Sheila Gunn Reid examines the Freedom Convoy’s one-year anniversary, Canada’s largest human rights protest, led by truckers like Tamara Leach and Chris Barber. Legal lead Keith Wilson, contacted via Zoom in early February 2022, details chaotic but peaceful conditions, federal misuse of the Emergencies Act (February 14th), and $600M media subsidies fueling anti-convoy narratives. The Trucker Commission’s report, delayed and redacted by Justice Minister Lemente, risks shielding government overreach—like freezing bank accounts—while exposing systemic fragility and gaslighting. Parallels drawn to Antifa’s Seattle protests underscore broader concerns about legal transparency and government accountability. [Automatically generated summary]
Oh, hey guys, I bet you're expecting the melodious sounds of Ezra Levant's voice, but no, it's me, Agasto Sheila Gunreed, filling in for Ezra in the big chair today.
Now, tonight I'm talking to trucker lawyer Keith Wilson because we're looking back on the first anniversary of the single largest human rights demonstration in modern Canadian history, the Trucker Convoy.
I'm asking Keith how this property rights lawyer from Alberta became the point man on the legal team for the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa and how he helped them navigate the legal quagmire they found themselves in when they landed in the nation's capital as several levels of government and several police forces tried to crack down and euthanize the trucker convoy.
And I'm also asking Keith what he thinks the outcome of the Public Order Inquiry Commission will be.
That's the official examination of Justin Trudeau's actions in invoking a counterterrorism law on peaceful political dissidents in the nation's capital.
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Looking back on the single largest human rights movement in modern Canadian history with the lawyer representing the activists.
It's January 31st, 2023.
I'm Sheila Gunread, but you're watching the Ezra Levant show.
I don't think I'm exaggerating when I call the anti-segregation, pro-free-speech, pro-mobility rights freedom convoy from last February the single largest cohesive human rights demonstration in modern Canadian history.
Tens of thousands of Canadians lined the highways and overpasses across this country as a convoy led by truckers, but joined by thousands of normal people headed to our nation's capital to protest the endless COVID restrictions on our lives.
By then, Canadians had spent two years being told which way to walk in the grocery store, who they could have in their homes.
They were told they had to get a medication they didn't want before they could travel or go to the gym or watch their kids play hockey or even have a beer with friends.
And when Justin Trudeau told the truckers they had to get a vaccine to cross the border after they had already been working for two years without interruption to keep the economy going, they said enough was enough.
It was the breaking point and Canadians joined the truckers.
And immediately upon arrival in the nation's capital, those truckers found themselves in real legal jeopardy as multiple levels of government and several levels of police sought to crack down on the convoy and their leadership.
So, they needed great legal help.
And along came my show guest today, who stepped up to thread the legal needle to protect the rights and interests of the peaceful protesters in Ottawa from a government that has an excessive reflex to squash dissidents and smash freedom.
Stay with me.
Keith Wilson, lawyer for the truckers, joins me after the break for a long-form interview.
Joining me now is that man, trucker lawyer Keith Wilson.
Keith, thanks so much for coming on the show.
I have so many questions for you.
And I think because we're sort of a year out of the convoy, I think maybe we can walk back a little.
I'm curious how a lawyer in Alberta ends up being a trucker lawyer in Ottawa.
How did you get involved in the convoy itself?
Well, you know, sometimes the phone rings and you answer it.
It was actually a Zoom call.
It was not quite one year ago today.
It was on February 1st, and I had a team meeting with my Peford lawyers because, as you know, I counsel for former Premier Peckford on the travel mandate charter challenge.
And there was a bunch of more names in the waiting room than I expected.
And there was an assembly of lawyers from the Justice Center that had been contacted that morning from the Truckers in Ottawa with a request for help with legal matters.
And the Justice Center determined that they were going to send a team of five lawyers to Ottawa the next morning.
And they asked me if I would lead that team, being a senior lawyer.
And I agreed.
So that's how I found myself in Ottawa on February 2nd for 19 days on the ground at the side of Tamara Leach and Chris Barber and other members of the Freedom Board and advising them and helping them negotiate their agreement with the city and deal with the police and the GoFundMe and the donations and everything else, the class action lawsuit, the injunctions, the Attorney General orders, the Emergency Act proclamations, and so on.
Now, how did you end up with Eva at your side?
Because Eva Chipiuk, she has been a very outspoken face of the legal team of the Convoy.
And she was the one who examined Justin Trudeau at the Public Order Commission.
So I guess, how do you formulate a team to walk into Ottawa to try to untangle this mess that's unfolding in front of you?
Well, I've known Eva for 15 or more years.
So my background is representing landowners, farmers, ranchers, and other landowners in Alberta and disputes with energy companies, utility companies, and that sort of work where you have a group client where you're representing, you know, 20, 30 farms on a pipeline route or something.
And Eva also, that's her background.
So we'd met numerous times where we were in hearings over large pipeline projects or power line projects.
So we practice the same kind of law.
We're in these David and Goliath type battles.
And she was the one who reached out to me in the fall of 2021 and asked me if I would be willing to take on the Peckford case for the, you know, as a contract lawyer to the Justice Center.
So that's how Eva and I, so we've known one another off and on throughout the years, had a lot of cases where we're on the same side of and so on.
Both her and I do a lot of public speaking to the legal profession.
So her and I would often be at legal conferences speaking on different contemporary legal topics.
But then they, the Justice Center themselves that morning of February 1st, had assembled a team and they, amongst themselves, they told me had decided that with myself being a senior lawyer, 27 years at the bar, they asked if I would lead them.
So I thought, well, that's helpful.
They've already decided amongst themselves that how they wanted the team to function.
So that's how it came about.
You know, it's interesting.
I didn't know that from Eva's background.
I knew that from your background, but I didn't realize that from Eva's, but that sort of makes the two of you kind of perfect in defending the little guys' rights from being tromped on by somebody or some institution that is far more powerful.
High Tension Convoy00:02:50
Now, you guys land in Ottawa.
How, what's the first thing you do?
Because you land and it's just, I guess, kind of chaotic, right?
You have these sort of different convoy factions and you have, you know, you're dealing with the police, you're dealing with the city.
Now the OPP is there.
The feds are sort of buzzing around like they might get involved.
What's the first thing you do as a lawyer to try to bring some order out of chaos, I guess is the right way to put it?
Well, we had a long plane ride there because we were in this twin thing.
And we went up and down, up and down, because we flew to Medicine Hat to pick up Tamara Leach's husband, Dwayne.
And then we flew to two locations in Saskatchewan to pick up lawyers and the accountant.
And then we flew to Winnipeg.
And then we were so heavy and full, we had to stop at Thunder Bay for fuel.
So we left at eight o'clock in the morning and we landed in Ottawa at 10.30 at night.
So we developed a plan and I sort of built, allowed the team to get to know one another on that flight.
We made the decision that we'd go in in two waves.
They were going to get a rental car.
I'd go in a taxi with Dwayne because that would get me to the leadership group immediately, going with Tamara's husband.
And when I arrived, the first thing I noticed when we got downtown to the hotel was that we drove downtown to the hotel because I had this image from the legacy media that we'd get stopped eight or 10 blocks out.
And then I was psychologically prepared for a long walk to get to the hotel.
And we pulled up right to the front door, just like you can today.
And that was consistent throughout.
Anyway, so that was the first sort of, wow, this is weird.
And also going past all the trucks and the people and the protesters and the signs and the encampments was my eyes were pretty wide.
But the other thing that was really notable, Sheila, was when I went into the lobby of the hotel, the supplies were stacked everywhere, like too high against the wall, because so many Canadians were just pouring in supplies.
It was remarkable.
And I could also, you could cut the tension.
It had this feel of, I imagined what it might have been like, say, during the Yugoslavian war, when the enemy had advanced significantly and all the civilians were like holed up in this hotel and they were surrounded, had that kind of super high tension to it.
And we went up to a hotel room where the key leaders were there, the key original convoy leaders and road captains and so on, Tamara Leach, Chris Barber, Sean Tyson and others, Miranda Gracer.
Establishing Key Channels00:02:30
And I had to work very quickly to understand who they were and to earn their trust.
None of us had met one another before.
So it was really interesting.
And it wasn't until the next day that I discovered there was all these other groups that were there and some had great intentions and others not so much.
So it was a sorting at first.
You know, it's funny that you would explain the first thing you notice is how much the mainstream media was lying about what was happening.
Remarkable in Ottawa, and that I guess that theme continued on.
Now, you was it almost immediately that you sort of got to work working with the city to sort of uncork some of the pressure that was happening in the downtown?
What are the first steps there of your engagement with the city?
Sure.
Well, you know, what Tamara and the other truckers had wanted was a dialogue with government, right?
Right.
And I've had to establish that before.
I've represented, you know, livestock groups, I've represented other interest groups.
And so the first thing you do, you don't go knocking on the front door.
You don't go up to the parliament building and say, hi, we'd like to talk to you.
You establish a back channel.
That's how diplomacy has always worked.
Okay.
And so I reached out to former Premier Peckford and my phone logs, which were in evidence in the inquiry, confirmed this as early as the Saturday.
And the first Saturday that I was there arrived on the Wednesday night.
And I said, hey, do you have any contacts both at the city level and the federal level so that we can try and open up a dialogue?
I had discussed this.
That was the first concern that Tamara and Chris and the other leaders had raised with me was the absence of any serious dialogue.
And they said, What do we do?
Like, we've never been in this situation.
We don't know how to do this.
And I said, well, what you do is you establish a back channel, you build some trust, and then you negotiate the terms for which you go and have your sit-down with the cameras and all that.
So I started that right away.
That's what they instructed me to do.
And Premier Peckford had contacts and he reached out to those.
And I got the first call that turned out to be the former chief of staff to Premier Doug Ford in Ontario, Dean French.
And he reached out to me on the Saturday.
Tweet Controversy00:10:03
That was very quick.
And him and I talked about what was possible.
I kept Tamara and the other key board members briefed at all times.
And one thing led to another.
And eventually, almost two weeks later, or more than two weeks later, Tamara and the mayor reached an agreement on how to de-escalate and allow the protest to focus on the federal government and allow the protest to go longer.
Of course, Trudeau and his government sent in the goons and violently beat up and arrested hundreds of Canadians.
Yeah.
You know, and that was one of the things that really struck me from the Public Order Emergency Commission, what we call the Trucker Commission here at Rebel News.
Is once we started seeing evidence about, you know, the mainstream media and the liberals, although I probably repeat myself by separating the two, they became the narrative was that the invocation of the Emergencies Act was the means of last resort to deal with the convoy, which was violent, which was terroristic, seditionist.
Nobody's ever been charged with sedition.
But the police didn't have the tools that they needed.
So they had to use these extraordinary tools that suspended civil liberties to give the police the tools that they needed.
But as it turns out, they had mused about invoking the Emergencies Act before they even knew the full extent of the convoy.
Like upon the day of arrival of some truckers, they were talking about is this an emergencies act level thing.
And then as it turns out, they didn't need these additional tools.
They had negotiated a deal to move the trucks out.
There were tow trucks available from places that were, you know, that, you know, they had people that had turned them down, but they were able to get access to tow trucks, which is one of the reasons they said they needed to invoke the Emergencies Act.
They didn't need to do that.
And as it turns out, the invocation of the Emergencies Act caused a redeployment of police away from the convoy's efforts to move trucks out of the downtown core because you couldn't move those trucks out without police stopping and redirecting traffic.
But once the feds invoked the Emergencies Act, it stopped those efforts, which sort of locked the congestion downtown for longer.
Yes.
Well, and so, you know, what was really remarkable about the evidence that came out in the inquiry from all of the government officials, the police officials, and we know we're talking about the highest of officials, is that it was clear.
So remember the timeline.
The Emergencies Act was announced on Monday, Valentine's Day, February 14th.
The deal, Tamara's deal, and the deal between the board to relocate the trucks with the mayor was approved by the board through an emergency board meeting of the trucker leadership on the Friday night before.
Letters were exchanged from the mayor to Tamara, and Tamara sent a letter back.
Tamara Lee sent a letter back to the mayor confirming the agreement on the Saturday.
All the trucker leadership went out.
850 flyers were printed to explain the deal and the plan to the truckers, handed out by hand because we couldn't trust any form other forms of media.
And there was significant buy-in from the truckers.
You've got to remember that a lot of people never planned to stay that long, and a lot of people were resolved to stay.
But some needed to go home and wanted to go home, but needed a graceful way out.
And so this idea of moving the majority of the vehicles out to these three base camps that had been set up just outside the perimeter of the city and having shuttle bus, we'd already started doing that and it was working really well.
So the idea was to expand it, but infill Wellington as tight as we could, because there was still quite a bit of space to put another 100 or more trucks up there to spread it along further to the east or to the west rather.
So the plan was to do that.
There was a logistics meeting with senior police officials, Eva Chipiuk, several of the truck captains and Tom Morazzo on the Sunday night at City Hall.
Everything was good to go.
And it was at that night, Sunday night, that the cabinet actually voted to invoke the Emergencies Act.
But what came out was that Cootes border was open at that point on the Sunday.
Windsor was open.
Emerson was open.
So all the border protests were resolved.
And the only thing left was Ottawa.
But the truckers, their leadership had reached this agreement with the mayor that they were about to implement it.
One of the real unfortunate and controversial things that happened was on Sunday night, a person who you've interviewed, BJ Dictor, logged into Tamara's Twitter account and sent out a tweet, even though the board had approved the deal with the mayor and said there is no deal.
And unfortunately, the prime minister, when he testified at the inquiry, Mr. Mendocino, relied on Mr. Dictor's tweet that he sent from Ms. Tamara's account without her consent.
She was incensed.
Eva and I and the other board members were with her all that night, so we knew she hadn't sent the tweet.
And unfortunately, it really sabotaged the Freedom Convoy and played right into the government's hands.
So this is the kind of thing we were constantly managing.
You know, there were divisions and infighting.
There was different groups or individuals trying to run out on point on their own.
But overall, no matter how you look at it, even with that quirk, because Tamara immediately sent out a tweet correcting that the deal was going ahead.
And on the Monday, we moved as all the mayor testified, the chief of staff, the police testified at the inquiry.
We moved over 100 vehicles out of the residential area of downtown.
We pushed 23 trucks up into Wellington.
Most of the trucks went out to the base camps that were set up on the perimeter or went home.
So we proved, and we also got stopped that morning by the police.
Their communications were terrible.
Just terrible.
Yeah.
So anyway, it was a crazy adventure.
But I think all in all, it was a remarkable display by Canadians of their patriotism and their willingness to come forward and take a stand when they were clear in their minds to the core of their being, the government had gone too far with these mandates, that, you know, that the charter was just being trampled in every respect.
And it was such an uplifting experience to be there, to see the hope and the pride and the determination of so many Canadians who came together who never knew one another before.
Yeah, the show of restraint too by Canadians in the face of that violence that so many of them faced at the hands of the police really speaks to the level of commitment they had to remain peaceful, to not be that thing which the government was going in the media and saying they were, that they were these fringe radicals, they were terrorists, they were seditionists.
They were being beaten by clubs by police and tear gassed and hauled out of their vehicles and their windows smashed in and threatened to have their kids and their dogs snatched from them.
And they didn't react once with violence.
And I think at any given point, all along the way, the police were vastly outnumbered by protesters.
And those protesters are the country's useful people.
They build things, they drive things.
If they wanted to overtake the entire city of Ottawa, they definitely could have.
They never did.
And I think that speaks to the quality of their character.
Absolutely.
You know, and the restraint was, wasn't it remarkable?
You know, even the, I've told this before.
One of the things that really struck me, Sheila, is each time I would go up onto Wellington and tour the areas and interact directly with the truckers and the protesters.
And I didn't have as much chance to do that as I would have liked, because as you can imagine, I was going from one meeting room to the other with Eva and I constantly dealing with so many different issues and or being in court on injunction and defending injunction applications and so on.
But is when I'd walk past the prime minister's building, you know, that big brown stone building right across from parliament, sort of towards the war memorial, and there wasn't any graffiti on it.
And it says prime minister of Canada's building or office.
Like, you know what it is.
It's obvious what it is.
There was no spray paint.
They didn't even put signs on it.
It was just like, you know, we're going to do absolutely nothing to give the prime minister and his paid legacy media the opportunity to further smear us and create false propaganda against us.
Like that sense of awareness that they had, because no one ever said, Tamara never said, or Chris Barber or Tom Morazzo never said, or Danny Bulford never said, don't put anything on that building.
It was that it's the point you make about how self-aware they were and how restrained.
It was just incredibly positive.
And the other thing I need to say, because I get this now that I've been to a few events since I've back to the closest thing I can describe to a normal life after that roller coaster ride of 2022, is the number of people that up until the Freedom Convoy trusted the legacy media.
Government Document Dump00:14:09
It was really them realizing the extent to which the legacy media was force-feeding them the government's line, the government's propaganda, and them seeing live streams in their Facebook friend group or seeing a live stream on Twitter or seeing a live stream on YouTube and going, hmm,
those people look pretty diverse ethnically.
And to me, they're dancing, hugging, singing.
Oh, those kids on the jumpy castle don't seem very threatening, certainly don't look like terrorists.
So it really, it was one of the most damning things for the traditional profession of journalism.
And people now, on a scale that I've never seen before, question everything from the legacy media or have just turned it off completely and now realize they have to work very hard and look to alternative and newer streaming and media sources such as Rebel News if they want to get any accurate sense of what's really going on in the world around them.
Yeah, that was one of the things that really struck me is how in this city that's teeming with journalists, right?
Like Ottawa is, if you're not a bureaucrat, you're a journalist or a politician there.
That's it.
And the media would not go down to the convoy and actually talk to the convoyers, but they would talk to the politicians about the convoy.
And I think it was because they knew if I actually talk to these people, it will debunk the narrative of the government.
So we can't do that.
And for us here at Rebel News, we saw enormous viewership growth over the convoy.
And all we had to do was turn on our cell phones and show the world that which the mainstream media wouldn't come out of their cubicles to do.
All they had to do was show the world the reality and they wouldn't do it because I think it would hurt their paymaster, Justin Trudeau.
Well, let me give a very vivid example of what you just said.
Sure.
CBC's building is on Spark Street.
It's one block from Wellington.
All they had to do was walk out, walk up the street, walk up one block.
They probably had to, and I heard a former journalist point this out, and I thought it was a powerful point.
He said they probably had to walk further to get to their car, to go home, than to walk up onto Wellington.
And since getting back, so like their refusal to, and you know what?
I think CBC's in a different class.
You know, $1.2 billion.
Sure.
Like they're just the propaganda arm of government.
You know, they're, that's all they are.
They're like North Korean television.
You know, I just, they're Rosemary Barton is the newsreader that's so excited about the dear leader, right?
But the other point, though, is I get, I only respond to about a third of the legacy media requests that I get.
And I did one actually with the Toronto Star.
And to their credit, it wasn't too bad of a story.
But what I found, and I discussed this with the journalists because, you know, I'm 58.
I've been involved in high-profile cases all my career.
So I've had lots of cases that are in the media over the years.
And normally, when I talk to a reporter, I have, in the old days, I had no idea where they were on the issue.
I had no Twitter I could go to see what their politics were.
And when I read the story, I still didn't know where they were, whether they supported my clients or supported the opposing party or supported the government that I was defending somebody against.
Now it's completely different.
I'll even say to the reporter, I'll say, look, you know, why are we even doing this?
You know that if I say anything bad about the government and you decide to, first of all, you're probably not going to put it in your story.
And if you do decide to put it in your story, your editor is going to pull it out because your editor is going to look at you, particularly the Toronto Star.
You've got two owners.
They're fighting once another in court.
One wants to sell off all the real estate and the printing presses and everything else and cash out.
The other one wants to keep it alive.
The only reason that the Toronto Star makes payroll is because they get part of the $600 million in subsidies from the federal government.
So the editor is going to look at that reporter and say, you know, Mr. Wilson might be right in criticizing the government on this, but if we print this, the government might not give us the Toronto Star the check.
Then I'm going to have to lay you off, says to the reporter, and you're not going to be able to pay your mortgage and make your car payment.
Like that's how bad it is.
So it's just complete government propaganda now.
It's paid government media full stop.
And I sense they're trying to fight back a little bit because I think they realize they've drank the poison and they've done a deal with the devil.
But I think it's too late.
And it's only a matter of time before I think we see them hopefully fade away, or we're going to see more money go in from our tax dollars and we're going to get even more extreme propaganda.
And Rosemary Barton is going to up her enthusiasm level when she talks about dear Trustin.
You know, you know, it's funny because they've nuked their credibility, but now they're in a position where they will not ever receive the market correction they so rightly deserve for nuking their credibility from the public who is who will not buy their product anymore or watch them because it doesn't matter because as long as they're saying the things that are friendly to the government, the government will continue to bail them out.
So it's just this hideous feedback loop where the only people who really lose out are the Canadian public who are forced to pay for this unwatchable batch of lies.
Now, I can talk about how terrible the mainstream media is forever.
However, as long as they remain terrible, I will have job security for as long as I want it.
But I wanted to talk to you about the Public Order Emergency Commission because the Commission has examined everything insofar as they've the evidence before them, I should say.
And it sounds like they've made their decision and they are passing the decision on to the federal government to look at before everybody else, which I think is probably normal practice.
I think the government usually gets a call.
No, it's not.
Okay, correct me on that.
Here's the thing.
Yeah.
Sure.
Because often when an inquiry is set, they do it from a blank piece of paper.
In other words, there's no statutory requirement.
There's no direction from the parliament that it occur.
In this case, that's different.
When we know that when the War Measures Act was replaced with the Emergencies Act, the parliamentarians of the day wanted an additional check in balance.
So, they added this provision that expressly directs the ruling government that invoked it to appoint a commissioner within a set number of days, and for that commissioner to hold a public inquiry.
And it expressly directs what the commissioner shall do.
It doesn't say he can do whatever he wants, doesn't say the prime minister's office can ask him to do whatever they think he should do.
It expressly directs in section 63, sub 2, that that report shall be laid before the parliaments within 360 days of the revocation.
Okay, so that works out to February 18th or the 20th, rather, because 18th is a Saturday.
So, you bump it over to the Monday because of the Interpretation Act.
So, what they're going to do, in contravention of the direction from Parliament, is they've announced that they're going to give the report secretly to the Prime Minister's office and the Cabinet.
So, they'll have it two weeks on February 6th or 9th.
I'm drawing a confusion on that date.
It's one of those two.
I think it's the 6th.
So, they'll have it.
And then we won't, the parliamentarians and the parliament won't receive it, and we won't see it until the 20th.
This is not cool.
This is not how the law works.
First of all, again, if they want to, you know, strike an inquiry into the provincial government wants to strike an inquiry into the management of the wildfires at Fort McMurray from 10 years ago, they can say whatever they want in there, right?
Because there's no statutory limitation or direction on it.
Here, the Emergency Act is clear.
The government's hands are tied.
The Commissioner's hands are tied.
The Parliament has said what he shall do, and he's about to do something along with the Prime Minister's office that's contrary to what the Parliament has directed.
It's very troubling.
You know, I'm glad you made that distinction because this is different than a normal commission.
This is built as a fail-safe into the law.
And I think the intention of building it as a fail-safe into the law is to make the government explain itself.
And so, why would you give the government an advance copy so that it can continue to make excuses for doing the thing that which it's being forced to be examined for doing?
It doesn't make any sense.
I'm very glad that you explained that.
Well, it's worse than that, though.
Let me be clear because this is very controversial.
If I ever had a court case and the judge, I found out that the judge gave the opposing party a copy of the decision two weeks before I got it.
The first thing that would come to my mind is: did they pressure the judge to change something in the decision?
Right?
How will we know?
This is not cool.
This is like the level of, to be blunt, the level of corruption that has come into the federal government is truly stunning.
And we could go on with the list and the list and the list of scandal after scandal after scandal.
I cannot even keep track of them.
They just don't care.
And so it's really unfortunate that this has come to be.
It's still open for the commissioner to follow the law and to only provide it to Canadians and the parliament and the cabinet and the prime minister all at the same time.
And I guess we're going to see what's going to happen.
Now, I was going to say there's an additional problem with all of this.
The legal opinion that the government relied on to invoke the Emergencies Act, so their justification for the act, which we are examining with the Public Order Emergency Commission itself, that is to remain secret.
So, this exercise in transparency, the one most important part of it all will not be on the table for everybody else to see.
Is that right?
Yeah.
And so, you know, when you look at a number of the parties, the police commit Brenda Lucky, the commissioner of the RCMP, the super, or the head and the inspectors and the superintendent of the OPP, police chiefs, political officials, government officials, and then the Freedom Convoy themselves.
Because of the unique nature of an inquiry, we all opted at the instruction of our clients to waive privilege.
I could have sat there when I was subpoenaed to testify.
And by the way, that's why I was there.
I was subpoenaed.
I think you know that, but some people are like, why was I there?
It's like, I was forced to be.
I would have been arrested had I not gone.
Is everybody realized what was so important here?
Because there's no criminal sanction or anything coming out of this, is that everybody be transparent as possible.
So all the parties instructed their counsel and their witnesses to where they could decline to answer a question on the basis of solicitor client privilege to waive that and get the truth out, except for one party, the federal government.
Justice Minister Lemente, he kept invoking solicitor client privilege.
So it's really disappointing.
The prime minister's office last summer had said that he was going to testify, that they were going to waive cabinet privilege, parliamentary privilege, all these other privileges.
That's not what they did.
They redacted things left, right, and center.
You remember, Sheila, we had endless battles, motions.
It was the reason Brendan Miller got removed from the hearing room one day is that we just kept making these motions on redactions that were clearly not proper redactions by the federal government.
I was just rule.
And it was until after.
I don't want to interrupt you, but I saw this firsthand because I was sitting right behind the lawyers in the commission room.
And as a witness was testifying, you guys would get a document dump from that witness.
So you couldn't, you didn't even have time to read the documents to examine the witness who was on the stand.
You couldn't even prepare.
And so what documents you did get were late, like as the witness was testifying, or they were excessively redacted with redactions that once you appealed them were revealed to be relevant to the case and not something they should have redacted.
I watched this firsthand in the room happen to you.
And I thought it was strange that none of the other journalists would walk across out of the media room to see what was actually happening over in the commission room.
But again, there's that credibility problem.
Document Dump Drama00:15:01
Yeah.
And the clearest example of what you say, it happened all the time.
And that's the other thing.
Like, you know, we were so exhausted.
We were working day and night, seven days a week.
We took Friday nights off to blow off some steam and build the team.
But it was because we were constantly, the federal government was supposed to disclose its documents in July.
And we were receiving massive amounts of documents from the federal government, as well as other parties, but the biggest culprit was the federal government.
As the hearing was underway, each week, a couple times a week, we'd get two or five or 10 or 1,000 documents thrown at us.
So we'd have to break it into things.
All four lawyers, we would be in our working room until 1, 2 in the morning, going through these documents, in addition to all the other prep we were doing for the next day's witness, the witness after that, after that, prepping our witnesses, everything else.
But the best example of this game that the federal government was playing, who was the last witness?
The prime minister, Justin Trudeau.
He took the stand and was sworn in at 9:30.
We received documents to council table by email at 10:30 while he was still on the stand and on redactions.
And one of them was remarkable because they had put up handwritten notes from, it was one of the cabinet ministers, and they had blacked out the middle part of the sentence.
And it was communications they were having with the White House down in Washington, D.C.
And the way the sentence read with the blackout was that Washington was super concerned about what was going on with the truckers in downtown Ottawa.
Once you pulled the redaction out, the sentence was completely different.
And it was them saying, and we have tow trucks available for you.
It was Washington offering tow trucks.
You know, so the only reason they redacted that was so that they didn't look bad and to create a negative narrative towards the truckers.
So we received that at 10:30.
And fortunately, Rob Kettridge with the Justice Center was able to redo his cross and actually put that to the prime minister about two hours later when we were up.
So it was, and that's when, you know, the early days of the inquiry, we really felt that it was a credible process and that there was lack of bias and it was meant to be a transparent process.
But as time went on and more and more federal, we got into the federal witnesses and we saw the games the federal government was playing.
We followed the rules and made proper motions in writing, supported by evidence and affidavits, and we wouldn't get rulings on them.
And it was like, okay, wait a minute here, something's going on.
So it started to a dark cloud moved over the hearing process the further it went along.
Now, what sort of recourse, if any, do you have to this early release of these documents, should it happen, to the feds before everybody else sees them?
Is there any sort of pushback that you can do on that?
Or is it just it is what it is?
Well, there's a few things.
We raised it in writing.
We made a formal demand that it not occur and that we get a response from the commission that they're not going to do it.
And they ignored that, like they ignored many things we asked of them in writing properly.
We put it in our written submissions, our comprehensive written submissions that were filed a few weeks after, along with all the other parties.
Some other parties also raised the concern, and we've heard silence from the commission on it.
We did consider bringing a judicial review application to the court, but the time's limited for that.
There's not an endless supply of legal donations to fund all of these different things.
There's still the truckers and the trucker leadership are still facing huge mountains of legal trouble with the class action lawsuit that they're facing, the $300 million one, with outstanding criminal charges and trials coming up this year that they need to fund legal representation for.
So we have to be conservative as to where we expend our limited legal resources.
And, you know, it's widely known now that this is going on and there's a role for the opposition political parties to say something about this.
And it's really disappointing that so far they've been largely silent about it.
Just doesn't leave a good feel about the level of integrity that exists in the institutions in Ottawa at all.
Now, tell us, what sort of consequences are there, if any, for the government if it is determined that the Emergencies Act was found to be illegally or improperly invoked on peaceful protesters in the nation's capital?
Is it going to be just another slap on the wrist, a la $300 ethics violation for Justin Trudeau again?
Or, you know, is it just maybe a public relations scandal that the mainstream media will just gloss right over?
What will come of this if it is found to be illegally invoked?
Sure.
So there's two parts to my answer.
The first is, with respect to the inquiry report, I think the expectation of the parliamentarians that drafted that act when the Emergencies Act was developed and became law of Canada was that if it turned out the inquiry concluded that there wasn't proper justification for the invocation,
I think the expectations of the parliamentarians of the day was that we would have ethical standards and that our politicians and elected officials would have ethical standards.
And perhaps the prime minister might resign or cabinet ministers resign or something in shame for them not handling it properly.
I just don't think this government's going to do that.
I mean, it's just stunning the extent to which when I talk to retired cabinet ministers and politicians from various stripes, various political backgrounds, they're all astounded.
You know, Premier Peckford is just like, if he had a cabinet minister that did a quarter of any one of the thing that the Trudeau cabinet ministers have done, he would have demanded their immediate resignation.
But he said, I wouldn't have needed to because they would have come to me with it in hand before I called them, you know?
And the nostalgia of the past, right?
Where politicians actually had some integrity.
So I don't think that's going to happen.
But there's another side to this.
The Justice Center, a number of other groups initiated judicial reviews right after the proclamation of the Emergencies Act, where they've gone to federal court and it's currently before the federal court and they've said, look, the federal government did not meet the requirements for invocation.
So the court can issue a declaration of invalidity or other technical legal rulings that will declare the action of the federal government to invoke the Emergencies Act to have been unlawful.
If that's the case, then that potentially creates an opportunity for those who were harmed by the invocation of the Emergencies Act.
And here I'm thinking of the many people I represent, my clients who had their bank accounts frozen and received other harms from the economic measures and still are being deprived banking and other merchant services that the rest of us enjoy to bring claims against them and proventially the government as well.
So there could be some legal ramifications.
My best guess as to what the Roulau report is going to say is it's going to be right up the middle.
It's not going to be definitive either way.
It's going to talk about the things that people who didn't think the Emergencies Act was properly required, such as the head of intelligence for the OPP, who said there was no evidence of insurrection, of terrorist activity, of ideologically motivated extremists, all of the criteria, and all the other police officials.
And then they're going to say, but the prime minister and his cabinet kind of thought that they had met the test and we didn't really see the legal opinion.
So that's what happened.
I think that's, it's going to be right up the middle.
I don't know.
We'll see.
It's just my best guess right now.
My concern is that at the end of the day, the liberals still have the power to rewrite this law and to add amendments to it to make it easier to invoke next time somebody embarrasses a foppish idiot that we call a prime minister in the nation's capital.
That's my concern: is that they are going to take what came out of the Public Order Emergencies Commission and create a roadmap for an easier invocation of the Emergencies Act going forward.
And I think that should be concerning to all Canadians if that's the route the Liberals are going to try to take.
Well, and I don't even think they need to amend the act if there's no consequence to invoking for jumping castles and extremely restrained, peaceful, law-abiding Canadians.
You know, as some people commentated and some of the police and other officials, the truckers, and we've talked about this in this interview, they were self-regulating.
They didn't need police.
There was no crime.
There was no windows broken.
They were picking up garbage.
They were feeding the homeless, right?
They were having dance parties without people, without fights that normally happens in a bar or a party environment occasionally, you know.
So if they get away with this politically, they will know going forward that if they encounter dissent or political opposition from Canadians standing up, my fear is they'll just say, wow, that freezing of the bank account things worked really well.
Let's just do that part again, right?
So we're in trouble.
The foundations, the foundational principles and beliefs of what I've always thought and to be a Canadian have just been pulverized by this liberal regime.
They're a cabal as far as I'm concerned.
They're no different than an organized crime ring.
I know that's a provocative comment, but look at the evidence.
Look at how they spend our money and the lack of accountability and so on.
So, you know, the optimistic thing with all that doom and gloom is this.
So many, so many people I met in Ottawa and since, and I bet you had this experience as well.
I haven't asked you this, but we'll see, is they tell me they were never politically active ever.
You know, they never maybe never voted, never paid attention to political parties, never did any of that stuff.
And they now realize, so many Canadians realize that didn't before, that if they want to control the future of this country and what it looks like for them and their children and their neighbors and their grandkids and their communities and their economy, they need to become politically involved.
So maybe that's the positive here is I think there's a big awakening that's occurred in Canada that engaging in politics and being involved in what's happening in government is really important and has a huge impact on the life that you will lead and your children will lead.
Yeah, I've seen that from people too, that even they are realizing that even if politics, if you don't care about politics, politics will come to care about you.
So you better get involved.
And I think that as Ezra put in his speech to the truckers when he was there, that it really doesn't matter what comes of all of this, because the truckers already won by being there.
Because the act of going to Ottawa and standing up to Justin Trudeau, not only did it expose Justin Trudeau as the fragile, ego-driven idiot that we all know him to be, but he showed it to the world finally.
The world was looking at them, looking at him, and the truckers exposed him.
He was no longer the cool guy with the cool socks.
But more importantly, it shook off this mind virus that Canadians were suffering from.
That a lot of people knew that restrictions weren't working.
It's crazy for the government to tell you to keep people out of your home for Christmas.
And it's crazy to tell people that you can't get on a plane or a train if you haven't taken this medicine that you don't want to take.
And it's crazy to tell people that you can't go to your job unless you get this medicine that you don't want to take, that, as it turns out, isn't all that effective anyway.
It was crazy.
But the media was telling people to shut up.
And if you felt differently, you were the crazy one.
But as the truckers rolled across this country and people poured out to those overpasses and along the roads, and it didn't matter if they had voted NDP or Liberal or whatever, when they turned up outside on those roads and waved to those truckers and said, thank you, truckers, it shook off that fog and that mind virus that a lot of Canadians were suffering from.
It ended gaslighting for a lot of people.
It helped them realize, no, I'm not crazy.
The government's crazy.
And I think it was a turning point for a lot of people that helped them feel no longer alone.
And if that is the one thing the truckers have accomplished, they set a nation free.
Well, and what did they replace it with?
What did they replace the mind virus with?
What is the thing that appears?
I get emails every day from people thanking me for the sacrifice of the last year.
And they always have the same word in the opening sentence of describing how they feel.
And the word is hope.
Hope.
What the truckers did and all the Canadians who came out to support them on the highways and the overpasses and all the Canadians who went downtown to support the truckers and be there in protest and solidarity with them is they gave one another hope and they gave millions of Canadians hope.
And as it turned out, they gave millions of people around the world who are also under that same psychological nightmare, hope.
Keith, I think that's a great place to leave this interview.
Like I say, if the truckers have done nothing else, they gave not just Canadians hope, but they became a symbol of resistance to government tyranny all over the world.
I want to thank you so much for your participation in that, but also your advocacy for truckers and normal people during these dark and terrible times.
Representing the Resistance00:04:31
You're representing people who are up against the full force of the government.
And that is a big task.
And the government is a formidable foe with endless resources.
So I really admire your ability to stand up and speak truth to power.
And I'm sure we'll talk to you very, very soon.
We'll want some expert analysis of whatever the results of the Public Order Emergency Commission's findings are.
Absolutely.
I'll be happy to come back on and share with you what's in the report and any other events that might occur between now and then or thereafter.
Thanks so much, Keith.
Thank you for your kind words.
I appreciate it.
Stay with us.
Your letters to Ezra, as always, unceremoniously read by me up after the break.
Well, friends, this brings us to the portion of the show where we invite your viewer feedback.
Unlike the mainstream media, we actually care about what you think about the work that we're doing here at Rebel News and the stories that we cover and the people that we speak to.
Now, today's letters come by way of a story I did yesterday when I was guest hosting for Ezra.
I sat down and I spoke with our Rebel News Pacific Northwest-based journalist, Katie Davis Court.
Katie Davis Court covers Antifa.
And because of that, Antifa hates Katie Davis Court.
They've robbed her in the past.
They stole her cell phone and all of her footage.
Well, this time she went out to cover an Antifa march in Seattle and she had four incredible professional security guards standing around her.
Thanks to your generous crowdfunded donations to journalistdefensefund.com.
And it heartens me to know that you care about the safety of our journalists as much as we do here at Rebel News.
And because of those security guards, Katie was actually able to talk to Antifa and ask them questions.
It was quite astounding to see a sneak peek into their mind.
Now, Antifa is out on the march because they are protesting in solidarity with people who are protesting the police-involved killing of Tyree Nichols, a black man who was allegedly killed by five black police officers, and a sixth police officer has so far been relieved of duties.
I think that, as though it matters, I'm not sure it does, but that sixth police officer, he's white.
Anyway, B3AR00707 says it literally has nothing to do with this poor man's life.
They're just looking for any reason to be domestic terrorists.
Yeah, of course.
Antifa, they need a catalyst to be out on the street causing mayhem, but they don't really actually believe so much in the cause that they are protesting against.
I mean, how does, you know, burning down a neighborhood or rioting or smashing windows do anything to protest police violence?
In fact, it probably invites police violence.
They just need a reason to be out there causing mayhem and anarchy, but that's their only ideology, really: anarchy, lawlessness.
Rolf Mueller, 54, says, I think they should make a law that it is forbidden to cover the face in protest.
They do this stuff because they are hidden.
Yeah, of course they do.
You know, it is funny, kind of unrelated, but it's also funny too, is that during the pandemic, I think it was Edmonton or maybe Calgary Police, they put out a police sketch of someone who had committed a robbery and he was wearing like a COVID mask.
And it was ridiculous because how is anybody supposed to ID that guy?
He looks like every other man during the time of COVID.
And it was just laughable, but this is exactly why Antifa covers their faces.
It's not because they're scared or of reprisal.
They're scared of being arrested for their lawlessness.
Drug nerod, no judgment without the whole video.
No judgment unless proven guilty, but no prosecution is unacceptable.
Yeah, I think that's the point of the whole legal process, isn't it?
No Judgment Without Proof00:01:32
And I think waiting to pass judgment is always a good idea.
We saw that with Nicholas Sandman.
He was the young man who was accused of mocking an Indigenous protester at the March for Life.
But once everybody waited and the broader context came out, it wasn't quite the story that was being passed off in the mainstream media.
Now, what I saw of this police-involved homicide, it looks bad.
It looks bad.
But that's why we have courts and that's why we have open courts so people can see the evidence as it's entered into evidence for themselves and that the whole process is transparent.
So it's true.
That is the hallmark of the legal system: innocent until proven guilty.
And that's, I think, what separates the Western world from, well, really, all the horrible places on the face of the earth.
Well, everybody, that's the show for tonight.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
Thank you to Olivia behind the board in HQ in Toronto for working so hard to put the show together.
And everybody works behind the scenes to make sure the show is there when you want to click on it and watch it.
And special thanks to Keith Wilson, trucker lawyer, for that extended long-form interview where I got to pick his brain a little bit and sort of dig a little deeper into the things that the mainstream media sort of just gives a shallow acknowledgement of.