Ezra Levant critiques the media and politicians’ dismissal of Canada’s January 25th trucker convoy, a grassroots protest with $4.5M crowdfunding despite GoFundMe pressure, led by Métis organizer Tamara Lynch. Conservative MPs like Scheer and Polyev support it, while O’Toole deflects on vaccine mandates, and CBC avoids actual participants. Transport Minister Omar Al-Gabra’s past ties to Hamas-linked groups and weigh station politicization fuel suspicions of government overreach. If the convoy escalates, authorities may label it terrorism, but public trust in industry associations—funded by grants—could shift, exposing establishment hypocrisy. [Automatically generated summary]
We didn't record it in the studio because we had a fire in the studio and it's not usable.
So I recorded it from home and that probably won't make a difference to you if you're listening on a podcast.
Other than I didn't have the teleprompter where I normally put all my notes so my speaking is a little more herky jerky.
But we still did manage to patch together a great show and thanks to our staff for pulling together.
I'd like to encourage you to get the video version of this podcast, not for today because it's not as slick as we normally do, but for the future, especially since we're covering this trucker convoy.
It's just a visual story and I really would like to see you to see the fruits of the labors of our team that's on the road.
So you can do that by subscribing to the video version of this podcast.
Just go to RebelNewsPlus.com and click subscribe.
It's eight bucks per month, about half the price of Netflix.
And it's really the only place you're going to get the other side of the story.
All right, here's today's podcast.
Tonight, the trucker's convoy gets closer to Ottawa, and Ottawa starts to sweat.
It's January 25th and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
Why should others go to jail when you're a 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 about why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
Hi there, I'm standing outside my own house.
There is a very gently used basketball hoop.
Reason is we had a bit of a fire at the studio today.
Normally we have a staff meeting at 10 a.m. where half the team is in the boardroom and the rest of the team joins from afar via Skype.
Today is a rare day.
I was taking the call from my house because I had another appointment and suddenly I heard people in the boardroom say there was a fire and rush out and the rest of the team didn't really know what was going on and then the feed from the boardroom cut out and it was very dramatic and I immediately raced down to the office and luckily it was a small fire that was quickly put out but when I arrived there were actually four fire trucks outside the studio.
My first thought, I won't lie, I was a little bit paranoid.
I thought maybe it's arson.
Maybe it's sabotage of some sort.
No such excitement.
It was just an electrical fire with one of our LED lights in the studio, which is ironic because those lights are very cool.
They're not hot burning at all.
Thankfully we put it out very quickly with an air with a fire extinguisher.
The problem is there was so much sooty smoke and of course the light itself was burnt out that we have to clean and fix up that studio before we can use it.
So I am going to do my interview today via Zoom and I'm outside in the chilly weather doing my monologue without a teleprompter.
Normally I write my script out word for word and then we put it in the teleprompter along with visual cues for the different elements.
Long Epic Convoy Passes By00:02:49
So we're going to sort of go homemade against today.
Obviously the story of the day is the story of the year.
That's the trucker convoy which is converging on Ottawa from around the country.
I want to start by showing you some of the on-the-ground work done by Mocha Bazirgan, our chief videographer who's accompanied on this trip by a new intern, Celine.
I'll show you some of their reportage.
Wow, we are in the middle of Trans-Canada Highway.
And as you can see, the long, epic convoy is passing by.
Lots of wind.
Lots of wind there.
I don't know if the wind is due to weather conditions or because of the trucks that are passing by, but this is pretty incredible.
It's an incredibly long convoy.
It's a really very long convoy.
Lots of enormous support all across the road.
I've seen many, many people out came out to support these convoyers.
Let's interview some people.
I'm amazed.
I'm just amazed by the amount of love this convoy has received.
I mean, it's crazy.
Hi.
Hi, sir.
How are you doing?
Good to see you too.
Thank you so much.
What do you make of the convoy?
Yeah, I can't hear you very much.
Are you excited?
Yes, you bet you.
We're going to follow along to Medicine Hat and then come back.
What do you make of the Truck Association of Canada condemning the convoy?
I don't know.
I don't know.
Okay.
I'm not a part of it.
I can't really.
Sure, fair enough.
What message do you have to Canadians?
Stand up for your rights.
Stand up for freedom and carry on.
We got to win this.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Nice to meet you too.
Thank you.
Mocha's doing a great job and he's going to be with the convoy the whole way into Ottawa.
It's just a very exciting way to see the country.
And I spoke to Mocha on the phone yesterday.
I think he's genuinely touched.
As you know, he hails from Turkey.
I think he was born in Canada, grew up in Turkey.
So he's sort of rediscovering Canada with the eyes of a new immigrant.
And he tells me that the positive feelings and the patriotism and the emotion that he's hearing from people along the road is very inspiring.
I love to see the country through his eyes as he described it to me.
He said, it's not just a protest, it's a kind of peaceful revolution.
I thought that was a wonderful way of phrasing it.
Mocha's Canadian Odyssey00:09:10
So he is driving and filming with Celine and editing at night.
So he's going full tilt.
If you want to see all his work, go to convoyreports.com and you can help chip in to cover his modest costs.
We did decide to rent a vehicle for him.
His own car probably is not up for a cross-country journey in the snow.
So we rented a sturdier vehicle for him.
He is staying in motels along the way, which you would think would be very affordable.
But of course, we're discovering when you have a convoy of hundreds and hundreds of people with you, you tend to book up all the motel rooms in town pretty quick.
We talked about how GoFundMe had not yet succumbed to pressure to cancel what is now over $4 million in crowdfunding.
And the last I checked, they had not canceled it, but they're, quote, working with the organizer of the convoy to develop a plan for dispersing the funds.
And that's not to say they're going to cancel it, but it is obviously pressure.
Then again, when you have millions of dollars raised, you can see there is a bit of fiduciary duty to the donors that the money be spent in a manner that was advertised.
I have no doubt that will be successfully achieved.
What's interesting to me in that all the press coverage demonizing this crowdfunding, they call it a Western separatist link to the Maverick Party.
That's a fully registered political party.
You wouldn't see that kind of condemnation of the Partique Bécois or the Block Québécois.
None of them mentioned that the organizer, Tamara Lynch, is a Métis woman from the West.
I mean, if she were leading some pro-vaccine campaign or some pro-government campaign, you bet she would be treated as a hero of the Indigenous community, someone who should receive the Woman of the Year Award.
I mean, you have a young Indigenous woman who has created this enormous thing.
That's a heck of an entrepreneur and a leader.
You never see her identity mentioned because that contradicts the official narrative, doesn't it?
Gerald Butts continues to rage.
And I see that the hate machine of the quote anti-racist establishment, all of whom are paid handsomely by Justin Trudeau, they have now engaged.
I see that the National Council of Canadian Muslims, which is the renamed version of CareCan, which of course was linked in an indictment to a terrorist group in the United States, their Canadian branch, which has renamed itself, is condemning the convoy as racist and Islamophobic and all those things.
The usual.
And I sort of chuckle because, you know, Mocha is a great guy and I look at him as an individual and as a great videographer, but he happens to be Muslim as well.
He's the number one booster of this convoy.
He's loving it.
He's from Turkey himself.
He always talks about freedom.
And the thought that Mocha, our Muslim videographer, would be participating in an anti-Muslim Islamophobic protest is just so laughable.
I guess that's the difference between being an independent journalist, as Mocha is, or being on Trudeau's payroll.
I see that a number of conservative MPs have decided not to be quiet anymore.
Garnet Genuous, who has been a good little boy repeating Aaron O'Toole's pro-carbon tax rhetoric, has decided to stand with the truckers.
It's nice to see.
I wish it would have happened a little earlier, but you got to welcome someone when they're ready.
Other MPs, including Martin Shields and even Andrew Scheer, who is a very weak leader, as I think we can all agree.
Even he is stronger than Aaron O'Toole, who continues to evade the question.
He doesn't want to be called racist by the NCCM or mean things said about him by Gerald Butts.
Aaron O'Toole, I've got a message for you.
They're going to hate you no matter what.
How about be on your team instead of trying to be on their team?
I see that the CBC, the state broadcaster that takes $1.5 billion a year from the government in the form of subsidies, I see that it has started to very, very carefully talk about this convoy.
Like I say, they would never mention it's being led by an Indigenous woman.
The funniest thing, though, instead of talking to actual truckers actually on the convoy, they went to some truck stop somewhere else where the convoy had not yet been, and they talked to three random truckers who were, you know, not particularly strong one way or the other.
You know, they said, oh, people should choose.
One of them said people should choose.
One of them said people should like, but they just talked to three random truckers who were not part of the convoy and that was their story.
What, what, they don't have enough manpower.
They don't have a big enough budget to go to the actual convoy and talk to actual people on the trucks.
I guess not.
Or maybe Gerald Butts doesn't allow them to do so.
I'm not quite sure.
As Sheila Gunreed told us yesterday, besides having this state broadcaster in the form of the CBC and the race mongers and the hate mongers at the NCCM and other groups smear the truckers, there's a little bit of a work to rule by the way scales.
You know when you're driving on the highway and you see these signs that say truckers pull over and they weigh the trucks to make sure they're not overloaded and they check the logs of the truckers to make sure they're not driving too much.
These are empty trucks and they're in a political protest, but oh boy, those way scales are open because anything to slow it down.
I mean, you can see it's an abusive government when even the way scales are being politicized like that.
You know, I want to mention one more thing because the Minister of Transport in Canada, Omar Al Gabra, the former head of the Canadian Arab Federation, anti-Semitic guy, in his position at the Canadian Arab Federation, he called for the legalization of the Hamas terrorist group.
He called for the legalization of the Hezbollah terrorist group.
Bizarrely, he condemned police who went on an exchange with Israel.
Like the guy is a died in the world race beta himself, and he's the transport minister.
And he announced that the number one way to fix the supply chain problem in Canada is not to exempt truckers from the vaccine, but to enforce it and get those truckers off the road.
I don't know how that math works, but that's what he said.
I have a theory about Omar Al Gabra, and it's that he actually wants to do as much damage as possible to the transportation department that he runs.
And I know that sounds absurd.
It can't possibly be true.
But, you know, as you know, Rebel News and the Democracy Fund were involved in a challenge of the airport quarantine hotels, where people had to stay in these Trudeau hotels at airports, pay for them, had to wait there for three days, whether or not they were safe.
It was really weird, even if they could drive straight home.
Anyway, we took that to the federal court.
And I was talking to our lead lawyer on that, and he had a theory that the absolute abusive nature of those quarantines was done on purpose.
And the ever-changing rules and the general incompetence, he thought that it wasn't just regular government incompetence, but it was on purpose, designed to deter people from flying.
That by changing the rules so often, making the rules so absurd and bizarre, generally taking any of the fun and ease out of travel, that that was the whole point.
That instead of passing a precise, thoughtful scientific law, they passed the sloppiest, ugliest laws they could, and then change them and change them and change them just to make people throw their hands up in the air and say, I guess I won't travel anymore.
That being the ultimate goal of the policy, to be so detestable.
And it sort of has a bizarre and dark sense to it, but what is the sense of literally taking thousands of long-haul truckers off the road?
How does that make sense?
I mean, these aren't people who are driving for their own pleasure.
They're driving to bring stuff to grocery stores and department stores for thousands and millions of us.
What sense does it make to cause a supply chain crisis?
Well, I guess if you're a radical, you want a crisis because a crisis allows big government to posit itself as the solution.
So the theory of my lawyer who said that maybe the sheer awfulness of this hotel quarantine was on purpose, well, let me extrapolate that.
Does Omar Al-Gabra genuinely believe that taking thousands and thousands of truckers off the road will improve the economy, improve inflation, improve the supply chain?
I don't think he's that dumb.
Normally, never ascribe to malice what can be explained by stupidity.
But in this case, I think Trudeau and Al Gabra actually want to damage the economy to perpetuate the crisis.
Police Support and Scare Tactics00:03:43
I want to leave with one more observation.
I saw that there was a police officer from Durham named Erin Howard who made an online statement in support of the truckers, but she did so wearing her uniform.
Take a look, hey there.
Uh, so i'm constable Aaron Howard um, coming to you from Ontario, Canada.
I just I really wanted to give a shout out to all the truckers.
I think what you guys are doing is incredible.
Um, you're fighting for our rights and freedoms and uh, right now it feels like we're a little bit at war and those rights and freedoms are at stake.
So you guys are honestly, true heroes.
Uh, what you're doing is just incredible.
Um, I will be in Ottawa when you guys roll in.
I'm going to be speaking on behalf of police on guard and we are thrilled, thrilled and honored to be able to be there.
I can't wait to meet you guys, hope to talk to a lot of you in person.
Anyway, just wanted to give you guys a shout out and some support and uh, keep rolling and we'll see you in Otta.
Now obviously, she's being investigated and she will surely be suspended or fired.
And I have to say, on this one, i'm torn, because I do not think police should be political, even if, as in this case, I happen to agree with the politics.
We don't want people who are wearing the armor or the uniform of the state, who have a monopoly on violence, saying which side of any political debate they're on.
They have to be nonpartisan, they have to uphold the law, no matter who wins the political debate.
You don't want to be arrested by a liberal cop or a conservative cop.
You just want to be arrested by a cop who's following the law, not a party platform.
She's going to be investigated and she'll probably be thrown away.
But I can't help but realize and remember and notice that every police chief in Canada, indeed all around North America, was happy to go to Black lives matter protests in full uniform and take a knee for that radical racist, really marxist organization.
So you had police chiefs across the country flying the black lives matter flag.
I'm not saying that that they that there's anything wrong with police being open to every race.
Of course I believe in racial equality, but black lives matter is a very particular Marxist organization that supports anti-police violence, by the way, and I want to say that what this lady did in support of the truckers is no more than her bosses did in support of black lives matter.
Of course they'll get promotions and raises out of it.
She'll get sacked.
Well uh, I want you to stay with us.
Sorry for this homemade edition.
Hopefully the Studio will be back up and running tomorrow.
I'm going to talk to our friend, Andrew Lawton about Aaron O'toole being absent without leave on this debate and I want you to keep going to Convoyreports.com, because we've made it a point to update that page frequently with Mocha's reports from the road and other things that we gather.
So I think this is a very important story and it's a classic rebel story and frankly, you just can't believe the mainstream media when they report on it.
So go to Convoyreports.com.
All right, stay with us.
More ahead with Andrew Lawton.
Welcome back.
everybody.
Well, as I mentioned at the top of the show, we had a small fire at the studio today.
A Scare At The Studio00:16:00
No one was hurt, thank God.
And it was actually more smoke than flame.
It was put up pretty quickly, but the studio is unusable until it gets a proper cleaning from all the soot.
And of course, we do have to replace that one light that had an electrical malfunction.
It was a little bit of a scare this morning.
Thank God everyone's fine.
So I'm doing this show from home, which means I have a studio audience.
There's a couple of little doggies in the background.
You might hear the barking sound, and I can assure you that they're supporting every word I say.
I'm just joking around explaining the different backdrops, but let's get serious for a minute.
The story of the day, in fact, I call it the story of the year, is the trucker convoy.
Why is it so important?
Well, I don't know.
I think everyone has their own reason.
I think it's national in scope.
It looks powerful and muscular, all those trucks.
It's a sign of the working class rising up against the ruling class.
It's so utterly unfair that people who work in basically isolation in the cab of a long-haul truck are required to be vaxed to serve us.
These are the frontline people who kept us fed and clothed for the first two years of the pandemic, but they're not good enough now.
There's so many reasons this is clicking all at the same time.
It is grassroots, it's populist, it's a little rough around the edges, but I think we need some of that because the fancy folks have not been on duty.
You'd think that the leader of the conservative opposition would want to meet with them or have something positive to say about them, but if you would think that, you're wrong.
Here's Aaron O'Toole on CPAC, the public interest broadcaster, evading the question for several minutes.
Take a look.
I feel that you knew that you were going to get questions on the trucker convoy today.
It just strikes me as odd that you don't have a clear position on this.
So I'm going to try again.
I know that our colleagues, my colleagues have tried, but like, why are you unwilling to tell these truckers coming to Ottawa if you stand with them or not?
And do you have a position that you will make clear today?
Well, Travis, let me be perfectly clear.
As I just said in French, it's not for the leader of the opposition or political party to attend a protest on the hill or a convoy.
It's up to politicians to advocate for solutions in a cost of living crisis, in a supply chain crisis, in a way that's responsible and respectful of the public health crisis we're in.
We have done that, Travis.
In fact, a few months ago, we advocated for solutions to deal with the trucking crisis and the supply chain crisis in a way that promoted vaccinations, kept public health the priority, but also made sure we didn't have a massive supply chain increase to shortages at a time where Canadians are already paying 10, 20, 30% more for goods.
Well, that was Aaron O'Toole on CPAC.
He later went on CTV where he also avoided the question.
Take a look at that.
Does the Conservative Party support the mandate that requires cross-border truckers to be vaccinated?
Yes or no?
We put forward a plan on this almost a month ago, Evan, that you can support vaccines, but you can also make sure you address the supply chain shortage.
We were already short thousands of truckers before COVID.
Now we're going to be short tens of thousands, and these are families that will be put out.
And what's disappointing, Evan, is a couple of years ago, before we had vaccines, we hailed truckers, we hailed grocery store workers, those essential workers as heroes.
And now we've allowed our debate on these issues to become so polarized, so divisive, that's been Mr. Trudeau's approach, as opposed to actually saying how can we tackle these critical supply chain shortages while having public health be at the top of the list as well.
Okay, I understand the Trudeau government's ignoring of the issue.
Okay, so the U.S. has the exact same mandate.
So both the Biden administration and the Trudeau government require cross-border truckers to be vaccinated.
You're saying you do not support that.
You would reverse the vaccine mandate for cross-border truckers.
Is that fair to say you would reverse the vaccine mandate?
What I said three weeks ago, Evan, and you know you covered the presidential.
But I'm just trying to say, what are you saying today?
To get vaccinated, but we can also address the supply chain shortages without 10,000 pink slips.
We've got to use everything in our toolbox to make sure that we tackle the supply chain shortage because if there's shortage of goods, Evan, the price goes up, and we've already got inflation at 5%.
We've already got 60% of Canadians worried about paying their grocery bills.
So this is leadership.
Dividing the population is not working.
We've got to come up with real solutions for a country that is tired of hollow words from Justin Trudeau for two years, and we're still in lockdown in the fifth wave of the pandemic.
Okay, so just on leadership, I'm just trying to figure out who people should listen to in terms of your party.
So again, you've got one MP saying reverse the mandate.
I'm not sure if you support that or not.
Your finance critic calls the Canadian rule that cross-border truckers and the U.S. rule need it.
He calls it a vaccine vendetta that is leading to higher grocery prices.
So what is a vaccine vendetta in my mind, if you could tell me that?
And is that your position as well, though?
This is a vaccine vendetta, and you believe the mandate is somehow punishing truckers and contributing to food shortages.
Is that the Conservative party's position?
We need solutions to actually get products on shelves and not have tens of thousands of people lose their home, lose their livelihood, Evan.
Polarizing this debate has not worked.
Mr. Trudeau knows that.
So three weeks ago, we proposed a solution that would solve the supply chain shortage.
The Trudeau government, about 10 days ago, looked like they were actually going to follow what we recommended, what the Chamber of Commerce, what most of the small business organizations have all supported, Evan.
And you can do that while encouraging all the top health care provisions to be provided for, including encouraging vaccination.
We need to make sure we tackle the cost of living crisis and the supply chain shortage.
Weeks ago, Mr. Trudeau was blaming inflation on supply chain shortages.
Now he's making it worse.
Okay, so let's get a couple things on the table if I can.
These truckers are going to come.
They've got support of your high-profile MPs.
They support these people that reverse the mandate.
Will you meet these truckers?
Will you go out and support these truckers when they arrive in Ottawa?
Well, as I said three weeks ago, Evan, we've been meeting with industry for the last two months, and I will continue to meet with industry and individual truckers throughout this week and into the weekend because people are advocating because they're losing their jobs, they're losing their livelihoods, and they want to make sure that they're heard.
As I said, this is what Canadians are a bit tired of, Evan.
Two years ago, we were calling essential workers heroes.
Now we're allowing the whole debate to become demonized neighbor against neighbor when there are ways we can tackle these shortages without dividing the country.
I'm just trying to get a straight answer because it seems like your MPs are very clear.
They say, I don't support the trucker mandate.
I know you're talking about what you said three weeks ago.
I'm just asking you today.
And you're talking about clarity.
I mean, you know, your transport critic, Melissa Lantzman, said there's a connection between the trucker mandate and empty grocery shelves.
You know, she tweeted out a picture that this picture here.
This is not a Canadian shelf.
We found this as everyone did called on iStock.
It was from Britain.
It's a fake picture, as you know.
So it's not actually a reflection of what's going on.
So to get clarity, have you talked to Melissa Lantzman about tweeting out fake pictures, your own MP?
And just look, I'll just, I just want it on the record.
Do you support getting rid of the border mandate?
Yes or no?
Evan, three weeks ago, as you know, I proposed a different solution other than the mandate to tackle the supply chain shortage and to make sure that thousands of people weren't put out of work at a time we need them on the roads.
We are highlighting the same issues that the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, that most of the business groups in Canada are showing Canadians.
There's already out of control inflation.
If we continue to see supply chain shortages from semiconductors right through to food, it's going to drive up inflation even more at a time that Canadians are already falling behind.
So leadership's about putting out real solutions.
Mr. Trudeau didn't even get a question on this today, Evan.
This is a crisis and Canadians deserve to be heard by their government.
Okay.
So you won't, so the truckers show up.
If Mr. Trudeau was here, I'd ask him the same question, just for the record.
If the truckers show up on Parliament Hill, sir, will you meet them yes or no?
We've been meeting with them for the last few months and I will continue to meet this week and into the weekend with truckers and with the industry, both individual people suffering, but also the industry.
Three weeks ago, Evan.
But I'm talking about the convoy.
I'm talking about the so-called freedom conviction problem, which would actually tackle the supply chain shortage.
Mr. Trudeau's making inflation worse through his overspending, through his lack of attention on issues like the shortages, and with the fact that he's continuing to just divide people and not deliver on the essential things we need in this pandemic.
You might remember a few years back when Andrew Scheer was the leader of the Conservative Party, and he reluctantly met with a convoy back then.
It was a convoy about carbon taxes and the attack on the West.
Aaron O'Toole lacks the courage of Andrew Scheer.
I didn't think those words were possible in the English language, but it's true.
Joining me now is someone who is desperately hoping the conservatives find their backbone.
And I'm upset that they are not our friend Andrew Lawton from True North.
He joins us now.
Andrew, great to see you.
Thanks for joining us in our mock-up studio today.
Anytime.
It's like a very triggering and traumatic flashback to early in the pandemic when just everyone doing anything was in Zoom boxes from home.
So a little bit of a throwback, whatever day of the week it is.
Well, thanks for your patience with us.
It was a little bit dramatic, but listen, I want to give you credit.
You have tried in good faith to give Aaron O'Toole the benefit of the doubt.
During the election campaign, I remember you did a masterful interview with him during the leadership of the Conservatives.
I think of anyone on the Conservative media, you have given him a fair shake, probably more than anyone else.
And so when you express your disappointment in him, I take that to heart.
I gave up on him a long time ago, and I don't even pretend that he's salvageable in my mind, but you're someone who's really given him a chance.
What's your take on his, compare him to a watermelon seed?
You push down this way, he squirts that way.
You push down this way, like you can't pin him down.
That's how I feel.
How do you feel?
Well, I think the big point here is that for the most part, the default conservative position, when they listen to all of the advisors and consultants that tell them the way to safely run to the middle, the default position for the conservatives is talk about the economy and nothing else.
This is the big frustration a lot of people on the right have had that conservative leaders only want to talk about taxes and all of that.
And the reason I bring that up now is that for the most part, you can get away with it because the biggest issues facing Canadians in normal times are by and large economic ones, things like cost of living, taxes, other things.
The last two years, that is not the case.
There are certainly economic harms facing Canadians, especially from lockdowns.
There are health concerns through the COVID pandemic.
But for the most part, I'd say the biggest issue facing this country is in general the rising power of the state and diminishing civil liberties and diminishing freedoms.
This is an unavoidable problem, and it's a government-created problem.
The conservatives are the best positioned to oppose the government in their title, the official opposition, yet they're not doing any opposition on the things that really matter.
And that's been my great frustration: the biggest issues facing Canadians are the issues where there is no opposition from within elected office.
I'm not talking about the PPC who's trying to make a change from outside of the House of Commons.
I'm talking about among the members of parliament in Ottawa or on Zoom or wherever they are, there is no opposition on the biggest thing that matters.
So, my frustration with Aaron O'Toole is that he's still stuck in this failed, and I say failed because as recently as the last campaign in September, it did not work for him, attempt to keep to the middle, but only confine the debate to these economic issues.
And the point I made in a newsletter I put out on this yesterday is that instead of being the official opposition, he's trying to make the conservatives the official auditors, focus on cost of living, empty grocery shelves, but say nothing else of substance.
Yeah, by the way, I know what email service you're talking about, folks.
You can follow Andrew Lawton on his main channel, which is TrueNorth, our good friends over there.
But he also has an email called andrewlawton.substack.com.
Very easy to subscribe.
I really recommend it.
So I'm glad you reminded me of that, Andrew.
Yeah, I think you're right about the Conservative Party.
I mean, there are role models in other countries.
In the United Kingdom, more than 100 conservative MPs spoke out against Boris Johnson's lockdowns.
So you have conservatives in France.
You have conservatives in the United States, of course.
Only in Canada have our conservatives been uniformly locked downist.
And where do people go?
I think partly the success of this trucker convoy is because all the people who should be protesting or standing up for freedoms aren't.
I saw Jason Kenney was generally speaking in favor of the truckers, but he only did so in terms of economic terms because how could he himself stand up for their civil liberties given the lockdown he imposed in Alberta?
I don't know.
I find it very depressing.
But I see, I want to ask you about one thing.
I noticed on Twitter a number of conservative MPs, including from Saskatchewan, are going much farther than Aaron O'Toole.
They're taking little video selfies of themselves and saying, I'm going to meet them.
I'm going to personally greet them.
I stand with them.
It's as if after a two-year slumber, at least some of the grassroots conservative MPs are waking up.
Do you think they're going to get in trouble from Aaron O'Toole for doing that?
I think they're very quickly showing themselves to be in too large a number to be chastised in any meaningful way.
Martin Shields, who's a lesser-known MP from Alberta, Bow River, Alberta, he did a video in front of the Centennial Flame saying, Hey, truckers, I'm waiting for you.
Come on, I'll welcome you to Ottawa.
And then just this morning, Kevin Waugh or Waff, I'm sorry to Kevin, if you're watching that I've mispronounced your last name, but he saw them off in Saskatoon, I think it was.
He said, all right, you guys have fun.
I'll see you in Ottawa.
So he's going to hop on a plane and meet them there.
And people like higher profile MPs, Lesland Lewis, Andrew Scheer, Pierre Polyev, have all shown their support either explicitly for the trucker convoy or for truckers in the context of their civil liberties.
So this isn't just a couple of rural, unknown Alberta MPs.
These are some bigger names.
In fact, names that probably have more cachet in the conservative movement than Aaron O'Toole does.
So as I said, everyone on the conservative base is getting on the convoy.
Industry Associations' Divide00:07:21
Aaron O'Toole is just waiting by the side of the road for the bus.
Who knows?
Yeah, even Pierre Polyev has had some positive things to say.
And you're right.
It was remarkable to me that Andrew Scheer, who I thought his instincts were so timid and so wrong, even he is standing with them.
I don't know.
I think that's hopeful.
It's a shame because Aaron O'Toole could in so many ways revive his leadership by standing with the most lively, passionate part of the movement right now.
I haven't checked the latest crowdfunding stats.
When I last looked yesterday, it was about $3.5 million.
That's $4.5 million now.
A little bit more by the time this airs.
Yeah.
And the reason that's important is that's a barometer.
I mean, you can do a lot of good things with $4.5 million, but it's just a symbol of 50,000 people want something so badly they're willing to pay cash for it.
Imagine if the Conservative Party itself had done that.
I mean, it's because there are no other options.
I find it very interesting.
I see on the other side, Gerald Butts just in full shrieking mode, tweeting conspiracy theories that this convoy is somehow foreign Russian bots.
I swear he linked to some really weird thing about foreign meddling.
It just made me laugh.
So he's obviously upset about it, which tells us that he realizes there could be a grassroots awakening.
He had the controlled opposition of Aaron O'Toole and the other parties for so long, and there's cracks in him.
I also see the NCCM, that's the National Council for Canadian Muslims.
I see they're now demonizing the convoy, saying that there's xenophobic racist anti-this and that.
I mean, you can see the usual suspects doing the smear.
Again, that tells me that they're worried about, which is, you know, no one shoots at a dead duck.
I think it's attracting this hate from the establishment because it's effective.
Oh, very much so.
I mean, one of the, well, two things that I would point out about this.
It's no longer just about truckers and vaccines, because one of the points, to go back to Aaron O'Toole for a moment, Ezra, is that he has not taken up a lot of these battles that have had to do with lockdowns and vaccine mandates and restrictions.
The only one he has taken up is against the trucker vaccine mandate.
He did come out to his credit earlier this month and said he's against the mandate, but his argument wasn't vaccine mandates are wrong.
His argument was, well, I mean, store shelves are empty.
Do we really want to do something that's going to prevent you from getting broccoli?
And the problem is that's missing the mark.
Those concerns are real, but they're incidental to the fundamental question, which is what the convoy is about.
I mean, for these truckers, they're not shoppers.
They're shippers.
So for them, it's not about the store shelves.
It's about their livelihoods and their lives.
And the reason so many truckers who are fully vaccinated, people who aren't even in the trucking industry, are joining this convoy is because this has become a very visible and very real manifestation of an anger that is not being addressed by any of the political class in Canada.
Yeah, you're right.
It upsets me when people say, oh, lay off the truckers because I'm hungry.
You know, that's treating them as a kind of servant.
You know, I saw this picture of Jeffrey Bezos on his yacht being attended to by servants wearing masks.
And we see this a lot.
I mean, when AOC went to the Met Gala, she was in this designer dress, mask-free, posing for the cameras, all her servants wearing masks.
That bothers me.
That bothers me when I see that.
And when you say, oh, let the truckers don't punish the truckers because I'm hungry.
And when I go to the shopping market, there's a supermarket, I want to see things on the shelves.
Okay, that's a very utilitarian.
So now I know what you want from me, but you're not respecting my essential dignity as a person.
And I find it sort of gross.
But again, what do you do if you've supported the mandates for everyone else for a year?
You can't suddenly say, no, I value this one person's civil rights.
I find it a terrible place to be.
Let me ask you this.
Yesterday I went through the truck news, which is an official truck industry trade magazine.
Every industry has a trade mag.
And this one was denouncing the convoy.
I thought it was really gross.
They were questioning the motives.
They were questioning the money.
They were basically condemning the only people in the trucking industry to fight back.
And I checked and I realized that that trucking magazine had received 10 grants from the media bailout.
And I looked at the Trucking Alliance, which condemned them.
And they have received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the federal government.
And I thought, well, okay, that explains why they're condemning the only people in their industry fighting back.
But one of the things that Truck News said that bothered me is, it won't work.
Just give up.
Well, I think it might work.
I think it might work.
Am I being too optimistic and too naive?
Do you think if you have a thousand truckers rolling into Ottawa, do you think the government might blink?
Or do you think Trudeau might say, no, I love to hate these guys?
I can paint them as redneck, racist, misogynist, violent, alt-right types.
I want this showdown and it's going to give me an excuse to go at them harder.
What do you think is going to happen?
Well, I mean, if one of the trucks so much as dislodges a manhole cover, the whole thing will be held up as an example of domestic terrorism.
So I do think that a lot of this depends on what happens on the weekend.
We're talking about a city that is not meant to withstand the infrastructure that cannot withstand what's coming that way on the weekend.
And I'm going to be there as well.
I know a lot of rebels will.
But at the same time, one thing that I do think you've touched on there, and this is not exclusive to trucking, is the divide between real people and the so-called industry associations that often represent them.
Remember, on the vaccine mandates, most unions in Canada have been very bad on this.
They've not been standing up for their employees, public sector, private sector.
There are some exceptions, but for the most part, individual people are left on their own.
Aaron O'Toole, in that clip you played earlier and in that press conference, was talking about, oh, I've met with the Canadian Trucking Association.
Are you meeting with the convoy, Mr. O'Toole?
Yeah, I'm going to continue talking to the Canadian Trucking Association.
So the problem is these groups claim to be representative of their members in a way that they often aren't.
I mean, I hear from disgruntled teachers all the time that are upset about how their union represents them and their interests.
We know some journalists, to their credit, have spoken out about Unifor and its political attacks on conservatives.
So the reality is it's certainly driving a wedge between the members and the associations.
And if politicians stop being able to lean on, no, no, no, we're consulting the industry because those associations have been shown to not represent the actual industry, that could be a big source of change.
Yeah, you know, it brings me to mind of all the chambers of commerce, including the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.
None of them have been fighting for businesses, or at least mom and pop shops.
They're all for the Walmarts and the Amazons.
Canadians Watching: Standing Together00:05:06
Well, listen, Andrew Lawton, it's great to catch up with you.
Folks, let me just say it one more time.
Andrew's new newsletter is at andrewlawton.substack.com.
And of course, you can also see him on TrueNorth, which is TNC.
It's great to see you, my friend.
Thanks for fighting the good fight and good luck this weekend in Ottawa.
Yes, and if anyone's out there, do come say hello.
Right on.
Okay, stay with us.
More ahead.
Well, my friends, that's the show for today.
I'm out here in the chilly Toronto weather.
And hopefully our studio will be up and running tomorrow.
I was very alarmed when people ran out of the boardroom and we didn't really know what was going on.
And we just heard fire and where's a fire extinguisher?
And I ran down there and I saw the four fire trucks.
I was a little bit terrified, but thankfully it was more smoke than fire.
It was put out pretty quickly and it was just that one electrical light.
But for a moment, I was terrified.
I knew that we would be fine journalistically.
Of course, my first concern was that everyone got out fine and everyone did.
It was just a little bit of excitement, but I just want to explain to you why I'm doing the recording from home and I did the Zoom call from home because the studio is sort of scorched.
That's it for today.
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here from Rebel, I guess I'm not at World Headquarters.
I'm at my own headquarters.
To you at home, good night and keep fighting for freedom.
And let me leave you with Mocha's latest from the road.
Wow, we are in the middle of Trans-Canada Highway.
And as you can see, the long, epic convoy is passing by.
Lots of wind.
Lots of wind there.
I don't know if the wind is due to weather conditions or because of the trucks that are passing by, but this is pretty incredible.
It's an incredibly long convoy.
It's a really very long convoy.
Lots of enormous support all across the road.
I've seen many, many people out came out to support these convoyers.
Let's interview some people.
I'm amazed.
I'm just amazed by the amount of love this convoy has received.
I mean, it's crazy.
Hi.
Hi, sir.
How are you doing?
Good to see you too.
Thank you so much.
What do you make of the convoy?
Yeah, I can't hear you very well.
Are you excited?
Yes, you betcha.
We're going to follow along to Medicine Hat and then come back.
What do you make of the Trucky Association of Canada condemning the convoy?
I don't know.
I don't know.
Okay.
I'm not a part of it.
I can't release.
Sure, fair enough.
What message do you have to Canadians?
Stand up for your rights.
Stand up for freedom and carry on.
We got to win this.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Nice to meet you too.
Thank you.
Hi, gentlemen.
I'm Mocha Bezerjan from Rebel News.
Can I ask you a couple of questions?
Can I interview?
Yeah, what do you make of the convoy?
It's great.
It's great everyone's supporting this.
We're sick of all the mandates and just our freedoms being chipped away at.
It's really good to see all the support.
Yeah, it seems like the final push.
It seems I have been to many protests.
This is the biggest one I've seen.
There are so many supporters all across the road.
It's really enormous.
Are you going to follow the convoy all the way to Medicine Hut?
Yeah, we're going to Medicine Hat today.
So then, yeah, we'll took the day off of work because we're sick of it.
Yeah, I guess it's worth it.
What is your message to Canadians who are watching right now?
If you're out there, try to get to a support, sit on the side of the road.
We've been here since 9 o'clock and it's now 12, so running a little late, but yeah, if you get out here and support, it's great.
And yeah, we're in this together.
Yeah, we are in this together.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Hi, ladies.
Are you excited for the convoy?
Very excited.
Proud to be Canadian today.
What is your message to Canadians who are watching?
It's time to stand up.
Don't let our freedoms go because we'll never get them back.