Ezra Levant joins a dozen Rebel reporters in Ottawa on January 28 to cover the trucker convoy protesting COVID-19 mandates, criticizing CBC’s propaganda—like Dale Manukdock’s debunked threats—and Trudeau’s false claims of racism, despite Sikh and Métis involvement. Tamara Ugolini calls it a "last stand" for freedom, while Patrizio Presenza, a deaf activist, highlights how masks and plexiglass block 70% of ASL communication, exposing Canada’s decades-long neglect of accessibility. His brothers’ initiative at al-marsolutions.com aims to bridge gaps as systemic failures fuel convoy solidarity, illustrating how policies harm marginalized groups beyond just truckers. [Automatically generated summary]
We're going to have a tremendous force on the ground there.
We want to tell the other side of the story because I tell you, the media party, they are in full propaganda mode.
I'm going to show you some of their wicked lies in the monologue today, including a hoax that the CBC is perpetrating.
It's so weird.
I'm worried about false flag operations.
I'll give you my thoughts on that.
That's ahead in today's monologue.
I also do one thing that I would like to invite you to see the video version of this podcast.
I'm going to show you about seven little videos I found on TikTok because I think it's very interesting that TikTok, which is like a little, you know, like a teenager's app, really.
But they're talking about this convoy in the most positive way.
I want to show you 10 little pieces of evidence.
So I want you to get the video version of the podcast.
Just go to rebelnewsplus.com, click subscribe.
It's eight bucks a month.
You get the video version.
I really want you to see these.
In addition, you'll get a subscription to our other shows, David Menzies, Sheila Gunread, Andrew Chapados.
And we just started a new show with Natasha and Catherine.
So I think we got a lot of content for you.
Just go to RebelNewsPlus.com.
Okay, here's today's podcast.
Tonight, a dozen rebel reporters are going to Ottawa for the trucker convoy, including me.
It's January 28th, and this is the Ezra Levant show.
Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
Guys, We Got Trucks Coming00:14:57
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.
Well, the truckers started arriving in Ottawa last night, actually.
Remember, the convoy is many convoys converging together from around the country.
And they're not just one long line.
They're broken up.
There might be 20 or 30 miles of trucks and then a big space and then another miles of trucks.
Trucks decide to stop in some towns.
Other truckers go straight through.
Some trucks join and some trucks leave.
It's organic, which means it's a bit chaotic.
Another way of saying that is it's completely real and authentic.
You know, Trudeau denounced the convoy as racist and sexist and fringe just before he decided to hide for five days.
He made a point of saying how fringe it was.
The small fringe minority of people who are on their way to Ottawa or who are holding unacceptable views that they're expressing do not represent the views of Canadians who have been there for each other,
who know that following the science and stepping up to protect each other is the best way to continue to ensure our freedoms, our rights, our values as a country.
I just can't get over the fact that the government now says there are certain opinions that are unacceptable.
I'd like to get a list of those unacceptable opinions because I think whether I agreed with them or not, I'd publish them just to prove that the government doesn't get to decide which opinions are acceptable.
Individual Canadians do.
But back to that fringe thing, this from the prime minister, who literally won government with the lowest percentage in Canadian history, just 32% of the vote in a low turnout election.
So he got just over 5 million votes in a country of 38 million.
Now, I'm not here to quarrel with our parliamentary system, our first past the post system.
I'm just putting it into laughable context.
The fact that this guy dares to call anyone else fringe or extreme when he has such a flimsy mandate himself.
But I actually think that's what he's afraid of.
The exact opposite.
That the trucker's convoy is not fringe.
It is not extreme.
And in fact, it has struck a chord with Canadians in a way that nothing really has in years.
And the fact that it's so organic and chaotic and that the organizer actually wasn't allowed to withdraw any funds yet, but that the convoy grew anyways shows just how real and wide and deep this is.
Normal people, the money was not actually necessary, was it?
I can sense, you know, that it's breaking into the normal people.
I spend a lot of time, I waste a lot of time, let's be honest, on Twitter.
And our company has social media accounts on Instagram and Facebook and even on TikTok now.
But on each of these, especially on TikTok, most users are normal people, as in they're not politically obsessed.
It's true that political people are obsessed with Twitter.
That's true.
But most Twitter users are interested in other things like celebrities or sports or whatever.
Even more so for TikTok, which is the youngest demographic of the social media networks I've just listed.
It's even younger than Instagram.
And my point is, in the last few days, TikTok, that is normal young people, have absolutely been awash in talk about this convoy.
Organically, people are just extremely interested in it.
They want to know more about it.
And when it drives by them, they want to go out to see it, maybe wave at it, maybe stop and talk to people at a truck stop, maybe just hang out with other people again, which they haven't done in a while.
It's not the extreme nature of the convoy that scares Trudeau.
It's the normal nature of the convoy that scares Trudeau, the widespreadness of it.
I was bored last night, so I just downloaded a bunch of examples from TikTok, each with a little flavor of something to it.
I want to show those to you, if I may.
Here is a Sikh trucker getting supplies for other truckers.
I'm going to guess, and I have no statistical basis for this, that maybe a quarter of all truckers in Canada are Sikh.
It's just a guess, just a hunch.
It was absolutely unsurprising to me that Jagmeet Singh's own brother-in-law was a huge donor to this convoy.
It's his people who are being punished by the lockdowns, yet Trudeau calls these guys racist.
I like this guy.
Hey, Mr. Trudeau, in your last speech, you said that almost 90% of Canadians are vaccinated and they're very careful about their health and stuff like that, right?
Yes, maybe almost 90% of Canadians are vaccinated.
But have you ever asked them why are they getting vaccinated?
Go ask them if they're getting vaccinated because of the fear of your mandates or the fear of COVID.
You will know.
I'll tell you, in my circle, most of my friends are families.
They're getting vaccinated because of the fear of mandates to save their jobs or they have to fly to see their families back home.
All right?
Go ask them and you will know that why are 90% of Canadians are vaccinated.
Thank you so much.
I mean, the only people who believe that racism hoax here are the white liberals.
Here's a Métis guy.
Again, lots of indigenous truckers, especially in the North, obviously.
These are my people.
This is my way.
He's just a young woman who absolutely would have likely been a Trudeau voter in the before times.
And here's one of those racists.
Here's Windsor, Ontario, the working class heart of the province.
You ready?
You ready?
Three, two.
And look at this.
This looks like Calgary, but that's Toronto.
What do you think of that?
I hope one day they finally see the truth.
God, we need you now.
I don't know the truth is hard to swallow, just digest it.
Suspected something's going on, but chose to just neglect it.
Afflicted by some breaking news, oh, we just accept it.
Expected just to fall in line and follow their perspective.
Don't question their objective.
Look at some of the slogans here.
One says, question everything.
That doesn't bode well for Trudeau.
I like that kind of independent thinking.
I hope it catches on.
Look at how multicultural, multiracial it is.
I point that out because the so-called progressives say this convoy is racist.
Tell that to these folks.
A lot of people showed up at Keelan 401 in Toronto on Thursday to support the convoy of truckers making their way across Canada to protest against COVID-19 mandates.
We're fighting for freedom and we're here to find the truckers.
We're opposed to these government mandates and extreme government overreach.
For the first time in two years, I finally feel hope.
Everybody's been attacked on, but you never take and play around with our freedom.
That's for sure.
The Truckers Convoy is scheduled to reach Parliament Hill on Saturday to watch the full-life coverage of the rally.
Head to Narcy's YouTube channel.
But the old 60s hippies, the white liberal progressives at the Toronto Star say everyone's angry and misguided.
You know, I think most of the anger is coming from the media and Trudeau.
The truckers and the crowd seem almost jubilant.
They're sort of reveling in the feeling of people power and taking action after being suppressed from everything in life for two years.
Now they're gathering and they're disobeying the rulers.
I think they're having a lot of fun.
The media party is absolutely focused on their narrative of angry right-wing guys threatening violence.
I mean, listen to this.
I don't have to tell what changed in that meeting, but we don't even know who exactly will he be meeting with, Morella.
And that's really the question.
Some of the organizers of this convoy, of this so-called freedom rally, have called for violence.
They have made racist comments, misogynist comments.
You know, there has been a lot of, you know, sort of threats to journalists on the way.
We know that reported by our colleagues.
So we're asking him, the journalists in the room, and you heard, we're asking him, so are you meeting with the organizers, especially one of our colleagues that was asking him, well, how could you meet with the organizers of a rally who are tweeting and calling for violence and who are using foul language and who want to come here and break down walls, come down a Parliament Hill, change the government?
I mean, there's some pretty outlandish stuff that's being said out there by some of the organizers.
Yes, among them are unvaccinated truckers.
So unclear, Morella, who exactly is Mr. O'Toole going to meet?
Is he meeting the organizers of a rally that calls for people to be violent on Parliament Hill?
Or is he going to meet with unvaccinated truckers who are part now of this convoy?
So there's a huge cacophony out there of voices, different voices that you hear.
And most of them are pretty strident.
We know that some MPs, some conservative MPs said they would come and meet with the protesters here on Parliament Hill on the Saturday.
But Mr. O'Toole said he would meet them but off-hill.
In other words, I suppose what Mr. O'Toole was trying to say, Marella, is he does not want to meet with these people in front of cameras.
Okay, let me...
Wow.
So the organizers are threatening violence, eh?
You'd think they would have a single shred of evidence, a video clip, some sort of screenshot of a comment, an email, anything.
No, just a bald assertion, pretty specific.
When you think about it, CDV is saying the organizers of the protest, that's a pretty small list of people, are racist, misogynist, threatening journalists, calling for violence, breaking down walls, really?
Here's that racist, misogynist organizer, this Métis woman, Tamara Lynch.
I want to thank you guys for bearing with me.
I know I can get emotional and I try really hard not to but I'm just so damn proud of all of you.
I've said it before a million times that I was at a point where I was giving up on Canada.
And I was at a point where I thought we were at the point of no return.
And you guys have given me hope.
All of us hope here.
You guys are giving us strength.
You guys are keeping us going.
And wow, we are one big team, one big national team.
Guys, we got trucks coming from the Northwest Territories.
I think I told you we got clan mothers coming from the Northwest Territories.
We have trucks rolling out of the north of Newfoundland.
We got Americans coming to support.
I was on the phone with an American last night who is sending his love and support, and he's saying that the entire world is watching us, and they are.
I firmly believe this is our last stand.
And we are not coming home until you are all free.
I love you guys.
I'll check in with you later, okay?
So it's just a lie this mirror.
And the thing is, when a million people are getting direct news, because they're right there in the convoy, along the convoy, watching the convoy, watching their friends' TikToks about the convoy, when a million people are getting direct news, does anyone really believe these media party talking heads from their studios?
It reminds me of this guy.
That is stupid, and they would never succeed.
At the same time, this is a good testimony.
This is a good proof that they are criminals and they are killers and they are believing in assassinations.
So I think they should be condemned.
They are stupid and condemned.
Yeah, no one believes you.
Here's Ian Hanna-Mansing from the CBC.
He said, I'm not going to retweet the vile text chat a colleague was subjected to as he was simply trying to set up an interview on the Truckers Rally because it is so ugly.
But we need to be able to cover and discuss this story without being subjected to threats.
I'm so sorry that he, or rather his friend, had to read a mean text message.
That's really, that can really ruin your day.
CBC Reporter Blocked00:12:54
But I wonder why Ian Hannah Mansingh, the reporter, didn't show the text message in question.
Oh, well, I found it.
Here's what it says.
These are texts the Toronto contact for the Truckers Convoy, calling itself a Freedom Rally, sent me.
After calling CBC a virus, he goes on to call me a slave-blooded traitor that will swing in time.
All I asked for was an interview.
And then he shows a bunch of swears and tough talk.
Nothing specific.
Not actually a threat, as Ian Hannah Mansingh said, but look, it's not a nice text.
I'll acknowledge that.
But you heard the guy.
This is from a CBC reporter in Toronto named Dale Manukdock.
I've never heard him before.
He said, he said, I just read it to you.
He said that these mean words came from the Toronto contact for the Truckers Convoy.
He said that.
He wrote that.
And thousands of likes and retweets, probably a million views on that tweet.
But it was a hoax.
It was a lie.
As he admitted in the very next tweet, he said, clarification.
I received these texts after reaching out to a Toronto contact number listed on a website for the convoy.
The text came from a different number than the contact number.
The texter did not identify themselves.
Sorry, that's not a clarification.
That is a complete repudiation.
It was not from the Toronto contact.
Not at all.
This CBC reporter doesn't actually know who it came from.
He has no basis for blaming it on the Toronto Truckers.
None.
He just said it.
And look at his clarification.
A couple of hundred retweets compared to the thousands for his hoax.
He's literally keeping his hoax tweet up, even though he admits it's a hoax.
And the rest of the media party, including his pally Ian Hannah Mansingh, is still treating that lie as a fact.
What's going on here?
Well, yesterday I showed you how Canada's rump deep state, the few dozen so-called national security experts and spies and academics who used to, during the Cold War, keep track of Russians and then for a few moments after 9-11 tracked al-Qaeda terrorists.
Well, now they're all as a mob, they just decided that right-wing extremism is the threat, and they are lusting for this to be the moment that vindicates their madness.
They want so very badly for this to go wrong, and with so many people, such an amorphous, organic group, really, almost leaderless.
That Met Lady Tamerlich, who is organizing it, is giving lots of pep talks and certainly doing good work.
I don't deny that.
And she did an amazing job of raising money, but she's not actually directing all the convoy strands.
Certainly not the thousands of joiners who have just followed along.
I'm not putting her down at all.
She's amazing.
I'm just saying this isn't a group of professional protesters like the left has who are used to obeying armies, orders like an army.
These are people who've never protested before.
They're TikTok people.
They're seek truckers.
They're normies.
This is the first time they've done anything.
They don't really have a plan, I don't think.
Anyways, you put 10, 20, 50,000, whatever the number is, in Ottawa, and you have Justin Trudeau running away and hiding.
What are they going to do?
And the police being egged on to make arrests?
What's going to happen?
Well, probably nothing, but that's if all goes properly.
But as you know, the deep state likes its hoaxes just as much as the CBC and CTV do.
And it serves Trudeau's interest to have proof that all these protesters are in fact evil criminal terrorists wanting to do violence.
So I'm worried about a fake event, a trap, a provocation.
As you know, Ottawa is awash in actual dirty tricksters, anti-FU thugs who really do get violent, who really are professional activists and violent types, people who riot for hire, people who are the violent backbone of the BLM riots, for example, the professional G20 rioters.
I'm worried about them coming to pick a fight as anti-FU or pretending to be truckers and that being turned into a spark that the deep state will use to justify their fever dream of an unlawful insurrection that proves we need to crack down on what remaining freedom we even have.
That's my worry.
I'm going to Ottawa tonight.
I'll be there for the weekend.
I'll let you know what I see.
But half our team will be there covering the news.
You can track it all at convoyreports.com.
Stay with us for more.
Well, we're taping this mid-afternoon on Friday.
As soon as I'm done, I'm going to hop in my car and get my way to Ottawa.
But joining us now live from the streets of our capital city is our friend, Lincoln Jay, who's one of our many rebel reporters following the convoy or actually in place in Ottawa already.
Lincoln, how you doing?
Good, Ezra.
Good.
It's getting pretty chaotic out here.
The actual demonstration isn't until tomorrow, but it's already getting pretty hectic out here, as you can see behind me.
Now, tell us who is there?
Are these folks from Ottawa or the Ottawa area who have come out?
Are there truckers who have arrived from Quebec or the West?
Who is exactly on the streets?
Have you talked to anyone yet?
Yeah, yeah.
So we've talked to tons of people and people are from all over here.
To be honest, I've only talked to one couple that was actually from Ottawa.
So people really are traveling down here to come support this movement.
You know, even in our hotel, there's just, there's just like, I would call them freedom fighters everywhere.
It's something.
The trucks are slowly rolling in.
You see trucks pass by every now and then.
As you can see, it's just kind of like it's completely blocked off here, right?
So right in front of Parliament, the road is blocked off.
And yeah, right now it's mainly just the supporters of the truckers who are coming in and the trucks are slowly making their way.
And the energy is high, that's for sure.
Now, tell me a little bit about Parliament Hill being blocked off.
Historically, Parliament Hill, the big lawn outside Parliament Hill, and there's that eternal flame there, this natural gas flame that never goes out.
That huge area is traditionally used by protesters of every stripe, left-wing, right-wing, foreign-focused protesters, whatever.
Are you saying that that is being blocked off to citizens?
Yeah, well, you can see for yourself here.
So right in front, it is blocked off.
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe on a normal day, you can go past the barricades there.
So to be honest with you, I'm not sure if these are set up to prevent protesters from whatever the case may be, but there definitely is barricades all around Parliament Hill.
So police presence, nothing too crazy happening as of right now, but it does seem that they are trying to kind of preserve that area.
You know, the police in Ottawa are very used to protests.
Literally, there are protests every day from small ones to large ones.
There's different police forces with overlapping jurisdiction.
So they know how to handle crowds, including huge crowds.
I'm worried about two things.
I'm worried about over-aggressive policing that takes a political bias.
But I'm also worried about police doing the FBI January 6th thing, which is sort of hoping there'll be some violence that they can use an excuse for a larger crackdown.
I know that sounds paranoid, and I hope it doesn't happen, but we've seen CESIS do that before.
We've seen the RCMP, local police forces.
We've even seen the Human Rights Commission do that.
Are you worried about that?
Is anyone you're talking to worried about how this protest will be perceived or if the authorities will try and turn it into some crisis event?
Yeah, absolutely.
It's funny you mention that because some people that we spoke to a couple hours ago, it seems to be on everybody's mind that there might be some sort of a setup or something, you know, where they potentially plant people as protesters who sort of stir up some sort of craziness.
I don't know.
I guess I don't think we'd be exactly surprised if something like that did happen, but I guess we're just going to have to wait and find out.
Yeah, and I don't think that's paranoia to say so.
Like I say, Grant Bristow, who led the racist heritage front for years, was later revealed to be a paid CISAS agent.
Richard Warman, a lawyer for the Human Rights Commission, was later revealed to have joined neo-Nazi groups online and said hundreds of racist things.
I'm also worried not just about government agent provocateurs.
I'm worried about Antifa, which likes to fight, likes to get rough.
And, you know, they've been whipped up and they follow orders.
So it's not just a wild speculation.
There are a lot of people who want this convoy to fail.
And if it's peaceful, it's successful.
If it's violent, then Trudeau can use that as a pretext to crack down on opposition.
Yeah.
And, you know, it's getting harder and harder for Trudeau to hold on to whatever narrative, whatever the case may be, whatever has been going on.
You know, there's so many people that I'm talking to out here that are vaccinated, double vaccinated.
You know, everyone is just coming together.
It's just so blunt and it's so obvious now that things aren't right.
You know, and I really think everything's coming to light and we're seeing that through this insanely huge protest.
So it's exciting to be here, that's for sure.
You know, I was looking at some of the people who were coming out to greet the convoy just on overpasses at truck stops, whatever.
People were bringing homemade signs, Canadian flags, and I think they were just sort of having fun, getting out, doing something with meaning, joining others, feeling a sense of community, being close to strangers again with no one saying six feet, social distancing.
There's not a lot of protesters that are wearing those face masks.
So I think that there's, I'm using the phrase a festival feeling.
The people are just sort of happy.
And part of the happiness is that they don't give a hoot about what politicians or scolds say.
Oh, you can't do that.
Oh, where's your mask?
Oh, six feet of separation.
Oh, you have to be obedient.
So, I think there's sort of a thrill of a very mild, peaceful resistance.
Is that the vibe there, or is there, or is there something more aggressive too?
How does it feel on the street?
You're spot on, to be honest.
Spot on.
You know, people have been cooped up inside, and this is an opportunity for people to come together to sort of live in a normal society as best as we can make it.
You know, people have just been deprived of everything, and it's totally positive here.
It's just completely positive.
I can't explain that enough.
These people are all peaceful and they are all coming together for one cause for freedom.
Well, that's very exciting.
I hear the bagpipes in the background.
That's a traditional Scottish sound.
I think that's a bagpipe.
Maybe it's a car horn.
But it's also truckers are very multicultural.
I know there's a large Sikh community in the trucking industry.
You're going to have to tell me if you bump into Jagmeet Singh's brother-in-law.
He was one of the largest donors to the convoy before his more famous brother-in-law told him to cancel it.
Is anyone there talking about the smears by the media party that they're racist, sexist, blah, blah, blah?
Is anyone talking about that or do they sort of laugh it off?
I think it's being laughed off, honestly.
You know, I think it's being laughed off.
I just feel everybody here, everybody that's coming to support this movement, they already know what the tricks that the mainstream media uses, the narrative they try and push.
Everyone here is very aware of that.
So I think it's almost like in one ear, out the other.
They know why they're here and they're sticking to it.
Yeah.
And that's the thing.
When the media controls the information, they're all you know and you believe it.
But it reminds me of like Baghdad Bob.
EveryoneLaughsOffTheSmears00:02:00
You're probably too young to know who that was.
When the Allies were closing in on Baghdad during the First Iraq war, the Iraqi information minister would say, Oh, we're on the cusp of victory, the mother of all battles.
We've got them surrounded now.
And everyone sort of laughed.
He became a comical figure.
But I think we're at that tipping point.
So many people have personal eyes on the convoy.
We're in the convoy, watched the convoy.
Had a friend there that when they the few people who watch legacy media now, they just sort of laugh and say, What are you talking about?
Half the protesters are Sikh or other minorities.
You know, it's led by a Métis woman.
I think that it's at that point of ridicule where they just can't control the story anymore.
At least I think so.
I'm going to join you in Ottawa in a few hours.
We'll see how it goes.
Last word to you, Lincoln.
Yeah, well, we got a report coming out.
I'm actually editing it currently in the process of editing it right now.
So we're going to have a fresh video for our viewers, hopefully out tonight, so that we can give them a little bit of a sneak peek as to what's to come tomorrow.
So let's stay tuned and see what happens.
All right, there you have it.
Lincoln Jay, and his report, as with all our other coverage, will be at convoyreports.com.
You can check out our coverage since the very beginning.
And if you like, you can chip in to help cover the hotel costs, meals, and travel for Lincoln and our whole team.
So Lincoln, I'll let you go.
Good luck out there.
Keep it up.
Cheers.
Thanks, Ezra.
All right, there you have it.
It's fun doing those live on the ground calls.
It looks pretty chilly there.
I am bringing a hat and gloves, which is very rare for me.
That's it for Lincoln.
Stay with us.
Your final thoughts are next.
Hey, welcome back.
Your viewer feedback.
Winning with Polarization00:03:13
Alfonso Liberty says, corrupt politicians are dangerous animals when cornered.
False flags are definitely the weapon of choice when threatened.
Well, I mean, I think that the coordination between the Canadian Liberal Party and the U.S. Democrats has been pretty firmed up over the last five years.
You might recall that the Democrats brought some of their gurus up to run Trudeau's war room in 2015.
So this is not a theory.
They really do follow U.S. tactics.
They use the identical wording build back better.
They're really in harmony, the U.S. dirty tricksters and the Democrats and the Canadian liberal dirty tricksters.
And so when I saw the FBI, you know, whether it was their agent provocateur behind that Michigan governor kidnapping plot, I don't know if you saw any of that, where it's actually FBI agents trying to organize the kidnapping of a governor to blame on right-wingers to the, you know, Ray Apps saying, hey, everybody, you got to storm the Capitol Hill.
I think those tactics are used in Canada too.
And again, this is not just speculation on my part.
As I mentioned yesterday, for the longest time, Canada's leading racist organization was run by a CESIS agent named Grant Bristol.
Like it's just, it really is a risk.
Louise Desjardins says, keep on trucking, all Canadians together.
No more division, no more segregation, collaboration and celebration is what Canada needs.
Trudeau doesn't know what Canada needs.
You're so right.
I mean, Trudeau, let me put it this way.
When you win with 32% or whatever he got, you need to divide people.
You need to demonize a certain number of people to polarize.
So you can, I mean, if you're trying to win a majority, then you want to reach out to every people, every kind of person from across the country.
But if you're a divider, if you say, I'm going to divide people between the good people and the other, between feminists like me and misogynists, between racial harmony people like me or racists like them.
If you're building everything on that critical theory of dividing people along lines, you're going to create an extremely polarized country.
You might get your 32% to win on election day, but at what cost?
The irony, of course, is Trudeau is anything but a feminist.
He basically admitted to sexually assaulting Rose Knight in Creston, B.C.
We know he dresses up in blackface more times than he can recall.
So the chutzpah, the this guy, is dividing us.
It's just over the top.
Someone with a nickname Axman Railing says, great to see an entire country united against tyranny, a small fringe group, politicians.
Well, that's the thing.
It really has been a little club.
And the thing about the club is it's just the Liberal Party.
Tell me one thing upon which Aaron O'Toole, the conservative leader, meaningfully disagreed with Trudeau or Jack Meet Singer or any of the other parties in Parliament about.
Tell me one MP who was allowed to be open-minded or independent-minded.
Anytime a conservative MP tried that, like Marilyn Glad You and her Civil Liberties Caucus, immediately scorched by Aaron O'Toole.
So yeah, they're all in one club together.
Deaf Community's Pandemic Barriers00:11:33
Well, I'm going to head on down to Ottawa now.
I'm going to leave you with a video of the day.
This one, Tamara Ugolini talks to a deaf community, how they're hindered by COVID policies.
Imagine being a lip reader in this mask mania.
That's it for today.
I'll see you on Monday.
Actually, I hope you tune in tomorrow because there's going to be a lot of action from Ottawa, and we'll be having lots of little live mini broadcasts and tweeting.
So I'll say goodbye to you now, and I'll leave you with this video.
Keep fighting for freedom.
Now, even more additional barriers have been placed on us, such as masks and social distancing.
I mean, These policies interfere and disregard people such as myself who rely heavily on ASL, which is 70% facial.
So before the pandemic, yeah, things were bad, but now it's magnified.
The definition of a barrier is anything that prevents a person with a disability from fully participating in all aspects of society.
So I guess you can imagine I'm not fully participating in society and neither are all my deaf friends.
Tamara Ugolini here with Rebel News and today I'm going to highlight the awful ways in which the COVID response has further isolated the deaf community.
Early on in the knee-jerk, unbalanced way governments around the world and of course also here in Canada responded to the pandemic pandemonium.
The mainstream media was at the time acknowledging how inaccessible communication was in wake of unprecedented staying home, isolating and social distancing seen throughout the spring of 2020.
The deaf and hard of hearing, well, their public communication has been hindered by the lack of facial cues, the inability to use touch and lip reading to communicate.
And then of course the use of plexiglass further muffles the sound even further.
I haven't had my hearing tested, but even I struggle to understand people who are speaking to me in a mask, especially when there is an additional barrier between us of plexiglass.
So I can just even imagine how hard it must be for someone who actually can't hear.
And to gain more insight and understanding, I wanted to bring you, our Rebel viewers, the lived experience of a deaf man.
His name is Patrizio Presenza.
And because I was unable to provide him with an interpreter, his brother, who acts as his support person, he and I had to get creative with how we could get Patrizio's story across on the Rebel platform.
So with the help of Patrizio's brother, his name is Alessandro Presenza, we decided that I would outline specific questions to them and they would record their responses and then we'd edit the whole thing into one cohesive report.
First, I asked them for their perspectives on the hardest part of navigating this COVID response, both as a deaf person and as a support person, and how COVID policies may conflict with legislation such as the Ontarians with Disabilities Act.
In closing, I wanted to know their opinion on what the remedy was, what they would like to see changed.
First, let's hear it from Patrizio.
Thank you for having me, Tamara, here today.
So my name is Patrizio Presenza.
I was born to Italian immigrants and my parents didn't know sign language or English efficiently.
So I did experience communication barriers when I was a child.
But I developed the reading and mouthing skills and the ability to read their gestures and facial expressions.
So I attended elementary and high school, but these schools, huge problems.
They didn't provide any interpreters or note-taking or TV, closed captions, and the teachers, they didn't even know sign language.
So it was a big problem back then as well.
And again, faced barriers even then.
Seems like this was the norm.
So I was surrounded by people, but I was isolated.
And this was like 45 years ago, and it's still an issue.
I couldn't participate in class or society discussions with other students.
So these were all barriers back then.
So I attended Gallaudet University in the US, and there were no existing barriers.
The university was fully accessible and fully accommodating.
So now this pandemic, the hardest part is it has exposed Canada's backwardness.
You know, Canada's insensitivities.
Seems like our public health authorities and politicians interfered with our grammar and our expressions, cutting off our communication in the deaf community.
Funeral homes, shopping malls, churches.
I mean, I couldn't understand people.
They don't seem to know how to or be aware of how to accommodate us as they are lost without any kind of map making it very impossible to navigate.
So as I explained, now even more additional barriers have been placed on us, such as masks and social distancing.
I mean, these policies interfere and disregard people such as myself who rely heavily on ASL, which is 70% facial.
So before the pandemic, yeah, things were bad, but now it's magnified.
And during this pandemic, I feel like the AODA, the Disability Act, conflicts with these pandemic policies.
So the definition of a barrier is anything that prevents a person with a disability from fully participating in all aspects of society.
So I guess you can imagine I'm not fully participating in society and neither are all my deaf friends.
So that's a really great question.
I mean, the remedy is awareness.
The remedy is education.
So I'm trying to do what I can educating and teaching ASL, you know, to show people what it's like to be deaf, to live in a deaf world, to experience silence.
I mean, so education is the key.
I'd also like to see the date changed.
So 2025 is four more years of barriers and isolation.
And I just can't even imagine that.
They're talking about implementation of the Disability Act by 2025.
So businesses should be accommodating all deaf people in their venues and all deaf people should be allowed to go into a business freely and be accommodated.
So I'm calling on the businesses to do that.
But I'd like to see more people learn ASL and more businesses maybe join our efforts with other organizations to remove these barriers.
But we'll save that for another time.
In the meantime, thanks for having me today.
The feelings of isolation, well, those far exceeded the pandemic and they're unimaginable for any of us.
But the response to a seasonal respiratory virus has only further isolated and segregated those already feeling like sideliners.
It's horrific and it's unjustified.
Now, I had pointed those same questions to Alessandro from the perspective of a support person, and here is what he had to say.
And you can imagine what it's like being pulled over by the police for a routine check or to walk into a public place or to walk into a business and be met by people who have a cloth mask that covers everything.
American Sign Language is 70% facial.
That's where the grammar is.
It's in the face.
By cutting that off, we've further estranged the deaf community completely.
We further isolated the deaf community completely.
And that's how, as a support person, I would say the hardest part navigating this has been the heartbreaking policy, the heartbreaking, the inability for our policy and for our society overall to understand what it's like to be in the deaf community.
So we ought to be able to look back on some of the things that we were, if you want to use the term doing wrong, and learn from those, but our government hasn't done that.
And our public health authorities haven't done that at all.
In fact, they've done the opposite.
But here's the definition of a barrier.
My brother alluded to it.
It's anything, anything that prevents a person with a disability from fully participating in all aspects of society.
And it goes on to talk about what that includes.
And here's some of the things that it includes: a physical barrier, an architectural barrier, an information barrier, or a communication barrier, and an attitudinal barrier.
I mean, the fact is that once we've completely masked up that way, we've erected now a communication barrier.
As it turns out, these brothers have taken it upon themselves to try to address the inequalities faced by those who are deaf or rely on lip reading to communicate.
Together, they have started an American Sign Language, also known as ASL, class.
They're offering a free introductory introductory sign language workshop, which are live and interactive, as well as mostly silent for a real deaf experience.
You can visit their website at al-marsolutions.com to find out more.
One thing is abundantly clear, and it just continues to be reinforced as I hear from more and more people who have been harmed directly by COVID policies that do not consider previously hailed checks and balances in place for public policy.
Year Three Of Harmful Policy00:01:22
It's not a few weeks or a few months.
This is going on year number three of disastrous and harmful policy enforcement.
Decision makers and policymakers on all levels of government should start to rein in these one-size-fits-all approaches that have dragged on longer than any of us could have imagined and only serve to further isolate and widen communication gaps.
For Rebel News, I'm Tamara Ugolini.
No one is more tired of these mandates than those who have been disproportionately affected by them.
That's why Canadian truckers have banded together from coast to coast to express their displeasure with the Canadian government and these never-ending COVID mandates, restrictions, rules, and guidelines.
As we have Rebel reporters not only bringing you the story from various provinces, but we have also embedded reporters directly within the convoy so that we can bring you on the ground reporting like we have always done.
You can keep up with these reports and help to fund the expenses associated with this extensive travel at convoyreports.com.
We will have daily updates and bring you breaking news as it happens.