True Patriot Love - January 22, 2026


Inside Canada’s Darkest Moment


Episode Stats

Length

43 minutes

Words per Minute

185.60027

Word Count

8,054

Sentence Count

405

Misogynist Sentences

1

Hate Speech Sentences

1


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Today on True Patriot Love, under the pillar, politics, I guess, I have Brian Isted with me
00:00:11.440 today. Hi, Brian. Hi, Paul. And, you know, Brian, so we're here. It's winter, of course. And this
00:00:19.620 weekend I was outside and beautiful weekend, cold, snowy. I was building a rink. So a beautiful 40
00:00:28.720 by 60 rink for the kids in the neighborhood. And, you know, we were all sitting there having
00:00:33.860 a coffee, talking, all the friends and the neighbors around. And the subject came up of
00:00:40.800 Friday's announcement. So it was very interesting. And I didn't think, I thought to myself when
00:00:45.620 they announced it, I thought, I wonder if I'm the only one paying attention to this. You
00:00:49.720 know, because it was a really important announcement. And I think for a lot of us who were watching
00:00:56.860 it at the time, or, you know, we were all involved, some of us more than others. You know, we went
00:01:03.400 through the February 14, 2022 launch or enactment of the Emergencies Act. And it caused a lot of
00:01:13.760 damage to a lot of people. And, you know, and I, so I went home and I took a look and I said,
00:01:21.900 okay, you know, how many people were affected? So for those of you kind of flashback, sorry for
00:01:27.120 everyone. For those of you who want to forget it, you know, 500 trucks pulled into Ottawa,
00:01:33.840 the convoy, the trucker convoy, the Ottawa police were overwhelmed, right? They couldn't make any
00:01:41.800 decisions. They had never seen this before. It was totally gridlock. The horns were honking.
00:01:47.820 We were hearing reports of, you know, rioting and everything going on. The Emergency Act came into
00:01:57.680 play because it went on for weeks. And then all of a sudden, bank accounts were being seized.
00:02:03.680 People were being ticketed, fined. I think there was a $5,000 fine for people who were just in the area.
00:02:11.900 So if you were found protesting in that area, you were going to be levied a $5,000 fine. There were
00:02:18.980 3,182 parking tickets. And, you know, the economy, whatever was left of the economy was totally
00:02:28.840 disrupted, because not only was it happening in Ottawa, it was happening in Alberta, it was happening
00:02:33.540 in Windsor, the border blockades, the road blockades, and then the Emergency Act happened.
00:02:40.020 And all over the fact that we were, through COVID, required to stay home, shelter in place, close our
00:02:47.340 businesses, go for mandatory testing, force business closures. People had just had enough. It had been too
00:02:54.580 many months, and they were just sick of it. And here we were, going through this winter. I think everyone
00:03:01.940 was isolated, not knowing what was going on. And the government put this in place, and we ended up
00:03:08.560 just making a mess at that point, and after. Leading us to a place where, I think last time I tallied
00:03:18.240 it up, I went online and took a look, Brian. We're at a billion dollars in civil lawsuits to the federal
00:03:25.500 government over this. And the neighbors, just the neighbors alone right now, are at $500 million.
00:03:33.680 So, the people who are getting disrupted and everything else. So, you know, I called Mike, and I said, Mike, you
00:03:40.220 know, is Brian around? Let's do a show, because quite frankly, I know you have a story to tell about this. So, I want
00:03:45.660 you to come in and talk about your story, because you were in the middle of this, right? I remember this story when I
00:03:50.900 first met you, you know, you're in the hall, and we started talking, and you started telling this story, and I was like,
00:03:56.080 wow, that's crazy. I had met two people other than you that were impacted. One that had their bank
00:04:03.100 account frozen, and another had a fine. And you're the third person I met who had been impacted, you
00:04:08.420 know, and that's in my small scope, a sphere of people. So, you know, tell the story for me.
00:04:14.980 So, I'm surprised I didn't have my bank account frozen, to be honest, because I donated to the
00:04:20.140 convoy through, I think it was Give, Send, Go was maybe the original one before it pivoted to the
00:04:27.260 other one. I can't remember, but I did send, I think it was $20, because I believed in what they
00:04:34.360 were doing. I didn't necessarily love the loud horn honking well into the night, you know what I mean?
00:04:40.740 But I can understand the frustration of the people and why they were doing it. I don't have to agree
00:04:47.880 with everything they do to be, to stand beside them or behind them. But yeah, at the time, I was
00:04:53.260 living just a couple kilometers away from the convoy. You could kind of see in a little sort of
00:04:58.640 suburb in the west end of Ottawa called Westboro, but you could kind of see even from where I was
00:05:03.640 living, the tail end of it, even just walking distance from my house, maybe there were trucks
00:05:09.640 that had parked at the side of the road, or maybe were sitting in a parking lot with their trailer
00:05:15.580 kind of thing that were part of it, but not necessarily at kind of at the ground zero.
00:05:19.680 So I did take a drive through it early on, I believe in the first few days that it was there,
00:05:25.720 I sort of drove past it as I was running errands. And it was hard not to become emotional, seeing
00:05:31.060 the level of patriotism, because at the end of the day, that's what this was for the most part,
00:05:37.860 were there people that were unruly and use it as an excuse to get drunk, and you know what I mean,
00:05:42.980 be rowdy and maybe commit, you know what I mean, vandalism or take a leak on a building?
00:05:48.920 Sure, you know what I mean? And I've said this before, like, have you ever been to a bar? Is
00:05:51.980 there a couple people there that can't handle their booze? For sure, you know what I mean? But
00:05:55.220 the vast majority of the people that were there, were there for the right reasons from what I could
00:06:00.060 see. And it was not this misogynistic fringe group of whatever Trudeau called them, you know what I
00:06:08.480 mean, woman beating bigots, or whatever words he was using to describe it, it was, it was a it was an
00:06:15.880 eclectic group of very mixed race from everything you could imagine, there was actually a pretty
00:06:21.400 sizable number of native Canadians that I saw there, which, again, doesn't fit the narrative of this,
00:06:28.420 of this neo Nazi group that had assembled there to cause havoc throughout the city. But just driving
00:06:35.040 through, I became a little bit emotional seeing it. And then I returned to it a few, maybe a week or so
00:06:40.580 later before the emergencies act had been initiated, obviously. And I just walked around, I just wanted
00:06:47.340 to see it for myself. And it was much bigger. But at this point, there was more trucks there, there was
00:06:52.880 infrastructure in place, almost, you could say there was not one, but two bouncy castles set up for kids.
00:06:59.020 There was hot tubs. Yeah, like, there were soup lines, there were hot dogs and sandwiches, and
00:07:06.580 everything was free for them, like hot chocolate. Everything was kind of going through either on the
00:07:11.400 dime of the individual that had sort of driven there, or maybe they were distributing the donations
00:07:17.280 that had gone through. But I just wanted to see what it was. So I took a walkthrough with some
00:07:20.680 police officer friends of mine who actually had been let go from TPS over the mandates. So these people
00:07:26.300 were there for a reason, and they wanted to see for themselves as well. And it was nothing but people
00:07:31.180 that were dancing, you know, I mean, having to go, I believe, at that time, there was two DJ booths set
00:07:36.740 up. So there was, there was, there may have been in excess of 10,000 people there. And I, everybody was
00:07:44.040 having a good time, it was probably minus 20, minus 1520, somewhere in there, it was very cold, in early
00:07:50.760 February. And people were there well into the night, all night. You know what I mean, sleeping in their
00:07:56.600 trucks, camp, there was many tents, people were braving this, like soldiers, you know what I mean,
00:08:01.700 going through winter warfare training. And it was, it was nothing at all that it was being portrayed in
00:08:07.660 the media. And if you went to see it for yourself, you would have seen that. And it was not long after
00:08:12.780 that, that again, I, again, so my speaking to my experience that I got a call from a colleague
00:08:18.480 saying, by the way, you know what I mean, just so you know, the military is tracking everybody that's
00:08:23.980 there. And I was still in at the time. And your name came up in a meeting, this is the person saying
00:08:28.700 it to me referencing my name. So Brian Isted came up in a meeting, as having been there. So it I just
00:08:35.260 started became very sick to my stomach, and distrustful of the leadership that I'd lost already almost
00:08:41.780 complete faith in. And I kind of knew from, as my health continued to deteriorate, both physically
00:08:48.960 and mentally, and then getting this news, I just, I couldn't have been more disgusted and disappointed
00:08:54.660 with the federal government, the leadership of D&D, and kind of the municipal response, OPP,
00:09:02.520 RCMP, you name it, other police forces were there in weird sort of uniforms that had no specific
00:09:10.020 marking, like there was a lot of weird, and sort of overreaction things going on there. I can go on,
00:09:16.660 but I think you kind of get the picture. Yeah, no, no, and you're not the only way. So it's
00:09:21.240 interesting, you know, you talk about it, the, the husband and wife that I know, they both work on
00:09:26.620 Bay Street. And they were there, you know, and they ended up getting that's the fine I talked about,
00:09:32.420 you know, the people I know, they got fined, but, but it was interesting. So there was people from all
00:09:36.880 walks of life, wanting to get involved. And it, you know, how it became, so let's talk about this. So
00:09:42.760 the, I guess the local police lost total control of this thing. Like really, or, or they just didn't
00:09:50.000 believe in it. They didn't want to get involved because they, they weren't against it. So I think it
00:09:54.720 was a combination when, you know, the reports I've read about the Ottawa police and, you know, some of
00:10:00.420 the comments and recommendations to improve were basically, you know, resource wise, they didn't
00:10:10.080 have enough. And the people they did have, quite frankly, were not committed to it and believed in
00:10:15.800 the cause. So it came, you know, they just let the trucks go. And there wasn't an active move to move
00:10:22.260 at the beginning to get them out of there. It just sort of grew and grew and grew. And I think
00:10:27.840 at one point they were just hoping they would leave. I think, I think that's an accurate
00:10:32.160 assessment. I think most of the police that were in Ottawa or sort of assigned to be working this
00:10:37.720 thing didn't really care, may have even agreed with it some strongly, but as far as them losing
00:10:42.940 control or not having control, I'm not sure what there would have been really to control. It was
00:10:47.680 a controlled environment already on its own. There wasn't, there wasn't rioting, there wasn't
00:10:52.740 violence, you know what I mean, to any sort of extent that would have required a extreme level
00:10:56.700 of intervention. And they had even, they even had routes able to pass through certain sections of
00:11:04.440 the streets that were sort of shut, quote unquote, shut down. They still allowed for emergency vehicles
00:11:10.380 to pass. If let's say an ambulance or something had to be ripping through there to operationally,
00:11:15.760 like it could have gotten through. So I don't know what exactly, you know what I mean,
00:11:20.500 the justification would have been to react the way they did because to lose control of something
00:11:26.460 sort of indicates that it required control, but it never really did in my opinion and probably many
00:11:32.140 others. Yeah. No, no, you're a good point. You know, I guess the only thing is they, they probably
00:11:36.980 as the trucks sort of, uh, you know, the trucker convoy came in the freedom convoy, they, they probably
00:11:42.480 could have started towing them away slowly, I guess, you know, that it seemed like, it seemed
00:11:46.960 like at some point they just gave up and stopped doing any of that. And that kind of led to, you
00:11:51.680 know, February 14th. It's interesting. So I was taking a look back and I had forgot all this, that,
00:11:56.740 uh, judge Mosley, the federal judge, when he did his initial ruling, he basically said, uh, the government
00:12:04.360 did not use proper justification, transfer, transparency, intelligibility, and did not even,
00:12:10.980 uh, have the factual or legal grounds to take into consideration the emergencies act. People lost
00:12:19.380 their livelihoods, businesses, bank accounts, frozen and trampled by horses. So there's a great quote,
00:12:26.760 you know, and that, that really kind of sums up what had happened. You know, it's interesting as we go
00:12:31.900 forward because you, you know, you tell the story about you moving, you know, it's a party zone at
00:12:38.620 that point, hot tubs, balloons, kids, horses, you know, and like I mentioned that couple I knew that
00:12:44.640 went up there, you know, they're, they were shooting selfies, you know, we were all sitting on the couch,
00:12:49.420 like, you know, kind of looking at it saying, Oh my goodness, look at through there. And you know,
00:12:53.520 they're, they're drinking beer, they're hugging people they never met. It was, it was, it looked like a fair.
00:12:58.840 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's an accurate, that's an accurate assessment of what, of what I saw too.
00:13:05.080 So then all of a sudden emergency acts gets dropped and the freedom of expression. So they put a fine
00:13:12.940 of $5,000 and it's nationwide, uh, for people who are involved in the protests. So, and that got,
00:13:22.840 that got ruled unconstitutional, unlawful. Of course they, they, you know, justice Mosley and the court of
00:13:28.280 appeals both ruled quite frankly, it needed to be more finely tuned than, and it's interesting when
00:13:35.280 you talk about them bringing up your name, it's, it's almost like there was a, like a witch hunt
00:13:40.460 for people who had actually now gone to this thing because they had let it get to this kind of fair
00:13:46.160 environment where it was like a party. Everyone was watching it on TV, didn't know what it was.
00:13:50.900 Some days it was kind of funny and cute. We had news broadcasters broadcasting every morning from
00:13:56.900 it. And we were watching, you know, where everyone slept and when they woke up and when the party
00:14:01.620 started, it was ongoing. Right. And, and they've came out and said, listen, you, you either had to
00:14:08.180 pinpoint people who were, uh, being violent or rioting or doing something like that in order to do that.
00:14:15.400 So they, they ruled against totally. So they came out and they, they said they couldn't do it. And
00:14:21.320 then the, the search and seizures, that was interesting. So now, now they went in and they
00:14:26.960 said, okay, now we're going to seize bank accounts for people who fund and give money to help this
00:14:32.480 thing or stem it. Um, that also came out and they, Judge Mosley ruled that they couldn't do that either
00:14:39.100 because they were doing it on the same basis. They were just randomly picking people who were giving
00:14:43.840 funding to an organization. Um, and that wasn't pinpointed either. So they couldn't do that
00:14:49.400 at the same time. And then here you are, you're coming up in a meeting.
00:14:56.520 It's, uh, it's, it's, I think it's probably the scariest moment in Canadian history that I'm aware
00:15:01.960 of. Uh, it's, I, I want to remind people that there was many articles written in the newspaper
00:15:09.840 in 2022 and 2023 about the planes that were flown from CanSoftcom above this convoy with the
00:15:16.800 transponders turned off. So what this means is that there's a plane flying above with data scraping
00:15:24.100 capabilities. So what this plane can do is use sophisticated sort of interception surveillance
00:15:30.980 technology to ping all of the phones on the ground. Cause let's be honest, every single person
00:15:36.280 assume the moment they leave their home, probably even in their home is carrying their phone on them
00:15:40.960 or close to them. So anybody that would have been at that convoy, uh, celebrating protests, whatever,
00:15:47.060 they would have had their phone in their pocket or very close by. So this plane will fly overhead
00:15:51.260 doing a sort of hockey Zamboni style, uh, ice clearing loops around to ping every phone that's on the ground
00:15:59.660 and start scraping data from it. So what does the data scrape mean? So they can, they know who you are,
00:16:05.620 where you're from, um, who you've messaged your, all the pictures in your, like they can literally
00:16:11.880 harvest your entire phone from a plane, several thousand feet above the crowd and very savvy
00:16:18.400 witnesses noticed this pattern happening and then used, uh, flight aviation records through the
00:16:25.220 government, um, and aviation log websites and stuff like that to figure out that this was a military plane.
00:16:30.500 And then once that was determined, articles were written. I found out about it many, uh, many,
00:16:35.340 many months later, I believe it was in early 23 is when I finally learned about it. And I did some
00:16:40.180 digging with some of the lawyers, uh, that I'm involved in a lawsuit. It's a, I'll get back to
00:16:45.520 that later to, to dig through some of the AATIP informations of the conversations going on in the
00:16:50.240 background. So what I was able to find was that when the journalists had reached out to DND to get a
00:16:56.820 comment on why there was a literal spy plane lying above the convoy with its transponder turned off,
00:17:03.260 which means that it's no longer sending or receiving location data. Why else would someone do
00:17:09.160 that other than to not be noticed? Um, so when the journalists asked DND, why were you doing that?
00:17:15.880 I found through the AATIP email traffic back and forth of them trying to figure out a way to deny that
00:17:22.260 it was them before they ended up being basically being called out by the journalists back and forth
00:17:27.200 in this email correspondence saying, look, I know it was you. I have the information. We need to know
00:17:32.160 what was going on. And then DND finally pushed back and said, oh, we were doing a training exercise.
00:17:37.580 There's sort of nothing to see here type of behavior, but, but I've seen the email traffic
00:17:42.260 myself. I was an intelligence analyst. I know how to look for information. I know how to sort of deduce
00:17:47.420 what it means behind this traffic. And you don't need any intelligence training to know that these
00:17:52.820 people were just figuring out how to lie about it. And it's really, really disgusting and dishonest.
00:17:58.720 And I really want Canadians to sort of not forget this and memory hole it as the 24 hour news cycle
00:18:04.120 gets you to be scared of Greenland and scared of supporting Russia or whatever the new narrative
00:18:10.480 is of what they're trying to ram down your throat to be afraid of. Canadians, the Canadian federal
00:18:15.300 government used Canadian special forces assets to illegally search and seize data from your phone.
00:18:23.580 People should not be forgetting this. And this should be a massive wake up call for anybody that
00:18:29.060 thinks that the liberal government is doing what's in the best interest of Canada or Canadians.
00:18:35.280 Like wake up. Wow. That's crazy. And, you know, it's interesting because you wonder,
00:18:41.660 that's a question I think I heard from the few people I knew and the people around them. How did
00:18:48.560 they pop up on the radar? They're just, they drove up there, they walked in, they basically
00:18:53.160 had fun for 12, 16 hours. They made it back home. And next thing you know, they popped up on,
00:19:00.580 they made a donation while they were there, you know, took some selfies. And next thing you know,
00:19:07.640 they're getting phone calls, they're getting fines. And I guess that's how they did it. You know,
00:19:13.400 that was the question everyone and they talked about it quite a bit, you know, and that is the,
00:19:18.860 you know, the interesting part, because when the court ruling comes out, the search and seizure
00:19:24.060 of the bank accounts, and to your point of personal information through whether it be search planes or
00:19:31.420 whatever, all unlawful, all unconstitutional.
00:19:35.740 Yeah, I just want to interrupt for one sec here quickly. It is, it is allowed to search and seize
00:19:40.380 someone's cell phone or computer or data records. You need a warrant to do that. As a police law
00:19:47.340 enforcement agency to do those things, you need a warrant. There's other ways to go about it with
00:19:52.400 specific persons of interest and sort of very high risk, high threat individuals that there's gray area
00:19:58.040 there. But if you want to do it to 10,000 civilians on mass, this is highly illegal and unethical.
00:20:04.600 Right. Yeah. And, and quite frankly, you know, the, this whole, the whole enacting of the Emergency
00:20:11.000 Act, which at one point in our history was called the War Act. And that's where the, you know, the basis
00:20:17.720 of the whole lawsuit and, you know, the judgment that happened was basically, this should never been
00:20:23.420 and used in this case. You know, there was nothing to your point earlier on, as we started talking,
00:20:28.620 this wasn't a riot. People were not rowdy. You know, they might've had a few too many drinks and,
00:20:34.460 you know, had too much fun and a little, they were very loud, but it wasn't something that quite frankly,
00:20:40.540 that should have been, they should have used many other measures before they even looked
00:20:46.700 at the Emergency Act or the War Act. And that, that was a, that was just the craziness of it.
00:20:54.060 And then once it got a momentum of its own and, but, you know, we were in a frenzy. Remember those
00:20:59.340 times, you know, I was looking back and I was thinking about it last night, you know, shut your
00:21:04.300 business, go home, you know, wear a mask. Like, you know, we were just, we were going to and fro and,
00:21:10.860 you know, the longest lockdown in any developed country in the world was Canada. And we just kept
00:21:17.740 going and going and going and we were wearing people out. We were bankrupting people. We were
00:21:22.300 people who hadn't worked, weren't, you know, able to survive. They were struggling. So we had all
00:21:28.140 these things happening and we weren't, we weren't, we weren't changing the direction nor opening up the
00:21:34.620 conversation. It was a very interesting time because, you know, the convoy was just a, it was indicative
00:21:40.780 of how everyone was feeling, I think, or most Canadians were feeling at that time. And we
00:21:46.860 didn't want to address it. We didn't want to have the open conversation. We didn't want to start to
00:21:51.660 put a plan into place. We had seen the US start to do things to start to reopen. We were, we were not,
00:21:58.060 we were just staying locked down, you know, and, and following the narrative. And it's interesting at
00:22:04.380 the end of it, Brian, this will lead to cost the taxpayers that this is the crazy thing that always
00:22:13.420 gets me about these. So all said and done after all the seizures, all the fines, all the parking
00:22:19.820 tickets, all the distress that both sides, the neighbors in the area, the people in the convoy and
00:22:27.660 the people in the, in the protest out of all the things it's going to lead to the taxpayers of Canada,
00:22:35.100 probably paying about a billion dollars on the federal side directly. And through the city of Ottawa,
00:22:44.060 and maybe even some of that to federal, but another 500 million. So this is going to end up
00:22:49.820 in a settlement of probably around a billion and a half dollars. Good. Well, yeah, it is good. Well,
00:22:57.260 it is good. And I, and I do agree, but, but you know who the responsibility, I think that's where you're
00:23:02.700 saying, I think that's where we got to really focus on this. So lessons learned, right? Number one,
00:23:09.420 you know, and I think we haven't done enough to make sure this doesn't happen again. I think the problem
00:23:14.780 is we put a commission in place, the commission came in, the commission had 56 recommendations,
00:23:19.660 those 56 recommendations led to basically a lawsuit, the lawsuit happened, you know,
00:23:27.900 the ruling came down in the federal government, it got appealed. And now, you know, it's sitting,
00:23:34.780 I guess, potentially for appeal, if the, if Mark Carney, the prime minister decides to move it to Supreme
00:23:41.980 Court. I think that's where it's kind of sitting now, it's sitting kind of now. So if he says,
00:23:46.940 push it forward, it'll go another year. You know, maybe they may be able to defer it,
00:23:54.460 maybe it's the wrong time for settlements to talk about, but it might be deferred for another year.
00:23:59.580 So say it gets pushed down the road for another year. And at that point is people's memory of COVID
00:24:05.260 so far behind, because I know, I don't know about you, do you, like, are you starting to forget COVID?
00:24:10.460 Like I am, I am, you know, it's funny, I have so much COVID PTSD, man, there's no way I could forget
00:24:19.100 the stuff that I, you brought up an interesting point too, because you mentioned that we had been
00:24:25.500 locked down harder and longer than anywhere else. And I want to remind people of something else too,
00:24:30.380 before they memory hold this as well. And I've talked about this on many podcasts now,
00:24:34.140 that I was working in intelligence at the time when, in, in early 2020, late 19 and early 2020,
00:24:41.980 when these meetings were spooling up at the top secret and above level of what was happening and
00:24:46.700 what should we do about it? And it was, and again, I've said this and I'll say it again,
00:24:52.060 that at the very beginning, which is in honesty, probably October and November of 2019, but at least
00:24:58.700 when it sort of landed on the radar of the world was January, February 2020. At that time, I will,
00:25:06.300 I will sort of allow the idea that they didn't really know what was going on or how to respond
00:25:13.820 to it, unless you want to go right way into the rabbit hole of the cabal and the plan and all that
00:25:17.500 stuff. But what I'm saying at the, in the intelligence level, they didn't really know what
00:25:21.580 to do with the information. So at that time, I will see that it's better to overreact and
00:25:28.380 underreact in that scenario. So two weeks to flatten the curve kind of thing. The first two
00:25:32.300 weeks I understand and empathize, but it was after that, that meeting after meeting, week after week,
00:25:38.620 month after month of what I saw personally was very high ranking officials in the intelligence community
00:25:45.900 who brief very senior MP officials in the federal government going along with whatever the news was
00:25:53.020 saying. There was almost zero analysis of the age of the people dying, the cohorts, you know what I
00:26:01.020 mean? The actual risks like this was all information that was known to us because I knew it. And I was
00:26:06.220 the dumbest and most junior person in the room in every meeting that I was in. And I'm happy to admit
00:26:11.100 that. And I was asking serious questions. And all that the answers were was show the front page of the
00:26:18.220 Toronto Star right here and say, Well, here's the graph of the the 10 million people that are going
00:26:24.220 to die in the next six months. And that was all they cared about. They had their time off at the
00:26:28.780 cottage, they were allowed to you know what I mean, work, work from home. And let me tell you,
00:26:32.940 most people were doing absolutely nothing. And this was benefiting them. So Canadians, please do not forget
00:26:39.500 what happened. Because I promise you, the people that were calling the shots were benefiting from this,
00:26:45.420 at least most of them. And they were not acting in the best interest of Canadians, they were repeating
00:26:50.940 whatever garbage was being sold to you through legacy media. No, no, no, I get you. I understand.
00:26:57.980 And you know, it's interesting, because you bring up a point about the fact that people were following
00:27:03.100 the narrative. The interesting part of this is the official opposition to the government
00:27:09.740 disappeared. This is the interesting part, because when you when you read this in the
00:27:15.180 last couple days, I got to, you know, after Friday, I sat down and read the appeal and went
00:27:20.380 through it. And, you know, interesting dry, but interesting reading. And somewhere in the middle,
00:27:26.460 I'm saying to myself, Wow, they're not even close. So from a from a legal premise to this,
00:27:33.740 the advice to the government at the time, they had to know they were going to lose this. So it's not like
00:27:38.460 they it's not like they were sitting in a room, and there's a bunch of people briefing if there was,
00:27:42.220 that was just terrible work on their part. But whoever was advising the government to do this,
00:27:49.580 to enact emergency act, because they weren't even close from a legal premise.
00:27:53.820 Not even close. And Justice Mosley kind of in his his initial findings, and his rulings,
00:28:00.220 basically said that, you know, we're these guys in left field, not even close to this,
00:28:05.580 not even, you know, to the point of, it's unreasonable and borderline incompetent. So
00:28:13.180 here we are, you know, they knew that. So there had to be someone on the opposition side that's
00:28:18.060 looking at they have their own lawyers, they have their own, they're, they're well briefed with the
00:28:22.060 Constitution, you know, they would have the first thing I would have done if someone would have enacted
00:28:26.780 the emergency act is I would have had my team digging into what is the basis for emergency act? Does it work?
00:28:32.300 And not even warning us not even saying to us like, hey, by the way, you are probably going
00:28:40.140 to be on the hook for a billion dollar lawsuit here. Like the citizens of Canada, not only not only
00:28:47.980 not only are you going to suffer all the losses from going through COVID. So the what is it 36,
00:28:54.060 I'm just feeling here, I think the initial stuff, 3.9 billion in economic disruption from all these
00:29:00.220 things going on during that time, whether it be convoys, you know, whether it be border crossing,
00:29:05.660 slowdowns, policing costs, I think I think Ottawa alone had like 50 million in policing costs or 55
00:29:12.140 million in policing costs. Not only are you going to bear all of this, you are probably going to put us
00:29:18.620 on the hook for a bunch of people you're about to harm within our citizenship. So you should stop.
00:29:25.340 I think that would have been the right thing to do. I think that would have been a debate conversation.
00:29:29.660 And how come that process doesn't take place?
00:29:34.380 I'm not sure if that's a rhetorical question, but I want to just interrupt here for one second.
00:29:38.060 Yeah, I think from what I saw, it was once the two weeks to flatten the curve had happened,
00:29:43.820 there was no time that anybody in a leadership position was willing to say,
00:29:48.380 hey, we overreacted, you know what I mean? We acted what we thought was in your best interest,
00:29:53.260 now we're going to ratchet it back. And I think that if that had happened at any point in the first
00:29:57.900 two, three months, maybe a little bit beyond that, people would have been understanding to say, hey,
00:30:03.260 kind of you acted with a little bit of information you had, and it was maybe not the right thing,
00:30:07.100 but now let's pull it back. But nobody ever did that. And when I say sorry to belabor this,
00:30:12.620 but when I say that they were in top secret meetings holding up the front page of the Toronto Star,
00:30:17.660 that is a fact. That's not hyperbole. I'm looking at the front page of the Toronto Star
00:30:22.780 in a meeting telling us that we're going to have X number of ICU beds all taken up and everyone's
00:30:28.620 going to die like this. Not only did none of this ever happen, but even at the time it was deemed,
00:30:32.860 this is the most extreme and take it with a grain of salt. And this is what we're presenting to senior
00:30:37.100 leadership. It was one of those things where they made a decision, they went with it, there was never an
00:30:43.180 attempt to correct course or accept any responsibility for having overreacted because that would have
00:30:48.380 been sort of politically bad. And somehow it became politically better to push it for two years
00:30:55.260 that this, you know what I mean, these lockdowns are going to continue. So sorry for interrupting, but
00:30:59.260 I feel like that question needed addressing. Yeah, yeah. You know, and I've, you know, I've talked about
00:31:04.220 this before. I find it bizarre that there wasn't a playbook in place already. There was. Yeah.
00:31:11.100 I've seen it. Like, again, I've dug into these ATIPs and there's a pandemic response plan in,
00:31:18.540 in the DND has been working on this for 25 plus years. There was literally a pandemic response flu
00:31:25.900 virus plan written into DND operational planning. And we did everything opposite of that. Right.
00:31:33.660 I've seen it. I have the document in my Google drive. Well, so, so, so there's a plan. And then we
00:31:41.900 don't enact a plan. We, we let a bunch of people drive into Ottawa, set up a convoy,
00:31:48.860 create a big party. And then in the middle of it, we call the emergencies act.
00:31:54.620 Like it's, if you think about it, it's very bizarre, right? Like the whole, the, the, and, and at some point
00:32:02.460 there had to be someone saying, okay, timeout. This is the interesting part because there are
00:32:08.780 meetings going on and someone saying, okay, we do have a plan.
00:32:13.660 Enact the plan. Why don't we enact the plan? Like, why don't, why don't we just, okay, move step one,
00:32:18.300 step two, step three, that's military, right? That's, that's what, that's what it does, right?
00:32:22.860 It moves. Well, if I can interject just, just to highlight how insane that time was just a few
00:32:29.260 weeks before the convoy started, I was in Miami, Florida on a winter vacation where I had spent the
00:32:36.060 better part of three weeks where that was back in the time when you had to take a test two days before
00:32:41.580 you could fly and then show your negative tests so that you could fly home. So two days before I was
00:32:46.140 set to fly home from Miami, I took a test through Miami-Dade health and there was a lineup down the
00:32:51.420 block and you got your free swabbing and the brain tickle and then they, they send your stuff off and
00:32:57.020 you get a test. So I get a call the next day from Miami-Dade health saying that I've tested positive for
00:33:01.900 COVID. I have no symptoms. I've been exercising every day out enjoying the sun. You know what I mean?
00:33:07.500 In South Beach, enjoying that outdoor gym there on the beach. And I get this, this call from Miami-Dade
00:33:12.380 saying you've tested positive for COVID. So I'm thinking, Oh my God, like, what do I do?
00:33:15.980 Cause I just lived in East Germany for the last year and a half in Ontario. So I'm saying what,
00:33:21.100 like, do I have to stay in my hotel room and notify the hotel? And the, the lady on the phone
00:33:25.740 was almost laughing saying, no, you don't have to do any of that. So I was like, what do I have to do?
00:33:29.100 And she goes, nothing. We don't care. Like we just letting you know that it's positives. Go about your life.
00:33:33.100 And I was just like, this is the contrast of the, of the mentality of what was going on in Ontario,
00:33:39.900 where we need to have a thousand trucks drive to a city to get our lives back. Where in Miami,
00:33:44.700 it was like, Oh, we're just like doing the things that we have to do so you can fly home kind of
00:33:49.340 thing. And just quickly to finish that, I took a test the neck. Cause I want to make my flight. I
00:33:53.820 don't have money to redo my flights and hotels and all that stuff. I got to go back. So I take a test
00:33:58.620 the next day in which I get a call. I believe it was later that same day or very early the morning
00:34:03.420 before my scheduled flight that says I no longer have COVID. So like even the testing, you know what
00:34:09.980 I mean? Was a joke. Who knows if it was a false positive, but like the, the contrast in the way
00:34:15.500 they were handling it and the reactions of the locals and the medical and health staff in the cities and
00:34:22.540 states versus the cities and provinces in Canada couldn't have been more black and white. It was,
00:34:27.580 it was absolutely mind altering to see this happen in real time.
00:34:31.900 Yeah, no, no, I know it is mind altering and you know, Friday comes, you know, and again,
00:34:36.540 and this is the interesting thing. Cause you know, I'm out building the rink on the weekend,
00:34:40.380 you know, we're, we're making plans on how to put the, the maple leaf at center ice of this makeshift
00:34:46.620 outdoor rink. And yeah, we're all, yeah, we're all talking and it's 40 by 60. It's beautiful
00:34:52.940 skating here. And so we're all talking and we're going through it. And you know, someone says,
00:34:57.900 well, how much is it going to cost? Do you think? And I said, well, it looks like it's going to cost
00:35:02.940 a billion dollars. Like, wow, a billion dollars. And, and you know, it's, it's funny because
00:35:07.260 people there are from, uh, you know, just neighbors. So, you know, you don't know their
00:35:11.420 political affiliations, but kind of getting, spending some time with them on this project,
00:35:16.220 I've gotten to know probably six or seven of them. My, my, my guess is probably most of them
00:35:21.100 are liberal kind of from what, you know, the way, and I haven't asked them, but the based on
00:35:26.300 some of their views and what they were really talking, but, you know, so the conversation
00:35:30.220 was very interesting. So we just have a nice conversation as we're working away. And,
00:35:33.980 you know, well, you know, so they said, well, that's a weird announcement on Friday.
00:35:40.620 And I said, what do you mean? And they said, well, no one talks about the details of this,
00:35:44.860 like settlements, what this is going to mean, like the outcomes in the media,
00:35:49.420 you know, it was, it was, it was a blurb, right? Yeah. Federal appeals court, you know,
00:35:56.780 rules, the emergency act, use the emergency act unconstitutional, the Canadian constitution
00:36:03.180 foundation, uh, had a quote, which, uh, you know, uh, you know, shout out to those guys for doing a
00:36:09.740 great job. I think they did the, the, all the legwork on the legwork for the
00:36:14.460 lawsuit. So, you know, but they said, but, you know, they don't talk about what did we do to
00:36:20.220 prevent it again? You know, what did that, what is the, from the military to the health, to health,
00:36:26.860 like we don't talk about sort of how this isn't going to happen again. I find that such a Canadian
00:36:34.380 thing. So, you know, how do we get reassurance? We don't mess this up again. We don't get into another
00:36:42.060 big lawsuit again. It doesn't cost us all this money. None of that is talked about. And then
00:36:47.660 a day later, if you look, if you look today on Monday, uh, it's gone. So it's out of the media,
00:36:55.020 it's swept through, I guess we'll wait to see if it goes to Supreme court. And that's the
00:37:00.060 frustrating thing to me. The frustrating thing is the consequences to all these people, the loss of
00:37:05.900 people's, you know, livelihoods and lives and how it changed all this, all these things, the economy
00:37:12.860 and, and the psychology, our kids look at the impacts of our kids. You know, our kids, when we
00:37:19.660 do our, our education shows, our kids can't add, they can't read the, the, we have teachers coming
00:37:27.260 on our shows talking about how poor the scores in Ontario. We're, we're actually taking over school
00:37:33.900 boards because their test scores are so low. Like that, that's how bad it is. But, but no one says,
00:37:41.260 no one says, well, yeah, I think we better think about how we don't do this again.
00:37:46.700 Like, I just find it, I find it bizarre thinking. And on top of, you know, Brian, this is, you know,
00:37:52.140 my pet peeve with it. The opposition doesn't stand up and say, like, make it be to me, if I'm sitting
00:37:59.100 in that chair right now, I'd be saying, I want to know how this doesn't happen again.
00:38:04.460 And I want you to apologize. And I want, if you have to make settlements to all these people,
00:38:11.420 I want you to disclose it. I want the people of Ontario or Canada to know about it. I want you to,
00:38:17.980 you know, I, I want all those things to happen, but, but yeah, just get swept under and we're off to the
00:38:23.100 next, you know, whether it's, uh, leadership campaigns or whatever. And that's sad. That
00:38:29.820 really is sad because I don't think, I don't think you learn anything from it. And quite frankly,
00:38:35.420 and I'd like to know my military has learned from it. Well, if I can, if I can touch on,
00:38:41.580 you said many interesting things there, but one jumped out at me was that, um, we don't like,
00:38:48.620 how do we make sure we don't do this again? And there's a funny saying for a lot of folks in
00:38:52.460 the military that have ever had to do almost anything administratively or operationally for
00:38:56.700 that matter is that every time they do something, it's the first time. So you, you'd think that
00:39:01.580 there would be these brilliant templates and, and, and policies and SOPs and stuff in place.
00:39:06.780 You know what I mean? Where you just be like, oh, we just did this six months ago, or we did this last
00:39:10.300 year. We'll do it the same and we'll tweak this and we'll improve this and get rid of the stuff we
00:39:14.380 didn't need. But it's like, every time you do something, it's like, nobody knows how to do it.
00:39:19.740 And it's, it's so, again, mind bending of you, you take over a role and you're supposed to get
00:39:25.580 what a handover, you know what I mean? From the guy before you. And it's just like, oh, well,
00:39:29.260 what happened with the handover? Either you never got one or that the files are deleted. And it's just
00:39:33.340 like, how do we run an organization that's supposed to be capable of war fighting through sophisticated
00:39:39.340 and timely logistics? When this is how we handle almost everything always, it's really scary.
00:39:45.740 And to touch up about the, you said also like coming forward and saying, hey, we're sorry,
00:39:51.980 we did this. You know what I mean? We're going to learn our lesson. The military in Canada is still
00:39:57.180 wanting you and asking you to get booster shots before you deploy. So if you want to go to Ukraine
00:40:03.180 or Greenland now or wherever, they're asking you to get your COVID booster to make sure that you're
00:40:09.500 safe from COVID. So roll up your sleeve and get your 16th Moderna. You know what I mean? So we can
00:40:14.700 keep pretending like what we did was the right thing and not take any responsibility for giving
00:40:19.740 tens of thousands of people in the military experimental science, you know what I mean?
00:40:24.380 Injections, because let's not call them vaccines. They're not. So all of this stuff adds up to the
00:40:29.980 stuff that you and I chatted about a couple months ago now of the lack of trust that these people have
00:40:35.980 that are, you know what I mean? Don't want to enroll or don't trust the senior leadership and view them
00:40:40.460 as obvious sort of activists with social justice narratives rather than leading a team of soldiers,
00:40:46.300 you know what I mean? Internationally through potential kinetic conflict environments. There's
00:40:51.420 so much loss of faith and trust in these institutions and people. For the longest time, I've had a sort of
00:40:59.980 hopeful resilience that they could sort of turn this around and fix this. And now I'm not sure anymore.
00:41:07.340 I think this might be the point in the Titanic where they realize that the ship has taken on so
00:41:11.820 much water. You know what I mean? It's time to sort of abandon this unsinkable ship and just get people
00:41:17.020 on the rafts because there is no saving this ship. I think the Canadian military and a lot of the senior
00:41:22.540 leadership positions might be on the Titanic right now. I hope not, you know. Me too.
00:41:28.620 Yeah. And I think it all comes down again to leadership on both sides of the aisle and holding
00:41:34.620 each other responsible and trying to figure out, you know, why this happened, how it doesn't happen
00:41:40.140 again. And, you know, Brian, I thank you for spending the time today. You know what? For those of you
00:41:47.420 watching, please, you know, subscribe. You know, we have a new app out. Please tune in. We're going to do more
00:41:54.380 shows again on this as we follow through because we really want to figure out what happens next.
00:41:59.340 I'm so curious. Does this just get kicked down the road a little longer? So do we just try to
00:42:06.460 put this thing into appeal at the Supreme Court? So quite frankly, in another year or two, we're back,
00:42:13.260 Brian, doing another show with the final outcome of this? Or do we actually get busy and try to resolve it,
00:42:19.580 take care of the people we harmed and do the right thing? So thanks, Brian. I really appreciate it.
00:42:27.180 Thank you for having me. I'm sorry for some of the doom and gloom, but it's just I'm at my wits end
00:42:32.540 most of the time here. I'm trying to hold it together here.
00:42:35.660 No, I get it. And if you want to come back and come skating on my rink, you're welcome.
00:42:41.580 Sounds like a cool rink, to be honest. That's really cool you're doing that. We need more of those.
00:42:45.740 Yeah, all the best.
00:42:49.820 Patriotic means looking out for each other and fixing things together. True patriotism is being
00:42:56.860 in a country you love, surrounded by people you love and great weather. Being a patriot is being
00:43:01.580 a part of your community and caring for it. It doesn't matter who you are or where you're from.
00:43:06.060 Patriotism is the one thing we all share. It's okay to be critical of government and still be a patriot.
00:43:13.020 It's gratitude to your country. Of course I'm a patriot. I'm Canadian. It's my home.
00:43:17.820 Well, actually, true patriot love is the mission.