In this episode, Conservative MP for Kildona and St. Paul, Raquel Dancho joins us to talk about the Freedom Convoy protests in Ottawa, Canada on October 19th, 2011, and the government's response to them.
00:04:05.740And I think there's going to be more of this coming out.
00:04:07.660And, you know, I think it's interesting, Jamie, because many people don't understand that the Emergencies Act is a follow-up to the War Measures Act.
00:04:14.040So it's our modern-day War Measures Act, which is the most powerful law in the land designed for the absolute worst-case scenario.
00:04:20.640So if you think about it like a, you know, it's hard to think about, but something like an invasion or like a mass telecommunications collapse or even, you know, deadly pandemic,
00:04:28.820those are the types of things that you may, governments may be justified in the most extreme circumstances to need to curtail charter rights in order to protect the greater national security framework.
00:04:39.680But the problem is, is that, of course, as you outlined, we don't believe that that threshold was met during the Freedom Convoy protests in Ottawa.
00:04:47.160And as you've said, certainly there were the border blockades, which were illegal.
00:04:51.380And, of course, as Conservatives, we condemn any blockades of railways, pipelines, bridges, roadways.
00:04:57.680That being said, those were effectively cleared without any emergency powers.
00:05:01.600So that sort of economic argument that the Liberal government had been making was a non-starter because they didn't, those powers were not needed.
00:05:08.760The RCMP were able to effectively clear those.
00:05:10.980Now, if you talk about the demonstration in Ottawa, certainly the resident, many residents of Ottawa, I live in Ottawa, half the time, so do you.
00:05:19.820We were living in Ottawa at this time.
00:05:21.820Some people believed it was, you know, very traumatizing for them.
00:05:43.120Like, this is supposed to be a piece of legislation that has national implications, right, from a major incident that would happen that would affect a large majority of the population.
00:06:10.260And I think that's a really key piece.
00:06:13.000And again, the two sort of, the thresholds that have to be met are either an economic one or public safety one.
00:06:18.620And if the demonstration in Ottawa was a threat to public safety, would they have really allowed members of parliament, the prime minister, the deputy prime minister, members of the public, members of the press, to walk around this demonstration if it was, you know, a national threat to public safety?
00:06:36.160I have a hard time believing that it was that level of danger.
00:06:40.000Otherwise, there's just no way that, I mean, I walked home 10 o'clock at night after work almost every day when that demonstration was here.
00:06:46.920You know, they provided security if we wanted it, but it wasn't, we highly recommend you, you know, or you should be at home in Manitoba from Zoom.
00:06:54.000There was no communications like that whatsoever.
00:06:56.900And half the federal cabinet, if not the whole federal cabinet, was in Ottawa, in West Block, in the center of it.
00:07:02.260So that's really what just doesn't seem to make sense at all.
00:07:04.980If it was that much of a threat, there's just no way with our Zoom capabilities that that would have been permitted.
00:07:10.580And what the justification at the time that was used, I remember the public safety minister, Marco Mendicino, going up in parliament saying, we're concerned about weapons.
00:07:20.500And of course, our colleague, Dane Lloyd, talked to the agencies, the police agencies involved.
00:07:27.260We see Block Lock's reporter, if to our viewers and listeners, if you haven't checked it out, please do.
00:07:32.920They're doing a great job covering it.
00:07:34.220Just talking about the various sides, but they're talking about memos from national security agencies that did not see the threat needed to justify invoking the Emergencies Act.
00:07:47.040And the Liberals were really drawing on a lot of different things that we found out later were not accurate.
00:07:52.720Many of them said that convoy protesters started a fire in an apartment building.
00:07:57.480We later found out that that wasn't connected at all to the protesters.
00:08:00.680They tried to connect that group of sort of armed extremists in the Coutts area with the organizers in Ottawa, and yet there was no legitimate link found between those two.
00:08:11.780But they, Minister Mendicino, repeatedly made that link, insinuating that, oh, there's guns over here and they're connected to here, so there must be guns here.
00:08:33.120You know, which sort of invokes that national security, public safety thought in people's minds, and yet we found out that not a single police force asked for this.
00:08:41.800And in fact, some are saying now that they never did need any of the powers, as we saw with the RCMP at the border blockades.
00:08:48.440So that really begs the question of what else were they not telling the truth about, or exaggerating, or sort of playing fast and loose with the words.
00:08:57.080And it would be one thing for one of their other policies, I mean, we've come to expect this from the Liberal government not being overly transparent or straight up or honest with Canadians.
00:09:05.380But when it comes to curtailing charter rights and invoking the most powerful law in the land that's supposed to be reserved for extreme deadly circumstances or extreme national security threats, it just is unacceptable.
00:09:18.760And it sets quite a dangerous threshold for the future, which we could talk about, which is really my primary concern with this.
00:09:24.060Yeah, absolutely. We don't want to get to a point where any government, I don't care what stripe it is, Conservative Liberal NDP just uses this as a way to move people in a way that they don't agree with.
00:09:37.060That's a very dangerous line to cross.
00:09:38.940It is. It really is. And that's the sort of thing we see in sort of tyrannical authoritarian regimes around the world, not Canada.
00:09:46.100And so it's quite serious what the actions of the emergency powers allowed.
00:09:50.800They froze bank accounts of Canadians with no due process.
00:09:53.840Now, in normal times, police can freeze bank accounts, which you have to go through the courts because Canadians have charter rights that protect them from governments just unilaterally seizing their assets and things like that.
00:10:04.140But so a number of Canadians had their bank accounts seized.
00:10:07.760They couldn't pay their mortgages. They couldn't pay their bills.
00:10:10.700I had constituents saying they were pulling out thousands of dollars, cancelling credit cards.
00:10:15.000It really drove a lot of fear into the minds of Canadians.
00:10:18.240I don't know if that was the outcome they were hoping to achieve to dissuade people from protesting, possibly.
00:10:24.000But regardless, it was a very serious infringement on charter rights if that threshold wasn't met and therefore the justification wasn't there.
00:10:30.460They also, of course, we have freedom of assembly as a key charter right in Canada that you can go and you could protest on public property at any time so long as you're peaceful and lawful.
00:10:39.080But that was, they made an entire perimeter around Ottawa where protests and demonstrations have been happening since really the dawn of Canadian Confederation, so to speak, and a very important part of our democracy.
00:10:54.420And there's protests happening all the time.
00:11:06.440So, and the last thing I'll say is the Emergencies Act also allowed them to put almost like pockets of saying no charter rights on assembly here, here, here, wherever they wanted.
00:11:16.680So the government could have said, oh, Winnipeg legislature, no charter rights for assembly there.
00:12:01.120Whether or not you liked the convoy or you didn't like the convoy, it didn't matter.
00:12:05.040Did it meet the threshold to bring in the highest piece of legislation in the land?
00:12:09.220And I think that still says no, while at the same time it came out in testimony, and I'm sure you know this,
00:12:14.340that when the province of Ontario declared a state of emergency, they had, the law enforcement did have that power to start moving trucks out,
00:12:22.060compelling tow truck companies to do work for them to move some of the trucks away.
00:12:27.040So that had already started in motion.
00:12:29.780The Emergencies Act really just went way above what was necessary.
00:12:35.620Well, it's odd to think that, I mean, countless protests have been broken.
00:12:39.720Of course there's laws on the books that allow police to break up things like riots or tow, enforced tow truck drivers to tow vehicles that are blocking roads.
00:12:48.880Of course there's laws on the books to maintain law and order.
00:12:56.120And I haven't heard a compelling reason of why Ottawa police or the local government here did not move forward with sort of preparing for this.
00:13:03.240As they saw those thousands of trucks or hundreds of trucks roll across the country, it's quite the phenomenon.
00:13:08.080I'll never forget those sites like most Canadians.
00:13:10.680But again, I think the Liberal government would love to have this sort of pinned on another level of government or this police in Ottawa or the City of Ottawa Council or whatever.
00:13:20.140But let's remember why they were here in the first place.
00:13:48.940They were protesting against lockdowns and the harms that those did on their businesses and their mental health of their children and themselves.
00:13:56.280And they were protesting against being forced to take health decisions that they didn't believe in or trust.
00:14:02.500That's what they were protesting, which is solely with the federal government and frankly some provincial governments who,
00:14:09.300although during the two years of the pandemic that those were in force really are being undertaken,
00:14:13.720were taking direction from the federal government and their health authorities.
00:14:17.580So I think a lot of the blame should be placed, in my perspective, on the Liberals' lack of leadership or their type of leadership during the pandemic.
00:14:27.000That's what inspired or motivated or enraged all of these people to come all the way across Canada to sort of set up camp in Ottawa to protest against Justin Trudeau.
00:14:37.400So the idea that Trudeau would perhaps, they're perhaps trying to maneuver to pin this on Ottawa,
00:14:42.980or maybe that's what will end up happening with this inquiry, I think is the wrong place in that regard.
00:14:57.060I think what's coming out is they didn't realize the size or maybe the impact that it would have.
00:15:01.780But if you look at Toronto, when the second convoy started up, that Toronto police were able to,
00:15:07.280and OPP were able to move the people along and keep them moving.
00:15:11.980And it lasted, what, a day, I think, and then it was gone.
00:15:15.500The second point, too, to all of this is that if you rewind the clock, countries like the United Kingdom were removing their restrictions.
00:15:26.500And at the time, Canada was putting in restrictions.
00:15:30.460Like, it seemed that they were using the force of government instead of trusting people, trusting Canadians to use their best judgment based on the conditions and the information provided to them.
00:15:40.220And I think that's what irked a lot of people in all of this.
00:15:43.620We're just being forced to deal with government that at times was going in the opposite direction in many countries of the world.
00:15:52.060Right. And again, we don't support law-breaking or blockading of any kind.
00:15:56.600That being said, I was not surprised that this happened.
00:16:00.520I think any member of parliament who was surprised that this happened was clearly not paying attention or taking those tough phone calls from their small business owners,
00:16:08.280from the, you know, widowed women living in tiny apartments that were elderly that were just hoping to die because they couldn't spend any more time alone.
00:16:17.100Or the parents who called me whose children didn't want to eat, they developed eating disorders because they had lost complete control of their lives,
00:16:25.080couldn't see their friends, couldn't join sports, had no outlet, were stuck in front of Instagram all day.
00:16:29.980You know, it was incredibly traumatizing, not to mention the division caused by mandates,
00:16:34.800which were certainly supported and talked about a lot from Justin Trudeau during the last election.
00:16:40.340People forget, but a year ago in Manitoba and elsewhere, you could not have anyone at a wedding, a funeral, a birthday party,
00:16:48.900a conference of any kind if there was one unvaccinated person.
00:16:52.800So in Manitoba, if you wanted to have a wedding and let's say your, I don't know, your cousin or your brother was unvaccinated,
00:16:59.000either that person couldn't come or they were the only one who could come.
00:17:02.400So imagine the tension that that creates, trying to have a funeral and your uncle and auntie can't come to their father's funeral because they're not vaccinated.
00:17:13.540Like, imagine what that does and the anger and the fracturing that has in a family.
00:17:18.220And so I think that all of that combined with job losses and the trauma of the whole experience,
00:17:23.720I mean, is anyone really surprised that this happens?
00:17:26.460Does it make the law-breaking justified?
00:17:28.300I just think it was like an outlet, like a pressure release.
00:17:32.480Well, don't even forget the prime minister was calling them names.
00:18:12.560Painted them as sort of a danger to society and said, I'll never forget when I saw this clip on Twitter.
00:18:17.680He was, you know, at a liberal rally yelling into a microphone that you have the right not to get vaccinated, but you have no right to sit next to someone who is.
00:18:27.200That's the most powerful man in the country saying that.
00:18:30.100What kind of message, sort of leadership is that providing to all the people who follow him?
00:18:36.580And so what happens six months later, there's this occupation or this demonstration in Ottawa.
00:18:42.960I think that his actions had serious ramifications.
00:18:47.140Of course, he can't be solely blamed, but I certainly think he carries the weight of most of what happened and has yet to apologize or live up to it.
00:18:54.920And all those terrible things he said, I mean, he called unvaccinated people like racist and misogynistic and anti-science and every name in the book.
00:19:02.820And it's like, this is our, this is the prime minister of Canada.
00:19:06.640You know, I just, it's, it's shocking.
00:19:09.060He's supposed to be the prime minister of all Canadians.
00:19:38.140And rare that you see that in a governing party that a backbencher speaks, at least not in the Canada system.
00:19:43.240We talk about the UK, so this is a little different.
00:19:45.260Yeah, so I, not to make light of any of this, but I just, I think it's, it's tough to almost start reliving this again.
00:19:51.600I don't know if others are thinking this, but, you know, that convoy was a sort of a monumental shake in Canada and was a response to two years of trauma, in my opinion.
00:20:00.800And, you know, now we're rehashing some of that and that can be tough, but we'll see, we'll see what happens.
00:20:07.120I, I have faith in our judicial process.
00:20:09.520This is an inquiry that was built into legislation because it's so serious to invoke this act that they've, the creators of this act and what was it, the late 1980s, built in an inquiry mechanism to investigate this.
00:20:22.740Because any time it's invoked, it needs to have a lengthy inquiry.
00:20:25.520I think that's fairly, I don't know any other, you know, that says a lot.
00:20:29.220So, anyway, we'll see how it goes, Jamie.
00:20:51.600Also, if you can't watch or listen to it right this second, download, listen to it on platforms like CastBox, iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, you name it.