Ezra Levant details Pierre Poilievre’s speech at the Canada Strong and Free Conference (April 11), where he attacked Justin Trudeau’s leadership, citing $600B in inflationary spending and ties to communist dictators. In Alberta’s "Coots 3" trial, police witnesses—Mark Wilgosch and Greg Tullock—contradicted Crown claims, describing defendants like George Janssen as polite and cooperative, even helping clear protest lanes. Similar patterns emerged in Tamara Leach’s Ottawa trial, raising legal questions about police-protester collaboration. Levant vows lawsuits against police for rights violations while shifting focus to Trudeau’s declining support, with a 20-point Conservative lead per Abacus polls, fueling calls for an early election. [Automatically generated summary]
And an interesting moment when a heckler stands up.
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All right, here's today's podcast.
Tonight, Pierre Polyev gives a speech, and a global warming kook heckles him.
It's April 11th, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
The Canada Strong and Free Conference started today.
It looks great.
Our reporter, Alexa Lavoie, is out there.
It looks healthy.
It used to be called the Manning Conference, named after Preston Manning.
And it started off great, but during the Harper years, it became more and more in my mind about lobbyists trying to get angles to sell things to the conservatives.
It felt like it was really a lobbyist convention, not an ideas convention.
Of course, Stephen Harper has not been in office in nine years, and so the idea of lobbyists going to a conservative conference to get access to power is moot.
So I think the ideas are back, although people, I think, believe that Pierre Polyev will, in fact, be prime minister within a year.
Ideas Are Back00:02:50
Tony Abbott was one of the guest speakers.
He's a strong conservative.
I was at an event with him earlier this week in Calgary, and he referenced Rebel News.
He knows who we are.
Of course, Avi Yamini is our Australian star who really covered the lockdown better than anyone else in Australia.
I learned from Tony Abbott that he himself at his personal residence was visited three times by cops who were investigating him for breaking COVID rules.
Isn't that incredible?
He's a real freedom-oriented guy.
Also at the conference in Ottawa, Boris Johnson, the former British PM, I'm not sure he's really conservative.
He was the imposer of lockdowns.
I'm not sure I would cheer that hard for him.
All he's known for now, though, I think is Ukraine.
And he is famous for being the one who scuppered a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine that was being brokered by Israel.
Why would he do that?
As they say in Latin, cui bono, who benefits from that?
My visit to the Ukraine Pavilion at the World Economic Forum, as you know, twice I've gone to the Ukraine Pavilion to really listen to the Ukrainian side of the story.
And doing so has utterly convinced me of the horrors of that war and how dearly I wish the war had ended a year and a half ago when that peace deal was being sewn together.
How many thousands of people, both soldiers and civilians, have died since then.
I note that Christia Freeland, the Liberal Deputy Prime Minister, who normally has nothing kind to say about conservatives, said this: Welcome to Canada, Boris Johnson.
You are a great defender and friend of Ukraine.
Last year, you told Republicans they should support Ukraine.
I hope Pierre Polyev and the Conservatives can heed your words and follow your example.
It's weird that she's Ukraine-centric, not Canadian-centric.
And I don't know how supporting Ukraine manifests itself in 2024.
I think finding a peaceful resolution that can preserve Ukrainian territory and stop Ukrainian casualties.
If I was dedicated to helping Ukraine, that would be top of my mind.
But even so, even if Christia Freeland has a different approach, she can't help herself by turning Ukraine into a political weapon to use against her conservative opponents.
I mentioned before, Alexa Lavoie is there getting half a dozen interviews.
I love the fact that Rebel News is back.
Not that we ever went away.
I guess the better way to say that is the Conservative Party is back.
Common Sense Plan00:08:14
Under the timid, cowardly lion Aaron O'Toole and Andrew Scheer before him, the Conservative Party didn't like to talk to Rebel News.
I think we're the same we've always been.
We ask questions in the name of our viewers.
We answer to our conservative conscience.
I really don't think we've changed.
What's changed is that the Conservative Party is actually conservative again.
So they're not afraid of actual conservative questions.
It's a delight to hear Alexa having so many interview requests met.
There's good panels.
I looked at the agenda.
There's a panel on censorship, censorship, a panel on global warming from the skeptic's point of view, fighting foreign influence, etc.
Looks like a substantive and genuinely right-wing event.
I even see that Imperial Tobacco has a hospitality suite.
That shows that they're not as politically correct as they might be.
I want to show you a video clip that I saw earlier today.
It's a heckler heckling Pierre Polyev during his keynote speech at this conference.
I want to play it for you, and then I have two observations I'd like to share here.
Take a look at the heckler, who's then escorted out.
I want you to watch this clip.
Take a look.
I think that heckler's pretty boring.
Just a non-player character, as the kids say, just reading the same script as any professional environmental protester.
I don't think she was interesting.
What was interesting is how young that crowd looked.
At first, I thought, what was this, a youth event or a youth meeting at the conference?
No, that's the conference.
That is the face of conservatives in 2024.
I compare that to any time I see a crowd shot for the NDP in particular.
The Conservative Party of Canada in 2024 is the party of young people.
And did you see that lady at the end eating an apple?
What was that all about?
Well, remember this amazing viral video from a few months ago, the original apple-eating video?
Taking the page of Donald Trump's book, but what are you all talking about?
What page?
What page?
Can you give me the page?
Give me the page.
In terms of turning things quite dramatically in terms of Trudeau and the left wing and all of this, I mean, you make quite a, you know, it's quite a play that you make on it.
So I'm not sure.
I don't know what your question is.
Okay, then forget that.
Why should Canadians trust you with their vote?
Common sense.
Common sense for a change.
We're going to make common sense common in this country.
Don't have any common sense in the current government.
You know, the guy prints $600 billion, grows our money supply by 32% in three years.
That's growing the money eight times faster than the economy.
No wonder we have the worst inflation in four decades.
I'm going to cap spending, cut waste, so that we can balance the budget and bring down inflation and interest rates.
You'll want to be able to pay your mortgage again?
You want to be able to afford rent?
Then you have to vote for Pierre Polyev because I'm the only one with a common sense plan that will bring back the buying power of your paycheck.
Just classic.
I sort of wish I was there.
Hey, let me leave you with three clips from Polyev's speech because I watched it and it was actually a pretty good speech.
I want to play a really long cut because it's one big idea woven into three parts.
Here is Pierre Polyev taking a battering ram to the snobby, condescending elitist view that the liberals are better than you, that they know what they're doing and you don't, that they're safe hands for the country, that conservatives are like cowboys that can't be trusted.
Listen to this.
I think Pierre Polyev demolishes the Liberal Party and all of its enablers.
Take a look at this.
Don't go away.
I'm going to come back.
I know this is a long clip, but you've got to watch the whole part.
Take a look.
Merci Bucou, who's ready to axe the tax?
Who's ready to build the homes?
Who's ready to fix the budget?
Who's ready to stop the crime?
Jala, how discourse in parliament of Montplane, the Roben Sans, the coupé tax aims, battle designers, repair debuggers, and stop et les crime.
I was going to start my speech today as properly scripted by my team, talking about my common sense plan to axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget, and stop the crime.
But I was interrupted by the testimony I just read from our very own prime minister just yesterday.
He said something incredible, although not so surprising.
Of course, what we're investigating is whether a foreign dictatorship interfered in our democracy in multiple elections to help him win.
A communist dictatorship seeking to keep in office someone who said he admires that communist dictatorship, but his defense actually speaks for itself.
The prime minister was asked why he didn't do anything about this interference, even though he was warned in briefing notes, is that he doesn't read briefing notes.
Now, we often don't believe the things that this guy says, but I think that most Canadians would believe that defense.
I think it's plausible that Justin Trudeau doesn't read documents that come before him.
In fact, I think it's likely that he doesn't read things that come before him.
And I think that that defense is interesting for three reasons.
One, because the ivory tower elites who support him and his ideology of concentrating all the power in their hands, they always tell us how wonderfully sophisticated and cosmopolitan they are, how brilliant they are, and that's why they're entitled.
They're experts after all, right?
That's why they're entitled to decide for other people.
But yet they're prepared to support a guy who says he doesn't read.
It's like he might be a know-nothing, but he's our know-nothing, right?
They support a guy who confuses decimals with decibels, who says budgets balance themselves, even when they never do, who says he doesn't think much about monetary policy, admits he's not very good with numbers, advises Canadians to pay for their tuition and their home renovations on their credit card.
This is the bright light, the genius that they believe should be able to run the lives of mechanics who are able to take apart an engine and put it back together with blindfolds on.
That the single mom who can budget or balance her budget on a minimum wage salary needs advice on budgeting from the guy who can't budget for himself.
That is the ultimate irony of the elitism is that these pseudo-intellectuals vest all their faith in this guy of all people.
He Wants Power, Not Responsibility00:04:10
The second thing that's so interesting, and this came up, by the way, in his defense on another scandal, when he had accepted a quarter million dollar free vacation from someone who had met with him asking for and later received a $15 million grant from his government.
The kind of cronyism that would get a small town mayor put in jail.
But the defense the Prime Minister gave at the time was that in the meeting, he didn't actually it wasn't important, he wasn't substantially important because he actually doesn't run the government.
He's a ceremonial figurehead.
And therefore, he didn't have any actual power over the government he heads to give the individual what he was asking for in exchange for that famous free vacation.
Even though in the Prime Minister's own open and accountability guide, the machinery of government, and that's a quote, is the exclusive responsibility of the Prime Minister, which brings me to the second reason why his, I don't read my briefing notes defense is so interesting.
And it is this.
He wants all the power and none of the responsibility.
He literally wants to control the entire economy.
He wants to nationalize large industries with monstrous taxpayer-funded subsidies.
And yet he wants to print $600 billion without having any responsibility for the resulting inflation.
He wants to increase the cost of government without taking any of the blame for the resulting interest payments that households must pay on their own debt after he drove up the rates.
He wants none of the responsibility for the fact that we have the slowest economic growth in the OECD over the next five years and over the next 35 years after he promised all this spending was going to stimulate the contrary.
He wants to have total control Over what you can see and say online to protect us all from these dangerous forces that might influence our thinking if we are not protected by the angels in the government.
And yet, when there is actually a risk of manipulation by hostile and malicious actors like, say, a communist regime in Beijing, he can't even take the responsibility of reading his briefing notes.
This is the irony, the great irony of his leadership, and one of the reasons why I think he's succeeded in doubling housing costs, giving us the worst inflation in 40 years, sending 2 million people to the food banks, 8,000 people signing up for a Facebook group called the Dumpster Diving Network, because they now have to eat out of a garbage can after he drove food prices rising with his carbon tax.
He wants to control every aspect of your life, and then when he ruins your life, he wants to take none of the responsibility for the ruin that he caused.
And the third reason why this testimony and this entire scandal is so consequential and indicative is why the hell did a dictatorship, a communist dictatorship, on the other side of the world consider it such a strategic imperative to keep this guy as prime minister.
What was their motive?
Why did they believe that they would be better off by having him as our prime minister in at least two elections where they intervene to help him win?
Why?
Because he's good for Canada?
Or is it because he admires their basic Chinese communist dictatorship?
He admits that he admires Fidel Castro, and his policy agenda would seem to point in that direction.
I thought that was actually a really good point.
Trudeau's Online Misstep00:04:56
The liberals always say they're better, smarter, professionaler.
They're not.
They've got a bit of an idiot as a leader.
The second point that Polyev makes is that Trudeau's actually not even a liberal in the real meaning, the true meaning, the good meaning of that word.
Look at this clip.
See, the thing is, it's not that Justin Trudeau is too liberal.
It's that he's not liberal at all.
He is deeply, deeply illiberal.
He uses the soft blue eyes and fluffy hair and fancy socks and, more importantly, the historic brand of the Liberal Party built up by such great leaders as Laurier and many more who followed him as a cover for what is a radical departure from the Canadian way.
A radical departure that sees in every way that the people are to be made small so that the government can be made big.
And we see the consequences of this.
You see, even if he were competent, it is not possible for any one person to run 40 million other people.
It is simply not possible.
Humans are far too complicated, their interactions far too numerous for one central authority, no matter how wise and virtuous it claims to be, to make all the decisions for them.
It has to leave them to make as many decisions as possible for themselves.
Worse yet, when you have the only thing worse than having some all-knowing elite try to control everybody's life, is to have someone doing that when he doesn't even read his briefing notes.
Just one last clip I want to show you.
Here's Polyev talking about rescinding censorship laws.
That kind of freedom is what Canadians have always come to expect.
It is what has always worked.
And so we will repeal the censorship laws, C-11.
We will require university campuses to implement a respect for Section 2B, Charter Rights of Free Expression, as a condition of getting federal funding.
If you want to.
If you want, if you don't like Jordan Peterson, fine.
Try debating him for once, because you can't shut him down.
You can't shut down people you disagree with.
You have to have open and honest debate, which has always been the Canadian way.
Well, what do you think?
I think that this conference looks great.
It looks energetic.
It looks big.
It looks young.
It looks like it's on the march compared to Justin Trudeau, who looks, I don't know, like he's got the cognitive power of Joe Biden, like he's listless, like he's playing old moves that might have worked and been cool in 2015, but don't really work in 2024.
You know, the other day, he went to a grade school where the kids were sort of prepped by their pro-liberal teachers, and Trudeau was hiding around the corner, and he brought them free pizza.
Here, just take a look at this clip that Trudeau put online the other day.
Yeah, I guess in 2015, that would have been really cool and young, but in 2024, it looks sort of pitiful.
Here's the prime minister who, anywhere he goes in public, is jeered and heckled.
The only place he can guarantee that he has a warm reception is grade school kids who have been primed by liberal teachers, and he has to bribe them with a slice of pizza.
And he still, of course, uses his own camera crew in case any of the kids say anything unscripted.
Justin Trudeau, I don't think that he's going to let go of the reins.
And in a way, that's good because he's going to drive his party right into the history's dustbin.
Stay with us.
An interview with Robert Krejcik is next.
The province of Alberta is the fourth largest province by population.
Decentralized Protest Testimonies00:16:01
Ontario, Quebec, and British Columbia are larger.
But I think Alberta is outsized when it comes to political importance.
It has a very strong political ambition.
I think it is as important that way as Ontario, the industrial and political heartland of the country, and Quebec with its own particular ambitions.
Alberta is where things start, believe it or not.
Not just the Reform Party, not just Ralph Klein and those kind of ideas, but in so many ways the NDP, the CCF.
They were founded in the prairies, often in Alberta, too.
And so it's no surprise that on the leading edge of political movements, Alberta is front and center.
Although the Trucker Convoy was most famous for what it did in Ottawa, it emanated from the West.
And of course, there was an echo convoy down at the border between Alberta and Montana in the border village called Coots.
I was just in Alberta the other day, as you know, at the carbon tax protest west of the city of Calgary.
That shows that fervid political mentality in that province.
Things are always cooking out there.
And so today we go down to Lethbridge, where the trial of the so-called Coots 3 is underway.
And our reporter, Robert Kraitschuk, is on the file.
He joins us live via Skype.
Robert, great to see you again.
Thanks very much for joining us.
Great to be with you.
You know, I've been down there at that same Lethbridge courthouse a dozen times.
That's where so many of these matters are being tried because it's the closest court to that border village.
Can you give us an update on the trial of the Coutz 3?
I was there personally for the first day when there was jury selection.
What's it been like in the week or so since then?
Well, I'll share with you the most noteworthy occurrences that I've observed.
So the first is the centrality of rebel news to this trial.
And I don't just mean the fact that I'm the only one in there day to day.
I've seen some other media figures, but they're not in there with any sort of meaningful consistency.
But the fact that every single video, with maybe the exception of one, that's been introduced by either the defense teams or the Crown as either an evidence piece or an exhibit has been a Rebel News produced video.
Almost all of them feature the Rebel News watermarket logo.
So admittedly, there's an aspect of professional chauvinism here because it's kind of fun to see that as a rebel news guy myself.
But one adjacent point to this, and I was just contemplating this this morning, I realized how stunning it was, is that none of the video evidence introduced into the trial or evidentiary exhibits or just exhibits on their own that are still in dispute have been provided by the RCMP.
Now, keep in mind that the RCMP had at least four liaisons deployed to the Coots border blockade protest across almost its entirety.
And that was 2022.
This is not 100 years ago.
You would think that body cams and associated microphones would be ubiquitous, particularly for this thing that was of such high political importance to the RCMP and, of course, the federal government.
So again, just keep that in mind.
I'm sitting there in the courtroom and every single video essentially that I'm seeing demonstrated has got that rebel news watermark there.
And again, nothing being provided by the RCMP, which was there spending tons of money to investigate or to observe or to liaise, however you want to look at it.
That is very interesting.
And I take a few lessons from that.
One thing that's on my mind is if it weren't for Rebel News, we wouldn't know what really happened.
I think it was similar, but not quite as dramatic in Ottawa because there were some other citizen journalists on the ground there.
But for most of the time in Coots, it was just rebel news.
There was a guy from Western Standard who was there for a bit, but we were there with the cameras rolling full tilt for more than a week.
So if Rebel News had not been there, the official narrative would have been the Trudeau narrative.
And so I'm glad we were there.
The second thing I take from your comments, Robert, is I'm skeptical because the RCMP, which was the main police force sent out to counter the Coots protesters, is a high-tech force.
They have, as you mentioned, cameras.
They have hidden cameras.
They have technology that ordinary people don't have access to.
They have wiretaps if they want them.
They have devices that can scan and hack cell phone conversations.
They have their own drones.
And as we've learned from Ottawa, they could liaise with the Canadian military and even get military drones, which I'm not sure is even legally appropriate.
My point is they have more technology in the mighty RCMP than Little Rebel News had in our cell phone cameras.
So I am skeptical, Robert, that they have actually furnished all of their evidence.
And it strikes me as implausible that they would have this massive investigation of the Coots protest and not record anything, that it would all just be handwritten notes.
I got to tell you, I just simply don't believe it.
You're reminding me of so many things.
Yeah, it's absurd.
So in the context of the trial, keep in mind that these officers, two liaison officers that were there in alternating shifts at the protests, have to rely on their memories and notes that they've written or dictated.
And you cannot capture all that.
It's a very fluid, complicated, long-form event with all kinds of happenings and occurrences and goings on.
So to not use inexpensive, conventional, modern technology to facilitate this investigation on the one part, or on the other hand, the sort of, let's say, crowd control, their stated claims that they were there to maintain peaceful assembly cannot be taken seriously.
That's your point about the high levels of technology that the RCMP and the federal government more broadly have.
Remember, I was sent to the first week to report on this foreign interference commission.
Sorry, I hope the witness is busting your eardrums.
And the Foreign Interference Commission had these senior so-called intelligence agency officials, head of CSIS and some others, some former RCMP guy, speaking about how they had these capabilities that you remarked on, the ability to do, as you put it, wiretaps or interception of digital communications, all sorts of really high-tech stuff.
And again, the RCMP doesn't have this sort of technology aisle.
So I'm with you.
I'm totally skeptical that the information or the evidence as they put it was furnished fully, that there's a real transparent disclosure here of what they've obtained.
Okay, so we talked about the nature of the evidence that it's mainly in the form of Rebel News videos.
I find that interesting.
And like you, I take some professional pride from it.
I guess both sides are trying to make their case using those same videos.
We were just rolling cameras.
Tell me how the trial has progressed.
I was there when jury selection was made, and I thought it was a very interesting process.
And, you know, when I, from what I recall, is there's a couple of people who were so young looking, they might even be in their late teens.
And it goes all the way up to people who are probably in their late 60s or maybe even early 70s.
It is a diversity by age and by background, but it really does feel like Southern Alberta.
And I'm glad that it was a jury pool in Lethbridge because I know that the prosecutor had talked about taking this to a different city like Calgary, which would have given a totally different jury pool.
It would have not reflected the community in Southern Alberta.
So I felt good about that.
How has the jury seemed attentive so far?
Have the lawyers been communicating in a way that a lay person can understand?
That's obviously a challenge because lawyers use jargon, they use technical terms, occasionally they even use a Latin word.
Are the lawyers conducting themselves in a manner appropriate for a lay jury?
Okay, so on the first part, the first question you asked about the reactions of the jury, you've got to forgive me.
I'm sort of all consumed about taking notes.
I'm not paying particular attention to whatever body language or expressions that they may be expressing.
So I can't comment on that too much.
What I can say, however, is in terms of the second question.
Yes, the information being presented, the comments, language, remarks from all lawyers, both the crown prosecutors and the defense counsels, is very understandable.
It's very layperson friendly.
There's nothing really complicated there.
Any sort of legal jargon is restricted to these wardiers, where the parties involved, the lawyers and the judge, understand that they've got these legal pedigrees that allow them to understand this.
So, yeah, very, very accessible information.
As far as how the trial is going, this is the sort of question I think you were getting towards.
The main point of contention or one of the primary themes of the ongoing testimony from the witnesses that have been invited thus far, and I'll indicate who they are to you.
Jim Willett is the former mayor of Coots, and he was the mayor at the town of the protest.
He was the first witness.
And the second two witnesses are two RCMP officers that operated as liaisons, like I was saying earlier at the protest, two liaisons between the RCMP and the protesters.
And the fourth one who's in there right now is sort of a higher level.
I'll say superintendent, I think, is his official title, RCMP guy, who is a bit more distant, not as much on the ground.
And the theme, one of the central claims of the prosecution is that the three defendants constituted the leadership of the protest and as such had a degree of influence and control and direction over the protesters.
So a lot of the questions that you're hearing from either the crown prosecutors or the defense attorneys to the witnesses, and remember, all the witnesses thus far have been crown witnesses, have been towards eliciting whether or not the defendants had a degree of control.
And this is the most important part.
I'll give you sort of the punchline.
There's been a lot of testimony from all the witnesses to the decentralized nature of the protest, which, in my view, is at odds with the central claim from the prosecution that these three men had control and direction and influence over the protesters.
I'll give you specifics.
The officers testified to several factions composing the protest, and that these different factions within the protest had strong differences of opinion over issues of how to proceed with the protest, how to conduct themselves, how to negotiate with the RCMP, if at all, how to conclude the protest, if at all.
And they also testified to moments of difficulty in, let's say, managing, or I'll use the word leading the protest.
Even Jim Willett, this former mayor, he used this phrase.
I think you were there for it.
He said that leading the protest was like, quote, herding cats, indicating that, again, it was hard to have this degree of command and control that the prosecution is alleging existed on the part of the defendants.
That's very interesting.
So it's been a number of days, and like you say, it's the Crown's witnesses.
So these are the witnesses that the prosecutors are bringing, thinking that they will elicit facts that will condemn the accused.
How are the accused lawyers doing in cross-examination?
I know two of them quite well, the lawyers, I mean.
The other two, I only know from observing them briefly in court there in Lethbridge.
Are they aggressive?
Are there gotcha moments?
How would you describe the defense lawyers?
By the way, the Democracy Fund is crowdfunding all of the defense lawyers.
There's four lawyers sitting in there.
All four of them are being paid by crowdfunding.
And by the way, I want to just say to our viewers: if you want to chip into those lawyers, go to coots3.com and your donation will get a charitable tax receipt.
I just wanted to throw that plug in there because you see four lawyers.
I, in my mind, say, oh, four lawyers billing every hour, but this is an important fight to win.
Sorry, let me put that tangent aside.
How are the defense lawyers doing?
Do they, what's their approach to the crown witnesses?
Are they aggressive?
Are they argumentative?
Are they sneaky?
How does it feel?
I just wish I could see it with my own eyes.
Well, first, I just want to continue with your tangent.
This is money well spent.
And in my estimation, I'm a layperson.
What I see in these lawyers is extreme competence.
As far as the demeanor, your actual question, how are they conducting themselves?
They are very congenial, very professional.
They are professional.
They are not aggressive.
They're very articulate.
They're very specific.
They're very deliberate and thoughtful.
And to what I was saying earlier, I'll just give some examples.
It was the questioning of these lawyers that elicited remarks, testimony from these witnesses.
Remember, I was mentioning two RCMP officers who were liaisons.
It's former Kootsmere, Jim Willen.
They got them to acknowledge in testimony that, again, there was a decentralized flavor, character, nature to the protest, which again is in central contradiction to this claim from the prosecution that there was this degree of command and control.
So you wouldn't be able to elicit that testimony if not for extreme competence.
But yeah, just to the basic question of the flavor, again, very congenial, professional.
I can't, very diplomatic.
These guys are great.
I have nothing but amazing words and praise to share for them based on my observations with them.
And just former disclosure, I don't know if this is a violation of privacy, but I've spoken to them outside the courtroom and they're just really, really well put together guys.
I'm glad to hear it.
I've been following your live tweeting from court, and I would recommend our viewers to do that because you're sort of giving updates every few minutes.
One of the things I learned from your live tweeting is that at least one of the police witnesses acknowledged that they did not see the accused men block the highway, but rather they saw the accused men help unblock the highway.
I thought that was such a powerful fact.
Yeah, so that's more evidence of what I was saying earlier regarding the extreme competence of these lawyers and how this is money well spent for those that were kind enough to donate to the defense fund.
So the two officers, the two liaisons, their names are Mark Wilgosch and Greg Tullock, if anybody cares about those names, testified that when it came to trying to coordinate the protest in a way that would serve the RCMP's interests, specifically they mentioned opening of lanes during intermittent periods of blockade.
In other words, to allow for traffic to flow in both directions at this highway, Alberta Highway 4, that sort of heads south towards Coots from Northern Alberta.
That Marco Van Hugenboss and George Janssen, two of the three defendants, were very helpful in doing that.
Conversely, when one of the RCMP officers was asked, did you see the defendants coordinate a blockade or coordinate a blockage?
He said, no, I did not see that.
So the bottom line here is that the two officers have testified repeatedly in several dimensions to the utility that they attributed to two of the defendants, George Janssen and Michael Hugenboss, in terms of their desire to liaise With the protests, not conceding leadership, by the way, but to help assist get the protesters to do certain things that the RCMP wanted at certain times.
David's Legal Defense00:07:27
Further, just as far as to continue with your question about flavor and character, you were asking about the lawyers.
One of the RCMP officer liaisons said that George Jansen was particularly congenial.
He used the word professional, he used the word compassionate, and he used the word polite in describing his exchanges with them.
And the reason I mentioned that is because I think the demeanor, the composure of the defendants, as was captured by the rebel news video, by the way, all of it, is in my view, again, I'm offering this sort of amateur legal analysis, sort of exculpatory at a minimum because they were always advising any protesters that they may be speaking to to maintain peaceable assembly, maintain peaceful demonstration, and so forth.
So, insofar as they had any influence whatsoever, insofar as they could communicate with their fellow protesters, they were constantly advising peaceful demonstration.
You know, that's very interesting, and I think it may be legally important.
It reminds me of one of the things that has come through in the Ottawa trial of Tamara Leach, where it has come out through the trial that far from being at odds with the RCMP, Tamara Leach and the other leaders of the Ottawa convoy had a regular back and forth to manage things, to clear this lane, to move the trucks out of this residential area to that non-residential area.
And not only is that interesting that the protests were cooperative, but it suggests that there was a, I think a lawyer might use the word estoppel, namely that the police condoned what was going on.
The police, you might even say, instructed the protest to move from here to there, instructed a truck to be here rather than there.
So, how could someone who is cooperating with the police, who is working with the police to facilitate certain lanes open or closed, if you're working with the police, cooperating with the police, complying with the police, even you might say, obeying the police, how can that then be called mischief?
And I think that that cooperative approach, and I think it was very strong in Ottawa.
I know that because they had some very clear objectives: get the trucks out of the residential areas, keep a lane free for ambulances.
They were very, like a daily basis and very formal basis, negotiating with the city and the police.
Sounds like there's a bit of that here in the Coots trial.
Yeah, so I think from my understanding of the Coups trial, now it was not there.
I was in Ottawa basically every day.
I can remark on that a bit with a bit more confidence based on my own experience.
But the Coots protest was, this is going to sound funny because it was so much smaller, was seemingly more decentralized, was more sort of ad hoc, informal, more chaotic, perhaps.
And Ottawa eclipsing Coots in terms of size and volume was actually more controlled in a way.
Anyway, to the point of, okay, this is so funny you mentioned this.
Chris Barber is actually here today, and I'm actually going to interview him at the end of proceedings.
And I was just thinking about what you were saying: this constant refrain from Chris Barber in these videos that he produced, that he recorded and published to so-called social media to advise supporters and demonstrators to maintain peaceable assembly to compile police officers.
And remember that Tamara Leach and Chris Barber are being charged with counseling others to mischief.
In other words, that they're being accused of advising others to commit mischief.
But what I saw in all of the videos was Chris Barber counseling others to comply and maintain legal assembly.
So like the very evidence being put forward by the crown is at odds with their central claim that these two defendants were advising others to break the law.
And the same thing is true here, by the way, in that same regard.
Isn't that interesting?
Well, I tell you, I wish I was there.
There's so many stories going on across the country.
And thanks, by the way, for going out to that carbon tax protest on highway, on the highway, the TransCanada Highway on the way to Banff.
I popped by there the other day just to check it out.
And it has that same spirit of the Freedom Convoy.
So I know you're an Ottawa boy to have you in, Alberta.
I think that's good for your soul.
And I think you're sort of marinating in the freedom out there.
And I'm glad you're covering that.
Thank you for that.
There are two ways people can help.
We've already mentioned the way to chip into the legal defense.
That's at coots3.com.
But as I mentioned, Robert's not actually from Lethbridge.
So we put him up in an Airbnb and we rented a car and we're covering his meals and stuff while he's out there.
He's staying economy class, but still it does add up because he's there for days and days and days to chip in for his modest costs.
Feel free to go to truckertrial.ca.
Robert, thanks very much for reporting from there.
And we look forward to your updates on Twitter and in your videos.
My pleasure.
I love being with you.
Right on.
Thanks for your time.
There you have it.
Robert Kraitchik, live from outside the courthouse in Lethbridge.
Stay with us.
more ahead.
Hey, welcome back.
Your letters to me, Toaster 3822.
I'm guessing that's not a real name.
It says, Ezra, I hope you are paying David dearly for standing up for all of our rights.
I take David's situation incredibly seriously.
Whenever he gets arrested, which I hate, I immediately get in my car and go downtown.
I immediately call the lawyer, make sure that we call David's wife.
We immediately tell the world what is happening.
We're going to defend him against everything, of course, these bogus criminal charges.
We're also going to go on the offensive and sue the police forces for violating his rights.
We're going to, we've got some plans.
I don't want to disclose them to you now about how we're going to protect him even more.
And yes, I mean, we do take care of David.
I think we pay him reasonably and we try and take care of him financially, but that's not the point.
That's not what David does this for.
David and none of us are in this for the money.
We're in this to fight for a mission.
And right now, the most acute part of that mission is freedom of the press and freedom of speech.
And so while we do pay David X amount of money, we spend multiple of that defending his freedoms.
I don't think I'm telling you any secrets when I say that a lawsuit against a police department where they have unlimited resources, government lawyers, where the police themselves are on the public payroll as they testify against you.
It's an uphill battle.
They outgun you five to one, 10 to one.
And every single lawsuit we sue against the police who harass them, there's no way less.
Those will cost less than $100,000 each.
Defending David will cost tens of thousands more.
But it's not about the money.
It's about if we don't do this, who will?
We absolutely must fight back.
Russell Coe 3926 says, Trudeau must resign.
We won't stand for this manipulative narcissist.
Largest Conservative Lead Ever00:00:41
Well, I saw a new poll out today by Abacus, which, as you know, is a liberal-leaning pollster.
The largest lead ever recorded by the conservatives over the Trudeau Liberals.
He was a 20-point lead going from memory, 20-point lead.
By the way, the Liberals don't even have a gender gap anymore.
exact same number of men as women support them proportionately.
It's the lowest, it's just shockingly low.
To see the Conservatives in the lead, even in Atlantic Canada, is quite something to behold.
I just want that election to come sooner rather than later.
It's our show for today.
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rubble World Headquarters, see you at home.