Ezra Levant and Eva Chipiuk examine British Columbia’s February 23 sentencing of four Indigenous pipeline protesters—April Thomas, Henry Sauls, Romalee Kavanaugh, and Jocelyn Pierre—for zip-tie disruptions, contrasting it with Tamara Leach’s 49-day imprisonment for convoy protests. They argue Ottawa’s use of the Emergencies Act was politically motivated, citing peaceful resolutions in other blockades like Alberta’s. Chipiuk warns of government-funded academic bias, while Levant praises truckers for exposing Trudeau’s overreach. The discussion ties legal double standards to broader media and geopolitical censorship concerns, including Ukraine’s crackdown on dissent under Zelensky. [Automatically generated summary]
Today, I compare the news coverage and the court case against some mischief-making occupiers in BC to how the truckers were treated in Ottawa.
You're not going to believe the difference.
Actually, I think you will.
Hey, before we get to that, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.
It's a video version of this podcast.
We put a lot of effort into the video side, and although it's eight bucks a month, I think it's pretty reasonable because we give you new content every day.
Plus, I got to tell you, that's how we survive here, Rebel News.
That's how we pay the bills because we don't get any government funding and we're demonetized by big tech.
So, do me a favor and head on over to RebelNewsPlus.com and click subscribe.
Thanks, a million.
All right, here's today's show.
Tonight, what would the legal consequences be if Tamara Leach were a left-wing activist?
Well, a new case in BC tells us.
It's December 9th, and this is the Ezra Levant show.
Shame on you, you censorious thug.
Pierre's Contempt Case00:15:25
This iconic image of justice is called Lady Justice, typically holding a set of scales symbolizing weighing both sides of a case and a sword symbolizing her swift and sure verdict.
This image is taken from a statue from the Court of Final Appeal in Hong Kong.
Now, obviously, that symbol is no longer fitting since justice in Hong Kong is no longer blind.
It looks to see what the Communist Party in Beijing is telling it to do, and it does it.
So, obviously, that's from the before times.
This is all very sad, and I say again, it is a disgrace that Canada's former Chief Justice Beverly McLaughlin sits on their high court whitewashing China's dictatorship.
That's super gross.
But that's just an example of that Lady Justice statue.
Here's another court, one that I have actually visited many times.
It's called the Old Bailey, which is the nickname for the Central Criminal Courts in London, England.
I don't think I ever noticed this statue before because it's way up top on the roof.
It's a golden statue of Lady Justice, but this version, for whatever reason, does not have a blindfold on, which is fitting.
I attended the Old Bailey so many times because that was where Tommy Robinson's case was often heard, the case of contempt of court against him.
As you may remember, Tommy had engaged in citizen journalism about a rape gang in the UK.
And after the trial was over, on judgment day, when the jury was done and was to announce their ruling, I tell you this because it was all over.
Nothing Tommy could possibly have done or said would have impacted the verdict.
It was already rendered.
Tommy simply asked the accused as they were walking into court how they were feeling about the looming verdict.
And for that, he was arrested, convicted, and sent to prison all in the span of a few hours.
Let me show you exactly what he was convicted of doing that sent him away to solitary confinement for more than a month.
I want you to see it with your own eyes.
So Tommy, what does this verdict mean, not only for you, but what does this mean for the country?
It probably means for me I'll go jail next week, which is unbelievable.
I'll go jail for asking someone on the way into court as a journalist, how are you feeling about your verdict?
That's all I've done.
That's all I've done.
The video's there for everyone to watch.
That's all I've done.
How you feel about your verdict?
And I'll go to prison for the second time.
And they know what that means.
It means there is not only no freedom, because we know we've got no free speech.
We know we live in a post-free speech era.
There's now no free press.
You're not even allowed to ask that question.
You're not allowed to...
I've been convicted for taking a photo of someone.
Now, what Tommy did there was verbally aggressive, sure, but he didn't swear.
He didn't threaten.
He didn't physically accost or block these men.
Sort of the opposite.
They did all those things to him.
But really, how much different from what the mainstream media does to any accused, including, by the way, Tommy Robinson himself.
Let's say you thought Tommy was rude and inappropriate.
So, still, how is what Tommy did contempt of court?
How?
And how on earth did that land him in solitary confinement for more than a month?
At the time, I did a lot of research into contempt of court punishments in the United Kingdom.
I probably read almost 100 cases.
And in almost all of them, the judge really just wants to know that the person in question is not being willfully defiant of the court's authority.
And almost always it's just a stern talking to, and then everything's fine.
There are some quirky or archaic rules, such as no photography allowed in the courts.
There are some good reasons for those rules.
But sometimes people forget, and so all a judge really wants to know is that you are governable, that you want, that you're not defying the judge's authority.
You're submitting to them.
It really takes an awful lot to be sent to prison for contempt of court.
It does happen, but very rarely and only in shocking repeated examples of contempt.
Very rare.
Tommy was the first British journalist in prison in nearly a century and for doing what every other British Fleet Street paparazzi does.
So that's my point.
I really don't think justice was blind in his case.
It was his politics that put him in prison, not his conduct.
I'm alive to these things.
I'm alert to these things.
We saw that same double standard in policing and prosecutions with the Trucker Convoy.
It came out during the Commission, didn't we?
It really brings the Administration of Justice into disrepute to politicize the courts, to politicize policing.
We got a glimpse of that during the Trucker Commission.
Because if people give up on the justice system and the courts and the cops, they won't respect them.
And they'll have contempt for them in real life.
And our entire system of laws and policing depends on the consent of the governed.
Those are Peel's rules of policing.
You have to have the mass of the population supporting the police and the courts.
Or it'll simply fail.
Unless you are in a totalitarian regime, a literal police state on every corner, you rely on the obedience and compliance and the support of the people.
There just aren't enough cops and jails to arrest everyone, so you need the people on side with you.
Imagine if the courts, instead of being neutral, became partisan, like the media is, like Hollywood is, like Woke Capital is, like so many other institutions are.
Imagine if you lost half the public support, or even just a quarter of the public support.
The entire system would fail.
What a catastrophe that would be.
We all have to respect the rules of the game if we're going to abide by them.
Which brings me to the story of the day.
It is about an occupation, about mischief, about minor crimes, about interrupting infrastructure and the economy.
In other words, it's a repeat of what the trucker convoy was accused of doing in January and February.
Except, of course, as you know, the trucker convoy didn't actually occupy anything.
They just parked on some downtown streets for a few weeks, but they didn't actually block the roads.
We heard in the Commission of Inquiry that they actually kept lanes open for emergency vehicles.
They actually moved their vehicles away from residential areas towards parliament itself not to harass homeowners.
They stopped honking their horns after a judge told them to.
And there was simply no violence at all from them, none.
But the entire country was put under martial law.
Hundreds of bank accounts were seized.
Peaceful protesters were arrested at gunpoint.
Our reporter, Alexa, was actually shot, and peaceful people like Tamara Leach were thrown in prison for more than a month on the laughable charge of inciting mischief.
I can't find any case in Canada of someone being imprisoned for a first offense of inciting mischief.
There was one case of a jail sentence for the man who knocked down Quebec's power grid.
So it wasn't a peaceful political protest, and it wasn't just inciting mischief.
It was a destructive act of industrial sabotage that knocked out power for nearly 200,000 people for days, cost more than $28 million to restore, and was the result of a careful scheme hatched as a sort of vendetta.
He got jail.
That couldn't be more different from Tamara Leach.
Other than one insane case of sabotage, I don't know of anyone jailed for inciting mischief.
And of course, that power sabotage was much more than just inciting mischief.
They're not even comparable.
I was just trying to give you the only example that I could find of mischief resulting in that kind of punishment.
Well, let me read for you the news from the BC Interior this week.
You'll notice that I'm reading from a small news outlet.
As far as I can see, this is not covered in the Globe and Mail or the CBC or even in post-media newspapers.
Here's the news outlet, Castinet.
Anti-pipeline protesters guilty of contempt for storming TMX worksite, violating injunction.
Four anti-pipeline protesters have been found guilty of criminal contempt after storming a Trans Mountain work site in Kamloops in 2020, violating an injunction that had been in place for two years.
April Thomas, Henry Sauls, Romalee Kavanaugh, and Jocelyn Billy Pierre were found guilty on Wednesday following an earlier trial in front of BC Supreme Court Justice Shelley Fitzpatrick.
Court heard Trans Mountain crews were undertaking very critical work on October 15, 2020, when Thomas Sallis, Kavanaugh, and Pierre disrupted construction in the Mission Flats area.
Kavanaugh used a zip tie to attach herself to a gate, and Pierre used a zip tie to attach herself to a bulldozer.
Thomas and Sauls violated the injunction by attending the work site.
A 2018 injunction laid out a five-meter buffer zone around all Trans Mountain worksites by which protesters are required to abide.
Court was shown video depicting a chaotic scene with lots of yelling and screaming from protesters as they were removed from the site by police.
The accused maintained the force used by Mounties was excessive and unnecessary.
Pierre claimed she was sexually assaulted by a police officer while being arrested.
The trial began in early October and was delayed after Thomas collapsed in court October 5.
Fitzpatrick ordered pre-sentence reports for each of the accused.
Sentencing is expected to take place over two days beginning on February 23rd.
I just read you the entire story, every word of it.
You'd think that would be bigger news.
TMX, that's this big Trans Mountain pipeline that the feds expropriated, bought at a huge premium from the company that was stalled building it.
It's just a crazy story, but this injunction battle has obviously been going on for years.
You can hear it's going on about four years now, and references to the incident in 2020.
Now, the story was also written up in another Kamloops newspaper called, well, it's Kamloops This Week is what it's called.
Let me read to you.
I won't read the whole thing, but I'll read part of the other local paper.
Protesters of Pipeline Expansion Project convicted of criminal contempt.
Four members of a Sequempek protest group opposed to the Trans Mountain Pipeline and Expansion Project have been convicted of criminal contempt and will be sentenced in two months.
Justice Shelley Fitzpatrick heard closing arguments in BC Supreme Court in Kamloops this week and rendered her decision on Wednesday, December 7th.
Romley Kavanaugh, Henry Sauls, also known as a Sequempic Hemitery Chief Sauses, April Thomas and Jocelyn Pierre were found guilty of breaching a court-ordered injunction against obstructing access to the company's work sites on October 15, 2020, during work hours.
The quartet, part of the Sequempic unity camp to stop the Trans Mountain pipeline, arrived at the Mission Flats property where they tied themselves to objects and work equipment before being arrested by Mounties.
Now, I thought this next part was interesting.
Pierre, who was carried down a hill when she refused to walk with police, said she had no recollection of seeing signage noted by the prosecution.
Pierre maintained she did not hear a Trans Mountain employee telling her to leave.
Pierre said she was in an uninterruptible and meditative prayer and ceremony, which she said she had a right to do on unceded Sequempic territory for as long as it would have taken to complete.
She also said she was in an isolated area.
Noting, and here's my favorite part: noting she's not an expert in Indigenous practices, Justice Fitzpatrick said she found it odd that Pierre deemed it necessary to zapstap herself to the bulldozer as part of that ceremony.
I think she meant to say zip tie instead of zapstap.
That's very strong plastic cords that can sort of be used like a kind of handcuff.
Anyway, back to the story.
Is that part of your Indigenous traditions to zapstrap yourself? Fitzpatrick asked.
To remain uninterrupted, I tied myself to the area I was on, Pierre replied.
Pierre argued that Canada has no legal standing to impose its laws on Indigenous individuals who have never ceded their rights and titles.
Weiberg, that's the prosecutor, in response, referenced case law to refute the notion some of the defendants were exempt from prosecution because of their Indigenous background.
We're all subject to laws passed in Canada.
We're all subject to injunctions issued by the court.
There's no special class of people that are not subject to Canadian law.
He's right.
In fact, everyone in Canada is subject to Canadian law.
Even people who are not Canadian citizens are subject to Canadian law.
There are some racial carve-outs in law, which I think are very dangerous.
Looks like this judge wasn't having any of it.
No, zip ties are not an Indigenous ceremony.
But I remind you that Tamara Leach is an Indigenous woman, too.
She's Métis.
Did you see any reporting like this when she was arrested?
People floating the idea that she really couldn't be guilty, that physical vandalism was actually a kind of ancient Indigenous ceremony.
Did you ever hear anything like that?
Of course not.
The liberal media wouldn't believe a word of it if it were said by a peaceful trucker.
You know, the truckers didn't vandalize anything in Ottawa.
They didn't attack anyone.
They didn't resist police.
It's actually amazing.
There was not a single act of violence by any of the truckers throughout the whole time there.
That's why you had liberals trying to cook up hoaxes, like the hoax that a trucker tried to arson an apartment or the hoax that the truckers defiled the Terry Fox statue.
Yeah, no.
This ain't vandalism, brother, but nice try.
We'll see what sentence these pipeline protesters get.
I don't know if jail is appropriate.
I know that from my reading of at least UK case law, if you repeatedly defy a judge, they eventually put you in jail just to break your defiant spirit.
These folks deliberately defied the judge, but I bet they get a modest fine that will immediately be paid by Greenpeace or someone else.
Not 49 days in prison like Tamara Leach got.
There really are violent occupations in Canada.
They really do disrupt businesses.
They really do endanger critical infrastructure.
They really do cost money and jobs, but Trudeau doesn't say a word about them.
He supports them.
His environment minister himself is a convicted criminal for vandalizing the CN Tower in the name of Greenpeace.
But it's not just Trudeau, is it?
It's the entire media party that has ignored this national story because it just doesn't fit their narrative, does it?
Stay with us for more.
Welcome back.
Well, the biggest news of the year from the Rebel News point of view, and I think indeed it would be hard to dispute it, was the trucker convoy in January and February.
It shook the country and it shook the world.
For the first time in my lifetime, everyone around the world was focused on Canada, genuinely curious about what was happening.
In fact, I think there was an admiration that the truckers, blue-collar ordinary folks without any backing of a political party or any political action group, they rose up and they helped free Canadians from the vaccine mandates and other lockdowns.
Roundtable On Misinformation00:07:22
It was wonderful.
That was Rebel News' time to shine.
And there was an echo to that fairly recently with the Trucker Commission of Inquiry when Justin Trudeau was asked to justify his decision to put the country into form of martial law.
Now, I don't think that Trudeau actually justified it.
I think it was crystal clear by the end of the commission that he, in fact, didn't have the legal basis for it, but he put forward his political case.
That was an important project for Rebel News.
As you know, we booked a Airbnb for a pop-up studio.
We rented a house near the Commission of Inquiry.
We had four bedrooms there.
Rebel journalists rotated through there.
We turned the kitchen into a studio.
We live tweeted it.
We live blogged it.
We had live streaming.
And one of our favorite guests was our guest today, Eva Chipiuk, who is here to give us a recap, not just of the trucker battles in general, but what's been going on the last two weeks.
Because although the legal hearings, examining the prime minister, et cetera, they were over a couple weeks ago.
There has been some other work going on.
And joining us now via Skype from Edmonton is Eva Chipiuk.
Eva, great to see you again.
Thanks for joining us.
Nice to see you as well.
You know, you were a real staple of our coverage from the Trucker Commission, and I thank you for that.
And it was sort of fun for us to have this outpost in Ottawa pretty close to the place where the commission was hearing.
I felt like we were really on the front lines.
It also felt good that we were fully accredited media because Justin Trudeau doesn't allow that.
And so it was great to get full access right in the room to be treated just like the other journalists.
And indeed, we were just like the other journalists, except for I think we were a little more balanced and we put a lot of people power into it.
Anyways, Eva, can you tell us what has been happening since the, I guess, the crescendo of having Christia Freeland, Marco Mendocino, and Justin Trudeau testify?
So we know about that.
And after that, we sort of wound Down our Ottawa coverage.
But the Commission of Inquiry isn't actually done, are they?
Tell us what they've been up to these last couple of weeks.
Yeah, of course.
So after the factual basis ended with Justin Trudeau, as you said, highlighting everything at the end there, the next week following was a policy discussion phase.
So there were various academics and different professionals that were giving their opinion on, for example, the CESIS Act and the definition of national security threat, which, as we know from what went on at the inquiry, that turned into be quite a question about whether or not the Emergencies Act was properly invoked and turned into whether or not that legal definition was met.
So there was a roundtable discussion about that with a former CESIS director.
There was also a roundtable about misinformation and disinformation.
So that would have been particularly interesting, I think, to yourselves and your audience, because as we know, there's a lot of that going on right now in Canada.
Same with police authority.
So there was a full week of policy discussions.
And some of these academics and different directors were giving their opinion of what should be or what shouldn't be in the Emergencies Act and what the Commission ought to provide the government as a recommendation.
So that's all interesting.
And it sounds like important discussions, but it sounds like they are sort of general academic discussions as opposed to retrospectively examining Trudeau's invocation of it.
Am I right?
So this is more the academics weigh in and say, well, we should do that, or here's a problem.
So as opposed to specifically holding Trudeau to account.
Is that a correct characterization?
You know, that even came up in one of the policy discussions is somebody, and I can't recall which debate it was, but they said, you know, the worst thing is this is giving academics work.
And the other thing that I found a bit troubling is some of these academics that were invited to speak after six long weeks of evidence was given were still using the same language as MSM was providing before the inquiry.
So all this, the narrative that was being spun was still being used by these academics like they haven't learned anything in the last six weeks.
So that was a bit troubling.
And certainly, yes, it was a bit more, in some respects, some were a bit more kind of hands-on with the evidence and some people were a bit more high-level.
Well, it wouldn't surprise me if a lot of those academics simply did not follow the Commission of Inquiry.
And in fairness, it was a very intensive period of time.
But it sounds like they came there with their talking points no matter what.
And of course, the thing is about academics is more than almost any other profession, they are funded by the government.
I mean, journalists sometimes pretend to be independent.
And I guess academics talk about academic independence.
But there is basically no scholarship in this country's universities that is not funded by Trudeau, you know, through various granting agencies.
And we know that they use that as a weapon against them.
Jordan Peterson, one of the most cited professors in Canadian history, I would imagine, certainly a high profile.
He got a federal research grant every single year of his career until he went viral as a public intellectual conservative.
And then, surprise, he had his grant canceled.
So anyone who thinks academics are neutral only has to look at how they punish the one in a million academics who actually speaks out in a conservative way.
So I would imagine that colored a lot of it.
Tell me a little bit about the misinformation and disinformation panel, because I think that whole phrase has been invented just to, I don't think it has any real meaning.
I mean, during the Cold War, I knew in certain instances, believe it or not, when I was a young kid, I subscribed to sort of a technical magazine that was pretty nerdy called Aviation Week and Space Technology.
So this was a really cool magazine.
It was not meant for boys.
It was like an industry magazine of really cool fighter jets.
And they would sometimes have disinformation in there.
And they would talk about it, that sometimes the U.S. military would put out deliberately false facts about the capabilities of their fighter jets so that Russians would get the wrong idea.
They would not understand the truth about America's aerospace industry.
That's disinformation.
When you choose to plant a false fact, knowing you're doing so to confuse a military enemy, that's a really normal use of the word disinformation.
But politicians are now calling anyone who disagrees with them disinformation, as if people are deliberately lying, as if people are in league with foreign powers.
I think it's a total corruption of the language and a total attempt to silence any peaceful political protesters.
Bubble of Disinformation00:08:58
Yeah, and I encourage your viewers to look at the transcript or view it still online.
All these policy discussions are also available still on the Commission's website, along with all of the evidence from the six weeks before.
So it's definitely worth taking a look at.
And you can see that there were some academics that were a bit more critical, thankfully.
There was a bit of a debate about certain things, and they did bring up the issue of whether or not politicians can be part of that disinformation and what consequences or what issues arise out of that.
So again, that did come up, and it'll be interesting to see what's argued.
One thing I wanted to mention is we do have the written submissions due today.
So now all of the parties are reviewing the evidence portion, this policy portion, and giving their thoughts and then their recommendations to the commission in written format.
Well, I tell you one thing, the judge was not lazy.
I have never seen a judicial procedure work so hard and so long.
And it applies to all the lawyers who are involved too.
I mean, I've never seen a court keep the hours, like the extensive hours, working into the night.
Like I'm impressed, and I hope he does the right thing.
And I hope he's objective and neutral.
You never quite know because he is just a man, flesh and bone.
But boy, was there a lot of work going on.
It'll be interesting to see what the results are.
Now, if I'm not mistaken, the report will come out early in the new year.
Is that right?
Yep.
So the report is due to be made public February 20th.
So that's when we expect to get to see it, see what it is that the Commission has gleamed from all of this and what kind of recommendations it's making to the federal government.
Yeah, I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that the judge says there was no clear legal basis to invoke the Emergencies Act.
And then you will immediately see the media party and the political classes say, oh, well, it was out of an abundance of caution and we did the right thing.
And it was all, you know, I think that Trudeau will absolutely skate.
I think that he will not be held to account.
And it'll be like every time he's broken the Conflict of Interest Act, a general shrug.
Oh, well, you know, sack a cabinet minister for taking a $16 orange juice under Stephen Harper, but a prime minister bringing in martial law for no good reason.
Oh, well, but he sure meant well.
And they sure did honk a lot.
That's my prediction.
Am I too pessimistic?
You know, I think you're even giving it more credit than I might be right now.
I don't know whether or not the commissioner will find that it was not justified because that last week really turned when the ministers and CESIS started coming up and saying, well, the legal definition is a bit different in the Emergencies Act, or at least that was the advice we got from our lawyers.
It's too narrow in the CESIS Act for what is going on nowadays compared to when that definition was first used and implemented in these acts.
So I don't know.
That last week was very strange to me.
I'm still processing it.
And I think there might be a chance based on the feelings that we heard for the six weeks, not actual facts, but the feelings of threat, the feeling of violence, the feeling of aggression, that based on this definition, the commissioner might say it was justified.
Yeah, the feelings, you're so right.
It was weird to see tough men who are used to guns and criminals say, well, there was no violence from the truckers, but it felt violent.
You know, the talk of microaggressions, it was actually embarrassing.
You know, I regarded the commission, the evidence part, as sort of like a bullseye.
You went from the outer rings and more and more and more towards the center of the bullseye.
You ending up in Trudeau himself.
So you started with, you know, just regular folks and police forces.
And as they moved away from beat cock, or not beatcocks, but Ottawa police, RCMP, OPP, and moved towards the cabinet and then towards the PM, I felt like they were less honest and more lying, frankly.
I think most police actually answered very plainly.
We did not need this.
We could resolve these problems without the Emergencies Act.
We did resolve the problems.
Like, for example, the Alberta blockade, the Windsor Bridge Blockade.
They were both ended before the Emergencies Act was even invoked.
So of course it wasn't necessary to stop them.
And the one they considered, excuse me, sorry, the most hostile, you know, the one in Coots.
So if they were able to take down the most hostile one in all of Canada using the regular laws we have, how was that not a possibility in Ottawa?
It was just larger.
The problem that we saw time and time again is that they just didn't talk to the citizens at all.
And actually that was one thing that came out in Windsor.
The Ontario government, together with its provincial police force, went to the protesters and talked to them.
And that's how it was successfully negotiated.
In Coots, it was police action.
In Ottawa, it was no action.
Yeah.
Until, of course, we know what happened.
Well, it's very interesting.
And, you know, as that movie was called The Empire Strikes Back, I think Justin Trudeau was personally offended that grubby, grassroots working class people would dare to defy him.
And when two cabinet ministers were joking about deploying tanks, yeah, how many tanks should we deploy?
I think that shows how dare these gross peasants challenge us up here at King's Landing.
This is the capital city.
It's our place.
It's not the people's place.
How dare they honk their rude honking?
Let's send a tank against them.
They claim it was a joke.
Maybe it was, but it shows, you know, never a truer word is spoken than in jest.
I don't know.
Eva, I find the whole thing rather depressing, but I'm encouraged by the fact that the truckers, I think the truckers won.
The truckers saved us in a way that no opposition party did.
I tell you, they certainly displaced two conservative leaders who were not very conservative and not very leader-y, Jason Kenny and Aaron O'Toole.
For that alone, I'll be grateful to them.
Let me close by.
Go ahead, sorry.
You go ahead.
Just one thing touching on what you said.
And I agree with you about what's going on in Ottawa.
And I find that at least what we had with this inquiry is we could look into that bubble.
And I honestly believe what's going on in Ottawa right now is they're living in a bubble.
And it's unfortunate because that's not real people.
That's not real Canadians.
And when you're in a bubble like that, you don't know how to lead.
You don't know how to talk to people.
And at least that was exposed on a national and worldwide level.
So at a minimum, I hope that that helps to affect change in this country.
Yeah, well, we'll see.
It's very interesting.
You know, it was very, it was a fascinating time.
The whole world was looking at Canada.
That normally doesn't happen.
And you could, and again, that came up in the Commission of Inquiry.
Trudeau and his colleagues were embarrassed that they were being made to look foolish.
That's not a definition of a national emergency, but that's clearly what motivated them.
But just let me end by congratulating you and the rest of your team.
You were one of about a half a dozen lawyers affiliated with the Truckers and the JCCF, who I think really infused this commission with a lot of its greatest successes and its personality.
Had you and the rest of your team, and we had Alan Honor from the Democracy Fund there too, if you would have taken out you, Keith Wilson, Brendan Miller, the other trucker lawyers, and Alan Honor, this would have been a completely different commission.
And I think you guys really helped hold the government to account.
And I think you provided balance.
And congrats on the judge for letting that happen, by the way.
So I just wanted to say that I think you yourself had a very important role and you also took a lot of time to explain things to us.
So thanks for that.
My pleasure.
It was lovely to be on the show.
Everyone was, it was my pleasure to help explain what was going on.
We'd been sitting through long days and I can't expect anyone to do the same.
Right now, well, you did great.
Thanks so much.
Eva Chipiuk, a lawyer for the Freedom Convoy Truckers, joining us today via Zoom from Edmonton.
Stay with us.
more ahead hey welcome back Here's some letters.
Market Prices in Moscow00:05:42
Wade Dunn says, Hey, Ezra, watch your show on Russia and notice you used our motto a few times.
Want to find out what's going on in the Donbass?
Check out Eva K. Bartlett, a war correspondent, a Canadian-born USA journalist, who is on Zelensky's hit list, the same hit list that Elon Musk was on for a few hours after calling for peace talks between Ukraine and Russia.
Not kidding, love your show.
We did try and send a reporter to Ukraine.
In fact, we were really geared up.
We thought he would get in in March, but things were too dangerous.
And his patron, he was going in under the patronage of one of the oligarchs in Ukraine, didn't give him the green light.
So, frankly, I would be more worried about a reporter in Ukraine because, first of all, it's a shooting war there.
Second of all, I mean, it's just a fact that Vladimir Zelensky has arrested or shut down journalists that don't support him, has done the same for opposition parties, and is now even taking that censorship to churches that don't fall in line.
I'm actually worried about civil liberties in Ukraine just as much as I am in Russia.
John Hall says, This is very interesting.
It is a gray zone.
If we were at war with Russia, which we are not, I would be opposed.
The main concern, as you mentioned, is being used by the Russian government to advance propaganda.
I'll reserve judgment until I better understand how involved the Russian government was in your visit.
In other words, are they restricting where you can or can't go?
Are subjects of your interviews influenced, etc.
I don't want to give away all of our moves just yet, but in about a week I'll tell you a few details that we're not releasing now.
But we just put out a new video today that describes when police accosted us at a farmer's market.
I'll let you watch that video for yourself, but we are very careful and the safety of our reporter was taught.
That's our show for today.
Until Monday, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, you at home, good night.
Keep fighting for freedom.
I'm Jeremy Lafredo for Rebel News in Moscow, Russia.
Upon arriving in Russia, I was told that I should visit one of the oldest farmer's markets in the region, Praer Brzezinski Market.
About 10 kilometers outside of the center city area, the market has a different type of clientele than downtown.
No product stores and no HM, which are actually littered around downtown Moscow.
Here at Prebrzhensky Market, it's just regular folks that come from all around the region to sell their goods.
Mostly vegetables like spinach, kale, and radishes.
Also, pickled vegetables like carrots, cabbage, and onions.
Sellers also have stands filled with fruit, such as pomegranates and oranges.
Some vendors are selling items for the quickly approaching winter, like slippers and winter coats.
They have an indoor space with farmers and butchers who are selling meat, such as chicken, dozens of different cuts of beef, lamb, duck, and pork.
They also have dairy products.
No one inside of this market is willing to talk to me.
They say their bosses are watching them on a security camera.
I'm not sure if that's true, but I went outside and I spoke to some people.
That was until the police came.
I asked people at the market if the prices of goods have changed since the war began and about the war itself.
Prices for many types of fruit and vegetables are just the same as the previous watt or other less.
Well, at some point, but I wouldn't say that it would be visible.
At some point, they changed, of course.
Do you support what's happening in Ukraine?
I'd like that war finish as soon as possible.
I won't answer this question.
It's a provocative question.
I don't want to answer this question.
Most people I spoke to at the market were not willing to speak on camera about the war.
Those who support Russia's actions in Ukraine might be hesitant to speak to an American about their support, since the U.S. has been propping up the Ukrainian military with billions of dollars in weapons.
Our two countries are effectively at war.
And those who oppose the war and Russia's actions in Ukraine could be scared to speak out of fear for government retribution.
This woman called for peace, but also explained her view was that the conflict is not Russia's fault.
Everything will end with the world.
Everything will end with the world, soon or later.
Well, you know, this is a policy, but this is a policy.
This is, of course, but Russia is not guilty.
Russia is not guilty.
Yes, this is a policy.
A policy that people don't know there yet, do you?
Yes.
Yeah.
While asking people about the war, a policeman seemingly came out of nowhere and asked me what my business was in the market.
I allowed my cameraman to speak as to not give away that I was a foreigner.
He told the policeman that we were simply bloggers.
The policeman seemed confused by that answer and told us to leave the market.
We got out in a hurry.
For Rebel News in Moscow, Russia, I'm Jeremy Lafredo.
This week I'm going to try to get you the truth on the biggest geopolitical issue of our time.
Now, doing this work isn't cheap between translators, transportation, visas.
All of these finances have act like a financial censorship mechanism that stopped the independent media from coming here and doing critical reporting.
You can help support my work and also keep up to date with all my reports at russianreports.com.