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Jan. 25, 2022 - Rebel News
46:32
EZRA LEVANT | The truckers convoy is the biggest news story in Canada — because it’s doing what no politician or judge had the courage to do

Ezra Levant frames the Freedom Convoy 2022 as Canada’s boldest protest against Trudeau’s vaccine mandates, with over $3.5M crowdfunded by January 24th and thousands of truckers converging in Ottawa despite media bias—CTV and Truck News pushed conspiracy theories while Indigenous organizers like Métis activist Tamara Lich led the movement. Embedded journalists report weigh station delays, public frustration, and comparisons to U.S. policies, where similar infection rates face no mandates. Critics argue vaccines aren’t about health but compliance, exposing surveillance overreach, while Levant warns strikes risk backlash unless strategically framed, yet praises the convoy’s lawful, nationwide resistance as a rare defiance against perceived government tyranny. [Automatically generated summary]

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Please Consider Subscribing 00:01:49
Hello, my rebels.
Today, I talk to you about the mighty trucking convoy that's headed from across Canada to Ottawa.
We've got a couple people on the convoy itself in the convoy and a couple reporters who are not at the main site but have tracked it so far in Calgary and Edmonton.
So it's a good show.
We'd show you lots of footage and over the course of the next week I think we'll have lots of updates because we actually have that embedded team.
You can see it.
This really is a visual story.
So please consider going to RebelNewsPlus.com, clicking subscribe.
It's eight bucks a month, and you get the video version of this podcast.
We really have some spectacular footage from the highway.
And believe it or not, we've got a helicopter ride that we filmed from.
And we've got some more surprises ahead for you.
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We don't take a dime from Trudeau and it shows.
All right, here's today's show.
Tonight, the trucker's convoy is the biggest news story in Canada because it's doing what no politician or judge had the courage to do.
It's January 24th, and this is the Ezra Levant show.
Why should others go to jail when you're the biggest carbon consumer I know?
There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
The only thing I have to say to the government is because it's my bloody right to do so.
I bet you've seen this in an email or on social media.
It's sort of incredible.
Truckers' Crowdfunding Campaign 00:16:18
It's a crowdfunding campaign on GoFundMe to raise money for the convoy of trucks across Canada converging in Ottawa to protest Trudeau's bizarre and unscientific and destructive and punitive vaccine mandate for truckers.
Last I checked this morning that GoFundMe had raised more than $3.5 million.
That's incredible.
That's got to be one of the largest crowdfunds in Canadian history, I have to think.
It's really a series of convoys from different parts of the country converging and heading to Ottawa.
They'll get there in about a week or so.
The purpose is to protest Trudeau's bizarre requirement.
The trucker is perhaps the most solitary profession alone in their trucks all day.
They have to get a vaccine or they lose their ability to work to cross the border, which a lot of trucks do.
It's punitive.
It's not about public health.
It's about attacking small businessmen and entrepreneurs, which many truckers are.
They have their own truck.
They're free spirits.
They're independent.
I'm guessing there aren't a lot of Trudeau voters in the trucking community.
Just a hunch.
So Trudeau loves to hate them.
On sent que la sécurité est accrue autour de vous.
On sent que c'est plus dangereux peut-être en ce moment pour vous.
On est dans un moment difficile parce qu'on est en train de prendre des choix importants.
We are entreating that we will source this by the vaccination.
Pience all Jesus entrepreneurs will concern, but also people who are opposed to vaccination.
It is extremists.
Which in the science are racist, this group but leaders, in a country leader, These Jean-Loho, especially voyages, the more people, because 20% of it is vaccinated, we will do it, and it's not these people who block a wagon.
That Besides the obvious point that there is no public health rationale here, there's the small matter of the supply chain I'm talking about.
That's a fancy way of saying how things get from farms and factories to shelves.
That's the logistics chain that involves ships and trains and trucks.
Think about it.
There's nothing in a grocery store or a restaurant, really any store at all, that didn't come off a truck.
And Trudeau wants to take thousands of truckers and their trucks out of service.
It's vengeance, not public policy.
But seriously, this is the guy who says things like this.
The commitment needs to be a commitment to grow the economy, and the budget will balance itself.
He says things like this.
The economy, not from the top down the way Mr. Harper wants to, but from the heart outwards.
And he says things like this.
I don't know what I think about the biggest, most important economic policy this government, if re-elected, would move forward.
You'll forgive me if I don't think about monetary policy.
I bet Trudeau thinks that supply chain is a funny nickname for his marijuana dealer.
That's a joke, and I keep using it.
I don't know how funny it is.
I see that Jason Kenney is tweeting about supply chain issues too.
And yes, that is one reason we don't want to force truck drivers to be vaccinated or ban them from our highways.
That's a utilitarian reason.
We need trucks to work for us, to serve us.
That's a reason why we shouldn't force nurses to get vaccinated or be fired.
It's a reason we shouldn't force firefighters to get vaccinated be fired.
That's a kind of selfishness, though.
It's not good for the economy.
I need service from my servants.
Yeah, but they're people too, people with civil rights.
You can understand why Jason Kenney is not mentioning that, because he was happy to enforce vaccines on his nurses and his government workers and to lock down churches and impose a vaccine passport.
He can't really make the moral argument now, can he, given that he has abused just as many people as Trudeau has.
It's a bit pitiful to value another human only for how they can serve you by getting you your groceries.
But enough about cowardly politicians.
Okay, not quite.
Here's just one more moment.
Watch a reporter repeatedly try to ask Aaron O'Toole to comment on the convoy.
Several of your MPs have tweeted out support for the convoy.
One of them saying that he felt the prime minister had a vendetta against people who were unvaccinated.
Do you support the convoy, its goals, its objectives, even though the Canadian Trucking Alliance says it could be disruptive?
And to follow, again, repeat Louis' question, will you meet with them when they come to Ottawa?
We've been talking to the Canadian Truckers Alliance, Glenn, for several months.
We've seen a crisis in the supply chain coming for several months, and we've proposed policies to try and help alleviate that, the most important of which is vaccines.
You didn't answer my question about it.
You didn't say whether you meet sure we keep store shutting down.
Maybe you can answer in response to my next question, sir.
You can say whether you're a private.
That's why last week, Glenn, when my follow-up question is about the supply chain, one of your MPs tweeted out a photograph purporting to be empty grocery store shelves in Canada.
Turns out was actually from the UK several years ago.
When things like that happen, does that undermine your party's credibility on this issue?
Well, we've been talking about shortages for some time.
So has the Canadian Chamber of Commerce.
There are unvaccinated truckers rolling into Ottawa.
You won't say whether you support them.
You won't say whether you will meet with them.
So what should Canadians think about your position?
Do you not support the trucking convoy?
I support getting as many people vaccinated as possible, including truckers.
So what's your message then to truckers who have maybe spent the past month thinking that you kind of have their backs and calling for reasonable accommodations and rapid tests?
And again, you still won't answer.
Will you meet with them when they come to Ottawa?
Do you support their efforts and coming all the way here?
What's your message to truckers who might be disappointed that you are dodging questions and when you won't say whether you'll meet with them?
Well, let me be crystal clear.
We've been meeting with the Canadian Trucking Association for several months.
In fact, we've written the minister on this.
And at every occasion, I encourage truckers to get vaccinated.
Yeah, he's called a conservative opposition leader, but he's none of those words, is he?
He's not very conservative.
He doesn't really oppose anything of substance that Trudeau does.
And I really don't think he's much of a leader.
He's more of a hider than a leader.
I think the reporter who was asking him those questions, if I recognize a voice, I think it was this guy, Glenn McGregor.
Here's a tweet that he did yesterday.
Statement from GoFundMe to CTV about the fundraiser for Truckers for Freedom, Freedom Convoy 2022 that has raised $2.5 million.
And he shows a response from the crowdfunding website, GoFundMe, that they wrote to him.
He obviously was asking them if they were going to cut off and shut down the truckers.
And it sounds like GoFundMe were actually working with the truckers to ensure that everything was compliant so the money would flow.
Say, do you think that's real journalism?
Or is that sort of mob cancel culture in the guise of journalism?
I would have liked to have seen McGregor's email to GoFundMe that elicited that reply because I don't think it's normal or natural or even journalistic at all, really, to ask GoFundMe if they're going to cut off someone's campaign.
That's a provocation.
That's an implied threat that the same journalist will embarrass them with a bad news story if they don't say, yes, yes, we're going to cut off these evil people.
And I don't think it's a coincidence that McGregor did that at the same time Trudeau's disgraced hatchet man, Gerald Butts, has done a dozen tweets attacking the convoy.
I think the media party were getting their instructions.
Here's something Butts said.
An Alberta separatist has collected almost a million bucks on a GoFundMe page to, quote, support trucker protests.
Where will the money go?
The murky matter of protests and the donations that drive them.
Truck news.
Hmm.
So you're an Alberta separatist now if you support truckers.
Gee, I wonder where Trudeau got his advice to call people racist or misogynist too.
I guess the only thing worse than a racist, sexist, Western separatist is someone who follows Tucker Carlson, Pierre Polyev, one of the few Conservative MPs to finally call for an end to lockdowns.
Well, that was just too much for Butts, who tweeted in reply.
This will sound like Fox News to the vast majority of Canadians.
The vast majority of Canadians are not fans of Fox News.
That, in a nutshell, is why the Conservatives keep losing elections.
Well, the word freedom is actually a Canadian word too.
Perhaps you've heard of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Pierre Polyev didn't mention Fox or anything American at all, but to Gerald Butts, anyone who mentions freedom can't be a true Canadian, which is weird because Butts himself, after being thrown out of Trudeau's office in disgrace over the Jody Wilson Rainbow Matter, went to work for an American lobby forum in New York.
That's weird.
And then Butts linked to this conspiracy theory, where the convoy was apparently being funded by foreign operatives or something.
I'm serious.
And they were money laundering.
I'm serious, full on conspiracy theory thread that Gerald Butts is pointing to.
You can tell they're worried, I guess, by how much he's hate tweeting about it.
Butts did quote the truck news, as I showed before.
That's not really his favorite people, people who read the truck news.
Butts is against fossil fuel use.
He's more a Prius guy when he's not in a private jet himself.
Here's their attack on the convoy, which sort of surprised me.
The murky matter of protests and the donations that drive them.
Sounds like Butts himself might have even written this, frankly.
First of all, it starts off by surrendering to Trudeau.
That's the approach that Butts wants all of his critics to take, to give up immediately without a fight.
Here's the Truck News.
They say, such protests rarely deliver results aside from angering the motoring public and casting shade on our industry.
We will report on significant events that disrupt our industry and your businesses, but do nothing to support this form of protest.
Let me read a little bit more.
One disturbing trend is the amount of money being thrown at recent attempts to bring commerce to a halt.
What a loser.
It's already had tremendous results.
And too bad Truck News wasn't part of it.
They literally sold out their own people.
What a weird lie, though, the convoy is trying to bring commerce to a halt.
No, it's not.
What a weird liar.
That's Trudeau's ban on truckers that would bring commerce to a halt.
These convoys are not blocking roads.
They're a convoy, not a blockade.
What a weird lie.
But again, the obsession with money, and I was thinking, why is that?
I think that's called projection in psychology.
Truck News is owned by a company called Newcom, which has received literally 10 different grants from Trudeau's media bailout in the last year I checked.
So yeah, I know why they're obsessed with money, because it's all they think about.
And so they're obsessed with pleasing Gerald Butts and the Liberal Party.
And how about the Truckers Alliance?
That's something else that Gerald Butts mentioned.
He points out that the Truckers Alliance, supposedly the Industry Association, they're against the Convoy too, which is odd.
Isn't it their job to stand up for truckers as opposed to stand against them?
Yeah, about that.
If you look at the government grants, you'll see 14 contracts from the federal government to different trucker associations over the past few years.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars from Trudeau to the truckers' associations.
So really, you can't trust any institution at all these days until you first find out how much money they've been taking from Trudeau to defend Trudeau, even against their own members' interests.
So what's my point?
My point is something has changed.
All the institutions that could be bought off, all the media, all the industry associations, all the politicians, they're not in control of this anymore, are they?
I think that really bugs the truck news.
No one's listening to them.
No one cares what they have to say.
I think that's what's bugging the Trucking Alliance.
No one cares what they have to say.
They're just politicians now.
And a very independent-minded group of Canadians, truckers, well, they're being successful.
And this thing has just started.
It has a week to go, and it's already mustering thousands, even tens of thousands of people along the way, isn't it?
And the money that's being raised, I think that's a barometer of how much people care, isn't it?
None of that money has actually been released to organizers yet.
I think it will be, but it might never be.
I don't know.
But the hugeness of that number shows how much people want this protest.
And it should shame every so-called check and balance in our system who has failed this past two years.
I'm very proud of the fact that we have embedded reporters in the convoy.
Two of our journalists, Mocha and a young reporter named Celine.
And we have reporters covering it in other cities too.
We'll show you what's really happening every day, not just the smears by Gerald Butts and the rest of the disgraced, bought-off media, like that guy at Truck News.
Stay with us for more on this.
That is amazing.
Convoy Convulsion: Across Canada 00:05:03
Lots of flags there.
I saw the Canadian flag.
I saw the BC flag.
I saw an Indigenous flag.
I saw a ton of homemade signs.
I saw maybe 100 cars parked along the side of the road, big trucks.
That footage, if I'm not mistaken, was taken by our rebel reporters embedded in the convoy.
As you may recall, on Friday, we spoke to our chief videographer, Mocha Bazir again, who will spend the next week with the convoy driving all the way to Ottawa.
We have a second junior reporter with him who will be helping film while Mocha drives.
And who knows, we'll probably have some footage from within a truck.
We're just getting started.
It's so exciting.
That was very persuasive footage, but this is indeed a large protest in many measures, larger than anything we've seen in the cities.
It's true.
You've seen some protests in Toronto, Montreal, exceeding 10,000 people.
I certainly wouldn't want to downplay that.
But to have people lining the sides of the highways for miles, I understand that more than 2,000 people gathered at one stop yesterday.
This is enormous.
As I told you earlier, I just checked, and the crowdfund is around $3.5 million.
It's not even what they do with that money.
I think most people in the convoy are happy to buy their own sandwiches and motel room and gas.
It's just a symbol, a barometer of how passionately people feel, more than 42,000 donors to that convoy.
You can see that Gerald Butts doesn't like it one bit.
He's actively agitating against the crowdfunding and his compliant journalists trying to pressure GoFundMe to cancel it.
I don't think they will succeed because it's so obviously a law-abiding good faith gesture.
I told you that Mocha and a new young reporter, Celine, are on the road with the convoy.
But we have started our reporting earlier, in fact, yesterday.
And I understand we've got some very dramatic footage joining me now via Skype from both Calgary and Edmonton.
Are my friends Adam Sos in Calgary and our chief reporter, Sheila Gunread, in northern Alberta?
Good to see you guys and welcome.
Hey, boss.
Thank you.
Happy to be here.
Well, you have both done reporting because I guess the convoy is actually a series of convoys that combine together because Canada is such a large place.
You have different strands, I suppose, that are then threaded together into a rope, if I can make a metaphor.
Sheila, let's start off with you.
I understand you were at a truck stop that had an enormous gathering.
It was absolutely enormous.
It was west of Edmonton in the Atchison Industrial Park.
There's a huge truck stop there.
And the truckers were slated to come through at about 5.30 yesterday afternoon.
I got there shortly after 4.
There's probably already 1,000 people on site at that time, people waiting in their vehicles, lined up on the roads, on the overpass.
Before the night was done, well over 2,000 people were there.
The truckers were approximately two hours delayed because the conspiracy theorist in me would say the Department of Transportation is doing a bit of Justin Trudeau's dirty work.
The way scales were open and they were delayed.
So they made every truck pull over and be weighed.
Most of these trucks are empty, by the way.
Pull over, get weighed, check their logbooks.
Yep.
You know what?
That's harassment.
I'm not surprised at all.
The RCMP, Toronto Police, Calgary Police, Edmonton Police, Montreal Police.
So many police forces in this Peterborough Police have been turned into, Aylmer Police have been turned into thugs.
Why wouldn't Department of Transport Police be turned into thugs too?
I mean, they've got their jobs.
What do they care?
Well, that's the thing.
These guys aren't hauling anything.
I mean, these are largely empty trucks.
A lot of it is pickup trucks, to be honest with you, because a lot of the truckers are not owner operators.
They work for other companies, so they can't take their boss's truck on this journey across the country.
But yesterday, well over 2,000 people waited in the freezing rain and then the snow just to show up to thank the truckers, but also to send the Edmonton area truckers on their way as they threaded it into the rope on the way to Calgary.
And while I was there, you know, you could tell that this was the first nationwide movement against the vaccine mandates.
You know, we've had restaurants pop up and rebel in Alberta, churches across the country sort of pop up and rebel, a lot of them in Alberta.
We've seen gyms open up in BC.
We've seen a curfew, scoff laws in Quebec, but nothing that puts the entire country together on this one issue.
And it's not just about truckers.
It's about our groceries in the store.
It's about our small businesses getting our goods to market.
And it's about respecting the people who worked hard to keep our economy going as the Liberals actively shut it down for 22 months.
Truckers and Beyond 00:04:17
And so that's what this is about.
And so that's why you see people lined up on the side of the Trans-Canada Highway.
People who want to be on the convoy but can't be.
They don't know what else to do but show up with food, with cookies, and signs to just thank them for fighting for everybody else.
Yeah, it's incredible.
The organizer of this event is a Métis woman from the West who is not even a trucker herself.
And she just loves freedom and good for her.
And she's put this together.
It's really telling to me that Gerald Butts is in such a fury.
He's in a tweet storm of rage against her.
I guess Justin Trudeau and Gerald Butts never do well with strong-willed Indigenous women from the West.
Just ask Jody Wilson-Rayboat if you need proof.
Now, Adam, you had a very special bird's eye view of the Calgary thread into this rope.
We got a bit of a rebel air force going on.
Let me throw to some video of that and we'll be right back and you can tell us about it.
Let's take a look.
That's correct.
We're just following that convoy there, so we'll see where they're originating and follow along.
Okay, that's all approved.
Just stay 4,800 or below.
As the city begins to awaken, we are seeing cars on this early Monday morning take to the streets, many of them likely having breakfast, planning to go to the grocery stores today, doing all of these normal things, seemingly unaware of the absolute dependence they have on these truckers and the work they're doing.
Truckers standing up not only for themselves and their homework, but for all against vaccine mandates.
So, Adam, that looks like it was taken last night from helicopter.
Tell us a little bit of what you saw from up in the sky.
Yeah, so it was actually this morning.
We were up at about 4 a.m. to get out there and to get up in the helicopter.
By the time we got out, it was about 6:37.
The convoy was originally slated to leave at 7 a.m.
But as Sheila mentioned, it seems like a universal consensus among these truckers and among the convoy that these weight scales that simply would not normally be open are all open and they're all doing due diligence on a level that has never before been seen.
So there seems to be some weight to that alleged conspiracy theory.
Conspiracy theories tend to come true these days in the COVID world.
So it remains to be seen if we'll be able to find some information on that.
But as we got up into the sky, it was incredible.
We approached the truck stop in South Calgary where the crowd was gathering.
As we mentioned, they were supposed to roll in last night, but some people were still arriving because of the massive delays this morning, well into the departure time.
So instead of having the convoy rolling out as we flew up, we simply had the group beginning to gather.
It was a sight to be seen.
Hard to gauge the number of trucks that were there, but as we flew over the truck stop, there were vehicles lined up all the way around it, cars, people parked, honking, supporting.
The trucks all had their lights flashing, and it was certainly something to be seen.
And that footage definitely shares the story.
The picture's worth more than a thousand words.
But it was incredible to see all these people gathered.
Even as we made our way out in the early morning, you'd see trucks driving from all directions with signs converging and gathering.
And shortly after we departed the helicopter and landed again, we drove into town.
There's even stay up for so long in the helicopter and drove to where the convoy was leaving town.
And we caught the tail end of that.
And we've only been through a province and a half of progress of this convoy building.
People are still just joining it right now.
But it was already pretty much as far as your eye could see both directions.
We had ample time to park as the convoy rolled up, walk a little bit of a way, set up and film.
So I can't imagine how big this is going to get by the time it reaches Ottawa.
Like Sheila said, this is certainly sort of a unique national event.
We're seeing for the first time these media outlets very often out there who've completely ignored the stories, completely ignored when 10,000 people are in the streets of Toronto, 7,000, 5,000 people in the streets of Calgary.
Even they're starting to cover this because this is so significant.
Long Haul Convoy Rebellion 00:09:56
It's starting to affect, like we said, the supply chain starting to affect people's lives on a more personal level.
So the story is expanding and the sentiment that we got from people literally up in the air.
Even on the weekend, we had this large protest, the Worldwide Rally for Freedom.
The mood in the air is that the veneer is starting to crack, the facade is falling away, and people can kind of optimistically sense that hopefully freedom is around the corner.
Yeah.
I think something is changing also.
I think some people who complied under some duress to get two jabs are now feeling betrayed, that they're being told that they're dirty, unclean, anti-vaxxers if they don't get a third jab and they have to take tests and there's more lockdowns, especially in Ontario and Quebec.
And I think a lot of people are having a bit of buyer's remorse for really being suckered.
So I think you have that.
I think people are realizing an obvious fact, which is that the vaccines do not actually stop you from getting the virus, which I think is sort of stunning to a lot of people.
That's what the word vaccine has always meant.
And I think people are just tired.
Now, by the way, it is true that the supply chain is a factor, but I think that that's just a utilitarian approach.
I think it's the personal freedom of everyone that's a much larger factor, including the freedom of these truckers.
And I think that they mess with the wrong group.
Go ahead, Sheila.
Yeah, I will agree with you there.
I know a little something about the trucking industry.
My husband works in oilfield trucking, and my father-in-law was a long-haul trucker for a very long time before he made the switch into oilfield, heavy haul.
And Justin Trudeau really bungled this one because, you know, you can push around government workers, you can push around a certain group of people.
But the thing with long-haul truckers, particularly the ones that make the long drive from the United States up to Canada, bringing the hipsters, their avocados for their avocado and toast.
These are people who like their time alone.
You don't get into heavy haul, long-haul trucking if you like having a boss over your shoulder.
These are people who embrace freedom.
They like the freedom of the open road, and they don't like being told what to do.
And that's why you get into an industry like long-haul trucking.
And so when Justin Trudeau picked a fight with them, he picked a fight with the wrong people.
And now all the opposition is coalescing around this one group.
Yeah.
You know, it's true.
I've talked about how being a long-haul trucker in some ways it's as reclusive as being a lighthouse keeper when you think about it.
But it's not just that.
I think there's a tradition of truckers to listen to talk radio, maybe call in, to banter on the CBs.
And I find that people who are by themselves in the truck or in farm equipment, they think about things.
They maybe listen to the radio more than most folks listen to talk radio.
They have opinions about things.
And I think that they're going to be more independent-minded and probably better informed than just some, you know, desk bureaucrat who's part of a union that immediately surrendered.
And, well, I just got to do it.
So I think it's wonderful that these truckers, as Orwell said in 1984, if there is any hope, it's the proles.
That was his nickname for the proletariat.
Not the fancy people in Toronto who couldn't wait to tweet a picture of how many masks they wore to keep up with the Joneses.
If there's any hope, it's with the proles.
Adam, last word from Calgary to you, and then we'll finish up with Sheila.
The convoy has left Calgary now, I presume, and Mocha and Celine are in the convoy.
Do you think anything has changed in Alberta?
I see Jason Kenney trying to sort of side with the convoy, but not quite coming out in favor of it.
Do you think things are going to get freer, or do you think you're going to see a relapse into lockdown?
Yeah, I mean, I think that there is at least the very hope.
I mean, we already had the best summer ever, so who knows?
But it's interesting that you mentioned the radio with these truckers.
You can actually listen into the official radio that the truckers are using on this convoy.
And it's incredible, province to province, with so many people calling from Alberta, children calling in, families calling in, sharing their support.
The amount of people that we saw out at this protest, the amount of people who we're talking to are who have been going along with this or who are double vaccinated, and they're saying enough is enough.
And that even beyond that, they're not just saying we want to open up.
They're kind of this woke active political activism now.
They're awake in a way they weren't before.
And I think very often the people who were alert were often people who maybe were from Venezuela, were from Poland or from countries where this sort of thing has happened in the past.
And so they're alert to those concerns.
I think Albertans now, with some broken promises and with some shifting, they have become alert to political corruptness and political corruption and political parties stripping away their rights.
So I think that they are hopeful that things will open up, but I do think they have changed on a fundamental level and that they will not allow things to lock down again.
I think that they know that they have to take an active role and that they're not simply going to be placated or ushered into a sense of comfort and simply go along any longer.
So I can tell you for the first time since the onset of COVID, I don't think any of us believe the open for summer, open for good.
We called that out immediately.
I think for the first time with a bit of a guarded nature to it, but there is a sense of optimism in Alberta that things might be actually changing for the better and hopefully changing for good.
Sheila, you've covered convoys before.
I know a couple years ago, there was a convoy to Ottawa from the West, and it was more energy support workers get out of this madness of shutting down the oil patch.
There's probably some of that behind this too.
I think it's a general frustration with a set of policies that make no sense scientifically, economically, regionally.
But this time, there's that added edge of violating civil liberties.
This seems like it is so many, it's like exponentially deeper and more serious than the last convoy.
What do you think?
Yeah, it has all the same problems that the last convoy ran up against.
So, you know, the, as you say, blocking pipelines is unscientific.
So are these COVID mandates?
And, you know, it doesn't make sense regionally, likewise with COVID mandates.
So there's a lot of that happening here.
And it does have that extra layer of violating civil liberties.
And a lot of people, as you say, were coerced into getting a vaccine they didn't want.
And I think, again, with Justin Trudeau underestimating who he picked a fight with, you're dealing with long-haul truckers who routinely make the haul to the southern United States where COVID is no longer a thing anymore.
And then they have to come back to Canada and they look at the same COVID infection rates.
And we're both dealing with Omicron, but life is much different in the place where they just picked up their load and they've got to drive back to Canada.
So you're dealing with people who are seeing both sides of this.
And as to use the word that Adam used, they're really awake to how bad the tyranny is in Canada because they've tasted the other side.
Yeah, that's a great point.
Well, I'm so glad the coverage you guys have done.
And for folks who want to follow our coverage, several times a day, we will update the website convoyreports.com.
Mocha and Celine are on the ground.
We will have reports in various cities as we've just done from Calgary and Edmonton.
If you want to be up to date, go to convoyreports.com.
If you want to chip in a few bucks to help pay our bills, please do.
I'm delighted that the crowdfund for the project as a whole is going so large.
Obviously, we don't tap into their crowdfund.
We have to crowdfund our own journalism.
I think it's very important that rebel news reporters are embedded in this convoy to tell the truth about it because I don't think Trudeau's bailout media will.
Stay with us.
More ahead.
Hey, welcome back.
Your feedback.
Someone with a nickname Lake Nipissing says, people around the world are waiting for this to happen.
It was good to see the convoy was mentioned on National Post and Global.
I was really expecting this to be censored through omission.
Once the truckers park and walk away from their rigs in Ottawa and shut the place down, the Canadian mainstream media will not be able to ignore it.
Congrats to Tamara Lich, a Métis woman, for being one of the main organizers of the group, Freedom Convoy 2022.
I agree with that.
I have seen what I will call neutral coverage in a couple of places, but I think it's a matter of time before they stick the daggers in.
Racist, stab, sexist, stab, misogynists, stab.
I don't know quite how they do that when, as you point out, the chief organizer is actually a young Métis woman from the West.
And again, Trudeau and Gerald Butts never did well with young indigenous women from the West.
Ask Jody Wilson Rainbow if you need proof.
Deb Wilson says the reason they continue to push the vaccine, even on those who have natural immunity, is because health is not the issue.
Compliance is.
Nothing but compliance will satisfy these tyrants.
Strikes and Compliance 00:07:18
Yeah, it's really weird.
I mean, we have, what, 80, 90% compliance already.
That's far beyond anything epidemiologists generally say is herd immunity.
This is about punishment and compliance and trying out new systems, systems of surveillance, systems of privacy violations, systems of tracking you.
I think that's what it's about.
Snivels Lurdergimento, if I'm saying it right, says truckers need to go all the way with this, block and shut down everything, close down major highways and access points for as long as is possible.
If more GoFundMe needs to be set up, by all means, let's get it done.
This needs to be a regular and long-term thing from now on and during the working weekdays, if possible, until all mandates are dropped.
Everyone needs to feel the impact of this, including and especially the majority businesses and individuals who have allowed government and medical tyranny to prevail.
Well, what you're talking about there is a general strike.
And we don't really have a lot of those in Canada.
There was a general strike that the communists supported in Winnipeg about a century ago.
I think that the convoy has deliberately chosen not to block highways because they want to keep the people cheering, not hurting the people.
And I think that's probably wise.
Anything like that will be immediately pounced on.
You can see the Trucker News is already smearing the truckers for blocking and grinding down business, which they have actually not done.
I'm not against a general strike.
And I think the problem is, as Sheila mentioned, until now, you've had this restaurant or that barber shop or this store pop up and it's like whack-a-mole and the government whacks them down so hard.
But what if everyone popped up at once?
That's the feeling of a general strike.
Too many things to lock down.
That's the feeling of this trucker convoy is that it's so big and it's so nationwide you can't just crack down like John Torrey, the Toronto Mayor, cracked down on that Adamson's barbecue a year or so ago.
You can't just crack down on Arthur Pavlovsky's church or Chris Scott's whistle-stop cafe in Mirror, Alberta.
That it's so big, it's sort of like I'm Spartacus.
No, I'm Spartacus.
So I think there's something to that, but I think the aggressiveness with which you speak is perhaps too much for Canadians.
I don't know.
I do know when there was an attempt to grind Canada to a halt by blocking railroad tracks and mining roads and logging roads.
When it was done by the left, it actually sort of worked.
Everything was ground down.
And Trudeau sent emissaries to negotiate.
But I think that lawbreaking brings with it a resistance from most Canadians who say they don't want to go that far.
I'm pleased with the convoy as it is.
I think it's lawful and upbeat and positive and it's a rallying point.
People can see it physically.
They can go out on the roads.
And even the number on that crowdfund is a form of online rallying.
And I think it's been successful.
So at this point, at least, I think I would disagree with your demand that it go into a full general strike.
Although I got to tell you, there would be no quicker way to end the mandate than if fire departments, police departments, or any other essential service had a strike over the vax.
I'm not recommending it.
I haven't thought about it much, but that would get people's attention.
That's our show for today.
We'll end with our video today.
Our friend Arthur Pavlovsky was with the truckers and he gave a speech.
I'll leave you with that until tomorrow on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters to you at home.
Good night and keep fighting for freedom.
So they were the heroes for the 22 years and 20 years.
Now there are zeros because some corrupted politician says so.
Are you kidding me?
You see, we are teachers.
We are trackers.
We are nurses.
We are Canadians.
That's why I am here.
Well, hello everyone.
We're in Calgary, Alberta.
We're expecting the Freedom Convoy to arrive here.
And here are the supporters who have assembled here to provide food and comfort for the truckers.
I'm here with Katie.
Katie, what's going on here?
Can you give us an update?
Can you tell us, tell our viewers across Canada what's happening?
So right now we're waiting for the truckers to come from Edmonton.
They just left.
They've been having issues with the way scales because of course they're trying to put everything in the way of stopping this.
So it might be a little delayed, but we have what I heard over 800 truckers coming here all over the place.
We got from Edmonton, from BC and from the United States coming down here tonight.
And we also have at least two or three other groups that came and provided us with all this foods for all the truckers and just make sure that they've got supplies to stand up against all this.
We are here in solidarity with every Canadian, with every father, every mother that had been subjugated to this tyranny because we have to start naming things the way they are.
This is not about mandates and regulations.
This is not about saving lives.
This is about control.
They are destroying lives.
I mean, teachers, come here, teachers.
Look, how long have you been teaching?
22 years.
22 years, she was perfectly okay to teach for 22 years.
How long have you been teaching?
20 years.
20 years.
For 20 years and 22 years, they were fine.
They were okay.
Suddenly, now the government, the wannabe tyrants, the Adolph Kennies, the Trudeau Castros, or the wannabe doctors like Tom and Hincha, they're telling them they cannot work anymore.
Excuse me, why?
Because of a flu?
Okay, flu with a kick.
That's why.
So they were the heroes for the 22 years and 20 years.
Now there is zeros because some corrupted politician says so.
Are you kidding me?
You see, we are teachers, we are trackers, we are nurses, we are Canadians.
That's why I am here.
Well, thank you so much for the update.
And I got a spot.
Yeah.
Anybody know how to spot?
Yeah, I'm in the back of the first video with the total.
Everybody know how to spot living here today, because the flags distance for freedom and they won't take the battle away.
And I'm proud to rein Canada when at least I can be free, And I won't forget no matter time again to try to be when the twin is time, and you'll defend us in today, Cause there ain't no doubt about this man.
7,000 Kilometer Journey 00:01:49
Hi guys, if you like me bringing you the other side of the story, please go to convoyreports.com and find my journalism.
As you know, I'm going to follow the convoy all the way from Calgary to Ottawa.
That's going to be a week-long journey.
And then of course I'm going to drive all the way back.
That adds up about 7,000 kilometers.
That's a lot of gas money.
Plus, I had to rent this car because the weather, you'll never know you need a big car.
Please go to convoyreports.com to fund our journalism so we can continue to bring you the other side of the story.
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