Juno News - Who won at the Public Order Emergencies Commission？ (ft. Paul Wells)

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show. This is The Andrew Lawton Show. Brought to you by True North.

00:00:10.700 Coming up, journalist Paul Wells endured six weeks of Public Order Emergency Commission testimony.

00:00:16.680 We talk about the big picture of the convoy and the government's response to it. Straight ahead.

00:00:21.540 The Andrew Lawton Show starts right now.

00:00:24.780 Hello and welcome to you all. This is The Andrew Lawton Show, Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show here on True North.

00:00:32.460 As we near the holidays, we are taking advantage of there being a bit of a lull in the news and talking about some of the big picture ideas,

00:00:40.120 going in depth with some of our guests in a way we don't often get to when we're covering the news of the day.

00:00:46.040 And today I wanted to revisit the Public Order Emergency Commission, which, as you know, dominated much of my personal time

00:00:53.640 and also the time of this show for October and November and the, I think it was done in November.

00:01:00.600 Yeah, it just felt like it lasted a lot longer.

00:01:02.920 And this was the commission that over a six-week period really laid bare the details of the convoy,

00:01:09.360 the police response, the city of Ottawa, the province of Ontario, the federal government,

00:01:14.120 how all of these different groups intersected and how they all discussed and viewed this event,

00:01:19.800 which everyone can agree was an important thing, but few sides could really agree on the fundamental facts of.

00:01:28.100 And that was why it was so interesting.

00:01:29.880 Now, there were aspects of this that weren't as intriguing to me.

00:01:33.440 For example, I was not personally as interested in the Windsor and Cootes stories,

00:01:38.480 because my focus of coverage had obviously been on what was happening in Ottawa,

00:01:42.520 which is, I think, what really was the trigger for the Emergencies Act,

00:01:46.820 given that the Windsor and Cootes blockades had been cleared well before

00:01:50.880 or were underway in being cleared when the Emergencies Act came in.

00:01:55.260 So I think that at the same time, it's fascinating to me to take this bigger picture look,

00:01:59.660 because polling has actually showed that Canadians think after this whole thing,

00:02:04.000 the federal government came out ahead.

00:02:06.020 Now, is this because the poll was wrong?

00:02:08.220 That's possible.

00:02:08.880 Or is it because there was a story that was missing that Canadians weren't having access to?

00:02:14.680 That's my inclination here, that the media might have played a pretty key role in this.

00:02:19.560 But I wanted to talk about this with a journalist who doesn't necessarily view the convoy the way I do,

00:02:24.740 but has, I think, a very sharp eye and very strong BS detector about this.

00:02:30.880 And as I mentioned, went through the entire process and followed this,

00:02:34.760 and I think picked up a lot of key details along the way.

00:02:37.000 And that is journalist Paul Wells, formerly of McLean's.

00:02:40.480 Now he runs a great Substack over at paulwells.substack.com

00:02:44.520 and hosts the Paul Wells Show over at the Toronto Star

00:02:47.820 and also has a short book coming out through my publisher, Sutherland House,

00:02:52.760 and its new periodical, Sutherland Quarterly.

00:02:55.360 And that's dealing exactly with this topic that we're discussing now,

00:02:58.880 the Public Order Emergency Commission.

00:03:01.400 Paul, it's good to talk to you.

00:03:02.460 Thanks for coming on today.

00:03:04.180 Hi, Andrew. How are you?

00:03:05.260 Good, thank you.

00:03:05.940 How are you doing? Keeping warm in Ottawa?

00:03:08.680 Yeah, yeah.

00:03:09.960 I was in Calgary for several days, and it was freaking cold there.

00:03:13.860 So it's a little rainy today, but I'll take it.

00:03:16.980 Sounds good.

00:03:18.220 I wanted to start off by talking about the Public Order Emergency Commission.

00:03:22.580 Now, you did what not a lot of people could withstand,

00:03:26.580 which was following along very closely these very long days,

00:03:30.500 days that dragged, a lot of very heavy detail in the testimony,

00:03:34.540 and then even more in the actual documents.

00:03:38.740 And you managed to find the energy to write about this after slogging through it all.

00:03:44.280 And you did so.

00:03:44.960 And I'm always amazed with you at how quickly you can churn out copy when things happen.

00:03:49.880 But I was wondering if you could speak to the why, first and foremost,

00:03:53.440 because my interest in the commission came about from my interest in the convoy,

00:03:58.260 which I was very invested in covering earlier in the year.

00:04:01.360 What was your attachment to this story?

00:04:03.160 So long-term sustained coverage of an institutional clash, like a trial,

00:04:14.280 is a form in journalism.

00:04:16.760 And I was, as the convoy got started, I think after I wrote my first piece,

00:04:21.040 I was talking with our friend Ken White, who was my editor at Maclean's,

00:04:25.460 published your book about the convoy.

00:04:27.580 And I was reminiscing about how he used to be so impressed in the 90s

00:04:34.460 when the O.J. Simpson trial was happening, and it lasted for many, many months.

00:04:38.980 And Dominic Dunn, the great American writer, covered it monthly for Vanity Fair.

00:04:45.840 And there'd be 4,000 words every month about the latest events in the O.J. Simpson trial.

00:04:52.760 And Christy Blatchford at the National Post used to cover all sorts of trials,

00:04:59.580 and eventually also the Gomery Commission of Inquiry into the sponsorship scandal,

00:05:04.860 which I covered for a much shorter amount of time as one of several people writing for Maclean's.

00:05:11.660 So it's a form.

00:05:12.960 You have to be able to put up with a lot of boring material.

00:05:17.440 You have to find the connections between material.

00:05:19.760 So it's very much, Ken talked me into keeping it up.

00:05:23.860 And the idea was it was a conscious tribute to the kind of work that Christy Blatchford used to do for us

00:05:30.700 and that Dominic Dunn used to do, and that courthouse reporters have done forever.

00:05:34.980 You know, the conflict at the center of the thing is incredibly lively.

00:05:41.780 The form and the setting is really not.

00:05:46.700 And you have to figure out how to find the drama in the extended event.

00:05:52.600 It's funny you mention that, because obviously when you watch like a courtroom drama in a movie,

00:05:57.420 when that moment comes up that just shocks people, you know, there's dramatic music and everyone in the room gasps.

00:06:04.220 There were a few moments that came up during the commission testimony where some bombshell will happen.

00:06:12.080 And it's like, wait, wait, did I hear that right?

00:06:14.000 Was that what I thought it was?

00:06:17.040 And sometimes these things are very fleeting and they don't actually get any acknowledgement in the moment.

00:06:22.340 And you plucked a few of those out.

00:06:24.220 Yeah. So, I mean, one of the ones which, funnily enough, having said all this, I actually didn't attend,

00:06:30.380 was when the head of CSIS said that this event did not meet the CSIS test for being a public order emergency,

00:06:41.720 which to some extent the government witnesses spent the rest of the commission trying to sort of

00:06:48.080 explain that pretty blatant apparent contradiction.

00:06:52.500 And then the testimony of Peter Stolle, which I thought was fascinating because it's another thing that happens in drama.

00:07:02.020 Peter Stolle was, until partway through this, the chief of the Ottawa police.

00:07:07.220 And no one liked him and no one thought he was effective.

00:07:09.980 And suddenly he testifies and his testimony was quite compelling and believable.

00:07:16.500 And then, that was on a Friday, on the Monday following, it falls apart because the cross-examination comes

00:07:24.520 and his testimony doesn't really stand up to any cross-examination.

00:07:28.980 So that was a kind of an interesting, dramatic moment.

00:07:32.420 And Christia Freeland, I actually haven't written about this on my newsletter, but I'm going to go over it in the book.

00:07:44.260 But she talks about how she discussed the economic impact of the border blockings at Cabinet.

00:07:55.760 And the numbers she was throwing around were just orders of magnitude larger than the numbers her own department was coming up with.

00:08:02.680 And, like, the real cost of the Ambassador Bridge and the Coutts border crossings were nowhere close to what Christia Freeland thought they were.

00:08:13.340 She had kind of misunderstood the numbers.

00:08:16.020 And to me, that shows that anyone's appreciation of the legalities of this stuff is very approximate.

00:08:23.760 And it's not really based on a careful reading of a test.

00:08:28.660 It's, do we feel like using this emergencies act or do we not?

00:08:31.780 I think that's what it came down to.

00:08:33.760 Yeah, and then come up with an excuse later.

00:08:36.360 And not that I extrapolate too, too much from Twitter.

00:08:39.160 And I think you were very wise to get away from Twitter many years ago.

00:08:42.460 But on Twitter, the sense that I saw from a lot of the federal government's defenders was basically,

00:08:48.100 we didn't like the convoy, the government invoked the Emergencies Act,

00:08:52.320 and then the convoy was gone in a few days.

00:08:54.000 Therefore, we're fine with the Emergencies Act.

00:08:55.860 And there didn't really seem to be from the outsider support anyway, this even concern for what the laws were and whether it was legally justified.

00:09:05.980 They were just happy with the outcome.

00:09:08.160 Yeah.

00:09:08.280 And you and I might disagree about the extent to which this is true, but there was a lot not to like about the convoy.

00:09:16.180 I mean, there was, there were some, it caused a lot of chaos in people's lives.

00:09:21.120 It was loud forever.

00:09:23.260 It was, you know.

00:09:24.260 And then the question is, what's the appropriate remedy to that?

00:09:27.480 But I do think it's true.

00:09:28.600 And I certainly think it's true.

00:09:29.800 The federal government, more than the other players in this thing, decided what the story was before they observed the unfolding of the event.

00:09:40.720 You have government communications staffers discussing essentially narrative before there are trucks in Ottawa or before there's, you know, protesters trucks in Ottawa.

00:09:52.700 And once you've done that, I mean, you know, there's people in Ottawa, I think of the former journalist Ellie Alboy, has written really thoughtfully about how if you become invested in a narrative, then you resist integrating new information that conflicts with that narrative.

00:10:13.140 So if you think that these truckers are monolithic, antagonistic, and dangerous, then it becomes hard to swallow any information to the effect that some of them were, but some of them weren't.

00:10:31.140 They sure weren't monolithic.

00:10:32.380 There was infighting that, first of all, shows that it was a complex human event.

00:10:38.640 And secondly, if you were trying to undo the convoy, that might have actually come in handy.

00:10:44.020 But the very strong impression you get from the testimonies of the federal government was not interested in studying this group of people.

00:10:52.020 They were interested in beating them.

00:10:52.920 That phenomenon you describe is very much akin, I'd say, to conspiracy theorists, where once they've baked in that idea, anything that they're presented with that counters that only basically fuels the conspiracy.

00:11:06.860 You know, they dismiss things that counter it and they elevate things that support it.

00:11:10.740 And what I found interesting in terms of understanding the convoy, and that was a big reason that I wrote my book, is I felt that people were not getting the complexity of this, is that people who were part of that movement kind of saw it as being a feature and not a bug, that they were not monolithic, and that there was no central hierarchy, and that they couldn't order anyone to do anything, and that it was very grassroots.

00:11:33.560 And it was interesting that that ended up becoming one of the key arguments against them in the commission hearings, especially when it came to this negotiation that had taken place between convoy organizers in the city of Ottawa.

00:11:46.120 The government's position was, yeah, but I mean, by their own admission, they weren't a homogenous group.

00:11:50.680 They were all, they couldn't force anyone to do anything.

00:11:52.720 So that disjointed nature actually became, I mean, to the government's view, a liability of the convoy.

00:11:58.740 Yeah, so the question that comes up is, why should the federal government talk to anyone in this group?

00:12:02.640 Because they can't, they can't bring anyone along with them.

00:12:07.940 Yeah, even if they sat down with Tamara Leach and worked things out, there's no guarantee that that extends to the other however many thousands of people were there.

00:12:16.460 Yeah, it's like pushing a string uphill.

00:12:18.140 And I mean, that might be true.

00:12:23.300 But, and I mean, what I think I'm going to end up writing in a longer piece of journalism that is coming is,

00:12:32.640 that nobody owns virtue in this debate.

00:12:38.060 Nobody was entirely right.

00:12:39.420 It's going to be frustrating for a lot of people who are looking for a winner and a loser, a hero and a villain.

00:12:44.480 But it is striking that the federal government was not against negotiating with any of these protesters.

00:12:54.920 They were against federal officials negotiating with the principals, but they were super happy to have people from the city of Ottawa negotiating with them.

00:13:01.380 But they were, they were all for having proxies talk to the protesters.

00:13:06.300 They, they were less excited about doing it themselves.

00:13:09.100 And the proxies, the people from the city of Ottawa, especially the then mayor's chief of staff, were furious about this.

00:13:17.440 You know, we take it on the chin for sitting down with these people.

00:13:22.160 And, and meanwhile, they're complaining about federal politicians, federal policies, and, and, and, and, and the, the city of Ottawa didn't, didn't like being put in that position.

00:13:33.980 So, I mean, so I've asked myself, you know, hey, smarty pants, if, if, if, if you, Paul Wells were the prime minister of Canada at this time, would you sit down and talk to anyone?

00:13:45.680 I think the answer is no.

00:13:47.180 Would you as prime minister designate someone to talk to them?

00:13:52.660 It's not as clear to me that, that, I mean, remember during the Oka crisis, not a perfect analogy,

00:13:59.220 but the, the, um, provincial minister of justice sat down and talked to masked indigenous protesters, you know?

00:14:08.260 Um, you know, the whole point of negotiation is you do it with people who disagree with you.

00:14:15.280 You don't do it with people who agree with you.

00:14:16.880 That's, that's called agreement, you know?

00:14:19.540 Looking at, yeah, I would agree with that.

00:14:22.720 And I think that one of the big, if we were to take a parallel history here and see what would have happened if the question that I'm very curious about is what would have happened if the government had not settled on as clear a narrative as they took with the fringe minority, with unacceptable views, the standing with swastikas, really leaning into that.

00:14:45.220 Because certainly my sense covering the convoy is that people were more frustrated with that than they were with vaccine mandates themselves a week into it.

00:14:54.700 It's that, you know, Justin Trudeau's response to this, the government's response to this actually started to inflame more pushback.

00:15:01.640 Now, it's entirely possible that that wouldn't have made a difference, that, you know, the government just standing up and saying, we condemn this protest, this is a lawless protest, it would have been the same.

00:15:10.260 But do you think that that was a policy, or do you think that was a political decision for the government to lean into that narrative, or do you think that was just what they believed?

00:15:20.700 I mean, I can't, I can't really know.

00:15:25.180 But I'll say something, because I've been fairly agreeable until now, but I'll, I mean, I'll tell you who would be inclined to not, to not like truckers who had, who strongly disagreed with them about vaccine policy.

00:15:39.680 It would be Justin Trudeau, because in the summer of 2020, a guy drove a truck halfway across the country and onto the lawn of his residence, the prime minister's residence, in a vehicle that contained several loaded lawn guns.

00:15:53.520 So, that is the sort of incident, incident that the rest of us can shrug off or laugh off or, you know, but if someone had driven a truck up onto my lawn, I would tend, and gotten arrested with a lot of, with a lot of weaponry, I would be inclined to remember that.

00:16:14.980 And to integrate it into my thinking about people who disagreed on, on vaccine policy, driving large vehicles, you know, and you can also bet that the most lurid examples of extremism and unpredictability were the subjects of intelligence reports that were getting to the prime minister's staff.

00:16:36.060 And I guess what I reproach in the prime minister is he was unable or unwilling to realize that this wasn't many thousands of people like that.

00:16:49.260 It was many thousands of people who had, you know, ways of expressing a disagreement that he might not alight, but, but that everyone in this story was a Canadian is kind of the story that is kind of the conclusion that I draw.

00:17:06.480 And caricaturing the other people in the story doesn't capture its complexity.

00:17:14.700 I mean, so one of the things we both saw was that every group that came, you know, the police of Ottawa, the RCMP, the federal government, the various levels of government, they were all dysfunctional.

00:17:28.740 By the beginning of 2022, they were all exhausted.

00:17:31.820 They were all operating on less than perfect information.

00:17:34.480 Uh, and, um, uh, so they were all making pretty lousy decisions.

00:17:41.560 I'm, you know, like, and we would, we would be surprised to hear, uh, that anything else happened.

00:17:48.280 I mean, by the beginning of 2022, if you tried to get a faucet fixed in your kitchen, uh, the, the, the repair company would send over somebody bedraggled and exhausted and almost in tears.

00:17:59.580 Like that's, that's just the way life was at the beginning of this year.

00:18:03.240 Yeah.

00:18:03.280 Nothing worked.

00:18:04.220 Yeah, exactly.

00:18:05.300 And, and, and, uh, you know, once you get away from trying to, uh, pin blame, you notice, uh, elements of the human story.

00:18:15.720 Like just the fact that, um, like Peter slowly begins to cry in his testimony when he was talking about how cold it was.

00:18:22.920 Uh, like that was also a, uh, a thing that was, that was, that was going on.

00:18:28.460 Yeah.

00:18:30.460 And some of the convoy, uh, volunteers and supporters that I, I kind of was following on Twitter and whatnot around then were, were sort of laughing at that because they were saying, well, yeah, we were cold too.

00:18:40.780 That was the whole point of it.

00:18:41.900 But, but you are right that that was exacerbating something that in Ottawa, the police did not feel they were prepared for.

00:18:48.740 And I think that was one of the big failings here is that in Ottawa, you had this sense that no one was accepting, no one was taking the convoy at its word here.

00:18:58.980 When they said, yeah, we're all driving to Ottawa and we're all going to stay there for as long as it takes.

00:19:02.720 Like that was something that no one in the policing side of it, certainly not the Ottawa police really bought.

00:19:10.320 Yeah.

00:19:10.800 Um, uh, well, and I think the police had different narratives and, and, and it's also interesting to me that kind of the relative gold standard in terms of police intelligence, uh, and response to large, uh, high conflict events was the Ontario provincial police.

00:19:31.620 Um, uh, frankly, because they'd had a lot of practice, uh, and, and very different approach from the Ottawa police service throughout.

00:19:40.200 Very much so.

00:19:40.840 And, and although the OPP got along pretty well with the RCMP, also a different approach from the RCMP who are the OPP.

00:19:47.300 They are the police who aren't in the big cities in Ontario.

00:19:50.360 So they're the police from hockey country, essentially in fishing country.

00:19:55.600 And, you know, they live on highways, they, uh, eat in restaurants where a lot of the, uh, protesters, uh, would eat.

00:20:04.300 They, uh, you know, watch the same, uh, shows they, uh, you know, are on the same Facebook, uh, uh, groups.

00:20:14.860 And, uh, uh, a lot of big city folks were surprised and concerned to learn that, that the OPP knew a lot of the, the, you know, uh, had spoken to a lot of the protesters and, uh, sometimes showed some sympathy for, uh, how they went about their day.

00:20:32.640 But it, it would be amazing if that wasn't the case.

00:20:35.820 It's, there's almost nobody in the OPP lives in downtown Toronto.

00:20:39.740 And so they had different reflexes from anyone else.

00:20:44.160 That's, that's quite a brilliant analysis of that.

00:20:47.900 And I hope you expand on that a bit in your book, because I do think that, I mean, there, there was one story that I wrote a few weeks back that was based on an audio file of a recording that I got between OPP and, and convoy organizers in which the OPP were actually apologizing for the Ottawa police fuel raid.

00:21:05.540 And, and that was the point where the Ottawa police liaison or the Ontario provincial police liaison sort of took a step back and said, okay, we're, we're not really in the mix here.

00:21:14.460 And, and the sense that we really got throughout the, the course of the public order emergency commission testimony is that the OPP really felt like they could use engagement to get through this.

00:21:26.480 And, and do you, were you able to identify the point at which the Ottawa police said, yeah, that's not going to do it anymore?

00:21:35.540 Well, I mean, that fuel can thing was, uh, hotly contested within the OPS.

00:21:41.100 I mean, there were people who thought that, um, uh, it was time to get serious about enforcement.

00:21:47.900 And there were times people who said that's exactly the wrong thing.

00:21:51.300 Um, um, um, um, the, uh, I'm blanking on the name of the, the, the, the, the, the three letter acronym for the group within the police that would, um, negotiate.

00:22:04.900 The PLT?

00:22:05.260 Yeah, the PLT, the, the whole PLT approach, which was, um, don't enforce, discuss and, and, and, and, um, uh, would often skate up to the line of being palsy-walsy with, uh, with these protesters.

00:22:21.420 And, uh, other police officers were not familiar with that whole approach.

00:22:25.760 And, uh, and it's frankly shocking to people who didn't like the, the, the, the convoy at all.

00:22:32.040 And I kind of get that.

00:22:33.300 Again, I sort of want to remind everyone that, uh, just about every official who testified at this commission, uh, spoke about getting death threats.

00:22:43.280 Uh, this event was, among other things, a machine for generating death threats.

00:22:48.820 And Tamara Leach said, Tamara Leach said she got death threats too, and I absolutely believe that.

00:22:54.100 Um, but we should, as a society, avoid events that, uh, that lead to everyone being involved receiving death threats.

00:23:01.200 And that was one of the, that was another part of this story.

00:23:03.620 So, like, another thing that has occurred to me that I, uh, is that the, the lawyer, Paul Champ, who represented the Ottawa's downtowners who took out an injunction against them, his clientele resembles the trucker more close, the truckers more closely than it resembles any other clientele.

00:23:27.560 Paul Champ's, uh, uh, clients were not rich.

00:23:30.880 They're mostly were not federal public servants.

00:23:33.620 They're mostly people who work in the service industry in the downtown of a, of a city where the downtown neighborhoods are not the rich neighborhoods.

00:23:41.440 Uh, and they were just fed up.

00:23:42.980 I mean, uh, they were fed up in a different way at a different time in their lives than the protesters who'd come to town.

00:23:50.240 But, uh, but they also felt helpless.

00:23:53.340 And, um, I, I have read a lot of care and a lot read and heard a lot of caricatures about what sort of, uh,

00:24:03.620 where people live in downtown Ottawa and they come from people who cannot have ever spent time in downtown Ottawa.

00:24:09.360 I don't live in downtown Ottawa.

00:24:10.840 Yeah, and, and I, I'm sort of guilty of that myself, not, not on an individual level, but sort of when I go to Ottawa, because I lived there very briefly, you know, 12, 13 years ago.

00:24:22.760 And when I go to Ottawa, I remember that, oh yeah, there are people here that aren't just people that live and work in these few square blocks.

00:24:30.240 There are people that do any of the other things that are in a city of, of the size of Ottawa.

00:24:33.980 And it is easy, especially if you only, your only experience in Ottawa is on, you know, Wellington Street or a couple of blocks around there.

00:24:41.640 And, and I, I think that's a, that's a fair, fair enough point.

00:24:44.340 And, you know, I think there were some people that I heard from that were Ottawa residents that were supportive of the convoys aims, but not like, okay, guys, yeah, yeah, I'm, I'm with you, but, you know, get off my street, that sort of thing.

00:24:56.280 And I don't know how many of those there were, but it's understandable that there, there would have been some, let me just ask you about Justin Trudeau's testimony here, very briefly, Paul, because I thought that he did very well, given the circumstances.

00:25:10.740 I thought that he was the last one.

00:25:13.280 So every bit of evidence that was going to come up was already on the table.

00:25:16.980 I wasn't sure if we were going to get the really annoying press conference, Justin Trudeau or something else.

00:25:24.240 And we got something else.

00:25:25.380 I mean, he, he sounded very candid.

00:25:27.660 He was giving short yes or no answers at various points.

00:25:30.500 And I thought he, again, I didn't agree with his justification, but I, I felt he gave as clear a justification as he could have for what his position is.

00:25:41.380 Yeah.

00:25:41.780 I mean, it was very interesting.

00:25:43.840 He was really superbly prepped to the point where he wasn't just playing the cassette, but he could improvise.

00:25:52.180 And when good lawyers pushed at him on various points of, of detail, he was able to push back.

00:26:01.140 He was also clearly part of a team.

00:26:03.440 He was also clearly part of a well-rehearsed effort.

00:26:08.460 I don't, I don't, one day I might find out how many people in this government were working on prepping ministers and the prime minister for their testimony.

00:26:15.260 Um, but I was at Halifax at the Halifax security forum and Jody Thomas, uh, the prime minister's, uh, uh, national security advisor was at Halifax as she would normally have been expected to be.

00:26:29.900 It's an important conference.

00:26:31.360 She had a earbud in her ear the whole night because she was listening to Janice Charette, the, uh, clerk of the Privy Council, uh, testify live.

00:26:43.020 And she was not paying that much attention to what was happening in front of her because she was part of this team that was following the testimony.

00:26:50.840 So what was Trudeau's role?

00:26:51.880 He had to bat, bat cleanup on two outstanding points.

00:26:55.000 One was this CSIS test that, um, did the level of turmoil rise to the level specified in the CSIS Act for a public order emergency.

00:27:03.960 And the other was this supposed February 13th plan that the Ottawa police had finally cobbled together to, uh, in concert with the, uh, OPP and the RCMP.

00:27:16.720 Trudeau's task was to bomb those two bridges to say the CSIS, CSIS test was absolutely met.

00:27:23.100 And the February 13th plan that would have meant there was no need for the emergencies act was a lousy plan.

00:27:29.840 And on those two points, I don't think he was, uh, persuasive, uh, but it was impressive that he went in with those two things in mind.

00:27:39.180 And he, you know, he made the most vigorous case they could concoct on those two points.

00:27:44.400 Um, it, it, it, it shows, as I say, the level of, of, of preparation that, uh, every federal official showed up with.

00:27:52.820 I mean, contrast that with poor Brenda Lucky, the RCMP, uh, commissioner who seems to have been cut loose. 0.97

00:27:59.840 Because she was not prepped at all.

00:28:01.780 Yeah.

00:28:02.320 And I, I actually have wondered because early on, I, I sort of assumed that there would have to be a, a fall guy or a, a fall gal in this.

00:28:09.480 And I, I, you know, I was convinced early on it might've been Marco Mendicino just because he was the one that was really sent out to sell this, uh, fairly aggressively when it was all happening.

00:28:18.940 And, and, uh, now I just wonder if it'll just be Brenda Lucky when all is said and done.

00:28:23.280 Um, or maybe they don't need a fall guy because, uh, the, the thing that's a little surprising is that the public opinion polling on this has been rock solid.

00:28:34.580 Yeah.

00:28:35.080 Yeah.

00:28:35.580 And, uh, and the, the, uh, support for the use of the emergencies act has been solidly higher than general support for the liberal party against its opponents.

00:28:46.540 Uh, so that would tend to tell you that, um, the use of the emergencies act and the long, long discussion about whether it was property is the emergency act has actually been, has actually been pulling the liberals up in the polls.

00:28:59.280 Um, now, what do you attribute that to?

00:29:02.860 Because my, my instinct would be to say that the media's characterization of the convoy has contributed to that perception, but you may have a wildly different one.

00:29:13.740 Um, I mean, I, the, the, the thing is I can, I can sort of believe that what in the spring when everyone's watching on TV and they're seeing round the clock, uh, quite alarmist coverage of, of, uh, uh, uh, what's going on?

00:29:29.260 What sort of characters the, these protesters were, but months and months and months later, when we've all turned the page and we're all stuck in a courtroom, listening to testimony, uh, seeing, uh, uh, different levels of government disagreeing with each other, seeing cabinet ministers, uh, joking about, uh,

00:29:48.260 uh, punitive colleagues behind their back and, um, um, making jokes about sending tanks in.

00:29:53.500 Um, um, I think it's basically that months, months later, it's hard to demonstrate large numbers of, it's hard to point to large numbers of Canadians whose lives were ruined by the emergencies act.

00:30:05.420 There are still figures who are still facing, uh, you know, criminal charges and they're having to defend themselves and that's, that's unpleasant for them.

00:30:14.180 And, and, you know, we'll see how that turns out, but there aren't whole classes of Canadians who, who have no access to their bank accounts, as it seemed, it might be the case early on.

00:30:23.580 Uh, and, uh, and, and, and then something else that doesn't get remarked on is, uh, the convoy didn't win because they didn't get a change to policy immediately while they were in Ottawa.

00:30:40.280 But all month long, while people were testifying in the, um, uh, in that hearing room at the National Archives, uh, everyone in that room was coughing, nobody was wearing masks, uh, everyone had cough drops rattling around in the back of their, of their mouths.

00:30:59.820 Uh, the, uh, uh, no mask, less, uh, uh, uh, less prominent use of, of, of, of, of vaccines, uh, everyone getting along according to their own conception of the rules rather than, than according to fixed rules that were, uh, handed down by government.

00:31:22.940 That's the way we were all living our lives, uh, you know, this autumn.

00:31:27.560 Um, and, um, and so I think that might lead just about everyone to realize that the, the really, uh, blatant direct confrontation that was symbolized by the, by the convoy versus the police and the governments and so on is not the way we're actually living our lives now.

00:31:46.340 And maybe people are chilling out a bit.

00:31:48.860 That is very well said.

00:31:50.980 And I think a perfect note to end on here.

00:31:52.700 We might not agree on, on everything about the convoy, but I think your perspective on the commission and the broader story here is a really important one.

00:31:59.780 Uh, you are doing fantastic work over at your sub stack.

00:32:02.540 That is at paulwells.substack.com.

00:32:05.740 And I know you've got your take on this coming out, uh, in just a couple of months through, uh, Sutherland Quarterly.

00:32:11.120 And I'm glad that, uh, Ken White has asked you to, uh, do that or rope you into it, whichever is the, the most accurate description.

00:32:17.020 But, uh, Paul, thanks very much and Merry Christmas to you.

00:32:20.320 Thanks. Merry Christmas to you.

00:32:21.600 That was Paul Wells.

00:32:22.780 And like I say, you don't need to agree with someone to appreciate their analysis and perspective on this.

00:32:27.300 Paul has always been very fair and even keel on this.

00:32:30.760 And I'm glad that he was, uh, suffering through the Public Order Emergency Commission as well.

00:32:35.300 I'm, I'm glad that my publisher, Ken White, has tapped him to do this.

00:32:38.780 So that's something you'll want to read.

00:32:39.940 And I, you know, I think his point is actually probably one that will withstand the test of time,

00:32:44.320 that no one comes out squeaky clean on this.

00:32:46.920 I mean, the whole nature of the convoy is that it was grassroots.

00:32:49.960 Anyone could have just showed up.

00:32:51.340 And by and large, many people did just show up.

00:32:53.840 So you couldn't be accountable for what every single individual there did,

00:32:58.820 which is why the organizers, people like Tamera Leach and Chris Barber,

00:33:02.460 constantly put out the message that this is a peaceful protest.

00:33:06.120 And I think that where history is clear is that it remained that until the very end.

00:33:11.720 That does it for us for today.

00:33:14.040 We've got to wrap things up there, but I will say thank you very much.

00:33:17.420 This is our last program before Christmas.

00:33:19.760 So I hope you have a very Merry Christmas.

00:33:22.860 We'll be back next week with more of Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.

00:33:26.380 Thank you.

00:33:27.000 God bless.

00:33:27.560 And good day to you all.

00:33:28.760 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:33:30.980 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

00:33:36.040 God bless.

00:33:39.380 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:33:41.600 We'll be right back.

00:33:41.660 We'll be right back.

00:33:45.460 We'll be right back.

00:33:45.920 We'll be right back.

00:34:04.280 We'll be right back.

Juno News - December 21, 2022

Who won at the Public Order Emergencies Commission？ (ft. Paul Wells)

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript