Ezra Levant examines why Tamara Lich remains jailed after a July 2nd hearing, criticizing Justice of the Peace Paul Max Harris—a non-lawyer with 16 years at Parks Canada—and a Liberal-aligned prosecutor’s $17K donation. Meanwhile, Dutch farmers protest a 30% livestock cut by 2030 under nitrogen laws, dismissed as a fabricated crisis tied to Agenda 2030 and Bill Gates’ Picnic venture, with police brutality escalating despite public support. Levant contrasts this with Ottawa’s Freedom Convoy, where crime dropped during protests but narratives of danger persisted, while Erin Mathers shifts from opposition to sympathy after seeing government overreach mirroring globalist suppression tactics. [Automatically generated summary]
The Justice of the Peace, who heard her bail application a few days ago, still hasn't bothered to make a decision.
I guess he's got more important things to do than freeing a woman from prison.
So he'll let her wait a day and then another and then another and then another.
You know, he's not even a judge.
I'll tell you more about him and the rest of the stitch-up, as they say.
Plus an update from our friends in Holland.
That's ahead.
But first, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.
That's the video version of this website.
We got some great video from Holland, in particular, the Farmer Rebellion.
I want to show you that.
Just go to rebelnewsplus.com, click subscribe.
You'll get the video version of my daily podcast, plus the videos of our four weekly shows.
That's 36 episodes a month, just for eight bucks.
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All right.
Here's today's podcast.
Tonight, why is Tamara Leach still in prison?
Plus an update from the Netherlands.
It's July 7th, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
Netherlands Farmer Rebellion Update00:03:53
I'm very excited about our reporters traveling to the Netherlands to follow the Farmer Rebellion.
We have a special website set up for that, farmerrebellion.com.
We have our Brit, Louis Brackpool.
He attended the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, a couple of months ago.
And there's a World Economic Forum link to this Dutch crisis.
It's really weird.
And of course, we have Lincoln Jay, who just landed in Amsterdam this morning.
You may recall him from the Trucker Rebellion in Ottawa.
I think he worked something like 23 days straight on that story in Ottawa.
He just didn't want to leave.
And he really covered it in depth.
And sometimes you just live stream for hours, just showing people what it looked like.
No filter, no editing.
People love that because they couldn't get the truth from the media party.
Media party just lied and lied.
Remember this?
I do ask that because, you know, given Canada's support of Ukraine in this current crisis with Russia, I don't know if it's far-fetched to ask, but there is concern that Russian actors could be continuing to fuel things as this protest grows, but perhaps even instigating it from the outset.
Well, again, I'm going to defer to our partners in the public safety, the trained officials and experts in that area.
What do you expect from Trudeau CBC State Broadcaster?
Now, the Dutch farmers have their own grievances that we'll hear about in a moment from a Dutch political commentator, but I have seen a number of them credit the Canadian Trucker Rebellion for their farmer rebellion.
And that's the website where we're compiling the work from Lewis and Lincoln and two other reporters who are joining us.
I don't know if I don't think I mentioned this before, but Katie Davis Court, she's a reporter with the post-millennial.
She'll be coming on our mission too.
She's very brave.
She has made a name for herself reporting on antifa riots in the United States, especially in Seattle and Portland.
And we're hoping to have a fourth journalist join as well.
I should tell you, it's very interesting.
Holland requires vaccines for people from Canada unless they're journalists.
That's one of several exemptions.
And they specifically say on their embassy's website that the reason they have a vaccine exemption for journalists, as in you don't have to be jabbed, is because they value freedom of the press and freedom of speech.
And they don't want their vax rule to impose on that.
Isn't that incredible?
So you don't have to have a medical exemption.
You don't have to have a conscientious exemption.
You just have to be going there to shine a light of scrutiny on public policy.
And in both cases, for Lincoln and Lewis, who are not jabbed, within two days, they got their approval from the Dutch embassy.
And I say that because I admire that exemption, that it's expressly for journalists, that it happened so quickly, and that Holland, which calls itself a progressive country, actually is.
It's a pro-choice country.
I mean, they're very liberal in matters from drugs to prostitution, for example.
And indeed, they're liberal on this matter of privacy and medical choice.
Whereas Justin Trudeau, who is very liberal on matters of drugs and all other social matters, well, if you don't take the jab, he'll lock you down.
Back to the truckers, which were an inspiration in part for these Dutch farmers.
What if we heard from Holland that some farmer was arrested and put in prison for more than five months without a trial?
Why Fairness Matters00:10:33
Five months pre-trial, thrown in prison, five months.
Well, that's happened in Canada.
A trucker organizer named Pat King, I have my beefs with Pat King, but five months in prison without a trial?
Or how about a friendly grandma, completely peaceful, nearly a month in jail already, the latest spate for taking a selfie with a political critic of the government?
Well, that is what we're talking about today because Tamara Leach is in a prison in Ottawa tonight, waiting till tomorrow afternoon to hear the results on her bail hearing, even though the bail hearing happened, I think it was on Tuesday.
It was a full-day bail hearing on Tuesday.
The judge was there, the Justice of the Peace, as it's called.
He listened, and he said, Well, I don't need an hour to think about this, which would have been fair.
He didn't say I need to think about it overnight, or two nights, or three nights.
He said he needed all the way to Friday afternoon.
He didn't give a reason.
Did he have something more pressing?
Did he have a golf game or something?
Did he have a dental appointment?
Why was it that he couldn't decide and give a quick oral ruling and then later come up with a written ruling?
Why did he have the hearing on Tuesday and yet make Tamara Leach sit in jail Tuesday night, Wednesday, Wednesday night, Thursday, Thursday night, Friday, until 1:30?
It's a good question, I think.
The judge in this case was actually not a judge, not even a lawyer.
He's a justice of the peace.
His name is Paul Max Harris.
And he's not a lawyer.
His official biography says he has worked for the federal government for 16 years.
He managed procurement policy and reporting at Parks Canada.
Now, I do not disparage procurement and other works of Parks Canada.
I like Parks and I like Canada.
But he's not a lawyer.
And he was dealing with technical legal matters.
And while he waited, I don't know, to Google the law, I don't know what he was doing for three days, a woman rotted in jail.
Does he really need three days to think about it?
There is no bail case so complicated that you need three days to think about it.
An hour, maybe, probably in real time.
Is there any accused murderer who even needs three days of cogitation?
Wouldn't you think that for a highly political case where a woman was dragged all the way across the country because she was posing in this photograph, this photograph was all the evidence that she should be jailed?
Don't you think maybe they should have put a judge in?
Or someone with more experience than just working for Parks Canada, someone who needs three days to think about things, and thinks nothing of having someone, like, wouldn't that be on your conscience?
How could you sleep at night knowing that because you're so indecisive or don't know what you're doing or you just like to take your sweet time, someone's in prison?
Again, not because you ruled that they should be in prison, but just because you're so bloody slow.
So why was that person in charge of this bail hearing?
You could have had anyone.
You could have a judge.
You could have a lawyer who was a Justice of the Peace.
Why that person?
And why, of all the prosecutors in Ottawa, a city of a million people, why the prosecutor that they chose, a prosecutor who, according to research from our friends at True North, personally donated $17,000 to the Liberal Party of Canada.
I mean, $1,700 is an enormous donation.
$17,000?
And it came out in the hearing that the cop issued a national warrant.
That's the kind of thing, as you know, that you do for murders or runaways or like extreme national alerts, not for some tweet picture of a selfie.
And we learned from the hearing that the cop who did that did not seek a legal opinion.
Of course, police forces have lawyers that they can access, the Justice Department, get an opinion from a prosecutor.
If there's some iffy area, a cop is not expected to be a lawyer.
A cop's a cop.
A lawyer is a lawyer.
If a cop has questions, he can ask a lawyer.
And in this case, that selfie was published in June 16th.
She wasn't arrested until much later.
That cop had weeks to put the question to a lawyer and say, hey, does this pass muster?
Hey, do you think we should issue a national warrant?
Hey, do you think we should do that?
The cop didn't seek legal advice.
He just ordered him.
And the cop who was on trial, sorry, not on trial, the cop who was in the witness stand, giving his evidence to this non-lawyer at the leading questions of the liberal prosecutor, admitted he had no idea who the other people in the room were.
He had no idea who Tamara Leach's lawyers were.
He knew nothing about the event, all of which was relevant because her bail conditions clearly said that if she was with her lawyer, she could talk to other truckers.
So you have a non-lawyer Justice of the Peace who takes days and days to make a decision that should take an hour.
You have a radical liberal, I say radical, I've never heard of anyone donating $17,000 to the Liberal Party of You.
Never.
You have a cop with a complex matter who doesn't bother looking at the facts and orders a national warrant without legal advice.
And bizarrely and grotesquely, the Medicine Hat Police comply like they're under orders.
Not a real judge, liberal prosecutor, lone cop, the thinnest of pretexts.
And as I talked to you this Thursday night, Tamara Leach is in prison.
In Canada, terrorists get bail.
Accused terrorists get bail.
You know, it's funny, as Sheila mentioned the other day, the cops on this case were from the homicide squad.
That's who they put on Tamara Leach's case.
Let me tell you what I think.
I think this Justice of the Peace, who's clearly obedient to the government, that's all he knows, that's all he's worked for, he's a creature of Ottawa, he's not a lawyer, he doesn't know the law.
I think he's going to keep Tamara Leach in prison.
That's my guess.
But even if he doesn't, it's outrageous that he kept her three extra days before deciding.
And I think a terrible thing is going to happen.
You see, I've had a lot of battles in my day, including in court.
I've won some and I've lost some.
It's better to win, but you can bear a loss in any contest.
You can bear a loss in court.
You can bear a loss in a sport, in any contest.
If you knew the rules in advance and agreed to the rules, and the rules were fair, and so when you lose, you say, well, the other side had some luck or they were better or whatever it is.
It was a fair deal.
I accept the loss and I can bear it because I know it was fair.
And if there was a shortfall, it was my own.
But what if you no longer feel that way?
What if people, Tamara Leach, her supporters, and millions of people across Canada, say, well, hang on.
We know she wasn't charged with anything violent.
In fact, it was the laughable charge of inciting mischief.
We know she's a sweet grandma who's done nothing wrong.
We know it's outrageous that she was held for 13 days' bail in the first place.
Outrageous that they sent the homicide cops together, outrageous nine more days before she had a justice of the peace, outrageous it took three days.
And what if, in fact, she's put back in prison?
That's extremely tough to bear.
It doesn't sound fair.
But then if you know that the judge who made the decision wasn't a judge or a lawyer, but a justice of the peace whose sole credential was working for the government, and what if you know that the prosecutor was as partisan as they come and the cop was acting in a manner unguided by the law,
what if you then decided, which could be quite reasonable, that the justice system is no longer fair and the rules by which your hero lost were not fair.
They were not the rules that others play by.
That the game was rigged, that the ref was rigged, that the umpire was rigged, that it was not a level playing field.
You can bear losing a game if it's fair.
You can bear losing a trial if it's fair, but not if it is unfair.
Then you lose trust in the game itself.
You lose trust in the institution, in the institution of the police, in the prosecution, in the courts, and in parliament itself.
This is dangerous.
This is what will radicalize people.
Tamara Leach didn't radicalize anybody.
She encouraged them to peacefully demonstrate in their national capital, waving the flag and singing, Oh, Canada.
There was the odd bouncy castle and hot tub party, too.
That's Tamara Leach.
She didn't radicalize anyone.
In fact, she brought people back into the political process.
I remember when I spoke to the truckers, they said, what's the point?
Why are we here?
What will happen?
Well, you are the point.
Your peaceful demonstration was the point to show the country that there was not unanimity on the lockdowns and the vaccines.
Don't make that a lie.
Don't turn that into a lie.
Tamara Leach and the truckers normalized and brought protesters back into the process.
It is this out-of-control prosecutor, the out-of-control police, and an untutored justice of the peace who are jeopardizing our social cohesion.
Because if Tamara Leach is put back in prison tomorrow, and it's an outrage that she had to wait three days to find out in any event, I promise you that will make many, many more people no longer trust a system that they can credibly say was rigged against them.
And all the people who would normally squawk if poor Omar Cotter was mistreated in prison.
Farmers and Fertilizers00:15:37
They were silent.
The media was silent.
The opposition was silent.
Where's Pierre Polyev on the subject?
Where's Candice Bergen on the subject?
Where is that opposition party that briefly hung out with the truckers?
Where are they?
If Tamara Leach is sent back to prison tomorrow, that one act will do more to radicalize Canadians than anything else in the last two years.
Stay with us for more.
Lewis, why don't you tell us what exactly is going on here?
So we're in the city of Drepton and the farmers, the Dutch farmers, have decided to park up right next to a roundabout right in the city center.
And if we just pan round next to us, so many are out in support to show solidarity with the farmers here.
So we're now going to be out talking to people, seeing what they think, asking the farmers why they're here, what is the purpose of this.
We were hearing that they were potentially going near to the German border tonight.
What's the word on that?
So, according to reports, the farmers will be heading to the A7, which is a highway connecting to the German border.
So, reports are showing that potentially German farmers will be coinciding and collaborating with the Dutch farmers.
So, this is all allegedly.
We're following.
We'll see what happens and we'll keep you guys updated.
Make sure you check out farmerrebellion.com for all of our coverage.
Thank you.
Thanks, guys.
Well, that's an exciting video on location in the Netherlands, where Rebel News has sent two reporters so far.
Louis Brackpool from the United Kingdom and our friend Lincoln Jay from Toronto.
We'll have one or two more other rebels joining on the ground to tell the story in English of what's happening in the Netherlands and could actually spread to other parts of Europe and the world.
Well, what exactly is going on with the farmer rebellion?
Well, let's talk to someone who actually knows in the native language.
I'm talking about Ava Vlardingerbroek.
You may recognize her from her appearances on GB News in the UK and on Fox News in the United States.
And we're delighted to have her join us via Skype today.
Ava, what a pleasure to meet you.
Thanks for jamming us in your schedule.
Welcome.
And can you tell us a little bit of what's behind this?
Because we can't get the news from the mainstream media.
Who are these farmers?
Why are they protesting?
And how's it going to end?
Hi, Ezra.
Thank you for having me.
Yeah, the Dutch farmers are out on the streets right now protesting a new law that has recently been passed in the Dutch parliament that basically forces them to give up at least 30% of their livestock before 2030.
So the Dutch government is expropriating these farmers' land under the guise of a new nitrogen law.
They're saying that the Netherlands, our tiny small country that you can see on the map, has a dangerous nitrogen crisis that suddenly needs all of these actions and measures.
Well, the farmers are the ones that are going to have to pay for it, and the state is taking their land.
So, obviously, if someone would come into your house and say, I'm going to take 30% of what you own, and you have nothing to say about it, you'd be angry too.
And that's exactly what these farmers are doing right now.
They're showing that they are not having this.
So, they're out on the street, they're protesting, they have blocked the freeways, they have blocked distribution centers, and they're basically saying, This is what is going to happen if you take our land away.
We're going to have food shortages because already right now, the Dutch supermarkets, a lot of the shelves are empty.
Yeah, well, and here in North America, too, inflation is high, especially for food.
The idea of deliberately ending 30% of your livestock capacity seems insane.
But I just want to get back to the one word that stuck in my ear.
I've heard for years people talk about carbon dioxide and carbon emissions.
And I happen to know that carbon is one of the most common elements.
You can see it in the word carbohydrate or carburetor.
We're made in large part from carbon trees.
It's a building block of so much.
And you can believe in the theory of man-made global warming or not, but that's carbon dioxide, nitrogen.
That's just another element in the periodic table.
I think most of air is nitrogen.
Like more than three-quarters of what makes up air is nitrogen, and there's oxygen.
Like, I've just never heard nitrogen, which is all around us being called an enemy of anything.
What are they worried about with nitrogen?
It sounds laughable to me.
It is laughable, and that is what you should take away from this.
It's not a real crisis.
Obviously, nitrogen isn't a problem, especially not when you consider the fact that, well, the Netherlands, like I said, is such a small piece of land.
We have our neighboring countries, Belgium and Germany, that don't have to implement any of these measures, but the Dutch government is doing it.
And the real reason, obviously, behind it is that the Dutch state wants the farmers' land.
Because probably there are a couple of reasons.
So, the farmers, first of all, they're a group in society that are very self-reliant.
They are basically ungovernable in that sense.
You know, they own a lot of the Dutch land and they, well, they produce agricultural products, they have livestock, they produce beef.
And what's interesting to know is that the Dutch minister who has pushed this nitrogen law has a brother-in-law who is the owner of the Dutch online supermarket called Picnic.
Guess who invested $600 million in Picnic last year?
Right, Bill Gates, the man who wants to make me.
And, you know, that's not just a conspiracy theory.
I know, for example, that the head of the Netherlands, am I pronouncing his name right?
Rutt?
How do you pronounce the name of the leader of the Netherlands?
He's a serious member of the World Economic Forum, too.
What's his name?
Mark Rutte.
Yes, Mark Rutte is very, very deeply involved in the World Economic Forum.
And, well, it's obvious that this law is a product, again, of these globalist institutions because this needs to happen before 2030.
Rings a bell, right?
Agenda 2030, the great reset, World Economic Forum.
It's very clear that this is a made-up crisis, which we've seen before with these organizations.
That's the way they handle it, that's the way they operate these things.
They say, We have a crisis, and you are the ones that are going to have to solve this by giving up all of your rights.
So that's what's happening here.
They're taking away these farmers' land.
They're taking away property because they see a future for us in which we're completely dependent on the state.
You eat bugs, and well, they own your land.
You own nothing, and you'll be happy, is what they say to you.
But these farmers are not happy, and I'm so proud that they're fighting this.
Yeah, well, you know, it's really reminiscent of the trucker rebellion we had here in Canada.
And one of the reporters we've sent over there, Lincoln Jay, was really 23 days in a row, he was reporting from our trucker rebellion.
So now he's going to report on the farmer rebellion, which is the name of our website, farmerrebellion.com.
So it'll be interesting to see him contrasting how Canadians do it.
Canada and the Netherlands are old friends.
A lot of Canadian soldiers fought and actually died in the Netherlands to help liberate that country.
There's been a deep tie between the two of us ever since.
It's one of the reasons why there's so many tulips planted every year in front of our parliament buildings.
It's a reminiscence of the in fact, the Dutch Queen, if I'm not mistaken, was born in Ottawa and the hospital room was declared Dutch soil.
Am I getting my history right on that?
Yeah, absolutely.
The Netherlands and Canada are very closely linked because of the reasons you mentioned.
And we had a lot of reasons to be very thankful to the Canadians for liberating us in large parts of the Nazi regime.
But our ties don't just limit themselves to history.
They limit themselves in a very nasty way to the present day.
And that is that you guys and us, we basically serve as these pilot countries for the rollout of this 2030 agenda for the World Economic Forum.
And the way that Trudeau has handled the crisis there and the way that he took away your rights, the rights of the unvaccinated, and the way that the protests have been handled by the truckers are something that we are looking at and saying, okay, we basically have the same type of treatment coming from our government.
Mark Grutte and Trudeau are, you know, closely, we've seen them before closely, you know, in social settings, being very friendly to each other.
And while they're, you know, they're very similar in the way that they view the world and they have the same globalist policies.
And the Dutch farmers have really looked also towards the Canadian truckers.
And you can see that in the interviews that they're giving right now, they're saying that.
They're saying the way that the truckers have stood up against Trudeau is the way that we want to stand up against Mark Grutte.
And they're being supported by Dutch truckers as well, Dutch fishermen.
So you guys have set a great precedent there that we were very happy to learn from.
And I hope that it has the same effect.
Wow, that's very interesting.
I just want to come back to the farmers and the cattle.
I presume livestock is largely cattle.
Maybe there's other livestock too, sheep, but I think that really means cows.
And I'm trying to think of it's what we've heard in the environmentalist drumbeat for decades is carbon dioxide.
So that means everyone has to drive less, everyone has to fly less, and everyone's going to be punished by the carbon taxes.
But it seems like this battle in the Netherlands is focused just on one part of society.
Like you say, farmers who are self-deficient and sufficient are property owners, believe in freedom.
I've never seen the punishment being targeted this way.
And really targeted at animals too.
We're going to get rid of 30% of animals.
It just seems very odd.
I want to ask you: has the rest of Dutch society shown solidarity with the farmers?
Or are they saying, well, I don't care.
It's those farmers who are the problem, those farmers who are rebelling.
I'm in the city.
I'm in Amsterdam.
I'm a sophisticated city person.
I'm not dirty and grubby like the farmers.
They deserve it.
Like, it seems like an attempt to demonize and ghettoize and focus the punishment on one group of people and one group of animals, weirdly.
Has the rest of Dutch society chosen sides on this one?
What we're seeing now is that a majority of the Dutch people seem to support the farmers, which is great news.
But obviously, the mainstream media that is run by the establishment by liberals who live in their ivory tower and who will have enough money to eat their meat anyway and are happy to see you eat bugs, those people obviously don't support the farmers.
So, like with everything nowadays, there's a real split down the middle between the side of the pro-establishment people, usually people who are part of it, and then the people who are just like, hey, wait a minute, since when do we think it's all right that the state intervenes in our private life this much?
You know, it's it this is quite literally communism.
So that's something that the Dutch are, you know, starting.
I feel like a large part of the Dutch country is starting to wake up to this now.
They're like, okay, this maybe goes a little far.
But the mainstream media is working overtime to make these people look bad.
And I don't know if you've seen the images, but the Dutch state has done a lot to crack down on these farmers.
They've actually, there's been police brutality.
Just a few days ago, they used their guns on peaceful protestors and actually almost shot a 16-year-old child in the head.
That's what they're doing now.
And those types of things are just stuff that we would never have seen before.
You know, Dutch is the Netherlands is such a peaceful country usually where we're pacifists.
You know, nobody has guns.
You don't really see police violence all that much.
But over the last couple of years with the COVID crisis, the way they've cracked down on those protesters and now the way they're cracking down on the farmers, I think they're starting to show their true colors and the people are noticing it.
Wow.
You know, and that is another echo of Canada.
I mean, the RCMP, the Mounties, were always held in such high regard.
And I think most Canadians respected them.
And to see the police brutality in Canada during the lockdowns, during the trucker rebellion, and then to see that echoed in the Netherlands, you're right.
When I think of Holland, I think of friendly, peaceful people on bicycles with tulips.
And I know that's a caricature, but I think that is part of the Dutch national character, to friendly, peaceful, reasonable.
And this is very shocking to me.
Well, I got to tell you, it's fascinating.
We're going to try and give it proper coverage in the English language because there's very little coverage in English.
And of course, most Canadians don't speak Dutch.
And I fear that what little we hear from the Netherlands will come filtered through our state media, our mainstream media that are just going to echo the anti-farmer sentiment.
You know, you make me remember Stalin declared war on farmers in Ukraine about 90 years ago, and it was called the Holodomor.
It was like a man-made famine.
Millions died.
The idea of attacking farmers and food and doing it deliberately, destroying and reducing food production, is so unhuman and dangerous.
It's shocking to me.
Ava, I don't want to take up more of your time.
I know you're so busy.
We're grateful to have met you.
We hope we can talk to you again.
It's just wonderful to hear straight from you what's happening in the Netherlands.
We're very grateful to you.
Oh, I would love to absolutely talk to you more about it.
It's so important that you guys know what's going on because this is not just something that's going to affect us.
Like you said, the attack on farmers is a way to get control over people.
And Canada, well, you guys have seen firsthand what it's like to have a state that wants full control over you.
So it's so important that you're covering this.
And I'm very thankful that you're showing support to our Dutch farmers because they really deserve it.
Right on.
Well, thank you for those remarks.
We'll talk to you again soon.
And thanks for telling us what's going on in one of our great allied countries.
Talk to you later, Ava.
There you have it.
Ava Vladingerbruck joining us on Skype.
We'll talk to her again.
And by the way, if you want to see all of our videos, go to farmerrebellion.com.
Stay with us.
more ahead.
Hey, welcome back.
David and Patrick's Missed Encounter00:02:53
Your letters to me.
Al Stewart says, I have a feeling that after Patrick Brown and his campaign team watch this episode, he will announce that he is dropping his lawsuits to focus on getting back to work for Brampton citizens.
Yeah, I don't think so.
I don't think he wants to go back to Brampton City Council.
They're waiting for him with plans for forensic audits and investigations.
And I don't think he wants another loss.
He's had a few when he was kicked out of the Ontario PC party.
That was deeply embarrassing to him.
I think this loss could be, I don't know if his political career would recover, although give the man credit.
He is the ever-ready or energizer bunny bouncing back.
Alan Oliver says, he called Rebel News Islamophobic.
He has no defense, so he just throws mud.
Yeah, I mean, it's just such a weird insult.
There was nothing Islamic or religious in any way about our entire presentation.
Rebel News is people of all religious backgrounds.
I'm Jewish myself.
We have Muslim staff, Christian staff, Sikh people.
I mean, I don't make a list.
It's not an important factor for how we operate.
It's just really weird that he reached for that, given that there was no racial or religious element to the story whatsoever.
I think it was sort of lame.
I think people saw through it.
Church says, David catching that P-O-S Brown in the arena will go down as one of the best pieces of journalism of all time.
I agree.
And it was so great that David was wearing a jersey himself.
And just the look on Patrick Brown's face, just the freeze of the realization, who is this?
It's David Menzies.
Am I on camera?
Yes, I'm on camera.
I'm stunned.
What's my excuse?
What am I going to say?
Oh, yeah, I'm inspecting the arena because what mayor doesn't inspect?
I'm here to inspect the arena.
That's what mayors do.
Oh, my God.
With my hockey bag and my friends who are all warming up for a game.
Oh, my.
You know what?
It was a perfect video.
It was a perfect story.
But part of me thinks, I wonder what would have happened if David, our reporter, would have arrived, let's say, 20 minutes later when Patrick Brown would have put on his hockey gear and got on the rink.
Would he then have said, well, I'm inspecting the ice?
I don't know.
I think he's too shifty to hold any public office or fiduciary trust.
I'm glad that he is not going to be the prime minister.
I say again, I would have rather him be dispatched by voters, but I'm glad in any way that he stopped.
That's the show for today.
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters to you at home, good night and keep fighting for freedom.
David Menzies for Rebel News here at Parliament Hill in Ottawa.
Ottawa's Siege Narrative00:06:30
And folks, you know the narrative when the Freedom Convoy rolled into the city of Ottawa way back in late January.
Well, the vilification and the demonization by the media, by the government, by various law enforcement even began.
Evidently, the people of Ottawa were being held siege in their own city.
They couldn't get around.
It was a dangerous place.
That's not true, really.
Crime went down during the three weeks of the trucker convoy.
Well, I am with Erin Mathers.
She is a resident of the city of Ottawa.
And she has a bit of a different story to tell you.
Maybe not the kind of story you're getting from the mainstream media.
So, Aaron, we go back to late January.
see all these incredible trucks, these 18 wheelers arrive.
And what was your first reaction?
And then when you did a little research, what did you discover?
Well first it was confusion.
I mean we knew they were coming, right?
It was in the news for a while that they were on the way.
I think it took almost a week for them to get here.
And at first it was really disruptive and I was upset because I was, it's inconvenience is one thing, but it was more than that.
It was really disruptive, right?
It's quite loud.
There's people working from home.
There's new babies.
There's elderly people.
So your issue was with the noise, because there was a lot of horn honking during the ..
And also, it's really frenetic energy.
You don't really know what's going on.
You know, all I knew was that it was the truckers union and that they were protesting the mandates for the rest of the employees that hadn't been vaccinated, right?
I'm not sure if it was any kind of union or association rather than individual truckers from across Canada.
Right.
So at first I thought it was the union.
Okay.
Right.
But then, so I was actually pretty upset with it, right?
And going, oh, why do you have this?
Oh, why do people have to do this?
But I think that reaction mostly was, firstly, it was natural to do that, right?
We're getting, again, we're getting disrupted, but nerves are already pretty raw from being locked down for two bloody years.
Yes.
Right?
So that I had to consider that for a while.
But at first, I was not for it.
I was like, oh, these guys, why do they come here?
But I've had to look into my curiosity and go, well, wait a minute, like, what's actually going on here?
Once you start hearing the mainstream media go, well, you know what Trudeau said.
You know, it's the vilification with the other, oh, these people.
You know, and now you're alienating half the population of the country.
So this is what started to shift it for me.
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.
If the narrative from top down is going, oh, well, these people are the bad people, then this is a problem.
So clearly, what was being reported was not reality.
Why was this falsehood being reported in the first place, Erin?
Well, that's a pretty big question.
And I'm not qualified to answer such a thing.
The closest thing, that was an unexpected question, the closest thing that I could surmise in my own viewpoint would be they're just going by the leadership.
Like most people are not leaders.
Most people need leadership.
So that's why it's so important that we have good leadership who isn't going to dehumanize people so easily.
We already do that.
It's bad habits to say, well, these people are good, these people are bad, or they're just this, or they're just, you throw a label on it, right?
I know you're wondering about what you saw in our capital city this weekend.
As my friend Erwin Kotler said on Saturday, freedom of expression, assembly, and association are cornerstones of democracy.
But Nazi symbolism, racist imagery, and desecration of war memorials are not.
It is an insult to memory and truth.
You mentioned off camera when you did research, you found the opposite was true.
They were victims.
These were people that were losing their jobs, their livelihoods, their homes because of all these COVID mandates.
And maybe, you know, when people have their backs against the wall, they do extreme things like having a convoy here on Wellington Street.
Right, so you, you know, the non-violent resistant thing is something that we saw, for example, in the Chinese occupation of Tibet.
It took quite some years for them to start resisting violently, like ten dozens of years before they started.
So our tolerance, our pain thresholds are a little bit lower in these parts of the world and in these times without that kind of training or cultural context, right?
We saw here during the Dominion Day weekend a complete clampdown of anyone that had a table or a speaker.
Officers and bylaw were on them.
And it doesn't feel all that free or festive when we should be celebrating the birthday of this nation.
Is this what we're seeing, an overreaction based on an unrealistic fear that another convoy will happen again here?
I think so.
I think it's definitely excessive, particularly with the checkpoints.
And it's post-festival day today.
It's the second.
So, I mean, someone like myself who doesn't fall into a camp and I'm not identified with my opinions.
I'm willing to shift them and research and have nuanced because more than one truth can be available to you at the same time.
There's simultaneous things and paradoxes, you know.
It's not just this or that.
So me wanting to go in and just hang out with families and see the music and sit on the grass and chill and talk to people, I'm hesitant to go in.
I don't have anything to hide it, but I don't want to be complicit in this airport security style stuff.