Episode 253: The Canadian Save The Children Convoy
In January and February of last year, the normal operations of Canada's capital city of Ottawa were disrupted by the so-called Freedom Convoy. The convoy involved hundreds of trucks and personal vehicles and thousands of protestors at its peak, who made a lot of noise and blocked traffic before finally being cleared out.
The initial convoy movement was created to protest vaccine mandates for crossing the United States border, but later evolved into a protest about COVID-19 mandates in general. Beginning January 22, 2023, vehicles formed convoys from several points and traversed Canadian provinces before converging on Ottawa on January 29, 2022, with a rally at Parliament Hill. The convoy was condemned by the trucking industry and labor groups. The Canadian Trucking Alliance stated that most protesters had no connection to trucking.
That all came to an end on February 14, when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act for the first time since its passing in 1988. Between February 17 and 20, a large joint-operation police presence in Ottawa arrested organizers and protesters, removed parked vehicles, and dismantled blockades from Ottawa streets.
Just a few months ago a new protest movement emerged, taking inspiration from both that convoy movement and anti-gay and trans protest movements. This one is called The Save the Children Convoy. Since this new convoy was announced, it has been subject to allegations of plans of criminal violence, infighting, and the leaders have invoked sovereign citizen and QAnon concepts.
We talk to Luke LeBrun, editor of the publication PressProgress, about this developing story and what members of the Save The Children convoy want.
REFERENCES
Canada’s Far-Right is Planning a Convoy to Toronto to ‘Save the Children’. It’s Already Spinning Out of Control.
https://pressprogress.ca/canadas-far-right-is-planning-a-convoy-to-toronto-to-save-the-children-its-already-spinning-out-of-control/
Far-Right ‘Save the Children Convoy’ Gathering at Rural Base Camp Outside Ottawa
https://pressprogress.ca/far-right-save-the-children-convoy-gathering-at-rural-base-camp-outside-ottawa/
‘Save the Children Convoy’ Leaders Plotted to Capture Police and MPs at Secret Meetings, Participants Allege
https://pressprogress.ca/save-the-children-convoy-leaders-plotted-to-capture-police-and-mps-at-secret-meetings-participants-allege/
‘Save the Children Convoy’ Leader Calls for Jailing Politicians and Replacing Government in QAnon-Inspired Speech
https://pressprogress.ca/save-the-children-convoy-leader-calls-for-jailing-politicians-and-replacing-government-in-qanon-inspired-speech/
‘Save the Children Convoy’ Says Conservative MP Invited Them Into House of Commons as ‘VIP’ Guests
https://pressprogress.ca/save-the-children-convoy-says-conservative-mp-invited-them-into-house-of-commons-as-vip-guests/
Welcome, listener, to the 253rd chapter of the QAA podcast, the Canadian Save the Children Convoy episode.
As always, we are your hosts, Liv Vakar, Julian Fields, and Travis View.
In January and February of last year, the normal operations of Canada's capital city of Ottawa were disrupted by the so-called Freedom Convoy.
The convoy involved hundreds of trucks and personal vehicles and thousands of protesters at its peak, who made a lot of noise and blocked traffic before they were finally cleared out.
The initial convoy movement was created to protest vaccine mandates for crossing the U.S.
border, but later evolved into a protest about COVID-19 mandates in general.
Beginning on January 22nd, vehicles formed convoys from several points and traversed Canadian provinces before converging on Ottawa on January 29th, with a rally on Parliament Hill.
The convoy was condemned by the trucking industry and labor groups.
The Canadian Trucking Alliance stated that most protesters had no connection to trucking.
That all came to an end on February 14th, when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act for the first time since his passing in 1988.
Between February 17th and 20th, a large joint operation of police presence in Ottawa arrested organizers and protesters, removed parked vehicles, and dismantled blockades from Ottawa's streets.
Just a few months ago, a new protest movement emerged, taking inspiration both from that convoy movement and anti-gay and trans protest movements.
This one is called the Save the Children Convoy.
Since this new convoy was announced, it's been subject to allegations of plans of criminal violence, infighting, and leaders have invoked sovereign citizen and QAnon concepts.
But what do the organizers say the convoy is about?
The lead organizer of the Save the Children Convoy, Gordon Berry, told the Canadian outlet Press Progress this.
Save the children is basically a generic statement, obviously.
There's a multitude of things you could be saving them from.
Oh my god.
You could be saving them from falling over, maybe?
Yeah.
Like that hurts children, you know?
Oh, they keep, they're sticking little paper fish to the back of our kids on the April Fool's Day.
It's some sort of French tradition.
We need to save them from the French.
You know, Kinder Eggs, that's a toy and, you know, food.
They could choke on that.
They can choke on it.
We're not supposed to eat eggs.
Eggs are for the chickens to be making out of them.
Barry has also said that he wants the convoy to save children from the human trafficking industry, but also from mandating the shots to kids, and kids getting sick, and frigging education, and all the stuff they're teaching them in schools, and the trans agenda, and the math agenda, gender dysphoria, all of these things.
You've got to save them from the whole system.
Oh boy.
I saw that quote before.
What is the math agenda?
Well, it's like they want to teach the kids mathematics.
We got to save them from that.
But I think that the trans agenda for me is just like a wonderful pink trapper keeper with like a bunch of stickers of like monsters and, you know, but the math agenda, you're right, Liv.
What is that?
We don't want to count anymore.
Friggin friggin one and two and three.
We hate it, folks.
So unsurprisingly, you know, the convoys also involved a lot of classic conspiracism.
On the convoy's private Facebook groups, Barry and others have shared graphics claiming that the World Health Organization and the United Nations are instructing elementary schools around the world to have pedophilia normalized.
Imagine any school listening to the United Nations.
Like, yes sir!
Uh, yes!
Mr. Kofi Annan, yes!
In all of history, this has happened.
Like, every guy who runs the UN just gets to call elementary schools across Canada.
Why don't we teach them now?
Pedophilia is good.
Okay, thank you.
You know, the model UN is a gateway to the one world government.
That's so true.
That was like, I did wonder why that one year it was like, pedophilia good?
And that was up on the agenda.
And it was like, okay, gather your countries.
Let's make some, let's, let's write some stuff.
And, uh, this is my favorite bit.
So they're also apparently pretty fixated on the Freemasons.
One graphic on this private Facebook page also features a photo of a QR code tattooed on a child's forehead next to a symbol of the Freemasons.
So all this pretty wild is pretty sprawling and complex.
So to help us understand what's going on with the Save the Children convoy, we are joined by Luke LeBrun.
He is the editor of Press Progress, and he's been following the convoy very closely since its inception.
Luke, thank you so much for joining us.
Yeah, thanks for having me on.
Yeah, this is a really wild unfolding story.
So, I think let's start by kind of understanding the men behind the convoy, the organizers.
Most notably, Gordon James Berry and Elliott McDavid.
So, it's my understanding that this is not the first time that these men have made the news.
So, Gordon James Berry, he's a one-time political candidate, right?
Yeah, that's right.
I mean, Gordon's kind of an interesting character.
You know, he basically for all intents and purposes functions as the leader of the Save the Children convoy.
In some senses, you might even say he is a bit of a spiritual leader in addition to being a lead organizer.
Um, as you say, yeah, he did run provincially for kind of this fringe party in Nova Scotia, which is on the east coast of Canada.
It is called the Atlantica Party.
It is, you know, ultra libertarian in the sense that they are in favor of deregulating everything, abolishing taxes, but they were also pretty vocal in opposing public health Yeah, but it's interesting, like Gordon doesn't seem like he had much of an interest in politics before the pandemic.
If you take a closer look at his social media history and so forth, he doesn't really talk about any of that stuff until about like 2020 or so.
And before the pandemic, you know, he was a contractor.
He was installing bathtubs.
He was a repairman at Tim Hortons Franchises, I guess, repairing coffee machines.
And then, you know, you start to see, like, around 2020, he just starts going down this rabbit hole.
And, you know, he's posting anti-vaccine stuff, COVID-19 conspiracies.
And as I later found out, also a lot of stuff kind of touching on QAnon and Pizzagate and, you know, satanic pedophile cults and all that kind of stuff.
Yeah, the other interesting thing, too, is he also I mean, he was involved with Freedom Convoy events out east.
He wasn't in Ottawa, but he was organizing events in the Maritimes.
He was also involved with a group that was serving police stations with legal documents about alleged crimes involving the administration of COVID-19 vaccines.
So I guess he wanted police to investigate these crimes.
It was very much tied in with this sort of sovereign citizen stuff.
And I mean, the other thing to say about him, too, is I mean, he does believe in a wide, wide range of conspiracies and also kind of new age spiritual beliefs.
I actually spoke to him on the phone this summer.
And at one point, just completely unprompted, he started telling me about this belief he had that so I guess there were some floods in Nova Scotia in the summer.
He started telling me this whole theory that he had that this was geo-engineered by the federal government in Canada to put out wildfires that were also happening.
So, you know, they created one weather event to put out another weather event that I guess he also probably thought they had also geo-engineered.
You know, but he just believes in a whole wide, wide range of stuff.
And to be honest, I mean, given some of his wacky beliefs, it is pretty impressive just from a purely organizational or logistical perspective that he's managed to set up a base camp that, you know, is housing about 150 or so people.
And, you know, they've been able to carry this on now for about three weeks.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, it is imprehensive, but as we'll get to, it seems like it was kind of a rocky road to get to that point.
The other organizer, another kind of leader involved in this is a man named Elliot McDavid.
And Elliot McDavid, he previously made national headlines for harassing a member of parliament.
So what was that about?
Yeah, that's right.
I mean, so Elliott McDavid, he was one of the original organizers, and he also has been credited with actually coining the name Save the Children Convoy along with Gordon.
But yeah, so basically last year, he kind of went viral for a couple of days because this video came out showing him sort of confronting and aggressively harassing Krista Freeland, who is a member of parliament for the governing Liberal Party and also Canada's deputy prime minister.
Also, I think at the time, Canada's finance minister.
And this video just shows him chasing Freeland around this this building in Alberta.
He's, you know, basically yelling at her and calling her a traitor.
And the video kind of ends with Freeland escaping into an elevator with her staffers who all look kind of shaken up because this is like a pretty big guy.
He, you know, is very, you know, has a big booming voice and that kind of a thing.
You know, and at the time, too, it sparked a lot of commentary in the media in Canada, just about the dangers of these sort of far right convoy groups.
And, you know, there are people were drawing comparisons to stuff that had happened in the United States, as well as the United Kingdom, where you've seen politicians who've actually quite literally been assassinated or been subject to kind of violent attacks by these sort of lone wolf type characters who have been radicalized by far right content.
Now, Elliott McDavid, he's also active on TikTok, where there he announced what the Save the Children Convoy is all about.
It's time you stepped over that proverbial line in the sand and joined with us, because we're peaceful, man.
We don't run around this countryside for money.
We don't run around the countryside for fame and fortune and all that horseshit.
We do it because we love each and every one of you.
We love the children.
The children are the future.
Humanity is at stake, guys.
If you ever look in history, go back in history and look at what, whenever they came for the children, that's when there was an uprising, a revolution, whatever you want to call it.
And the day is coming soon, guys.
Very, very, very soon.
And we'll let you know that.
Okay, two small notes here.
It actually looks like the sign was drawn by a child, and also he's not wearing any shoes.
Yeah, he's standing in front of a sign about the Save the Children and is sloppy.
It looks like crayon.
It's not spray paint, but someone with not a very steady hand, definitely.
And his little toesies are out.
He's got no shoes on, but he's got the Save the Children shirt, which has tastelessly repurposed the bloody handprint, which is a symbol of, you know, the kind of like native women that have been victimized and disappeared, which is obviously horrible.
But this is obviously just he strikes a very comedic and ridiculous figure here.
Yeah, he's threatening revolution.
Also, on a historical point, revolutions happen when they come for the children.
I don't think any historian would agree with that kind of analysis.
No, it's when they come for the taxes.
It's when one ruling group decides that an external ruling group that is geographically removed is taxing them too much, and they want to be taxing the local working class instead of paying up.
Yeah, so this is a very absurd video.
So there's another TikTok video in which Elliott McDavid cites another partial inspiration for The Convoy, which is the film Sound of Freedom, starring Q-Pilled actor Jim Caviezel.
Like the Sound of Freedom movie.
I haven't, we haven't watched it, but I mean, I just watched snippets of it here and there, like the people have posted and it's, and it's, it's utterly heartbreaking.
And it goes way beyond that movie guys.
I mean, yes, they, I believe they got in depth in the movie, but it's way worse than that.
Oh my God.
Being inspired to start an entire convoy by a movie you haven't watched is, that's incredible.
So yeah, Luke, you've also noted that Elliot McDavid believes that the government of Alberta is colluding with insurance companies to produce child pornography and has claimed that children are being hunted down like animals and thrown in a rail car by degenerates on horseback.
This is a very strange detail.
Very, very elaborate story.
Rail cars and horseback and hunting children.
What did you watch, man?
What did you watch?
Yeah, so I'm not really sure where that specific allegation is actually coming from.
You know, usually if you listen to what they're saying and kind of dig a little bit below beneath the surface, you sort of find some half truth somewhere or some kernel somewhere hidden in there.
But I really could not figure out what he was actually referencing with the, you know, people on horseback hunting down children.
It kind of sounds a bit like something out of Plan of the Apes to me.
At least that's the image that kind of invokes The thing is, though, I mean, if you do watch his videos, he is a very, very intense guy.
You know, he'll talk and he starts getting himself worked up and he starts getting more and more emotional.
And you sort of see him making increasingly more and more outlandish claims as he goes.
And, you know, it seems like in this case, he just invented a completely bizarre scenario because he was just so emotional at that point.
You know, even compared to other members of this movement, you know, McDavid does seem particularly emotionally unstable.
The only thing that I can think of that is even remotely like this is, unfortunately and tragically, the American, like, border guards that were lassoing people trying to cross.
And, you know, some of those people are, you know, crossing with children.
So, yeah, of course, once again, you know, just these horrors, like, repurposed, transformed, beyond repair, beyond recognition.
Oh, my God.
Yeah, it sounds like an 18th century, like, settler fear of indigenous people.
Like that's sort of like maybe there's a spaghetti Western influence here.
Yeah.
They bring them back to the damn teepees and the squaws are throwing them in big pots and cooking the children.
It reminds me a bit that when the Q drops are still active, Q referenced the fact that the Rothschild family in in Austria was, was, uh, selling their hunting lodge in the
black forest.
And Q kind of implied that they were selling this because the Rothschild
family was being taken down, but also this particular hunting
lodge was used to hunt humans.
I don't know how like involved in the Q drops or QAnon he is, but it just
reminded me of that basic bizarre kind of claim of like, you know,
human hunting is going on.
Where do you think black forest ham comes from Travis?
That's right.
It's the children.
So it's also my understanding that despite McDavid's passion for saving the children, he has no actual children
of his own.
[laughter]
The uncle at school meetings sort of energy.
My man went to like some sort of fucked up rodeo and he was probably on a good amount of PCP and there were small people being lassoed and he's like, he's fucking degenerates on horseback, man.
This is a hallucination.
This man is on like a fear and loathing style trip.
I want to start talking a little bit about the kind of like concerns about like possible violence activity or like plans of violent activity, because these were concerns that were brought up by some other kind of like right wing figures before the convoy even started.
So one of the first people to denounce and distance themselves from the convoy is a man named Corey Sager, who is a right wing figure and in a Facebook Live video, Sager claimed that he attended a meeting with sort of these convoy planners.
And during that meeting, he saw a document detailing violent plans that included convoy supporters performing roles associated with police officers, basically like taking over for the cops and like being the cops.
So here's what he said.
Towards the end of the meeting, they start to talk about some things that aren't all really that peaceful.
They somehow think that by presenting a document that regular citizens that are playing parts of authority like the police officers and other people like that, that they're going to accept this document as something that overrides the legal system, which is just absolute nonsense.
I'm sorry.
That's no, no, you're not going to be able to do that.
That doesn't, people aren't going to, they're not going to fly with that.
This is very, very concerning.
Of course, publicly, the convoy organizers, they've denied that they have violent plans.
But Sager is not the only one who has alleged that this convoy involves criminal behavior.
There's a woman named Jody Leisurewood, and she's a real estate broker from Ontario who was involved in the 2022 Freedom Convoy occupation.
And Luke, you write how she told Press Progress that she attended two secret save the children convoy meetings this previous summer. And
she claimed that the meetings involved this multi-phase plan that includes like forcing
the police to surrender, detaining members of parliament, and finally confronting the Freemasons
because on the assumption that the Freemasons are really the puppet masters of everything
that's going on.
So here's what Jodi Ledgerwood said in the video.
We're gonna, you know, all the activists are going to Toronto. We're gonna protest
around the financial district.
We're taking the financial district down because follow the money, right?
Money talks.
Fantastic.
Sounds great.
When the police come in and surround us, much like they did in Ottawa, 2022, then they're going to have a second slew of protesters and activists come in and surround the police.
And police mandates are typically when you are overtaken like that you're supposed to stand down.
When that second group comes into Toronto then there was a phase two that was going to activate in Ottawa and their special skills were going to go to Ottawa and surround eight buildings in Ottawa and also surround the tunnel entrances into those buildings and they were going to detain MPs, MPPs until they met with them and succumbed To their demands.
At the same time as that happening, a third group was going to go to Tofino and take the head off the snake at the Mason's in Tofino.
Those were the plans that were told to us.
If anybody understands our criminal code here in Canada, that is, one, talking about a conspiracy to commit treason.
Two, if you actually do it, it is treason.
Okay, so a lot of this is just, like, people LARPing so fucking hard.
Like, oh yeah, then we're gonna do this, and then we'll do that, and then we'll send a group over to the Freemason Lodge up in Tofino.
I hear it's a pretty fun town, too.
Yeah.
I mean, yeah, Luke, this is something we often encounter when sort of researching these conspiracy movies.
On one hand, it's totally absurd, but on the other hand, it is kind of disturbing because based upon the testimony of people who say that they've been involved, and again, these are like right-wing figures who claim that they're involved in these meetings, it sounds like they have some possibly dangerous plans.
I mean, what do you think we can sort of like piece together from like what their initial intentions were for this convoy?
Well, I mean, the first thing is that, I mean, at least in Ottawa, they did succeed at, you know, basically bringing hundreds and hundreds of vehicles into Canada's national capital and shutting down the city for three weeks.
And it just, you know, everything turned very lawless.
That was kind of the biggest Cause I'm based in Ottawa, you know, one of the most surreal things about the whole thing.
It wasn't, you know, the honking.
It wasn't the, you know, streets being shut down.
It was like actually the lawlessness in the streets.
Police were nowhere to be found.
There were thousands of these people just with conspiratorial signs everywhere.
You know, it's very, it seems hard to believe, but you know, it actually did happen.
So I think a lot of people in Canada are taking It's seriously when people associated with this group are talking about these sorts of plans.
The other thing that happened is in Toronto, the police actually just, you know, at the end of September, actually shut down parts of downtown Toronto.
They brought in garbage trucks to block key roads because they got intelligence that the Save the Children convoy was actually heading to downtown Toronto to, I guess, presumably, you know, start phase one of this kind of ludicrous sounding plot that they've detailed.
The thing though that I gotta say though, like the part of this plan that is most head scratching and surreal is this part where you know, the third phase, the final phase where they're going to have a confrontation with the Freemasons in Tofino, you know, if your listeners aren't too familiar with Tofino.
This is a small surfing village on the west coast of Canada.
It's about several hours west of Vancouver.
Kind of hard to get to.
To get there, actually, you'd probably have to take a ferry and, you know, drive through some mountainous terrain.
So the idea that they would send this convoy here is like just on one level kind of kind of funny to think about.
But also, you know, I wasn't really clear why they well, I'm still not clear why they think, you know, Tofino is this epicenter of like Freemason activity.
But it does seem like they from what I can tell, like in their inside their private Facebook groups, they do talk about sort of these, you know, kind of Pedophile rituals that they think are happening in secret in Freemason lodges.
So I think that that might be kind of what they're getting at.
Yeah, it's kind of the biggest head scratcher in all of this.
Something that's so interesting to me about these sort of plans is how much, I think this is just the case internationally, how much like far right actors want to recreate January 6th, despite how much of a failure that was for the American far right.
They're like, yeah, let's just let's do that.
Oh, like our attempt to do January 6th didn't work.
Let's do a bigger one.
So it really feels like January 6th.
I mean, it really does show the general intent, the general direction that these movements are going towards.
Despite how much these increasingly violent attempts have failed, they're like, well, no, clearly the problem is that we're not being violent enough.
Yeah, the idea that January 6th was kind of inspired by 1776 or some form of, like, the American Revolution, and then this one is just going to be inspired by January 6th.
That's what we're aiming for.
Aspirational.
Yeah, I mean, I almost, like, kind of want to see what would happen if, like, these guys and these convoys really confronted, like, small-town Freemasons, which, you know, for For them, it probably functions as like a drinking club with like occasionally weird rituals and costumes.
Like it was just like, you know, ruin their Monday night away from their families, I think would be the worst case scenario.
I also know, like, there's been previous, like, attacks on Freemason lodges in British Columbia.
I believe one was, like, almost burnt down.
Is there, like, a specific enclave of Freemasons in British Columbia out of all Canada?
Or is there just conspiracists in BC are more obsessed with it?
I have honestly never heard of that or of any kind of specific, you know, Masonic presence in BC that's different from anywhere else in Canada.
So that's, that would be news to me.
Well, you have lovely forests there, so there's a lot of places that they could be happening.
A lot of lodge-making material.
Mm-hmm.
That's true.
The lodges would be made of the wood, so you need the wood.
Tofino, Tofino, we need to go surfing.
I think just a group of them wanted to just go have a nice vacation.
They're like, yeah, the final stage is we're going to take down the Cabal on Fire Island, and we're going to have a good old time.
So, I mean, the convoy it did, you know, they started, they did manage to get a group of people who are on board with this plan, I guess, and as absurd as it sounds.
So the convoy first met up in a base camp in this rural area about 40 minutes east of Ottawa.
And leaders of the convoy said that they're going to use the area as a staging area before marching into Ottawa.
So I, Luke, I saw pictures that you posted of a staging area.
And what struck me was like the total absence of like big rig trucks.
It was just it was like cars, pickup trucks or a few RVs.
I mean, what what was the scene like at this initial staging area?
Yeah, that's actually kind of interesting.
I drove out there early on and originally there were about like 30 vehicles or something.
And then within a week, it had kind of ballooned to like over 110 vehicles.
And like you said, too, I mean, there are it's mainly cars, a lot of pickup trucks, a few RVs.
There are some there's kind of like these school buses that have this like psychedelic Burning Man aesthetic to it where they've painted it and kind of put some wacky, wacky things on it.
You know, and a lot of the people are just sort of sleeping in their vehicles or, you know, in some cases, they've actually set up tents and that kind of a thing.
But the actual base camp itself is kind of interesting because they've like it's almost turning into a little miniature village or something like that, where, you know, they have like one of these mobile office trailers like you might see at a construction site.
And this thing is just loaded up with all their food and their supplies and that kind of a thing.
Then they have these almost like party tents, like a network of little party tents that are Uh, you know, they have like their dining area and their cooking area and just the amount of logistical effort that goes into setting up something like this is actually kind of, uh, you know, kind of surprising and in some ways impressive, I guess, to see.
I don't really see too many left-wing protests in Canada that have the same sort of, uh, you know, going to the same level of logistical sophistication, I guess you could say.
But I mean, the other thing, too, is like we saw this during the original Freedom Convoy.
Also, there were several base camps that were set up in the rural area just outside of Ottawa that were kind of providing they were kind of being used as staging areas and also providing logistical support for the stuff that was happening in downtown Ottawa.
And a lot of the media reporting didn't focus on that.
Like it focused on the stuff that was happening right in front of the parliament buildings, which is, you know, Canada's Congress, I guess, would be the best analogy.
But yeah, you had all these base camps that were kind of, uh, where they're, they had their supplies and they were sending stuff downtown to kind of refuel and, and support, uh, stuff that was going on downtown.
Uh, one of the most like striking images, I mean, during the convoy in Ottawa was they actually took over our local baseball stadium.
So Ottawa used to be the home of a AAA farm team for the Montreal Expos, a major league baseball team that went defunct about 20, 30 years ago.
And it's a stadium, it's got about capacity for 10,000 people.
These people basically took over the entire stadium, built this camp that almost looked like a fort in the parking lot.
They had all these wooden crates and sort of skids or whatever you call them that they had used to kind of build this wall around the perimeter.
And the inside, it was much like the base camp that we're seeing near Castleman, Ontario, you know, had like kind of this network of tents and semi-permanent structures.
They had like Hundreds of gas canisters that were being used to they would like load them on to pickup trucks and then sort of ferry them downtown to refuel the trucks.
So, you know, it is one of the defining features of this convoy movement in Canada.
I don't know that there is something similar in the U.S.
that I've seen or even internationally, but it is a very defining feature in Canada.
So, yeah, basically they set up these these base camps and then they try to attract people to the base camps themselves.
You know, in the evenings, they're hosting these like kind of open mic nights, they're having like concerts and things like that.
And then they live stream their videos and tell people to come down because this is where the party is happening.
It really is very, very strange and surreal part of these convoy protests.
Yeah, it's some some mutated form of Burning Man meets just the will to have any kind of political volition.
You know, I mean, getting together, driving across the country and feeling like you're a part of something instead of separate.
There is definitely that element that I can see as a kind of as a kind of positive, at least, you know, a satisfying element of it for for some of these people who feel disaffected.
Yeah, you know, Liv, you mentioned how, like, you know, that January 6th was a total failure.
But I think that for, like, people who otherwise feel, like, totally disaffected and, like, what they want is just cause disruption, you know?
That feels good, that you disrupted the people who are in charge.
The fact that they all got arrested and, like, it fell apart and then Joe Biden was president anyway, kind of beside the point.
The point is that they very temporarily did cause an inconvenience to people in power.
And I feel like the convoy movement was in the same way.
All right, didn't really accomplish anything.
They didn't get any concessions.
But for a few weeks there, they were a thorn in the side of people in power, even if the end result is meaningless.
I feel like that's just like a win.
Just feeling like you're being irritating to people you don't like is the same as feeling like you're powerful.
At least it's preferable to how they feel generally.
So I think this is how they generally approach these things.
Right, the real coup is the friends we made along the way.
And I guess in a certain sense, it is effective if it continues to inspire these sort of things, regardless of how bumbling they are.
Yeah, there's there's an idea of like, yeah, it didn't work that time, but next time it will.
I mean, the fact that they even managed to be that disruptive and cause like such a big kind of backlash to their actions for them, I think tells them that they're onto something.
I think, too, for a lot of them, if you actually ask them, they will say that they derive like a sense of community out of this.
In many cases, these are kind of like IRL in real life meetups for, you know, people who are meeting in private Facebook groups or, you know, people who are meeting online.
And so this is sort of like the physical manifestation of an online community in many ways.
While the participants were gathering in the staging area, there were some immediate clashes and infighting.
There were some in the group accusing others in the group of being infiltrators.
Someone from the convoy posted a video of one of the chaotic scenes from this time.
He beat our protesters.
He put our truckers in jail.
We need to save the country and make democracy happen.
Our government is entangled with the World Economic Forum and we can't let that happen.
Shoot out for treason, stand for thee. Shoot out for treason.
There's infiltrators behind us.
There's infiltrators behind us. Shoot out for treason.
So again, another man in sandals toesies out.
Yeah, lots of toesies.
Both about Trudeau and the infiltrators in this mess.
He's fighting a two-front war immediately.
I think we need to bring back John Dunsworth, RIP, fantastic man, and just get a good Mr. Leahy just kind of plowing his way through this crowd drunkenly and falling into like a children's swimming pool or something.
You know, this chaos has actually not reached a paroxysm.
They need to amp it up a little bit.
Turn it to 11 there.
So this infighting also led to like a physical confrontation.
There's a video that captured a moment where two convoy members physically attacked a vehicle belonging to another convoy member.
A man can be seen getting thrown from the hood of a moving vehicle as he repeatedly punches the windshield.
It was really weird and nasty.
Why exactly did the convoy seem to like start to break apart before they even like reach their destination?
Well, infighting is a defining feature as well of this convoy movement.
I mean, they've had multiple, multiple downs three weeks.
I mean, I think they had another one just a few days ago, too.
You know, with the incident with the person getting thrown from the car, I mean, that was all started where you had one.
So basically, the the leaders of the base camp decided that they're going to have a live stream video where they were going to announce that this base camp is now open and welcoming everyone to come in.
But one faction of the convoy was left out and they felt jealous about this.
So they tried to interrupt the live stream, which led to, you know, basically the the scene that we just listened to and, you know, people arguing.
Next thing you know, they're punching a car and a guy's getting thrown off of a car as it's driving out of the parking lot.
You know, but I guess the important thing to understand is that this movement is also very much driven by influencers and live streamers.
And many of these people are trying to build audiences and they're trying to crowdfund money for themselves.
So I think that is one of the reasons why you see You know, there's an attention economy at play here where, you know, there's a finite number of eyeballs and a finite amount of crowdfunding money to go around for these people.
And so they do tend to get very jealous of one person's getting more attention than them.
Or if, you know, one group of convoy leaders are presenting themselves as the, you know, lead spokespersons and leaving other people out of it.
So we've seen that, you know, just repeatedly over and over again, throughout, I mean, not just in the last three weeks, but, you know, going back a year or two.
So last week, you know, one of the TikTokers with the Save the Children convoy, he actually got kicked out of the base camp because he did a media interview where he was sort of presenting himself as one of the spokespersons for the group.
And this led to, you know, this led to a lot of, you know, jealousy and people getting rubbed the wrong way because they they were taken aback by the fact that he was presenting himself as a voice of the of the movement, basically.
And then, you know, this led to kind of this flame war erupting through different live stream videos where people were just sort of unloading on one another.
One person actually put out a video where he said that he had gotten a phone call from another person who Was one of the leaders of the Freedom Convoy.
He's currently in a criminal trial right now in Ottawa.
He says that he got a phone call asking them to knock it off because they're taking attention away from his criminal trial and he wants to get more attention for that.
So this is kind of the dynamic that we we see in the in the Freedom Convoy movement.
Oh, cloud is a hell of a drug.
It's interesting.
Like, is there really any are any of these schisms, like ideologically driven or like pseudo ideology?
Or is it really just like interpersonal drama?
It's a lot of interpersonal drama.
And I do think though, that there is like a material You know, thing underlying it, which is, you know, this competition for followers and who's going to have the biggest Facebook group and who's going to, you know, be able to capitalize on those Facebook groups by raising crowdfunding money and so on and so forth.
Right.
But no one arguing about, like, how to save the children.
Or it's like, no, you're saving the children the wrong way.
No, they can't even decide what they're saving them from!
Like, ideology!
They don't even agree on material reality!
These people's brains are like different blurry JPEGs, like, sewn together.
You know, there's, oh my god, ideology!
Where does the 1950s live?
You expect people to actually argue about something tangible?
They're gonna have a Truckers International?
That is genuinely sad.
I do wish we could at least be describing some kind of coherent ideological fight.
Instead, it's just pieces of gum stuck together, rolling around on the floor.
Yeah, kind of like interpersonal market competition.
Yeah.
There's a certain funding going here.
I want the funding.
No, I want it.
Yes.
Yes.
I mean, yeah, I think the revolution will be led by whoever gets the most likes, unfortunately.
Yeah, and what is the revolution?
Well, it's being at the top of the feed.
It is getting more likes.
This is like, it's self-eating.
Yeah, unfortunately, there's nothing.
They're going nowhere!
They're going nowhere!
The truckers, the trucks are going in circles.
It's a convoy to nowhere.
So, I mean, yeah, Luke, and, you know, as absurd as all of this is, like, you've also pointed out how, like, some of the rhetoric coming from Gordon Barry is really concerning, as you've, like, you know, you've highlighted.
You talk about, he does this, Gordon Barry, he does these, like, nightly kind of, like, speeches to the crowd, and sometimes, I mean, he just talks a lot about, like, you know, basically, like, taking over the government, and, you know, obviously in ways that don't sound perfectly peaceful.
These police should be arresting these politicians.
There's mountains of evidence.
When I talked to Maxime about that, and he talked about, you know, the Parliamentary Investigation Committee and the RCMP, they're all corrupt.
They all swear their oaths to the Crown.
They don't care about the people.
If all of these systems have failed us to this point, there is no other option but the people.
We are here for this reason.
We are the only solution.
We've had the legal right for almost a hundred years or better to set a du jour government in this country right alongside of this existing corrupt system.
So what is wrong with putting these people in prison for the crimes that they've committed and setting a system in place that benefits the people?
For the people.
There's nothing wrong with that.
And nobody will convince me otherwise.
So there, I mean, he's kind of like touching on the kind of the strange sovereign citizen kind of concepts that you like you mentioned.
So what role does that play in their kind of like their beliefs and their ideology?
It is pretty a pretty significant thing that keeps coming up time and time again.
You know, he referenced in that clip, the idea of a du jour government, which is basically the idea that he wants to return to, you know, a sort of natural or organic You know, and he's got lots of theories that basically amount to him thinking that he's got a loophole that takes him out of the legal system and why he thinks that laws don't actually apply to him personally.
He talks a lot about birth certificates.
He calls it the birth certificate fraud.
You know, there's times where he starts talking about He's basically advocating that people don't register their babies with the government, because if they do that, then, you know, they will be subject to the laws of the state.
And, you know, but if you don't, if you don't get a birth certificate for your newborn, then they can, you know, they can be free men or women or babies or whatever, free babies.
And so I mean, this is just a thing that you it permeates like everything that they say.
The thing that's really fascinating to me, though, from listening to Gordon specifically, but all of them, you know, in different ways, is just the way that you sort of see different discourses kind of overlapping with one another.
And it just kind of it's it's sort of you get the sense that they've just been consuming so much content online and it's all kind of just bouncing around their heads.
And that kind of comes out in this sort of You know, in this really strange kind of stream of consciousness.
So you also see Gordon sort of, he talks a lot about sort of New Age spirituality.
You see him frequently bringing up kind of this idea of like energy and wanting to kind of focus their minds on things so that they can sort of manifest this new reality.
And it's really interesting to me the overlap between the New Age stuff and the Sovereign Citizen stuff in the sense that they're both kind of like, you know, fantasizing about just Being, you know, sort of this escapist fantasy of wanting to, you know, just sort of manifest a reality that is completely divorced from all the constraints of, you know, of the reality that we, the rest of us live in.
I mean, yeah, that reminds me a lot of the QAnon claims, where they often think that this massive political upheaval will be paired with a spiritual revolution.
There's going to be a Great Awakening, and there's also going to be a storm of mass arrests that sweeps away all the bad guys.
So it seems those two concepts are often intertwined in political activist conspiracies.
But what about Saving the Children?
Like, I still haven't heard anything coherent about that.
Yeah.
It seems like Save the Children is more like, it seems like they got the sense that this is what's playing.
You know, there's a Save the Children movie that, you know, that made- That they haven't watched!
A lot of money.
So it seems like a popular thing to latch yourself onto.
And this is a way to get attention to your movement.
I mean, this is what it sounds like to me.
Here's a quote from a book that they haven't read.
I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff.
What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff.
I mean, if they're running and they don't look where they're going, I have to come out from somewhere and catch them.
That's all I'll do all day.
I just be the catcher in the rye and all.
That's them.
The catcher on the chance.
Yeah.
We've got to get the children.
They're going off the cliff and I just, oh God, save us all.
Yeah, you've also discussed how members of this convoy have invoked QAnon theories.
At one point during these speeches that Gordon Barry gives in the evenings, he referenced the QAnon claim that there are these white hats who are secretly battling the One World Government agenda behind the scenes.
And he seems to like entertain the idea, but he also encouraged his followers to consider what they would do if it isn't true.
You know, people say you guys are wasting your time because, you know, the military and the white hats and all these things are taking place.
Well, if that happens, that's a bonus.
And we get to go back home and live our lives.
But, what if it never happens?
What if that's nothing more than a distraction to keep us pacified until they get more control?
More totalitarian control?
You have to look at this in a broader scope.
So it's like calling your convoy the QAnon convoy except Q was lying and if he's lying then we got to do something because we could be entirely motivated and named after someone who just lied to us and is a psyops to keep us pacified.
And QAnon is also about Canada.
You may not mention it, but... Quebecanon.
Yeah, I mean, this is something actually I sometimes saw, like, the QAnon followers on 8kun discuss, is that they talk about Plan Z. In Plan Z, we like all, well, what if, like, the White Hats, they're like a minority of QAnon followers who are willing to entertain the possibility that the plan wasn't going to actually happen.
So they would say, OK, well, then it's just revolution time.
That means that, you know, America has fallen and therefore we need to like, you know, get our guns and make the revolution happen for ourselves.
And this was kind of sounds like what he's talking about.
That was always my biggest concerns.
Like all these people, they're so, they're so certain and so hopeful that there's going to be these massive revolutionary changes.
And what happens when they get blackpilled and they start, start believing it isn't going to happen, but that desire for big change still remains.
Then it could get into a lot more ugly, dangerous, violent situation.
Yeah.
If Q doesn't come through, it's time to get our toes out, our tarps up.
It's time to get our mics going and get that live stream running.
Let's go.
We got to make some change.
We got a case of Labatt's Blue.
Come on, come on down to the fire.
So Luke, what exactly is the relationship between members of this convoy and QAnon that, as you've seen?
Yeah, I mean, at first, I sort of would, you know, here there see people kind of referencing QAnon slogans or things that sort of sounded like something kind of vaguely QAnon adjacent.
I didn't really think too much about it.
But you know, I just increasingly kept seeing more and more sort of signs of, you know, things that sort of seem to reference that these people were at least at the very least very familiar with QAnon. So,
you know, I mean, obviously the Save the Children name itself is a, you know, QAnon slogan. It
was used as a hashtag for a while.
But, you know, and then you would also see people would post in the Facebook group stuff that would
reference the "Where we go one, we go all" slogan. You know, still not too, you know,
it could doesn't necessarily mean that they're like really deep into the QAnon stuff.
But you know, then you started to see like I saw a truck show up that had a giant where we go one we go all sign right on the back of it.
Yeah.
And then I noticed that Gordon Barry gave a speech one night where he was referencing the White Hats, as you mentioned.
And that's when I started to notice that, you know, they do seem to be a lot deeper into this mythology than I had originally thought.
So I actually started digging into Gordon's social media history, and I found multiple posts where he's, you know, very clearly referencing QAnon stuff.
I mean, there's memes claiming JFK Jr.
was murdered by Hillary Clinton.
Literally says hashtag QAnon on it.
He's got posts where he's talking about pedophile rings that run Hollywood and explicitly mentions Pizzagate.
He actually posted this one video that talks about satanic rituals and child sacrifice.
And it goes on to talk about the deep state and Planned Parenthood and Child Protective Services.
And, you know, at the end of this video, it tells people, don't worry, because Trump's working on it.
And, you know, these sorts of things really do clearly map onto the whole QAnon narrative.
But you know, that being said, you know, it's I don't get the impression that these are the kinds of people who were, you know, waiting with bated breath for, you know, Q to post things so that they could get together and piece together the puzzle of what he was actually talking about.
This does seem to me more like people who have just been saturated with this content to the extent that it's now just kind of their lived reality, like they just take it as truth that there are these white hats out there who are working behind the scenes.
Like it's just a fact for them and whether or not they succeed or not,
it's, you know, doesn't really matter.
It's just like this is something that's happening as far as they're concerned.
And, you know, so I guess in some ways this does feel like kind of a post QAnon
phenomenon in the sense of, you know, we're a couple years after, you know,
a lot of social media platforms cracking down on the, you know, explicit QAnon
content and, you know, Q's no longer, you know, sharing his Q drops.
But you do have all these people who have been consuming this content for a couple of years now, at least, who are now living with the after effects where they have, you know, this has basically shaped their reality and now they're just taking it as a given that this is, you know, these are the circumstances in which they exist.
It does strike me that, you know, if there is a kind of ideological difference, it's really just about, like, how do we organize ourselves to feel community?
Should it be Romana Didulo?
You know, should we be in RVs?
Should we be in cars?
Should we have a base camp?
Should we stop in this town?
Should we head to the East Coast?
You know, that's just about...
As much thinking as you can get, because as soon as they try to kind of coherently organize, there's like this infighting, people are turning on it, people are making videos against it, because there's a lot of content production at the core of this.
content is going to kind of diversify just to cover different aspects of the
market and explore if there's, you know, a viewership for whatever idea. Is there
a viewership for the Ronin who went on his own? Is there a viewership for the
man who betrayed, you know, this particular movement? So, you know, I mean,
I'm sure we'll cover it in the future, but, you know, Saskatoon, you know, has
been kind of asking the government to take care of Ramona DiDolo now that
she stopped there. And I'm sure with any of these convoys, it's like wherever they
stop, the local government and local population has to start contending with
like, "Ah, fuck, do we have like a compound, you know, building itself here?"
And so they do kind of become itinerant by default.
So Romana DiDulo is an interesting contrast because, you know, if listeners aren't familiar, she claims to be the Queen of Canada and sort of has this, you know, group of followers that kind of worship her.
And it's all very strange.
Uh, and she's now set herself up in an abandoned school in a small town in Saskatchewan.
And it's almost like her palace, like the Queen of Canada's palace, is this abandoned school in Saskatchewan.
But, you know, there is a contrast here, right?
Because in that case, you know, there is this very top-down hierarchy in the, you know, Romana Di Diulo universe.
Whereas with the Save the Children convoy, it actually is like a lot more community oriented.
And you know, just recently, just yesterday, actually, they announced that they are they have a farmer has given them land and they they're getting a barn and they're planning to build a permanent camp there.
And they're, you know, kind of sharing these utopian ideas about how they're going to plant seeds and grow, grow, grow food there.
And it really does kind of have the vibe of like a, like a 1960s hippie commune or something like that.
And you can sort of see this, you know, there is like really this, like you said, like a community oriented direction that they're heading in versus Romana DiDulo, who, you know, is demanding everybody kind of worship her.
I'd like to apologize to Canadians for confusing Saskatoon, Saskatchewan and Richmond, Saskatchewan, which is where Romana is currently trying to set up this little utopic community.
Yeah, so it almost seems like they're trying to use that, like, organizational power that's been kind of building up from Convoy stuff to create some weird, like, dual power system.
Like, you create your own government.
I guess that relates to, like, the not having your kid tracked in, like, the Canadian birth system.
Like, we'll give you a real birth certificate from the real Canadian government.
From the Queen of Canada.
How absurd that is, obviously.
It seems absurd, but who knows the scale that they'll be able to draw from this.
Although I guess the threat with creating some actual community will always be that they'll just tear each other apart.
And they're posting these memes, like we mentioned at the top, you know, of like a child with a QR code on their forehead, which is not happening.
And I mean, that's, I guess it's like, again, you're fighting a phantom of like what you imagine, uh, you know, a birth certificate or being registered in some way by the government as part of the population.
They want it so badly to be something as kind of clear and aesthetic as a QR code on a child's forehead, but they, they have nothing.
It's like, I'm sorry, but like the average person, if you ask them to find their birth certificate, they probably don't have it.
You know, it's, uh, it's purely off in some computer or in some, you know, drawer of like some government building.
Everything is completely intangible.
And, um, and so you can keep kind of, you know, fighting windmills.
So the latest development in the saga involves the Save the Children members getting kind of close to power.
So as you write, so members of the convoy say that they were invited into the House of Commons as VIP guests before suddenly being kicked out.
So what exactly happened there?
Yeah, so I guess about a dozen members of the base camp went down to the House of Commons last week.
And actually, to go before that, they staged a protest at a local media outlet where they were, you know, railing against fake news and whatnot.
And a Conservative MP, which is the opposition party federally in Canada, decided to show up.
He took photos with them and sort of, you know, expressed his support for the aims of the convoy and I guess, you know, their opposition to the media.
And I guess at this, when he showed up there, he invited them to come down to Parliament Hill, go into the House of Commons, and they could see how, you know, democracy is practiced in person.
So about a dozen of them took him up on that offer.
And they actually got into the House of Commons and they were being kind of led down the halls.
They started posting videos sort of showing themselves hanging out and wandering the halls of Parliament Hill.
And I actually saw this and I called up, they were saying on the live streams that they had been invited in by a specific Conservative MP by the name of Arnold Vearson.
He's a very, very socially conservative right wing guy from Alberta.
So I called up his office and I asked them about it.
They told me that they were going to look into it.
And then next thing I know, they're all angry because they've been kicked out of the House of Commons.
In subsequent videos that they posted online, they basically they've said that they have tried to get into the House of Commons a couple of times now, but they are now on some kind of a blacklist.
It is pretty concerning, though, because, you know, it does show that.
I mean, in this case, I don't really know if the Conservative MP, you know, if he actually shares the aims of the Save the Children convoy or if he just sort of saw them as maybe natural allies and didn't really realize just how, you know, weird some of their beliefs are.
But, you know, it is pretty concerning to see that they are, like you said, getting this close to power.
Well, could you actually elaborate a little bit more on, like, Pierre Poilievre, who I believe is the current, like, head of the Conservative Party, right?
And, I mean, he is a kind of radical figure with some pretty wild beliefs himself.
So, you know, how would you kind of connect the dots between something like this, this kind of, like, dysfunctional grassroots movement, the remnants of an earlier, much more disruptive convoy, and the politics and beliefs of Pierre Poilievre himself, who's going to be a candidate for prime minister?
Yeah, that's a good question.
So Pierre Polyev, he is a creature of the, you know, kind of conservative movement.
He's the kind of guy who, you know, he's kind of was incubated in like a like a right wing think tank kind of thing.
He's a real true believer of, I I would say I would line him more with the sort of like libertarian wing of the of the Republican Party, maybe like in the Tea Party era, like I would say that's kind of more his ideology.
I don't think he is someone who believes in, you know, QAnon.
He's definitely not someone who, you know, believes Oh, yes.
of these like really, really far right conspiracies. But he is very he has no
Oh yes.
problem inviting people to think that he's kind of like on their side. He has
definitely referenced a lot of conspiracies involving the World Economic
Forum, which is a big thing in Canada. I'm not sure if it's as big of a deal in
the United States.
Oh, yes. Oh, yes. That's all we ever hear about is Klaus Schwab.
Okay, okay. Yeah. So that's a big thing where a lot of the people in his base in
the Conservative Party think Justin Trudeau is just sort of like in lockstep
with Klaus Schwab in the World Economic Forum.
So anyways, I would say that, you know, he is he is a creature of the conservative movement.
And I think he is.
Well, I don't think he personally believes in this stuff like I think he is.
He will invite people to believe that he's on their side when it comes to it.
And he's very he will give them permission to share these beliefs and express these beliefs.
And how much of a shot does he have at becoming the prime minister?
Well, currently he is leading in the polls, which is actually quite, you know, I think a lot of people who were following Canadian politics 10-15 years ago would find that very surprising because he got elected in his early 20s and he would kind of was known as the, he was kind of an attack dog and would just Go out and make really outlandish statements and very inflammatory statements attacking the opposition parties.
But, you know, he's tried to reinvent himself as someone who has gravita and can be a leader.
And, you know, he's currently leading in the polls.
Going to be a beautiful future in Canada.
It is interesting, especially in relation to, like, I guess what we would kind of classify as, like, right-wing American political influence.
It seems like it doesn't really have a place in the kind of traditional Canadian Overton window, where, like, now you have a much more, I think, significant portion of the Conservative Party who's, like, explicitly anti-trans, explicitly, you know, anti-abortion, which, like, a decade ago, the idea that, like, abortion was a partisan question in Canada seems, like, Far more strange than it is today.
And, like, the question of where Polyev navigates in that seems like, it still seems kind of like an open question insofar as during the, like, conservative policy convention, which is this kind of, like, big event where the conservatives, like, delegates from the conservative party vote on these non-binding resolutions and the party leadership, like, says the direction they want to go.
The conservative delegates are, like, pretty overwhelmingly anti-trans, for instance, and Polyev didn't seem like he wanted to comment.
On those particular issues.
So it is like, you know, as a Canadian trans woman, it's going to be interesting to see, or interesting, troubling to see where he relates to a lot of the kind of beliefs that seem to be coming from like right-wing conspiratorial almost content that Canadians, that are American made, made for American political discourses that Canadians are viewing.
Yeah, do you have a sense that he's just, like, feels a little more like, hey, you know, we don't need to do some of this more frivolous American culture war to win, you know, and he's just interested in kind of more old school conservative talking points?
No, he's definitely very steeped in the online right wing culture war stuff.
Like that's the thing that I'd say he really leans into.
I'd say generally in Canada, you know, the conservative movement, conservative party kind of has three factions.
One is, you know, social conservatives, kind of religious right type people.
There's sort of this libertarian conservative movement type people.
That's the second part of it.
The third part would be kind of the more fiscally conservative Bay Street, Wall Street type you know, conservative. And Polyev is definitely more of
the libertarian, conservative movement type person.
Unfortunately, the libertarians don't have a great track record when it comes to laws protecting children
from sexual advances. So good luck with saving the children, guys. You know, it's going to be great.
And would you say Poilievre and like that kind of faction is ascendant?
I mean, is that like a bit like MAGA over here?
And is there a bit of like friction with the old school conservatives?
I mean, what are we looking at in terms of the way it's shifting?
He seems, you know, he really does seem more like a early 2010s Tea Party character than like a Trump MAGA type character.
You know, I do see sort of elements of like maybe DeSantis to where he, he does seem to be embracing this.
While not, you know, explicitly, you know, anti LGBTQ, he is very, you know, I think he's, again, like, I think he will welcome those people into his coalition, for sure.
So, I mean, as far as the future of the Save the Children convoy, I assume they still have plans to try to make it to the streets of Ottawa, but, you know, I checked the weather report and it's getting colder and rainier in that area.
So, yeah, I feel like the window for, you know, comfortably, you know, organizing a protest movement is closing.
So, do you think, are they still, you know, planning to make it there in the next couple weeks or months here?
Well, they say that they're in it for the long haul and will never leave.
You know, you would one would think that the weather would become a factor at some point.
But I mean, they have demonstrated great resiliency in the Canadian winters by, you know, spending three weeks camping out in You know, in Ottawa back in January and February of 2022.
So, you know, they have demonstrated the ability to survive in winter conditions.
So I don't think that will be a problem for them.
If they do, if they do see this whole thing fall apart, it will probably be due to infighting more than anything else.
That is fantastic stuff.
So we've been talking to Luke LeBron at Press Progress about his reporting on the Save the Children convoy.
I'm going to link to all of his reports in the show notes.
Check them out because it is in-depth stuff.
Luke, where can people follow you to learn more developments in this bizarre story as it unfolds?
Yeah, so I mean, you can find my reporting at Press Progress at PressProgress.ca.
We're a non-profit news organization based in Canada that, you know, in addition to covering the far right and right-wing politics, we also do stuff like labor reporting and, you know, reporting on issues like social and economic inequality and such things.
You can also follow me on Mastodon and Blue Sky at underscore Ella Brun, and I'm also on the website formerly known as Twitter.
Thank you so much, Luke.
Yeah, thanks so much for having me on.
Thank you for listening to another episode of the QAA Podcast.
You can go to patreon.com slash QAnonAnonymous and subscribe for five bucks a month to get a whole second episode for every main one, plus access to our entire archive of premium episodes and our mini series.
For everything else, we've got a website, QAnonAnonymous.com.
You can find Liv at LivAgar.com and search for that name on pretty much all the different platforms.
Listener, until next week, may the deep dish bless you and keep you.
It's not a conspiracy, it's a fact.
And now, today's Auto Q. This trucker family has been parked in Ottawa for 13 days with their five-year-old.
There's not a parent down here that would jeopardize the safety or the health of their child.
We brought them down here so that they can be proud of the moment.
Kathleen Callahan says it's sad police are now working with the Children's Aid Society over concerns about safety.
The risk of carbon monoxide and fumes.
The noise level.
Concerned about cold.
We're concerned about access to sanitation.
We've had a ton of support from a lot of the Ottawa residents who have opened their homes for showers, using their bathrooms.
So, you know, it's not like we're locked in these trucks.
I think it's disgusting that they would take the chance of traumatizing the children with CAS.
There was no media availability with police Wednesday, and the Children's Aid Society declined multiple interview requests.
In a joint statement, the organization said police would report any potential dangers they observe to the CAS, and that there have been ongoing reports around welfare concerns.
But the CAS wouldn't respond to a number of questions by deadline, including how many calls they've received, what type of concerns they're looking at, and whether they'd consider removing any children from here.
We've seen no indication of anything unsafe at all.
I mean, the only things we've seen that say it's unsafe are reports from legacy media.
These cabins are designed to be slept in while vehicles are running.
So, I mean, at this point it seems like they're trying to pull straws and anything they can to try and add scare tactics.
Parents Global News spoke to say they want to teach their children about protests and call for change.
She has no idea what a birthday party is.
Family gathering.
If she has a doctor's appointment, we can't even go in as a family.
