Ezra Levant examines the Ottawa trial of Tamara Leach and Chris Barber, which began August 13, 2023, after 40 days of hearings and $5–$10M in wasted government resources—led by Doug Ford’s Ontario—not Trudeau. The prosecution’s shaky case, marked by judge Siobhan Weschler’s sharp critiques over factual errors (e.g., misstating Arthur Pavlovsky’s job) and reliance on vague mischief charges, mirrors a politically driven effort to silence Leach, dubbed a "Metis moral authority" against lockdowns. Defense lawyer Lawrence Greenspawn’s crowdfunded team counters with no direct evidence, framing the convoy as Canada’s largest peaceful protest. If acquitted, it could block retroactive criminalization of dissent, proving trials now punish free speech more than alleged crimes. [Automatically generated summary]
Tonight, I'm in Ottawa, where Tamara Leach is back in court.
It's August 13th, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
Andrew Levant here in Ottawa.
I have come to Ottawa with Sarah Stock, one of our young reporters, to cover the trial of Tamara Leach, which is absurd to say.
It was two and a half years ago she was arrested.
The trial itself has been in the courts spread out over almost a year, over 40 individual days of hearings, dozens of witnesses.
I was in the court today.
I counted there were 11 people.
There was the judge, three clerks, two prosecutors, and two defense teams of five lawyers total.
Just an absolute shocking amount of resources deployed to prosecuting Tamara Leach and her co-defendant, Chris Barber, on mischief charges.
Mischief, which is the lowest order of crime in the criminal code, the kind of thing that you get charged with if you committed vandalism or if you broke someone's doghouse or mailbox or something.
Like, it's the catch-all for minor offenses.
Most mischief cases, the judge looks at you sternly, wags his finger and says, I don't want to see you in this court again, young man.
You fly straight now.
Like, it's that.
We've seen mischief cases across the country be dismissed with either the prosecution saying there's no public interest in proceeding.
We're just going to stay the charges completely.
I'm aware of some cases where someone who was charged with mischief just had to make a like a $100 donation to charity, and that was it, no criminal record.
But they have thrown, according to one lawyer's estimate, $5 to $10 million worth of government resources at Tamara Leach and Chris Barber.
And I think I know why.
I think it's sort of obvious why.
Because she's the moral authority, the lovable Metis grandma from Alberta, who was so sweet and never got sour, despite what was done to her, despite being thrown into prison for 49 days, much of that in solitary confinement.
She never lost her positive attitude.
And others who were against her being discredited.
David LeMetti, the justice minister who approved the Emergencies Act, resigned in disgrace and scurried off Parliament Hill.
Justin Trudeau himself rebuked by the federal court along with Christia Freeland for invoking the Emergencies Act and seizing people's money.
All the antagonists on the pro-censorship, pro-martial law side have been rebuked in the public eye.
In fact, many people who were for the lockdowns are now trying to pretend they weren't.
They have not been able to besmirch Tamara Leach, and I hope that she is acquitted in this case and that if anything, this backfires on the state for trying to criminalize her.
What's interesting, and it just sort of really came clear to me today, is yes, Trudeau invoked martial law by imposing the Emergencies Act, and yes, the RCMP, and yes, Trudeau meddled with local police forces.
But for the last two and a half years, it has been the provincial government of Doug Ford, the so-called conservative premier, that has prosecuted and put so many resources into prosecuting Tamara Leach.
You can't blame that on Justin Trudeau.
We've been covering this trial since the very beginning.
A variety of reporters for Rebel News, as well as a variety of lawyers for the Democracy Fund, because, of course, we have crowdfunded Tamara Leach's defense, which is very important.
I find this an agonizing trial.
There's no reason for the trial to be this long.
Complicated murder trials or terrorism trials are not this long.
I believe that it's a deliberate strategy by the prosecutors who know that it's very likely that Tamara Leach will be acquitted, that they're going to turn the trial itself into a kind of prison sentence, a kind of punishment.
So even if Tamara Leach is acquitted, they will have got their pound of flesh from her anyways.
For example, it's not just when she was in jail, but she has been under all sorts of conditions.
She's had to put aside her real life to make her way to Ottawa all the time to be stigmatized by a criminal charge.
My point is, her life has been put on hold.
Not just the risk of a conviction, but the waste of time.
And luckily, we have Rebel News viewers to handle the costs of her legal defense.
But of course, she hasn't been able.
How can you have a job when you're called to Ottawa for your trial, when there's negative publicity?
It's just been a punishment of Tamara Leach precisely because she has embarrassed the regime.
All right.
Well, if you want to know the minute-by-minute updates on the court hearing, you can go to a page you put together called Tamaratrial.com.
We'll have stories there.
We've had them for the last 40 days.
We'll continue to put all our news there.
And I will have video updates during the breaks.
And I'll come to you after for some thoughts with both Mark Joseph of the Democracy Fund and Sarah Stock from Rebel News.
Well, we just wrapped up the first day of court.
After weeks of kind of intermission, it's back at it.
Ottawa is hot.
It's the summertime.
I think court will go for the rest of the week and into next week as well.
Joining me for her first time court reporting is our young reporter, Sarah Stock, who judge me now.
Sarah, welcome to Ottawa and welcome to the court beat.
Yeah, thank you.
It's a lot more exciting than I expected it to be, to be honest.
What did you find exciting about it?
I think just the judge and the prosecutor going back and forth.
The judge was not taking anything from the prosecutor because they're reaching a lot of the time.
There's a lot of mistakes in their work.
They were missing details, getting information wrong.
And the judge didn't let any of it slide.
One of the crazy things about Ottawa is there's a lot of extremists and kooks.
And there's actually a crazy lady behind us who's on a pro-Hamas shtick.
She's actually been banned from using a kind of sound weapon that she has put up to people's ears before with a kind of eardrum breaking sound.
Anyway, I think if we speak right into our microphone, we can talk over these pro-Hamas nut bars.
Now, I have to go back to Toronto tonight, but I'm counting on you to continue doing the reporting here.
And I think there's two ways to do that.
One is a kind of stenography, like kind of court reporting that just every five minutes or so, try and describe, even in plain language, what was going on, who's on their feet, if you can read one of the slides on the wall, something like that.
Especially when the judge pushes back.
I think that's very interesting.
The second is to kind of summarize things during the breaks in a video format.
Now, there's going to be kooks around.
That's just the nature.
But I think that sort of tells a story.
You have insane, provocative harassers, but because they're pro-Gazza, the police don't care.
There was a massive march in Ottawa this weekend where they actually had a banner that said legal armed resistance.
I don't know what legal armed resistance means.
I don't think that's a thing.
Truckers, if they would have said armed resistance, would have immediately been arrested and prosecuted.
But not so with the pro-Hamas crazies.
Yeah, I mean, they've pretty much taken away almost all of our gun rights in Canada.
Yeah, I think isn't half of this trial.
I know the Coots 4, there is some evidence of there being firearms just in the bed of a truck, and that was enough evidence to prosecute those freedom protesters for a trial that lasted also forever, and they were jailed as well.
There's no firearms in this case, and that's one of the things that makes it so hard for the prosecutors.
What they talked about for about an hour or two today was how the trucker convoy had lawyers, had accountants, had a PR team, had like a war room organizing everything.
And so how do you prosecute someone for criminal mischief if they're engaging in such compliance?
How do you say what they're doing is illegal when they're daily negotiating with the police on where to park the trucks?
It'll be very interesting to see what they do here.
We tried to provide a lawyer on the scene in Coots, Alberta.
We sent the lawyer, Chad Williamson, and his colleague to be there through the blockade.
But it was, I don't know, I think they were trumped up charges there because there were weapons that were found.
I'm going to have to go back to Toronto.
I'm going to hand the torch over to you.
Hopefully you won't be persecuted by the pro-Hamas crazies.
Maybe because you're not Jewish, they'll lay off you, although I think she's genuinely mentally ill.
Hopefully people can hear our interview anyway.
Sarah, good luck to you.
You're getting a taste of being a street journalist.
Thank you so much, Ezra.
You know, we're on the street.
We're citizen journalists.
And just because someone's an annoying rabble.
I mean, some people call us annoying rabble, too.
So we have to have some tolerance for the kooks, just as long as she's non-violent.
I don't think we're that annoying.
No, I think she set a new standard.
All right, stay with us more ahead.
Well, Rebel News is deeply intertwined with Tamara Leach.
We published her best-selling biography, Hold the Line.
We covered the trucker convoy two and a half years, and indeed now we are crowdfunding her legal defense with our friends at the Democracy Fund.
That is, any donation to helptamera.com goes straight to the Democracy Fund, which pays for Lawrence Greenspawn and his top legal team.
Speaking of top lawyers, Mark Joseph is a staff lawyer at the Democracy Fund, and he is monitoring this trial and live tweeting it from the courthouse.
Great to see you, Mark.
Thanks for having me.
You have been covering this case almost every day.
You've been rotating with other lawyers from the Democracy Fund.
I think this is, what, day 40 or something of the trial?
Yeah, you know, I lost track.
I think it's up high 30s, could be 40.
I'm not sure.
I have never heard of a mischief trial going this long.
Mischief can cover a lot of things.
There was a case of someone who blew up a high-tension power line in Quebec, causing a blackout for an enormous number of people.
I think he was charged with mischief.
But even that shocking case that affected tens of thousands of people, even that did not deploy the same government prosecution, police resources as this.
I mean, and that's a shocking case, blowing up a hydro tower.
This seems like the government is just pulling the wings off a fly to be cruel.
Well, look, we had another lawyer, our staff lawyer, Adam Blake Elbow, do a little research to see what other types of cases, how long they usually take.
And he found that some murder cases take a lot less time than this mischief case.
There's some, you know, a week-long murder trials, you know, three-day-long sex assault trials.
But this one is getting up there.
So we don't know why the Crown has chosen to devote this much judicial resources to this trial, so we can only speculate, but it is a lot of time.
Well, I think the answer is sort of obvious.
It's political.
Tamara Leach was the symbolic figurehead, sort of the Joan of Arc inspirer of the trucker convoy.
So smashing her and bringing her back down to earth, destroying her as a freedom icon is their goal.
I notice on Twitter, some people are saying this is Trudeau's prosecution.
And in a way, Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act.
There were many RCMP and even military involved.
But I think that the prosecution here is where all prosecutions, other than some unique federal crimes, are.
It's the provincial government of Ontario, that is Doug Ford and his attorney general, who are behind this prosecution.
You can't say that prosecutors working for Doug Ford are Justin Trudeau's fault.
Am I wrong?
You know what?
That's a good question.
I'd like to speculate, but I really can't.
Let's pull it back to the law.
That's politics.
I can give my comments on the politics.
But on the law, how much you've been watching some of these, and so have others, and so is our guest who's just joined us right here.
Welcome to the streets of Ottawa, where you make friends whether you want to or not.
A lot of the evidence that was given by so-called witnesses for the prosecution, they actually didn't have any evidence touching on Chris Barber or Tamara Leach.
They talked in general about the convoy, in general, about what it was like to have the horn honking.
And it feels to me like they're trying to graft on evidence about a political movement onto two particular scapegoats.
The judge today pointed out a few times that there were a lot of trucker movements, a lot of trucker organizations.
She asked the prosecutor, how is this hung around the necks of these two particular individuals who are on trial for crimes?
Right, and I think that's a fair question.
I mean, when you're accused of a crime, the evidence has to go to the particulars of your conduct in relation to that offense.
So she was asking, okay, well, what direct evidence do you have about the mischief with relation to Ms. Barber or Mr. Lych?
And so that general contextual evidence doesn't go explicitly to their individual conduct.
I think that's a fair question she's asking.
Today, the junior prosecutor, Siobhan Weschler, if I'm pronouncing her name right, was going through legal precedents trying to convince the judge that the facts of the Leach and Barber cases, Chris Barber being the other defendants, match other cases.
One of the things that I noticed that none of the cases that were proffered were from senior levels of court that would be binding.
I didn't see any court of appeal rulings.
They were all minor rulings which are not binding on this judge.
But this junior prosecutor, Siobhan Wetchler, pointed to the case of the University of Toronto pro-Hamas encampment that was there for almost two months.
Justice Perkins Pushes Back00:06:06
And instantly, I thought there's so many differences between that case and this case.
The first one is no one was charged with the crime for that Hamas encampment.
Second of all, they were committing actual crimes, trespass, uttering threats, the whole time.
No one was charged.
And in the case of the trucker convoy, it was actually peaceful.
There was no violence.
And most importantly, these folks have been jailed.
Tamara Leach was jailed for 49 days.
It just seems like a really easy to distinguish case that shows the two-tier policing.
Weekly pro-Hamas marches, including, in some cases, uttering threats, no problem.
Have a trucker protest, go to jail.
Right.
Look, it's hard for me to comment on the analogies or the disanalogies there.
I mean, the judge noted that the encampment on the university, that's a civil case.
I think it was a civil injunction case.
It's just not comparable.
These were weird cases the prosecution was putting up.
Right.
I think the judge pushed back a little on that.
I don't know how much the prosecutor can make drawing in that civil injunction case.
They're just separate issues.
I mean, there's a different standard of proof at play as well.
So I think probably the defense will jump on that.
There was a case apparently was just ruled on in recent days of someone not in the trucker convoy, but in some rolling thunder convoy.
I don't know exactly what that is.
I'm guessing that's motorcycles or trucks or something.
Someone was yelling, hold the line, and waving at protesters.
That man was convicted of mischief in recent days.
I hadn't heard of that case.
I think the name of the accused was Blanchfield or something.
If that really is the law, that a court convicted someone for saying hold the line and waving, I feel like we're not living in a particularly free era right now.
Yeah, that would be a little disturbing.
I haven't read the case, but I think the judge did note, Justice Perkins Wave is an excellent judge, and she pushed back a little bit, and she said, well, in that case, wasn't the accused on top of his truck yelling things?
So she probably is wise to the fact that there is more than simply saying hold the line.
I think even in this case, the defense has made that point that simply saying that phrase doesn't constitute a mischief.
You know, I'm so glad you said that, and you're sort of correcting me.
You're suggesting that there's more here that got that conviction.
And the reason that that's important for me is I want to be accurate.
The reason that's important for this trial is because this prosecution is desperately trying to say, look, the low level that Tamara Leach did is, in other cases, convicts of crime, but you're pointing out that there may be well more.
And I think there's a little bit, a few inaccuracies that are sprouting in.
For example, they cited the case of Arthur Pavlovsky, who was convicted of mischief in Lethbridge, and his appeal is being heard next week in Alberta.
And I know about that case because the Democracy Fund crowdfunded for that too, and I actually attended some of that trial.
Just small things.
The junior prosecutor said to the judge, oh, no, he wasn't a pastor.
And that was later corrected by another lawyer.
And the judge said, I knew it.
I knew I was right.
And I don't know if a lot turned on that little error, but you have enough of these little errors.
And I've got to think, a judge, you know, you make one mistake, fine, everyone makes mistakes, but case after case, you're stretching the facts to fit.
You're exaggerating a little bit here, there.
You're omitting here and there.
That's not going to win with a seasoned judge.
What a seasoned judge is going to do and say, oh, I can't take what this lawyer says at face value.
I have to double check everything she says because I don't want to be tricked.
Because even if it's not on purpose, even if it's just being sloppy, not malicious, that deputy lawyer today on the prosecution side, I don't think she did her case any wins by getting so many facts wrong.
Well, in fairness, when you're on your feet, I've been in this position, you're arguing cases, you're trying to marshal your arguments.
Sometimes you miss little details, but judges, they never miss the details.
In fact, Justice Perkins Vey always says, okay, take me to the citation, take me to the quote.
I want to read it for myself.
So she's not going to miss that.
And I think as well that the defense will make a point of that when they stand up because they're sharp.
They're going to say, well, that case referred to does not sit on all fours with our case.
So they're going to distinguish it.
That's elementary legal stuff.
They're not going to miss that.
I want to remind our viewers, and I don't know if you know this, Mark, but this judge, Justice Perkins McVeigh is her name.
She was appointed about 15 years ago.
So that's a fairly seasoned judge.
I'd say she's in her prime.
She's not so old that maybe she's having Joe Biden moments.
She's not so young that she's still learning.
I'd say Justice Perkins McVay is in the apogee of her career.
And it was a few years ago she was the judge in a case of prosecuting Vice Admiral Mark Norman, which was such a political case.
There was so much prosecutorial misconduct.
They didn't disclose things to Vice Admiral Mark Norman until way into the middle of the trial.
And it was not called a mistrial, but it was just a summary acquittal.
It was a shocking case of prosecutorial abuse.
In fact, I think the government paid all of Mark Norman's legal bills as some sort of compensation for their false accusations.
What's my point?
Justice Perkins-McVeigh was the judge in that case.
So she is alert and alive to the fact that every now and again, just like anyone can lie, well, a prosecutor can lie or forget to disclose a key piece of evidence.
I think this is the best judge that Tamara Leach could have asked for because she knows all about legal shenanigans.
Well, look, I've been impressed with her.
We've been in front of her before.
She doesn't miss anything.
She pushes back when she needs to.
She's very diplomatic about things.
It's hard to read her mind, but she's been excellent so far.
Judge Perkins-McVeigh's Vigilance00:06:14
So I agree.
I think Tamara Lich and Chris Barber have an excellent judge.
So we're just starting the week.
It's Tuesday.
This is going to go a few more days this week.
Basically, the Crown Prosecutor closes their case.
Then you have the two different defense parties.
You have Tamara Leach and Chris Barber.
Some days are set aside next week in case more time is needed for reply or whatnot.
But all the lawyers submitted big, thick, written arguments, more than 100 pages each.
And the judge really said, I just want you in your spoken remarks just to amplify things.
Don't read it to me.
I'll read it myself.
I think this judge realizes things have gone on long enough.
She doesn't need them reading things to her that she could read on her own.
Do you think things will wrap up this week?
Who knows, eh?
Yeah, hard to say.
I've been wrong about how long this trial will take before.
I anticipate it'll probably go longer, but the lawyers seem optimistic they can wrap this up in time.
You heard that they gave away some dates in September.
So maybe, you know, we're optimistic that it'll wrap up soon.
Well, listen, thanks for, first of all, I follow your live tweeting, and I retweet everything you're live tweeting because I know it's smart because you're a practicing lawyer, you're with the Democracy Fund, and you have been following a lot of these mischief cases and other COVID cases, well, for years.
You were actually on the ground in Ottawa with our other counsel, Adam Blake Gallipo, going from truck to truck, handing out information to the truckers.
So the Democracy Fund has been there.
We're defending Arthur Pavlovsky.
We defended, I think, 55 truckers.
When I say we, Rebel News encourages our viewers to crowdfund, but the dough goes to the Democracy Fund and to lawyers, including Lawrence Greenspawn and his team.
I've gotten to know Lawrence a little bit over the last year.
I think he's really sharp.
Yeah, he's one of the best criminal lawyers in Canada.
I think that, you know, no one disputes that.
So he's doing an excellent job, and when he speaks, people listen.
Him and his team, they don't miss much.
You can see them taking copious notes.
They always stand up and object when they need to, and they've done a great job.
So I remain optimistic that there'll be a positive outcome.
You know, it's funny when you say when they speak, people listen.
Even journalists who I would say are skeptical or hostile, from time to time, Lawrence Greenspawn comes out and right over here he does sort of a quick scrum.
And you can see that even the state broadcaster, the CBC, which obviously has strong opinions against the truckers, even the CBC deals with Lawrence Greenspawn with, I'm not going to say with reverence, but with respect.
They know they're talking to a straight shooter.
They know he's not a partisan.
He's just a pure lawyer's lawyer.
I like listening to Lawrence Greenspawn, but even more, I like watching the CBC and CTV listen to Lawrence Greenspawn.
That's how good a lawyer he is.
Yeah, I mean, we've seen it throughout the trial that he stands up and speaks when he needs to speak.
Otherwise, he's sitting down letting the crowd do their thing.
So, yeah, I haven't, he doesn't make a misstep.
His team is excellent.
And I think the judges respect a guy like that who's not wasting their time with Blather.
You know, I had a chat with Lawrence Greenspawn downstairs, and I presume it's okay to reveal it in public because it was just his speculation.
I know how much his bill is because the Democracy Fund is crowdfunding it, and I don't think it's a secret to say it's approaching half a million dollars for him and his two co-counsel who've been working on this for a year.
But I said to Lawrence, what's your estimate of how much has been spent by the police and the prosecution and the court?
And I put numbers to him and I said $5 million.
He said, north of that.
So I think he's right.
When you think about not just the two prosecutors, but the first team of prosecutors that was removed because they were out of control, the judge, the clerks, all the witnesses, the prep time with all the witnesses.
You know, the 40 days of hearings is just the iceberg on top of the water, seven-eighths of which was preparation in advance.
And 40 days of court hearings where you could have had rape trials and murder trials and real trials.
All of that pushed aside, and I say again, it's Doug Ford on the hook even more than Justin Trudeau.
Lawrence Greenspawn estimated, if I'm repeating what he said to me accurately enough, between $5 and $10 million to go after a Metis grandma who said, hold the line.
And that's the Dabin Goliath situation, which is why we need our crowdfunding.
There's no way a normal person could take on that kind of a machine.
No, absolutely not.
And she's got the best legal representation she could have, but it costs money.
I mean, in fairness to Lawrence, he could be doing other things.
So, you know, we've got to come up with that funding.
Our donors have been excellent so far, but people got to kick in if they want to see vindication here.
Yeah, I wish everyone could be in the courtroom, first of all, just to watch Lawrence in action, but second of all, to see how crazy some of the arguments made by the prosecution is, too.
I don't think they brought their A game.
Obviously, I'm biased.
If folks want to help, the Democracy Fund issues a charitable tax receipt, and the funds go to pay the legal bills.
HelpTamara.com.
And we have tried to help her journalistically.
Rebel News has published her autobiography, which if you haven't read it yet, it's a great book.
It really is.
I thought I knew Tamara Leach.
I mean, I've met her a dozen times.
I didn't know half the things in that book.
I really recommend it.
Hey, Mark, thanks for talking with us on this sunny day.
And there's some colorful characters around here.
Welcome to downtown Ottawa.
I mean, that's just what life on the street is.
And by the way, we do believe in freedom of speech.
Yeah, look, it's never boring, and that's what's involved when you're in public speaking.
Everyone gets their say, even the crazies.
So, yeah, people.
Some people call Rebel News crazy, and, you know, Shakuna Songgu.
Everyone has their taste.
That's right.
Yeah.
So thanks for having me, Ezra.
I appreciate it.
All right, there you have it Mark Joseph, a senior litigator at the Democracy Fund.
Democracy Fund has furnished the lawyer to Tamara, three lawyers, in fact, led by Lawrence Greenspawn.
And Rebel News is delighted to help promote that because we got to win this one.
It's not just Tamara Leach who is on trial.
Canadian Truckers' Protest00:03:57
They are trying to put the entire convoy on trial.
Tamara Leach had an enormous moral victory over the government.
In fact, if you chart it, it was from the lockdown that Justin Trudeau's decline in the polls began.
They want to retroactively criminalize the convoy by convicting her.
That's why it's so important to acquit her.
I believe momentum is on our side.
You'll remember that the federal court of Canada under Justice Mosley declared that the Emergencies Act itself was unconstitutionally invoked and implemented, really taking the wind out of the sails of Trudeau and his charter-busting thugs.
We'll keep on reporting from it.
This is our lunch break.
We're going to go back in about half an hour and cover the rest of the day.
I'm here today only, but my colleague Sarah Stock will be here all week.
And I know you'll follow her both on Twitter and on video.
We want to own the coverage of this story.
It's so close to our heart.
I'll talk to you a little bit later.
You know, I was here in Ottawa for a few days at the beginning of the trucker convoy.
It was an amazing festival feeling.
People were unironically breaking out in songs, singing, oh, Canada, flying flags.
It felt like a standing club victory night or something.
This square where I'm standing here was part of the action too.
Behind me, the National War Memorial, where many of the truckers took it upon themselves to keep that clear of snow.
It was extremely cold and snowy, and the truckers, being working people who like to be productive and useful, took it upon themselves to beautify the city.
They shoveled and swept the snow.
They cleaned up the garbage.
And police reported that crime in the downtown area actually fell during the trucker convoy.
It's an interesting place to have a protest.
That building over there, the former train station, which then became a conference hall, is the temporary parliament, while the main parliament building undergoes a billion dollars worth of renovations.
All around me are corridors of power.
You have all sorts of lobbyists and others with lots of government contracts around here.
The National Arts Center, this really is the center of the capital.
And this is one of the places where the truckers would congregate.
It was an amazing time.
And I think it was the greatest peaceful protest involving politics in Canadian history.
Not only was it totally peaceful, not a single violent act committed by any trucker.
In fact, violence was committed against the truckers by the police, including against our own Alexa Lavoise, you know, but it changed things.
The copycat protests in Coots, Alberta soon caused the provincial government out there to abolish its mandates and move away from the COVID lockdown insanity.
And soon around the world, other countries started following the Canadian example.
We've heard people from as far away as the Netherlands, Israel, and Australia say they were inspired by the Canadian truckers.
There was even a modest American trucker convoy that we sent a reporter on.
The Canadian truckers inspired the world because I think people inherently trust truckers.
Truckers are independent.
Everyone knows they work hard, long hours.
And when you're in that cab, I can imagine you have a lot of time to think about things.
Maybe you listen to talk radio or listen to the news or you call in.
And those individual battalions for freedom is what freed our country.
It was no political party that freed us.
It was no media company.
It was no part of the establishment.
It was ordinary Canadian truckers who saved us.
And I think that was a magical moment.
I'm delighted that we had a role in it, both being journalists to document the truckers and crowdfunders to help defend the truckers.