Ezra Levant and Sheila Gunn Reid cover the Trucker Commission, a six-week inquiry into Trudeau’s February 2022 Emergencies Act invocation, with 13 Rebel News journalists accredited—unlike mainstream media. Witnesses like Keith Wilson (representing convoy protesters) and Tamara Leach challenge claims of espionage or violence, exposing financial seizures (frozen accounts, canceled insurance) and government reliance on debunked reports (e.g., CBC’s retracted foreign funding allegations). Police, including OPP, now defend the act despite earlier denials, while Marazzo notes its unprecedented legal scrutiny. Rebel News’s live, crowdfunded coverage aims to counter mainstream media’s perceived bias, revealing potential overreach and media-government collusion in Canada’s post-COVID crackdowns. [Automatically generated summary]
It is Ezra Levand out here in Ottawa, almost on location.
I'm not quite in the library and archives, but I'm awfully close.
Sitting next to me is William D. Asberthioma, our Ottawa-based correspondent.
And across this giant country of ours is my good friend Sheila Gunread, our chief reporter.
She is headquartered in northern Alberta.
Sheila, how are you doing out west there?
I'm doing great.
I tuned into the live stream of the Trucker Commission proceedings all day today, or at least as long as they went today.
And there were some things that really stuck out for me, even though they were just presenting reports and making formal introductions today.
There were some things I don't think anybody in the mainstream media picked up upon because it referenced them directly and their bad reporting and their fake news.
Isn't that interesting?
We will talk about that.
Let me just tell you what we're going to do for the course of the next hour and what we hope to do every day for the next month and a half.
Like I said, I am in Ottawa with William and we have a team.
In fact, we have set up like a pop-up TV studio.
We've rented a large Airbnb just a stone's throw from the library and archives.
It's got four bedrooms in which we will rotate through our rebel news reporters.
It is my plan to have 15 rebel news journalists cover this over the course of the next six weeks.
And some people will be here for a few days.
Some people will be here for almost the whole duration.
We are going to be in the room.
I want to reach into my pocket and show you something, Sheila.
This is my official accreditation.
And William has it and you have it, Sheila.
And 13 Rebel News journalists have it.
Now, normally that would be a very strange thing to boast about.
It's saying like, look, dad, I've got a driver's license unless you're 16 years old.
That's not much of a boast.
But it goes to show that this commission of inquiry maybe, just maybe, is less toxically partisan than the rest of this city.
For example, the Debates Commission that bans Rebel News or the Parliamentary Press Gallery that bans Rebel News.
Maybe, just maybe, maybe it's just for show.
But the fact that 13 Rebel News journalists have been accredited and we will be covering this thing like green on broccoli, we will be there to scrum politicians, to ask lawyers and witnesses questions.
We'll be there to ask questions of Justin Trudeau, who you know, the media party won't.
Sheila, I'm pretty excited about what's coming.
And by the way, we're going to talk about the exciting first day that William has had too.
So Rebel News is on location.
I'd have to check, but it wouldn't surprise me if our 13 journalists make us one of the largest media outlets accredited to be here.
Well, and I think we need to be because if you look at the media list, there aren't all that many skeptics.
However, you know, they did accredit the Epoch Times their video arm.
Western Standard is there.
True North is there.
There are some skeptics, but it's the usual suspects, the bailout media, who are happy to sit idly by while the liberals sort of stack the deck to rig the outcome of this thing, because we've already seen the mandate of the commission focuses on the actions of the truckers when they should be focusing on the actions of the government.
The courts will sort out the actions of the truckers.
Some of them are charged with mischief and other very, very minor related offenses, despite what the internet hysterics would have you believe.
There are no sedition charges here.
And that's another thing that came up in the reports today.
But they're really trying to have another bite at the apple with regard to holding the truckers to account instead of the government to account for their actions.
Well, yeah, and I think that's something very interesting, Sheila, because the point of the commission, as some people don't fully understand, is not to see if the actions of the Freedom Convoy were illegal, they were peaceful action, if they were things that should have happened.
The point of the commission is to see if Justin Trudeau's authoritarian response to the peaceful Freedom Convoy is something that was appropriate for situations.
That's something really important that you just said right there.
You know, let me jump in, Sheila.
Go ahead, Joe.
You appreciate that thought, and I'll jump in.
Yeah, I was just going to say, part of this, and of course, we'll have lawyers weigh in on this, but the whole point of this is to show: did the government react to a situation that met the very specific benchmarks of invoking the Emergencies Act?
I would say it doesn't.
Based on what the commission lawyers said today, I would definitely say it doesn't.
But that's what this is all about.
It is, it's got nothing to do with mischief charges against truckers.
Yeah.
You know what?
That's the whole point about this Emergencies Act, which was never invoked before in Canadian history.
It was the successor to the War Measures Act.
The War Measures Act was deployed during the October crisis, some 52 years ago, when there was a terrorist group called the FLQ that were blowing up mailboxes.
They kidnapped people.
They assassinated people.
It truly was a terrorist insurrection in league with Cuba.
I know this sounds hard to believe, but it really was as close to Canada came in 100 years to an insurrection.
Trudeau Sr. brought in the War Measures Act.
It was just in Quebec and it was just limited for a few weeks till they stamped out the terrorism.
This Emergencies Act was brought in.
Why?
Because there was some horn honking that irritated some of the Bonsey Castle.
Those are the ones that did it.
So the Emergencies Act has built into it a kind of retrospective.
Was it justified?
And as William pointed out, it's up to Trudeau to justify why he suspended our civil liberties.
There are truckers and protesters who are facing charges of their own, and that's for other courts to deal with.
But this purpose of this inquiry is whether or not Trudeau had a bonfire of our civil liberties that was justified.
But look at this.
I'm now quoting from the Commission's own mandate.
If you go to the publicorder emergency commission.ca, that's the official website for this inquiry.
And if you click on mandate, you'll see the instructions given to this judge by Trudeau.
Oh, hang on.
Is that how it works?
If I'm charged with a crime, do I get to tell the judge what to think about?
And there's five points written down here.
Let me read the first three.
So again, just remember: this is the commission of inquiry into Trudeau's conduct and suspending our civil liberties.
What are the instructions that Trudeau gave to the judge to look at five things, including A, the evolution and goals of the convoy and blockades, their leadership, organization, and participants?
Huh?
What?
What's that got to do with the fact that you torched our civil liberties?
You want to put the truckers on trial?
B, the impact of domestic and foreign funding, including crowdsourcing platforms.
Well, I'll tell you right now, there was no impact because none of the money got through.
GoFundMe canceled it and give Sengo had their money seized.
But again, once that happened.
And to address that point, both crowdfunding platforms testified at Senate hearings, or sorry, House of Commons hearings, and they said the majority of their funding was domestic.
It was not in any substantial way foreign.
Yeah, another pack of lies and then from Trudeau.
And then the third point is that this judge was instructed to examine the impact, role, and sources of misinformation and disinformation, including social media.
Yeah, or the CBC saying Vladimir Putin's behind it.
Like none of the three things I just listed had anything to do with Justin Trudeau suspending our civil liberties.
And that's what they're trying to do.
Now, listen, we cleared our throat here for 12 minutes.
We have a one-hour live stream today.
You know me, Sheila.
I could talk, I could talk for an hour in one big deep breath, but we can't do that because we've got a lineup of great people.
And I want to say that every night during this commission, and we've got a special website for it, truckercommission.com.
Let me tell you what we got at TruckerCommission.com.
Number one, that's where all our videos are going to be.
Number two, that's where we have our crowdfunding if you want to help us pay for our Airbnb and the cost of bringing our journalists in.
And I want us to stop Trudeau from trying to flip the script.
He's trying to use his commission inquiry to have a do-over because he lost the PR battle for the truckers.
He's trying to have a do-over.
So truckercommission.com.
Okay, I want to be mindful of the time we have here, Sheila.
It's great to see you at West.
And I'm going to be here from time to time.
You know, we've got people, like I said, we've got four bedrooms here at our homemade Ottawa office or studio.
We are going to have people here the whole time.
We're going to cycle through about 15 staff.
It's sort of fun.
And, you know, our team's pretty young.
It's sort of like a frat house, but instead of dedicated to drinking and getting in trouble, it's dedicated to holding the government to account.
Yeah, I think there's an importance there as well.
And we saw the importance of having rebel news journalists instead of having mainstream media journalists today in the building, in the library building, because earlier we saw Keith Wilson, the lawyer of Tamaro Leech, was walking around in the building.
And the moment that I started asking him questions, you saw 10, 15 mainstream media reporters gathering around us and then starting to put their microphone in his face to ask him questions.
And questions that were also in a different angle than the question that we asked here at Rebel News.
We ask questions from a freedom-oriented perspective.
We ask questions from a conservative small C perspective as well.
That's not what the mainstream media does when they ask questions to both politicians and lawyers and just public personas as well.
So that's the importance, I think, Ezra of having rebel news people here.
Well, listen, I think we have a clip of that.
Do we have that handy of the scrum with Keith Wilson?
I don't want to play the whole interview, but if we can, we'll show that.
Tell me a little bit more about what you did.
And then what we're going to do is we're going to throw to a short ad and we're going to bring in Keith Wilson, King's Counsel, the lawyer of Tamara League.
The lawyer of Tamara Lee.
So give us a word about that and then we'll call in our first year.
Yeah, yeah.
So basically today, what we saw in the building, what were the proceedings today?
We saw some preliminary matters being discussed and some background reports as well.
So no witness testify.
I know Catherine McKenney is testifying the next two days of proceedings.
So that'll be definitely interesting.
He trends at my role candidate for the city of Ottawa.
But today we just saw some basically some preliminary matters being discussed.
We saw an Alberta solicitor talk about the invocation of the Emergencies Act and talk about what was her view of the emergencies act.
And I think that was very interesting to see her testifying to that because she was opposed to the Emergencies Act that we was talking about.
She was talking negatively about it.
So that was that was interesting to see.
But yeah, with Keith Wilson, we spoke about what he hopes to see as the outcome of the inquiry.
Preliminary Matters Discussed00:03:22
He gave us a little rundown of what was going to happen.
And some of her questions would like to take a look to the clip when we have it.
All right.
Do we have that clip or should we call in Keith Wilson live?
Okay, we're going to do that.
We're going to throw the commercial.
Nobody go away.
We'll be back in a minute and a half.
And joining me here in the living room studio will be Keith Wilson, KC himself.
Go Go ahead.
It's the values.
You look at Western values in Western society.
And these are values we could all relate to, but they're old world values of grit and community and perseverance.
It's a place where you can make a living with your back and your hands and a little bit of hard work.
And it's a place of opportunity.
And I think as Albertans, we're fiercely protective of that.
The world's energy crisis has been grabbing newspaper headlines.
In a nutshell, we're running short of petroleum resources and the prices are zooming upwards.
My colleagues in the government and I have come reluctantly to believe that the price of oil in Canada must go up.
This was Alberta.
Origin of the Alberta separatist movement begins with the election of Pierre Trudeau as prime minister.
It was a deliberate and malicious targeting of the West, which suited Pierre Trudeau just fine, just like it suits Justin Trudeau just fine.
Sunny ways, my friends.
Blackface.
There is an actual hostile government, though it's Alberta.
Why did your dad give everyone in Western Canada the middle finger?
Really, in politics, you do have to make big decisions.
And whenever you make big decisions, there's going to be people who agree with it and people who don't disagree with it.
Plenty of people want to leave this country.
It's not the kind of idea you'd expect to hear from someone who wants to win power and hold power.
It is a radical idea.
And you would normalize the discussion.
And so maybe Alberta wouldn't have to go because maybe the rest of the country and the rest of the world would say, whoa, don't go.
Will you accept these changes instead?
That's what happened through Quebec.
There's no maple leaves west of the Manitoba borders.
Why do we have a maple leaf by unilateral decision on the Canadian flags?
Think of how the American colonists were in 1775.
That's how a lot of Albertans are today.
Well, there's a bit of a lag here in the studio.
This is the first night.
We're going to be doing this every night for six weeks.
So it's a great time to test out our systems.
Like I say, we're in an Airbnb that we are turning into a studio.
Today is just the first day.
And how appropriate it is that joining us in our little homemade studio here in the Airbnb, Stone's Throw for the Live Library and Archives is Keith Wilson, King's Counsel, who has been a lawyer for Tamara Leach and other truckers.
Great to see you, Keith.
Thanks for joining us here tonight.
Happy to be here.
First Night Q&A00:15:24
So tell me what happened today.
It sounds like from Sheila's report, there wasn't the actual action of the inquiry.
It was sort of backgrounders, reports that the commission itself had done, sort of setting the stage.
Why don't you explain it in layman's terms?
What happened today?
First of all, tell us who's presiding.
What's the room like?
How many people are in there?
How many lawyers?
Where were you?
Before we even started, tell us, what are the like?
Well, it was there was a tension in the room for sure.
I think everybody in that room understands the gravity of what's happening here.
This is a historic legal and political event of our lifetime.
Justice Rouleau, he's a sitting justice of the Ontario Court of Appeal.
He was appointed by the prime minister and the privy council to be the commissioner in this matter.
He kind of laid down the ground rules and allowed the various parties to, you know, the who's who in the zoo.
To give you a sense of scale, when we had an all-council call last week, there was all lawyers, thank you.
All lawyers were on this call that are involved, and there were 78 lawyers on that call.
When I look at how the deck's stacked, we calculate that there's approximately 50 lawyers against us.
So, but we're ready for it.
We've got a phenomenal team.
There's four of us.
And yeah, so Justice Relow's task is to receive the evidence from a wide variety of parties and documents and oral evidence and cross-examination to determine whether or not the invocation was justified.
Now, you say 50 lawyers are against us.
I'm assuming that means they're lawyers for the state, they're lawyers for Trudeau, they're lawyers for the city of Ottawa and the police.
So on the other side, you mentioned there's Forbes.
Are you referring to your legal team?
Yeah.
And are you affiliated with the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedom?
That's right.
So the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms, a legal charity, has been helping cover a large portion of the legal costs of the legal team and very important work, and they could use more help at all times.
The Justice Center itself is also participating, dealing more to policy level and a charter and rights and freedoms alongside of the Democracy Fund.
Alan Harner, the lawyer for the Democracy Fund, was Saturday, and he made some remarks.
So are there any other good guys there?
Democracy Fund and JCCF.
Who else is there?
Well, there's another group that's representing the protesters at Windsor.
There's some academics that are very concerned about the Constitution, Ryan Alford.
Well, I'm pleased to hear that.
I'm shocked to hear that.
I didn't know any academics cared about freedom anymore.
Yeah, I hear you.
But no, he's been very engaged.
There's going to be some really complex issues where they've already signaled the federal government that they're going to want to go in camera.
That means turn off the it actually means turn off the camera, right?
That's right.
It means sort of it's a secret hearing that no transcripts, no videos will be allowed.
How do you have a public hearing that's a secret hearing?
Well, absolutely.
And what are they going to talk about?
Cease's assessment of the puncturability of jumpy castles?
I mean, come on.
So anyway, it's going to be interesting, but the cross-examination starts tomorrow.
And if things go as we expect, there'll be some very interesting developments tomorrow.
I want to bring Sheila Gunread in in just one minute, but I want to ask you to clarify that last thing you said: cross-examination.
So typically a witness says something, and then they're asked tough questions based on their testimony.
Do we have a list of witnesses?
Do we know the order of witnesses?
Do we know the name of all the witnesses?
Who's up tomorrow?
Okay.
So let me first zoom out a little bit.
The list is long.
There's a publicly released list that has 65 approximately witnesses on it.
The prime minister's on that list.
The commissioner for the RCMP, Brenda Lucky, is on that list.
Mendocino's on that list.
Blair's on that list.
One-fifth of the cabinet.
Chris Freeland, Omar.
All of these people.
The head of the OPP, the mayor of Ottawa, and so on, the various police chiefs.
Including the police chief who it looks like he was fired for not being tough enough.
Yeah, so I'll be interested to hear from him if he's allowed to speak.
And so we've, and it's a living document.
It's not a final list.
We've submitted a list of 25 witnesses that we'd like to see, including Dean French, the former chief of staff to Premier Doug Ford, who helped negotiate the deal with the mayor near just before the Invocation of the Emergencies Act, former Premier Peckford, a number of Danny Wolford and so on, a number of important people involved in the freedom movement.
Think they should testify.
So we're still working that through.
And what's going to happen is you're going to see each day the witness list is going to get filled out a little bit more for the coming days.
So right now we know the witnesses for tomorrow and we know the witnesses for Monday.
So tomorrow we're actually going to have Lexi Lee, who is the plaintiff with Paul Champ, the personal injury lawyer, that brought the $300 million class action suit.
Because Horton Honking is so, you know, she's disturbed for a lot.
She had to hear some horns talking.
Ridiculous claim.
Very troubling.
But you know, it's a big deal.
Tom Morazzo is one of the persons listed.
Tamara Leach.
Chris Barber and others have been listed in this class action.
No one wants to get sued for $300 million.
So this is a serious matter.
So she's going to testify.
Interestingly, Miss Dean, who was on the police board chair, I believe is going to be up tomorrow if we get through the schedule, as well as some other local officials and residents.
Interesting, next week, we're going to have Steve Canalakis, who is the city manager.
I was involved in direct negotiations with him, as was Tom Morazo, with respect to the deal and other matters.
So it's going to be interesting to see how his testimony unfolds.
And we have documents to make sure he stays in his lane.
Well, that sounds very exciting.
We're going to talk to Alan Hunter a little bit later.
He is your counterpart at the Democracy Fund.
And I know he made some remarks today to the commission.
Very exciting.
But I want to invite our dear friend Sheila Gunrid, our chief reporter, and who has been live tweeting all day.
Sheila, I'd like you to weigh in either with questions for Keith, or you said you saw some tantalizing things in the opening briefings from this commission that you say were curious and that maybe were ignored by the mainstream media.
So what are the things because you were covering this thing all day?
Tell us something that our viewers would know or put a question to Keith Wilson.
Love to get you involved in the conversation.
Sure.
You know, what I found most curious, Keith, and I don't know how much of it that you saw or stuck around to watch the explanation from the government for why they used Section 58.
Now, Section 58 is the justification for invoking the Emergencies Act.
It's like a restraining order against the government, really.
And it says that to declare a public order emergency, there has to be an emergency arising from threats to the security of Canada that are so serious as to be a national emergency.
Apparently, Bouncy Castles, hot tubs, and honking does that.
Threats to the security of Canada, including threats or acts of serious violence against persons or property to achieve political or ideological objectives.
There was no real violence against the truckers.
There was violence committed against truckers.
And a national emergency so emergent that the local police forces do not have the tools to deal with the emergency.
And Keith, your client is charged with mischief, being annoying in a public place, really.
So, I guess my question to you is: well, and I guess because you're there on the other side of this, prediction-wise, are they even going to be remotely successful in proving that the police did not have the tools they needed to address bouncy castles, hot tubs, and open-air soup kitchens?
Well, I don't think so.
And one of the things that's going to be surprising is the extent to which they're infighting.
The infighting within the police, the infighting between the city officials or the elected officials, the fighting between the police, infighting between the level of dysfunction I think that's going to get revealed here is going to cause people to question the competency of some of our government agencies.
In the opening statement for our group and lawyer Brendan Miller is our lead counsel in the barrister's role.
So, you may have saw Sheila, his opening statement, where he basically put the pop cans on the fence posts and knocked each one of them off and said there's five things you have to prove, and there will be no evidence to support any one of the five.
So, this is going to be, I knew it was going to be interesting, and I think it's actually going to be riveting.
I do too.
And, you know, just again from the government's explanation here, they're already starting to use social justice nonsense to change the meaning of words under continuing blockades and activities tied to serious acts of violence.
They say these activities are tied to serious acts of violence.
Slow rolls, slowing down traffic, creating traffic jams, and tow truck drivers refusing to work with governments to remove vehicles from blockades.
According to the government, those are activities that are tied to or result in serious acts of violence.
It's outrageous that they think that they can get away with this.
Keith, I know you lost your earphone for a second there.
Sheila was saying that the stretching of those words to include slow rolling trucks as an act of violence is absurd and it marks a lurch from real law to touchy-feely woke politics.
Well, what Professor Alfred said in his statement today is that that's not the test.
The test isn't whether something's associated or close to or related to or nearby.
It has to be actual evidence of it, actual evidence of violence towards the state, actual evidence of each one of those criteria or any combination of them.
So that's the jockeying for positioning is occurring.
I don't envy the federal government lawyers' position.
They're in a tough spot.
I got one more question for you, Keith, and then we're going to have another short commercial break and we're going to call on your colleague at the Democracy Fund, Alan Hunter.
Tamara Leach has become a tremendous symbol of this movement, peaceful, patriotic, positive, and yet the vendetta against her, not just by Trudeau and the police, but by the prosecutor.
And I've never heard in my entire life anywhere in Canada, let alone in any other Commonwealth country, of someone being jailed even for a day for a mischief charge.
Actually, that's not true.
One guy who shut down, who blew up the power grid in Quebec, got a little bit of jail time.
But I've never heard of a pre-trial custody of 49 days for someone who has no violence, no threat to the community.
I've just never seen such a thing.
Tell me a little bit without giving away any confidences, what do you expect Tamara Leach to say as a witness?
And what do you think the impact will be of what she has to say on this inquiry?
And finally, these are a lot of questions.
What's she going to say?
What's the impact going to be on the inquiry?
And what are the bad guys going to try to do to her in cross-examination?
Well, let me try and tackle those.
I'd first say that she's going to tell the truth.
And the impact is going to be to confirm that this was an extreme example of the federal government and Prime Minister Trudeau overreaching and using this nuclear weapon of statutory powers against Canadian citizens.
I'm not going to go into cross-examination, but I'm going to say this, Ezra, because it's really important.
It goes to an underlying theme in your question.
Today, Tamara was mobbed by the legacy media.
And they all said, Tamara, they're asking her for comment on this, comment on that, comment on this.
And she just smiled and declined to comment.
So when I was scrummed, they're like, well, why won't Tamara talk to us?
And I thought to myself, are you guys kidding me?
Are you not paying attention here?
So I explained to them that under these draconian bail conditions, she's not allowed to criticize the federal government's COVID mandates and she's not allowed to speak in support of the convoy, the freedom convoy.
And I pointed out to them that right now, in Putin's Russia, they could interview Balani, his critic, but in Trudeau's Canada, Tamara Leach can't speak.
Incredible.
Well, it'll be interesting because, of course, my understanding is if you speak before a judicial commission, it's like being in a court and you have absolute privilege, immunity to answer truthfully before a judge.
Now, that's my understanding.
Let me wreck me if I'm going to nail that for you.
And that's what I explained to the reporters as well, the gaggle of the legacy media, was that they need to understand that the way this works is because it's a public inquiry, and these are pretty rare, that under the rules and the law that applies, it means that when Tamara is subpoenaed and as with Tom Marazzo and Chris Barber and others, when they're speaking under oath in the commission, they have protections under the charter and the Canada Evidence Act,
which means nothing they say can be used against them in other proceedings.
So the only place she can speak right now because of these bizarre punitive and politically motivated, in my view, bail conditions is in that room.
So I think it was an eye-opener for the reporters because they really wanted to ask her questions and then suddenly realized, wow, so she goes back to jail if she talks to us here?
And the answer is yeah.
Yeah, well, it'd be interesting to see.
But wouldn't they love that?
But wouldn't they love that?
Isn't that the truth?
Sheila's saying they would love that.
Some of them would, some of the reporters would love it if she was back in jail.
Some of them were partisan reporters.
Others, the fact that they don't know that this is the fact just is stunning to me.
Yes.
A Canadian citizen who's a public person has spent nearly two months in prison and they don't know that.
And they don't know about these bail conditions.
They're not particularly troubled by it.
And oh, okay, that's interesting.
To me, that's just as appalling.
William Put The Microphone To00:06:24
Well, Keith, it's great to see you.
And I understand you're going to be here for the duration as well.
Yes.
Our Rebel News homemade studio.
Today's day one.
Thanks for helping us iron out the wrinkles.
And I think we're doing okay.
And it's very important to me that this story of this commission of inquiry be told, not just by the regime media, because as Sheila pointed out, and as the questions that put to you pointed out, if we relied on the regime media, we would not know what's really going on.
In fact, if it were only up to the CCCDB Global News, the truckers would have been called violent insurrectionists.
Well, you saw true racists, misogynist.
Sedition.
It was only because of citizen journalists that those lies were rebutted.
So I think that having independent journalists here, and I heard that Western Standard has a reporter a credit.
I hope True North does.
Okay, that's good to hear.
And we're going full tilt here.
I really think we have a special duty, as our motto says, to tell the other side of the story.
So thanks very much for coming in.
I'm sure we'll talk to you in the weeks ahead.
Thanks for having me.
All right, there you have it.
Keith Wilson, King's Counsel, I have to get used to saying after so long of calling it QC Queen's Counsel.
If you don't know what that means, it means he's a top dog lawyer.
Stay with us.
We're going to run a quick commercial.
And when we return, another top gun lawyer, our dear friend Alan Honor, will join us.
That's moments away.
Yeah, so just for the viewers at home, you know, that don't really know what's happening for the next six weeks.
Can you just outline quickly what's happening here in Ottawa?
Well, my name is Keith Wilson.
I'm one of the lawyers representing the Freedom Convoy.
And because the federal government took the unprecedented step of invoking the Emergencies Act, under that law, there's a requirement for a public inquiry to be held.
And that public inquiry has started here in Ottawa.
And it's going to last at least six weeks.
There's going to be a wide range of evidence presented.
Witnesses from the municipality, residents, the protesters, the police, and the federal government, including the Prime Minister, are going to be testifying.
I think it's going to be a very engaging process.
You can tell from the opening day that the different stakeholders have staked out some very different territory in terms of what their positions are and what they think needs to be addressed here.
And what would be the best possible outcome that you see from this inquiry?
Well, the truth, that the truth comes out and with some accuracy as to what happened here in Ottawa and what was happening in other locations in the country at the time that the Prime Minister and his cabinet made the decision to invoke the Emergencies Act, because they made the decision in a cabinet meeting on the Sunday evening of February 13th.
And on the Saturday and the Sunday of that weekend, the borders had opened at Coots and Windsor.
There was no border closures.
And over that same weekend, myself and other people involved with the Freedom Convoy had negotiated a deal at the initiation of Mayor Watson of the City of Ottawa to move the trucks and the protest vehicles out of downtown, consolidate on Wellington and bring the downtown back to normal.
And so in my view, and I think the evidence is going to show that it wasn't justified.
There was no need for it.
And the Emergencies Act's a pretty dramatic tool, to say the least.
What the Emergencies Act does is it allows the government to interfere in your life without going through the normal due process.
So many of my clients, many of those people involved in the Freedom Convoy, had their bank accounts frozen.
They were unable to buy groceries.
They were unable to put gas in their vehicles.
Their credit cards stopped working.
They were unable to take money out of their bank accounts.
Their mortgage payments bounced and so on.
The order issued by the federal government by the Deputy Prime Minister Freeland also ordered insurance companies to cancel all of the insurance policies, including life insurance, mortgage insurance, vehicle insurance, and ordered the securities companies to liquidate any investments that Canadians had who are on this list.
So these are dramatic powers to isolate Canadians from normal living and put them in a virtual jail cell financially.
And in addition, what a lot of people don't understand is that under the Emergencies Act, it also gives the federal government powers to intrude into areas of provincial jurisdiction.
Gets to override provincial governments rights.
Well, there you have it, Keith Wilson, scrumming with our friend William Diazbertium on the premises of the National Library AND Archives.
What pleasure to have rebel news in the house, and by that I mean actually in the house as opposed to on the outside.
I should tell you we do better journalism on the outside than most of the mainstream media do from the inside, but now we're leading the way.
As Chris Wilson pointed out, it was William who put the microphone to Tamara and then the others caught up.
It was William who put the microphone to Keep and the others caught up.
You know what I?
The most interesting thing that Keith said to me was not that journalists are hostile to Tamarilites or the truckers.
I mean, we know at least the edgy Trudeau courting journalists like David Aiken or, you know, Glenn Mcgregor.
The most alarming, depressing thing Keith Wilson said to me was that most journalists just simply don't know, they're unaware that in our country in 2022, while we criticize Vladimir Putin for being authoritarian, while we criticize China and Iran, in our own country we have a truly a political prisoner who served 49 days in prison without a trial for the alleged crime of mischief and she has, to this day,
a speech ban.
She cannot criticize the government, she cannot support the truckers, neither of which have anything to do with mischief.
That, to me, was the most incredible thing.
Well, that was Keith Wilson, and now joining us in the fancy chair in our extremely fancy Airbnb studio is my friend, Alan Hunter, who is the head of litigation at the Democracy FUND, and he, along with the JCCF, has standing and he's actually on the commission and Olivia.
Alan's Opening Remarks00:09:40
In a moment i'm going to call for the clip of Alan's opening remarks, so please get that ready.
Alan, great to see you.
Welcome to our very humble studio.
Well, thank you very much.
As For it's a pleasure to be here.
I'm going to invite you to come a little closer to the microphone just to make sure we hear that clearly.
Um, so today he told us a little bit about how it went.
It was sort of throat clearing, scene setting backgrounders.
The real action starts tomorrow.
Tell me what you thought was interesting.
What are the most important things to know from your point of view?
That happened today yeah well so, as for today, I think the most important thing we've seen and the most interesting we've seen is that counsel for the different parties gave their opening statements, and opening statements are not evidence, but they show you where the parties are heading and what type of evidence they intend to lead.
And I think there were some surprises there.
I think the biggest surprise for me, or one of them, actually came from the OPP lawyer.
Now there are a lot of police who are involved in this commission as parties.
There are police associations and I think some of them have been a bit embarrassed about the way this protest unfolded and they're trying to save space because of perceptions about them.
I don't i'm not saying those perceptions are true or not, but that's something that's that's very much alive.
So the lawyer from the OPP said today and i'm going to quote, I have the exact quote here he said Windsor was very much a success story.
So, why would he say that?
And I think the reason he's saying that is because in Windsor, the police managed to stop the protests.
They managed to, there goes my earpiece.
They managed to clear the protests before the invocation of the Emergencies Act.
They managed to do it with the laws that were available.
Isn't that interesting?
So, when he said, and by the way, from a policing point of view, it was a success.
There was no violence.
There was no insane insurrection or things did not get out of hand.
They went in, they moved the vehicles after a couple of days.
I know that because our own David Menzies and I think it was Isabel Ravosch were there.
And it was quite a dramatic moment, but it was handled.
And in terms of, you know, can we get a tow truck driver to tow a truck?
Our existing criminal code gives police the power under the criminal code to commandeer the use of tow trucks or frankly any vehicle for their purposes.
You don't need the whole country in martial law seize bank accounts, quash insurance policies, deploy ride horses to get a tow truck.
You actually, in the criminal code, have the power to take any tow truck you please at any time.
It's quite an astounding power that the police have.
That's very interesting that the OPP sort of, like, like I'm sure they wouldn't characterize it as attacking the Emergencies Act, but by implication, if they had a successful clearing of the bridge, and by the way, there was no strategic problem with having trucker protesters in Ottawa.
Okay, so there's some horn honking that stopped immediately after a local judge said, stop the horn honking.
But there was no strategic shutdown.
There is no strategic value to those lanes of traffic a couple of blocks away from Parliament Hill.
There was a lane kept clear for ambulances and fire trucks the whole time.
Whereas blocking the Ambassador Bridge between Windsor and Detroit is extremely important.
That is one of the most economically important bridges in all of North America in terms of trade.
So that was very important.
And yet that was cleared in a couple of days with no violence, with no shock and awe, and certainly no emergencies act.
That is a very interesting comment by the OPP.
I think you're absolutely right, Ezra.
And what surprises me is that I thought TDF was going to need to make this argument.
I thought the JCCF would have to make it.
But now it looks like the OPP is going to be helping us out with that.
I wonder if that's on purpose or if that's just speaking the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Well, as I say, I think they're probably trying to save face here a bit.
That's my theory.
I don't know.
But let me raise another point about Ken Ezra, sort of along the same lines.
The government of Alberta.
I thought they had a very interesting opening statement because they had coots.
And this is what they say.
And I'm going to read it again because this is an exact quote.
They say that the law enforcement mechanisms were, quote, completely sufficient to deal with coups.
You know what?
And it's funny because, of course, Jason Kenney hated the Coots truckers.
He lied about them.
He smeared them.
He defamed them.
He said they were violent.
They were not.
The RCMP actually made a public statement saying that Jason Kenny lied about it.
It was quite astounding.
The Coots truckers caused the downfall of Jason Kenning, just the same way the Ottawa truckers caused the downfall of Aaron O'Toole.
So the Alberta government is no fan of the truckers by any stretch, certainly not the Justice Department, which has been persecuting them.
But again, same thing.
They did not need the Emergencies Act.
They did not need martial law.
They didn't need to seize bank accounts of families to move some trucks out of the way.
In fact, they managed to pretty much negotiate it away.
That is very interesting, too.
Sheila, what do you think of these things that Alan Holler is pointing out?
Well, you know, it's interesting because I noticed some things similar to that too.
Again, going back to the government making the case for why they invoked the Emergencies Act.
And I don't think Alan can hear me anymore because I think his earpiece fell out.
So you might have to play telephone.
Oh, he's got it back.
Yeah, we'll get more earphones.
We'll get bigger, better earphones in the days ahead.
This is day one of our homemade studio, Sheila.
It's a DIY operation.
But I noticed that the government is relying on media reports.
They said that one of the reasons they invoked the Emergencies Act, because it was a threat to Canadian sovereignty, was media reporting about Give Send Go indicating that the majority of donations to the protests were made by donors outside of Canada.
Well, Give, Send, Go, and GoFundMe testified at a House of Commons committee that that was not the case.
And the two stories CBC published about Russian interference, those were both retracted, but that's never indicated in the government's reasoning here that they relied on largely debunked media reporting.
Yeah, yeah.
What do you think of that, Alan?
Well, you know, I think that is a very interesting point, Sheila.
We haven't heard any evidence from the government yet.
I believe we're going to hear from them starting next week.
I think Keith is right.
I think the government is in a pretty tough spot, and they're going to be asked questions about those media reports on these other issues.
I think raise.
You know, there's a lot of collusion between the media and the government.
The media would come up with a hoax.
The government would use it as proof to go to the courts to get some power or whatever.
I mean, it was a closed loop.
They were rebreathing each other's air.
They were, I'll scratch your back, you scratch mine.
I mean, nothing makes me laugh more than the CBC talking head who said to Marco Mendocino, maybe Vladimir Putin's behind the truckers.
And he just sat there.
He didn't say, you're crazy, you're a crazy lady.
He just sort of threatened.
And I don't know.
I mentioned that because the ombudsman of the CBC made a statement on that in the last few days saying how embarrassed he was.
Well, you know what?
This is going to be very interesting.
What I'm hearing from both Keith Wilson of the Justice Center and yourself of TDF and Sheila's reports also is that this trucker commission has a lot of interesting things to say that may actually contradict the official regime narrative.
And whether it's the government of Alberta or the Ontario Provincial Police, the OPP, it's not just freedom fighters saying it.
I mean, if the OPP, which I happen to think is an abusive police force, I say that from some experience, if the OPP is saying we didn't need the sledgehammer, guys, there are some interesting things being said here.
Now, the question is: will the regime media report that in the way that we've just heard here?
And I'd say that the media is more compromised in Canada than it ever has been.
You don't just have the CDC state broadcaster.
You now have 99.9% of journalists in some way on Trudeau's payroll.
We've listed the independent journalists in this country: Rebel News, True North, Western Standard, F Op Times, and I think I'm done my list.
And so I think it's extremely important that we have our little homemade studio here.
And I'm really grateful to Democracy Squad and the Justice Center.
I think you're doing good stuff.
So you're going to be going every day, eh?
You or your colleagues.
Absolutely.
Okay.
Well, we'll keep an eye on that.
We're going to report on it.
We're going to report on the JCCF and the Democracy Fund because we're going to report on everything.
No Credentials Needed00:09:04
You know, our motto.
What's our motto?
Telling the other side of the story.
So, Alan, thanks for popping by our homemade studio.
It's 651, and we do have one more very special guest.
So, we're going to have a short commercial break, and we'll be right back.
My name is Alan Honner, and I am the litigation director for the Democracy Fund.
The Democracy Fund is a registered charity and a civil liberties organization.
As you've heard, we're sharing standing with the JCCF and with Citizens for Freedom.
Our interest in this inquiry arises from our legal work.
In February of 2022, we sent lawyers to Ottawa and to Windsor to provide demonstrators with legal information about their rights when protesting, as well as the limitations of those rights.
Around the same time, we were granted intervener status as a friend of the court at the Superior Court of Justice in Windsor over the Ambassador Bridge injunction proceeding.
Currently, we represent dozens of persons who have been criminally charged in relation to the protests at Ottawa, Windsor, and Coots.
And we represent thousands of others who've been charged under the Quarantine Act or provincial offenses related to the pandemic.
We've also brought applications before superior courts.
Well, we are back.
You know, there's a bit of a time lag in our homemade studio, so forgive me that I have that little pregnant pause there.
It's great to be here on day one of our studio.
Just for those who are joining us at our special website, truckercommission.com, we will have nightly live streams, updates throughout the day in video, in tweet form.
My point to you is if you want the antidote, the other side of the story, you have to bookmark truckercommission.com.
And it is my hope that you find this useful enough to maybe even check in to help us cover the cost of the Airbnb, which I think is about $15,000.
I know that's a shocking amount of money, but we are so close to the library and archives, you wouldn't believe it.
And it's a big place.
There's four bedrooms.
And it's cheaper, I think, than getting a hotel room and a studio.
We're in one of the rooms of the Airbnb.
We're going to make it even better.
So please do support us at TruckerCommission.com.
Now, sitting next to me is Tom Marazzo, who is a witness here.
Now, Tom, I just want to ask you a question before we get started, because I'm nervous now, because Tamara Leach has bail conditions on her that are extremely onerous.
And there is an insane, out-of-control prosecutor in this town.
And I want to make sure that I know any restrictions on you so I don't inadvertently get you or me in a pickle.
Do you have any bail conditions that I need to know about?
I do not have any bail conditions.
Okay, good.
Now I relax a bit.
I don't want to go to the clinic before I would be good.
So what are you charged with if you don't mind?
I actually haven't been, I haven't been charged that I'm aware of or there's no charge.
Okay, there's no charges, Penny.
Forgive me for being overly cautious here.
I just don't want.
I mean, remember what happened when Tamara Leach was thrown in jail a second time.
Absolutely outrageous, but the other side is not dealing with us in good faith.
Right.
Sorry.
Okay, thanks for letting me clear that up.
Tell me a little bit about your plans to testify.
How were you called as a witness?
Did the commission call you?
Were you suggested by counsel?
How did you come to be one of the, like, I'm sure hundreds of people would like to testify.
How did you get on the list?
I believe that Keith Wilson and Eva had put together the application in the early days when the commission was looking for witnesses to come forward.
And my name was one of the ones that was put forward and it was accepted by Justice Rouleau and I guess the government team.
And that's how I got on the list.
And it's interesting to me that there are so few of us that are actually participating in this.
I'm quite surprised by how small the people that I worked with during the convoy, how small that list actually is.
So that's your standing as you were helping to organize the convoy or to interlocute between the convoy and the police.
That was one of the things you were doing, right?
You were a go-between, like a human ambassador bridge, if I may, between the truck and the police, right?
Yeah, there was my role did actually evolve over time.
When I first got there, I was more focused on the logistical aspects and making sure that it was safe and responsible.
We had safety lanes open to the public and emergency services.
One point that most people don't know, they call it a lockdown.
They call it an occupation.
There were lanes open.
The police were shutting down more lanes.
Yes, suckers.
Yes, in fact, they were.
And there's one incidence I was asked by the police to go confirm that we were not locking in an intersection.
And when I arrived, there was heavy equipment, two concrete barriers, and five police officers standing there blocking the intersection, not us.
I believe it.
I believe it.
So do you, you've got to prepare, let me guess, you have a prepared statement.
You're going to read it and then your lawyer will ask you questions and then you'll be open to cross-examination.
Is that how it goes?
Is it like a trial that way?
Like, have you prepared a commentary?
I've had many discussions with the legal team, but how the actual steps will unfold once I do get called to testify, I'm not entirely sure of how that's going to go because none of the witnesses have actually testified yet.
So I don't really know what that is.
It's not really a trial, but it's like, you know, there's witnesses before a parliamentary committee.
That's what I was thinking.
Those are often you make a statement and you take questions.
But there's so many lawyers.
I mean, we heard there's almost 80 lawyers there, each one wanting to take a shot at you.
Yeah.
And so I don't even know if there would be time for me to do an opening statement of any kind.
I think it's, there's just, I'm going to be too open to too many, too many lawyers from too many different groups to consume that much time, I suppose.
Now, are you there representing a group of people?
Like, do you have any official status?
Are you there in your personal capacity?
Well, I was summoned to appear and to make myself available in Ottawa in person for the entire duration of the interview.
Is this going to be in person or some of them appearing by remote, like by Zoom or something?
That is yet to be determined.
Sure.
I'm so curious.
Because I don't believe that the witness list has actually been finalized.
That's what people say.
A draft, a working draft.
Yeah.
Yes.
All right.
Well, very interesting.
I'm going to bring my friend Sheila Gundrida in.
She's our chief reporter and the big boss in northern Alberta.
Sheila, what questions do you have for Tom Marazzo?
Are you a witness tomorrow?
No, I don't believe I have.
Not tomorrow.
Okay.
I'm getting excited there for a second.
Sheila, go ahead.
Well, Ezra, you just stole my question.
Are you a witness tomorrow?
Thanks.
But also, Tom, are you able to sit in the room when other people are testifying?
Or are they keeping you outside like they do at the normal courtroom?
I sat in on the first day today inside the hearing room because it was open to the public.
So I was sitting there in the audience.
In fact, the back four rows were completely empty.
I originally believed that I would need to get credentials to get into the room, but it turns out there was no need for me to get credentials.
Keith arranged for me to come to the room, and I didn't have to go in with credentials, but I think Keith worked his magic as usual.
Anything else, Sheila, for Tom Razzo?
You know, Tom, was there anything today that you heard in the opening statements and the presentation of reports?
Anything that stuck out to you that surprised you or shocked you, or maybe you were just sort of blindsided by the honesty as Alan Honor was by the OPP?
You know, that's a great question because there were a couple of things that really did surprise me.
And the biggest surprise to me was, you know, it was my understanding that this inquiry was about examining the actions of the federal government and the decisions that Justin Trudeau had made to invoke the Emergency Act.
But what I found particularly interesting was all of the law enforcement agencies actually were taking ownership of the invocation of the Emergency Act, which I found really kind of also strange when in previous commissions they testified saying they never asked for it.
Six Weeks of Scrutiny00:04:57
But it would appear to me that their demeanor was that they were almost in defense of the government and are taking some sort of a position of ownership over the invocation of the Emergency Act, even though they say they never asked for it.
And so I found that to be a little bit, I don't know, disturbing because I thought it was the government that was there to be examined for their decisions in invoking the Emergency Act, not law enforcement agencies across this country.
Well, this we're just at the very beginning of what's going to be an interesting and intensive six weeks.
I understand that they might even do a very non-Ottawa, non-government thing and even meet on Saturdays.
Like to go six days a week, that's astonishing to me.
That's just, I mean, we're in a place that thinks passport offices can work from home and have a six-month delay.
Like that's normal in Ottawa to find someone who's willing to work six days a week is so upside.
It's like it's like Costan.
Find someone to work after three.
Find someone to work after 30.
Very interesting.
I sure hope this judge lives up to the public interest and the public duty.
I know people point out that he's a liberal donor and a liberal appointee and things like that.
And I want to brush that aside that part of me wants to think: okay, you know what?
It's not shocking that a judge in Ottawa is a liberal given how judges are appointed.
It's just not shocking to me.
A lot of judges are liberal.
A lot of lawyers are liberal.
And I don't want to, I really want to give this guy the benefit of the doubt and say, you know, he's not a liberal anymore.
He's not an activist anymore.
He's on the bench.
This is a serious matter.
He's taking it seriously.
He's being rigorous.
He seems to be even-handed in terms of the witnesses and, you know, even granting intervener status to the JCCF and the Democracy Fund.
So I really want to hope.
I really need to hope because the courts have been such a shocking disappointment over the last two years.
I went to law school and the Charter of Rights was this holy grail.
It's so important part of our identity.
And yet the Charter, other than the case of Arthur Pavlovsky in Alberta, the Charter has not shut down any lockdown elements in the last two years.
Our Supreme Court hasn't even weighed in on the subject.
It's like the judges just didn't give a damn.
And so I really need my faith in the legal system revived.
And I hope that this judge does it.
But, you know, don't put your trust in princes, as the good book says.
Last word to you, Tom.
Are you excited about being here?
Are you looking forward to this or are you dreading it?
No, I've actually been looking forward to this every day since I left Ottawa last February.
And, you know, I too am looking for that hope as well.
But the one thing that I can say is, regardless of what the government says, what the judge himself says or the commissioner, my faith is actually in the legal team that is representing the convoy itself.
And when I, you know, I'm involved in the conversations with Keith and Eva and Bathsheba and Brendan Miller.
You know, he made some great remarks that, you know, Olivia, can I get you to call up Brendan's remarks?
We'll play that in a minute.
So I know we clipped it earlier.
Sorry to interrupt.
Keep going, but they're, you know, brilliant minds that are here doing the work of Canadians that supported the convoy.
And there's a lot of talk online where people are saying, you know, this commission is a big farce.
It's irrelevant.
It's not important.
But I disagree.
I disagree because this is where the first time since the COVID restrictions that the public is going to get to examine for the first time, I believe, the government's actions against the people of Canada.
In the 6 million that chose not to get vaccinated that have a very good grievance, they're going to get to hear their grievances are going to be heard, I think, throughout this entire process.
And so I think it is important.
And I think this is very much a court of public opinion, if nothing else.
There's no punishments.
There's no, this is really what it's important for about hearing the facts.
Yeah.
And if we, if we want this country to move forward and start to heal from the experiences of COVID, I think this is the starting point.
Well, Tom, those are some very thoughtful and philosophical comments.
I'm so glad you're here.
I'm so glad you're a witness.
Stay point for one second.
We're going to run.
Olivia, do we have the clip?
Yeah, we do.
So you were referring to the legal dream team who was representing, and one of your lawyers made some thoughtful remarks.
And we'll play that and we'll call it a commercial.
And that'll get you a chance to gracefully move up to this chair.
Listen, we're still setting up our living room studio here, so give us a break.
Hear the Evidence00:02:44
But I'm kidding around.
It's nice to have you on our first day.
I'm very pleased with how the live stream is going.
More than 2,000 contemporaneous viewers.
And we're just getting started.
And we're going to be here for six weeks.
We've got 15 different journalists who are going to rotate through.
We're bringing journalists, not just from our Toronto office and our Ottawa team, but Key and Simone came all the way from Calgary.
Alexa Lavoie is going to come.
Of course, she's based in Montreal.
Lincoln J.
We have so many people who were part of the trucker convoy coverage who know this is an important second part of it.
So thanks for joining us.
Let's play that video by your lawyer, Brendan Miller.
Right?
That's the name of the lawyer.
Let's play it right now.
Take a look.
Good morning.
My name is Brendan Miller of Foster LLP and I am counsel to Freedom Corp, which is an organization that represents the protesters of which attended Ottawa in January and February of 2022.
My colleague, Ms. Bathsheba Vandenberg of Foster LLP, is my co-counsel on this matter, as well as the solicitors of record, both Mr. Keith Wilson, King's Counsel, as well as Ms. Eva Chipiuk, who is counsel to the convoy.
With respect to sort of everyone's given an overview of the theory of their case, it is our view that there was no justification whatsoever to invoke the Emergencies Act.
The Emergencies Act requires several things.
One, it could be invoked due to espionage and sabotage.
Are you going to hear any evidence about espionage and sabotage?
The answer to that is no.
Two, it could be invoked on the basis of clandestine or deceptive foreign influence or foreign influence that involves a threat to a person.
Are you going to hear evidence about that?
The answer to that is no.
It also could be invoked on the basis of threats or use of acts of serious violence against persons or property.
Are you going to hear evidence of violence against persons or property?
The answer is no.
Lastly, it can also be invoked if there is a group or persons trying to destroy or overthrow by violence the system of government of Canada.
Are you going to hear evidence about individuals trying to do that?
The answer is no.
And the answer is, is that there was no reasonable and probable grounds to invoke the Emergencies Act and that the government exceeded their jurisdiction, both constitutionally and legislatively, in doing so.
Threats and Violence Invoked00:03:49
Thank you.
Well, that's a very interesting comment, isn't it?
Sheila, what do you think of that?
I thought he was great.
He laid it bare.
All the things that restrains the government in the Emergencies Act from just whipping out this piece of legislation willy-nilly and stomping all over the civil liberties of Albertans, but Canadians writ large.
There's no proof of any of it.
There's no proof of any of it.
And yet in the government's response, they say the measures that were taken were tailored such that any effects on charter rights were reasonable and proportionate.
Yeah.
Well, there's going to be some strong lawyers and strong witnesses in the weeks ahead.
We're going to be here to cover it journalistically during the day and each night.
It is my ambition that we have a live stream.
We've got a great team of citizen journalists.
And frankly, a lot of our team fused together.
We became a team during the crisis of covering the trucker con war.
When I think to the people we hired on the fly, people who joined us in an emergency state, this company, Rebel News, has the size that it has.
Like when we started the pandemic, we had about 30 people.
Now we have about double that.
Covering the pandemic was important, covering the lockdowns was important, but covering the truckers was our time to shine because our motto, telling the other side of the story, because of our style, citizen journalism, because of our promise, no government money.
And it was the confluence of those factors that allowed us to cover the trucker component a way no one else could.
And it is my hope that we tap into the same values and the same spirit and rely on the same Rebel News citizen journalism team to give you outstanding coverage in the next six weeks.
So Sheila, I know you're going to hold the fort from out west there.
I'll be in Toronto or Ottawa or flying around.
I'm going to do my best to come by the Airbnb here.
We've got to give this place a nickname and we got to make sure we keep it tidy when you got a bunch of young guys all staying under one roof for weeks at a time.
We got to make sure that it remains tidy and hospitable to our, yes, I'm joking around, but it's going to be a lot of fun.
But it's actually deadly serious because the matter we are convened to describe fun is not an acceptable word when our reporter Alexa Lavoie was shot in the leg by a riot gun when RCMP horses stomped on peaceful protesters and the RCMP joked about it.
When 200 people had their bank accounts seized, when people were arrested for essentially political crimes and jail, there's nothing fun about that.
We're going to have, we're going to be happy warriors, I guess is a phrase I like to say.
We like our craft and we like living up to our mission of telling the other side of the story, but we are not here for fun.
We are here because a terrible thing happened in our country and we need to hold our powerful political leaders to account, even if the rest of the media is just sucking up, trying to get their next media bailout.
Last word to you, Sheila.
Our presence in Ottawa at this commission is so important.
It is day one, and we've already seen how important to enforcing the government narrative the mainstream media was.
Their inaccurate reporting closed the circuit that allowed the liberals to do what they did to so many Canadians.
Fake news, the government reacted to fake news, to things that they knew were fake, and then the mainstream media quietly retracts and washes their hands of the mess.
This is why we are so important in this story.
We have to be the counterbalance to this mess.
Sheila Out West00:00:31
Yeah.
Well, Sheila, great to see you.
Thanks for holding the fork and joining me on the live stream.
Thanks to our team here in Ottawa: Efrain Oswaldo Flores-Lonsanto, William Diasbertiom, Kean Simoni, our team in Toronto, who I think is Olivia Breen.
There might be other people there as well, and I thank them.
Sheila out west, and all of you at home who make this possible because we are 100% crowdfunded.
We take no money from mega corporations, no oligarchs, and most importantly, no government funding.