Ezra Levant critiques the UN’s Australian ad campaign urging public skepticism of unverified sources while pushing its own fact-checking site, shareverify.au, linked to vaccine narratives and framed as an "information war." He examines Canada’s 2022 Freedom Convoy, where Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act—freezing bank accounts of 200 families—despite Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson’s testimony of peaceful cooperation and no insurrection. Tow truck drivers refused to move vehicles without violence, yet police claimed no need for martial law; Conservative MPs like Michael Barrett and Eric Duncan called it excessive. Levant argues the act was politically motivated, not a legal necessity, and that Trudeau prioritized punishment over resolution, mirroring global trends of overreach in protests. [Automatically generated summary]
I'm going to interview my friend Andrew Lawton about the Trucker Commission of Inquiry.
But first, I'm going to show you something really weird that was sent to us in our tips email hotline.
Ads posted in a subway tram, paid for by the United Nations, telling you not to trust anyone or anything without verifying them.
I dig into it.
I go to the website and I try to make heads and tails of this.
It's just creepy and weird, and I don't like it one bit.
I'll take you through it and I'll show you the photos in that subway car.
That's why I want you to get to the video version of this podcast.
Go to RebelNewsPlus.com, click subscribe.
You get the video version of the podcast so you can see what I'm talking about.
Eight bucks a month.
You get my show every weeknight.
Plus, we have four weekly shows.
That's 36 episodes a month just for eight smackers.
And by the way, we need the money because we don't take any money from Trudeau.
We're completely independent.
We depend on you, which is how we can be free.
All right, here's today's show.
Tonight, the United Nations rolls out an ad campaign telling you who you should or should not believe.
It's October 18th, and this is the Ezra Levant show.
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
There's a lot of news in Canada, and we're covering it.
I think the most important story is the Trucker Commission of Inquiry in Ottawa.
Misinformation and Good Faith00:15:03
We're covering that intensively.
We're live tweeting it, by which I mean we're commenting on it in real time.
And we're live streaming it, by which I mean we're just literally streaming the real-time video of the full proceedings.
We're also doing special reports.
And each night we have our own live stream broadcast where we go over the day's highlights.
That's all at the website, truckercommission.com.
I think we're covering this more intensively than anyone else in the country.
Now, in a moment, I'll interview my friend Andrew Lawton from True North, who has been covering it too.
And of course, our friends from the Democracy Fund were there.
Here's Alan Honor, a TDF lawyer in action today.
You told us earlier today, where evidence came out that these protesters, they were nasty, they were hateful, and they were vulgar.
Is that right?
Yes.
And you said that you saw or you said that they had ripped masks off of people.
Yes.
Did you actually see that?
No, I saw it reported in the media.
Okay.
There is still other news in other places and we're covering other news too, of course.
And some of our top talent has just been in Berlin, Germany for the World Health Organization conference out there.
Just great work.
Here's some new clips from them.
Okay.
Mr. Tedros, how are you?
How are you, Mr. Tedros?
If you could do lockdowns again, would you do that?
If you could do lockdowns again, would you support them?
I'm sorry, please.
Mr. Tedros now.
Please do lockdowns again.
Would you support them?
That's what you got for unelected, unaccountable.
Fearcats.
Heading in there to the WHO conference, the World Health Summit.
There wasn't anything about sort of the other side to lockdowns, like losing jobs and businesses.
Do you think that that should be represented in this event?
No, you've got to focus on one thing.
What's focusing on solutions, not on the victims and on the disadvantages we've brought.
And so what solutions do you think are most important to focus on?
Vaccination and developing of new products.
I can tell you the best is yet to come from them.
And we have some explosive footage that we will share with you probably next week.
But I want to show you something odd that I saw in my email box today.
It was a tip from an Australian viewer.
I've hidden his last name.
I'm not sure if he wants privacy.
He says, Hi there.
I'm a frequent watcher of Rebel News as well as other outlets.
I found this hilarious and disturbing on the Canberra light rail system today.
Seems recent, but not sure if it has been sent to you and if it exists elsewhere in Australia.
These bizarre ad posters about misinformation, and funnily enough, a global symbol in the corner.
I didn't scan the QR code on the ad, but feel free to do so from the pictures.
Should work.
Maybe it's worthy of attention.
Maybe not, but I think it's dangerous to believe.
A group that says, Trust us, we tell you the truth.
Anyways, keep up the great work.
Continue to work with integrity and peace.
Kind regards, Luke.
And he sent these photos.
Now, the first one's weird, don't you think?
Fake news.
Spoiled houseplants become allergic to tap water.
Misinformation isn't always as easy to spot.
And then you can see some symbols there.
That one on the left is the United Nations symbol.
And then this weird double check mark symbol, and then a website shareverify.au and a scannable QR code.
And I checked it.
It goes to the same place.
That's weird.
That's a pretty dumb ad, I think.
What even is the meaning of it?
What are you trying to learn from?
What do they want you to learn from that?
I don't know.
There's a couple more photos that Luke sent, that UN symbol and that double check mark symbol.
And then another ad that says, every day is April Fool's Day when it comes to information online.
Always verify what you read online because not everything is true.
Now, of course, that's a truist.
That's trite.
Of course, it's pretty banal.
Some things aren't true.
We know that.
Some things online aren't true, of course.
Always verify what you read online.
Now, I'm not sure if that's possible, is it?
How can you verify everything always?
You can't.
You have to trust some people.
And we learn over time, we remember things through good experiences and bad experiences.
We see patterns.
This guy's a liar, I've come to know.
This guy's pretty honest, I've come to know.
This gal admits to making mistakes and tries to correct them.
I like that.
This guy takes government money and seems to parrot their line.
I mean, we literally cannot verify always what we see online.
The entire world comes to us through the online.
Everything we do or see or read is online.
It's as absurd to say verify everything online as it would be to say verify everything in your entire life.
You can't verify the whole world.
Sorry, that's just absurd.
You cannot.
You don't have the time or the resources or the skills or the interest.
So we develop shortcuts.
We come up with patterns.
That's part of being intelligent people.
Based on what you know, do you trust, say, the United Nations?
I can't even spit the question out without laughing.
Because that's who paid for these ads bizarrely.
The United Nations is paying for ads in Australian subway cars about not trusting things online.
Okay, but what if I don't trust the UN?
Because I know better.
I mean, the UN itself is not trustworthy.
It's full of dictatorships, for example.
They take away civil liberties from their people and they lie about it.
Even their Human Rights Council, the UN, is stacked with human rights violators.
Does the Trust No On motto apply to the UN too?
But I actually clicked on that link they advertised.
I scanned the QR code and it took me to a number of pages.
I was poking around.
This is the main one.
And naturally, it's about vaccines.
They're obsessed with vaccines, aren't they?
I mean, just Google Bill Gates gift to UN.
I just typed that in and Googled it, and you'll get a sense of why the UN is obsessed with vaccines.
Bill Gates gives them billions of dollars to promote his interests and causes and foundations and his businesses.
And he is obsessed with vaccines, so you have to be too, because the UN says so and you can trust them, right?
Or can we verify what they have to say before we trust them?
You can pretty quickly see that this isn't just about a selfless pursuit of the truth.
It's about an information war, a battle on for your mind, as Alex Jones might say.
Here's a page on that website the UN is promoting using evidence-based insights to create behavior change.
Oh, okay.
So they just want to change your behavior.
They want to manipulate you.
That's what they're saying.
That's what this is about.
It's not about the pursuit of truth.
It's about manipulating you.
It's about allies and enemies.
Are you with them?
Are you pro-UN?
Are you pro-Bill Geitz?
Then you're a friend.
But if you're an enemy, watch out.
Watch out.
If you get offside, then you're in for a fight.
Fighting misinformation where it happens, striking first and offend.
That's so butch.
Strike the enemy.
Except if the misinformation is from the UN and their World Health Organization and the vaccine companies, don't strike them.
Thing that the citizens of the United States right now should be worried about.
There's no doubt that we knew that we would get cases here.
There is no need to change anything that you're doing on a day-by-day basis.
You do those things, masks, no crowds, physical distance, personal hygiene.
No doubt you're going to be able to turn these things around.
When you're in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better and it might even block a droplet, but it's not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is.
Make sure you wear a mask.
So you wear a mask, then you put a cloth mask over, which actually is much better.
Another coronavirus that obviously jumped from an animal species.
We don't know exactly how that happened.
We have not ruled out the possibility that there could have been a leak from the lab.
Should we have any worries about walking by someone on the street who may be unvaccinated?
Not at all.
I would have no concern walking down the street past a person who's not been vaccinated and even a person who's been infected because the protection is really quite substantial.
We do know that the science shows now that even people who are vaccinated and get a breakthrough infection can transmit.
Yeah, funny thing about misinformation, it's always the other guy that's guilty of it, says the UN.
The UN wants you to take a pledge to fight their information enemies.
Did you know you have to pledge to support the UN?
They want you to.
They had these videos that they're promoting on this website.
Now, here's a video that's been up for a year.
You can see it has had a grand total of 337 views.
That makes me deeply happy.
I'm serious.
Now, the video says you're an emotional train wreck who believes everything you see, so you should be scared.
Take a look.
Even is there advice or takeaway there?
That feels like a child's video, but it doesn't even make sense.
Here's another video that's a little bit more grown up.
It has, I'm delighted to tell you, in a year, 340 views.
Desinformação é o maior monstro que a gente tem que combater hoje em dia.
Desinformação é aquela peça que foi criada para tentar te enganar.
If it's too good to be true, it is very likely that it is false.
Lo que sabemos sobre la desinformación es que una de las razones de su éxito es que apela a nuestras emociones.
Eso es peligroso, sobretodo cuando tiene que ver con falsas curas o tratamientos.
A lot of the time, misinformation is shared by people who are sharing it in good faith.
So, a lot of people share these pieces of misinformation out of genuine concern.
It can be anybody, it can come from anyone, even people like us can fall for misinformation.
Check in with yourself and think, Who shared this?
And is this?
Do I think this is real?
The more that we can do this, me, you, all of us, the more that we can stop harmful information impacting lives in ways that make them worse.
Pause.
Pause and take care before you share.
Too good to be true?
Don't believe things that are too good to be true, people, like the claim that vaccines have a 90% effectiveness rate, like the claim that vaccines stop you from transmitting the virus.
That kind of good, too, too good to be true.
But how can we verify false statements like that if social media companies, including the ones that help sponsor this site, ban us from having full debates about them?
How can you discuss if something's true or not?
Pause and take care before you share.
What on earth does that mean?
That really they really think you're a foolish child.
This is the website promoted with ads in an Australian site.
Take care before you share.
They talk about emotional manipulation, beware of that.
But that's what they trade in.
That one irritating guy from their video, Tommy Shane.
Who is he?
I googled him, Tommy Shane.
He's with First Draft, a self-righteous fact-checking truth soldier for the UN.
I skimmed their website, it was too boring to read much more.
I read their impact report.
Here's what they said in a recent report: they said, The year opened with a distressing confirmation of how lies, conspiracy theories, and radicalization can lead to democracy-shaking violence.
The January 6th siege of the U.S. Capitol, then the onslaught of vaccine disinformation showed how vulnerable critical healthcare systems are to bad information.
Sorry, you're the crazy one, mate.
You're the emotionally manipulative one, mate.
You should pause and take care before you share.
I saw this weird line in his report: Pro-Russia networks are driving anti-Pfizer vaccine disinformation.
What is that true?
Is that the reason people are skeptical of mRNA vaccines by Pfizer because Russia did it?
Is that really fact-checking?
Is that really why people are mad at Pfizer?
So, it's got nothing to do with saying, Oh, I don't know, Pfizer paying the largest healthcare fine, their largest fraud settlement in U.S. history, $2.3 billion for lying about their drugs.
It's not that it's Russia, Russia, Russia.
So, I clicked on their truth link.
This is the guy the UN says we should believe because he's verified.
And I got this page.
So, I'm following the UN's advice.
And I came to this page: banned sites and pro-Russian networks are driving anti-Pfizer vaccine disinformation.
Highly misleading articles framing Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine as an unsafe experiment for guinea pigs were spread across both fringe and mainstream social media platforms.
I'll read some more.
To de-platform disinformation websites and key players within Russia's disinformation and propaganda ecosystem are largely behind the false narrative on fringe platforms that the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine is experimental and its recipients are guinea pigs.
Collectively, they facilitated the spread of the experimental narrative across multiple languages and larger social networks.
The narrative now exists alongside and feeds into other misinformation narratives surrounding the mRNA-based vaccine.
Well, I should tell you that Pfizer's drug is experimental.
That is not up for debate.
That's a fact.
That's why it needs the emergency use authorization.
It hasn't finished its clinical trials.
Normally, drugs don't get to the market for years.
They have to be tested.
Now, people aren't really becoming guinea pigs.
That's an animal.
But it's a metaphor because guinea pigs are often used to test drugs on before they test it on humans.
So, of course, we're not actually guinea pigs, but it's a turn of a phrase.
To be a guinea pig means to have something tested on you.
It's obviously a fair comment because these drugs have not finished their clinical trials.
Now, I have no idea if Russia doesn't like Pfizer.
I don't know what angle they would have in all that, but I've never read a single word from a Russian website about Pfizer.
I don't care what Russia has to say about Pfizer.
And the story starts off by saying that the Russian sites have been deplatformed as in hidden or canceled.
Government Fears Unfounded00:16:43
So what are they banging on about?
Talk about weird.
Frankly, this feels like misinformation.
Whether or not Pfizer vaccines are good or bad is a debate that we should have, though these folks don't want us to have it.
They're trying to win that debate by saying anyone who criticizes Pfizer is a Russian agent.
That's just trying to cut off debate before it begins by saying if you doubt this vaccine by an American company ordered by American and Canadian politicians into the arms of American and Canadian citizens using a new technology that has not been tried before, if you have concerns about this, well, you're just a Russian agent.
Yeah, no, that's actually disinformation.
And this first draft fact checker, come to think of it, I've never heard of him before.
Maybe I should follow the UN's advice after all and verify their lies before I believe them.
What a bunch of weirdness this anti-disinformation scam is.
Free government money sloshing around, globalist agendas, an obsession with promoting vaccines.
What a bunch of kooks they are.
Yet they're the ones telling you to doubt yourself and what you think.
You shouldn't doubt yourself, or at least you shouldn't doubt everything in the world, which is what these people literally told you to do.
They want you to distrust your own eyes.
They want you to ignore everyone else except them.
It's like Jacinda Ardern, the globalist socialist from New Zealand, said.
The most up-to-date information daily.
You can trust us as a source of that information.
You can also trust the Director General of Health and the Ministry of Health.
For that information, do feel free to visit at any time to clarify any rumor you may hear, covid19.gobt.nz.
Otherwise, dismiss anything else.
We will continue to be your single source of truth.
We will provide information frequently.
We will share everything we can, everything you are, else you see a grain of salt.
And so I really ask people to focus.
So this gracious example of that appears to be this text which originated in Malaysia and has kind of become a viral hope in Australia and in New Zealand.
How irresponsible is it the people that are sharing that news of a lockdown imminent in New Zealand?
Yeah, and look, that's the kind of thing that adds to the anxiety that people feel.
So I continue to share the message: New Zealanders must prepare, but do not panic.
Prepare.
And when you see those messages, remember that unless you hear it from us, it is not the truth.
And I really ask people, just visit covid19.govt.eng.
It has all of the up-to-date information.
And we will continue to provide everything you need to know.
Yeah, sister, I think I'm going to pause and verify that lie.
Thank you very little.
Stay with us for more.
People started to realize this was turning into a very volatile situation when we started seeing fireworks going off and hot tubs brought in and the behavior I told you about those four or five incidents.
And the public who are living here understood fully that this was a horrific situation.
And the sooner it got resolved, the better it was for everyone.
That's a clip from the Trucker Commission.
As you know, Justin Trudeau is required to submit to a judicial inquiry about his use of the Emergencies Act, the former martial law that he invoked in February, when he panicked because the truckers and their hot tubs and bouncy castles.
Well, suspending civil liberties is a grave thing, and the law had built into it the requirement for hearings.
What troubles me is that Trudeau issued terms to the judicial inquiry that demanded that they focus on the truckers, not on him.
Although he's the one who invoked the Emergencies Act, the Commission has been directed by Trudeau, as you can see in their mandate letter, to examine the motives and the communications and the funding of the truckers.
What's that got to do with Trudeau suspending our civil liberties?
And of course, disinformation and foreign meddling, which we both know are hoaxes.
Well, despite that, I have a flicker of hope that this judicial inquiry will do the right thing.
I was there in Ottawa for a day.
We have a team there permanently.
For six weeks, we've rented an Airbnb just a stone's throw from the commission, where we'll have people around the clock covering the story and live streaming it.
But we're not the only game in town.
I'm delighted to see other skeptics, critics, independent-minded people covering the story.
And you know that our friend Andrew Lawton would be all over this.
This is his thing.
He's got the best-selling book in Canada right now about the truckers.
Without further ado, let me bring on air our friend Andrew Lawton from True North.
Andrew, it's great to see you.
Hey, always good to be here, Ezra.
You know, you were such an important journalist during the lockdown, sorry, the trucker convoy itself.
You've written a best-selling book on the subject.
And now I am so glad that you are live tweeting the commission's.
Our Sheila Gunn Reed is too, between the two of you, I feel like I'm right there covering it.
Tell me a little bit about today.
And then once we get some of today's news out, I'd like to back the camera out a little bit and get your feelings about the commission itself.
I want to be a little bit hopeful about it.
And I want to know if you think I'm being naive to think that this is an open-minded commission.
But first, what happened today in the commission?
So the focus today was actually on Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson, who was of the three levels of government, the one that was probably the most directly affected by this protest, given that it was happening in his city.
But he took the stand, spoke a lot about insurrection and the horrors of dance parties and raves.
And interestingly enough, and I have a clip of it if you're interested in it, the fact that Ottawa never asked for the Emergencies Act.
They didn't ask the government on it.
They didn't offer any advice.
And they weren't even advised on, let alone consulted on, the federal government invoking it in the first place.
Yeah, let's play that clip right now and take a look.
Now, on February 14th, we know that the Emergencies Act was invoked.
Were you consulted on the invocation of the Emergencies Act before it was invoked?
No, I wasn't.
Did the city request that it be invoked?
No.
Did the city weigh in on whether it was required, necessary, or needed?
Well, when it was released, I think, like most people, very few people knew exactly what the Emergencies Act was, to be perfectly honest.
I remember growing up in Quebec with the War Measures Act was and the implications that had for the province of Quebec and the rest of the country.
But no one had raised the Emergencies Act with us.
But when it was invoked and I was briefed on what its powers were, I thought this is a very positive step to getting this situation resolved once and for all because of the provisions in the Act.
So I very much supported it.
And I was, as you may recall, the current chair of the police service board, Eliel Chantir, and I sent a letter to the Prime Minister thanking him for invoking the act because it actually acted as the catalyst for us to move forward and get that whole situation in the downtown core resolved once and for all and give people their street and their homes back.
You know, Andrew, it is not surprising to me that Jim Watson, I mean, he's a liberal mayor, he's not to my taste, but he's a fairly normal guy.
I disagree with some of the things he says, but the idea that he would reach for martial law to handle some noisy but lawful truckers.
By the way, by the time they brought in the Emergencies Act, the honking had long since stopped.
They, you know, local residents went to court, got a judge to issue injunctions saying no more honking, and it ended.
That was long gone by the time the Emergencies Act was in place.
I think that's why Jim Watson, like the rest of the country, was stunned when Trudeau invoked it because there literally was no need for it, was there?
No, and Jim Watson's a bit interesting because he's not popular to a lot of the convoy people.
His rhetoric about the Freedom Convoy and a lot of the fake stories and fake narratives that have been purveyed, he himself has talked about.
But at the same time, he also did something Justin Trudeau didn't do and the provincial government didn't do, which is allow his office to actually have a conversation with them.
And near the end of the protest, there was that deal that was reached between the city of Ottawa and convoy organizers to move trucks onto Wellington Street.
So the city of Ottawa and Jim Watson, whatever their shortfalls are in other areas, did something that the federal government wouldn't do, which is actually have a conversation with these people.
And that's such a critical point because the whole point of the Emergencies Act is that it is meant to be there when all other means have been exhausted, when existing laws are incapable of achieving the desired outcome.
In this case, the federal government wouldn't even engage.
They wouldn't even have that discussion.
But Ottawa did, and it was bearing fruit just before the Emergencies Act came into play.
And I think that that is no coincidence.
One of the things we learned today is that Jim Watson's office, the mayor's office, who was engaging productively, they say, they acknowledge that the truckers were negotiating in good faith, that they were moving trucks around, moving out of the residential areas, keeping lanes free.
They were moving trucks when requested.
Jim Watson was actually getting his hands dirty and making things happen.
And he had the honesty to acknowledge the truckers were working in good faith.
I think that was precisely the problem, Andrew.
I think that Justin Trudeau wanted an insurrection.
He wanted a dramatic moment like in the U.S. They had their January 6th insurrection, according to the Democrats.
Trudeau wanted that up here.
He didn't want peaceful cooperation and a managed protest.
wanted something shocking.
And isn't it true that we saw today testimony and documents showing that there really wasn't there was an agreement to manage things?
And it was precisely when that agreement started to be implemented that Trudeau pulled the trigger on the martial law.
It was almost like Trudeau didn't want this thing to end peacefully, right?
No, because the whole point of the deal was to get the trucks that had been on residential streets onto Wellington Street, where there are no residences.
It's just government offices, most of which were empty because of COVID.
And that was so key because that would have made it the federal government's problem.
And it was interesting that the breakdown in this deal happened after the Emergencies Act was invoked.
And more importantly, one thing we learned from the testimony is that it broke down because of police and parliamentary security, not because of protesters.
You know, Andrew, you've really covered this well.
I want to give a shout out to your book, The Freedom Convoy, The Inside Story of Three Weeks That Shook the World.
Isn't that the truth?
Number one Amazon bestseller.
We're so proud of you.
Thank you for that.
Here's my theory on the whole thing.
I think you and I are in general agreement about what happened in February.
Peaceful protest.
Crime actually fell in Ottawa.
There was such a demand for crime that they made up hoaxes like they're burning down an apartment.
There was an attempted arson.
Any crime, any natural crime in the city was attributed falsely to the truckers.
They were so desperate to find acts of violence.
There wasn't.
I was there, I listened to Zexie Lee talk about violence, violence, violence.
When she was pressed, did you actually observe any?
She said no, other than her friends throwing eggs at the truckers.
So I think that the truckers were enormously successful in breaking the narrative that Trudeau wanted.
But that's what the media party wants to do with this trucker commission of inquiry.
They want to use it as a do-over, as a chance to revise history, because I think they lost that first round.
I mean, let me put it this way, that trucker convoy broke the spell of unanimity in this country.
We soon saw the federal mandates leaving.
Jason Kenney was deposed.
Aaron O'Toole was deposed.
These truckers did more than anything.
I think Trudeau and his bought and paid for media are trying to use this commission of inquiry to rewrite history.
What do you think?
I would agree.
And I think that it's interesting as we go through this process.
And remember, it's going to be a couple of weeks before we hear from anyone that was actually involved in the convoy.
So the first things people are hearing are about the government's fears of violence, the government's fears of insurrection, this idea that it was an insurrection, this idea that there was organized crime embedded at one intersection they were talking about today.
These things are really their attempt to make it seem like things were a lot worse than they are.
And everyone can talk about the theoretical risk of violence.
No one can point to any actual violence.
You know, one thing that I reminded my viewers about yesterday, and I know you emphasize this, is the whole question that the country has gathered in this commission to answer is not, did anything bad happen?
I'm sure there were some bad things.
Life is tough.
It's not even, did any crime happen?
I think the answer is generally no, just a lot of parking infractions and hornhonking.
The question is, was the invocation of martial law justified?
And let me put on the screen the very clear test in the law.
Is there a danger to Canadian citizens or is there a risk of violating the sovereignty of this country?
And look at that keyword, and.
And these cannot be resolved by current law.
So not only does it have to be extremely dangerous or an extreme violation of national sovereignty, but whatever the terror is, cannot be resolved by existing laws.
And that, to me, makes this or should make this a slam dunk.
There was no reason for martial law.
You could have dealt with this with local police force.
The OPP testified that they were able to clear the Windsor Ambassador Bridge with Detroit in two days without violence, without the Emergencies Act.
And all the complaints we're hearing from these Ottawa witnesses about how it hurt their feelings, I don't even know if those are dangers or crimes, but there was nothing that martial law could do for them that regular police couldn't.
Yeah, and I think you're very right to point that out.
And I want to re-emphasize that point, if I may, here, because when it comes to constitutional challenges, there's a murkiness to it.
We know that courts have oftentimes been very deferential to governments.
When it comes to the criminal cases, again, there's a murkiness of that.
We don't yet know how the criminal charges against Tamara Leach or Chris Barber or any of the others will unfold.
This is a very simple issue.
And it's noteworthy that governments and Ottawa representatives and Canadian government representatives are really muddying the waters here.
We're not talking about whether the convoy was a group of upstanding citizens or not.
We're talking about whether the convoy was disruptive or not.
We're not talking about whether people's lives were in some ways affected on either side of that things.
We're talking about that very key question.
Was this a national emergency as defined by the Emergencies Act?
And I mean, forgetting for a second all the definitions about sabotage and espionage and threats to sovereignty, which I think are laughable to apply to this Bouncy Castle rebellion, we're talking about something that cannot be effectively dealt with under any other law of Canada.
And it is inconceivable to me that that case can be made by the government because they didn't even try to use other laws and other means, and even things that don't involve the law, like having a conversation.
Yeah.
Can't Be Punished Under Law00:08:07
You know what?
Let me just check.
I did a tweet today referencing a particular section of the criminal code.
Let me find it here.
Yep.
I should tell you that the idea of commandeering tow trucks, which was one of the things that was referred to, we needed the Emergencies Act because tow truck drivers simply wouldn't give their tow trucks.
That is allowed under the criminal code.
You know, in TV movies where you see a policeman pull over a civilian vehicle and say, I need this car, get out.
That actually has the force of law.
I know it sounds crazy, but police can commandeer a private vehicle and they can commandeer any service, including tow trucks, under the criminal code.
Now, we don't like it to happen a lot.
It's an abuse of people's liberty or their private property or their business.
But the criminal code of Canada gives police the right to let them commandeer your stuff.
And, you know, if we don't like that, we should change the criminal code.
The only justification I have ever heard, and I heard it again today in the commission, was we couldn't get the tow trucks to help.
Well, the criminal code lets police do that anyways.
They didn't need martial law for that, Andrew.
I think when you strip away all of these things, what we're left with that the government couldn't do was financial penalties, freezing bank accounts, taking away business licenses, taking away insurance policies.
That's the elephant in the room here.
That's what the government wanted that it needed the Emergencies Act to do.
You know, but none of those things remedied the problem.
None of those, like seizing bank accounts of 200 families, the names chosen from CBC's malicious coverage.
How does that move a truck?
You know, seizing bank accounts.
It absolutely doesn't, but they wanted to do it.
They wanted to punish these people.
And that was why, to go back to that earlier point, that window closing by the trucks voluntarily moving to Wellington was so dangerous to the liberals.
Yeah.
It is obvious that's what Trudeau wanted.
He wanted to demonize, marginalize, scare, traumatize his enemies.
And by his enemies, he means everyone who opposed him.
The 200 bank accounts that were seized, they were not all truckers.
Some of them were just donors.
And of course, the out-of-control acting police chief in Ottawa saying, if you donated to these truckers, I'm coming for you.
You know, one of the things I learned is that the reason why the older, the former police chief was sacked is that he was so obviously in the way of the prime minister.
Here's a clip testifying to that.
They fired a police chief.
And by the way, the first black police chief in Ottawa history, they fired a police chief because he would not be as abusive an authoritarian as Justin Trudeau's taste.
Take a look at this clip.
You had no plan in that period 8 to 13th.
No plan was possible in your view without collaboration, and collaboration was late in coming.
Is that a fair summary?
It's a very, very summary.
And may I respectfully add that I believe that, you know, there's a lot of armchair quarterbacking.
And in hindsight, I'll give one example.
A member of council was tweeting, no mass arrests.
That was at the start.
The chief of police was telling us the charter rights.
He told the mayor, the mayor has no authority to overrule the chief of police on police operations.
He told the mayor, the charter dictates that we allow this demonstration.
Clearly, we have learned all everyone, the city, OPS, our partners have learned that the world of policing has changed.
And this ended up being almost an immovable armada.
It wasn't just individual trucks coming to Ottawa.
It was the collective potential impact of all of those trucks, you know, in the parliamentary precinct bleeding into the residential district that made it so complex and unprecedented.
You know, we talk about authoritarian regimes in Iran and in Russia and in China, and that's good because those are authoritarian places.
But the idea that a prime minister could express impatience with a police chief and have him turfed is truly un-Canadian.
But I promise you, tonight, Global News, Toronto Star, won't even mention that, Andrew.
No, it's been really fascinating to see just how eager everyone is to point the finger at someone else.
And you can start to see who the convenient scapegoats are: Ottawa police, Peter Slowly.
These people are having fingers pointed to them by the government of Canada, by the city of Ottawa.
And ultimately, even if you accept that the government dropped the ball and should have moved in more quickly, incompetence is not in the criteria justifying the Emergencies Act.
It's not about what a bunch of people were unable or incapable of doing.
It's about whether the laws available to them could have been used.
And the laws could, even if no one knew what to do.
You know, there's this one moment I want to close with this.
Here's a clip of Mayor Jim Watson.
He was saying that the city of Ottawa was starting to look ridiculous, that people were losing confidence in them.
And by the way, I think he's right, certainly in the eyes of the thin-skinned, microaggression-oriented political class.
But losing face, being embarrassed, being shown to be incompetent, those are not national emergencies that require martial law.
Those are political prices to be paid or not.
That's not a reason to lift our civil liberties.
Here's a quick clip of that.
To say these acts in the occupation are having damaging and long-term impacts on the well-being of our residents.
People are living in fear and are terrified, and they're now being subjected to the non-stop honking of large trucks for nine days, which is tantamount to psychological warfare.
Then you say, given the scope and scale of the armada of large trucks that are now occupying our downtown core, and this is now on the second page, we are writing to you to ask today for your help to secure 1,800 officers to quell the insurrection that the Ottawa Police Service is not able to contain.
And then further down, you say, we must do everything in our power to take back the streets of Ottawa and our parliamentary precinct from the criminal activity and hooliganism that has transpired over the last nine days.
We need your help to end this siege at the heart of our nation's capital and in our residential neighborhoods and to regain control of our city.
So was that description of the situation accurate as to what was happening on the ground as of February 7th?
Absolutely.
You know, I think if you just go back and look at the media coverage, the media themselves were being harassed during this whole period of time.
We now know that a number of children had to miss chemo and radiation appointments at CHEO.
The residents living on those streets having these horns honked literally 24 hours a day, seven days a week, plus the diesel fumes, plus roasting a pig on one street, bonfires, lighting off fireworks, having a dance party.
It was showing complete disrespect for the people who lived in the city of Ottawa.
The two other orders of government know that we needed their help.
Our city's back was against the wall.
We had this outrageous behavior by people who seem to have no respect for private property, public property, or the well-being of the citizens of Ottawa.
And my job as mayor was to speak out and say we have to end this, and the only way we're going to end it is with a significant increase and boost in the number of police officers.
Canadians Demand Transparency00:12:52
Andrew, it's very interesting.
I hope you continue to cover this.
We certainly will.
I have one last question for you.
How do you think the judge is handling this?
People point out that he's a liberal.
They point out the choice of witnesses here seems unusual.
But I don't want to hop to an early conclusion.
I want to hold out hope that this judge is going to do his job.
And even if he has some liberal instincts, and a lot of judges do, that he will look at this plain, plain test and say, was there truly a national danger so acute that we had to lift civil liberties?
And I hope, I don't want to be proven to be a fool, Andrew.
But in my bones, I think he's going to say there was no justification in my bones.
One thing that I'm very grateful for is that this commissioner has really made an effort to ensure that these proceedings are public.
They're live streamed.
The documents and exhibits are public.
It's available with sign language, English, French.
And one of the dangers of court proceedings is that so much of it happens behind closed doors and things that are technically public, but the public really doesn't functionally have access to.
In this case, the public is seeing what he's seeing, and the public is hearing what he's hearing.
And I think there's an accountability in that.
And I, like you, am holding out hope.
But more importantly, here, I think it's incumbent on Canadians to watch because even if for whatever reason he makes a finding that it was justified, Canadians who saw this can make their own determination at the next election.
Yeah.
Well, listen, keep up the great work.
Congrats again on your book.
I'm so glad that there is a contingent of independent media here.
And I tell you, I went home the first day I was at that commission.
And then I read the global news version and I saw the official media and I thought, was I at the same place as them?
Well, that was what happened to the convoy itself.
Yeah.
I would look on Twitter and be like, well, hang on, was I at the wrong protest?
This isn't what happened.
Yeah.
And I've never seen a greater need for independent media.
So you're there.
And I think Western Standard Online is there.
And I think Epoch Times is there.
Anyway, I'm not 100% sure, but I know there are independent voices there.
And I'm very glad of it.
Great to see you, Andrew.
Thanks for coming on the show.
Hey, thank you.
Keep up the great work.
All right.
There you have it, Andrew Lawton from True North, TNC.news.
Stay with us.
more ahead.
Hey, welcome back.
You know, it was interesting talking to Andrew Lawton.
I've been really focused on that Trucker Commission.
We've got such a great team covering it.
It's just very, very bizarre to me.
They're inviting such a strange list of witnesses.
I don't even understand it.
The first day, it was two people who witnessed nothing directly.
They just had a lot of personal complaints.
They were hypochondriacs or woke people talking about microaggressions.
They talked to a number of low-ranking politicians who really were not decision makers.
Again, they were just complaining.
It was feeling like the airing of the grievances.
It felt more like a Oprah Winfrey show than a hearing.
Today, they started to get down to brass tax and talking to the mayor at some length.
That was interesting because although he hated the truckers, he did acknowledge that they were working collaboratively and in good faith with the government.
Hardly the insurrection, riot, revolution narrative that the mainstream media has been talking about for a year, but much more importantly, as regards the purpose of the commission of inquiry, absolutely a million miles away from the level needed to invoke the emergencies act.
Now, that same mayor, Jim Watson, said he liked the invocation of the Emergencies Act, but he said why?
Because the truckers were embarrassing him as a weak mayor.
And of course, smashing them with the sledgehammer of riot police was helpful to him.
But he said he specifically said he did not ask for the Emergencies Act, and he was surprised to learn about it after the fact.
The only legal purpose of this commission of inquiry is to assess whether or not there is evidence that Trudeau had a legal rationale for pulling the martial law, pushing the martial law panic button.
And so far, he has not.
In fact, so far, every single person in authority, whether it was the government of Alberta or Saskatchewan, whether it was the Ontario Provincial Police or today, the mayor of Ottawa, every single one of them made it clear that the truckers were peaceful, acting in good faith, no violence was detected, and they were actually cooperating.
If this judge is honest, and I sure hope he is, he's got to conclude that Trudeau put this country into martial law for political reasons, not legal reasons.
And that is against the law.
That's our 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.
What's your understanding of why they were refusing to tote?
Well, there are several reasons.
The first was their own safety.
I think they felt that trying to tow a vehicle without the site being secured in amongst protesters.
You could imagine, you know, it could be quite conflictual when you're trying to take someone's truck and people are still around the trucks.
So they were concerned about that.
I think we've heard some incredibly important evidence.
What the evidence is today is about how the truckers were working with the city officials to de-escalate the situation.
I don't think they're building the case here.
There were other tools available that I think could have de-escalated the situation much better.
A lot of things the Prime Minister could have done in the first place, but the fact we were here and the fact that he even thought that data to be evoked was frustrating in itself.
Hello everyone, William Jess here with Rebel News and Today.
Let me walk you through what you need to know about day three of the Emergencies Act inquiry here in Ottawa.
The inquiry is taking place since during the peaceful Freedom Convoy that occurred back in February.
Justin Trudeau used a never-seen-before emergencies act.
This served to override all the civil liberties of the protesters that were there.
The inquiry's role is to determine whether or not the use of the act was necessary and justified.
First of all, the two people testifying were Steve Canalakos from the City of Ottawa and Chief of Staff Serge Arpin.
What's your understanding of why they were refusing to tow?
Well, there are several reasons.
The first was their own safety.
I think they felt that trying to tow a vehicle without the site being secured in amongst protesters.
You could imagine it could be quite conflictual when you're trying to take someone's truck and people are still around the trucks.
So they were concerned about that.
They were concerned about the damage potentially to their own vehicle should things get out of hand and it's a cost to their business.
Some were concerned that they do business with truckers and trucking companies and that this would damage them reputationally and they would lose business.
Some were sympathizers or supported the protests and didn't feel that they were going to offer their services to do it.
Those were generally the reasons.
Finally, my last question relates to a proposition that Council for the Government of Canada put to you in terms of enforcing the city of Ottawa's injunction.
And the suggestion was that enforcement of the injunction came in the days after the invocation of the Emergencies Act.
And my question to you is, was the city's injunction ever used as a measure?
Are you aware?
No, it wasn't used as a measure.
Okay, thank you.
Those are all my questions.
I wanted to convey to the Prime Minister's office that we needed their help.
The numbers were inconsistent.
We wanted them to know that, that we were being told about the numbers was inconsistent.
And I conveyed that, and I believe that there was a change in tone.
You know, roughly the next day, I think maybe someone realized this will have to be a team effort.
We need them.
It's clear that we need them to help end the insurgency and the demonstration.
And I guess everyone came around to the conclusion that it would be better to try to take a collaborative approach and maybe try to reduce some of the finger pointing you have.
I interviewed Freedom Convoy lawyer Keith Wilson to respond to the claims made by Canalakos.
Take a look.
So far, I think we've heard some incredibly important evidence.
What the evidence is today is about how the truckers were working with the city officials to de-escalate the situation and to reach an agreement to move the trucks out of the downtown core but for Wellington.
So the reason that's so important is that the implementation of that agreement between the truckers and the city occurred on the same weekend, the weekend of the 12th and 13th of February, which is the same weekend that the international borders opened at Windsor in Coutz.
So the only thing happening in terms of a protest that was impacting Canada was the Ottawa protests at the time on the Sunday.
And on the Monday, the truckers were successful in working with the police and the city officials to move 102 vehicles out of the downtown core, including 42 semi-trucks, 23 of which went up to Wellington.
All the other vehicles left the downtown and went to remote locations outside the city.
Two city blocks were cleared.
That was the deal being implemented.
However, the federal government and the new police chief intervened on the subsequent days and blocked any further movements of trucks, which prevented the deal from being completed.
So it really begs the question of why did the Prime Minister invoke the Emergencies Act at all?
The Public Order Emergency Inquiry isn't the only thing that's happening in Ottawa.
Members of parliament are back at work after a week off.
I was able to speak with seven Conservative MPs to get their thoughts on the Emergencies Act inquiry.
Take a look at what Michael Barrett, the shadow minister for ethics and government accountability for the CPC, Eric Duncan and Ziad Abu Taif stated.
What do you hope the findings, the outcome of the Emergencies Act Inquiry will be?
I think what a lot of people are concluding that it was absolutely unnecessary to invoke that.
I think it further stoked an already divided situation.
And we talk about the polarization in this country and people's frustration and confidence in the federal government.
I think I've seen limited clips of it so far, but I don't think they're building the case here.
There were other tools available that I think could have de-escalated a situation much better.
A lot of things the Prime Minister could have done in the first place, but the fact we were here and the fact that he even thought that data to be evoked was frustrating in itself.
What did you hope the outcome of the Emergencies Act Inquiry will be?
What did you hope the findings will be?
Well, we have to get transparency for Canadians.
The government has been trying to obstruct the truth, obstruct this process.
And so that's, you know, that's really the bottom line.
We've heard from Ontario's police force that the use of the act was not necessary for them to be able to do their job, which is a criteria for it to have been invoked.
So that tells the tale right there that what we've been saying all along, that the government did not properly invoke this act.
And so we're hoping for transparency.
It's unfortunate, but very consistent with what this government's done in the past, that it took the commissioner to have some cabinet conferences waived instead of the government being transparent and providing that to the commission, which is the basic thing that Canadians would expect when we have a situation where Canadians' bank accounts were frozen and so many civil liberties and basic freedoms that we expect as Canadians were violated by the government.
It's too harsh of a measure.
I mean, the action doesn't deserve the emergency act.
The government could have done it in a different way, more peaceful way, instead of bringing the whole...
And that tells you about only 48 hours they lost before they just remove it.
So that tells you that they were on immediately after they introduced it.
Jim Watson, the mayor of Ottawa, is testifying today on October 18th, and this will definitely be interesting to watch.