PREVIEW： Brokenomics ｜ Canadian Injustice with Gord Magil
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Summary
As we often cover on Lotus Eaters, Western governments, especially in the Anglosphere, seem to have decided that things like democracy, free speech, thinking for yourself, are very outdated concepts, and in order to protect democracy, by which they mean themselves, they will have to come down on us increasingly hard if we exercise our ability to think or question the narrative in any way. I ve recently been made aware of a particularly unfortunate case pertaining to the Canadian truckers, which of course we supported very much. And in order for me to speak about that, I've got Gord McGill on the line.
Transcript
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Hello and welcome to Brokernomics. Now as we often cover on Lotus Eaters, Western governments,
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especially in the Anglosphere, seem to have decided that things like democracy, free speech,
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thinking for yourself are very outdated concepts and in order to protect democracy, by which they
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mean themselves, they're going to have to come down on us increasingly hard if we exercise our
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ability to think or question the narrative in any way. I've recently been made aware of a
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particularly unfortunate case pertaining to the Canadian truckers, which of course we supported
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very much. And in order to speak about that, I've got Gord McGill on the line. Gord,
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thanks for joining us. Oh, thanks for having me, sir. Pleasure to be here.
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So as I understand, you work Canadian, you become American, and you're also a trucker. Have I got
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that right? Mostly, yeah. I haven't got my American citizenship yet, but I have been living here for
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almost 10 years. Married an American lady. We moved here full time in 2016. I have been a trucker my
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entire life. I went home to support the Freedom Convoy and show solidarity during that epic,
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very based and very legitimate protest in 2022. And I've sort of been writing about it ever since.
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And on your Twitter handle, you've got this photo of you with, you know, I don't want to call it a
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truck because it looks more like a bloody train to me. You don't seriously drive that thing, do you?
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I used to. That photo's from Australia. I've spent some time down under, and I was driving what the
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Aussies call a road train. So it's a triple road train through Western Australia. I was working for a
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company in Perth and going up north to places like Newman and Dampier, Carratha, Broome, sort of outback,
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as they say. Right. Because I often drive past trucks on my way into Swindon from somewhere nice.
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And the trucks we got here, they're like one truck, but that thing was like four, five, or six,
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or something. I mean, it's a triple road train. So three 45 foot trailers. They do have larger ones
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that service the mines out of the Pilbara region and various other locations in Australia.
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I wasn't driving one of those, but I mean, three is enough.
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But what's that like to drive? I mean, I'm just looking at it. It looks bloody terrifying to me.
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I don't know. I guess when you've been driving truck for as long as I have, it's not that big of a
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deal. You actually drive slower. It's a lot more relaxing. When you're in the outback in high
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temperatures, it's really hard on the equipment when you're towing that much weight. So you drive
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slower. You tend to drop a gear or two, do about, you know, 80 kilometers an hour rather than a
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hundred. And, you know, just, just, just take her slow and easy. You have to be ginger on the
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equipment when you're in the outback. Nobody's coming to help you if you break down, like you
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basically have to fix everything yourself, change your own tires.
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Oh, I mean, you know, there's lots of brakes with that many wheels on the ground. It's
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Oh, okay. Oh, right. Okay. Um, yeah, well, uh, it must be a fascinating career. I mean,
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I know, I know we've got a couple of, um, a good number of truckers who, who listened to
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Lotus Eaters and they, they sort of put one of our podcasts on, which, you know, that just,
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that feels quite nice to me listening to me and, and having the air stream through the
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windows and the sun on one of your arms. I mean, that, that feels, you know, that, that's
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got to be the life, isn't it? Uh, the job certainly has its charms. And speaking of
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Lotus Eaters fans, uh, there's a gentleman in England who's been on my podcast once.
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His name is Graham Brown. He has a sub stack called the Louriest. Uh, I think he's, I think,
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I think he's friends with you guys. So g'day Graham. How are you doing?
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Very good, Graham. I, I, I think he might be one of our subscribers. I know I've met a couple
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of them, but, uh, I have to look up that blog. That's excellent. Right. So, um, you're coming
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to talk to us about the case of, um, Tony Olenek and, uh, Chris, uh, I think Cabo, I think it is.
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Yes. So, yeah. So I've, I, I, I've looked into some details of this and it's pretty horrifying.
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Do you want to take us through, um, what happened there? And it all sort of started, did it with a,
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with a Canadian truckers program, which, as you said, was an entirely correct and based
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protest against government overreach. Right. So let's, uh, let us, let us get in the time
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machine and go back to the COVID times. Yes. Um, if I had a time machine, that is the last
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point I'd go back to. I'd rather go back to the bloody dinosaurs wandering around than that, but
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okay. Yeah. So COVID happens. We all know what went down there. Um, in Canada, the, uh, COVID regime
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as manifested under Justin Trudeau was particularly harsh. Um, Justin Trudeau was, uh, pretty extreme
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in his rhetoric against those citizens who had chosen to, you know, uh, adapt to COVID with their
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sort of own approach to it. Um, you know, some people took vaccines, some people did not.
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And Trudeau was very harsh on those who did not. In fact, uh, he orchestrated what I would call a
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system of medical apartheid where, uh, federally regulated industries, figure federally regulated
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jobs. You had no choice. Um, you could not get on an aircraft. You could not board a train. You could
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not use any federally regulated transport if you did not produce a vaccination certificate. And in a
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country, the size of Canada, which has got six time zones, it's the second largest country by landmass
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in the world. Um, a lot of people who live in the far North and the Arctic, uh, there's not that much
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medical care available in the North, uh, preventing people from getting on an airplane might be a death
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sentence for them, uh, over and above all the other stuff, right? Like COVID as it manifested in many
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countries was, you know, much the same, lots of restrictions, lots of fear. And in Canada, it was just,
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it was really bad. So, uh, January, 2022 comes along and Trudeau and his transportation minister
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decide, uh, with no scientific or logical rationale to impose yet another restriction this time on
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truckers who are traveling back and forth into the United States of America, basically saying that if
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they did not get a vaccination every single time they came back over the border from the United States,
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they would have to quarantine for two weeks. Now, this makes no sense because up to that point,
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truck drivers, American and Canadian had been pretty much the backbone of the economy because
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everybody else is hiding at home, getting their free money from the government, hanging out on their
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laptops and their pajamas, but the material reality of society still had to keep going.
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Truckers were part of that and truckers were still working, uh, working under hours of service
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exemptions. So the government said, not only can you keep working, but you can work harder.
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The American government removed hours of service legislation. They basically said you can work as
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hard as you want. And then at the same time, uh, highway rest areas were closed. Truck stops were
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closed. You would show up at a facility and the people that work, they were afraid of you. They would
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treat you as like a vector of disease. Drivers were like prevented from using any facilities,
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right? So truckers are literally working twice as hard as normal. There's some of the only people
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that are still working. And then all of the services to help truckers were closed, right?
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Then Trudeau and his people come along and say, no, no, no, no, no. If you don't take the juice,
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you're basically out of a job. So to any thinking person, like this is extremely offensive, right?
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So the freedom convoy was born out of this situation. Um, some people in Alberta, some
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people in Ontario organized online. It sort of spread like wildfire online. It became a sort of
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distributed, spontaneous, and completely leaderless thing. I think, uh, I think the number of convoys
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that participated in arriving in the city of Ottawa was 13 and just thousands of trucks, people from all
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over the country, but Ottawa was not the only location. There was a number of freedom convoy
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protest sites. There was the one in the city of Ottawa. There was one at the border crossing between
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Detroit, Michigan and Windsor, Ontario. Uh, there was another one in Manitoba at the border crossing
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into North Dakota. And then there was another one in Alberta. There's a pretty major border crossing at
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a little town called Coots, which is about a four and a half, five hour drive South of the city of
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Calgary, right on the border with Montana. And, uh, this story we're going to discuss starts in
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Coots. So at the Coots border crossing, much like the one in Ottawa, a number of trucks, they kind of,
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they, you know, it's said that they blocked off the border, which is sort of not necessarily a hundred
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percent true. Um, they had their trucks lined up on either side of the road. Um, the border crossing
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was only officially closed for about three days out of the three weeks that the protest site was
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there. And was it, was it closed by trucks blocking it? Or was it closed by the Canadian
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government? Well, depends on who you ask. Uh, the Canadian border services agency officially closed
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it for three days in February. Yes. There was a bunch of trucks there. Yes. They had slowed it down,
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but there was also two other border crossings within half an hour in either direction. So like the board,
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the border was never technically really closed. There was always an option to get across could
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still get across. Yeah. I mean, if they took a small detour, yep. And then the actual closure of
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the highway where the highway for Alberta provincial highway four was actually closed, was that the next
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community North of the place called milk river and the RCMP basically barricaded it off and nobody
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could come or go on highway four at that location. That was care of the government. So this protest,
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uh, goes on and you know, as, as the, as the protests across Canada were, you know, set in,
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right. So like the truckers showed up in Ottawa on January 29th. Um, they were in Alberta and Manitoba
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and all these other places around the same time. Um, Justin Trudeau is under pressure from the American
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government because the backups at the border, specifically the one in Ontario were starting to
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cost the American economy, a lot of money, uh, sort of a repeat of September 11th, when they
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closed the border, because so many parts, the American Canadian economies are so intertwined
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and they have, uh, you know, just in time delivery for automotive parts that are built in factories
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in Canada. Then they go to factories in the U S to assemble cars. You know, it's, it's, it's 24 seven.
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There's always has to be great moving in order to keep all that stuff going.
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So, um, Pete Buttigieg, uh, who was the secretary of transportation at the time under Joe Biden
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is in meetings with Trudeau and his people with Christia Freeland. All the documentation of this
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stuff is publicly available. Um, it was all reviewed during the public order emergency commission,
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which reviewed the imposition of the emergencies act by Trudeau. It's all there. You can all go look
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at it yourself. And, uh, basically Biden and Buttigieg were leaning very heavily on Trudeau
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to get the borders, like those border crossings unblocked. Right. Even though there was ways
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around it, like even at Detroit and, uh, Windsor, you could go North to Sarnia, Ontario and cross the
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border there. There's another major border crossing an hour North of Detroit that everybody was still
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using. It was still open. So like at no point was it ever completely closed or was it ever,
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you know, yes, a problem, yes, delays, but at no point anywhere, was it ever completely closed?
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Um, Trudeau is having these meetings with, uh, the American government. And at the same time,
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uh, you know, they're, they're trying to figure out ways to clean these protests out. Like,
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you know, it's, it's looking bad for Trudeau. Trudeau is a venal evil person who doesn't like to be
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told no, but at the same time, they never sent out any of his representatives to talk to people at
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the convoy. So in Alberta, there was no communication between the government. No, the city of Ottawa talked
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to the protesters in Ottawa, but from the federal government, there was nothing. Right. Um, yeah.
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Well, I remember, I remember watching the protests at the time and I distinctly remember a whole bunch
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of, I mean, I know you didn't exactly have leaders, but you kind of had leaders. And I remember
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distinctly a whole bunch of times from saying, you know, we want to have a dialogue. We want to have
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a communication. Correct. Yeah. There was, there was, there was always, always an open, open,
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you know, basically an open invitation from protesters. Hey, come talk to us about this. Come talk to us
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about this and Trudeau just refused because it's, you know, it's our democracy, right? Yeah. So
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Coots, Alberta, um, the government sends in undercover officers to case the joint, right?
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Just to sort of like see what's happening. And, you know, rather than communicate directly,
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the government decides to communicate through subterfuge. So they send in a bunch of, uh,
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young female undercover officers to the Coots protest site and start talking to people.
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And they specifically start, uh, uh, listening to Tony Olianek. They don't have wires on them.
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They have no recording devices. They don't have video cameras, nothing hidden. They're just,
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they're just listening and taking notes. And then, um, they basically come to the conclusion,
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the undercover officers that Tony Olianek and some of the other people there are ready to fight to
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the death and want to have a revolution. And, you know, they're, they're, they're, they're,
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they're, they're gonna, they're, they're an imminent threat. So they obtain wiretaps. They
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get an, what's called an imminent harm wiretap, which means they have 24 hours to listen in on their
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phones. And that wiretap does not require a warrant because it's imminent harm, right? They put an
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imminent harm wiretap on a bunch of guys' phones at Coots, Alberta, and they get nothing,
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no actionable evidence, no rhetoric, nothing. And then they leave that wiretap on,
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for a couple more days, which is illegal without actually getting another separate proper warrant.
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Anyway, the, long story short, the government decides that these guys in Alberta are going
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to be their scapegoats. Uh, the police raid the site on the evening of February 13th, uh, 2022,
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the night before Justin Trudeau invoked the emergencies act, which resulted in the bank account
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freezings and, uh, all the fun stuff downstream of that. I mean, I just quickly add, I mean,
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that is so typical of the way Western governments are going. They, they did, they, they have moved
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from a model of, of genuine democracy to cattle management, where they're basically just kind
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of trying to keep us under control. And because those of us who push back are not actually doing
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anything wrong other than exercising what used to be democratic rights. Instead, they go with this
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sort of, um, um, sort of anarcho tyranny where they will pick out a handful of individuals
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and just ran road them with process and problems in order to make an example of them to scare
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everybody off. That's exactly what's happened here. And you mentioned the site. I mean, what,
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what, what site are we talking about? Presumably just a whole bunch of trucks pulled up alongside
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each other. Right. So basically Coots, Coots, Alberta is a village of like only a couple hundred
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people. It's in the middle of the prairie. So it's just all flat for the most part. And then there's
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a highway that runs through it. So the American interstate 15 ends and then Alberta highway
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four begins. There's a little customs office and the guys had basically parked all their
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trucks. There's photos of this all over the place, park their trucks on the Canadian side
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of the border, both sides of the road. They had like campers and stuff set up in people's
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property in the village of Coots. And they had assembled, there's a little bar kind of restaurant
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tavern pub type place in Coots called smuggler's saloon. And that was their sort of headquarters
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and everybody was just hanging around, standing around, drinking coffee, talking about all
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the stuff that was going on during COVID. Like nothing was happening. So RCMP raid the
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joint. They make, they arrest 13 people initially. They arrested a couple more people the next
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day, including one of the Coots four guys, Jerry Morin on his way to work up in Calgary,
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like five hour drive away. So they arrest all these guys and then accuse them of like just,
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just, just the most heinous stuff. Conspiracy to murder police officers. They've got all these
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guns. And then they had this like staged photograph of, they'd gone around to all these different
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people's camper trailers and residences and vehicles. And they grabbed all these guns and
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vests and ammunition and they made a big show of it, you know, to scare everybody. Um, the guys get
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arrested. So, so, so, so these guys were stocking some serious firepower, were they?
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I mean, well, the thing is, is that like, nobody knows who most of those guns belong to,
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right? Because they are, they didn't, the RCMP were never able to attribute most of them to the
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people they claim to attribute them to. Okay. I mean, just, just, just on the point of the guns,
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I mean, I know in the U S it's, it's much more liberal. I don't, I don't know what the gun laws
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are like in Canada, but I mean, I would imagine. Okay. You're allowed to have rifles, rifles and
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shotguns are a fixture of life in rural Canada. Everybody has rifles and shotguns because you've
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got bears and moose and on the prairie, you've got gophers and prairie dogs and nuisance animals,
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coyotes. There's a, there's a bounty for coyotes in some places. Like if you shoot a coyote and bring
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in its carcass, they'll give you money. Right. Right. And so like people, people just have guns. It's not
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that big of a deal. Okay. Right. The government tried to make it a big deal, but like if you live
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in rural Canada, it's not right. And it is, if you live in Calgary or Toronto, or you're like,
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you know, one of these bug people, urbanite liberal party supporters, you know, you, the sight of a gun,
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it just triggers you immediately. Right. Anyhow, these guys get arrested and the, the, the,
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the problems start in that the, they get arrested, they get booked. Um, the nine of the 13 people are
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eventually released and they focus on these four guys, Tony Olionek, Chris Carbert, Chris Lysak,
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and another gentleman named Jerry Morin. They're all denied bail, right? They're put in jail. They're
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accused of all these heinous crimes. Uh, three of them have no criminal records at all. Uh, Chris
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Carbert had like a minor, you know, drug position thing from when he was a very young man, kind of
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meaningless, but you know, all of them work upstanding citizens, you know, no criminal record, no history
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of violence, nothing like there's just, they're just regular working class dudes. Tony Olionek and his
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dad ran a gravel quarry, uh, well, his late father, he had a dump truck down there. Uh, Chris Lysak's
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an electrician, Chris Carbert, like self-employed owns his own sort of landscaping business. And,
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you know, Jerry Morin's an electrical lineman. So like, they're all just regular working class guys,
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totally peaceful. Again, no criminal records. They get thrown in jail and then they get kept there.
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They get denied bail. The, the, the reason for the, the, they were the, the, the bail denial
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was that the charge against them is so heinous that it would, you know, uh, bring disrepute to
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the justice system and the prison system. If they were let out like in the eyes of the public, that's
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what the judge who denied their initial application for bail said. Right. And this is all hinging on the
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fact that they believe these people were about to go on a mass cop.
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killing spree or something. Correct. Right. Yes. And you know, when they got arrested,
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when the RCMP showed up, everybody was like, okay, cool. Like it was totally peaceful. Nobody
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put up a fight. There was never any resistance. It was just like, oh, okay. And they just went
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away with it. They're like, and the next day, the, uh, whole crowd at coots dispersed. Everybody
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went home peacefully. There's famous video of like the protesters singing, Oh Canada and hugging
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the cops and shaking hands and all smiles. Like, okay, cool. We came, we set our pace.
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We left. Right. But the government insisted that these four guys were like a threat to
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the nation. They were cited by Trudeau. Uh, Trudeau's public safety minister, this guy
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named Marco Mendocino was like having these fire breathing pressers. There's these armed
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revolutionaries. They want to overthrow the government and they were getting ready to kill
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cops. And they basically use these four guys to scare the bejesus out of the rest of the
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But it's palpably absurd though. Yeah. I don't know how they're going to overthrow the government
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when they're in Alberta, 3000 some odd kilometers away from Ottawa, but you know.
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Well, and also presumably no, no cop actually got shot during any of this.
00:21:08.120
No, there was never any violence across all of the protest sites in Canada, Ottawa, Windsor,
00:21:15.060
Manitoba, Alberta, any of the sort of smaller ones in other places, nothing, zero.
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