Trucker Commission Day 14 features convoy organizer Chris Barber, a vaccinated trucker from Swift Current, Saskatchewan, testifying about peaceful protests and $3,000 in fuel costs while rejecting January 6th comparisons. Government videos confirm his calls for "peace, love, unity," yet invoked the Emergencies Act despite no violent breaches. Meanwhile, Doug Ford resists a subpoena via parliamentary privilege, defying the commission alongside Sylvia Jones, as others comply—highlighting a clash between civil liberties and political power. [Automatically generated summary]
Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to the Rebel News daily live stream.
This used to be hosted at noon Eastern, but right now we've shifted it to the end of the day because we want to talk about the only news that matters, and that's the Public Order Emergency Commission.
I'm joined today by my co-host, William Diaz, and also the lovely Tamara Ugalini, who's got some news to bring us.
I should get some housekeeping stuff out of the way before we get to everything that we want to talk about because it was a crazy, crazy, busy day.
A lot of very interesting, frisky witnesses today.
And Tamara had the side story of the day with Doug Ford.
So she'll talk to us about that.
So if you want to get involved in the show, there's a great way to do that.
And it allows you to support the work that we do completely willingly.
You can leave us a paid chat on Rumble.
It's called a Rumble Rant or on Odyssey.
It's called a hyper chat.
If they're over $5, we'll do our best to get to them at the end of the show.
We appreciate every little bit that you give us, but there's just so many things we need to talk about in the show that we sort of had to set a bar, a cutoff, so that we can do our best to get to your story ideas, your questions, your comments about what we're talking about without sort of cluttering up the whole end of the show with little bitty comments.
We're covering the public order emergency inquiry, and that's a fail-safe built into the Emergencies Act.
It prevents the authoritarian overreach of a crazy tyrant, let's say, like Justin Trudeau, who invoked the Emergencies Act on peaceful anti-mandate truckers in the nation's capital after about three and a half weeks, close to four weeks there, of literally no violence whatsoever, early complaints of horn honkings, and just basically an extended traffic snarl.
And for that, he used a never-before-used counterterrorism law on these peaceful anti-regime protesters.
It's the kind of thing you see done all the time in Russia, Argentina, Iran, Egypt.
When the normals get a little too frisky, they drop the hammer of government on them.
And that's exactly what Justin Trudeau did while blathering out the other side of his mouth about the right to protest and human rights.
So right now in Ottawa, they're examining testimony from key players to see if the government was justified in using it.
And if they had any other tools in the toolbox left to deal with this protest, they should have done it that way.
And actually, they didn't need to deal with this protest at all.
It wasn't doing anything wrong.
It was just being annoying, which is sometimes some of the best protests.
So that's the news of the day.
We'll discuss some of the testimony, but I'm very happy to have my friend Tamira Ugolini on the show.
And I know I'm talking too much and I get emails about Sheila, you're monopolizing the show.
Tamara was in court today because a side part of all of this, and I know we have the clips, so maybe Olivia, if you want to key those up, Doug Ford, the Premier of Ontario, has said that he's never been called to testify at the Emergencies Commission, which is odd because he's a key player in all of this.
And he has said repeatedly he supported the use of the Emergencies Act.
And he stood shoulder to shoulder with Justin Trudeau on the invocation of the Emergencies Act, which puts him in stark contrast from the other conservative premiers in the country, like Ottawa and Saskatchewan, who have specifically said we are against the Emergencies Act, even though we had, in the case of Alberta, blockades here, there were other ways to deal with it.
So anyways, let's throw to that clip of Doug Ford saying he stood shoulder to shoulder with Justin Trudeau.
And I believe that was the day that we saw testimony about Justin Trudeau driving a truck over Doug Ford.
Anyway, we'll get to that in a minute.
How come Premier Ford, you're not testifying at this inquiry?
Were you asked?
Did you decline?
I have not.
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.
I'm not sure if he knows what he's talking about.
He said he's never been asked to testify, but that's not what's stopping him because he was asked to testify.
And in fact, today in court, Doug Ford was fighting what amounts to a subpoena.
He doesn't want to testify in the Emergencies Commission, and it's a public hearing.
It's because the public is entitled to know what their decision makers were deciding behind closed doors before they dropped the hammer of government on people's civil liberties.
Doug Ford has repeatedly said, well, nobody asked me.
That's why I'm not testifying.
Well, now he's been subpoenaed.
They're asking him and he doesn't want to go.
Tamara, what happened in court today?
It's interesting.
First, I just want to give a little bit of background context here because, like you mentioned, Sheila, Doug Ford is a key player in the invocation of the Emergencies Act.
And previously, so I believe it was February 4th that the city of Ottawa invoked their own state of emergency.
And then on February 11th, or maybe it was 12th, they could have the dates mixed up there.
But regardless, prior to the invocation by the federal government, Doug Ford had also issued a provincial state of emergency.
So there were two separate provincial states of emergency that already existed prior to Trudeau invoking his own unprecedented use of the Emergencies Act on February 14th.
And now what I want to note here is that, okay, there's the Premier of Ontario, the alleged progressive conservative Doug Ford being compelled or summonsed rather to testify because he otherwise refuses.
But another key player in all of this is the former Solicitor General.
So that's Sylvia Jones.
And under the mandate of the Solicitor General, she is to do things such as be responsible for public security, law enforcement, policing, emergency management.
So when you talk about key players in the whole scheme of what happened with this emergency response, those are two really crucial key players in all of this.
And they're the two people out of all the elected politicians and others who have been compelled to bring forward testimony in the public inquiry.
They are the only two who are skirting their otherwise considered parliamentary duties to do so.
And they seem to be doing that, as the lawyers argued today in court.
They seem to be doing this under the veil of having some parliamentary privilege and resorting back to the Constitutional Act of 1867, which I find to be oddly ironic because we've seen throughout the last two and a half years that none of these elected officials care really about the constitutional infringements that they've imposed on their constituents and arguably the entire province of Ontario indiscriminately.
I mean, all throughout the COVID regime narrative, we saw unprecedented business closure mandates, indiscriminate mask mandates, coercive vaccine passports, and of course, the highly infringing squashing of peaceful protest and the right to assembly.
So now that it's serving Doug Ford and his former solicitor general, Sylvia Jones, who's now the Minister of Health, oddly, they're falling back on this constitutionality infringement on their parliamentary privilege to try to argue that that will prevent them from testifying, not in court, but in this public inquiry.
And the offense was basically that, A, this has never been done before.
So there's not a clear precedence on the invocation of parliamentary privilege in a commission situation.
There's a lot of precedence there within the federal and the court of law.
But in terms of a commission that has high public value and really high social interest for not only our democracy, but our province and country as a whole, this is really unprecedented.
So the amount of things that the Doug Ford government and he himself and some of his ministers are doing in that realm of unprecedented just continues to mount here as evidenced by what I saw in court today.
Just to put into context, just how ridiculous Doug Ford is being right now, Marco Mendicino is going to testify.
Federal cabinet ministers who had their grubby hands all over this are going to testify.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is going to testify.
And he doesn't think he should be accountable for anything.
When he does things like blackface, it's something we all have to be accountable for and not him.
He's going to go.
And Doug Ford, first he says he wasn't asked, but I would go basically alluding to I would go if I was asked.
And then so they say, okay, well, you're asked.
And he says, oh, no, I have cabinet privilege invoked here.
I'm not going to go.
It's utterly ridiculous.
I think, here's what I think.
I don't think some of they don't want some of his internal communications to be admitted once he's a witness.
Those come with him.
And I don't think those are going to be very favorable to Doug Ford amongst Doug Ford voters when you see how Doug Ford is talking about people formerly of Ford nation, but I think now occupying what's better known as Yahoo Nation.
What do you think, William?
You know, I don't think it'll have that big of an impact on the votes that Doug Ford received.
We saw the way that Doug Ford behaved during the pandemic with conservative voters still supporting him, so-called conservative voters still supporting him.
He didn't act like a true conservative during the pandemic.
He gained more votes at the last election.
So I don't think it'll have that big of an impact, though, on Ford's voting base.
It's odd because the man was elected, I think, because his brother was so beloved and he was happy to trade on the Ford name until he got into power and then acted totally the opposite.
You know what, Olivia, let's roll that clip where he's talking about standing shoulder to shoulder with Justin Trudeau, because on the very day he said that, there were internal communications admitted into evidence in the Trucker Commission.
If you want to see some of that, I think it's in my live tweets on truckercommission.com.
But if it was on that day where there were conversations between Jim Watson and Justin Trudeau, it's a readout of a phone call where they said, basically, things are going sideways.
How do we stick this on Doug Ford?
That was the very day he stood shoulder to shoulder with Justin Trudeau.
So, why don't we show that clip?
Because it's funny the reasoning he gives for the invocation of the Emergencies Act.
And none of them are actually things you can use a counterterrorism law on.
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 believes 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.
Disrupting the lives of people living downtown and having rural pools, as they say, which I think is a brand name and not actually Tub.
It's like saying you have a frigidair.
Like, that's not terrorism.
It's inconvenient.
It's annoying.
As one cop pointed out, it's an eyesore, but it is not terrorism.
But we heard today testimony: some people's bank accounts were frozen for up to like three months.
People were denied loans subsequently, like in the summer.
One man today, shoot, I forget his name.
The leader of the leprechauns from Quebec.
Steve.
He had Steve Charland.
He had his bank account canceled way afterwards.
They just nuked his bank account.
And the best Doug Ford could come up with was disrupting the lives of the people who live downtown.
I don't know if you live downtown in any major city, I don't think your life is all that peaceful to start with.
And not to mention that the COVID regime literally upended everyone's life with their unprecedented response to a seasonal respiratory virus, right?
This is the precursor to everything that happened thereafter in Ottawa with the protests.
That was just the full force showing of how fed up Canadians were with these continual power grabs and government overreach.
And again, I have to reiterate that the irony and the testimony that I heard today, for instance, the lawyers that were arguing on behalf of Ford et al., which is Ford and Jones, Sylvia Jones, noted in there, and I quote, that it was important to protect privilege when it is under threat.
So parliamentary privilege.
And then she refers to the compelment of testimony as coercive, further asking what would be in jeopardy if Ford and Jones were worried about coercion.
Parliamentary Privilege Debate00:05:38
Yeah, right?
Again, the irony in the fact that Ford and Jones are worried about being coerced to testify in a highly relevant to our social fabric setting.
Yeah, there's my tweet there.
And I live tweeted the entire proceedings.
So if you are on Twitter, you can go and find that and sift through what I tweeted out today.
There's a, I don't even know how many tweets, but there's a lot to sift through there.
And we also have a write-up published on RebelNews.com.
And I will have a video out either tomorrow or the next day, just kind of doing a play-by-play of what happened in the hearing today.
But regardless, I couldn't believe that I was hearing things like upholding constitutionality and being coerced to testify.
When also the fact of the matter is, and you brought this up earlier, Sheila, is that everyone else, including parliamentarians who have been asked to testify, have all complied.
No one else who has thus far been asked to testify has decided to seek public orders or private hearing orders against giving that testimony.
So that includes all of the representatives from Alberta who also saw that Coots protest take place around the same time.
So to allude to the fact that this is, you know, like an isolated incident, that Ford and Jones somehow have this parliamentary privilege and also what they refer to as being compelled to testify would be a distraction to their parliamentary duties.
Well, no one else has taken that stance or tried to skirt their duty to be part of this commission, which again is a mandate put out to ensure that the government does not act disproportionately in their response.
So the whole thing to me is why hugely ironic and such a disservice to the mandate of the Public Order Commission.
Yeah, it runs completely counter to it.
The whole point is to hold the government to account for their decision to invoke it.
And so every government official who is involved should be testifying there.
And it's like Doug Ford hasn't even been paying attention to the commission.
I can't imagine that he would anyway.
But basically, you can go there and say whatever you want.
Like literally, that's what's been happening.
You just say things.
They'll show you emails.
You can basically deny what even they say in the emails.
You could just, it's not like a court.
You could just go and say whatever you want, which is why I believe it's the evidence, it's the emails, it's other things that are going to follow with his testimony that will prove problematic for him that he doesn't want the public to see.
I know we have one little matter of housekeeping that we have to get to before we move on too much, and that is the matter of Rebel News Live.
These are our live, in-person, sort of TED Talky style conferences where you'll be with close to a thousand other free thinking rebels and friends.
We've got one coming up in Toronto, November 19th, and another one coming up in Calgary.
That's Saturday, November 26th.
I think it's rebelnewslive.com for tickets and details.
Actually, maybe, do we have an ad that we can throw to?
I'm not sure, but you will see some of the key.
Perfect.
We'll throw to an ad in a second, but I'll be there.
I'm sure William will be there.
Tamara, you'll come in for it, I'm sure.
And you'll also have some key players from the convoy there.
For example, my friend, the wonderful little Tamara Leach.
Also, Paul Mender Singh.
He was the TikTok star of the Convoy, lawyer for TDF, Alan Honor, who is currently examining people at the convoy as well, as well as a whole host of others too.
So that's rebelnewslive.com for tickets.
And I think early bird tickets end on November 4th.
So get those and get those fast because every year it sells out.
Maybe we want to roll the ad now.
Freedom in 2022 is not sitting idly by while health dictats with no skin in the game make up all the rules.
If you're like me and want to play an active role in upholding civil liberties and freedoms for all Canadians, for our children and eventually our grandchildren, then come out to our Rebel Live event and get to know us in person.
We'll hear from some of the most influential leaders in the freedom movement.
We have events in Toronto on November the 19th and in Calgary on Saturday, November 26th.
Tickets are on sale now at RebelNewsLive.com.
Come out, have lunch, get some Rebel swag, meet the Rebels, and more.
You don't want to miss this event.
Check it out, rebelnewslive.com.
This will be my first Rebel Live event, and I'm so excited.
Oh, they're so fun.
And I'm actually really excited to meet Ben Bankus in person.
I think that's the one that I'm most looking forward to.
And I don't want to make Chad Williamson mad, but I think it might be Ben Bankus because I can see Chad whenever I feel like.
Consequences Unfold00:15:54
Before we say goodbye to Tamara, because I know she's got little ones and it's supper time where she's at, let's throw to Justin Trudeau calling out his, I guess like 10 minutes ago, was his best friend Doug Ford for the use of the notwithstanding clause regarding support education staff workers.
And he calls this a suppression of rights.
So using the sort of provincial nuclear button of overriding everything, that's the notwithstanding clause.
Justin Trudeau thinks that's a bad idea because it will hurt civil liberties.
Ain't that weird?
Maybe they're having like a fight in the bromance.
Let's check it out.
Using the notwithstanding clause to suspend workers' rights is wrong.
I know that collective bargaining negotiations are sometimes difficult, but it has to happen.
It has to be done in a respectful, thoughtful way at the bargaining table.
The suspension of people's rights is something that you should only do in the most exceptional circumstances.
And I really hope that all politicians call out the overuse of the notwithstanding clause to suspend people's rights and freedoms.
Using the notwithstanding.
That guy, what a piece of work.
Tamara, tell us what's going on with this.
The irony in all of this is just, I hope that people can see what is really happening here and just having that context over the last two and a half years and how all of these people have not given any care in the world for civil liberties and people's constitutional rights.
So this is really interesting to see all of this unfold and now all of a sudden we care about those things.
But just in closing, and thank you, Sheila, because I do appreciate yeah, it's dinner time and bath time and it's normally witching hour, which is just further compounded tonight by the sugar high that my children are coming off of after Halloween.
So the lawyer, sorry, rather, the judge in this case decided to reserve judgment at the end of the hearing.
So they went for almost the full four hours.
I think they cut about 15 minutes short.
But he specifically says at the end that the worst that will happen is an order with reasons to follow, which the judge will provide by November the 8th.
And what I took from that and what I kept hearing in the hearing itself was that choices have consequences.
So I thought that was really interesting because throughout the COVID narrative and those health overlords and the regime that they were imposing on the plebs, us little people, was that your choice, for instance, with the coercive vaccine mandates, those choices came with consequences.
And so we're hearing that same slogan, if you want to call it that, now translating over to into this hearing.
And so I guess what the judge will do is give this order with reasons to follow.
And then Doug Ford and Minister Sylvia Jones have a choice to make.
And that choice, whatever they decide, if they are found to be in contempt of court by not showing up to testify and complying with their summons to appear, then that choice will have legal consequences.
So we should know more on November 8th when the judge gives his ruling.
And then of course, Doug Ford is set to be testifying on November the 10th.
So that's a mere two days later.
And I suppose only time will tell what happens and what kind of consequences come with the choices that both of those individuals decide to make.
Isn't that interesting?
What do you think?
Do you think they're actually going to have to testify?
Before I let you go, do they have to?
Do you think they're going to be able to skirt this?
It sounds like they're really clinging onto the fact that they will not be complying with the summons.
The lawyers on Ford's side, in my opinion, argued pretty weakly that there was any sort of precedence there and that they even had the merit to invoke the parliamentary privilege.
I think that this is really messy because there isn't precedence there and the judge was unsure whether or not this was suitable to be heard in a court of law or there needed to be some other sort of policy put in place around the parliamentary privilege.
The Ottawa Residence Coalition lawyer said something really interesting that a section of what Doug Ford is sort of falling back on in the Parliamentary Privilege Act was a part that was actually amended in July of 2020.
So I'm actually having some of our lawyers look into that amendment and what was made, what was changed.
And I think that's a really interesting part of this whole story.
It's very messy.
There's a lot to consider here.
The judge went into this asking basically, is the parliamentary privilege being invoked as a shield or as a sword?
And that just kind of continued to be further scrutinized, obviously, as the lawyers each read their or said their various positions and arguments.
And this judge straight up said, my head is spinning now after listening to the commissioner and his remarks.
So I think that he's really confused now.
Some of the precedents used were cases that he actually sat in on or presided over or was part of the, I don't remember the technical legalese word that he used, but he was part of those cases.
And so he has a lot of thinking to do and he only has eight days to do it.
It sounds like Doug Ford and Sylvia Jones have that decision to make and it could come with really, really harsh legal consequences.
I heard that there was potential jail time, not only just fines, and whether or not they'll, you know, the full hammer of the law would come down on someone like that is up for debate and review.
But the consequences here can be pretty large.
And their own speaker of the house could investigate them and see if they've invoked this parliamentary privilege on good faith or whether or not they're acting within their actual scope.
So it is really messy.
And I really am looking forward to seeing how it all unfolds because I don't know really.
I thought going into the hearing, it sounded like the judge kind of had a good idea of what he was going to do.
And then, of course, as he heard the remarks and the arguments, obviously it really changed what he kind of had in his back in his mind going into it.
Got it.
Very messy.
Nobody knows what's going to happen, but we know Doug Ford is not a good guy.
Tamara, thanks for coming on the show and trying to unpack all that for us.
Why don't we go to clip four?
Marco Mendicino was getting grilled in the House of Commons today over his staff's text messages to frame the convoy as extremists before they ever arrived in Ottawa.
Let's go to that clip and then we'll allow Tamara to just sneak away.
I'll say good night now.
Thanks, everyone, for joining us and have a great night.
Enjoy Sheila and William for the rest.
Thank you.
Thanks.
The government was planning to insult the occupants in an effort to scorn them.
Text messages between liberal employees reveal that this was strategic.
They wanted to give interviews about the extreme elements of the convoy to make them look bad.
And they even thought it would bring out the crazies, they said.
Two days later, the prime minister insulted the convoy and the police confirmed that this fueled the crisis.
Does the government realize how dangerous and deeply irresponsible its strategy was?
The Honorable Minister of Public Safety, Mr. Speaker, we invoked the Emergencies Act because this was an unprecedented situation.
It was dangerous for workers, for families, for youth.
And that is why we work together with police services.
It was a necessary decision.
And now we're going to collaborate with the Commission because transparency is an important component of this exercise.
Now, thank you.
Since the beginning of this illegal blockade, the government managed the resources and the RCMP to help the police force here in Ottawa and help other operations across the country.
It was an unprecedented situation, and the decision to invoke the Emergencies Act was one that was necessary to help Canadians who were impacted by this unprecedented situation.
Thank you.
It's like a big waste of time to listen to him talk because he doesn't actually answer the question about why his staff.
Yeah, or any liberal.
You know, you're doing the Lord's work out there trying to ask them questions, but you just get mumbo jumbo back from them.
The question was, why were your staff trying to frame this as a January 6th event before they even got there, making them pre-criminals?
And he just says, you know, this was impacting workers and youth and residents of Ottawa.
I don't know how it was impacting the youth.
Maybe they were getting hurt in the bouncy castles.
I'm not sure.
But besides what unfolded in the House of Commons today, there was testimony from one of the convoy organizers, Chris Barber.
I think just before we move away from what Marco Mendicino says, I think it's disgusting to see someone in your office that you're still hiring talk about these people and talk about strategies the way that he did.
And the text messages referred to people in the convoy as crazies and trying to mold the stories, fit their narrative.
So they're going to say something, they're planning on putting something out there.
And then afterwards, they say, okay, well, how can we support what we are saying instead of going after the facts wherever they lead?
I think it's absolutely repulsive to see that someone like this is still hired in the office of our public safety minister here in Canada.
But that's probably precisely why they were hired into public safety.
These people get into the upper echelons of the liberal government, not by doing the right thing by all Canadians, but by doing the right thing by the liberals.
You can tell in the context of this, they really don't see the people in the convoy.
For me, this has been an overreaching thread that the people on the other side of this don't see the people in the convoy as their fellow Canadians.
They really don't.
That's why they call it an occupation.
These are Canadians.
They belong there.
They have a right to be in their nation's capital.
They're not an occupation.
They're Canadians who see things differently than you.
Maybe to use the language of Justin Trudeau, they're experiencing things differently.
And they have a right to be heard.
And they were treated like they were foreign invaders from a far-flung land of barbarians.
It's quite odd.
Yeah, you know, I keep seeing there's one counterprotester.
Well, there's one protester that was here at a courthouse.
Well, not at a courthouse, at the library.
I could tell by their rainbow flag.
Yeah, like she was alone.
She was alone on herself.
She had a whole poster saying basically, go home, terrorist.
She had signage on her little truck insulting the protesters.
was doing this sign to the protesters right in their face not to to one of the tamara leach freedom convoy supporters right to their face not a single let me just stop you i was I was just going to say, what did they say back to her?
Nothing probably, right?
Well, exactly.
You know, you saw some people approaching her trying to have discussion, like the man holding a green coat right here, but not a single one of them laid a finger on her, not a single one.
And you dare call them terrorists without anyone doing actually anything terrorizing to you after you keep insulting them in their face.
You know that she knows, even she knows in her heart those truckers are peaceful because she went down there alone, knowing full well that they wouldn't hurt her.
No matter what she said about them, no matter what insults and invective she hurled at them, she knew they wouldn't hurt her.
So they are, she, even she knows in her heart they are peaceful.
But she's just so weaponized by the CBC and the government that she's acting crazy.
Like, I don't know how you can feel good about your day if you were that crazy woman on the street.
Yeah.
And actually, this is not the first time I see her.
I saw her at her rally when Tupac, you know, the church that's set up in Ottawa for a few months and got evicted.
She was there as well doing the exact same thing.
There were reports of her assaulting someone.
I didn't see any video of it concretely, but I was told that she did.
Then later, two weeks ago on a Saturday, myself and Efron, our head of post-production, went to walk on Bollington Street and there was a freedom protest there, a freedom rally.
And she was there as well.
And some people said that she did harm them in person.
So she's always there.
She's always there trying to cause trouble.
And not a single thing has happened to her yet.
So I think those terrorists, those so-called terrorists, are not very terrorizing all that much.
They're doing their job badly.
Yeah, I was going to say they're doing it all wrong.
Did she have a bullhorn there?
Did I see that?
I'm not entirely sure.
I know that she had probably a megaphone.
I saw her having her megaphone.
I thought they were against loud noises.
Yeah, I thought they were against loud noises in Ottawa.
They don't like the breach of their peace and quiet in Ottawa.
I'm reliably informed by crazy people.
Let's go to Chris Barber's clip six.
Chris Barber testified today.
He's one of the organizers of the convoys from Swift Current, Saskatchewan, Speedy Creek, as they say, home of former premier there, Brad Wall, and his son, Coulter Wall, of whom I'm a big, big, big, big fan.
He is a trucker.
He employs some lease operators and his son.
He is vaccinated, but he also stands with the rights of people to make medical decisions.
I saw some people online saying, Oh, Chris Barber is vaccinated.
Yeah, great.
He, but he, it was the choice.
He made a choice to be vaccinated against unemployment, but he also stands for the unvaccinated people around them, the right to make their own medical decisions.
That's the moral and ethical thing to do.
That's what anybody, all anybody ever wanted was for it to be a choice.
Anyways, he said, let's go to clip six.
He testifies that he advocated every single day for a peaceful protest.
And there's video evidence of all this all over the place.
They actually showed the video evidence.
The government did.
I was like, what are you doing?
But anyways, and he pushed back against the demonization of the convoy as a January 6th event.
Again, they didn't even storm a single building.
Thousands of them in the streets.
They didn't go anywhere they weren't supposed to go.
Again, they were probably an eyesore to uppity people who like orderly things all the time, but they didn't even trespass.
So it's not, so January 6th.
Why People Turned Political00:06:37
Anyways, let's roll this.
In another TikTok video you posted, and I'm, and this would have been during the protests in Ottawa.
You say that the last thing we need is a January 6th style insurrection.
And that was one of your biggest concerns.
Do you recall saying that?
Yes.
Why was that one of your biggest concerns?
I believe the federal government was backed into a corner, not wanting to speak to us.
And I personally believe that that was the only way, I guess, out of it for them to demonize us to the point where they could say insurrection when that wasn't the case.
And so I pushed that message constantly daily: peace, love, unity.
Like I said, it changed me as a person listening to myself daily saying that.
In another TikTok video, you posted.
I think overall, the testimony given by Chris Barber was a very honest and humble one.
I think it really showed how genuine he was.
And I think it made him look great.
I don't think it was a bad testimony at all.
I saw some people thinking on social media that he was getting destroyed by the government lawyer.
I don't share that feeling at all.
I think he was able to stay professional and I should defend his point and defend his image, even when presented with videos or stuff that could go against him.
So yeah, I thought his testimony was great.
But yeah, you did see some TikTok videos of him advocating for a peaceful protest and telling people that if you're coming to Ottawa to cause trouble and do illegal things, don't come to Ottawa.
I thought his testimony was great overall.
Yeah, I didn't understand why the government was trying to put those videos in.
When I saw them, I was like, yeah, that was exactly the experience that I had from the outside looking in that every day he was calling for peace.
One of the things that really struck me, and it's a theme, again, that we've seen over and over during the pandemic, why people end up in these protests when they've never been political before in their lives.
And Chris Barber said, I'm not political.
I've never really been political.
I've never done a protest before all of this.
But all of a sudden, he felt like he needed to be involved.
And when you go to the protest, it is exactly the same sentiment.
People who are like, I'm not really, I'm not really political, but I don't know what to do.
And I can't watch this stuff anymore.
So, why don't we throw to clip seven about why Chris Barber decided that he had to protest these vaccine mandates because they didn't really touch on him?
Clip seven, Olivia.
We'll get to it.
It's a long day for her too.
Oh, it's a long day for everyone.
Yeah.
So, Mr. Barber, I'd just like to start about this, about the reasons why you were coming to Ottawa.
It was about mandates generally, or was it just the trucker mandates or the border restriction that truckers could no longer enter or pass through if they were?
I can only speak for myself, but for me personally, it was the border mandates.
That was the last straw per se in the government going too far and wanting, I needed my voice to be heard.
Right.
And government going too far, it was everything.
It was the restrictions, the restrictions from going into restaurants, from schools were shut down, all those sorts of things.
It just built up and that was the last straw for you.
There's so many different stories that I've heard throughout this ordeal that contribute to why we went there.
When you're hearing stories of people's parents dying in a hospital bed alone because mandates wouldn't allow their kids to be with their, with their, with their adults when they took their last breath, there's you've seen the mental health issues in this country just plummet.
It was.
It was sad.
I watched that with my own children.
My daughter it was 16 at the time uh was uh, was unvaxed in high school, bullied by the rest of her classmates because she was wasn't vaccinated.
She had to play a clarinet in music class in a separate room, you know.
Later on he went on to talk about how his 18 year old son experienced some similar bullying too.
And again, Chris Barber's unvaccinated, but he was standing up for his unvaccinated staff and his unvaccinated friends and family.
He took a moral stand when a lot of these things didn't touch on him.
He said he stopped going to restaurants when the vaccine passport came in because he didn't want to be in the medically privileged class.
I'm putting words into his mouth, but he said he didn't go.
He just didn't go because other people couldn't go too, and that's really forgotten in all of this, that there are a lot of people out there like Chris Barber, who told the commission judge uh, judge Rillo, that it cost him three thousand dollars out of pocket just in fuel to go to Ottawa, and that's not all the fuel to go back, that's not all the idling fuel, that's not the food, that's not the hotel rooms, but he just didn't know what to do.
He couldn't watch it anymore.
And uh, there were a lot of.
I think there were as many people like Chris Barber in this protest than there were just the unvaccinated, Yeah, well, I think the pandemic did that to Canadians.
I think the path, and just by the way, before I get to that, all of this took place during the convoy.
All these people spent all that money during the convoy, yet Justin Trudeau thought they weren't worthy of being heard, which is absolutely crazy to think of.
But I think the pandemic did that to a lot of people.
I think the pandemic turned people who were not political at the beginning into people that are super interested in politics, that are actually reading about what the government is doing, that are trying to keep their eyes on the government.
I think it did that to a lot of people.
I have a lot of personal stories that I've heard in the past year, in the past year and a half, of people that couldn't care less about politics prior to the pandemic.
And then they saw COVID-19 mandates, then they saw mask mandates, they saw vaccine passports, they saw all of these authoritarian measures taking place and then became political people.
I think Chris Barber's story is very similar to the story of a lot of Canadians.
Pandemic Politics Shift00:02:52
I think we all have people on our Facebook page who are like true believers in the COVID scare at the very beginning, like the kind of people who wash their mail and groceries, who would leave their like Amazon parcels outside for the COVID germs to die off.
I've watched those people come full circle around to my way of thinking and beyond a little bit sometimes.
I just want to rope them back in.
And, you know, when we see those people come to life and, you know, the scales fall from their eyes, we've got to show them some grace.
I'm trying to keep all my I told you so's in a big fat sack to myself because it's hard.
You know, we don't go around, it's hard, but you know, you and I go around proselytizing the good word of freedom.
When we get some takers, we have to say, okay, good.
Thank you.
Join us.
We have to, we can't do a purity test on them after the fact.
Clip nine, Olivia, please.
Are you awake, Olivia?
Clip nine.
Clip nine, Chris Barber describes what it was actually like on the streets as opposed to the assaultive, crazy behavior Tinderbox, I believe is the word that Chief Slowly said.
Chief Slowly.
He described the streets as a Tinderbox where nothing actually was explosive.
Why don't we throw to that one?
Because this is reality from inside the convoy.
And with respect to you walking the streets during the protest, what did you see?
Life-changing.
Yeah, it was amazing.
There was so much grown men crying on your shoulder, women crying on your shoulder, grandmas, grandpas, you name it, kids.
It was really, it was really an experience, unforgettable.
Is there anything notable that you remember of who you spoke to?
Who I didn't speak to.
It was everybody.
You couldn't.
I remember Mr. Marazzo and I went for a walk and Mr. Wilson.
And it was like he, Mr. Wilson explained it as like walking down the street with Mick Jagger.
He said, because no matter where you went, there was somebody wanting to stop and talk with you.
It was, it was a lot of love.
And with respect to you walking the streets during the tinderbox.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And despite all this stuff, despite all this positive energy, Justin Trudeau still decides to call them unacceptable people with a fringe minority with unacceptable views.
And despite all of this, you still have this lady who's standing in front of the library and archives building, calling these people terrorists and trying to insult them to their face.
It's crazy to hear all of this being revealed actually to the open public and then comparing all of these testimonies to what you heard in February by the media.
Comparing Testimonies00:12:46
And also interesting to compare this testimony to the earlier testimony of those two Business advocates from Ottawa at the very beginning.
Barber testified that every place that was open was patronized by the truckers, like the ones that weren't scared by the OPS into being closed.
They were patronized by the truckers and actually, in fact, frequently overwhelmed by the amount of business that they got.
They noted the Tim Hortons that was local to the center of the protest was so overwhelmed by business at one point that the truckers were doing the janitorial work in the restaurant.
They were taking the mop and mopping the floor because everybody's coming in with snowy boots and then it melts and then just creates a mess on the floor.
So the truckers were washing the floor so that the staff that were there could actually help serve customers.
And that's a far cry from what we heard from those people saying the truckers were unruly, they were dangerous.
Yeah.
Yeah, it was just a just mayhem.
It was like the purge, as that, as she said.
And then we had the one lady who is a business council advocate or something, those lady and the man that one day basically saying the businesses were so scared of serving people who were unmasked that they closed their doors because the implication is if the business served people without a mask, then the business would get the ticket for serving people without a mask.
But as it turns out, OPS didn't enforce that, not even once.
So they never enforced it.
Yeah, the businesses that stayed open like a Tim Hortons, I know exactly which Tim Horton is talking about because it's actually the one in the center of the protest.
And there were so many people there every single day.
The truckers need to eat.
They're coming from Saskatchewan, they're coming from Alberta, Manitoba, Vancouver, British Columbia, from everywhere.
They need to eat something.
Where are they going to go?
In Ottawa, they're going to go to the restaurant.
They're going to go to the fast food places that are open.
And those places have never made that much money, I think, in months due to Trudeau's COVID-19 measures.
So, yeah, I think Zegzili was way off.
And I think, you know, that's the thing with the inquiry.
It's not a court proceeding.
So you're allowed to do hearsay in the inquiry.
The issue is going to be when you compare two testimonies, the commissioner is going to say, okay, well, which one seems the most credible to you?
And when you have a feeble testimony, like the ones given by Zexi Lee or Catherine McKenney or Matthew Fleury, and you compare it to the testimony that we heard, say, from Chris Barber, or the ones that we're going to hear from Tamara Leesh, from Keith Wilson coming up this week, I think there's some that look a lot more credible than other ones.
Well, especially when their evidence is backed by the paper trail, the email evidence, the back and forth.
So for everybody that's testifying, there's a stack of documents supporting what they're saying.
And the commissioner has the job of going back and saying, okay, they said this.
Is this supported by the documents?
Do the documents contradict what he said?
He's got a very big job ahead of him.
I just want to point out the willingness, by the way, of Chris Barber and the truckers to move those trucks out of residential areas and how quickly that fell apart when Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act.
Chris Barber testified that he moved 100 vehicles in one day.
40 of those were heavy-hauled trucks, and about 20 of those left the city entirely.
But that all ended when they invoked the Emergencies Act.
And maybe we can show throw two.
I got to pull up the clip number here.
I think it is clip five, Olivia.
And it is Chris Barber saying, I would have moved my truck actually from in front of Parliament Hill, but literally nobody ever asked me.
So, why don't we just throw to that?
I asked you this, and I think you have confirmed it, but you parked your vehicle on Wellington Street.
Is that correct?
Yes.
After you parked there, at any point in time up until, we'll say February 14th, were you given any indication by any police services that you shouldn't be parked on Wellington and you'd need to move?
I was not.
No.
Did that come as a surprise to you?
I don't know if I really had time to think if it was a surprise.
It was so fast-paced.
Asked you this, and I think you have confirmed it, but you parked your so an emergency so emergent that you need all the tools in the toolbox, setting aside the civil liberties of every Canadian in this country.
And apparently, it could have been solved, at least in the case of Chris Barber in his truck on Wellington Street, by knocking on the window and saying, Hey, would you mind moving this thing?
And he would have.
Yeah.
And this once again corroborates fully with the testimonies we heard previously that the truckers had a willingness to move their trucks and to negotiate with the government, to negotiate with the police and actually have a plan.
But then you have the idiotic Trudeau government that decides to just ignore that whole plan and still invoke the Emergencies Act.
It's such a disgrace.
The more we get into this, the more it is evident.
The evidence is just compiling how the federal government just wanted to teach these Canadians who stood up to them a lesson.
It wasn't about a terrorist-level insurrection event, nothing like that.
They just wanted to show who had the power in this country.
And they were worried that these blue-collar workers from all across the country thought that they might have something to say.
Yeah.
And as I said in my opinion video about what we're seeing happening since the beginning of the commission, I would pay to be a fly on the wall of a Trudeau cabinet meeting right now.
Like how hard they must be fighting right now.
They must be working to find a way to save face when they're going to be testifying.
Because right now they're losing all the credibility of moderate and commonsensical Canadians.
They're losing all the credibility they have left in regards to the way they handle the Freedom Convoy.
And you're seeing that from testimonies, from people that were not even sympathetic to the convoy from the beginning.
I would love to, I would love to be a fly on the wall and see what is actually being discussed, like how Omar Jabra is going to be able to save face in front of the committee when he testifies.
You're going to have to hire a navigator to get a communication strategy going.
You know, I think the further we get into this and the more evidence we see, you might see a few self-serving liberals break ranks and say, look, I think that we were probably wrong in invoking this, that we overstepped.
I think there are some of those who are going to try to save their own shirts and distance themselves from the decision of the government.
I think there's a few of those.
And not because they believe in civil liberties, but they want to save their seat.
Yeah, well, I think it's already starting.
I don't remember exactly which one it was in February.
It might have been Joelle Lightbone, something like that.
But there were a few, I believe, or at least one or two that did oppose the Emergencies Act prior to it being invoked.
And we're seeing some liberals starting to break the rank that they're in.
I interviewed Avi Rabiar when I was in front of Parliament the other day, and he told me he doesn't agree with everything that the government is doing at all.
He actually shook my hand and took the time to speak to me, which by itself is literally breaking the rank, speaking to rebel news when you're a liberal.
That's not what you're supposed to do.
And he told me he opposed Justin Trudeau's planned tax hikes.
He told me that he thinks Pierre Polyev is a good leader.
He told me he doesn't agree with everything the liberals are doing.
I think it'll be interesting to see the way the Liberal Party divides itself in the upcoming weeks.
You know, before we had the Conservative Party that wasn't united, prior to Pierre Polyev being the leader, you had at least three different factions within the Conservative Party.
Now it's united.
I think the Liberal Party is going to become the divided party.
From your lips to God's ears, William.
Let's get to the two chats that we have and then we'll wrap it up.
We're a little bit over time and you've been working all day and so have I. Adam Ottawa gives us five bucks.
The major federal unions are posing for strikes or poised for strikes soon.
Let's see how Justin Trudeau's narrative changes if that happens.
Yeah, I can't wait.
I love when my enemies fight and I just stand in the corner and let them sort it out.
I'm not getting involved.
Well, you just see everything happening by itself.
I mean, the lawyers at the moment, the Freedom Convoy lawyers, don't have a lot of work to do when the government is testifying and showing videos of convoy organizers saying that people should be peaceful.
I mean, their job is made easier by the truth being actually revealed by the commission, by the government lawyers.
Yeah, and Catherine McKinney, I think some of her evidence was that way too, where she's walking around the street.
The government lawyers are admitting her videos of her walking around the street ranting about truckers.
And I'm like, just right behind her, there's an open lane of traffic and then she'll pan and you don't hear anything.
I'm like, oh, there's no honking.
And then you see truckers standing behind her while she's ranting about how horrible.
No aggression.
Saying absolutely nothing to her.
And I'm like, I hope she never stops recording.
That crazy, crazy woman.
Okay, let's get to the last one.
It's Fraser McBurney.
Don't misgender her, Sheila.
Come on.
You're so insensible.
I'm not playing that game.
I'm not playing that game.
We got Fraser McBurney, our Fight the Finds recidivist friend from Hamilton, who just, he just loves having his caps locked.
He gives us five bucks and says, before the madness started, I had the flu.
So I did what every person with half a brain.
I researched the flu.
That's why I'm so glad I didn't take the jabs to look.
Like Chris Barber said, it was about choice.
Get it.
Don't get it.
Whatever.
You do what's right for you, but don't carve people out of society because they've made a different medical choice than you.
And as it would turn out, those people who waited on hindsight were probably wiser than everybody else at the end of the day.
I think that's that's everything, right?
Yeah, I think that's it.
We're already putting testifying tomorrow.
Who's on the stand tomorrow?
I believe we have Tom Razzo, Keith Wilson, and Pat King.
Three of them tomorrow.
It'll be interesting to watch.
Yeah.
You know, Keith Wilson is going to be interesting because he's going to be cross-examined by Brandon Miller or Bath Sheba van den Berg.
It'll be so funny to watch because he's basically working with them at the same level.
That'll be interesting to watch.
I can't wait to see him get cross-examined by a lawyer for the Ottawa Busy Bodies, as I call him, Paul Champ, with his tax the rich sticker.
And I'm like, you're the rich.
Tax you.
How about?
Gosh, I'm not supposed to be the lead live tweet journalist tomorrow, but I think it'll be me.
I might have to tune in very carefully.
I have other things to do tomorrow, but I don't want to miss that.
We'll figure it out.
It's going to be a great day.
And if people want to follow along, do follow at truckercommission.ca and.com.
That's where you'll find all of our work.
William's wrap-up reports, my live tweets.
This show that you're watching right now will be embedded on the compilation page.
Any of our written articles about this, clips about our guests that join us on the show, also.
And if you want to support their independent journalism from on the ground in Ottawa, Williamson, and Airbnb, we are flying journalists out as relief.
K2 is coming, Celine's coming.
We've got people in the Airbnb who are behind the camera.
Thanks very much, by the way.
You're doing a great job.
And Olivia, back in Toronto, if you want to support their work, you can do that also at that same website, truckercommission.ca, as opposed to supporting the work against your will of the Trudeau colonized media who colluded with deputy ministers in public safety and a communications person in Justin Trudeau's office.
Fiercely Independent Voices00:01:08
You will never get that from us.
We're fiercely, furiously independent.
I think that's the show for tonight.
William, thanks for doing some great work today.
Appreciate it very much.
Thanks to you, Sheila.
And as David Menzies always says, when he wraps up the show, stay sane.
The media created the left and the right.
I don't even know what that means.
I'm of the people, and I want to stand up so that the people can keep on standing up and be heard.
Left, right, up, down.
I don't give a damn.
It's become the people against the elected officials who are managed by multinationals, by money, by other powers.
And that makes no sense in a quote-unquote evolved society in 2022.
How come we have to demand that our charters are respected?
Otherwise, we are put in jail because we offered soup and coffee to people who were in need.