Sheila Gunn-Reid and Tom Marazzo revisit the Freedom Convoy, where truckers peacefully occupied Ottawa for weeks, only to face Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Emergencies Act—a move Marazzo calls a betrayal despite his own restraint in negotiations. They critique Canada’s gun ban (C-21), Bill C-11’s internet censorship, and MAID expansion, warning these laws erode citizen rights while elites exploit divisions, like targeting gun owners or weaponizing Indigenous identity for political gain. Marazzo’s defiance reflects a broader fight against perceived tyranny, urging non-violent resistance as freedoms shrink under legislative overreach. [Automatically generated summary]
Looking back at 2022 and predicting what 2023 will bring us with key Freedom Convoy participant Tom Marazzo.
I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed, and you're watching The Gunn Show.
Today's show is a bit of a long one, so I'm going to cut my usual preamble short.
Now, for those of you who don't know, the Freedom Convoy was a movement of, well, it grew from truckers once the federal government decided to impose a cross-border vaccine mandate on them after they were able to cross the border freely to keep the economy going without a vaccination for two years.
That one act of tyranny that didn't make sense to so many people sparked a nationwide movement of people who had just frankly had enough, vaccinated and unvaccinated alike.
People who were tired of being told what to do, what to put in their body, how to treat their neighbors, were sick and tired of seeing their friends and family demonized, not being able to travel, not being able to work because of a conscientious medical choice.
And so many people said, I'm not against vaccinations.
I just want to take a wait-and-see approach to this one.
And so many of them were thrown out of their jobs.
And so the Freedom Convoy rose out of that.
It went to our nation's capital, Ottawa.
It was there for nearly four weeks, completely peacefully.
Thousands of people were there in the streets playing hockey, holding concerts, enjoying their hot tubs, having barbecues, feeding the homeless.
All this was a bridge too far for the boring people who live in downtown Ottawa.
And because of the international embarrassment that these working class people were causing to our pompous and frivolous Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, he invoked a wartime law, the Emergencies Act, to put an end to the protests and suspend the civil liberties of all Canadians, seize bank accounts and arrest the convoy leadership, who had never done anything really all that wrong.
They were arrested under mischief charges, which is definitely not sedition, although if you got all your news from the mainstream media, you would think that it was some kind of January 6th plot.
Tom, who is joining me on the show today, was a key participant in the convoy, and he was one of the people who worked very hard to alleviate some of the pressures on Ottawa's downtown core as part of a deal struck between the city of Ottawa and the truckers to show that they were working together in good faith.
And that was just before the federal government decided that they needed to get involved and mess everything up.
So Tom's got lots of opinions, and Tom has paid a high cost for his moral and ethical stance against forced vaccination, but against the treatment of his fellow Canadians.
And he was also one of the key analysts that we brought in during the Trucker Commission, the Public Order Emergency Commission, which was the official examination of the government's actions in invoking that civil liberties suspending wartime law, the Emergencies Act on peaceful truckers in the nation's capital, doing the old full Venezuela that Justin Trudeau did.
So joining me tonight is Tom, and hopefully he can bring in some of his analysis to discuss just the things that have really happened to us in 2022 and what he thinks 2023 will bring us.
I know I promised you a short preamble, but I am still talking.
So I'll shut up.
Here's me and Tom from earlier today.
Joining me now is my friend Tom Marazzo to discuss what I think is probably, we'll start there.
And I think the biggest story of the year that started the year, but also finished the year, the trucker convoy and then the examination of the government's euthanization of the trucker convoy.
And then maybe we'll move on to free speech issues and the state of Canada, but also probably the state of the world.
Tom, thanks for joining me.
I know you're not home right now, so I appreciate you taking the time to do this interview.
Let's start off with the Trucker Convoy because when you were one of the key participants in it, as much as you like to downplay your role in it, what we've talked about this before, but what was the impetus for you to get involved with a bunch of strangers and go to Ottawa?
Well, you know, the reality of the whole thing was for two years leading up to the convoy, for your viewers that are ex-military, they'll know the saying.
I mean, it's a pretty common saying, but I was the gray man for a good two years during all the COVID garbage that was going on.
Didn't want to draw any attention to myself.
I just kind of wanted to put all my training and experience to play to protect my family.
That's really what I wanted to do.
So I didn't want to be drawing any attention because we just, it was things were just too unpredictable.
I mean, if you remember what life was like in Canada, let's say 14 months ago, the level of fear that non-vaccinated people had in this country was, you know, absolutely off the charts for anything we've ever seen in Canada.
So, you know, we were, those who were unvaccinated were not able to participate in society.
I mean, Quebec was talking about excluding people from grocery stores.
New Brunswick was talking about it.
You couldn't go in any public places.
You had all the Karens out there that were right in your face if you didn't wear a mask.
And so I was doing stuff to what I thought was to protect my family by being the gray man.
But the other big reason was I didn't know what to do.
Like, it's not like you have this opponent in front of you that is very obvious.
You know, you understand who your opponent was.
I just know that I had one.
Turns out it's the federal government.
So when the convoy rolled through, I just something told me that that was my opportunity to come out of being the gray man and to get involved and do something meaningful for this country.
And it was just, you know, I was, I'm privileged with the opportunity that I had.
And then I saw that opportunity.
And as soon as I was asked to participate, I was gone.
I was in Ottawa immediately because I just recognized it for the awesome possibility that it could be, which I think turned out to be absolutely correct.
Yeah.
And when like one of the things that I, well, there's a lot of things I like about you, Tom.
I shouldn't phrase it that way, but you paid a high cost for your ethical stamps to remain unvaccinated.
So it's not like you were just somebody who attached themselves to saw a movement growing and said, ah, I got to get myself involved in that.
This is my claim to fame.
You paid a high price for your choice to be unvaccinated.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, I lost my job teaching in September, just over a year ago, right around the same week that Julie Panessi lost her job is when I got fired as well.
And, you know, there was a small group of us that I was at Georgian College, a small group of other teachers there, and they were all worried as well.
But I kind of thought, no, because I have a small army pension, I was a little bit more insulated against economic hard times than the rest of them were.
So I said, look, I'm willing to stick my neck out and we'll see what happens.
And if I get my head chopped off, then you guys will learn.
You know, it's kind of like when penguins are looking for a new place to swim and they throw one in the water.
And if it gets eaten by an orca, they move on.
So unfortunately, I got eaten like by a big giant college level orca.
Blindsided By Restraint00:11:09
And everybody else kind of said, all right, we need to adjust.
We need to adjust our plan because clearly publicly pushing back isn't going to work.
So yeah, I mean, it's been a difficult year.
I lost my job, had to sell my home.
And then, you know, just a whole series of different things have happened.
I still haven't had a job since I've I lost my job teaching, but I've been really busy this year.
I mean, I went to the convoy right after I ran in the Ontario election with the Ontario Party.
Then right after that, because I didn't get elected, obviously.
Then I was helping out James Topp with Canada Marches.
And then I had some time in the summer to figuring out for my living arrangement.
And then I ended up in Ottawa for two months for the Public Order Emergency Commission.
So it's been a very busy year.
And I feel like every few months I have to reinvent my whole entire life.
And now we're heading into Christmas.
And really, I got to just get that book written.
Yeah, you did.
It's so delayed.
It's delayed because of the commission.
Because at first I didn't want to, I didn't want to write about the commission.
But after sitting there for two months listening to the testimony, I feel that it's absolutely necessary now that I have to add in a lot of the context and the backstory that we learned of what the government was up to during the entire time of the convoy.
So I think that that's an important part of the story that needs to be told, especially from my point of view, my context.
Yeah.
And the story is not quite over yet.
I mean, we won't even know.
I sat in that commission room.
You sat in that commission room.
You sort of get a feel for what's happening, but you never really know.
I've sat in on tons of court cases and thought that they were going one way.
And then all of a sudden I'm like, what the heck just happened here?
So we won't even know really how things went in the Public Order Commission until February.
And that might be delayed the same way the Public Order Commission was.
But I want to talk to you about that next because you were instrumental in executing a good faith deal that was struck between the convoy leadership and the city to put an end to what the worry warts on the other side call the siege of downtown Ottawa.
We're moving trucks out of downtown Ottawa as a show of good faith to sort of undo some of the traffic snarl and the inconvenience felt by the few thousand people who live downtown.
But you were doing that.
And instead of recognizing that in good faith you were making those efforts, the federal government dropped the hammer and hit the nuclear button on the Emergencies Act, which is something we've never seen before.
Yeah.
And that was incredibly frustrating to, because, you know, I realized a couple of things during the actual commission.
One we showed incredible restraint uh, because very, very easily, very often we could have easily put that entire city in constant, a constant state of uh checkmate, yeah you know.
But we showed a lot of restraint where we said no, we're going to do a lot of things uh, to try to build a working relationship at least with the law enforcement and hopefully get the goodwill with the government so they'll come and talk to us.
We wanted to always appear reasonable, responsible, and safe.
We always wanted to take that stance.
But, you know, when you listen to the testimony during the commission, it was incredibly frustrating.
And I remember saying to Keith and Brendan, you know, our two lawyers that were fighting it out every day.
Well, Eva and Bashiva, I mean, the four lawyers.
And I remember saying to them, listen, the one question I think I would like you to ask each of the witnesses, like key witnesses, was, did you ever have the will to go and at least talk to the convoy organizers?
And, you know, there was a lot of back and forth discussion as to why they weren't going to ask that question to all of the witnesses, but they were asking, they did ask it to specific witnesses.
But what was striking to me was day after day after day, we sat in that commission and we listened.
They never from day one, even you heard Justin Trudeau's testimony, they were talking about the Emergency Act on the 27th of January, the day before the convoy even arrived.
That was their go-to default thinking immediately.
You know, there was never any engagement.
You saw testimony from the PMO's office where, you know, the media was painting a very dark story about the convoy.
And yet the PMO's office was talking about, no, no, no, make sure that we don't put pressure on the convoy because we want them to keep all their, what they called crazies, keep them in the convoy so that the leadership of the convoy that was traveling across the country wouldn't push them out.
Like they wanted, they were hopeful that we would show up as a very radical idea.
I mean, there were already discussions about a possible January 6th scenario here in Canada in Ottawa, you know, which is ridiculous given all of the support that the convoy was getting as it traveled across the country.
You know, people were waving flags.
January 6th, I don't even know why that's a comparison.
It's a comparison because I suppose it's effective at demonize the convoy, but it's not a fair comparison by any stretch.
That's not what the intended purpose was.
And yet we saw from day one, the government just wanted to vilify and the media wanted to vilify the convoy.
And so when we listened to the testimony, it made sense that nobody wanted to talk to us.
Nobody wanted to engage in any dialogue.
We believe that they would.
And the reason being, because they've done it for pipelines, they've done it for Indigenous.
But for a bunch of Canadians, you know, from every walk of life in this country, why would you want to possibly talk to them?
You know, it just baffles the mind to see the level of desire, default thinking to put this protest down before any discussion of actually speaking to us.
And that's what we heard day after day after day in the commission.
You know, I think maybe some of the people in the convoy were blindsided by just how sinister the federal government was.
You guys were thinking, okay, well, they might not like us.
They might disagree with us on everything, but like they might engage with us, but they had no intention of doing any of that.
And the convoy remained peaceful the entire time we found out that actually they had been on the receiving end of violence.
And I'm not just talking about the government kind, even though government has a monopoly on violence.
You know, there was, there were outside actors who threw eggs at the convoy truckers and the truckers never responded in kind.
And this whole January 6th narrative, anytime somebody raises it.
As you know, this is sedition.
Okay, nobody's been charged with sedition.
They're charged with the crime of being annoying in public.
But think about the restraint the trucker showed, two years in a pressure cooker.
A lot of them have lost their jobs.
They've a lot of them have lost everything.
That's why many of them had their kids with them.
Yes, the country's useful people show up in the nation's capital by the thousands with heavy haul equipment.
They didn't even break a window.
They wanted to storm parliament hill.
They could have taken it at any point.
Everywhere the police turned, they were overwhelmed if the truckers wanted to take the place over.
They never did.
They never responded with violence once never, never.
And you know we we, I was reminded during the commission too.
Um, or I had spoken to our lawyers because I I, it was a really important detail that I hadn't given much thought to since the commission started.
But you know, in halfway through the, we were threatened.
The truckers were threatened.
All the families that brought their children and their dogs, they were threatened that if the truckers didn't leave, that they were going to come in and euthanize people's dogs.
Yeah, they were threatened by Family AND Children's Services to come in and take their children away.
Actually, i'm just going to correct you there they weren't threatened by Family and Children's Services, they were threatened by the police, and Family and Children's Services said, we didn't say that, don't involve us in your nonsense.
They were caught blindsided by it.
Yes yeah, exactly that's.
That's a fair detail as well.
But you know, this was the issue for us is that we, we showed so much restraint um, because I can tell you a first-year captain in the army could have basically put that whole entire city into gridlock, like we could have easily put them into checkmate anytime we wanted to.
We didn't, we deliberately did not do any of that stuff.
I mean we, we did some slow rolls through Amazon, we did some slow rolls through um, the airport, but we were just trying to demonstrate that if you want to escalate things, we've got the ability to escalate as well, but we don't want to.
And I remember saying to the police the day after they raided Coventry, because they came in very heavy-handed I was there um, and and I saw what they had done, and I said to the police the next day.
I said look, if you want to do tit for tap, we can easily do this.
Yeah, that's not a problem for us.
Let's yeah exactly, let's dance like, if you want to do tit for tat, i'll do tit for tat with you, that's not a problem, but we're not going to.
And if you do something stupid again, like you did at Coventry, We will do something equal.
We'll never exceed what you did.
We won't go like a level above what you did, but we'll always match you.
So if you want to do stupid things, we'll do stupid things too.
But we have an opportunity right now.
We'll keep it cool and just consider that Coventry was your freebie.
You do something stupid like that again, and we're going to have an impact on the city just as badly.
And that's when we did the slow rolls to the airport, just to let them know we can shut your airport down.
We can shut down Amazon, which is private property.
We could do a lot of stuff.
We could be very disruptive to the city, but we're not going to.
So behave and we will behave.
That was the message we were trying to get across to them.
And, you know, it worked for about two weeks until they came in and they just raided under the Emergency Act, which, by the way, we all heard during the testimony that was not required.
RCMP And Tanks00:13:00
Every law enforcement person that testified said, well, we didn't need it.
We had the power to do what we needed to do under normal criminal code stuff.
But Justin True and all of his psychopathic cabinet ministers were just hell-bent on picking our back.
And that's what they did.
Yeah.
And, you know, moving tanks, joking or really considering moving tanks in on peaceful protesters, Tiananmen Square style, whether they were joking about that or not.
Okay, first of all, you get to choose what kind of disgusting jerk you are.
You can be the kind of disgusting jerk who jokes about using tanks on peaceful protesters, or you can be the kind of disgusting jerk who actually considers it.
But it's really dealer's choice.
I think you're awful either way.
And we saw cabinet ministers joking about using tanks on peaceful protesters while simultaneously denying military equipment to the Alberta government, who didn't want anything other than just access to tow trucks if they needed them or heavy haul equipment because they're dealing with tractors at the Coots border.
And the Fed said, no, we don't, first of all, we don't have it.
We don't have it.
Then we don't have it to spare.
And then, sorry, we just can't give it to you.
And it is my understanding that people from the Alberta government went to CFB Edmonton, laid their eyeballs on the equipment, knew it was there, and that's how they needed to ask for it.
And the feds denied it to them while considering using tanks on peaceful protesters in the nation's capital.
Yeah, and I found that to be very strange dynamic because I had actually seen a copy of the order that the chief of defense staff was actually talking to the prime minister's office and saying, hey, if you want to use this, we'll help out.
Which is strange.
I find that to be very uncharacteristic of the role of the Canadian military because I participated in the GHG 20 summit in 2010 in Toronto.
And the brigadier general that we were all working for for that, he every day said, look, the Canadian military cannot be perceived as being the lead agency for this entire event.
This is a law enforcement in government area, government of Canada event.
We're here in support.
So we cannot be seen in any capacity of law enforcement of any kind.
We're not the lead agency.
We're supporters of a security event.
That's it.
And so, you know, that was in keeping with everything that I had ever believed about the Canadian military's involvement in a domestic operation.
You know, typically the military gets a flood, an ice storm, something like that.
But to put down a peaceful protest, you know, is so offside.
I mean, I don't know how to describe it.
But then when you see this current chief of defense staff offering support to Ottawa was ridiculous.
And I kind of understand why Edmonton didn't want to get involved as well.
But when you look at the testimony of the Minister of National Defense, I was just thinking, like, how is it that you're in charge of the Canadian military?
I just, it baffles my mind.
Absolutely baffles my mind.
But hey, look at the state of the Canadian military right now.
They care more about a woke culture in the Canadian military than they do about the actual defense of Canada.
It makes no sense.
I mean, it is literally the managed decline of the Canadian Armed Forces.
And I'm glad I'm not in uniform anymore.
I'm absolutely glad I have nothing to do with the Canadian military.
It's not what it was.
And it's not going to get better.
No, it's definitely not going to get better because as it turns out, all the conscientious objectors have been pushed out.
And those are the people that you want in positions of leadership, right?
Like those are the people who have a strong moral compass.
They see things in black and white.
They're led by their ethics.
And those people, if they resisted forced vaccination, they were shown the door.
And so while it's bad right now, I think in five years, we're really going to see the extent of the damage to our public institutions done by Justin Trudeau's vaccine mandates.
Yeah, and I absolutely believe that's true.
When I ran in the Ontario Party this summer, a small part of me was actually quite worried that we could end up becoming the government of Ontario.
I'm worried because, you know, my thought was if we formed a government because of some Hail Mary, we formed a government.
Now we would have been responsible for cleaning up this mess.
And do you think the voters were ever going to forgive you or distinguish the difference between what Doug Ford and Justin Trudeau did to Ontario versus a brand new party that has to come in and clean up all the carnage?
So I was always slightly a little bit worried about that.
That the public, when things were really bad, they set the conditions for it to get to its apex of really bad.
But the government, you're the government.
So now you're in charge of cleaning it up.
I don't know if the voters would ever forgive a brand new party for the mistakes of a previous government.
And I just didn't want to have to be the one that came into Ontario and cleaned it all up and then got blamed for the mess to begin with.
Yeah, well, I think Danielle Smith's experiencing a little bit of that here in Alberta, and she's the same party as the guy who caused all the problems.
But I think at the end of the day, you just have to say what you're going to do and then do what you said, which seems to be what she's doing so far, which I could talk to you about the Checker Commission all day.
But I want to talk to you about a couple of other things.
The things I had on my list were the state of free speech and the gun grab.
But since we're talking about Danielle Smith, let's talk about the gun grab because she's been leading the way in the fight against Justin Trudeau's illegal confiscation of, I guess, Canada's entire hunting gun inventory, with the exception of just a few.
The provincial government in Alberta is working very hard to make this sort of an amnesty zone for law-abiding gun owners where our new premier has advised that our RCMP are not going to enforce this law because I don't know how they could.
A lot of these guns, well, most of them are moving from unrestricted to now prohibit.
So the government doesn't know where they are.
They were never registered.
So the only way that you could possibly find them is to expend stretched RCMP resources to go door to door down the list of registered gun owners or PAL holders and kick in their doors and say, do you have an SKS in here?
And Danielle Smith has said that's not going to happen.
And she's sort of having that DeSantis effect where he stood up and said, we're not doing this.
And then all of a sudden Texas said, yeah, us too.
And Oklahoma said, yeah, us too.
And so she's doing the same thing.
We're doing it.
And then all of a sudden, Saskatchewan and the Yukon and Manitoba are like, yeah, us too, us too, us too.
What do you think is going to come of the gun ban?
I think it's just absolutely impossible to enforce.
And I think this might be the one thing that Justin Trudeau has overplayed his hand with.
I was just going to say, I think that this is the one issue that Justin Trudeau is not going to be able to get away with.
And this is, you know, really a testament to the moral courage of Danielle Smith and any other provincial government that finally stands up and says, listen, you guys have been so out of control in Ottawa that this gun thing is the line that we're not going to let you cross.
You have backed us up into so many different walls, but this one here, no, absolutely not.
And, you know, prior to COVID, I might have been a little bit more like, okay, why do you need a 50 cap?
You know, why do you need to own something for, because there's no elephants in Canada that you need to go hunting.
Okay, so why do you need this big massive Gatman gun?
And I say that jokingly, but given everything that we've seen and learned, I question everything about the Canada that I once believed I live in.
I question everything.
I question history.
I question everything about this country.
And I will say this.
I think that history has shown that every time a government has disarmed its people, it's always worked out incredibly bad for those people.
So if the police are willing to give up their gun, then the public could give up their gun.
But until that happens, I don't think it's reasonable that you can have a government that is armed and can come to your home and commit violence against you when you have no way to defend yourself against your government.
And so I don't think that any Canadian should give up their gun.
And I have to be careful here because I don't want to end up getting charged with an utterance or something stupid like that.
But what I want to be clear about is I don't think that any government has the right to tell you you cannot own a firearm.
And so I think it is one of those rallying issues where ordinary Canadians are going to come up and say, you know what, just like when you froze bank accounts, this gun issue is a drastic overreach of government authority.
And so I think it should be stopped.
And I'm very appreciative that Danielle Smith and I dare say Scott Mo, because I'm not done with Scott Mo.
I think Scott Moe's got to go.
Sorry about the rhyme, but I think he needs to be removed legally, obviously.
But I think the other provinces have to have big changes in leadership.
And I think they have to start respecting their constituents and doing what is right for their provinces and put what is right for the country on the back burner.
So I'm very, very happy with the Sovereignty Act.
I think it's a great idea.
I'm really happy about that.
Alberta needs to get rid of the RCMP as well.
They need to convert them to a provincial police force or just get city cops.
But honestly, they need to get rid of the RCMP because you shouldn't have federal police inside your jurisdiction dictating Ottawa's policy at the provincial level inside your jurisdiction.
So I think I'm hopeful that Alberta gets rid of the RCMP.
I just don't think it's a good marriage to be in.
And because, you know, guns are criminal code stuff.
This is all federal.
Criminal code is all federal.
So if you've got federal control like that and you've got a federal police force inside your province, they do technically have the ability to execute search warrants and come into your home and take your guns away from you if you're registered and you have to be registered.
So I really, I'm really happy to hear that at least Alberta is leading the way and saying, you're not coming for the guns.
You're not coming.
We're going to fight you.
Well, and that's the thing that I think is, and I hate to use the word offensive because sometimes when people say, I'm offended, it just means to me, you can't control your emotions.
There's something quite defensive about a federal government creating a special class of criminal out of the law abiding, while on the other side of the equation, reducing the mandatory minimum sentences for a whole host of gang-related gun crimes.
So if you are involved in gun trafficking and committing crimes with guns, armed robbery with guns, your mandatory minimum sentences are disappearing.
But over here, somebody who's got a gun in the gun cabinet, they're grandpas in my case.
And all of a sudden, it's illegal and I'm a criminal, but that guy gets a lower sentence for committing a crime with a gun and mine just minding its own business waiting for duck season.
Yeah.
And, you know, there are days in this country where I look and see what the governments are doing.
And the worst pessimist inside of me comes to the conclusion that it's almost a deliberate dismantling of the foundation of a society.
And I think, you know, we look at the Royal Canadian Legion as an example.
You know, all out on the East Coast, they were denying James Topp access to their legions to rent them.
He's a five-time deployed.
And of the five times he's deployed, four of those were combat missions.
Okay.
He served 27 years in the regular force.
He walked across Canada, peacefully protested, raising awareness for the government overreach.
And yet they denied him access, but they're hosting drag queen shows all over the place.
Twitter's Censorship Controversy00:07:48
And it's like you're hosting a drag queen show where you're right on the pamphlets.
It's saying, bring your children.
I mean, we're talking about men dressed up as women, women and doing sex shows.
Okay.
This is fundamentally upside down.
And you look at it and you say, what is the point of this if you, if, if for no other reason than to just completely disrupt any moral ethical standards that we have in our society?
Like, yeah, overnight, grandpa can now become a criminal because of the hunting rifle he has, but a rapist has a lower sentence and is back on the street.
Yep.
It's like they're deliberately trying to dismantle the very foundation of our society.
And you just, you know, and then you get into this other legislation, the free speech, this is Bill C11.
You know, now it's, they want to control the internet because they don't want conversations like this that you and I are having right now to ever be seen by Canadians.
They want to be able to control the dialogue that you and I have because God forbid Canadians think anything else than what the government propaganda machine wants you to think.
You know, this is really, we're getting into Ministry of Truth territory here.
And it's obvious and they don't care.
They don't care.
They don't care that it's obvious because they've got this ungodly alliance with the NDP and the liberals.
So they can just do whatever they want to do because they have an unofficial majority government.
They can just push through anything they want and they're not stoppable.
So it's worrying.
Yeah.
And there's a third part in that unholy trinity there.
You said the liberals, the NDP, but there's also the mainstream media who you would, in normal times in a different country, they would be squawking about the crackdown on free speech and the free press in this country.
But it doesn't matter to them because they are, I think, denied the rightful market correction that they need for their lies and their constant support of the liberals because all they do is get handouts from the liberals.
So while, you know, independent media, we've got to hustle, we've got to sort of, you know, if we get something wrong, we hear about it right away from our donors because we're connected to them all day long.
But the mainstream media, they don't have that.
They are connected to the government.
And I think when they get things right about the government, that's when they hear about it.
Yeah.
And it's just baffling to see the level of complicity that they have.
It's almost, I've always had the impression that the government and the mainstream media have played off of each other.
It's like the media starts down a certain path and the government says, I really like that.
Let's get a hold of them and support that and keep pushing them.
We like what they're doing.
And then the government, and then the media will look back at the government and say, hey, wow, they're really supporting us in our effort.
We must be doing something good.
And it's just this perverse relationship between the government and the media.
And they feed off of each other.
And the media doesn't consider its ethical standards anymore.
I mean, they have a guiding, you know, guiding principles that as journalists, they are supposed to abide by.
And they don't.
And they haven't.
And because they've been getting away with all the lying that they've been doing since COVID, why would they care about their own ethical standards?
They've just been lying with impunity and getting away with it.
So they don't have to circle back and actually, you know, do a, you know, look at their belly button and try to really reflect on, you know, what have I been doing to this country in the last couple of years?
And, you know, if there were ethical, a lot of ethical journalists out there, you would be seeing more of them acting in terms of a whistleblower capacity or leaving and going to different alternative media outlets.
But they're not.
They're just happy to keep getting their paychecks.
And I during the commission, I spoke to a journalist who worked for one of the mainstream media outlets.
And I said to him, I said, you know, David, like, why don't you leave the mainstream media stuff?
And his response was, well, those other alternative media outlets, they just don't pay enough.
And I'm like, so you're doing this for money.
You're writing stuff that is ripping apart this country for money.
You know, that was the level of conscious awareness that he had about.
He didn't care.
He just wanted to get paid.
But this is, sorry to interrupt you, but this is why they can't understand people like you is because you were willing to lose your job to stand on the moral hill of forced vaccination.
And so they can't understand people like you because they will say and do anything for a paycheck.
Yes.
And that's why they call them prostitutes, right?
But here's the thing.
You know, this entire convoy was never, ever, ever about COVID-19.
It was always about the rule of law in this country.
It was always about government overreach.
We had vaccinated and unvaccinated people go to Ottawa.
That wasn't the issue.
The issue was that the rule of law in this country was being completely disregarded.
And the lawyers in this country catastrophically failed the public.
The courts still continue to this day to catastrophically fail the public.
The government, well, I don't need to talk about them.
Law enforcement in this country have failed the public.
And, you know, academia, the doctor.
Academia.
Yes.
Yeah.
So the doctors are starting to come around a little bit.
And, you know, we talk about what's going on in Twitter.
And with the Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter, the lack of censorship you're seeing on Twitter right now.
And what I found interesting is the other day he said, okay, all social media, other social media platforms, he's not going to allow you to put links on there.
And, you know, a few people were like, what is all that about?
Why would you do that?
And I think I don't know because Elon Musk doesn't return my calls, but I'm suspecting that the reason he's doing that, he's saying, you know what?
I'm going to punish you guys.
I'm going to punish you.
You're not going to put your stuff on my platform because you're censorship giants.
And so I think that that's probably what it's all about: is that the fact that you've been censoring for all this time, I'm not going to reward you and allow your link to be on my platform.
If you change your rules, then maybe I'll allow Facebook posts to come back onto my Twitter.
But if you stop censoring and act in good faith and leave your members alone with censorship, they're actually the product.
Yeah, the product, right?
So, you know, we're seeing a lot more people come out on Twitter and they're more open and they're talking about things and they're not afraid to be banned.
Okay.
They're not afraid to have their accounts frozen.
That's a good thing.
That is a good thing for society to have an open dialogue.
Unfortunately, we've not remembered how to have a proper, open, respectful dialogue.
We just attack each other like it's a blood sport.
And that's why I block everybody.
I block people.
I mute them.
I let them scream into the ether at me and I just ignore them.
Yeah, I just block them because I just don't care enough.
If you want to attack an issue and if you want to have a dialogue about something, I'll do it all along as long as you're not attacking me personally.
But I find more often than not, they just go from my throat and I just ignore you with a block.
I don't care.
Blocking Dialogue00:11:34
And that's the thing.
They can speak all day about whatever nonsense they want, but I don't have to listen to them.
I'm not required to listen to you.
Tom, I know I'm taking up a bunch of your time today.
So I will ask you this.
What's next for you?
Well, I do have to get the book finished and it's unfortunately going to be delayed.
I really wanted to hit the anniversary of the Emergency Act, but because of everything we learned in the commission, I'm just not going to be able to do it.
And I don't think that the book would be done properly if I didn't add what we learned behind the scenes from the government law enforcement.
So that's pretty much what I'm going to do.
And after that, I'm not really sure, to be honest.
Maybe I'll get a job at Walmart as a greeter, go back into hiding.
I don't know.
I have no idea what I'm going to do.
And I think spend more time with my kids, obviously, because I haven't spent as much with them in the last year as they deserve.
So I've got to connect with my family.
However, I'm still going to be very active, very vocal on social media, speaking out about a lot of the things that the government is doing, because I think 2023 is for us going to be, we're going to be the frogs in the boiling pot in terms of legislation.
Because Canadians don't pay attention to what's going on in, you know, the willfully ignorant people in this country don't pay attention to what's happening with legislation.
And 2023 will be the year of legislation.
You know, we're past COVID.
It's all, you're going to wake up and just by virtue of owning a gun, be a criminal.
you're going to wake up and have your ability to use free speech on social media because the government's going to have C-11.
You're going to see, well, talking about Bill 21 in 11, right?
So that's the gun ban.
That's the censorship.
You got the federal 36, C-36.
You've got MAID taking effect.
Certain things were supposed to be triggered in March.
You're going to have C-36, which is this insanity happening in British Columbia right now, where that new premier has off his rocker, wants to make it a crime to, if you're a healthcare worker in the province of BC, to openly or publicly criticize anything to do with COVID measures.
Like he's talking jail time in a $200,000 fine for criticizing the government's response to COVID, even though there's people with a crazy amount of vaccine injuries going on across this country right now.
He's still pushing that narrative.
He's lost his mind.
So there is so much legislation that's in the pipeline right now that I think that's what this next year coming is going to be all about.
We're going to be less and less and less free as time goes on.
Every month, it's going to be a new law that further restricts your freedom as a citizen of this supposed free country.
So that's troubling.
Yeah.
Tom, I don't think obscurity is in the cards for you going forward.
I don't think you fading into obscurity will be good for the country either.
I think your best place is in the fight for freedom.
And while I am pessimistic about the government, I remain optimistic about humanity in that it is our natural inclination to be free.
And so even though tyranny was normalized over the past two and a half, let's say three years, and government overreach became a daily occurrence, they can only get away with that for so long.
And every great tyranny in the history of humanity has fallen and it has been normal people who took it down.
I couldn't agree more.
And despite all the pessimistic things that I've said in this conversation, I do believe that we are going to come out better than when we started almost three years ago.
I really do think that.
And I also want to say I think that 2023 is going to be a great awakening for people and not just in Canada, but around the world.
And I think you're going to see the public.
I'm hoping that it isn't civil unrest.
I don't want to see violence.
I don't want to see this country torn apart.
I think we can do it.
I think we can get through this and make the changes that we need to see in this country happen without violence.
But I hate to say it, the more the government pushes, it keeps that as an unfortunate option for some people in this country.
And I don't want to see that happen.
But at some point, the government is going to have to either back off or the public is going to have to reassert itself as the people that are truly, truly in charge of this country.
That's what I'm hopeful for.
You know, who's cheering for the people to get violent?
The government, because they can meet with overwhelming force.
Tom, I could talk to you all day, but I am just out of a meeting.
We're going to head into another one.
Thanks so much.
We'll stay in touch, definitely.
Merry Christmas to you and your family and best wishes in the new year.
Thank you.
I make no exaggeration when I say that I could talk to Tom all day.
Now, this is a portion of the show where we want to hear from you.
I give out my email every single week because unlike the mainstream media, I actually am curious about what you think about the work that we're doing here at Rebel News and the topics that we're covering.
And so if you want to send me an email, it's sheila at rebelnews.com.
It's really easy.
Put gun show letters to ends, please, in the subject line so it's easy for me to find.
But also sometimes I go poking around on Rumble, even the censorship platform of YouTube to see your comments there.
So you know what?
Leave a comment everywhere and you might just end up on the show.
Now, tonight's letter comes to me by way of Don Withers, and he writes about a show I did a couple weeks back.
And frankly, this is something, this show that I did a couple weeks back, I'm getting a lot of viewer feedback still on it.
Don writes, I'm a retired energy worker that was born in Alberta.
I was watching the show with the NFA.
That's the National Firearms Association.
I interviewed Rick Igersich a couple weeks back and was pleasantly surprised to note that you are the first public figure I know of with the courage to say that closing the border would do more to decrease crime than persecuting legal firearms owners.
Yeah, of course it would.
How do you think the guns are getting into the country?
Immigration is unfortunately the third rail of all politics.
And anyone who mentions that bringing in millions of unvetted people from the most violent countries in the world is not a great idea will be attacked 24 hours a day.
Let's even set aside that people that we have no control over or have no information on are just strolling into the country at Roxan Road.
Let's set that aside.
Like I said, if people can walk into the country, surely they can bring guns.
But there are a whole host of other issues that are caused by our immigration levels.
And I am not by any means anti-immigration.
I think orderly immigration is the way to go, especially in a society that is not doing well to replace itself.
We've sort of vilified parenthood and procreation in this country.
And then we've made it impossibly expensive for people to have kids and live the Canadian dream, get a house with a backyard and a couple of kids, even afford to get married.
But our high immigration levels put pressure on housing supply and it drives up the cost of housing.
And so it's not fair to immigrants, but also people who are already here.
So new Canadians and old Canadians, for lack of a better term, nobody can afford a house.
So if you slow down immigration so that housing supply can catch up and so that everybody has a job when they get here.
And if we are tailoring our immigration to our domestic workforce needs, like, we need welders in Alberta.
Maybe we need to seek out immigrants with the skills that we need to grow the economy.
I think that's a better way to do things rather than just take all comers.
I think we should probably be a little more choosy.
Anyway, the letter goes on.
Sorry about that segue.
I also purchased a one-year membership to the National Firearms Association today as a way to help them out.
Well, that's great.
I was never a hunter, but started target shooting when I retired five years ago.
I got a severe case of the firearm bug.
Everybody does.
That's why I say take a liberal to the gun range.
It'll fix them right up.
Anyways, I got a severe case of the firearm bug and now shoot three times a week, own more handguns than fingers and a couple of semi-auto black guns that are now illegal, mainly because they have pistol grips, barrel shrouds, folding stock, and have the potential to use a magazine that is more than five rounds.
That's a really important point because Don puts potential in capital letters.
Your gun doesn't have to hold a magazine that has five rounds to be banned.
It has to have the potential to hold a magazine that can hold five rounds to be outlawed.
When speaking of Bill 21, everyone talks about hunters.
Could you please mention target shooters so we are included and not forgotten when the dust has settled on this matter?
Definitely.
You know what?
I don't think it matters what you use your lawfully obtained firearm for.
If you didn't break the law to get it, why are you suddenly now breaking the law to own it after the fact?
It doesn't make any sense to me, but I'm not a liberal.
He goes on.
I'm sure you've noticed, but it's becoming more apparent that Indigenous people are being used as a political weapon in Canada.
Yeah.
Many organizations use them to block pipelines or energy projects, as well as stirring up the usual systemic racism narrative.
I'm glad the Indigenous organizations are starting to push back against Bill C-21, but I would feel better if these organizations included all Canadians in their demands to respect the rights to hunting and firearm ownership.
When you see the small clips on the news, the Liberals are now saying that, of course, the hunting rights of all Indigenous and Métis will be respected, but no mention of the rights of non-Indigenous Canadians.
I think that's the Liberals dividing people apart.
I don't think it is the Indigenous organizations doing that.
I think hunters and firearms owners and sports shooters, we stand shoulder to shoulder and we don't divide ourselves around racial lines.
It's the liberals trying to pit us against each other by carving out exemptions for certain ones of us based on our ethnicity.
And I'm not going to let them do that.
I've been a subscriber since Ezra started the Rebel in his living room and I followed him a bit when he was at Sun News.
Thank you for your tireless work publicizing what everyday Canadians care about.
Thanks for Your Support00:01:12
Best regards.
Don Withers of Lethbridge.
Well, thanks for the great letter, Don, and thanks for letting me just interject my thoughts along the way.
Thanks for your support all these years.
But yeah, that's my goal here at Rebel News is to do news for the normals.
I think I'm like you when you read the news from some of the corporate government sponsored, I'll call them media outlets.
It's like they've never spoken to a normal person before.
They've never met a hunter or righand or a farmer or a blue-collar person or anybody from the working class, quite frankly.
And they look at us like we're zoo animals and they think they know better than we do about how we need to live our lives.
And I say no thanks because those people, they're the people who could survive the least without all the help from the government.
And so I don't need to take their life advice on anything.
Well, everybody, that's the show for tonight.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, Happy Hanukkah, whatever holiday you celebrate this time of year.
I'll see everybody back here in the same time, in the same place next week.
And remember, as always, you know, I'm thinking about a new tagline for next year.