

00:03:43.780 and then all of these thousands of other Canadians saying, we're here for you, we're going to help you,

00:03:49.700 we're going to make sure that you can get the message across to the leaders.

00:03:54.360 So I was documenting that and I went home and I was very concerned when I was in Ottawa.

00:04:01.860 I went with a friend who's not very political and we would walk around together

00:04:06.580 and, you know, people would be laughing and dancing and hugging

00:04:09.620 and there was so much love and so much joy and then we'd go back

00:04:13.720 and if you turned on the television news, you heard about far-right racists and terrorists

00:04:20.040 and who were holding the city hostage and it was just nothing like what we had just experienced on the street.

00:04:29.180 And that was sort of a moment for my friend who just said,

00:04:32.000 well, what's the point of watching the news? It's all bullshit. 1.00

00:04:34.800 So, you know, that was a really important moment for her that, you know, she wasn't expecting. 0.99

00:04:41.380 And when I went home from the convoy, you know, and I did the second week

00:04:46.060 and we didn't know how long it was going to go on and, you know, there's only so long you can pay for a hotel room

00:04:53.500 and you're not sure what's coming next.

00:04:55.160 So I wasn't there for the terrible stuff that happened at the end.

00:04:58.820 But I expected the media to snap out of it.

00:05:01.980 I expected once, you know, calmer heads are going to prevail, there's a little time has passed,

00:05:07.180 we're going to start having now an accurate and an honest conversation about what happened in Ottawa.

00:05:13.100 And that didn't seem to be happening at all.

00:05:16.560 And then it was at that point that I decided that I guess I should be documenting these people's stories

00:05:23.560 because otherwise it's not going to happen.

00:05:26.060 So afterwards, I had to sort of struggle a little bit to get names and numbers

00:05:31.640 because I hadn't actually collected that many because I'm just taking photographs, right?

00:05:37.120 So I was sending some truckers I knew.

00:05:40.200 Do you know this guy?

00:05:41.340 You know, a picture of this guy.

00:05:42.460 Do you know how I can get in touch with him?

00:05:46.160 But eventually people would say, oh, you have to talk to so-and-so, you have to talk to so-and-so.

00:05:50.580 So it became very easy, actually, to, you know, to learn the experiences.

00:05:58.320 And they were great, great stories.

00:06:01.880 One of the – so you also wrote an article for the CSTC Journal,

00:06:05.760 which is what explains the book to me and the stories of the individuals who were at the protest,

00:06:13.500 not necessarily just the truckers, but people who were there in solidarity and so on and so forth.

00:06:18.340 And it really reminded me of the story – I don't know if you know the story of Daryl David.

00:06:23.880 He was a black blues musician.

00:06:26.240 In the 1980s, he befriended members of the KKK.

00:06:31.940 And it all happened because these members of the KKK were – I think they were in a bar one night.

00:06:37.080 And he – Daryl asked the KKK members,

00:06:40.080 how can you hate me if you don't know me?

00:06:43.460 And this, I guess, friendship blossomed or they started getting to know each other.

00:06:47.740 And all ended up in several of the members giving up their robes at the end.

00:06:51.760 And so it's a story of how – how can you hate me if you don't know me, I think is really critical here.

00:06:58.600 And in this case, with the way your article described it,

00:07:02.480 is the government, the KKK in this story, hating without understanding?

00:07:05.740 And I also listened to another podcast you did recently with Tom Nelson.

00:07:08.840 And you brought up that a police chief had said,

00:07:12.160 anyone bringing food or money to the truckers will be hunted down.

00:07:15.540 Again, how can you hate me if you don't know me?

00:07:18.160 And this betrayal from the media afterwards,

00:07:19.980 you said that you thought perhaps the media would change their tune.

00:07:24.420 So did the media go in?

00:07:26.040 I mean, we know that Pierre Polyev did go meet some of the truckers

00:07:30.140 and he hasn't heard the end of it since.

00:07:31.960 But I'm not sure any of the other politicians have.

00:07:34.380 And so what are your thoughts on this?

00:07:38.120 So you're absolutely right.

00:07:39.760 We have this – we have this thing going on in society now

00:07:42.800 where if a politician – if the political class and the media say that you should hate someone,

00:07:49.720 then many, many people just kind of follow that.

00:07:52.820 And they don't actually make any attempt to understand or to do some research on their own

00:08:00.040 or to get a different perspective.

00:08:01.880 The CBC says these are bad people.

00:08:04.160 They must be bad people.

00:08:05.980 And so, yes, there was this incredible demonization.

00:08:10.540 Before the truckers even got to Ottawa, we had our prime minister calling them, you know,

00:08:16.800 a fringe minority with unacceptable views.

00:08:19.980 They haven't even got there yet.

00:08:21.560 You haven't even had a conversation with them yet.

00:08:24.480 And yet you are demonizing them.

00:08:27.280 You are putting them outside of normal conversation.

00:08:32.120 They're not worth having a conversation with.

00:08:34.720 And that's a terrible thing.

00:08:36.060 And, you know, it undermines democracy.

00:08:39.660 It undermines, you know, us understanding each other.

00:08:44.480 Canada is a big country with many different regions.

00:08:48.780 And, you know, it used to be that the CBC used to claim that its role was to help Canadians,

00:08:54.640 diverse Canadians, understand each other.

00:08:57.440 And instead what happened was the CBC, amongst other media outlets, just decided to, you know,

00:09:05.300 to adopt the very, very hateful, and I don't use that word very often, but a very hateful perspective of the government. 0.97

00:09:16.220 These are just mangy dogs. 0.89

00:09:18.140 We don't even have to talk to them.

00:09:20.820 And the CBC was promoting that.

00:09:23.320 But what's very interesting is that during the course of these interviews, I spoke to a number of truckers who said,

00:09:31.040 I gave an interview to the CBC, or I gave an interview to CTV, and they told me I was going to be on the news.

00:09:39.640 And then either I wasn't on at all, my interview had totally been shut down, or they took half a sentence of something I said.

00:09:47.560 And in one guy's case, he said, they made me look like a psycho because they only, you know, quoted me this.

00:09:54.140 I had given them a 15-minute interview, and I had answered a lot of questions, and they use one tiny little bit in a way that's very deceptive.

00:10:03.020 And in another case, you know, the trucker was sitting there on Wellington in his blue Peterbilt, and his wife is in the passenger seat.

00:10:13.800 So when the CBC crew comes up to his window, there's the cameraman, there's the sound guy, there's the journalist asking the questions.

00:10:23.560 She filmed it. She filmed it. And I got to see that video afterwards. So that CBC crew did a very proper job.

00:10:33.660 They asked questions, they let the trucker answer, you know, they did their job.

00:10:38.900 And then that film footage went back to the studio, and almost none of it made it on air.

00:10:46.120 I think that, again, he said three words, three words that this man said out of this entire interview got on the air.

00:10:54.040 So things were happening in the editorial suites, in the, you know, they were being sliced and diced in the studio,

00:11:03.380 even though journalists on the street had done their proper job.

00:11:07.800 So there, you know, what went on there is very, very alarming on many dimensions.

00:11:15.240 And, you know, it's something we should be talking about, but we're not.

00:11:19.400 Source of the, with the resignation of Trevor Dunraj recently, who was at the CBC,

00:11:26.140 has essentially come out and said that there are these editorial issues, that these decisions are being made at the top.

00:11:32.300 And I think we're going to hear a lot more about that over the coming months and years,

00:11:35.980 which I, for one, am looking forward to getting to understand a little bit better.

00:11:39.600 Now, what your article does, and I imagine what your book also does, is, like you're saying,

00:11:45.040 really humanizes the individual stories of people who were defending Canadian life,

00:11:50.940 were defending freedom, their own personal freedom.

00:11:53.420 And one of the points that I really enjoyed in the essay is pointing out that for nearly two years,

00:11:58.680 these essential workers, you know, these, whether they're nurses or, you know,

00:12:04.180 people who work in grocery stores or truckers even, were lauded as heroes of the country.

00:12:09.880 They were keeping everything alive.

00:12:11.320 They were keeping everything going at a time where we're all locked down.

00:12:14.060 And all of a sudden, after the vaccine mandates, then suddenly they became the enemy of the country. 0.86

00:12:20.620 They became, you know, the, like you said, the people with unacceptable views.

00:12:25.240 And this really is a betrayal of the Canadians.

00:12:30.000 And then the Canadian flag became the symbol of far-right hate, right?

00:12:34.660 It was misogynists, often racists, and so on and so forth.

00:12:38.260 And I was recently in England doing a report on migrant protests.

00:12:42.660 And although they didn't have the same jubilant feel to it,

00:12:47.720 it certainly was a similar situation where these are working-class individuals

00:12:52.700 who are affected by policies of the government and they're expressing themselves

00:12:57.040 by raising their own flag and saying, we are celebrating our own country.

00:13:02.100 This is who we are.

00:13:03.980 And the same thing is happening.

00:13:06.140 They are being treated as far-right racist and all this stuff.

00:13:09.560 The local council where I was in Norwich, just as I was leaving,

00:13:13.680 made a decision to criminalize people, not just raising the flag,

00:13:18.860 but if you'd said something hateful while you were raising the flag.

00:13:21.160 It became a non-crime hate incident or a hate incident.

00:13:24.640 So there's a lot of similarities between the using of the flag

00:13:29.200 or turning the flag, a national symbol for people, into this symbol of hate.

00:13:34.980 And I know this is not necessary to do with a trucker protest,

00:13:37.940 but I'd be curious to hear your views on that, because Canada's reversed that now.

00:13:42.440 Now it's become a national symbol of pride again.

00:13:48.700 Yes, that's right. It's sort of whiplash.

00:13:51.940 So when people went out to the overpasses to cheer on the truckers,

00:13:56.880 there were all sorts of Canadian flags being waved.

00:14:00.500 And that was, I think, a new thing for Canada.

00:14:04.820 Americans, you know, have a lot of flags in their front yard,

00:14:09.420 and they wave flags a lot, but Canadians, not so much.

00:14:14.300 And it's the first time, you know, other than an organized Canada Day celebration,

00:14:18.300 it's the first time I can remember people using the Canadian flag as a symbol

00:14:25.460 and to make a political statement.

00:14:27.700 But you're absolutely right.

00:14:29.780 These are ordinary people who are saying,

00:14:32.340 this is Canada, or this is not Canada.

00:14:35.200 This is not what Canada should be.

00:14:39.520 And, you know, a lot of the signs on those trucks

00:14:42.280 and on just handmade signs that people brought to Ottawa

00:14:46.480 talked to, you know, quoted the national anthem,

00:14:50.140 you know, glorious and free.

00:14:52.720 You know, there were these lines from the national anthem that were,

00:14:58.200 you know, so Canadians were being patriotic.

00:15:01.320 And also the other thing that came up was the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

00:15:05.500 People would put that on a protest sign, you know, and walk around with it.

00:15:09.920 Or there'd be copies of the Charter in the windshields of the parked trucks

00:15:15.800 that were protesting on Ottawa.

00:15:18.320 So we were basically, you know, as Canadians saying,

00:15:22.280 these are all of the things, our Charter, our flag,

00:15:27.360 we're supposed to be about freedom,

00:15:30.260 we're supposed to be standing on guard for our country.

00:15:33.720 And that was the context in which their, you know,

00:15:37.740 concerns were being expressed.

00:15:39.020 And I think it was a very healthy context.

00:15:42.660 I don't think it was, it was at all threatening, but you're right.

00:15:46.580 You know, people who were opposed to this message

00:15:49.220 turned it into this, this, you know,

00:15:52.380 oh, you must be far right, you know,

00:15:54.620 terrible person if you're doing this.

00:15:56.820 And so a real, a real, again, a, you know,

00:16:01.720 very good at labeling people and shutting people down

00:16:04.940 and not very good at actually listening

00:16:07.140 and hearing the concerns of someone who's not like you.

00:16:13.080 That's exactly what I heard.

00:16:14.740 I tried to speak to the so-called left.

00:16:17.560 I don't like left and right,

00:16:18.360 but that's, that's the discourse in the UK right now.

00:16:20.600 I kept trying to speak to people on the left,

00:16:22.540 for example, about discourse.

00:16:24.260 And they kept telling me how important discourse is,

00:16:26.140 but then that discourse never really happened at all.

00:16:28.620 And they were very quick to label.

00:16:29.960 And I'm seeing the same patterns over there.

00:16:31.500 And there was a lot of national, I'll bring it back.

00:16:34.640 There's a lot of national unity around the flag,

00:16:37.040 not just with the truckers,

00:16:39.360 but people who had sympathy with that.

00:16:40.960 There was a lot of talk of freedom

00:16:42.580 and how important that was.

00:16:44.200 And over time, it seems like some of that unity

00:16:47.060 around Canadian patriotism has sort of dispersed a little bit.

00:16:53.000 And I'd be curious to know if you, if you feel,

00:16:56.720 if you see that fragmentation at all,

00:16:58.380 or if you see a possibility for that unity to come back.

00:17:03.640 Well, I'm going to be always hopeful for unity to return,

00:17:08.080 but absolutely the fragmentation.

00:17:10.860 So I live out, I live pretty rurally now.

00:17:13.760 I live in a town of 7,000 people

00:17:16.640 and I am surrounded by farm country.

00:17:19.420 I'm in Southwestern Ontario.

00:17:21.060 And around the time of the convoy,

00:17:24.960 a lot of farms had a Canadian flag at the end of the driveway.

00:17:29.760 So when you're driving by on the small little highways,

00:17:32.440 you're seeing those flags,

00:17:33.900 or sometimes they were F Trudeau flags.

00:17:37.120 But there was, you know,

00:17:38.140 when you drove around town at that,

00:17:40.700 in that period of time or in the country,

00:17:43.540 you knew what the Canadian flag stood for.

00:17:46.400 It stood for the freedom convoy.

00:17:48.640 It stood for, you know,

00:17:50.020 pushing back against the government's mandates,

00:17:54.200 pushing back against all of that pandemic stuff.

00:17:57.660 And then, and then more recently with the,

00:18:01.800 you know, Trump is the problem

00:18:03.740 and we have to rally around the liberal prime minister

00:18:08.140 because he's going to do a good job

00:18:09.980 of treating, you know, dealing with Trump,

00:18:12.600 the elbows up crowd.

00:18:14.220 They embraced the flag suddenly.

00:18:18.100 And so then I saw some of the farmers

00:18:20.960 taking down the Canadian flags

00:18:23.340 more recently here in my part of the world

00:18:25.720 because they didn't want to be confused

00:18:27.760 with that more recent wave

00:18:32.380 that the Canadian flag meant something very different.

00:18:34.980 So it's very interesting that even, you know,

00:18:39.560 rurally ordinary people are, you know,

00:18:43.740 grappling with what does the flag mean

00:18:45.580 and who owns the flag

00:18:46.940 and what does it represent?

00:18:48.840 So it's an interesting time in Canadian history.

00:18:53.660 Yeah, I've noticed that as well.

00:18:55.860 So you've written a bunch of other books.

00:18:57.960 One of them that I found interesting

00:18:59.660 that I think I'm going to read

00:19:01.040 is the delinquent teenager

00:19:02.740 who is mistaken for the world's top climate expert

00:19:06.680 and analysis of the Intergovernmental Panel

00:19:10.040 on Climate Change's policies and its processes.

00:19:14.300 I discovered that I was looking up this information

00:19:16.420 and I have to say I'm very interested

00:19:19.140 for my own personal reasons in going into that.

00:19:21.400 I think it's really interesting,

00:19:22.680 the pushback on not necessarily

00:19:24.160 that climate change is happening necessarily,

00:19:28.420 but the policies behind that can be very suspect.

00:19:30.840 So I'd be very curious to get your take

00:19:32.360 on that, reading that book.

00:19:34.800 So I'd be curious to know what's next for you.

00:19:37.000 You've written this book,

00:19:37.960 you've written a whole bunch of other books

00:19:39.060 and where can people check out your projects?

00:19:44.760 So amazon.ca is a good place.

00:19:48.300 All the books are there.

00:19:49.260 The delinquent teenager book is 14 years old now, actually.

00:19:53.780 And it was a very interesting project.

00:19:55.840 I had left journalism for a number of years

00:20:00.300 and then I sort of started blogging about climate issues

00:20:03.600 just as a private citizen who was a bit concerned

00:20:07.780 that we weren't hearing the whole story,

00:20:09.780 that we were only hearing half of the story.

00:20:11.800 So I started doing some blogging

00:20:13.660 and then I discovered that there's this UN body

00:20:17.360 that I've never heard of before called the IPCC,

00:20:21.260 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

00:20:24.940 And that's important because intergovernmental,

00:20:27.280 you know, is the clue that this is governments.

00:20:29.580 This is governments.

00:20:31.100 And they all get together under the auspices

00:20:33.260 of this UN organization

00:20:34.760 and they nominate scientists

00:20:38.680 to write a report about what's going on with the climate.

00:20:41.820 And that report kind of gets renewed

00:20:44.040 every, you know, six or seven years.

00:20:46.300 And so my book goes back 14 years.

00:20:49.600 So the report that I'm writing about

00:20:51.540 is, you know, a bit in the distance now.

00:20:53.920 But the same principles apply

00:20:56.420 and simply that this was an organization

00:20:59.440 because it was a UN body.

00:21:01.900 The journalists just kind of took the press release

00:21:04.760 and said, oh, this is, you know, this is what they do.

00:21:07.480 This is how they do it.

00:21:08.600 This is who is involved.

00:21:10.500 And they never bothered to do really simple fact checking.

00:21:13.660 So when I turned my attention to that organization,

00:21:17.240 I said to myself,

00:21:18.300 I don't have a PhD in physics or geology

00:21:21.660 or any other science

00:21:23.800 that would give me some insight

00:21:25.520 into the actual scientific debates

00:21:29.160 around what's going on with the climate.

00:21:31.520 But I can evaluate an organization.

00:21:34.920 And so this is an organization.

00:21:36.540 And so I did some very basic things.

00:21:38.360 Like they said that the organization

00:21:41.040 is made up of the world's top scientists.

00:21:43.280 Well, is that true?

00:21:45.280 Well, there were some very esteemed scientists,

00:21:48.740 but there were also a bunch of activists

00:21:50.380 from Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund

00:21:53.900 in very senior roles.

00:21:56.000 And there were graduate students

00:21:58.420 who were still working on their PhDs

00:22:00.700 who could not in any way be described

00:22:02.880 as the world's top scientists.

00:22:04.820 So, okay, their personnel

00:22:06.180 isn't quite what they've described.

00:22:08.240 Okay, how about their policies and procedures?

00:22:10.100 They say they rely entirely on peer-reviewed literature

00:22:15.560 when they reference research.

00:22:17.260 Is that true?

00:22:18.580 Well, I started looking at the back of the references

00:22:20.980 and I found all kinds of citations

00:22:24.140 to press clippings,

00:22:26.940 media releases,

00:22:29.180 you know, all sorts of things,

00:22:32.520 you know, working papers,

00:22:33.940 all sorts of things

00:22:34.740 that were not in fact peer-reviewed literature.

00:22:37.260 So you have this whole series of claims

00:22:40.180 about what they do

00:22:41.780 and how they do it

00:22:43.160 and who they are.

00:22:44.300 And then it turns out

00:22:45.520 that they're not true.

00:22:46.420 So if you have a UN body

00:22:48.360 that can't describe itself accurately,

00:22:50.920 can't describe its personnel accurately,

00:22:53.640 can't describe its procedures accurately,

00:22:57.320 why in the world would you trust the report

00:22:59.780 that they produce, right?

00:23:01.520 This is a basic credibility issue.

00:23:04.400 So that's sort of what,

00:23:05.520 you know, so it was a little bit,

00:23:07.620 it was an expose of this organization.

00:23:09.880 Here's what we've been told,

00:23:10.840 but here's what really happens.

00:23:12.320 We should all know about that.

00:23:14.000 So that was a very fun book to write

00:23:16.340 and it's found an audience internationally,

00:23:21.060 which is really cool.

00:23:22.840 So the vast majority of copies

00:23:25.120 have been sold outside of Canada,

00:23:27.000 not inside of Canada,

00:23:28.860 which is fun.

00:23:30.760 So yes, and, you know,

00:23:32.880 the basic ideas of what was going on there

00:23:35.080 are still relevant,

00:23:36.140 even though, you know,

00:23:37.320 it's talking about an earlier version

00:23:39.520 of the report.

00:23:40.880 Well, I love a woman 1.00

00:23:42.600 who is not satisfied

00:23:43.880 with what she's being fed

00:23:45.100 and has to go find out

00:23:46.100 the details for herself.

00:23:47.380 I feel like I have found

00:23:48.720 a spirit animal in you, Donna.

00:23:51.000 Everyone should go read that book,

00:23:52.520 but they should also read

00:23:53.260 Thank You Truckers.

00:23:54.400 Donna, I'm so grateful

00:23:55.380 that you took the time

00:23:56.300 to speak with me today.

00:23:57.120 Thank you.

00:23:58.300 Thank you.

00:23:59.480 The truckers went home,

00:24:01.400 the bouncy castles came down,

00:24:03.160 but the backlash never really ended.

00:24:05.420 It carried on in courtrooms

00:24:07.540 and careers on frozen bank accounts

00:24:10.640 and blacklists.

00:24:12.600 And to this day,

00:24:13.140 the punishment continues,

00:24:14.700 sometimes in other forms,

00:24:16.120 whether it's on speech

00:24:17.420 or new tyrannical government controls.

00:24:21.260 And I discuss this kind of thing

00:24:22.860 all the time here on this show.

00:24:24.860 You know, the growing dissent

00:24:26.260 from Canadians

00:24:26.940 on this authoritarianism

00:24:28.500 being imposed on us.

00:24:29.860 So if you like this episode,

00:24:32.200 I would encourage you

00:24:32.920 to like and subscribe,

00:24:34.500 maybe share it around.

00:24:35.840 And as a bonus,

00:24:37.060 you get all the other great shows

00:24:38.820 that feature stories like mine

00:24:40.540 that the other media won't touch.

00:24:42.800 For True North,

00:24:43.740 I'm Melanie Bennett.

Juno News - November 08, 2025

The Untold Stories Behind Canada’s Freedom Convoy

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