Tom Marazzo, convoy volunteer, and hosts Sheila Gunreid and William Diaz dissect Ottawa’s Public Order Emergency Commission, exposing federal and police failures to engage protesters despite offers like emergency lanes and manual path-clearing for ambulances. Testimony reveals Ottawa police blocked deals (e.g., removing 75% of trucks from residential areas) before invoking the Emergencies Act, while veterans faced assaults—knee strikes, zapstrapping—and abandonment at -25°C despite military recruitment pleas. Sympathetic officers like Helen Brood were targeted, and tow truck companies refused to move convoy vehicles, highlighting systemic obstruction. The episode reveals Trudeau’s act as a power grab, not a solution, while questioning institutional trust amid Nuremberg Code violations for discharged soldiers. [Automatically generated summary]
I'm your host, Sheila Gunread, and I'm joined today by my co-host, William Diaz and trucker Tom Morazzo.
We've sort of shuffled our noon live stream or 10 a.m. Alberta time live stream to later on in the day because we are feverishly covering the Public Order Emergency Commission as it takes place in Ottawa for at least the next six weeks.
We've transitioned a team of journalists to working in the nation's capital to bring you the other side of the story, much the same way we did during the convoy itself.
Because you just can't trust the mainstream media.
That is more evident than ever.
They repeat the nonsense of some of these more hysterical witnesses verbatim, even though video evidence shows so much otherwise.
Guys, I'll shut up right away and I'll throw to you.
But I want to let everybody know if you want to get involved in the stream today, if you'd like to support the work that we do completely willingly, unlike what Justin Trudeau forces you to do with the mainstream media, might I suggest heading on over to Rumble or Odyssey and you can leave us a paid chat.
Paid chats at five bucks or more.
We'll do our best to address them on the stream if we have time.
William and Tom, you guys were watching today.
I was watching the thing from beginning to end.
I think I started watching at 7 a.m. my time.
It's still ongoing, if I am understanding correctly.
Yeah, well, we all are.
We have to.
It's all hands on deck right now.
What's the most incredible thing that you heard today?
William, you, then Tom?
Because I'm full of incredible things I heard today.
Honestly, today, Sheila, was such an interesting day with the commission.
We saw that, I think, for the first time since the beginning, the people that were suspicious and that weren't sure if the commission was actually going to be independent got their answers today.
We saw the commission actually going after the government, seeing did the government do everything in the power to resolve the situation without using the never seen before Emergencies Act.
And for to me, that's what struck me the most today: we saw the commission actually seeking answers as to whether or not the city did everything they could to not have to use the emergencies act.
Yeah, it was weird.
It felt like the grown-ups were around today.
Last week, it didn't feel like there were any grown-ups there.
It felt like a bunch of fragile people who are not emotionally resilient whatsoever, who would die if you misgendered them.
That's what last week felt like.
Now it feels like we have the grown-ups and people who are.
Today, we had the city manager Steve Kenilakos and Serge Arpen grown-ups.
They, you know, they talked about the effect on the city.
They were quite honest about their communications with the convoy and the convoy lawyers, but also with the feds.
But, anyways, I will ask Tom you the same question.
Did anything really stick out for you today or surprise you?
Well, I certainly think that the biggest thing that did stick out for me is just like you said, Sheila, that it was the grown-ups that were in the room.
And I have to admit, I was incredibly encouraged and pleased with the testimony that I saw coming from the two witnesses today, because it certainly is exactly in line with everything that we've been saying the entire time.
And, you know, from my point of view, it was really spectacular to me that the city of Ottawa and people say that this is the biggest protest in Ottawa history ever.
And yet, nobody wanted to talk to us.
Nobody wanted to talk to us.
And if you listen to the testimony, it was all of these conversations going back and forth amongst the government, the various levels of government.
But you didn't hear many people wanting to talk to us until you heard this morning where the Ottawa Police Services, the liaison team contacted the city manager and said he wants to have a, you know, they want to have a meeting with you.
And, you know, it's incredible to me that you've got all these Canadians, these taxpaying voter Canadians with charter rights in your city.
And after two years, nobody wanted to hear from us.
Nobody wanted to listen.
They show up on your doorstep and you still don't want to talk to them.
That to me is remarkable.
Yeah.
And I think just to add to that, you know, we saw Justin Trudeau throughout the protest.
He would never speak with you.
When James Topp held his press conference that I attended here in Ottawa, not a single liberal member of parliament went to his press conference.
Not a single one.
Yet the city manager and the city of Ottawa was open to talking to you.
So I think it shows the level of respect Justin Trudeau versus Jim Watson, regardless what we think of him, regardless what you think of the city of Ottawa, had for a convoy.
Yeah.
Yeah, I don't have a ton of respect for Jim Watson, but it sounds like he has some level-headed people around him.
And it is, I mean, isn't that the symptom of the whole convoy?
Is that you had to go all the way to Ottawa because you didn't think anyone was listening to you.
And when you finally get there, they still won't listen to you.
And the ones that do listen to you get it all wrong and they lie about you.
It was interesting to hear the timeline of events unfold.
And I think the timeline of events is going to be severely damaging for the liberals because to invoke the Emergencies Act, there has to be, you know, a very strict set of circumstances and it has to fit into a box this big.
And the convoy is all out here.
Like it's not even remotely in the box.
And one of the things that came out today was really the things that the city of Ottawa were finding difficult to deal with, those were basically resolving themselves by the 13th.
And the liberals knew that they were resolving themselves on the 13th because, as the kids say, receipts hurt didn't happen and they had receipts from Steve Kenilakos.
His name is so Greek.
It's so hard to say.
And Serge Arban.
They both communicated with the federal government, Bill Blair and old lion Marco Mendicino.
They communicated to them that a deal had been struck with the truckers to move the trucks out of the residential areas.
That was on the 13th.
They, you know, they had receipt of those emails.
Both men testified that they sent people in those offices in the minister's offices copies of the communication.
So they were well aware.
And yet, still the next day, the feds dropped the hammer.
Yeah, I think one of the things that we saw at Stay was the self-willingness of the truckers to try to resolve the situation by themselves.
They were willing to move the trucks.
That's what they wanted to do.
But one of the reasons why they couldn't is because the police was blocking both sides of Washington Street, both sides, what was blocking them from moving.
And we also saw that the truckers' lawyer, Keith Wilson, who's an incredible lawyer, I must say, that had extremely courteous exchanges with the city of Ottawa.
And everyone thought the truckers were domestic terrorists.
They were aggressive people.
They were violent people.
We saw them, first of all, being willing to help the residents of Ottawa and move their trucks from Ridea to Wellington.
And we saw their lawyer being extremely polite and nice in his exchanges, in his text message exchanges with the city of Ottawa.
I don't know if we have some of the screenshots that we saw in the commission.
It would be great if we could put them on the screen, but that was something interesting to see.
Yeah, Tom, I just want to ask you that.
I'm sure, well, you'll correct me if I'm wrong.
That must be reflective of your experience on the ground.
We had Steve Kinelakos saying that it was clear the truckers didn't want to cause any disruption in the residential streets, but they just ended up being where they were kettled.
And then they started to move the trucks out.
And then all of a sudden we see a change in leadership with the Ottawa police and then the police helping move that stopped.
So basically the truckers were kettled in these residential areas through no fault of their own.
Yes.
And this was a repetitive issue that we were facing with the city, really with the Ottawa police quite consistently.
We would at various levels, different groups within the convoy, different sections or streets would try to have this dialogue or negotiate safety issues or safety concerns with the police.
And, you know, for example, a really important thing that came up today that I heard, they were talking about these emergency safety lanes.
And we worked really hard to make sure that there was always access to emergency services vehicles.
And I remember getting to the corner there right near the byword market in that one difficult intersection.
And I was talking to one of the truckers and I said, listen, you know, you've got your like your trucks are on three different lanes abreast.
We need to move one of those and open up a guaranteed safety lane.
And he said, no, what they've done, and they did it two times, is they sat in their trucks and they listened for emergency sirens.
And if they hear a siren, they basically move the vehicle out of the way so that the emergency vehicles can get through.
And he reassured me that twice on two separate occasions, they actually had to do this to allow emergency services vehicles to get through.
So this talk about safety and all that stuff, this was a fundamental goal of all of us that were trying to coordinate the public safety aspect of this.
We had also routinely communicated this very important point to the Ottawa police services.
So they knew that the city knew through the police that we were constantly trying to be safe and responsible for the city residents of Ottawa.
We also had a lot of occasions where there was, you know, slips and falls on the ice and the truckers were there to actually provide first aid, call the ambulance and make sure that that resident was attended to.
So we've got lots of examples of that where that actually took place.
And in fact, you know, a lot of the stuff that we heard today about interruptions to, you know, garbage collection, the fire trucks, that's all completely false because, you know, at one point we created garbage collection points to make it easier for the truck, the garbage trucks to come and collect the trash.
Like we went out of our way to try to relieve a lot of the pressure on the city.
And it became very, very clear to us the evening or the day after we watched the first police services board meeting where they were talking with Diane Dean, who was still the police services board chair.
And we watched the things that she was saying to then Chief Peter Slowley.
And we were kind of horrified with what we were hearing.
And that's the night that we fundamentally realized we need to take the pressure off of the city.
And if the city doesn't feel the pressure, they can't put it back on the politicians who are then going to put that pressure onto the police.
So we were trying to avoid this.
And this is kind of an original sort of genesis of how we ended up getting the meeting with Steve Kay, was towards those efforts.
We were trying our best to work with the city, but they were very reluctant to talk to us, except Steve, recognizing the opportunity that he had.
And like you said, he was the grown-up.
He recognized the opportunity he had and he took advantage of it.
And I think we were getting the ball rolling.
I think you were.
And, you know, there's some testimony here that in hindsight, you hear it, and then afterwards, you sort of digest it and put it all together.
At the beginning of the day, we heard from Steve Kay, as you call him, Steve Kenilakos.
It's fun to say it once you figure out how to say it, by the way.
Yeah.
You know, he testified in his communications with Peter Slowly that Slowly was saying we need more cops because we can't get the truckers out without more cops.
We need help directing traffic.
And it's a big major police operation to remove all these trucks from downtown.
We don't have enough cops.
And so later on in the testimony, when we start hearing from Serge Arpin and his communications with the feds on trying to get more RCMP police resources into town, they only sent 60 additional RCMP officers when the city was begging for more cops so that they could get the trucks out.
It wasn't just for enforcement purposes, to write tickets, to shoot people with beanbags.
That's really not what they were asking for, at least maybe 50%.
I don't know about Steve Bell, but you know, they needed additional cops to get everybody out of town.
And the feds weren't sending them.
So it was Marco Mendocino and Bill Blair who were in effect inhibiting the removal of these trucks.
And then still on the 14th, they cracked down on everybody because the trucks aren't out.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, I think, Sheila, if there's one argument or argument to be made for the use of the Emergencies Act, and I don't think there is any, but if there was one to be made, it's the fact that the city and no, not the city, the prevent the federal government did not provide enough resources to the city to help deal with the protests.
I think if there's one argument to be made, I think.
You don't get to invoke the Emergencies Act because Bill Blair and Marco Mendicino are bad.
Yeah, 100%.
I don't think it's a good argument, but I'm saying if there is one argument, I don't think it's a good one at all.
I don't think there's any good argument.
But I think if there was one good argument that I would see a lawyer make is that they needed the emergencies.
Doug Ford's Misinformation Concerns00:16:01
A lawyer like Paul Chen, you know, we know him, a lawyer like Paul Chem.
I think that's one good argument that he could make to well, I'd like to raise one important issue regarding Bill Blair.
Let's remember that he was the chief of police in 2010 during the GH20 summit when that city got ripped apart.
And he was the police chief of jurisdiction over that entire operation.
And let's, you know, we're still seeing court cases dealing with that from 12 years ago.
So, you know, clearly he didn't really learn many new lessons from his experience 12 years ago.
And now he's even in a higher position authority.
Yeah, was he not kettling peaceful protesters back then?
Yes, he was.
Yes.
He just, so he just did it now with trucks instead.
Well, he brings the violence, right?
That's what he's accustomed to.
Yeah.
That's what he does.
Olivia, do we have an ad break and then we'll go into some of these clips and we'll take a look at some of these clips of the day.
Instead of us just talking about what happened, let's show everybody what happened and we've got the guys to help me analyze.
Yes.
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.
The 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 these 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 to Quebec.
There's no maple leafs west of the Manitoba borders.
Why do we have a maple leaf by unilateral decision on Canadian flags?
Think of how the American colonists were in 1775.
that's how a lot of albertans are today great yeah such a it'll be such a great movie she let that That's going to be really good.
It is.
We have 20 tickets left for our most recent Edmonton showing.
So you can, if you're interested, and I think you should be, because I'll be there, K2, our filmmaker, will be there.
Ezra will be there to answer questions.
The tickets are available at AlbertaDocumentary.com.
So no, but that's all tidied up.
Let's get into some of the clips from today.
This one was fascinating, and it's not actually from the Trucker Commission.
It's Doug Ford saying that he is standing shoulder to shoulder, I think the phrase he said, with Trudeau over the invocation of the Emergencies Act.
I'm not sure I'd want to hitch my horse to that wagon at this point in testimony, but Doug Ford did it.
Let's roll that clip.
If you can think back to February, do you think that the federal government was justified in using the Emergencies Act to lift the occupation of downtown Ottawa?
Well, we have some of the top officials with the OPP testifying.
And yes, I stood shoulder to shoulder with the Prime Minister.
These folks were, you know, camping out, everything from whirlpools, disrupting downtown, disrupting the lives of the people of Ottawa.
We've worked collaboratively with the mayor and the prime minister.
Over at the borders, they were holding up a billion dollars of trade every single day, getting across our borders.
We were getting phone calls from governors.
It's unacceptable.
Myself and I know the prime minister believe in free speech.
And if you want to protest, protest.
If you want to come down to Queen's Park and do cartwheels, but if you disrupt the lives of the people of Ottawa every single day, disrupt the lives of economic flow across our borders, I have zero tolerance for it.
Thank you.
Doug Ford, it fascinates me so much that this man calls himself a conservative, but sides with Trudeau on every possible single issue.
He sides with Trudeau here in terms of the use and the emergencies.
He doesn't push back against it.
Justin Trudeau basically campaigned with Doug Ford while Doug Ford was campaigning recently.
And also he said he talked about the coups, the coups blockade.
The coups blockade was sorted out before the emergencies act were invoked.
Yep.
Yep.
I just think I'm not sure that happened this morning, sort of as testimony was kicking off.
I wonder if Doug Ford feels that way now after today's disastrous testimony.
Yeah, he shouldn't.
Go ahead, Tom.
Yeah.
You know, I take exception to a lot of the things that he had said in there, but that's typical Doug Ford.
He always has seemed to have campaigned as a conservative, but he's always governed as a liberal anyway.
But what's concerning to me is the statement.
You know, they bring up the bridge in Windsor.
And the reality is I've got a very good friend who was there and was arrested in Windsor.
And he assured me, he's a fellow veteran.
He assured me they had one of the lanes open.
So to say that the bridge was completely shut down and interrupting billions of dollars, well, what is the Rivecan interrupted in the lives?
And what is the federal policies of this government in their failure to open up the borders and then compound that by what they've done to the truckers in this country in order to further interrupt international trade?
So, you know, these people in their hypocrisy, they just have no boundaries whatsoever.
Don't expect Doug Ford to go against the narrative of the Arrive Can Act.
It's Justin Trudeau's favorite tool ever created since he was in power.
Doug Ford's never going to speak badly against that.
No.
You know, there was at one point where one of, I think it was the lawyer for Peter Slowly, who did a great job of sort of defending his client from any, you know, criticism that he was too hard on the protesters.
Because Slowly said at one point, I think it was an email or a text message exchange that, you know, like he didn't have the right to stop people from heading downtown, that they had charter rights and they can go downtown.
They could go into the downtown core.
And it wasn't, you know, he didn't or shouldn't use that authority as police chief to stop people.
But it's interesting because Doug's for Doug Ford's government is guilty of quite a bit of misinformation regarding the protests and not just the nature of the protests, but also just how much help they said they sent.
I think Minister Sylvia Jones in Doug Ford's government told the media at one point there were 1,500 OPP officers deployed to Ottawa.
Could you imagine saying 1,500?
That's like a small Alberta town of cops just deployed there.
And Steve Kay, he said, yeah, no, that was inaccurate.
And so it looked like they like this Ottawa city officials, the good ones, were dealing with misinformation coming from both the feds, but also from Doug Ford, Trudeau's dancing partner.
No, 100% sure.
I agree with you.
Well, you know, from my point of view, too, listening to the testimony and I listened to all that, you know, their integrated emergency center that they kept talking about and the different police of jurisdiction, the different capabilities that they had to handle this particular situation.
The level of intelligence that they were able to gather that we could not.
So, for example, they owned the CCTV cameras.
They had UAVs up in the air.
So they had a much better opportunity to get a full account of where everyone was located with trucks and what they were doing.
And yet, a simple conversation with any one of us probably would have yielded an incredibly different dynamic to that entire situation.
And yet they had no interest in actually talking.
And especially since the truckers were so open to talk with city officials and federal government.
They were there to talk.
They drew them up.
They were country to talk to somebody.
That was the bullpen.
Yeah.
And so this is, you know, when you look at it, you know, Twitter was lighting up today.
And I think a few people came after me and said a bunch of, you know, unkind things, which I'm pretty used to.
But, you know, the question you have to ask is after two years, like Doug Ford said it today in that clip that you showed.
Well, come to Queen's Park and do cartwheels.
Well, guess what?
Thousands of people went to the worldwide rallies in Toronto and every weekend people went.
And you know what Doug Ford did?
Nothing.
He didn't want to talk.
He never engaged, called them names.
Yeah, Yahoos and stuff like that.
Right.
So, you know, when you're talking about the adults, let's be clear, we're not talking about, you know, the leadership at the executive levels of government in this country.
And I would also, I'd say, federal, provincial, and I hate to say it, but local government, because I'm not a big fan of Jim Watson either, because he has acted in bad faith several times.
And again, he got caught during Rolling Thunder in acting in bad faith.
And, you know, we published all the evidence through V4F on our Twitter.
So, you know, these people that are elected officials, they're not elected to be kings and queens or lords and dukes.
They're elected to represent the wishes of the people and to have a dialogue when we have a grievance.
And they don't seem to get that.
And this is the point of why the convoy finally said, enough is enough.
You called us heroes in the past.
Then you sanctioned us with these unreasonable mandates.
So guess what?
We're going to go to Protest Central.
And I say Protest Central because we heard on Friday that they have approximately on average 99 protests per year in the city of Ottawa.
And that one, the Councilor Fleury there, has been a counselor for 12 years.
So he's lived through 1,200 protests.
And I find it really disingenuous to hear that they were not prepared for any level of protest that could handle this in terms of their integrated operations center.
And so it's just, it's amusing and terrifying at the same time to watch the level of infighting that we're witnessing in the actual in the room between government officials.
And if you see our lawyer, Brendan Miller, he didn't really spend a lot of time crossing this afternoon because he was precisely.
Yeah, it didn't have to.
It's like I just sat here with the popcorn and I enjoyed you guys rip each other apart.
Thank you very much for doing our job, which is what we've been saying the entire time.
So Brendan's job, I think, today was pretty easy.
And I want to credit, I'd like to credit the two witnesses today.
They seemed like very thoughtful, very responsible people that were doing their job, which is to serve their communities.
But the challenge here is that it wasn't just a community issue.
This is a Canada-wide issue.
This is not a left or a right.
This isn't vax on vax.
This is a Canada issue.
And the question really becomes Justice McClain.
And, you know, in line with what the police chief, Peter Slally, was saying, is that he didn't have a charter right to stop us from doing it, which was further reinforced by Justice McClain during the Horn injunction when he said we have a right to be here, which stopped the local government and the police from confiscating our vehicles and going after people.
So, you know, we're seeing at that mid-level within the city, the law enforcement, the city manager, and the chief of staff to the mayor, they got it.
They understood the situation we're in.
The only criticism that I would have is that they failed to reach out and ever talk to us in a meaningful way until we pushed the issue.
You know, we pushed the issue and finally we started to get the ball rolling.
And it was, I believe, through our own efforts that we got the dialogue started with the city and started to get a deal, which was later than spoken about in the testimony today.
Yeah, the police liaison team, you know, if you were truly the terrorists they say that you are, I'm sort of sure that the police wouldn't be negotiating with terrorists.
I think that's a hard fact rule.
But, you know, they said for the first time ever, we were negotiating with protesters, demonstrators, something they'd never done before.
And I think that was a testament to the behavior and the conduct of the protesters to show, like, look, you need us to move trucks.
We're going to move trucks now.
Let's talk a little bit more.
And so when he said, never before have we done anything like this, I think that that's on the truckers that you guys were acting well, not necessarily.
And I want to reinforce that that was very productive.
Like those discussions were very productive from our perspective.
We were willing to do everything we could to continue to be safe, responsible, and to relieve the pressure on the citizens of Ottawa and the council and the police themselves.
But at every turn, we were seeing that the leadership starting at the very top was putting pressure downwards to derail the efforts of the city themselves.
And honestly, I looked at Chief Slowly and there was a lot of times we recognized very early that he had hardly any room to maneuver whatsoever and that the pressure, he was getting hit on every side.
And, you know, there's no doubt in my mind that he didn't resign.
He fell on his sword on behalf of other incompetents, unfortunately.
And you know, Shia, I just want to say, you know, you say the government won't negotiate with terrorists.
I think you forget Omar Katter, who received Telman $10 million.
It wasn't a negotiation.
They just gave him the money.
There's no negotiation there.
Policing Beyond Politics00:11:47
Like, what do you want?
Okay, let's get it to you.
I think it's the words.
Just saying on Doug Ford before we move ahead to some of the other stuff, because we're quickly running out of time.
Doug Ford actually praised the police for doing an incredible job during the Emergencies Act.
I'm not sure I would praise the actions of individual officers who were particularly aggressive with protesters, but there were some good cops involved in all of this, particularly, I think, Peter Slowly.
Let's show that clip and then we'll have a talk about it.
How come, Premier Ford, you're not testifying at this inquiry?
Were you asked?
Did you decline?
Good question.
I have not been asked again.
I want to repeat what I said earlier.
We have top officials from the OPP that were running the operation with conjunction with municipal police agencies and the RCMP.
You know, our police did an incredible job.
They were very peaceful.
They moved forward.
And I am so proud to stand here and back our police right across this country and right across this province.
I'll always support our police.
They're professional, they're polite, and they ended up getting the job done.
Thank you.
Now, I think that's your standard politician's response about police.
If you're from the right, you usually are supportive of the police.
And if you're from the left, you want to defund them.
Although I'm becoming more open to hearing those arguments these days.
But I thought it was weird that the Emergencies Act is invoked because of actions that are happening in Ontario.
And the Premier of the province isn't called to testify.
I just think that's frankly bizarre and stinks of a bit of a cover-up.
Yeah, you know, I also had the same thought until I spoke to Keith Wilson, the lawyer for the Convoy, and he told me basically that he doesn't think it's such a big deal that Doc Ford isn't testifying because his government can say what they believe through their lawyer.
And there is a government lawyer who, there is an Ontario government lawyer who did speak in the preliminary matters on the first day of the commission to talk about the Ontario's view of the convoy and yeah, the emergencies act.
I don't think you would have much to add, to be perfectly honest.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He wasn't there.
He was armchair quarterback in the entire thing from back in Toronto, had very little input from what I saw.
And if you look at the testimony today, from what I heard, they didn't seem to be overly interested initially in even getting involved.
You know, so I don't know.
I don't know that he would personally add any value.
What I'm hoping to eventually hear, and I don't know if I will or not, but there are other members of his government I'd like to hear from.
But I'll hold off on that comment so I don't get my hands slapped by Keith Wilson for talking about strategy of any kind.
But, you know, I do have objections to what he just said in that statement today again about the professionalism of the police.
You know, I would agree.
I have several friends of mine that are police officers and they are on the side of the Canadians.
They are on the side.
These are police officers that were also forced into making economically coercive decisions where they weren't, you know, they didn't take the inoculation for the virus.
They took it for unemployment.
But yet they've never given out COVID tickets or they've never targeted people like some of the other officers have.
So we have to be very, very careful that we're able to distinguish between a police officer that will be sanctioned if he speaks out in support of anything.
And you're seeing, I think Helen Brood is one of the police officers who is they're targeting.
And Peterborough went after, or sorry, Durham, Ontario went after some of their police officers, right?
People are being charged in Ottawa for donating 50 bucks on the OPS.
There's a police officer, I think she donated 50 bucks to the Commonwealth.
She's being charged under the Police Services Act.
So, you know, the message is: if you support this in any way, shape, or form, you risk your employment.
So, you know, naturally, the police are afraid to come forward.
But, you know, the willingness to see some of those police officers do the things that they did.
And for me, I think it's reprehensible what they did to the public at large.
But I really do get quite frustrated when I hear about what they did to the veterans standing on the steps of the National War Memorial.
When they beat veterans wearing their medals, their berets, they're clearly veterans, clearly identifiable as veterans.
And you're seeing police get knee in the ribs or veterans getting knee in the ribs, butt stroked on the ground.
Zapstrapped, put in lineups, even though they have injuries from the war.
And then they take those veterans and they drive them out into the country and drop them off on the side of the road in the wintertime, minus 25.
That, you know, what does what do they mean when they say thank you for your service when it's convenient?
Yeah.
You know, and I will be here in Ottawa on November 11th, and I will be at the National War Memorial unless I'm testifying.
And I'm going to look a lot of these people right in the eye when I'm standing there.
And we have Rolling Thunder, and I think we've made our peace with what happened.
But I think this is going to be an interesting time this year, November 11th.
And I encourage the public to participate in Remembrance Day ceremonies across this country and to really question what do we mean as Canadians anymore?
What do we mean when we say thank you for your service?
If you saw the CBC article that came out today, the CDS, the chief of defense staff for the military, is asking for the people of Canada to start enrolling in the military.
It's like, are you out of your mind?
Have you lost your mind?
You've kicked out thousands of soldiers who honorably served because they would not allow the government to violate the Nuremberg Codes, which says you don't experiment on soldiers and informed consent or bodily autonomy.
And yet, we learned nothing in the military about methylquin, the malaria drug and other things we've done.
And yet they're making a plea for you to sacrifice your sons and daughters to join the military.
So what, they could go and risk their lives in the Ukraine?
I'm sorry, but I fundamentally find that to be absolutely stunningly bizarre.
No, 100%.
That you would kick, you know, a thousand soldiers is approximately $800 million worth of training, taxpayer-funded training.
You know, I know of a helicopter pilot who flew for Cantsoftcom, who was 21 years into his service and had four more years to go, was kicked out 5F from the military for not taking a vaccination he didn't want to take because the clinical trials are not over.
And he forfeited a long-term or a lifelong pension and medical benefits for life because he's four years short of it.
I've heard a story of a woman who was seven months short of getting her 25-year pension, being kicked out of the military.
And now your government has shown a willingness to beat veterans on the steps who are exercising their peaceful right to protest, which is what the soldiers are there to do to defend the charter, the constitution of this country, and the people of Canada, our way of life.
And now you're asking for them to join the military to serve.
But if you ask me, that's just a little bit more than I think veterans are willing to, you know, you know where I'm going with this, Sheila.
I can see it on your side.
Yeah, I do.
Yeah.
You know, you're asking more than they're willing to give.
Right.
So enough is enough.
Enough is enough, I think.
You know, I think there's a real crisis in policing in the military that is going to be on our door very, very quickly.
When not only have you kicked out the conscientious objectors, but you've also discouraged everybody else who remained behind, who begrudgingly, as you say, inoculated themselves against unemployment, but not a disease.
And so they look at this thing that they signed up to do as not what it was presented to them as.
You know, they joined the military to defend freedom.
They joined the police to make sure that people's Canadian rights are protected and they can live safely, free of coercion, maybe.
And those guys are going to take early retirement.
They're just going to say, you know what?
I'm just going to time out.
I'm tapping out.
I'm done.
And you know who that leaves behind?
The worst people who go along to get along people.
Instead of promoting the people who are conscientious objectors, those are the people you want in management, right?
They're the people who are not subject to peer pressure.
They have a good moral compass.
They'll do the right thing, even if it's unpopular.
Normally, those are the people you want in the upper echelons of management.
They've all been tossed.
They've all been tossed out.
And so upon us in our institutions, bad things are coming.
And in my 25 years in the military, though, that was kind of typical the entire time anyway.
It was, you know, you had the great ones that would leave, get out of the way.
And the not so great ones that never made tough decisions always kind of percolated to the top of the senior leadership positions.
Obviously, there's exceptions.
I mean, there's some phenomenal leaders out there, both senior NCOs and officers.
But by and large, but the argument you make about the bad ones percolating to the top, this is what I've been saying all this time.
The good police that have been internally advocating for all of us, I don't want them to quit.
I want them to stay.
I want them to fight for promotions.
I want them to percolate to the top and make the real change to inside, you know, what's happening in the internal politics of policing.
And maybe if the good ones, I mean, in this country, it would have, in my estimation, would have taken two chiefs of police in this entire country to stand up and push back and fight against these mandates that the politicians were pushing because they had the law on their side the entire time.
They just refused to exercise it.
And they chose their careers and their own internal politics over their police.
And the police at the rank and file police know it.
They all know it.
And they don't respect the leadership of the police departments.
They just don't respect their leaders in the policing departments.
That's the feedback I'm constantly getting.
So if you want to change the culture, then you have to, you know, you're going to have to show your moral courage and your resilience.
And you're going to have to stay in, be a police, and affect the change from the inside and fight tooth and nail.
And we're seeing the unions have been completely inert in terms of supporting everybody in this country, not only the police.
But I think the police should start, you know, really pushing back and unifying and start climbing the ranks.
Let's bump ahead because I could talk about the failures of policing and our public institutions all day.
But we're supposed to be talking about the testimony today.
Let's talk about the Ottawa city manager, Steve Kenilakos.
Why Trucks Were Not Towed00:06:27
Speaking of conscientious objectors, Freedom Convoy trucks were not towed by contract tow truck drivers who are contracted with the city for a bunch of different reasons.
So let's hear those reasons because one of them is conscience.
You mentioned that some of the tow trucks companies refused to tow vehicles that were associated with the convoy or they were not willing to tow.
What's your understanding of why they were refusing to tow?
Well, there were 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.
They were concerned about the damage potentially to their own vehicles 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.
You mentioned that some of the towers companies refused to totally.
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What do you hope the findings, the outcome of the Emergencies Act and 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 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.
What did you hope the outcome of the Emergencies Act and 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 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.
from the get-go was to get a sense of their willingness to recognize through mr french that they were hurting local communities And if there was no agreement on that notion, then there was nothing to discuss.
We wanted to get to a point very, very quickly of understanding of whether or not he could get the key organizers to recognize that they never intended to hurt ordinary people in residential districts.
And that became apparent quite quickly in our first few discussions.
And so we sought to establish some parameters, and they included a sense from them of their willingness to remove a large number of trucks from the residential district.
And we set out a number, 75%, below which we felt we would not be providing any relief to the residents who were under essentially what they viewed as siege and what we concurred with as being a siege of their day-to-day life.
So it had to be a big number.
We wanted to see rapid progress on the removal of trucks because we would find out very, very quickly if this was a stunt or if it was a bluff to try to gain more time or and we found out that it wasn't a stunt.
Well, isn't that interesting?
That's this chief of staff for Jim Watson, Serge Arpan, saying that the truckers were not bluffing.
It wasn't a stunt.
They wanted to get those trucks out of the residential streets and the truckers agreed.
And it was actually the Ottawa police after the change in leadership from Peter Slowly to Steve Bell that stopped the truckers from moving out.
That and the lack of staff provided by the federal government.
So look, that was happening on the 13th in the lead up to the invocation of the Emergencies Act.
So if one of the criteria is that this could not be dealt with any other way, it was already being dealt with.
Tomorrow's Testimony00:01:44
And Justin Trudeau just wanted to teach everybody a big, ugly lesson about who's boss.
And I think at the end of the day, it's probably going to blow up in Justin Trudeau's face after we hear all the testimony at the Public Order Emergencies Commission.
Well, everybody, that's the show for tonight.
It was a very long day watching testimony.
It'll be a very long day tomorrow, but I think Canadians are being informed by what's happening here.
It's all laid bare, and Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
And we'll be back again tomorrow at the same time, 4 o'clock Mountain, 6 p.m. Eastern, wherein we will digest the day's events.
Thanks, everybody.
And as David Menzies always says, stay sane.
And you agree from your statement that it was the police that prevented the deal from being executed in the end, correct?
My opinion is that it is a broader context of circumstances and that the invocation of the act created new legal framework around Parliament Hill in that red zone and that the authorities decided to take a step back and see what was the impact of the invocation of the Act.
Right.
But it's fair to say that Mr. Wilson, in your dealings with him, he never indicated to you that the protesters and truckers ever intended to renege on the deal.
That is correct.
Thank you.
Those are my only questions.
And have a good evening, sir.
Thank you.
And you agree and from your statement that it was the police that prevented the deal from being executed in the end, correct?