The John-Henry Westen Show - March 09, 2022


Producer of Freedom Convoy documentary attests to the 'genuine love' among protesters

Topics
legacy media footage bias
Hosted by
John-Henry Westen
Mentioned
Ben Hab Ben Boucher Benjamin Hab Vern Buecher Tamara Leach Ben Huff Quebecer Spencer
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Episode Stats


Length

19 minutes

Words per minute

156.94

Word count

3,085

Sentence count

186

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

What happened to all the trucks in the protest in Ottawa? What happened to the trucks that blocked the streets of the city? Ben Hab, who was there on the ground filming the whole way through the protest, answers the question.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.360 With all the news going on in Ukraine and Russia, many people have forgotten about the truckers in Canada.
00:00:07.960 We've seen a massive amount of freedom restored, not only in Canada but around the world,
00:00:13.160 and it's largely thanks to those truckers.
00:00:15.000 We know some of them are already in prison.
00:00:17.500 We saw Tamara Lich not only arrested with handcuffs but also brought to the court in shackles. 1.00
00:00:23.760 She's unable to get bail, so she's in jail, and this is still ongoing.
00:00:28.620 So unbelievable stuff, but one of the questions that many people had during the demonstration in Parliament,
00:00:37.180 the blocking not only of the border areas but also the massive demonstration in Ottawa,
00:00:42.140 was what happened to all the trucks?
00:00:45.100 We heard there were tens of thousands, even 50,000 trucks coming from all over Canada descending upon Ottawa.
00:00:52.700 You heard that there were some coming in from the United States as well.
00:00:55.240 But when we got there, we saw that it was maybe a few thousand.
00:01:00.260 When we went up in the helicopter, we saw one of the most amazing things was a conversation I had in the car
00:01:06.900 with a gentleman who explained some of that to me.
00:01:11.180 His name is Ben Hab, and he is doing a documentary on the convoy of trucks right from B.C.
00:01:19.620 and other areas into Ottawa.
00:01:22.260 They were there on the ground filming the whole way through, and he can answer that question for us.
00:01:28.660 What happened to all the trucks in the convoy?
00:01:32.780 Stay tuned.
00:01:33.420 Ben Hab, welcome to the program.
00:01:55.440 Thank you very much. Thanks for having me on.
00:01:57.220 Awesome. Let's begin, as we always do, with the sign of the cross.
00:02:00.680 In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
00:02:07.500 So, Ben, it was great to talk to you back then in the heyday of all that was going on.
00:02:14.120 Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you're doing with this documentary.
00:02:18.480 For sure. My name is Benjamin Hab. I'm out of northern B.C. in Canada, and I own a small production company,
00:02:27.480 and we do mainly instructionals, industrial documentaries, safety orientations, and promotional videos.
00:02:35.620 And we, a few of our friends were traveling in the convoy out east, and some of the reports they were sending back
00:02:45.640 were vastly different than we were seeing on legacy media platforms.
00:02:49.880 Some of them were calling that there was a violent string of trucks that were out to, you know, have mayhem and, you know, overthrow the government downtown in Ottawa.
00:03:05.880 And what Bernd Buechert was sending me was vastly different from being on the ground.
00:03:13.260 So, we originally went to downtown Ottawa to film a little five-minute expose of our experience,
00:03:21.780 of what we were experiencing on the ground, and seeing how that might differ from legacy media.
00:03:28.640 And our results were vastly different.
00:03:33.580 What we were experiencing on the ground, what we were seeing with our eyes,
00:03:38.560 the amount of celebration and love around was, it was hard, it was almost hard to see how different it was
00:03:46.580 from what the government was saying, what the mainstream media was saying.
00:03:51.560 And so, we knew we had to do something a little bit bigger, and that's where the documentary was born.
00:03:59.060 Amazing, amazing.
00:03:59.920 One of the most interesting aspects, at least when I called you first, was, what happened to the trucks?
00:04:07.500 We heard tens of thousands are coming in, yet when we got there, we didn't see that many.
00:04:12.240 We saw lots for sure, tons along Wellington, about six streets or so running north-south, also filled with trucks.
00:04:20.040 But if you counted all that up, you still ended up in a few thousand, rather than the tens of thousands that were talked about.
00:04:26.480 And can you answer that question for us?
00:04:30.060 For sure.
00:04:31.000 I mean, to be fair, tens of thousands was probably a bit of a stretch, even from the get-go.
00:04:38.960 I mean, you had the left-leaning media saying one thing.
00:04:43.740 You had the extreme right saying a completely different thing.
00:04:48.120 I think giving accurate numbers was a very difficult thing, because there were so many strings of trucks, and they were broken up with passenger vehicles as well.
00:05:03.660 So, getting accurate numbers from any front was very difficult.
00:05:06.560 But what we found, what was happening in Ottawa, the convoy was working alongside the police a fair amount to guide them into downtown.
00:05:18.820 They knew they were doing a protest, so there was a fair amount of working together to make sure that this was happening safely.
00:05:24.980 But what was happening was you'd get a string of 30, 40 trucks or trucks and trailers, or just some of the trucks just bobtailing, which means they don't have a trailer on.
00:05:39.540 And they would be driving along, and all of a sudden, they would realize there was no additional vehicles behind them.
00:05:47.000 And what the Ontario police were doing were marshalling some vehicles into areas that were off-site.
00:05:56.400 There was a stadium just outside of Ottawa that the parking lot was full of trucks.
00:06:01.280 There were industrial areas where trucks were brought to that were 10, 20 kilometers away from downtown Ottawa.
00:06:09.540 Even Armprior still had a lot of trucks that were still there that didn't even make it anywhere near Ottawa.
00:06:17.360 So, there was a lot of strategic things done in order to minimize the overall look of how many trucks were actually there.
00:06:31.360 Whether or not that was very intentional or whether or not they were trying to just stop the congestion that was going to be happening downtown,
00:06:37.880 it's really hard to say, but there was a lot of misdirection on where the trucks were going.
00:06:47.040 Now, that being said, was it 10,000 to 50,000 trucks?
00:06:51.060 I honestly, I can't think that it was that many trucks, honestly.
00:06:55.740 The convoy that I was a part of was from the West, and when we were filming, I was excited to see what 50,000 trucks looked like.
00:07:06.600 It was not 50,000 trucks.
00:07:08.340 I can assure you the West convoy was not in those numbers.
00:07:12.920 Was it still impressive?
00:07:14.620 A hundred percent.
00:07:15.420 It was a very impressive string of millions and millions and millions of dollars worth of equipment driving on their way to Ottawa to protest.
00:07:24.560 Now, you had an incredible clip of the Western convoy, a large percentage of them being blocked from entering at all.
00:07:34.740 What happened there, if you could tell us?
00:07:37.260 For sure.
00:07:37.980 So, there was a lot of heavy equipment brought in to block-specific streets, like city graders, a lot of police vehicles,
00:07:47.220 a lot of RCMP mixed with Ontario police, mixed with some of their Ontario special service and whatnot,
00:07:55.200 and they were blocking the one video clip you might have saw there was from McDonald Street there,
00:08:03.660 where a portion of the trucks were split off, and about three kilometers from downtown were just stopped,
00:08:12.300 stopped at a crossroad with a big grader sitting in front, and they were allowed to leave the street,
00:08:17.220 and, you know, grab fuel and turn around and whatnot.
00:08:20.500 They weren't, they weren't, like, trapped inside there, but they were blocked from going any closer to downtown.
00:08:28.340 And so, a few, probably five, six days after they were parked there on McDonald for a few days,
00:08:37.660 the officers were talking with some of the lead truck drivers, saying,
00:08:41.780 okay, we're going to get you in a little bit closer, and they started leading them away, essentially.
00:08:47.220 from downtown.
00:08:49.940 But they, what happened is that there was about, I was talking with Vern Buecher,
00:08:54.980 they managed to get themselves onto Nicholas Street, which was fairly close to downtown,
00:08:58.280 a little bit closer than they were.
00:09:00.580 And they parked about six or seven trucks down there.
00:09:04.420 But again, there was, there were so many, so many cops redirecting vehicles to be further away,
00:09:09.680 so it was hard to get everything congested right downtown, like they were hoping.
00:09:13.000 Right. So, you had talked to me about, in the stadium, there were trucks parked, in some abandoned malls, there were trucks parked?
00:09:21.860 Yeah, there was parking lots everywhere outside of the town. Yeah.
00:09:24.600 So, one of the other aspects that I found fascinating was, sometimes the truckers were blocked and decided to walk in anyways.
00:09:33.460 Tell us the story about the Quebec blocking there.
00:09:35.820 Oh, for sure. That was phenomenal. At the border from Quebec into Ottawa, there was a, there was a fairly large blockade from, from the officers with heavy equipment.
00:09:45.120 And the, a large string of trucks from Quebec and from the east were blocked from getting downtown.
00:09:53.840 And this was the very first day that we were down there.
00:09:57.060 And so, the party, like, and I, and I, I say it's a party, it was a giant celebration.
00:10:03.260 It was like, I, I, it was essentially like, like Canada Day, your 4th of July, on steroids.
00:10:12.940 It was, you seen Canadian pride and, and, uh, uh, this, this massive, um, earnest love towards Canada being celebrated downtown.
00:10:27.260 And Quebec was stuck on the other side of the border. They abandoned their trucks. They all got out, they walked across the bridge and they joined their fellow Canadians downtown and, uh, Albertans and Quebec, uh, Quebecers, they, they, they have a little bit of animosity towards each other once in a while.
00:10:46.600 They, they, it's, it's, it's like a, a good hockey game there. You know, there's going to be a little bit rougher, rougher situations, uh, if, if the Quebec and, uh, Alberta was in a hockey game together.
00:10:58.740 Uh, uh, but what you saw was like a genuine love for, for one another. There was hugging, you know, you see a, a, a, a, an Albertan Canadian with a big cowboy hat on and a Quebecer flying his Quebec flag.
00:11:12.880 And they're hugging and crying together because they've, they've seen their, their freedom eroded in Canada and, and to have them come together in this kind of unity.
00:11:22.960 Like we've never seen that kind of unity before. It's, it's, it was awe inspiring. And I, I knew every, every minute we had the camera rolling, we were capturing something special and capturing a piece of Canadian history.
00:11:34.680 Yeah. That was so evident for everyone who was there. It was a party like none other, uh, but I don't mean party in that kind of sense of just, uh, for sure. I, I understand what you're saying.
00:11:47.520 It was a deep, deep love and appreciation for one another. It was unbelievable. Never anything I've experienced like that before in, in a public setting like that. Um, so there was a huge beauty.
00:12:00.300 And yet there was this mismatch between what was going on in the mainstream media, what was being said by the prime minister and the politicians, and then the reality of the situation.
00:12:10.720 Just the other day, uh, we heard the report of the investigation into the truckers, the donations into the GoFundMe page saying that, nope, it wasn't as it was claimed that there was largely foreign donations.
00:12:23.160 88% were from Canadians. Um, nope, they didn't find any, um, bad actors in the list. They went through and tried to investigate and see who might've, so it's a fake narrative coming, uh, that led to, you know, these, some of these really draconian measures, especially going after people's personal bank accounts.
00:12:41.820 Uh, unbelievable. But just how did all that strike you as you experienced yourself, the convoy, and then saw the resulting emergency order act?
00:12:53.160 And going after people's bank accounts. Now, uh, some of the trucker leaders, uh, arrested without possibility of bail and in shackles in court, as if there was some kind of threat to the public.
00:13:06.900 Confusing, I would say to, to, to say it lightly. Um, it was, I always felt like there was little bits of bias on different, different, uh, outlets.
00:13:19.720 You, you, you would take, uh, what you would see as a grain of salt. And, and, and I had a little bit of background with that. I, I, I film for legacy media quite often. If there's a story up and up in, uh, Fort St. John, they'll often hire our firm to go capture some footage and, and, and do it, conduct some interviews. And we have done that before.
00:13:41.220 So I've seen the result also of what they've picked out of our footage. We'll have a whole interview based around something and they'll say, say something along the lines of like, well, you know, it's unfortunate that some of the farmers are losing their land.
00:13:56.360 That the economic benefit is, is tremendous for our area. All they'll take is it's unfortunate. Some farmers are, are losing out on their land and they'll cut it there. They won't, they won't tell the whole sentence.
00:14:08.860 So seeing that firsthand with the footage that we've prepared for legacy media, it, it, uh, it makes you second guess what you're, what you're watching.
00:14:17.360 If that's the full story, because I could see it happening with our own footage that we were providing now to be down on town and filming the, the items that we're filming and, and seeing what their, what their focus is on.
00:14:31.920 There, there was a Confederate flag that was downtown. There was a, a Nazi flag flown at one time.
00:14:39.280 Uh, as soon as I seen those reports, um, I actively spent eight hours looking for one of those flags for looking for a Confederate flag for looking for these moments and I could not find it.
00:14:52.560 Um, yet that was, that was the reports for the next two and a half, three weeks.
00:14:57.960 And that was the basis of, um, um, what our prime minister was talking about with the level of racism and unacceptable behaviors was based on this one flag from one individual that, that I never, I could never find.
00:15:13.200 I could never see that hate. I could never see that, um, firsthand. And I'm actively looking for it. I'm looking for these narratives that are being portrayed and are not able to confirm what is being said.
00:15:27.440 And that's, that was a big eye opener for myself when, when something was so 180 degrees different than what I was, what I was seeing firsthand and trying to find these moments that I could confirm and, and, and have some semblance of trust in, in, uh, in legacy media.
00:15:46.760 And I was having a very difficult time finding that. So that, that, that me, that was a big, wide, wide eye opener for sure.
00:15:56.220 And, and a concerning one as well, because now you have to second guess everything that you're being told and it's exhausting.
00:16:03.200 It is indeed. It is indeed. And it has real consequence. Consequence also for people who don't question and therefore turn on the neighbors.
00:16:12.640 And it really is creating a division in Canada that, uh, is hopefully repairable, but it'll take a lot of work.
00:16:19.300 Ben, uh, I want to thank you for joining us and also tell folks where they can get your documentary when it's ready.
00:16:24.760 Oh, for sure. So, uh, we have, uh, a website. It's www.eaglevisionvideo.ca slash unacceptable doc.
00:16:34.800 So it's unacceptable doc. And there we'll be slowly posting a few updates as we're going along.
00:16:41.500 We're currently, uh, just outside of, uh, Indian head, Saskatchewan, traveling our way all the way, uh, back to Ottawa, grabbing more interviews as well with people that were, uh, having experiences, both with coots down at the coots border, down in Alberta, as well as, uh, all the way over to Ottawa.
00:16:59.720 So we just met up with a, a truck driver in, uh, in, uh, Indian head called, uh, pretty boy Spencer.
00:17:06.800 Uh, pretty boy was his radio handle. So most of the truckers went off their radio handles there,
00:17:11.180 but, uh, if you want to see more updates, you can, you can find those on that website, which also links to our Facebook page, YouTube, Instagram as well.
00:17:19.980 Awesome. Thank you so much, Ben Huff for being with us and, uh, God bless you.
00:17:26.160 Likewise. I appreciate you having me on the program. Thanks again.
00:17:29.340 Thank you. And God bless all of you. We'll see you next time.
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