Eva Chipiuk and Tom Marazzo expose contradictions in Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson’s testimony during the Public Order Emergencies Commission, where he denied requesting the Emergencies Act despite negotiations with convoy leaders like Tamara Leach—including a signed letter on February 13th—before its invocation the next day. Watson’s reliance on retracted CBC claims and dismissal of protesters’ cooperation (e.g., open emergency lanes, 28 tows in the first weekend) clashes with city officials’ accounts, while police resources were diverted to secure Justin Trudeau’s residence amid 3,000 tickets issued without assault charges. The inquiry reveals systemic political interference, like pressure on Police Chief Peter Slowly, and questions whether the government’s actions were lawful, underscoring broader risks to public institutions and civil liberties under pandemic policies. [Automatically generated summary]
Good evening, everybody, and welcome to the Rebel News Daily Live stream, wherein we have shifted focus from an afternoon or morning, depending on where you are in the country, live stream where we talk about the news of the day to the evening where we talk about the only news of the day, and that's the Truckers Commission in Ottawa.
It's the public order emergencies inquiry, wherein the actions of the government are being examined because the government invoked really a counterterrorism law on a bunch of bouncy castles, hot tubs, and the horror street parties.
And I'm joined today by my friend William Diaz, who's been working his butt off in Ottawa, covering the Truckers Commission.
And what a treat.
Eva Chipiak, the best photo bomber in the country.
She's in the background of all my pictures with Tamara Leach.
And there's a reason for that is because if there's not a lawyer in Tamara Leach's pictures, they're going to put her back in jail.
Eva, thanks for being on the show.
Oh, my pleasure.
So happy to be here.
Oh, big testimony today.
And before we get too far into the weeds here, I should tell everybody if they want to get involved in the show and support the work that we do completely willingly.
I've got a bunch of different ways for you to do that.
You can leave us a paid chat on Rumble or Odyssey.
If it's over five bucks, I'll do my very best time permitting to read it on air.
But you can also donate to cover the cost of our coverage of the Truckers Commission at truckercommission.ca.
You see, our entire team will be cycling through at some point through our Airbnb satellite studio in Ottawa, which is exactly where William and Eva are.
So there's your proof positive that we're spending your money in the right place.
But today we had Jim Watson on the stand, and it was interesting to hear him say that he never once asked for the Emergencies Act.
Eva, you're the legal expert.
What's your big takeaway of what you heard from Jim Watson today?
Oh, yeah, there was so much, like you said, big day of testimony.
And I think where it becomes really interesting is if you look at the contrast of yesterday's evidence to today's evidence.
So here we have, you know, top dog of city of Ottawa and painting a very different picture than what the top representatives at the city of Ottawa were saying.
And it, you know, it makes me think a little bit going back to Friday's evidence that we heard, counselors, politicians versus employees and how evidence is coming across quite differently depending on whether or not you are an elected official or not.
And we even saw that today with Kim Ayot, who is also an employee.
So lots of good, credible information.
One big ticket, big factor item is that emergency lanes were always opened and they had alternatives and they had already figured out what to do in the cases where they couldn't access.
And the one particular example really is Kent Street.
So they had the protocol in place.
So really you see the evidence is quite contrasting.
And that's what we saw in the media the whole of February.
You could look at the same scene and have two different accounts of it.
100%.
Yeah, it was weird to see Jim Watson sort of describe himself as a bystander in all of this.
And it's like, no, you were on the phone with GoFundMe.
Testified that it took one phone call with GoFundMe to get everything cut off.
Um, he was, and this is something we'll get to, actively meddling with the prime minister, throwing uh, looked like the prime minister's office was putting pressure on Watson to put pressure on uh the former police chief, Peter Slowly, to act in a certain way.
And they threw Doug Ford under the bus, which is what you get, Doug Ford, uh, because Doug Ford said yesterday he's standing shoulder to shoulder with Prime Minister Trudeau on the Invocation of the Emergencies Act.
And then today we see in private uh phone call exchanges that uh Watson and Trudeau were sort of saying, Well, Ford's not doing enough here, he's the bad guy here, and we're going to hold him to account, likely in the media.
Um, there was one thing that I thought was outstanding, and it was, you know, it was one of those things, as I always say, uh, the kids say they need receipts, and boy, they had them today.
Watson repeatedly said that the protesters were unreasonable and you could not reasonably negotiate with them.
And then there's like this letter, yeah, and then there's this letterhead from Watson where he was negotiating with Tamara Leach.
And he kept saying I was involved in the negotiations.
It was Dean French, formerly of Doug Ford's office.
He was doing the negotiating.
It was the city manager who's doing the negotiating.
It was my chief of staff who was doing the negotiating.
And then there's this letterhead that he signed to Tamara Leach detailing the negotiations with her.
Eva, why don't you weigh in on that?
Oh, did we lose Eva?
I think we're having the same technical problems that we had yesterday.
But yeah, what I was saying to Eva was that Jim Watson just was doing his very best to rewrite reality.
Eva, now that you're back, maybe you can weigh in on that.
Right.
I was going somewhere.
Just remind me again where you were at before we cut off.
Okay, sure.
I was talking about Jim Watson repeatedly saying that the protesters, you couldn't negotiate with them.
They were just absolutely unreasonable, crazy people, irrational.
And then there's this piece of paper where he literally negotiated with them.
Yeah, so a couple comments on that.
One is that the timeline of events, you really have to think about it.
And I don't think that really came out in the evidence today.
So if you paid attention to the timeline, the first time we met with the city manager, that was a Tuesday.
And that was under very tense circumstances.
And you'll hear that in evidence when some of the protester group will be able to testify.
So it was like first meeting, tensions are high, and we're looking to de-escalate.
And that was, I think somebody said today, bring the temperature down.
And that was exactly it.
Dean French came into the picture a couple of days later, I believe.
We had a kind of a preliminary meeting on Friday, Friday night, Sunday.
This is two days.
Two days later, there's an agreement that is made public on letterhead, like you just mentioned, Sheila, not only from Mayor Watson with his signature, but in response, the Freedom Convoy signed by Tamara Leach.
So less than a week, this is how quickly, and yesterday we heard very clearly both of the two that were testifying, they gave evidence saying that they did that to reduce impacts on the area residents.
They wanted to do it.
didn't come here i think we might have lost eva again yet It sounds that way.
Yeah.
I guess to just summarize what Eva was saying, and we heard it repeatedly yesterday from both the city manager and the chief of staff to Jim Watson.
Oh, there you are.
We're having technical problems, but this is what happens when you set up a satellite studio and have it controlled from Toronto.
Yeah, it was, you know, we heard that repeatedly.
And as I was saying to Tom Morazzo yesterday, it was nothing but grown-ups in the room yesterday.
We had a grown-up in the room in the afternoon today, but not so much in the morning.
Very different from the hysterical accounts that we had from last week, where people were reporting like, My mom's dog's babysitter told me that the truckers were mean, and so terrorism law them.
That's what we were hearing from some of the city councillors.
Yeah, I think Jim Watson mirrored a little bit the type of statements that we saw in last week as well, right?
Yeah, I think we, Olivia, if you're able to, we have a clip of something that the politicians were doing that the grown-ups in the room, the city employees, did not appreciate.
And that came out in testimony yesterday that they didn't appreciate as they were actively trying to negotiate with clients, Eva, that they were bashing them in the media and they were, you know, they were pointing out like, you're not being helpful.
You're making this worse.
But Jim Watson, not one to learn from his mistakes.
He thought he would do a little bit of that today when he said that the convoyers were nasty people.
Maybe we can roll that clip.
Once you get down to 100 spread over three shifts of eight hours a day, it's not a lot of officers.
And so while we appreciate it every time we saw a mountie or we saw an OPP officer, we needed the large number of 1800 to get this situation under control and kick these Yahoos out of our city who are disrupting the quality of life of the people of Ottawa.
Fast forward, we got what we wanted.
Federal government, the provincial government support.
We wanted it sooner because this thing should not have lasted three weeks.
This I don't know if we have the clip where he calls everybody's, yeah, that's the Yahoo's clip, but we do have one where he said that they were nasty people that just don't represent Canada.
I think I've seen the mayor from Ottawa has a better finger on the pulse.
Yeah, I think it's written in the transcript of his conversation with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
I think that's where he that's where we see the way he spoke about the protesters.
And I do want to make a comment about that because, yeah, the people that were in Ottawa, they saw these comments.
The people that were negotiating with the city saw these comments.
And what did they do?
They didn't go out in the media and name call in return.
They continued to act like adults and they said, that's not why we're here.
We're here to end the mandates.
We're not here to impact area residents.
We're going to be the adults in the room and we're going to abide by this agreement and move forward.
The other thing I wanted to note about what we heard from Mayor Watson today is, and this particularly shocked me, is that he continuously referred to getting his intel information from the media.
Yeah.
It says, he lives here.
Take a walk like Councillor McKinney did.
And I actually do very much enjoy her video that she posted walking around with in the protest.
And if you actually watch it, there's zero honking, there's zero violence, there's zero name calling.
She's taking a stroll down a street packed with trucks.
That's what we see.
I liked McKinney's video because if you do watch it sort of out of context and maybe tune her out a little bit, yeah, it just looks like a busy street.
You can see directly behind her that there's an emergency lane that is wide open and she's ranting about the truckers and how awful they are, walking right past them.
And none of them even engage with them.
And none of them engage with her.
They're just like, yep, we'll just let the crazy lady talk to her camera.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Exactly.
There's some other things that I thought were quite interesting today.
If we could bump ahead to Kim Iot.
Olivia, I know I'm putting you on the spot in the office there.
Maybe you might want to grab those clips.
I think Sidney cut them.
But we'll talk about now, like, you know, you had Jim Watson in communications with Justin Trudeau.
And Justin Trudeau looked like he was pushing for an active change in the policing leadership because when we heard yesterday, it sounded like Slowly said, no, these people have a right to be here.
You might not like the traffic snarl they're causing, but we don't have an ability or we shouldn't have an authority to limit their charter rights when they go downtown to protest as long as they're keeping a lane of traffic open.
And it looked like the prime minister was saying, well, what can we do?
What can we do to put some downward pressure on the police chief to bend to our political will?
And you can see that in the phone call readout.
And to his credit, Jim Watson said, we should be doing everything we can to support our police chief and not allowing this political pressure to come down on him from the top.
And it seems as though slowly, and I'm only speculating here, he just sort of fell on his sword, I think, rather than be fired.
I think he probably just took the gracious way out because he wasn't going to do the things that they wanted him to do.
well and i i don't know if you you caught this but uh definitely it was brendan miller's cross examination it looks like we lost eva chippy x uh audio there um it's
It was really something to see, though, just wanting to apply the same force to a local police officer that he's probably applied to Brenda Lucky a thousand times.
Sorry, Eva, we lost your audio if you want to pick up your thought.
Injunction From A Private Citizen00:04:15
Oh, no problem.
So I just wanted to share that when we less than with, I think it was not even 24 hours that we were basically retained and told to get out here.
We came here thinking that we would be in court defending an injunction from the city of Ottawa because that made sense to us as a legal tool.
That didn't happen until well into our third week, and they didn't even serve us with it.
So, and we clearly made ourselves known.
We were in City Hall.
They knew who we were and who we represented, not all the protesters, but at least, you know, a good chunk that had been recognized.
But that didn't happen.
And what we did see was an injunction from a private citizen.
And if you're looking to reduce impacts, we know that that did help with the honking impacts.
Yeah, as we've got video evidence from the anti-honkers themselves.
You were mentioning, yeah, you were mentioning something about no, we're back.
You were mentioning something about Brendan Miller's cross-examination.
And I keep joking on Twitter that they're going to emergencies act him and cheese his bank account if he doesn't stop with his cross-examination bloodbath.
You were going to make a point about his examination of Watson.
So I don't know if it came out in Watson, but he had referred to the cross-examination with one of the witnesses about Chief Slowly looking for an injunction.
So that is one of the legal tools that were available to the city.
And when we got retained, very last minute to help with some of the protesters, recognizing that the landscape is really getting a little hot and some legal assistance might be required.
We assumed the first thing we would be defending is an injunction from the city of Ottawa to, well, we didn't know exactly what they would be looking for, but probably parking.
We weren't on the ground, so we didn't know the exact situation.
That made sense to us.
And as we know, they did get an injunction, but that was way late in the game.
We weren't even served, although we had identified ourselves as representing some of the key players in the protest.
So, you know, that tool was available.
And if Mayor Watson today is saying they wanted all tools available, that was one that very much made sense.
And we saw how effective it was with the private citizen injunction with Honking.
Now, Watson said it was a very volatile situation.
And I, you know, I shouldn't burst out laughing when I'm watching these hearings, but sometimes they're just so ridiculous.
And I think these people are just so darn fragile.
So Watson says it was a very volatile situation.
And then he goes on to describe the volatile situation.
Olivia, maybe you can that clip because it was just a little bit too perfect.
It wasn't like violent street thugs.
Okay, let's roll this.
Sorry.
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.
A volatile situation sounds pretty darn fun to me.
Well, fireworks and hot tubs.
I never saw one hot tub, and I'm still upset about that.
I'm just going to put that out there.
So I don't know where they were.
I hear they were around, but I didn't see one.
And the second thing I want to note, and it was, you know, Mayor Watson today said that he met with the two most affected counselors during the protest and went to a downtown business to help support the downtown business in this chaotic, volatile situation with Yahoo's around.
So, you know, if you just really think about what he says when he's giving his personal accounts of what happened, as opposed to what somebody may have told him or he may have seen on the television, you get a different account.
Cops Under Pressure00:15:07
So that's worth noticing.
And I'm going to make this point because I have heard this a lot and I'd love to say it here: people are really asking about hearsay.
Why do people get to talk so much about all these things?
And, you know, this is an investigative process.
It's not an adversarial process.
So that's one thing.
Normally in a situation, like a lawsuit, you also don't have 20 or 10 different lawyers cross-examining you later.
So that is difficult.
And that is where the evidence will be tested.
So if two people give the same evidence, what the commissioner is doing and the job is as a judge or a commissioner will do is they test the credibility of the witnesses and then they weigh it.
So if two people say the same thing and you're not really, you don't think this guy is as truthful as the other guy, his evidence is going to be weighed with less, just weighed less than the one that's more credible.
So that, you know, we saw how engaged the commissioner was yesterday with Serge Alpen, which was, that's also really nice to see from, you know, the decision maker is to see how engaged they are with the testimony and the witnesses.
So I just want to point that out because I'm also sitting through a lot of this and, you know, I'd rather get straight to the truth, but that's what we're doing for the next six weeks.
Yeah, it's, I noticed the commissioner was also asking questions again today of, oh, darn, what's his name?
Kim Ayot.
Kim Ayot, the second witness, he was asking questions of him and I thought that was kind of interesting too.
I think you also asked questions of Jim Watson when he said, okay, so who do you think is more responsible, the provincial government or the federal government for the lack of police resources that were sent your way?
And he said it was both.
Definitely not Jim Watson himself, though.
It's those other guys that were responsible for the screw-ups in Ottawa.
No, did we lose the Ottawa guys again?
Okay, perfect, perfect.
Now, speaking of Kim Ayot, he gave some very straightforward testimony today.
I think there was no BS with that guy.
He didn't try to spin anything.
You know, you can sort of see where he was going with some things, but he really was pretty darn straightforward.
So one thing I thought was interesting, and it sort of blows holes in the hysterical testimony of the city councillors, Matthew Fleury and Catherine McKinney.
He testified, I think it was under examination by the government lawyer, that there were 28 tows.
So he's in charge of bylaw, ticketing, towing, all that stuff.
But he also pointed out that if it was happening in the red zone, the exclusion zone, or the vehicles were related to the convoy, his people were hands off.
They weren't going to do it.
So if people were saying, why weren't you ticketing and towing these vehicles?
He was advised by the police not to.
And he has to, he doesn't work directly underneath the police, but they work in, they don't work in opposition of each other.
But he noted that there were 28 tows on the first weekend and then a rapid decline in all the towing happening after.
And the government lawyer asked if this was because the tow trucks refused to come.
And we've heard that repeatedly.
We needed the Emergencies Act because we couldn't get the tow trucks to come for three different reasons.
Either the tow truck drivers were scared or they didn't want to risk their business reputation being involved in doing this stuff or they were sympathetic to the convoy.
They've said that repeatedly.
But Kim Ayot said something different.
He said, when the government lawyer asked him if this is because the tow trucks refused to come for whatever different reason, and he said no, he said it was because they didn't need them to tow because the emergency lanes were kept open, which has been something that they've said all along is that they needed the Emergencies Act to get the tow trucks to come because it was dangerous and they couldn't get to these emergencies.
But the lanes were open.
Yeah, that's definitely something we heard today that emergency lanes were open everywhere except for there was a bit of a congestion more so on Kent and Prido and Sussex.
So those were the two areas that were identified.
He identified, protesters identified.
So that's certainly the case.
And it is interesting to see and hear these different accounts.
I think actually Olivia whispers in my ear, we have that clip.
So maybe we can show that.
Maybe I'm paraphrasing wrong, but I don't think I am.
Is it not true that the protest leaders were actually concerned about maintaining the safety lanes and raised that with you?
They did.
Right.
And they wanted to ensure that the lanes were open so that emergency vehicles could always get through?
Correct.
Right.
And the protest leaders cooperated with you and the city in maintaining those safety lanes, right?
Yes.
Right.
And they maintained them.
For the most part, yes.
Yeah.
And when new trucks would even arrive, they even organized to talk with what they referred to as block captains.
Did they relay that to you?
No.
All right.
But when new vehicles were arrived, had arrived, to your knowledge, you agree that they always organized to make sure that those safety lanes were open.
Yes.
Huh.
Well, isn't that interesting?
There was a one point where Ayot reiterated that they were not inhibited from attending emergencies by the convoy.
And he even said that they were getting complaints from the public, poorly nuisance complaints, that emergency services were taking too long.
But every single one of those they investigated, they didn't have any high-level risks that they were concerned about with regard to response time.
Yeah, and this is, I understand that Tom Arazo is coming up after here, and he will definitely be able to speak to that a lot more because that is something, you know, volunteers came together with their, what they were able to contribute to, and that's something that Tom really took under his wing is to help organize and make sure that there were always an emergency lane available.
It was a logistical nightmare and nobody was in charge, but he was just trying to help facilitate to make that happen.
There was something else that Ayot said, and I won't keep you too long, Eva.
I think we said we would only occupy a half an hour of your time, and you've been in the same meetings that I have been today.
So I know that it can be psychologically exhausting to sit through that stuff.
But there was Brendan Miller also cornered Ayat, and Ayot was quite honest about it.
He said that there were 3,000 tickets issued for municipal infractions and provincial infractions between January 27th and February 14th.
So up and until the day before or the day of the invocation of the Emergencies Act.
And the exchange was fascinating because Brendan Miller goes, 3,000 tickets is a lot, a lot of interactions with a lot of protesters, and not a single assaulting an officer charge was laid.
And, you know, that was one of the reasons they said, oh, we need to invoke the Emergencies Act because, you know, there's, we've got to crack down on these guys.
They're violent.
They're going to assault police officers.
None were ever laid against the bylaw officers whatsoever or against any crimes committed against bylaw officers whatsoever.
And so the threat, you know, one of the reasons they said they needed the Emergencies Act was, oh, the bylaw officers are going to get assaulted.
The tow truck drivers are going to get assaulted.
But any of the ticketing and in any of the subsequent towing, nobody was assaulted.
I thought it was very, very fascinating.
I don't know, Olivia, if we have a clip of that or not.
I lost the Ottawa team again.
Thanks.
Olivia is going to bring one up while I rag the puck a little bit.
Here we go.
That's a lot of interactions with a lot of protesters.
And not a single assaulting a peace officer charge was laid in relation to your bylaw officers.
That's correct.
Well, well, well.
How about that?
I'm not sure if we lost the team in Ottawa, so I'll just figure this out on my own.
I'll keep going.
Okay, perfect.
It's funny because I spent the whole day being excoriated by the entire left of the internet saying, oh, you're just repeating or you're just pushing an agenda.
I'm like, I'm literally just repeating the facts here.
You might not like them, though.
The facts aren't going to go your way because you might have had a little bit too much CBC and you're relying on the same set of facts that Jim Watson did to make his decisions instead of the facts before us.
Yeah, even CBC, you know, retracted their comments about the tomb of the unloved children, some of the crimes.
Yeah, exactly.
They retracted their comments.
And both Catherine McKenney and Jim Watson did not take into consideration the fact that the state-funded Canadian Broadcasting Corporation retracted their comment.
They still went along with the original narrative saying that it actually did happen.
One thing I'd love to add too is just going back to the 3,000 tickets and no violent interactions or charges.
I'm not a criminal lawyer.
That's not what we came here for.
And so we, Keith and I, Keith Wilson and I didn't witness anything that remotely resembled any criminal activity.
And we were with our clients, advising our clients.
And it was more of a discussion with we were talking to police officers daily.
They had our numbers.
So what are how are we acting criminally or assaulting people when we have a direct line of communication with the police?
It doesn't even add up.
It's very, it's been an interesting already few days just to hear what was going on on the other side and all of the interactions that were going on there when we were there on the ground having a good time with some of the police officers, really getting to know them and, you know, talking about how we can help, what we could do, where you need trucks moved and thinking we're all getting along and working together.
Yeah, we saw that with the communications between Kim Iot and I think it was Chris Barber, where they were a collegial sort of exchange.
I'm moving trucks.
I've been working really hard.
We're going to start moving trucks again this morning, although they didn't because the police were redeployed after the invocation of the Emergencies Act.
And, you know, Kim Iot thanking him for his hard work.
And that is a testament to how the truckers were dealing with the cops.
And the cops, it seems, were getting this pressure from above.
Emergency services, they seem to have a good relationship with the truckers.
And it all changed.
Everything changed when Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act and police resources were instantly redeployed away from getting the trucks off the street.
So for all those people who are complaining on the internet about sucking diesel fumes while they're sleeping with their window open on the 22nd floor, I'll have you believe that that doesn't happen.
Carbon monoxide goes down, but whatever.
But the science doesn't work out.
But even if that were the case, a lot of their suffering, their misery, the phantom honking and the phantom smells they tell me they experience, that's on the federal government because they were the reason there were not the resources to get those trucks off the street anymore.
Nailed it, Sheila.
There you go.
Like there, you see the background now of what was going on with the like our clients, the protesters that we represented.
Daily communications interactions, very friendly, cordial, reasonable, as we heard yesterday.
And then all of a sudden, it just ended.
And that was because of Justin Trudeau's actions.
Yeah.
And now that we know the timeline, we do know that the city manager and the chief of staff for Jim Watson, I think it was on the 13th, informed two ministers, Bill Blair and Marco Mendochino, that they had reached an agreement with the truckers and trucks were already beginning to move.
They said that your clients were operating in good faith the whole time.
And still, with that information in hand, they invoked the Emergencies Act the next day and derailed the whole thing.
You got it.
Yeah.
So that first Monday, there was a bit of logistical issues that, and you saw that in the text message, I think, with Kim Ayot.
What's going on?
We need to move.
And then the next day, derailed.
Chris Barber was out there again in the freezing cold.
As you saw, he's like, I wiped my bum off yesterday, got some rest, ready to go again.
And he was ready to go out there.
And they weren't removing the blockades and nobody talked to us.
So here we have daily communication, daily talking, but I think that's something that's going to come out.
We've already seen the miscommunication and the infighting with the city of Ottawa.
And I think we're going to see a bit of miscommunication with police as well and different departments of the police.
And I saw it firsthand.
So that's going to be coming up in some of the next few days, I think.
It was really something to listen to yesterday's testimony where the city officials are saying, we don't have enough cops.
You're not sending us enough cops.
We don't have enough cops to get these trucks off the street because that's what we need to do.
That's the most pressing thing.
We need to move the trucks.
They've got a place where they're going to put them.
They've agreed to let them be on Wellington Street.
They had another two locations outside of the city where they were moving other trucks.
And they were saying, we don't have enough cops to complete this operation.
The feds weren't sending enough cops, although they did deploy 50 of them to Justin Trudeau's house.
And then the next day, they take all the cops, or a couple of days later, take all the cops off the operation to clear the streets and focus it on, I guess, trampling old ladies and shooting reporters with crowd control devices.
Let Eva Seize Justice00:04:55
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, oh, go ahead.
No, please go.
i had a thought oh we had a moment there where everything was working fine And then we both stuttered over who was going to talk next.
Olivia, do we have their audio back or did we drop it again?
Okay.
William, say something.
Speak to me, William.
Can you hear me, Sheila?
I can hear you now.
Yeah, perfect.
Perfect.
You know what?
Maybe we'll let Eva go.
We've probably annoyed her enough with our technical difficulties.
Eva, thanks so much.
Please come back at any time.
You're such a pleasure to talk to and you're fun at parties.
Thank you.
And I'll be happy to photo bomb anytime.
Perfect, Eva.
Thank you.
Let's throw to an ad.
We'll let Eva just shuffle off set and then maybe we'll bring in our next guest, please.
Thursday in Ottawa, the Public Order Emergencies Commission kicked off.
It's an inquiry into the actions of the government, or at least it's supposed to be.
The inquiry is allegedly meant to examine whether or not the government was justified in invoking an anti-terrorism law called the Emergencies Act to euthanize peaceful anti-COVID mandate protests taking place in the nation's capital, but also in other locations across the country.
Now, the convoy to Ottawa spent nearly four weeks completely peacefully demonstrating against lockdowns and vaccine passports.
It evolved into a nearly month-long street party replete with bouncy castles, hot tubs, street hockey, concerts, and community outreach efforts like soup kitchens and food for the homeless.
Rebel News, as we were for the convoy to Ottawa, will be there on the ground in Ottawa to cover the commission from the beginning to the end because you just cannot trust the mainstream media.
And in fact, that's what today's report is about.
We've rented an Airbnb in Ottawa where we're sending a rotating cast of journalists to report on the public order emergency inquiry.
Now you can help support our efforts there at truckercommission.com.
The mainstream media's reporting about the alleged foreign nature of the convoy funding was cited as a reason the Liberals invoked the Emergencies Act to arrest, detain, and seize the property, bank accounts, and assets of anti-Trudeau demonstrators.
Hey folks, from October 13th to November 25th, we are here in Ottawa for the Emergencies Act inquiry organized by the Public Order Emergency Commission.
But why?
Why the Emergencies Act Inquiry?
Well, because during the Freedom Convoy back in February, Justin Trudeau used a never invoked before Emergencies Act to basically seize protesters' bank accounts, seize protesters' money, seize their assets, trample their civil liberties.
So we're here this month for the next month and a half to figure out if the way the government acted was lawful and was appropriate.
So we are here to hold the government accountable, but we need your help.
We are here to cover it for you because everyone else here is mainstream media.
So if you want to help us cover it, if you want to help us bring you the other side of the story, factual, actual news, go to truckercommission.com and consider making a donation.
If you haven't checked out our special website covering the other side of the story of what's really taking place at the World Health Summit 2022 in Rebel News, you should.
It's called RebelWho.com.
And there you can also chip in to support our journalism because we've brought you many great reports that you need to check out there.
But today we are speaking with a grassroots political party in Germany called Debasis.
You might be familiar with their chairman.
He is a leading prosecutor in Germany.
His name is Rainar Fulmich, who's been heavily involved in the Corona Investigative Committee.
We're going to speak to some of their members here, but what they are informing the public about today is to stop the treaty.
That's the pandemic treaty that Rebel News has already put on your radar.
In fact, we have a petition set up for you guys to sign right now.
You can open up your tab, go to another device, and go to nopandemictreaty.com.
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.
Single Lane Streets Safety00:03:59
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 can 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 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.
Well, there you go.
We have that was Steve Kay testifying that he felt that the tow truck drivers were in danger.
But as it turns out in today's testimony from Kim Iot, they actually didn't need to tow anybody because they kept the lanes of traffic open.
There were 20 something tows, approaching 30, I think it was, on the first weekend.
And then it just petered right off because of people like Tom Morazzo, who joins us now.
He was part of the convoy and he was one of the people making sure that the lanes of traffic were kept open for emergency services.
And we heard Kim Ayot say today, yeah, there was not a time and we investigated all the complaints.
There was not a time that we could not access an emergency scene in a timely fashion.
How did you do that, Tom?
Well, you know, I have to say, first off, I'm really, really happy to see that final acknowledgement in the room today because for months and months, we've been vilified for that as being one of the issues.
And so I'm really happy to see that testimony coming from an actual, you know, the key guy in terms of safety in the city right now.
So that's a really positive thing to finally see that level of truth come out.
And, you know, the reality is that, you know, my first day on the ground, I remember being there, we got a map of the city and there was several locations that the OPS had requested that we avoid.
And so I had a list that was produced or given to me by one of the other members and we had the map and the first thing we said was, okay, let's identify the vulnerable infrastructure within the city.
And we highlighted it.
Like we literally had it on the map as no-go areas.
And there were streets that the city had requested.
And by the way, I want to say the police department, their building was one of the pieces of infrastructure in the city that we identified ourselves in and agreed that we would not go near.
And hospitals, long-term care facilities, everything.
So that's really where we started.
And then we started to look at all of those high-speed approaches to the hospital and stuff like that.
And so one of the things we did is we put word out and we said, okay, look, if there's a single lane street in this city, and we know there wasn't one, but we were trying to kind of emphasize the importance of this.
We said, if there's a single lane street, we don't put any trucks on it.
If there is a two-lane street, we will only block one lane.
If there is a three-lane street, and I remember very distinctly being in those meetings, and I said, okay, if there's three lanes, we'll block two on the outside lanes.
And one of the truckers said, no, let's do the outside two so that as people travel down the middle between the trucks, they can safely turn left or right.
So, you know, we did a good analysis on what was safest for drivers that were trying to travel through safety lanes that we deliberately left open.
Block Strategies Discussed00:06:46
And we worked incredibly hard to make sure that it happened.
Now, I want to say something of a personal nature.
During my time in Ottawa, one of my children actually went to the hospital in an ambulance in where he lives, not in the city of Ottawa.
And so it reinforced the idea that this was an important thing to the public.
I mean, I had actual skin in the game for my own child.
And so I had conveyed this to the Ottawa police myself to say, look, this is an important matter for us as participants in the convoy, but it's the responsible, safest thing that we can do right now to work with the city to make sure that we are not interrupting any form of emergency service to the people of Ottawa.
And we worked really hard at that.
And you saw the testimony today that confirmed that we were actually very successful of it because we made a conscious effort to do this for the city and for the truckers, for the police, for the fire, for the ambulance drivers, for everybody that would be affected by an emergency.
There was cooperation with the residents of Ottawa.
There was consideration for their well-being as well, despite what the mainstream media, despite what Jim Watson said, that she came here specifically to harass them and to make their life inconvenient.
Yeah.
I, you know, I, yeah, I, the testimony that we saw this morning was, I usually don't get stuck for words, but with what I watched with Jim Watson today, um, I feel like we've gone back in time nine months.
And he incorrectly regurgitated all of the legacy liberal-funded media talking points from nine months ago.
Uh, you know, I timed it.
I actually looked at the clock 17 minutes into his testimony this morning, and I was like, there are too many false accusations that he has recounted that even the mainstream media themselves have retracted.
Yeah.
And to sit here and listen to him recite these things as if they were fact when they were pure fiction, all hearsay, and just garbage that he was getting out of the media is it was it was beyond sickening.
And here's the most bizarre thing that I personally heard him say this morning, which is unreal.
At about the time when the convoy raised about $3 million in the first Give Send Go or GoFundMe campaign, he made the statement 17 minutes in.
He made the statement that Canadians came to Ottawa so that they could get a piece of that money.
That's why they came here.
That's why they were motivated to come to Ottawa was to get a piece of that donated money.
Like I, it was bizarre world listening to the testimony come out of the, I'm going to use the term, the so-called mayor of Ottawa, because I honestly, I don't know where he was getting his information other than from the mainstream media, because it doesn't sound to me like he wanted to talk to the police either.
No, I think, I think it's a mix.
He said he was getting it there.
He said he was getting his.
Yeah, go ahead.
Sorry, Sheila.
I was saying, I think it's a mix of mainstream media and willful ignorance as well.
Seeing that fact that was brought forward by mainstream media at the beginning and then refusing to even do a little bit more research about it.
What were you going to say, Asheila?
No, I was just going to say, Jim said he was getting his information from the mainstream media.
He did.
He said that.
And so it's a neat little circuit these people close, isn't it?
So you spread misinformation while accusing everybody else of spreading misinformation.
Politicians react on the misinformation, knowing probably full well it's wrong, because it's literally happening outside their doorstep.
And then you give them funding to perpetuate the next lie so that you can react in exactly the way you want to.
And the circuit just goes on and on and on.
And thank goodness our team is there to try to hold these politicians to account.
Actually, I think we have a clip of William running into Jim Watson.
You know, William, I'm surprised.
I'm surprised that you haven't been tossed out of the building quite yet.
Every day that you are, you're living on borrowed time, kid.
Yeah.
Well, you know, I'm polite.
I don't harass them.
I don't call them names.
I don't yell at them.
I don't run after them.
I'm asking them simple questions like media used to do in the early 2000s, in the 1970s, 1980s.
Don't think for a second that being polite and reasonable is going to keep you in there because it's not about being polite.
It's not about being reasonable.
It's not about asking a good and fair question.
It's about asking the wrong question, the question that they don't want to answer.
And that's why you're going to get kicked out.
Again, you know what?
I think you'll make it till three weeks.
I think they'll give you till three weeks until they've just had enough of you.
When Justin Trudeau arrived, taking bets.
Yeah, right before Justin Trudeau arrives.
True North is kicked out, no problem.
We've got that clip.
Olivia's got it.
Mr. Watson, you stated earlier that protesters were not able to discuss rationally, to have rational conversations.
Yet we saw yesterday Keith Wilson have a cordious exchange.
Why doesn't the evidence corroborate your testimony?
Perfect.
Thank you.
Well, you said thank you.
Because I'm polite.
Yeah.
Too polite.
It's, you know, what could he answer, though?
Well, I was lying because he was.
I mean, he really was.
He testified today that he was not negotiating with the protesters because the protesters were so unreasonable.
They were just like wild people in the city, according to him.
A feral.
You guys were just feral people, not worth communicating with.
There's letterhead from him.
Yeah.
We saw this.
I mean, the testimony that we've been listening to thus far has constantly demonstrated, with the exception of a few like Steve Kay and a few of the others, because I was in the room when that second meeting with Kim.
Government Silenceispers00:04:14
And, you know, for the most part, you're seeing this propensity between all three levels of government just refusing to want to have any form of a dialogue with us whatsoever.
But they have this deep desire towards law enforcement, extraordinary powers, powers of punishment.
And really, it seemed to me like every level of government's objective was to crush the convoy, not to actually listen to what our grievances were.
I mean, there's 6 million people or approximately that are unvaccinated.
And on two separate occasions, we raised $10 million.
We had unlimited fuels and supplies given to us by the public, yet we were not worthy of dialogue, which we all repeatedly throughout the entire convoy were asking for.
Just yeah, they felt that we were unworthy of their attention other than to put us down.
That was their stated objective.
And that's that testimony is coming out.
I mean, even myself, surrounded by many members of the board, asked for Justin Trudeau to come and sit at a table with us.
And of course, the media spun that into a completely trying to overthrow the government.
It was ridiculous.
Oh, I know, I know.
And this is the frustrating part, right?
Is, you know, we talked about this last night.
They're not kings and queens.
They're, you know, they are elected representatives that are meant to serve us.
And when they refuse to talk to us, and you know, two years, two years, people in this country protested all over in trying to get a dialogue going with the government.
They refused.
So what was our option?
Our option was to go to the nation's capital and take our grievance right to the source.
And that's what the convoy was about.
It's like, if you're going to, two years, you know, people, people constantly say, well, there, you know, there was an election, he won, suck it up.
Well, I'm sorry, but that is not how our system is supposed to work.
Section two of the charter says we have a, you know, a right to peacefully assemble.
Well, that's what we did.
And we wanted to be heard because after two years of trying, nobody was listening.
Yeah.
You know what?
It's interesting.
I've seen people conflate the word peaceful with the word convenient.
Yeah.
And they're not the same thing.
You know, I think peaceful means doesn't mean not disruptive.
It means not violent.
And the people of Ottawa, although I don't think largely, I think a handful of activists, busy bodies in Ottawa, they are really doing their best to rewrite the language here to think that inconvenience is akin to violence.
And, you know, one of the things you're remarking on about Jim Watson, one of the things he said to me really stood out and it showed his very sinister side and just how sneaky he was behind the scenes.
Because as I've seen firsthand with access to information filings, these people will say to each other in an email, let's take this offline or let's turn this into a phone call because they don't really want a record of what they're saying so that somebody can file for access to information.
Jim Watson today testified that he said it was best not to make their request for 1800 additional police personnel public because they didn't want to show their hand about their preparations to end the so-called occupation.
They didn't want to show just how much force they were willing to bring to bear on peaceful protesters who were doing their best to do everything right and who were doing their best to work with the police on the ground.
Conservative Premier's Controversial Move00:11:27
The politicians were ready to smash heads and they didn't want anybody to be prepared for it.
Yeah, it is incredible.
I mean, you listen to you listen to his testimony, you know, what struck me was there was a moment that when Brendan Miller said to him during his cross, he said, were you aware that the government was planning to invoke the emergency act?
And he immediately said no.
Yeah, he did.
That really struck me as bizarre because if you look at his testimony in the number of meetings, the discussions that he had from the PMO to the premier and all three of those politicians, like he said, they're politicians, all three of them had declared states of emergency.
There's no way in my mind that I believe that that was a credible answer that he gave today, where he said he was not aware of the emergency act or the government's plan to invoke the emergency act.
I think that that is, you know, this is my own speculation, but if you listen to his testimony all morning long and the number of inter or sorry, interactions that he had with the government, how could you have possibly not had some sort of a pre-warning of some kind that the EA was coming?
Because I think that he judged his actions or he measured his actions according to the what he probably believed the emergency act was going to be invoked.
And I think he danced around the memos going back and forth between him and Tamara based off the fact that he probably knew the emergency act was going to be invoked.
So he was hedging his bets throughout that entire interaction.
And you can see he's a very skilled politician.
He's playing, he was playing all sides.
Yes.
Oh, he was playing all sides.
And I guess so was the prime minister.
And Doug Ford was playing all sides too, but I guess he just got rolled up into a carpet and thrown into the ditch.
I grabbed a screenshot of the readout of the communications.
It was a phone call, actually, between the prime minister and Watson.
Justin Trudeau says, Listen, yes, you can say yes.
The federal government will be there with more resources.
But again, the thing that frustrates me, and everyone is conflated, and then it's inaudible because it's Justin Trudeau, he probably just mumbled or took a drag off a left-handed cigarette.
Too much.
Yeah.
Anyways, then he goes, Doug Ford has been hiding from his responsibility on it for political reasons, as you highlighted, and important that we don't let him get away from that.
And we intend to support you on that.
So these two are colluding behind closed doors to hang this around Doug Ford's neck.
Doug Ford, swimming in the shallow end of the political pool, says, Oh, I'm standing shoulder to shoulder with Justin Trudeau yesterday.
And then Watson, he says, if they keep dragging their feet, I'm happy to call them out on it.
It'd be nice if we have something firmed up with the federal government to shame them.
Ford didn't even make an effort to come and see what's going on.
Well, Watson, you didn't either, by the way, and neither did Justin Trudeau.
So it's a bit ironic that they might say those things.
But they were turning this into political gamesmanship for themselves.
They didn't care about the protesters.
I don't even think they sincerely cared about the people of Ottawa.
They were positioning themselves to hang this around a conservative premier's neck.
Conservative.
Yeah, progressive conservative.
Very loosely.
Yeah.
And I agree.
I mean, you can see, you can see, and Brandon Miller called them out on it and said, you know, you basically politicized this entire thing.
And he denies it, but that's what a skilled politician does.
And he's been in politics most of his career.
That's what he does for a living.
And that's what you, you got a great example of, you know, how not to answer questions truthfully in such a Machiavellian skilled level.
And, you know, one of the things that I noticed, he's not quite on par with Christia Freeland for not answering questions, but he certainly does take a long time to get to the punchline, which never really is very funny in my book, but just deeply disturbing to listen to this testimony today.
I actually had to leave just after two o'clock.
I couldn't take it.
I had had my fill.
And plus, Eva gave me a lot of people.
You were messaging me early in the morning.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You were text messaging me early in the morning and you had already had your fill by like 10 a.m.
Yes, yes.
And it was only the first half hour.
But Eva sent me away to do a homework assignment.
So I took that opportunity to duck out and get that done.
So I think looking out for everybody.
It was definitely a different crowd yesterday.
And in terms of maturity in terms of the honesty of the answers that you actually got from the people that were testifying.
Yeah, that was definitely a different story.
The testimony yesterday was absolutely refreshing.
I mean, you could tell that the two individuals that testified yesterday, they didn't want us in their city.
They didn't agree with us.
But I think they were very virtuous people in terms of being public servants and wanting to do the right thing for their city.
That's their responsibility.
Whereas the mayor today, to me, like he's not running for re-election, but I think he is definitely running for a position in Toronto's government.
100%.
Yeah.
100%.
Yeah.
100%.
Rumors are, I've heard he wants to be in the UN representing Trudeau at the UN.
Well, you know what?
That seemed about right.
No, I think he's positioning himself right here.
He'll be the next MP for some Ottawa backwater.
No, one of the things that came out today was the, as I was talking to Eva, although we had some technical difficulties with her, the political meddling from the prime minister's office trying to put pressure on police chief slowly before he resigned, before he was too deeply tied to the civil liberties infractions.
I think he just sort of threw himself on his sword.
Yes.
This is what the prime minister said.
He said, but on the Ottawa policing side, have you seen, as I have, some concerns on how things were handled from the beginning?
How is your relationship with the police chief and how are you guys working together?
There are moments where you are saying one thing and he is saying another.
Is there anywhere we can help around that?
And then Watson goes on to say, as you know, Prime Minister, now is not the time to change courses.
We have to do our best to support him.
So they were already putting pressure on Watson to put pressure on the police chief.
And that's political meddling, but I mean, this is just Justin Trudeau's usual habit of leaning on the police to get them to bend to his political will.
We see it with Brenda Lucky all the time.
Brenda Lucky, exactly.
That's actually what I was thinking too.
Like he's perfectly comfortable putting political pressure on the highest jurisdiction police officer in the country.
Why is he going to bat an eye over putting pressure on Peter Slowly?
I just, it's not a far stretch for him.
He does this all the time.
So I don't see why the Ottawa police chief would be an issue.
Yeah.
You know, and he is actually right.
I mean, when you talk about it, I mean, police services board, I have a friend of mine who is on city council in her area.
I won't say where, but she's on the police services board and she has said you cannot interfere with police operations, which we knew from Diane Dean's experiences in Ottawa.
You cannot interfere.
You can, as a police services board member, you cannot direct police operations.
There's legislation against it.
And yet, I don't know.
Here in Ottawa, you see that Diane Dean no longer kept the confidence of city council and she was removed as the president of the police services board.
Right.
So even during that situation, when they're getting rid of police services board presidents or chairs, and they're also getting rid of police chiefs, what does that say to you?
It means that the people in power don't like the people that have the legitimacy to either manage police budgets or manage police operations.
So you saw that these two people were no longer in their positions by the end of what, day three of the Emergency Act.
Yeah.
You know, and I think this goes to our conversation yesterday about we're in for a real crisis and a crisis in our public institutions because all the people who will not bend to the politicians will, they will be either removed or seek early retirement because the BS just isn't worth it.
I think we've reached seven o'clock your time.
William, you've been working hard all day.
I have approaching 10 hours in this chair.
I know I could probably talk about the flaws of the federal government all day long, but we will have an opportunity to do that tomorrow.
Guys, thanks so much for joining me on the stream.
Tom, your insight is always so essential because, you know, we can only speculate about what happened on the ground and inside these conversations, but you were really there.
And so your insight is just so valuable.
You're such a great resource for us here on the stream.
William, keep ripping it up out there until the kickout.
Young man.
It's all justin shooters enough to have.
We'll see everybody back here this time tomorrow, although it won't be me on the stream.
I'm hosting a movie premiere in Edmonton with Ezra Levant and Kian Simoni.
It's our documentary, Ungovernable.
If you want tickets for that, there I think there's just a handful left.
It's dinner and a movie at a really great restaurant, a restaurant that stared down the Chinese consulate and sent protesters in a $3,000 bribe to get them to cancel a book signing there on Ezra's book, China Virus.
So they turned down the bribe.
They were going to call the tow trucks on the protesters, which would have been just wonderful to see, but they didn't.
So we're there tomorrow night.
If you want tickets, it's albertadocumentary.com for remaining tickets.
We hope to see you there.
Guys, great work.
I will watch the live stream replay of what you guys talked about tomorrow for my updates.
And as David Menzies always says, stay sane.
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.
Council Tweets No Mass Arrests00:00:34
Is that a fair summary?
It's a very, very fair 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.