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March 25, 2022 - Viva & Barnes

03:02:51

Live Stream with Ottawa Convoy Attorney, Keith Wilson - Viva Frei Live!

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	So would you discriminate against somebody who changed genders if they wanted to serve as a judge?
	No, no.
	That's bigotry.
	People have the right to choose how to live their lives.
	You know, Cruz asked a series of absurd questions.
	I hope he didn't learn them from me.
	He was my student.
	Where he said, well, if a woman has, if a man has the right to choose to be a woman, do I ask?
	A Latino person has the right to be Asian.
	No!
	No, you don't.
	You can't change into somebody who's Asian.
	You can marry somebody who's Asian and live an Asian life and be part of Asian culture, but no, you can't do that.
	You can convert.
	You can be born a Jew and become a Catholic.
	You can be born a Catholic and become a Jew.
	There's certain things you can change, certain things you can't.
	We used to think that gender was one of them.
	It turns out it's not.
	It turns out you can change gender, and you can live a perfectly happy and good life.
	We have two friends who have grandchildren who have changed genders, and in both cases, they're living much, much, much happier lives with the gender change than they were.
	Good morning, people.
	It's morning, as it will be for the next 59 minutes.
	Let me get center.
	I don't like this.
	Hold on.
	There we go.
	For those who don't know what that thing is right behind me there, that's a Shorty Social Good Award, which I won back in 2019.
	I don't know.
	I'll never win another one.
	It was for YouTube channels that contributed to greater social good.
	But I have a sneaking suspicion, politics being what it is, Even though I think it might be even more applicable to what we're doing these days, probably will never happen again.
	But we'll see.
	We'll see.
	How is the auto?
	Am I blowing this out again?
	We're going to have a good show today.
	But as always, I've got to do something of the intro discussion.
	Let people trickle in.
	If you have not shared this link around, share it around because it's going to be wildly interesting.
	Keith Wilson, who is the attorney for a number of people in the Ottawa protest, who's representing Brian Peckford in his federal challenge to the...
	Oh, those restrictions.
	The vaccine mandate restrictions.
	But let's just actually dissect a little bit Dershowitz and what he said there.
	First of all, you can see why Dershowitz is...
	I say was because he's no longer teaching probably, but wasn't it.
	He's excited and, you know...
	I'm energized in what he's saying.
	Delivery is different than substance, however.
	And I was watching that, and when you watch it, and you dissect it, and you look at it analytically, and you say, here are the logical mistakes he's making.
	Here are some of the, I won't say rhetorical, but tactical, I'll call it Scott Adams loser think strategy that he's doing.
	You can then see where Alan goes wrong in his thought process here, and where he goes wrong in...
	The ad hominem attack on Ted Cruz.
	First of all, there's an element of what Dershowitz is saying which is just tautological.
	It's a vicious circle.
	We thought you could not change genders.
	It turns out you can.
	We'll swap the word gender for race and then tell me why, though he may think that's not true today, why it may not be equally true in five years.
	We thought you could not change races, but it turns out you can.
	Because if it's based on a belief and not a biology, well, you can always change beliefs.
	I mean, just ask Dolezal, the woman who identified, born Caucasian, identified as black, and did a lot of things to actually make it such that one would not have known by looking at her.
	The ad hominem attack, which is, on the one hand, self-praise, because he used to be a teacher at Harvard, I believe, and...
	He taught Ted Cruz.
	And then the ad hominem, I hope I didn't teach him how to ask questions like that, which presupposes that the question was bad in the first place to lay the groundwork for the criticism of the question itself on the substance.
	He says, you know, my two cents, it was in the tweet.
	He, like many others, are confounding gender and sex.
	One is biology, the other is belief.
	And he's right.
	You can do whatever you want, make whatever choices you want, and you should not be discriminated against for them, discriminated unless there are criteria for which your decision could procure you an unfair advantage in certain circumstances.
	You may want to live like a bodybuilder.
	It doesn't mean you're necessarily going to be able to lift massive amounts of weights.
	On the flip side, you may want to be...
	A bus driver, but if you have certain physical attributes that don't allow you to do that, it's not discrimination at that point, it's something else.
	But confounding gender and sex, one is biology, one is belief, but people have used them so interchangeably for such a long time that people think they're the same thing.
	What gender are you?
	People often and typically take to mean, what's your sex?
	When you look more into the term, there is a distinction between gender and sex, otherwise you wouldn't have a different word for what is...
	In theory, identical things.
	Gender typically does refer to sex, male or female or whatever, but the nuance is that gender is distinguished from sex in that it talks about the attributes that are generally associated, either culturally, socially, or whatever, with the sexes.
	So there's that element of culture, society, semantics, and tradition in gender, the concept of gender, which there isn't in...
	Sex as a biological term.
	And so then in confounding those two and in treating them effectively synonymously like he does in his one-minute thing, basically says, well, you can change beliefs.
	And I've presumed now sex is gender and therefore a belief, but race is not.
	And then I equate or distinguish race from religion because religion is a belief.
	You can always change it.
	Race is not.
	You cannot change it.
	We thought gender could not be changed, but now it can.
	So, in a way, it's arguing from certain conclusions in a circular manner while confounding the definitions and the nuance between the two terms.
	And as attorneys, my father always said, words are the tools of our trade, and they have meanings, they have purpose, and when you don't respect the meanings or the purpose of words, well, on the one hand, it's how lawyers twist arguments, but on the other hand, it's how they lose arguments.
	And then the anecdotal...
	Story at the end.
	That's all fine and well.
	When you argue from anecdotes, rest assured there will be just as many people out there with anecdotes that prove the exact contrary.
	You do not argue from anecdotes.
	They're nice.
	They're nice for understanding someone's life experience, someone's lived experience, but they don't win an argument.
	They don't prove an argument because as many anecdotes as Alan Dershowitz might have that support his foregone conclusion, there will be other people out there and you know what they're going to say.
	They're going to have anecdotes to the exact opposite.
	And then you have competing anecdotes.
	Where do you go from there?
	Okay.
	That is it.
	Standard intro disclaimers.
	Super chats.
	You all know the rules.
	YouTube takes 30%.
	If you don't like that, we're simultaneously streaming on Rumble.
	Rumble has the equivalent.
	Rumble rants, they take 20%.
	So better for the creator.
	Better to support a platform that you like.
	What else?
	No medical advice.
	No legal advice.
	No election fortification advice.
	Although today, we have an attorney who is representing Some, at least as far as Canadian politics, Canadian law goes, some of the biggest, most pressing legal questions from some of the most relevant, legally speaking, issues going on right now.
	The truckers, not all of them, but a number of the people involved in the protests, the convoy.
	Brian Peckford, the last living signatory to drafting the 1982 Charter of Rights, which Justin Trudeau has desecrated.
	Which desecration...
	Oh, look at that.
	We're demonetized already.
	Which desecration has been duly noted by the European Parliament and the members of the European Parliament, who, at least four of whom lambasted, Lisa Lampanelli roasted Justin Trudeau in the political sense on the international scale, on the international scene.
	So that is that.
	We're 10 minutes in.
	I think everyone's had a fair chance to bring in the late...
	Lollygaggers.
	I see Talex is in the house.
	When I started watching you some years ago, I bet you never thought you would be smack dab in the middle of a culture war, let alone a battle for what reality itself is.
	Talex, I can guarantee you and promise you that no, I did not.
	I thought I was discovering it and being thrust into it in the early stages of what I experienced as YouTube soft censorship, pulling videos, demonetizing videos.
	I thought that was the extent of it.
	I had been watching Tim Pool.
	But lo and behold, Yeah, well, life has a way of thrusting you in certain directions.
	Life has a way of choosing your path, even if you don't necessarily choose that path.
	And speaking of chosen paths, people, I'm bringing in Keith Wilson, Queen's Council.
	I think that's what the QC stands for.
	Keith, get ready.
	Bringing you in now.
	Sir, how goes the battle?
	Well, the battle is intense and the battles are many, but the battles are going to be won.
	Now, someone says not on Rumble.
	That should not be the case.
	Hold on one second.
	We should be simulcastingly on the Rumbles.
	Hold on.
	Hold on.
	No, we're live on the Rumble.
	Now, I happen to see that I'm overlapping with Barnes.
	Oh, there's too much going on.
	Barnes is with the Rubin Report, it would seem.
	Okay.
	Anyhow, you can catch this later if you want to go watch someone else live in the real time.
	This is not going anywhere.
	Keith, elevator pitch for people who don't know who you are.
	We're not going to harp on your childhood, but we're just going to gloss over to get to where you are now.
	But elevator pitch for those who may not know who you are, what you're doing, and then we're going to get into the details.
	Sure.
	I'm a lawyer from Alberta.
	I've been practicing law for 27 years.
	I'm a litigator.
	The pattern of my clients is I tend to take on...
	Fights where there's someone smaller against someone bigger.
	And I often find myself representing people in disputes or challenges of government.
	And I am currently lead counsel on two significant cases, working as a contract lawyer to the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms.
	And the first case is the Charter Challenge against the travel...
	Vaccine requirements.
	And my lead client there is the former Premier, the Honourable Brian Peckford.
	And then the other cases, I'm representing many of the key players in the Freedom Convoy and the not-for-profit that was created, a charity group that was created to help move that freedom concept forward.
	Okay, now let's start from the very beginning just quickly.
	Born and raised, and how many generations Canadian are you?
	I am two generations Canadian, and I was born and raised actually in Burlington, Ontario.
	Okay.
	How many siblings, and what did your parents do?
	My dad was a teacher, and my mother was an assistant of various things, a secretary, a claims adjuster and things.
	She always taught me and my four siblings that everybody is just a justa.
	I was just a janitor to put myself through law school, and now I'm just a lawyer.
	So that's one of the things she taught me.
	Yeah, so that's sort of my origin story.
	And where did you study law, if I may ask?
	I lived in Vancouver for...
	In my teen years, early teen years, my parents moved to the prairies, to Alberta, and then later moved to Vancouver.
	I started my undergraduate work there.
	I got politics out of my system very early.
	Fortunately, I was the president of Douglas College Student Society in New Westminster.
	And then ended up meeting the lady who became my wife.
	And we've been together for 34 years.
	We've got four kids.
	And transferred back to Alberta because that's where she was from.
	I did my first year of law school at Osgoode Hall.
	The lure of Alberta was too strong.
	And so I transferred back and finished my law degree at the University of Alberta.
	Fantastic.
	And your practice itself, I mean, this is a question I'm interested in, in terms of, you say you're on contract with the JCCF.
	So you have your own practice, your own firm, and have you been there for 35 years?
	Yeah, no, I started off in the big firms and learned a lot, but also learned I didn't like the dynamics.
	I didn't like the conflicts.
	Because of the nature of the economy in Alberta, and a lot of my clients had been farmers and ranchers and dairy farmers and other things, and I'd have a farmer come to me and his water wells were contaminated, and I wanted to go after the oil company to get a remedy for them.
	I couldn't because the partner three floors up was working on a litigation file for that oil company.
	So the conflicts just became too great.
	So I started my own firm and then I switched it to a purity boutique firm, Wilson Law Office.
	And I like that style.
	I'm full on on my files.
	I get to pick the files that I work on and I can commit to them 100%.
	So that's the business model I have.
	But I'd like to tell you how I found myself working with the Justice Center, if that's all right.
	Oh, please.
	That was my next question, actually.
	Okay.
	My wife's job throughout our marriage and my career has, I'm the guy who brings home the stray cat and the stray dog.
	In other words, when someone phones me with a hardship story, I just have a heck of a time saying no.
	So throughout my career, her job has been to be a bit of a gatekeeper because I tend to work too hard and take on too much work.
	So as COVID came, and by the way, my wife's a retired registered nurse.
	You know, a university degree trained.
	She was watching this whole COVID stuff and watching the public health responses to it and the governmental responses to it.
	And she's a very, very apolitical person.
	And she started to become increasingly concerned about the disconnects between what she was seeing in all of her academic training and her clinical experience.
	And then she started to become quite concerned.
	And in the fall of last year, she came to me.
	And she said to me, you need to get involved.
	This is too serious.
	I'm getting very scared about the future of our country, the future for our children, the government overreach, and what she was seeing.
	And it was in early December that the Justice Center came to me and said, hey, we need more horsepower.
	We need more senior litigators on our cases.
	And would you be willing to run one?
	He said you could pick anyone.
	So I picked the travel mandate one because it makes no sense to me that this discriminatory policy of entrapping Canadians in our own country and preventing us from flying and discriminating against people who made the choice to be unvaccinated.
	So that's how I ended up joining with the Justice Centre.
	It was in February that I got the infamous phone call to go to Ottawa on very short notice for the truckers.
	Two questions.
	Your wife, was she a retired RN pre-COVID or during or post?
	Pre-COVID.
	Okay.
	And how did you know the JCCF?
	I mean, I guess the legal community is small, but were you affiliated or had you known of the JCCF prior to COVID or did you discover them in the context of COVID?
	No, I knew of the Justice Center from its early days.
	I followed their work.
	I've always thought that they were doing important work, and I obviously think they're doing even more important work right now, so I was always aware of them.
	Okay, and the first file you took from them was the travel restriction or the vaccine mandates for interprovincial national travel via train and plane, 2021?
	Yeah, so it was right around Christmas that I agreed to take that on, and they assembled a team of incredible lawyers.
	I've been very fortunate to work with very skilled lawyers there.
	And we went to work.
	I reverse-engineered that case.
	I started with a blank piece of paper, and I said, okay.
	Obviously, we're going to be able to establish charter breaches, a mobility for one, Section 7 in terms of security of the person, freedom of conscience, discrimination, Section 15. And we may not fully establish all of them because of the nuances that will happen, but I knew we were going to establish a breach, and that's obvious.
	So we knew the fight would shift quickly to Section 1, Oaks Test, in other words.
	Is the breach demonstrated justified in a free and democratic society?
	And then, of course, it has its four-branch test.
	So I looked at it and I said, okay, what types of facts and what types do we need to support the legal arguments to defeat the government on their Section 1 arguments, their Section 1 defense, so to speak, even though the onus is on them?
	And so, for example...
	Heart damage, myocarditis is a risk for young males.
	So I said we need to make sure one of our applicants is a young athletic male.
	So we reverse built it.
	And then we knew that former Premier Peckford was interested in challenging this.
	That's probably a mild way to say it.
	And so I thought about him and the value that he would bring both to the litigation and to the court, given his unique role.
	So we reverse built that.
	That litigation.
	We have some of the best experts in the world.
	We've got Dr. McCullough, Dr. Bridle, who filed expert reports on our behalf.
	So I'm looking forward to that case moving forward.
	One question.
	I mean, the restriction or the vaccine requirement mandate for air travel is just the latest in the egregious violations of charter rights.
	But you go back to, like, The quarantine hotels.
	You go back to the curfews provincially.
	I got a few questions which I didn't know that I was going to ask you, and I don't want to put you on the spot with legal questions.
	The one question that I've always been asking myself, and I think I know the answer, and the answer should be yes, but when it's the provinces that are violating the Charter, the Charter of Rights for everybody who's watching applies to government entities, federal, provincial, municipal, federally regulated entities.
	The question is...
	A lot of people are saying, well, it's the provinces imposing certain curfews, certain lockdowns, certain provincial orders.
	It's not the federal.
	Am I not right?
	Am I wrong in thinking that if there's a charter violation that a province is committing, the federal government itself has standing to take that charter violation to court because it's violating their federal charter?
	Could the federal not sue a province over charter violations and not force a citizen to do that?
	Well, the question on standing.
	The federal government, if they wanted standing in pretty much any case, they're going to get it just in the same way that the province is.
	Because of the nature of the beast, a court's going to say, yeah.
	I mean, if Joe off the street wants to jump in because he has some axe to grind, he's going to have to show.
	There's well-established case law and legal tests on standing, but the Crown would almost always meet it.
	Okay, good.
	And now this, I'm going to share the charter for one second, just so we can look at this.
	And just to hear what you mentioned, the quarantine hotel.
	You know, I looked at that when it first came out, you know, and there's something was going on.
	Oh, I think I remember.
	So Trudeau was under pressure because he completely blew the procurement process for getting vaccines.
	And this was back when we thought whatever side effects a vaccine might have.
	That it actually would work and be a vaccine.
	In other words, stop you from getting it and transmitting it.
	So he was looking for a distraction.
	It was snowbird season.
	So this is my take on it anyway.
	So he brings in this whole quarantine hotel thing.
	And I thought, that doesn't seem right.
	So on my own time, I started researching the Quarantine Act.
	And there was nothing in there.
	Nothing.
	To allow them to do that.
	The only thing they could quarantine and require the shipper to pay is a crate.
	So if you're importing a crate of linens from Egypt and they were suspicious it had a moth in it, they could quarantine it and make you pay the storage charge.
	There was zero ability.
	So nonetheless, they issue this order.
	I remember writing.
	Just sort of on a lark, because there was an email on the bottom where you could write to the person responsible for the order, the regulation, and I thought, well, I won't get a response, but it's just going to take me a few minutes.
	I'll just, you know, explain why you don't have the authority.
	I did the confused thing.
	I've searched the Act.
	I can't find any provision for this.
	Can you help me understand where you think you have the authority to do this?
	And they basically responded by saying they didn't and they're working on it.
	And that's been the pattern.
	All the provinces did this.
	When they brought in their various orders, they realized after the fact that they actually didn't have the authority to close the businesses.
	They didn't have the authority to issue these sweeping stay-at-home orders and masking orders.
	So they all did these retroactive amendments to their legislation to make what they did lawful and to declare...
	Retroactively lawful and to put a provision in preventing anybody from suing and to put a provision in from anybody from making a claim.
	And that's when we started to really fastly go down the slippery slope of ignoring the rule of law, of governments saying, we're so important and we've determined this issue to be so serious.
	Forget about the law stuff.
	We're just doing it.
	And here we are with the travel mandate, you know, like telling Canadians they can't travel in gross violation of the charter.
	And just to, you know, we'll back it up for one second there.
	The Oaks test, which people might not be familiar with, but bottom line is when there's a charter violation, the Crown, you'll fill in the criteria that I'm missing, but it's got to be a compelling interest.
	It's got to be narrowly tailored effectively.
	There's got to be a logical connection.
	Between the measure imposed, and it's got to be as minimal as possible when it's violating a charter right.
	And that's the test that the Crown has to satisfy.
	Let me just share this with the Charter.
	Once there's been an established violation, the question that I've always had, the Constitutions Act, here it is, Keith, is this.
	The Section 1. Which says, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it, subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law, as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.
	The demonstrably justified part is the Oaks Test.
	But the prescribed by law, and the question that I've been asking myself from the beginning is, this quarantine hotel, the curfew, the lockdowns.
	Am I wrong in thinking it was never actually prescribed by law?
	Because it was never passed into law.
	There was never any formal legislation, no debate, no nothing.
	It was mandates, which I questioned whether or not it even met the initial criteria of Section 1, which is prescribed by law.
	Is there a difference in law between these edicts, these mandates, and anything that is formally prescribed by law?
	That is a great question.
	And let me illuminate a whole bunch of things there if I could.
	I think we have, generally as Canadians, this idea that when a law is to be made that is going to restrict our freedoms or tell us how to live our lives or how to register our vehicles or how to build our homes or what a safe workplace is, that the law...
	We'll have to go through the legislature, either the provincial parliament, provincial legislature, depending what province you're in, they're called different things.
	And if it's federal, through the House of Commons and the Senate.
	And we believe, and we have this general understanding that...
	It has to be introduced as a bill and it needs to be read three times and go through third reading and pass.
	And then it needs to finally receive royal assent, either by the Lieutenant Governor of the province or the Governor General of Canada, depending on whether it's a province or federal government.
	That's all true.
	However, much like you see the controversies in the United States over the president's executive power, you know, it's a constant, whatever party's not in power in the United States is always accusing the president.
	You know, Obama was accused of abusing his executive powers.
	Trump was accused of abusing his executive powers.
	Biden's been accused.
	So we have this whole idea of executive power.
	One of the things that you can do within a statute is you can delegate lawmaking powers.
	So, for example...
	In the travel mandate case, there's a section in the Aeronautics Act that has delegated to the Minister of Transportation the power to make emergency orders with respect to aviation safety, okay?
	So that's where the order was made.
	Telling unvaccinated Canadians that they can't get on planes, trains, or ships, and they can't leave the country.
	That was not passed by Parliament, but the section authorizing the minister was.
	Now, there's a phrase that people will think I'm a kook when I say it, but Google it.
	A Henry VIII clause.
	The last Lord Justice of the King of England.
	Gave a speech before he retired, and he said his greatest concern was the overuse of Henry VIII clauses.
	The Royal Law Commission of Australia several years ago wrote a report that the greatest threat to the rule of law and freedom and democracy was Henry VIII clauses.
	What the heck is the Henry VIII clause?
	Oh, did you Google that already?
	Yep, I'm pulling it up here in the background.
	See?
	There you go.
	So let me explain Henry VIII clause.
	So Henry VIII clause is basically where the lawmaking function of the legislature is delegated to the executive branch.
	Just to segue for a minute, one of the last biggest battle I was in...
	It was in 2009 that lasted to 2012 when the Alberta government, the conservative PC dynasty here, brought in a suite of laws that I couldn't believe what I was reading.
	And I thought if I went and spoke at a few public meetings, the government would realize the error of their ways and they would repeal these laws.
	And they were relating to land rights and property rights.
	And one of the pieces of legislation, which is still on the books, unfortunately, it's the only one, I managed to get all four laws repealed but for one, said that the provincial cabinet could, from the cabinet room, make a law, a statute, or a regulation on any subject matter from the cabinet room that the legislature can make a law on or amend any existing law.
	So this would mean that the provincial cabinet could, from the cabinet room, make all the laws behind the secrecy of the cabinet, you know, because cabinet, there's a principle of cabinet secrecy, everything that happens in cabinet is secret, and completely run the government and run your lives without ever taking anything to the legislature.
	That's a Henry VIII clause.
	The reason they came about was actually because of the terrorist attacks in 9 /11.
	And the belief was that because terrorists could be lurking amongst us and government would need to act quickly, we can't burden them and they shouldn't have to make these laws in the presence of the public because that would tip off the terrorists.
	So this is where they started from.
	And now they've creeped into all these different statutes.
	They've creeped into these public health laws.
	They've creeped into these other laws.
	They've creeped into the Aeronautics Act.
	And if you trace back the origins of these various mandates and curfews and things, which goes to your question, is you will see that there's some Henry VIII type clause in there.
	And again, I emphasize that in his last speech, a former chief justice of the English High Court.
	He said that was his biggest concern about the future for liberty and democracy, was the overuse of these clauses.
	And boy, that was all way before COVID.
	So, sorry for the long answer, but I hope that was helpful.
	No, but it's great.
	And it is something that Kierkegaard, life can only be understood backwards, but must be lived forwards.
	And now I look back on everything that happened post 9-11, without even getting into the conspiracy theories, without even getting into the theories as to the hows and whats.
	Just what was done afterwards.
	Secret courts, you know, continued detainment, government operates in the cloak of darkness.
	But Keith, I want to bring up one thing here, because this goes back to the quarantine hotels.
	And I, for the life of me, don't understand it.
	And it's not for lack of trying.
	Okay, I'm just going to pull up one random article just from Law Times.
	The court finds mandatory hotel quarantine constitutional.
	This is what I don't understand.
	And this is not a mischaracterization of the decision.
	The federal government's policy of mandatory hotel quarantining for international travelers does not violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the federal court has found.
	Now, they found that.
	This is not an article misrepresenting it.
	I did videos on the decision itself.
	I don't understand how that was the conclusion.
	The conclusion, I would still vehemently disagree with it.
	The only tenable conclusion in law that I could have ever foreseen was, yes, it obviously violates your constitutional rights because we're detaining you.
	We're obviously violating your constitutional rights because you can't go where you want to go.
	We're telling you what to do.
	We're telling you where to stay, and we'll let you out when you satisfy our conditions.
	The only logical conclusion could have been, yes, it violates your charter rights, but it's justified under Section 1, the Oaks test, which they never got into.
	In your mind, in your view as a lawyer, how on earth does a judge come to the conclusion that it doesn't violate charter rights?
	Or are we saying the same thing?
	They're saying it doesn't violate your charter rights because it's a justified violation, but I read the decision and that really wasn't what they even said.
	I mean, what's your take on that?
	Judge is afraid of COVID.
	Fear.
	And I can give you a longer answer, but...
	When I've read that decision, the reason I was reaching to the side here is because I actually have it right here because I've referred to it so many times because it's important for me to understand it in the context of the challenge or the battle in front of us to win on the Peckford Charter Challenge.
	You know, if you get a chance to read that decision early on, you can sense the panic.
	It was at a different time.
	It was at a time of Delta.
	It was a time of, you know, everybody trying to be a cheerleader.
	And in fear of COVID, the court took judicial notice of things that I don't think it's possible for them to, proper for them to have taken judicial notice of.
	If I may finish your sentence there, you're thinking of the outbreak in the old person's, the long-term healthcare facility in Barry, where the judge said...
	There was a case of somebody who came back and didn't quarantine, got their roommate sick.
	They worked in a long-term healthcare facility.
	They infected the facility and 67 people died.
	I mean, that was one of the things where I'm reading that decision and I'm like, you just conducted a trial within a trial with no evidence.
	And that's your basis for the urgency.
	Yeah, and these early decisions are riddled with that.
	Because some people have said to me, Well, okay, Wilson, you know, look at all these decisions saying the government can do all of these things and they pretty much have a blank check.
	What makes you think you're so special and are going to win, right?
	And what I've said is, well, maybe I won't, but me and my team and our witnesses are sure going to work hard.
	But what we've tried to, what we've, first of all, we're in a different time.
	We have way more information.
	We have the things that some of the skeptical doctors, and thank goodness for them, because skepticism is the essence of the scientific method by definition, not cheerleading and blind faith following.
	It's not a religion, it's science.
	Anyway, we have way better science and data to support a more balanced view of...
	The whole COVID controversy.
	And we're putting that best evidence forward.
	The other part of it is we've learned.
	You learn from your mistakes.
	And I'm not saying they were mistakes.
	You learn from your failures.
	Because I have the highest respect for the lawyers that ran those cases.
	And I do consult with them regularly.
	And they've been terrific assets to us and our team.
	There's a lot of barriers we're going to have to get through.
	But I do fundamentally believe one of the things that's driven some of these court decisions is fear.
	And not just personal fear, perhaps, of COVID by the individual judge, but fear of stepping out, fear of going against the grain, which is, you know...
	I remember on the Trucker case when I was before Justice McLean, and he's a senior supernumerary judge.
	And one of the things he said early on as the Zoom call crashed a couple times because so many reporters and others were trying to get in and watch this emergency injunction application that I was defending.
	And he pointed out that something like, this is not...
	I don't make decisions based on a mob.
	I don't make my decisions based on popularity.
	That's not what the law is about.
	I'm to make my decisions based on the evidence and the law, and that's what I'm going to make my decision on, no matter how popular or unpopular it is.
	And I was really relieved to hear that because I think it's important that that's what all our judges do.
	Supernumerary, just for those who don't know, is that semi-retired?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	And so when you started in saying a senior judge supernumerary, I'm thinking maybe he's going to be like, everything is justified because I don't want to be exposed to any risk whatsoever.
	But he took the more rational, judicial perspective of this?
	Well, it was in the context of the noise injunction and the horns and the convoy.
	But I really appreciated how he kind of spoke past the lawyers.
	And to all the reporters and the public and the people who were on the Zoom call, the 500 people, and kind of set the stage that, you know, this isn't a popularity contest, people.
	You know, like, this is the law.
	And, you know, there's a reason that Lady Justice is supposed to have a blindfold on, right?
	So it shouldn't matter whether there's one person cheering for a result or a million.
	It's facts and law.
	I brought up a chat two seconds ago.
	I'll bring it up.
	It says, Viva and Keith.
	Viva, can you and Keith acknowledge that judges are political appointees and corrupt?
	Keith, you'll tell me if you agree or disagree with my assessment of this.
	In Canada, it's far less polarized than in the United States.
	The corruption in the sense that they're political appointees in Canada is that they're all members of a club.
	Whereas in the States, maybe there's two clubs with a little overlapping.
	In the States, it's clearly Democrats versus Republicans on the bench throughout the court system.
	In Canada, they're appointed by the government.
	There's the loyalty, the deference to the government.
	They are independent, but you can sometimes see the deference of the judiciary to look to ratify, look to confirm, look to reinforce what the government has done as a reflex, especially in COVID, and not to challenge it.
	And so maybe there's that type of corruption, but I don't see the same politicized conservative versus liberal politicization of the court system here.
	Keith, I mean, do you have that same impression or the same impression?
	No, I think I'm glad we don't have elections for our judges.
	I'm glad that they're appointed for life.
	And, you know, there's been lots of decisions I get from judges that I disagree with where I've lost.
	And I've never once, I can honestly say, having done this for coming on 28 years, where I felt there was corruption behind it.
	It might have been that I don't think the judge really put the effort into reading the materials.
	I think the judge maybe sometimes got distracted by something.
	Maybe I didn't do the best job I could have done.
	I can honestly say I've never encountered in all of the courts and tribunals that I've appeared before corruption in the truest sense ever.
	And Dash Riprock says they're independent but behoven to the government.
	Okay, Viva.
	I mean, I see the sarcasm there, but look, having read through a lot of these decisions in the context of COVID, the reflexes, deference to the government, presumption of constitutionality, You know, believing or legitimizing the urgency, the arguments raised by the government, which creates this uphill battle of sorts, legal.
	Call it corruption, call it whatever you want.
	I mean, we might be describing the same thing with different terms.
	The government appoints the judges.
	They're independent, but they're part of the infrastructure.
	The government appoints their medical experts who advise the government that submits it to the courts.
	And so you have your trifecta of government.
	Appointing experts and then deferring to the expertise of the people they've appointed.
	Call it what you want.
	That's what I think we've seen throughout the context of this pandemic.
	But, Keith, I still don't understand, in these cases, the curfew, the masks, the hotel, the quarantine hotels.
	The courts did not conclude, yes, it's a violation, but it's justified.
	They said, no, it's not a violation.
	And to show that there was a distinction, I think it was in one of the quarantine hotels where they said...
	No charter violation for the mandatory quarantine, but yes, there was a charter violation when some of these people that were whisked off were not allowed to consult with counsel.
	So even within the context of those decisions, they said, here was a charter violation, which was unjustified.
	Here, there was no charter violation.
	Where I, for the life of me, can't understand how it got there.
	It could have only had to have been, yes, there's a charter violation, but yes, it is justified under the Oaks test, which they never got to.
	But the Oaks test is on the merits, correct?
	That's not on a preliminary or provisional or interlocutory injunction?
	Yeah, it's interesting how the Oaks test works.
	But just to answer your first question, to circle back to your point before I answer the one about Oaks, is...
	It's clear in reading, you know, if you imagine driving down a highway and there being multiple off-ramps, right?
	And maybe a judge could have ignored the first off-ramp and found and said, rather than saying, oh, I'm out of here, there's no charter breach, said, yeah, there is a charter breach, and then kept driving and then escaped by saying, oh, yeah, it's saved by Section 1 Oaks test.
	I think that's what happened.
	I think the judges took the first off-ramp they could to say, oh, well, I can end this case by saying there's no charter breach.
	And it is absolutely troubling.
	Absolutely troubling.
	But it hasn't caused me to lose complete faith in the system.
	It's caused me to look at it sort of like, what?
	So we're going to try real hard on this one.
	And let's see where it ends up.
	But with respect to the OAKS test, so the dynamic is he who goes first has onus of proof, right, as you've probably explained to your listeners.
	So if you're a plaintiff, the onus of proof is on you.
	If you're an applicant, the onus of proof is on you.
	It's your job to prove the case.
	When you do a charter challenge and you meet your onus and prove a breach, then there's...
	In real time, with no pause, there's an onus shift.
	And then the onus shifts to the government if it wants to, instead of, it could just say, yeah, we're done.
	Or the government can say, yeah, we realize there's a breach or you've ruled there's a breach.
	We think it's saved.
	It's demonstrably justified.
	And therefore, you should allow this law to continue despite the breach.
	So the onus shifts to the attorney general to prove that it's demonstra justified in a free and democratic society, which is the Oaks test.
	Amen.
	All right, now let's get into some of the...
	Well, we're not in the Oaks test yet in the federal lawsuit with the Peckford, but maybe we'll get back to that in a bit.
	Let's get to the convoy because I know people, I see the comments in the chat, I see the questions, and people want to know what's going on.
	So you were involved with Peckford in the charter challenge from before, and then you say you get the call.
	Because of what's going on in Ottawa, tell us, you're an attorney, and I know that you were active, very active in this.
	Just tell everybody how that went down, what happened, and your experience at the protest, and then we'll get into some of the legal stuff.
	Sure.
	So, it was February 1st.
	I had been watching, like, Canadians, all, you know, all Canadians, and people around the world, this phenomena.
	Of these convoys starting in different places and namely started in southern Alberta and Saskatchewan.
	And seeing the outpouring of people coming out onto the highways and lining the highways in the middle of the prairies in minus 25 with a wind chill of minus 42. And cheering,
	waiting and cheering these truckers on and the crowds getting bigger and the support and the volunteerism and the donations and I'm talking about the material donations of food and people setting up staging areas, anticipating them coming and some pizza restaurant saying,
	I'm going to give them all free pizzas and just this outpouring of hope and patriotism and this unleashing of this Fire, internal desire for freedom again.
	It was just so awe-inspiring to watch.
	So that was me, like everyone else.
	I even donated a little bit of money to GoFundMe, partly because I wanted to track how the communications was going to go because I was so curious about it.
	Little did I know that I would be on a conference call with all the lawyers and the president and vice president at GoFundMe a mere few days later.
	I had arranged a call in the afternoon on the, I guess it would be February 1st.
	Let's look at the calendar here to keep my bearings.
	But yeah, it was February 1st.
	And I'd arranged a Zoom call with my legal team.
	And it was late afternoon, about 3 o 'clock.
	And I was the host.
	And all of a sudden, I saw these other names start popping up that I didn't recognize.
	And I thought, who the heck has hacked my Zoom call?
	So I clicked on one of the lawyers.
	And I said, Eva, who are all these people?
	And she said, just let them in.
	And I'm like, OK.
	So I let them in.
	And it was a group of other lawyers who I hadn't met.
	And they were with the Justice Center as well.
	And they informed me urgently that there had been a call from help from Ottawa and that some of Tamara Leach and others.
	I had reached out to the Justice Centre and said, you know, we need some help.
	We're trying to form a not-for-profit corporation to deal with this wave of donations and have a proper legal structure in place.
	And we've got some other legal issues here.
	We've got police, you know, interactions and so on.
	Long story short, I was asked if I would lead a team of five lawyers, four other lawyers and myself, and fly to Ottawa the next morning.
	To be on the ground to assist the truckers.
	And I thought for a moment.
	And, you know, I have been so concerned about the direction of our country.
	I have been so fundamentally concerned about the trampling of civil liberties and the loss of rights, the overreaction to COVID.
	I've been fundamentally concerned about the future for my children, deeply, deeply concerned.
	And I was inspired by what the truckers were doing.
	And I thought to myself, you know, I don't know if I can make a difference, but if there's any possibility that I can and I don't go and I say no, I'm not going to live with myself.
	So I said, how can I say no?
	So next morning, so I got permission from...
	The highest authority, my wife.
	And interestingly enough, in all of the cases and times I've had to go on a long trip, public inquiry, a long trial.
	And the night before I got to go, the last thing to do is to get my suits out and pack my bags, pack my clothes.
	Well, for the first time, my wife did it.
	So that tells you.
	How committed she was to me moving forward to help in any way that I can.
	So yeah, we got on the plane.
	What's that?
	Your kids age, like how young to how old?
	Just to gauge how excited you might actually be to leave the house for a couple of weeks.
	Yeah, for sure.
	I'm 57 years old and my oldest, my two older boys are 27 and 26. My daughter's 21 and our youngest is 17. Okay.
	All right.
	So they're adults where they can actually have fun when parents are gone, which they probably do.
	Well, yeah.
	Not only that, though.
	Importantly, as you can imagine, they're trying to figure out their future.
	And as parents, we want them to have a good future.
	And I keep looking at their future opportunities and looking at the course of the country, not just in terms of this incredible...
	Annihilation of our basic rights and democratic principles, but the economic stuff and the fairy dust, you know, we'll just, you know, I don't worry about budgets and I don't worry about financial matters, like our Prime Minister said, as if we hadn't figured that out.
	So it was looking pretty grim.
	But so, yeah, so we ended up...
	Hopping across the country.
	First, me and another lawyer flew down to Medicine Hat to pick up Tamara Leach's husband because he was going to come there to be supportive of her.
	Then we flew up to Saskatoon, picked up two more lawyers, flew down to Regina to pick up the accountant, then flew to Winnipeg, picked up one more lawyer and then we were so heavy in this Beach King Air that we had to stop in Thunder Bay for fuel.
	And so I got on the plane at 8 in the morning and we arrived in Ottawa at 11.30 at night.
	There were some who characterized as it came up in the bail hearing that somehow this was some luxury jet flight.
	And it wasn't.
	What you just described is probably the last plane on Earth I would ever step foot on.
	I mean, that's a...
	When you have to worry about fuel because one people of eight might have added so much weight, you might...
	That's, yeah.
	And I presume that's a turbulent flight.
	It's not a smooth flight.
	It wasn't too bad.
	But the first thing we did was we worked the whole time.
	We drafted a five-page substantive letter in response to GoFundMe.
	Because we got a briefing.
	I met the accountant for the first time.
	And I'm like, what's going on with GoFundMe?
	Because just that day, they put a freeze on the funding thing.
	That was the first freeze or the second freeze?
	That was the...
	I can't remember.
	I think it was the...
	Well, there was different kinds of freezes.
	They put a freeze on so they suspended donations, right?
	And they did the first one, then they lifted it, then they put the second one and they froze the donations, and then they locked the whole thing down.
	And it was, as they were entering into that, it was the lockdown one.
	So he had provided us all this different email correspondence.
	One of the lawyers got the laptop out and we started going through each of the questions and drafting a substantive response.
	So we were working the whole time getting to know one another briefing.
	We arrived.
	The decision was made that I would go with Dwayne first as the others arrange transportation and rental car, get to the hotel first.
	So it's 1130 at night.
	I'm driving into downtown Ottawa in the middle of the war zone, so to speak.
	And I don't know what I'm going to expect.
	Like, are we going to have to park and walk six blocks because it's completely inaccessible?
	And I started to see the groupings of the trucks.
	And I know you were there on the ground, so you know what I'm talking about.
	And the flags and the signs.
	But we drove.
	The taxi drove us right to the front door of the hotel, just like any other time.
	And that's the first thing I realized, wow, judging by the media reports, you would have thought this whole downtown was completely inaccessible.
	That wasn't the case.
	I saw police everywhere.
	But you could feel the tension.
	I could feel the anxiety.
	When we went into the lobby of the hotel, there was truckers everywhere.
	There was supply stacked, donations everywhere of every kind.
	Went up to a room, met the key organizers, had to get to know them and earn their trust very quickly, obviously, because we were faced with some serious issues to deal with.
	And that's sort of how it all began.
	And I was on the ground there for 19 days.
	And there's lots of vignettes I can share.
	Well, so starting actually with the GoFundMe, this is when they...
	The first freeze wasn't really a freeze.
	They just paused it and said, specify how the funds are going to be used.
	Then they allowed the campaign to go on.
	It was the second one where they froze it.
	And then they went into, we're shutting it down.
	Did they actually say, I mean, I think I saw this in real time.
	Did GoFundMe actually initially say, we're keeping the funds and we're going to give it to a charity of our choice?
	Oh, yeah.
	Yeah, but it was not only...
	That they did that.
	So we sent this five-page letter.
	We had one of the lawyers that was with us on purpose has 40 years of experience as a lawyer and deals with incorporations of both for-profit companies and not-for-profits.
	So his job...
	Was on our team was to work with the accountant and form the board of directors, do the organizational minutes, do the banking resolutions, like do every possible thing from a due diligence and a corporate government's perspective that could be done.
	Not just what needed to be done, like right off the top of the scale.
	Like let's make this thing perfect and bulletproof.
	So we provided those documents.
	We ended up having a conference call on the Thursday afternoon, so this would be the 3rd of February, with the general counsel, the same characters who ended up testifying before the House of Commons Finance Committee a few weeks ago.
	And they were asking really weird questions.
	And they were talking about these different reports they'd received of criminal activity and other things going on.
	Well, one of the things that I learned very quickly is, and I don't know if you know this, you might know this, but if you do, your listeners will be interested, is that groups of Antifa were coming through at night, and, you know, in their black hoodies and their little backpacks and their black jeans, and they would come through when the truckers were sleeping, and they would knife their tires, they would cut their airlines, they would knife their trucks, or they'd spray paint their trucks, they'd vandalize the trucks.
	So each block...
	Had a block captain for that area of trucks.
	And they had a watch system so that they would take watch at the night.
	An Antifa guy would come along.
	A trucker would hear them.
	The guy who's on watch, he'd go over and grab them.
	And he didn't do to the Antifa person what you would expect a trucker to do, which is beat them up, right?
	And teach them a lesson.
	They'd call 911.
	The police would come.
	Arrest that guy, take him away.
	And so let's say that happened three instances in the night.
	Guess what the police chief did the next day?
	He said three acts of violence.
	Yeah, he said we had three arrests for property damage in the downtown core last night.
	And we're like, are you kidding me?
	They were Antifa.
	The 911 calls were from truckers, right?
	So it was this...
	So it was that kind of thing going on.
	There was also a strong rumor going around or some Antifa group had said they were coming in force that upcoming weekend to really take on the truckers.
	And so the GoFundMe people said, because you know of that, shouldn't you be leaving town?
	And I remember pushing back, saying, okay, so a group of thugs are going to, they're threatening to come and vandalize your home and do violence to you, and the answer is to run away?
	I said, wouldn't it make more sense for the police to arrest those people?
	You know, so it was a really odd exchange.
	It was very clear from their questions.
	I mean, politically, we know where they're from.
	Politically, GoFundMe supports more left.
	Leaning causes and is not a friend of conservatives.
	So we knew we were in a bit of a show fight anyway.
	So we'd answered all their questions, reminded, I reminded them that they just can't rely, and they were relying on news reports.
	And the news reports were, you know, how many news reports have been retracted now?
	Well, if it's so- I've got a list now.
	It's just ridiculous.
	So we tried our best to show them that we were credible, that this was a legitimate process, that we had all the checks and balances in place.
	I bet you before they've never been in a conference call where the charity had five lawyers and an accountant on the call as well as the people who originally set it up.
	So they told us they were going to take all this into consideration.
	So now you switch over to the Friday.
	Friday afternoon, we're dealing with all kinds of issues on the ground.
	There's two war rooms in the ARC Hotel, and then there's an operations center at another hotel outside of the red zone.
	And so I was, and the other thing that happened when I got there, there was all these different groups.
	And I'm like, who are these different groups?
	Like Canada Unity with its MOU.
	I know, I'll answer that.
	But just to give you a flavor, I had all these different groups.
	And I was trying to figure out who's who in the zoo.
	And so on.
	But you're going to ask a question.
	Actually, that's one to clarify right now.
	Who are you representing?
	And who formally represents what is known as the convoy?
	Because people are asking, well, is Pat King affiliated with the convoy?
	BJ Dichter, Ben Dichter, Tamara Lich, Chris Barber.
	Who are you representing?
	And who formally represents what is known as the convoy?
	And what are the other entities?
	That are either getting involved, co-opting, or just participating, but are not formally representatives of the official convoy.
	Sure.
	It's a complex question for sure.
	It's a critical question.
	And it's a moving target still.
	So the approach we took was, you guys have to decide who your leaders are.
	We can't.
	Pick them.
	That's not our job.
	And so they worked amongst the team.
	So each province had a captain.
	So there was a convoy captain from BC, from Alberta, etc., from Quebec, from Nova Scotia, Ontario.
	And so they had some kind of informal, interesting structure.
	And so they had to use that to decide who they wanted to be on the board of directors.
	So our client, my client, the client of the Justice Centre, is the, we call it Freedom Corp because it's got a long name, a federally incorporated not-for-profit.
	So Freedom Corp is one of our clients.
	And we're dealing with a whole range of legal issues on their behalf.
	And on the board of directors are individuals such as, and I won't be able to name them all because there's a lot off the top of my head, but is Tamara Leach is the president, or at least she's taken a leave because of her charges and her bail conditions.
	So we have an acting president, but it would be Tamara Leach, Chris Barber, Sean Thiessen.
	Bridget, Miranda, some of the real high-profile people who were involved in the convoys as they moved across the country and actively in very dedicated volunteer positions on the ground.
	So it's the board of directors and then other people who came forward to help volunteer as well.
	I know you've had, we call him Army Tom, but Tom Marazzo, who became the logistics guy.
	Great, great human being, great Canadian.
	And so he, so our clients are the board of directors, both, or sorry, the Freedom Corp, the board of directors in their individual capacities, because they've all been sued by Lexi Lee in this $300 million class action.
	The key volunteers.
	So former RCMP Daniel Beaufort is one of our clients.
	Another former paramedic, Thomas O 'Connor is one of our clients and Tom Marazzo.
	So that's who our clients.
	Pat King has kind of been in and out.
	Pat King is, if you know anything about Pat King, Pat King's his own man.
	He's a very independent thinker.
	He's a very independent player.
	He's never been on the board.
	He would...
	Have some interaction from time to time with the main group and then he'd go do his own thing for a while and then he'd come back and have some interaction and collaborate and then he'd go do his own thing for a while.
	There was some concerns about some of his rhetoric and his strong language and talking about bullets and violence that did cause the Freedom Convoy group to issue a press release saying, "Look, we don't support that kind of thing." There was a great deal of sensitivity that the government wanted to characterize the entire group that way, so they felt they needed to create some separation.
	So Pat King is not one of the clients.
	All right.
	And actually, we'll finish off with the GoFundMe, because, I mean, it's mind-blowing.
	But they shut it down.
	They're citing, as the evidence of the violence of this protest, incidents which were phoned in by the convoy.
	And I had heard this as well way back when, slash tires, incidents involving shit disturbers that get called in and then the police say, look, we had acts of violence.
	GoFundMe then runs with that to say, we can no longer support this, yada, yada, yada.
	We're shutting it down.
	And to whom, when is the first time you, you know, you're representing the parties here, when's the first time you hear that GoFundMe says, A, we're shutting it down, and B, we're going to keep the money and give it to one of our charities?
	So, in the afternoon of that Friday, the police chief...
	So, you remember early on, the first police chief, he was saying things like, you know, there's not a police solution here.
	This needs a political solution.
	And I think that was the right answer.
	And then the pressure built, and for whatever reason, he snapped.
	And when he snapped, was on the Friday.
	And he held this press conference, if anybody looks it up.
	And the stuff he was saying and the rhetoric that he was using, it was completely over the top.
	He was talking about all the reinforcements and it was just really strange, aggressive, aggressive language and made it sound like a raid was imminent.
	I left the one hotel about noon to go to a meeting at the operations center.
	We watched the press conference from the operations center.
	I needed to rush back to a war room at another hotel.
	And from in that in-between time, the police presence on the street had quadrupled.
	It was like, whoa.
	At an intersection where there was one or two police cars, there was six or eight.
	It was like something's about to happen.
	So we get back to the other room.
	We're talking about what is he talking about here?
	And he's talking about taking the swift, decisive action, you know, things indicating violence.
	And then the accountant comes flying into the war room and says, I just got a message because he was the one who would get the messages first from GoFundMe as to what they put up on the GoFundMe.
	And GoFundMe just broadcast to a hundred and...
	30,000 donors that they had determined that there was something wrong with the program, and they were not going to give the money to the truckers, and they were going to give it to some other group.
	What me and the leadership team saw at that point, it's like, oh, okay, so the police chief wants to go goon.
	He's said he's going to.
	We've seen this massive buildup.
	He needs the truckers to come at him so he can justify using force.
	That was our fear.
	And especially communicating it all to the truckers.
	So we're like, uh-oh, how's this going to go over?
	As in real time, this is all occurring over about 55 minutes, I glance at my emails and I get an email from the class action lawyer.
	Announcing or serving me and advising that he's serving Freedom Corp and my clients at that time with a $10 million class action lawsuit and that he's applied for an emergency injunction and we have to be in court on Saturday, less than 20 hours away, at one o 'clock to respond to an emergency injunction application.
	And there was all these...
	And as events unfolded afterwards, it became absolutely clear this was all coordinated.
	GoFundMe was talking to the police.
	They admitted that in their testimony recently to the House of Commons Committee.
	The personal injury lawyer was working closely with the police.
	They even at the last minute, the lawyer for the police on the Saturday wanted to participate in the hearing.
	And I'm like, she's not a party.
	She can't give evidence.
	I initially objected.
	Actually, I did object and she wasn't able to.
	So you could see this orchestration of events.
	And we thought it was trying to build a climax of pressure to cause the truckers to go out of their peaceful stance and do something stupid.
	And to the credit of the truckers, they didn't.
	They all kept their heads on.
	That was the message from the leadership.
	It's okay, guys.
	We're going to keep working through this.
	This is what we're doing is important.
	We're here in peaceful, lawful assembly.
	We're here to hold the line to restore our rights and freedoms and civil liberties.
	I have so many things where we can get into like...
	Yeah, that was one hour.
	Ultimately, they reversed their decision.
	They say we're going to reimburse it.
	We're going to reimburse it to those who request a reimbursement.
	This is funny.
	So we started smelling a rat, you know, just from the questions alone.
	Like on the plane, when I'm first meeting some of these people going in, we thought, you know...
	And there's something not right with GoFundMe here.
	So it was like, okay, what options?
	So what was identified by the accountant and Tamara and Chris had already had discussions with Give, Send, Go.
	So they were already starting plans to have a second platform as an alternative, but also as a backup.
	So immediately within minutes, Chad contacted Jacob Wells and said, Turn up the volume.
	We're switching to you.
	And Jacob Wells, for those who don't know, is the co-founder of GiveStemGo.
	I think you've had him on your program, haven't you?
	Yeah.
	A really wonderful human being.
	So we switched to him.
	But a number of people with banking backgrounds, and we use social media to get the word out, said, don't ask for a refund from GoFundMe.
	Go to your credit card or your merchant.
	Because apparently, depending on what it is, there's a $25 fee or a $35 fee that GoFundMe would have to pay.
	So I guess tens of thousands of disputes came in right away.
	GoFundMe did the math, went, wait a minute, some guy donated $10 and we're going to have to obviously give it back and pay $25?
	And then...
	The only news to cover this in a kind of balanced way was Fox in the U.S. And then Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, said this is outrageous, instructed his attorney general to commence an investigation into GoFundMe, as did a number of other governors.
	So GoFundMe quickly changed course and announced that it would automatically refund.
	All the monies.
	And I got my donation back, too.
	So that's what happened there.
	All right.
	And now this class action lawsuit.
	Yes.
	We know of the injunction.
	The injunction was issued.
	Well, first, you'll explain that a bit.
	There's some context to the injunction.
	I touched on it at one point during the streams where...
	Where the media was saying they got this massive injunction by the court.
	It's a smashing success for the lawsuit.
	It was, they got one element of everything they were seeking.
	It was actually more of a success for the truckers than the plaintiff.
	We'll get there.
	But this class, the injunction was issued in the context of the class action, correct?
	Yes.
	Okay, and has the class been certified yet?
	Like, what's the stage?
	Okay, so the class has not been certified.
	I guess technically, how do you get the injunction?
	Before the class action lawsuit itself is certified to begin with?
	Oh, I can answer that.
	Okay.
	Because of my background and having to deal with serious live situations, you know, where a rogue oil company's polluting my client's water well or their land.
	And I just look at my history.
	I've done a ton of that stuff.
	I've had to do a lot of injunction work, which made me, it was really weird.
	This is sound a little tuning my own horn here.
	But when I look at the experiences I had in my career, like it's like so many of them, just to digress for a minute, because I love this long format and I'm going to take advantage of it.
	Some may remember the BSE crisis from 2003 in Alberta, where we had.
	It decimated the cattle industry.
	The borders were closed.
	Well, I happened to be...
	My client was a regulatory body at the time that dealt with tracing of cattle.
	So I was right in the Emergency Operations Centre dealing with the trace-out for that international disease outbreak crisis.
	2009, we had H1N1.
	And yeah, there you go.
	Actually, even if you just...
	Not to toot my own horn, but go to my website because you just see the cases I've had and how they gave me all these tools.
	What's your website?
	Just search Keith Wilson Law Office.
	And so in 2000 and...
	No, that's somebody...
	There you go.
	So you just scroll down.
	And you'll start to see.
	So lots of oil company cases, charter cases, Supreme Court of Canada cases.
	Keep going down.
	And then you'll start to see.
	So go actually right to the bottom.
	You'll see this.
	Oh, sorry.
	That was too much.
	Although you can show them what my office looks like because it's pretty damn cool.
	There.
	That's family.
	So that H1N1.
	So that was the biggest panic we had about a global pandemic was right there.
	And it was previous to COVID.
	It was in 2009.
	And it was H1N1.
	And why the public health officials were so afraid, it was the first documented case of a Zootonic transmission.
	And I might not have pronounced that medical term right.
	What does that mean?
	What happened was there was H1N1 in Mexico.
	A Mexican farm worker got it, came up to Alberta to work on a hog farm in Alberta, gave it to the pigs, and then the pigs gave it to the humans, my clients, the ones you saw in that picture, the family with the young kids.
	And so I...
	Was representing that family.
	So I was in the Emergency Operations Center and as the world health experts were deciding and everybody was worried that this was going to be like a SARS thing.
	So I had that experience dealing with government in emergencies, both from those two other cases.
	And I can't remember where I got on this digression, but you'll help me.
	My point is that these different situations I've been in.
	Help me.
	What was the injunction?
	So I've had to, and because of the environmental cases I've had, I've had to bring injunction applications.
	All you need to do to bring an injunction is you have to have an action.
	So you have to have a lawsuit or an originating application.
	You cannot bring an injunction out of thin air.
	So you can put together a lawsuit.
	It doesn't have to be credible or anything else.
	And then that gives you the ability to go to court.
	To get an injunction.
	And that's what they did.
	So there's no assessment whatsoever of the merits of the class action lawsuit in the injunction hearing itself.
	So you just need a plaintiff and then that one plaintiff to satisfy the ordinary criteria for the issuance of an injunction, setting aside any eventual ratification or denial of the class.
	Right.
	Okay.
	And so later on...
	They applied for the injunction, and it was an interim interlocutory injunction, which is different from a pure interlocutory, and it's a different standard, actually.
	In any event, so at some point down the road, the plaintiff will complete the process of listing their defendants and listing their plaintiffs, because they keep expanding it, which is not surprising.
	And then they will have to go into a class certification process.
	My overall comment on the lawsuit is extremely weak.
	I don't think it's going to succeed in the end, and I don't think it's going to succeed at the class certification.
	Before we get there, the injunction itself, I know there's context to the issuance of that injunction.
	Do you want to elaborate on what the plaintiff was seeking by way of the injunction and what was ultimately issued?
	How it was drafted, crafted, because I know you had a role in that.
	Bottom line, I mean, did the judge not effectively ratify or at the very least not condemn or render illegal this very protest, which everyone on earth in the government and government subsidized media seems to call an illegal protest?
	Yeah, I mean, first of all, I warned the clients that they're going to get an injunction.
	I mean, the judge isn't going to say, no, it's fine, keep...
	Honking your air horns and train horns.
	Their injunction request was framed very narrowly.
	It wasn't to move off the streets.
	It wasn't to do any of these things.
	It was simply to refrain from honking horns, not any horns, air horns and train horns.
	Informally, the truckers had put in their own kind of informal agreement that they wouldn't honk their horns.
	During the week from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m.
	They'd have a quiet time because they wanted to rest too.
	They're sleeping in their trucks and so on.
	And they didn't think it was a good idea to be honking.
	And there would be the occasional honk, you know, and on Friday and Saturday nights, it was a different story because it was the whole downtown was very much a party festive atmosphere and people were encouraging it.
	Give me a honk and the trucker honk honk.
	So that was happening.
	But they did try to create some really ridiculous enforcement mechanisms in there.
	We're basically giving the police the power to arrest on site and things.
	So we fought against those and were successful.
	We really narrowed the scope of it.
	And we also insisted that it include a clause that I know you've referred to that confirms that the truckers had the right of lawful...
	Peaceful assembly.
	And as long as the conditions were abided with, they had the right to carry on and continue to engage in their civil protest.
	And the judge made a number of comments about that in each of the hearings about that this is a recognized thing in a free country, the right of peaceful public protest.
	I'll bring this up.
	This was the tweet.
	And this is the order from the court.
	This is the conclusion in the court, people.
	We've talked about it before.
	This court orders that, provided the terms of this order are complied with, so respect this court order, the defendants and other persons remain at liberty to engage in a peaceful, lawful, and safe protest.
	Despite this conclusion of the injunction that was issued, you still have the likes of...
	Justin Trudeau saying illegal protest and everyone in the media saying illegal blockade, illegal protest.
	Yeah.
	As the narratives evolved, they all say now it started off as a lawful protest but then became illegal.
	I have not been able to find anybody explain to me what that transition point was, if it was.
	What's the rationale for that?
	Because I don't know.
	It never changed in the 19 days I was on the ground.
	Someone had asked who's funding this lawsuit, the class action.
	Is this a case where there's plaintiffs, lawyers, I forget what her name is, looking at a bucket of $10 million saying, frivolous or not, at least we'll get paid because we can get paid from that amount.
	Is there any suspicion as to who might be behind the scenes subsidizing this lawsuit itself?
	Or is it the obvious the lawyers involved think they're going to get a payday and if that money disappears, it might become a different story?
	B. It's clear to us that, well, all indications are it's a classic personal injury type approach, you know, where you find someone who you think can get money.
	And then you get to be their lawyer and you take 30%, or whatever the contingency percentage is, 20%, 30%, 33%, I don't know.
	I'm not privy to that information, but that's the norm in that line of work.
	I don't do personal injury work for obvious reasons.
	So yeah, that's what's going on there as far as we've been able to determine it's a personal injury lawyer that sees an opportunity to make some money.
	Okay, and that's just to, maybe people are still going to think there's underlying theories to that as to who might be subsidizing this lawsuit.
	I tend to think it was, they're looking at a politically favorable environment, 10 million bucks sitting in an account, at least one and a half in a TD account that they've actually seized.
	I think they got another million in crypto.
	And the lawyers are like, even if we get 20% of that.
	Or even if we could just pay ourselves from that, get the court to authorize the payment of our fees, we're going to be good to go.
	So I don't think it's anything more sinister, but maybe I'm wrong.
	There was word at one point they were going to add the donors to...
	I think they said the donors to the Give, Send, Go after February 4. And the article that I read said, because after February 4, it became clear that anyone supporting the convoy by donating to Give, Send, Go was supporting illegal acts.
	I mean...
	First things first, have they added any of the donors to the give, send, go to the list of defendants?
	No.
	And I've heard some indication through some of the legal channels that they might be.
	And the reason is, did you want me to kind of summarize what's happened to all the money?
	Would that be helpful?
	Yeah, that might be good as well, just so people know.
	Okay.
	So, and this is confusing, so let me try and do my best job I can.
	So, we had a number of buckets of money, of donations, and we all know that there, so for GoFundMe, it raised $10 million, right?
	And we know what happened to that, we just talked about it.
	But before things went south with GoFundMe, they did release $1 million of the donation.
	To Tamara.
	And it went into her account.
	And one of the things she did right after I met her and we started talking about this, I didn't even ask her.
	She gets her phone out.
	She goes, see, it's right there.
	And I'm like, $1 million, okay?
	They also were receiving e-transfer donations into a second account at Toronto Dominion TD.
	And it has about $300,000.
	And she's like, see, there it is.
	So that's one of the smaller buckets of money.
	And not to give any bad publicity for TD, but that's the $1.4 million that went to TD that they subsequently froze?
	Yes.
	So TD froze it.
	And so then there was a few people on their own doing this crypto stuff.
	And for the main people involved, myself included, which is kind of like, what?
	Crypto, what are you doing?
	You know, we just hear these things and somebody was going to create a new crypto.
	And I was like, I was having a hard enough time getting my head around Bitcoin and all these other things, even though I have followed it for a number of years.
	And I'm like, you're going to create a new, that I'm not getting.
	And none of that was approved by the board or sanctioned by the board or the board had any involvement.
	So there's this crypto fund out there on the side and it's got about 1.2 million in it.
	And then there's another guy who started a program called Adopt a Trucker, and he had about $140,000.
	So one bucket, $140,000, another bucket, about $1.2 million in crypto, $1.3 million at Toronto Dominion.
	Pause.
	Give, send, go.
	Despite all of the cyber attacks, so Give, send, go got...
	Denial of service attacks and unbelievable things.
	So when we switched to Give, Send, Go and people reacted and they were angry that GoFundMe had defeated their ability or prevented them from donating to the Freedom Truckers.
	What individuals did was said, well, we're going to donate to Give, Send, Go.
	So that Give, Send, Go started to take off.
	And imagine a garden hose, you know, back when you were a kid and you kink it because your brother's trying to take a drink at the other end, you know?
	And you wait till you get smells closed and you open it, but different story.
	Did you ever do that to Danny?
	Of course we did that.
	There we go.
	You have to.
	You have to.
	My brother usually did it to me.
	So anyway, the hose was, even with the hose crimped, it was amazing how fast Give, Send, Go grew.
	It grew to 12,748,000 Canadians.
	So now we've got that big pot.
	Then on the Thursday, the 11th it would be, no, the 10th, the same day I was on the ground with Tamara working with the police trying to move trucks to help the police and the city, I got a phone call from TD's bank lawyers saying they were freezing it.
	And then I was looking at my phone and all these Emails were coming in from the Wall Street Journal and all these other places asking me to comment on the Ontario Attorney General's freeze order.
	And I was like, what's that all about?
	So what had happened was the Attorney General of Ontario had gone to the court without notice to us, even though they knew that I was a lawyer of record, and they obtained an ex parte order under the criminal code treating the donations.
	As proceeds of crime, potential money laundering, potential terroristic activity, and wanted to do a criminal forfeiture of the funds.
	So they froze the Give, Send, Go.
	They froze the Bitcoin, and they froze the $140,000 adopter trucker program.
	Fast forward a week.
	I get served with more legal papers from the personal injury lawyers, increasing the lawsuit and the class action from 10 million to 306 million, expanding the list of defendants, no donors on it, but lots of other defendants, including all of the board of directors and all of the people I've mentioned who are my and the Justice Centre's clients.
	And they serve us with a Mareeva injunction.
	What's a Mareeva injunction?
	This is like two years of law school going on here.
	The Mareeva injunction, it's the nuclear weapon of immigration.
	Yes, well put.
	I like that.
	That's a nice short way of putting it.
	So they were seeking to freeze and get control of the first, the big pot, the 12.7 give send go.
	They didn't know about the 1.2 million TD.
	Not that we weren't withholding it.
	They just didn't know.
	And they were trying to get the crypto and they were trying to get the same thing.
	So now we've got the Attorney General using these super broad powers that you normally only use with the Mexican cartel to come after the donors for the freedom truckers who are...
	protesting in Ottawa because they're being discriminated against because they're not vaccinated or they support those who are fighting for freedom and the respect for charter rights and civil liberties.
	And so now we've got two big bears in the room trying to go after these pots of honey.
	So we brought in a very skilled team of lawyers from Toronto that have been working and are working literally as we speak.
	There's a call this afternoon that I'll have to be on to manage that process.
	And what we did was we moved all of the pots out of the mariva, because a mariva is so restrictive on your life forever.
	Into an escrow monitored and controlled by a third-party specialized law firm that all the parties agreed to would be the custodian of this.
	So that money will only come out when all the parties agree for it to come out or a court orders it to come out.
	And we will, at the appropriate time, fight to get that money out to where it belongs, which is with the truckers.
	In the meantime, where's the $12.7 million?
	Well...
	When we remember how this leads into, but I won't go into the, I'll just stay in the shallow end of the pool.
	The bank account freezes and the announcements from our Deputy Prime Minister.
	Well, she started early on, before even talk of the Emergency Act, using some new powers and creating new powers to freeze bank accounts and stuff.
	So as the money was coming in, To Give, Send, Go.
	It was going to the US with Give, Send, Go.
	So it's down in the US.
	Normally, you then, just like with GoFundMe, they move it in tranches up to your bank account in Canada.
	So our accountant and the treasurer for the not-for-profit was trying to go and set up bank accounts.
	We actually, because we, the police officials and the government officials kept bragging about how they were using this, All of the government agencies, CSIS, some other intelligence agency, Fintrac, the RCMP, the OPP, Municipal Forces, their intelligence groups were using in-person, digital, state-of-the-art surveillance and all of this stuff.
	They were always boasting about how carefully they were monitoring us and it infiltrated us.
	So we assumed it to be true.
	And I'm not giving anything up or...
	I'm not breaching anything and saying what I'm about to say.
	So what we did was we made a lot of noise that we were trying to open the bank account at TD for the Freedom Corp.
	So we wanted them to think that they knew where the landing pad for the money was.
	So yeah, it's going to be TD and geez, we'd really like to open a bank account for Freedom Corp there and all this 12 million is going to go there.
	We had no intention of moving some money to TD.
	In the meantime, the accountant goes to try and open bank accounts at credit unions in Saskatchewan and is initially successful.
	So we were about to give instructions to move the money up to Canada when all of these other things started to happen, the order from the Attorney General.
	And we're just like, whoa, wait a minute.
	What is all this about?
	We need to understand what this is, what process we can have to challenge it.
	Because the Attorney General's order...
	Was based on an affidavit from a police officer that was a hundred...
	I read through that.
	The affidavit from the police officer was basically, I read in the news, I saw reports of, I heard this and that.
	And, you know, just to quickly define, the Mariva injunction, by the way, it's an ex parte seizure before judgment.
	Ex parte meaning without notifying the other party.
	On an injunctive basis.
	So that's how they went in and seized and got a freeze order on these monies.
	Ex parte, without even notifying the defendants because it was so urgent.
	But the affidavit from that police officer, I read through it and I was like, wow.
	This ordinarily, if it were subject to ordinary scrutiny of an ordinary case, would never have...
	Resulted in the issuance of anything.
	Because it was all third-party hearsay.
	I read some reports.
	CBC reported.
	The wrap-up smear, as Nancy Pelosi calls it.
	So yeah, carry on.
	Just so everybody knows.
	If I had a chance to cross-examine that guy, could you imagine I'd be like, sir, can I take you to paragraph 17?
	Yeah, I read in the CBC, whatever.
	I'd almost look at him and go, seriously?
	Like, that's your evidence?
	Of course, I wouldn't.
	It's that ridiculous.
	So we ran into this problem of circularity all the time, of media saying something, police then saying, well, the news is saying it, then the media saying, well, the police said it because we said it.
	And it was like we're losing our minds.
	So back to where I was, if I can remember where I was.
	I was getting a feel for what I've been going through.
	The seizure of the monies.
	Yeah, so the seizure of the monies.
	So now what do we do with the 12.7?
	Well, it's actually not ours yet.
	And meanwhile, we've been through the Emergency Act and all that, and the House Committee...
	For public safety and something else.
	They don't have intelligence in their name.
	And after watching the committee for a while, I realized why.
	Sorry, I couldn't resist.
	And they brought Give, Send, Go, GoFundMe.
	They brought the banks and so on.
	And they said to Give, Send, Go, well, how come you haven't turned the money over?
	And they go, because we're...
	In a different country?
	We're in the United States of America and you're in Canada.
	Long story short is, fast forward, there was a court hearing a few weeks ago and Give, Send, Go showed up and they said, look, we're not turning the money over because our first duty is to our donors.
	We have it in our terms of service that we will only send the money through to the charity if We feel the money's going to get to the charity and we reserve the right to send the money back to our customer, the donor, if we have any concerns, just like GoFundMe did, right?
	So the personal injury lawyers are like, "Oh no, you got to send the 12 million up because, you know, we want to get our hands on that." And they're like, "Well, no, your jurisdiction doesn't extend to us." And the judge said, "No, I don't have jurisdiction in the United States." They never applied for an extra jurisdiction order, which they could have done.
	And so Give, Send, Go said, well, if this money is not going to go to its intended recipients, which is the truckers as part of the freedom movement and the freedom convoy, and it's going to go to personal injury lawyers or going to be seized by the Ontario government and mischaracterized as some kind of criminal activity.
	Then we're just going to send the money back to the donors.
	So that's what Give, Send, Go is in the process of doing.
	As a footnote, you may recall that one of those House committee meetings, the head of FinTrack, which is the security agency that's designed after 9-11 to track financial movements to identify terrorist activity, the deputy director testified.
	And here was another government narrative blown out of the water.
	And he said they found no evidence of terrorist activity.
	They found no evidence of money laundering.
	They found no evidence of illegal activity.
	He said that this was just average Canadians donating money to a cause they believed in, period.
	Then we had the allegations it was dark money, it was Trump money, that it was American money.
	That was, of course, After they dropped saying it was the Russians, because of course it had to be the Russians at the beginning, then someone hacked, unfortunately, into Give, Send, Go.
	And I really wish that wouldn't have happened.
	I have a friend who has a very large national IT firm, and he deals with some very big customers.
	He told me years ago, about four years ago, because one of his big customers got hacked, and he said, anybody who tells you that...
	They have a system that can't be hacked, doesn't know what they're talking about because the systems are so complex and there's so many layers of things you add in.
	Any system can be hacked.
	So unfortunately, GiveSengo got hacked.
	So all the donor data came out.
	And what did it show?
	113,000 Canadians average donation $75 from across the country with the highest amount of donations coming from Ontario and then Quebec.
	And one of the really high ones that threw me was Nova Scotia, but whatever.
	And this was just average Canadians who were obviously very concerned about the state of their country, the loss of civil liberties, the direction of our government, and this was one way they could exercise their voice.
	So that's some of my comments on that one.
	I was trying to find the quote from the guy, but I can't find it.
	He literally said...
	This was a group of Canadians who thought they lived in a democratic country supporting a cause that they believed in.
	The way he said it was even worse.
	I know, but then I thought to myself, he said that, and then he left the hearing room, went back to his office, found a box, packed up his personal belongings.
	Like, is he still employed?
	And it's good for him because he spoke truth.
	What was his name?
	If anyone in the chat remembers his name.
	His name is Barry McKillop.
	M-A-C-K-I-L-L-O-P.
	McKillop, FinTrack.
	Barry McKillop.
	Opening remarks.
	Let me see if I can find it.
	It was...
	Oh, it's no longer on the government website.
	See?
	My goodness.
	You know what?
	Hold on.
	Let me do this in real time so people can see that I'm not making this up.
	This is the beauty of the internet.
	Barry McKillop, share.
	So here we go.
	Barry McKillop, Deputy Director of Fincheck.
	And I'm just looking.
	Opening remarks by Barry McKillop.
	And we click on it.
	And no, no.
	It was actually his really good statement was in response to a question.
	Let's see.
	Barry McKillop, convoy.
	Do the same thing, but just put new search.
	Oh, you just did.
	Sorry.
	I was going to say search new.
	Yeah.
	Right there.
	Fed up, people.
	Fed up, people.
	Which one are we on here?
	True North.
	Oh, yeah.
	Well, if it's in True North, then you know...
	Okay, hold on.
	Let's get the quote.
	Oh, here.
	Let's just play it.
	So this is my question.
	Yeah, it's good.
	Without the elites of GoFundMe, without that, are you able to find out who the donors are?
	Who the donors are?
	All of those who funded?
	Thank you so much for your question, Mr. Chair.
	Certainly, we don't use elites, nor do we speak of elites.
	Those who donated to that cause did so.
	But as far as crowdfunding platforms are concerned, unfortunately, they are available to everyone.
	Anybody can donate with respect to one like Stripe.
	Well, certainly there were people who supported the cause before it was declared illegal.
	When was it declared illegal?
	Around the world who were fed up with COVID, who were upset and saw the demonstrations against COVID.
	And I believe that they just wanted to support the cause.
	It was their money, their own money.
	So it wasn't money that funded terrorism or that was in any way money laundering.
	Okay, well, that wasn't quite the good one.
	It was one where he said they thought they lived in a free...
	Yeah.
	Ah, whatever.
	Well, it's close enough.
	You know where to go find it, people, if you want to find it.
	It was a great quote.
	Well, what a good Canadian for just being honest.
	Okay, so, by the way, I just checked my bank and I saw the chats.
	Give, send, go has, I guess, has refunded because I just saw my Freedom Convoy donation come back.
	So I guess that, you know, the irony is strategically.
	GoFundMe blew it by returning.
	They could have just held on to it for a couple of weeks and waited for a favorable court order.
	And they could have complied with it even though I don't know what jurisdiction they'd be in or where that money was.
	Except for all the merchant dispute charges.
	Oh, yeah.
	That's true.
	That's true.
	Okay.
	Well, although if they got a court order, I mean, I presume they would have had a better defense for the merchant dispute.
	But yeah.
	Okay.
	So the money then is that we know where it is.
	They got...
	The crypto, Keith, are you aware?
	I was told, or from what I understand, they didn't seize the crypto wallet.
	They seized a computer that had the password, and that's how they accessed the crypto wallet.
	Do you have any knowledge of that?
	No, I don't think that's how it happened.
	They did some kind of tracing, and I really don't understand it to be straight up.
	I've tried to get my head around it, but I also haven't spent a lot of time on it because we're pressing issues.
	The first time I've heard that there was a...
	Seized laptop.
	They had the crypto addresses appended and the wallet IDs.
	I could bring it up if somebody wants to go to the deep end of the pool.
	Bottom line, it wasn't like a back-end seizure of a...
	No, it was crypto secure and it can operate under the radar, but it doesn't operate under the radar if you say, hey, I got crypto over here and it's with this company and here's my wallet.
	Right?
	So that's kind of what happened.
	Okay.
	Let's see where we're going to go.
	We've got the class action, the lawsuit, the breakup.
	Everyone's asking, where's Ben Dictor?
	Are you representing Ben Dictor?
	And are you allowed to speak to anything there?
	I don't want to...
	You know, I'll stop myself.
	I'm not shy.
	Okay.
	I can answer that I'm not.
	And the reason is simple.
	Because of the complexities of the crypto and that it happened outside the scope of anything that Freedom Corp and the other client group was doing, it creates a potential for a conflict of interest where the parties could be adverse.
	So whenever that potential arises, you immediately extract yourself and get that person to get new counsel so that it doesn't manifest it later when at a more acute time at trial or something.
	So Ben has his own lawyer.
	Ben's doing fine and still is a freedom fighter.
	Oh, you went mute.
	Ben is not a fed or controlled opposition, as some people suspect.
	Why isn't Ben in jail?
	Why was it only Tamara Leach and Pat King?
	I don't know.
	I don't know.
	I mean, I do know why Ben left downtown.
	When the raid started.
	I know exactly why he did.
	He didn't want to go.
	I phoned him.
	And I said, look, the arrests are starting.
	The message from the police, in part, is if you're outside of the red zone, they won't arrest you.
	So get outside of the red zone.
	And he just went just right to the edge of Ottawa.
	I had a friend and went and stayed with him.
	And he didn't even have a plan to get out.
	I don't want the whole board arrested here.
	They're saying if you get out of the red zone, they won't arrest you.
	So if the police are being truthful to us, then please leave the red zone immediately so that you and others can continue to speak for the freedom movement.
	And you know, before I forget, we spoke yesterday and we talked about a few things which I didn't know, but you mentioned something and I want people to know if you can discuss it.
	The early days of this protest, when Tom Maratzo was involved, and we talked about it during our stream, where the police are there, they're meeting with police, the police are asking them to leave their cell phones off or out of the room.
	You mentioned something, but what was the dynamic going on with the police?
	And what was your impression of the government and Trudeau simply refusing to engage with the protesters?
	Let's talk about that, because it's really important, and I think it's fascinating, too, from my perspective, and I guess others will decide in a minute.
	One of the big concerns I had as I was on the ground and managing the issues, and we joked amongst our legal team, each hour, A slow hour on the ground, there was the equivalent of a 12 to 18 hour day in a law firm.
	Like we really felt like we were there for six months, even though I was there for 19 days.
	So one of the things that I was very concerned about was the level of tension, especially when the police chief, before he resigned, upping his rhetoric.
	That this was going to get violent.
	And we didn't want that.
	And, you know, you need lines of communication.
	So I reached out actually to Premier Peckford, former Premier Peckford, and I said, Brian, do you have any contacts here that I can reach out to to try and create a back channel into the mayor's office and into the federal government?
	And we decided first to work on the mayor's office because that way we could help communicate with the police.
	Long story short, someone came forward.
	If anybody's an investigative type, you research it to find out who it was because it's a person of some experience and political stature in Ontario.
	And I started working with that person.
	It took me a couple of days to gain their trust.
	Then they started talking to the mayor's office.
	It led to a meeting.
	At City Hall, between me and my wingman lawyer, Eva Chipiak, brilliant, brilliant lawyer, tireless worker, no fear.
	Just as a footnote, I designated the different lawyers on different tasks, and her job was to be the legal liaison with the police.
	When we were in the war room in the main floor of the Ark Hotel, every other day, they would do a fake kind of raid.
	So eight or 12 police would just...
	Come in en masse into the lobby.
	And so someone, the guy at security on the door in the war room would say, the police are here, the police are here.
	And Eva would just go, and she would go and deal with the police.
	She was absolutely fearless.
	Anyhow, so her and I and Army Tom, Tom Marazzo, went over to City Hall for a secret meeting.
	And I'm fine.
	It's not secret anymore, obviously.
	But before we could even...
	We had to do this crazy negotiation with the senior police to even get into the room with the city manager or to get into the building.
	We get into the building.
	They declared the state of emergency.
	So it was right out of a Hollywood movie.
	Everybody with special vests on and designating them and guys with earpieces and more people with guns than you've ever seen.
	No public allowed.
	The place was locked down.
	Security everywhere.
	It was really, it was like, calm down.
	They're truckers.
	They got bouncy castles, guys.
	Like, chill out.
	You can bring your kids.
	Anyway, before we went into the mayor's wing, I had to take my blazer off, empty my pockets.
	First time in my life, I was physically searched like that.
	Like, it wasn't a cavity search, but it was pretty close.
	I take my shoes off, everything.
	So we finally get to go into this room and have this secret meeting.
	And our message was, we've got to de-escalate things.
	How can we de-escalate things?
	And the ask was, can you move out of some of the areas?
	Where there's condo towers and other things, we asked for three top priorities.
	The first one was Sussex and Rideau by the Senate and that fancy condo tower and the Chateau Laurier, that funny five-way intersection not far from the U.S. Senate or the U.S. Embassy.
	And we said, all right.
	What we're going to do is we're going to commit to you.
	And we said, we don't know who all these truckers are.
	This is not like a golf tournament or a curling bond skill.
	People didn't register.
	They just show up.
	So the extent that we can have influence here, we will try and move those trucks out of those sensitive areas.
	And as time went on and they saw that we were actually trying to do that, we earned some more trust.
	And then that led to this.
	Mediator, government guy coming in that I had got through Peckford.
	That led to the mayor on the Friday, I think it was, proposing an agreement, which was that we would move all the trucks out of the downtown core, anywhere in the downtown core, except for Wellington and the Sir MacDonald Parkway.
	And any trucks that couldn't fit would go out to...
	Two remote locations that were already established.
	One was called 88 because of exit 88. And that shuttle buses would be used and the city wouldn't be paying for this.
	And so the trucks could park out on these farm fields.
	And then each day, those who want to come down with their Canadian flag in protest on Parliament Hill could.
	So we're like, okay, this is a good compromise.
	It'll de-escalate pressures and we can keep the focus on the freedom protest.
	And I, you know, those letters, the letter from the mayor is out there.
	The response letter from Tamara Leach's president is out there.
	That occurred on the Saturday.
	On the Sunday, the mayor made a press release about it, which we were coordinating with.
	And then on the Sunday afternoon, that would have been the Sunday of the 13th of February.
	A delegation of truckers went over and met with the superintendent of police, met with the head of emergency services, the city manager, and they developed a plan to move a sequential plan as to how they would move the trucks from the various side streets in the downtown core up onto Wellington.
	The next morning, they went to the Monday.
	As they were about to implement the plan, we found out that the city had gone to court and got an injunction against us, or the clients, without any notice.
	The truckers kept their head and said, no.
	What we found out was bureaucracies work slow.
	It was city council that had wanted that injunction.
	They'd given instructions a week before, and it took the city lawyers that long to get around to it.
	And the truckers said, we're going to honour the agreement with the mayor.
	We're not going to get distracted by the second injunction.
	And so the first day, the clients were trying to move the trucks.
	But not all the police were aware of it.
	So they'd start to move trucks and then the police would stop them.
	And then different liaison and some captain or whoever would have to come and inspect her and then say, no, it's okay.
	But they were able to get 40 trucks moved.
	So we kept trying to move trucks.
	Another day, we were trying to move trucks.
	Had a whole bunch of trucks ready to move out of the areas that the city had wanted them out of and up onto Wellington.
	And there was space on Wellington.
	And we got stopped again by the police.
	And so I was at one of the operations center and the police had come over.
	There was a big delegation of them.
	So I went storming into this room.
	It was a funny dynamic.
	I'm a pretty big guy.
	And for some reason, all the police were short.
	So it just gave me a little extra edge when I walked into their room because I was always sort of looking down at them.
	And not, I respected them, but physically it was, I was like, some big guys you could send?
	Anyway, they'll probably send them later to deal with me.
	So I was like, what are you guys doing?
	Everybody wants de-escalation.
	We're trying to do this.
	And they're like, oh, well, it only was for 24 hours.
	I'm like, read the letter.
	The mayor said right in the letter, we acknowledge that moving this many trucks is a large logistical exercise and will take a number of days.
	How do you get 24 hours?
	And then they get on the phone and then they turn white and they say, oh, so sorry.
	Now they're on the radios.
	Oh, yeah, let them move.
	Let them move.
	So we were starting to move more and more trucks up.
	That's when Trudeau started talking about the Emergencies Act.
	And just so everybody's clear, we had no communication in our operations center, the client's operations center there, with Windsor, Cootes, Northern Portal, Sarnia.
	All that was happening spontaneously.
	The only reason the truckers in Ottawa knew about that was because they saw it on the news.
	We weren't coordinating that or orchestrating it.
	And so, yeah, there was a lot of...
	On the ground attempts.
	But one of the ones, and I sent you a little clip and some pictures, was, I remember I said we were going to do a show of good faith and try and move trucks out of Sussex.
	And the most fascinating thing happened.
	Are you able to bring up those pictures?
	Yeah, I'm looking for that.
	I want to see this.
	I want to make sure.
	And I might not be able to do because it's a little bit more difficult, but let me see here.
	Which picture?
	The one with me and Tamara talking to the police and then that little video link I sent you to YouTube.
	And if you're not allowed to show it, that's fine.
	I can describe it.
	And I'll just keep chatting and describing it in the meantime.
	So we were on the ground, liaison with the police.
	But they put all these, after the trucks had set up in areas, they put these big concrete barriers in place, like really big concrete barriers.
	And they put these mechanical trap devices that you'll see in some of the pictures.
	They're orange and yellow and they're metal.
	And when the truck drives over and it kind of launches and takes the tires out.
	I think I found it.
	Yeah.
	You heard that audio?
	Yeah, that's the one.
	So hold up, I'll bring that up.
	So just before you play it.
	So we were working with the truckers, and we had them all ready to go.
	So they were going to move up from where they were and head up towards Parliament Hill.
	And the big, huge, massive forklift thing was there.
	So there's me negotiating.
	There's Tamara.
	We're negotiating with the police liaison, all those trucks behind.
	See all those signs?
	So groups of...
	Ottawa Citizens Canadians started to fill the streets as they do as it gets 4 or 5 o 'clock, which was normal each day as more and more people would get off work and come down.
	And so Tamara, so the truckers were on side.
	They wanted to move up to be in front of Parliament.
	And so Tamara went and started taking the signs down.
	The police were smart not to take the signs down because that would be a provocation for the general citizenry.
	So she's carefully taking the signs and moving.
	More and more police are showing up.
	But the reason the police are showing up, they know there's a truck move and they know there's lots of public.
	So we got to create kind of like a security corridor.
	And so the trucks can move without running anybody over because there's people all over the streets, right?
	So we're working the logistics.
	And then...
	A city truck comes.
	It's like a tow truck.
	It's got flashing yellow lights and it puts its backup alarm on.
	And it's got all its lights and there's other lights so it looks like tow trucks.
	The public misinterprets what's going on as the police coming in to move the trucks.
	And it was unbelievable.
	People came from everywhere.
	Instantly.
	I was trying to talk to as many of them as I could.
	Tamara was trying to talk to as many as they could.
	The truckers were trying to talk to as many as they could.
	Say, it's okay.
	It's okay.
	It's a good thing.
	We're working together.
	We want to move the trucks.
	No, the police aren't arresting.
	No, the police aren't taking...
	And over and over and over again.
	But more and more people came.
	Play the video.
	Okay.
	Remove this.
	Stop.
	Screen share.
	Screen.
	Let me go.
	Now, whose video is this?
	I want to worry about...
	It's a guy on YouTube, some Convoy supporter.
	Okay, I believe it's this.
	Okay, let's go for this.
	The glory of God, O Canada!
	Now, what portion of the video should I go to?
	That's you.
	So there I am.
	I got my trucker camo on.
	just told See you.
	That's amazing.
	So these people thought the police were coming to do harm to the truckers.
	And I finally said to them, look, this is too hot.
	You guys got to get out of here.
	So I literally escorted them through the crowd.
	And to get them out of there.
	And, yeah, that's about it there.
	And this is on February 10th.
	So this is...
	Here, I'll stop, sure.
	When did the poo-poo hit the fan?
	The poo-poo hit the fan on the 17th, 18th, and 19th.
	Things got really ugly on the 18th.
	That's when a lot of people got beat up.
	Yeah.
	It shows the extent.
	So Chris Barber was there.
	Sean Deason was there.
	Army Tom was there.
	I was there.
	The other lawyers were there.
	We were all trying to work cooperatively with the police to move the trucks in a way that the police and the mayor had asked for.
	Initially, we kept getting blocked by the police.
	And then later on...
	The public was so supportive of what the truckers were doing.
	Anything that they perceived as a threat, they just rushed in and put themselves between the police and the truckers.
	It was the most amazing thing to see.
	And then they start singing, oh, Canada.
	You know?
	So I said to the police sergeants, I said, well...
	That didn't go so good.
	I think we need a better plan here.
	And this, you know, this is why when you haven't asked me, but I'll ask myself the question, because I know you know I have to be careful and you know I will be, is when I look at these charges of counseling mischief against Tamara and Chris, yeah, they counseled truckers to move.
	They counseled truckers to open up emergency lanes.
	They didn't counsel any truckers to block a road.
	So when I look at all the evidence that I've seen, these charges, I believe, are politically motivated, and I believe ultimately they'll be withdrawn or they'll be in acquittal.
	Well, let's actually get to something you mentioned to me yesterday.
	It stuck with me, and I want you to explain it to the crowd.
	You're in Ottawa with Brian Peckford at one point, who you're representing.
	In your federal lawsuit.
	Just tell me the context, what happens once you find out, before it actually happens, that Supreme Leader Trudeau...
	We talked about the nuclear weapon in civil litigation.
	Well, when you find out that Trudeau is going to use the nuclear weapon of laws, explain that because I think it'll be poignant to a lot of people.
	Well...
	Yeah, and so you remember, we have this weird thing in Canada that one of our founding fathers is still alive.
	The guy who signed and negotiated and drafted our Charter of Rights and Freedoms 40 years ago is still alive.
	And he's very concerned, obviously, about the condition of our country and the direction and its violation of charter rights.
	So he had agreed to come to Ottawa to speak.
	And so he spoke on the Saturday on the main stage.
	And he stayed over a few days into the next week.
	And it was on the Monday or the Tuesday of the next week, I believe, that the Emergencies Act was invoked.
	And I'll just double check that date because I've got, as you can tell, lots of dates in my head.
	But yeah, it was February 12th, Monday.
	So that morning, I was actually in a meeting with Tamara Leach and we were working on a letter to all of the elected officials about what the truckers were looking for.
	And one of the things that they were asking for, in addition to the mandates to go away, because Peckford had talked about this on the main stage in his speech on the Saturday, is a Royal Commission public inquiry.
	Because we need to understand what happened in COVID and how governments reacted.
	We need to understand the mistakes that were made and if anything was done right so that we can learn from it and not make this horrific error ever again, assuming we get through this yet.
	And also for a reference case, which is a special thing that I can talk about.
	Anyhow, so we were working on that.
	We're putting the fish and touches on that.
	We had a meeting scheduled at the top floor of the Lord Elgin Hotel.
	Which had significance for Premier Peckford because that was one of the rooms he'd negotiated the charter in.
	Army Tom was there ahead of me, as was my wingman lawyer, Eva.
	I was with Tamara Leach and her husband.
	We got driven over to the hotel.
	And as we were driving, we learned that the Prime Minister was about to invoke the Emergencies Act.
	So I went into that boardroom, did my quick hellos, and I said, I still believe he's a member of the Privy Council, so he has the designation of honoree, the honourable for life, and I believe he deserves respect, so I still call him Mr. Premier, just as I would when I was working in government and dealing with premiers.
	So I said, Mr. Premier, I've got some very bad news.
	And he said, what's that?
	And I said, the Prime Minister's about to invoke the Emergencies Act.
	And he looked so serious and he said, Dear Lord.
	And he understood the gravity of that.
	And his reaction conveyed the gravity of that.
	This is government writing itself a blank check over your rights and your life.
	And he understood.
	What the facts were on the ground and that there was nothing there to justify it.
	So he understood that this was a retaliatory measure by an authoritarian, petulant child prime minister latching out.
	Retaliatory, or what's the word when you're looking towards the future?
	Punitive.
	Well, punitive, but even more, like, setting the groundwork for digital currency, setting the groundwork for expanding FinTrack to, you know, what Christopher Freeland came out and said, these temporary measures, well, now they're going to be enforced forever.
	The ones that they implemented under the Emergencies Act.
	What's what I'm looking for?
	Chat, you know, like, projective or prospective?
	Prospective measures.
	Punitive, retaliatory, but also prospective.
	Let's lay the groundwork for the new normal for government.
	Preparatory.
	And what did the Honourable Peckford do?
	Well, we were calculating when, okay, where's the House of Commons right now?
	Are they going into question period?
	When's he likely to make his announcement?
	And we made the decision to get out in front of the Prime Minister if we could.
	And call an impromptu press conference where Premier Peckford would speak and Tamara Leach would speak.
	And they would explain that there is no justification for this.
	By that point, all the borders were reopened.
	The only thing going on was Ottawa.
	We were in the midst of moving trucks.
	And we were being stopped.
	We got shut down on the Friday.
	And the reason we got shut down, because it was actually on the Friday that the first musings of the previous Friday of the Emergency Act came out, was we were told by the police that it came from the federal government, that they shut down any further moves.
	The Prime Minister didn't want us to de-escalate.
	That was the worst thing we could do for him, was to de-escalate and have more jumpy castles.
	And, you know, more wiener roasts and more hot tubs.
	He needed confrontation.
	He needed people being agitated, other Canadians and Ottawa citizens being agitated.
	And so our de-escalation move was what he couldn't stand.
	And they shut us down.
	It was obvious from the beginning.
	It became so obvious towards the end.
	He needed it, wanted it to be a January 6th.
	They had their...
	I genuinely believe they were not legitimate protesters with their Yahtzee flag and the Confederate flag on day one to never reappear.
	They got their images for that.
	They wanted to make it to January 6th.
	If not in spirit, they wanted to provoke the same response.
	They never got that.
	And after three weeks of not getting that, they come in with the police.
	Were you on site on the Friday and the Saturday when they were violently assaulting and arresting protesters?
	If you search YouTube, we anticipated the raids because a lot of the volunteers who were in Ottawa up until November or December were police officers and army officers and paramedics and doctors and nurses and chiropractors and dentists.
	Carpenters and all these people had been put out of work because they were exercising their choice of informed consent and refusing to be vaccinated, which I completely respect.
	So we were getting tipped off.
	And in the early days, they could tell we knew exactly what they were about to do when they were about to do it.
	We did a little counterintelligence on them.
	If you ever saw Chris Barber's tic-tac about everybody pulling up and moving to Toronto and how the Toronto police reacted to that and it was a joke.
	So they did a few of those on us where they did like Coventry was a test when they raided Coventry and put snipers up.
	They had like six snipers on the roof.
	Snipers.
	You can see them in the video.
	Snipers.
	Like what the heck?
	It's Canada.
	And they stole some fuel, or they took fuel.
	Anyway, so we knew, we had a sense that the raids were about to start and the arrests were going to begin.
	So we called a, we had a virtual press conference and Tamara with some of the other board members read a statement about what the future should look like and what the government should do, which is repeal the mandates.
	Stop these planned firings.
	Reinstate people into their jobs.
	Restore our freedoms.
	Do a public inquiry.
	Direct a Supreme Court of Canada reference case on the constitutionality of all these actions, etc.
	And then we all kind of shook hands and hugged because we all had a sense we may not be seeing one another for a while.
	And she gave me a big hug.
	And she instructed us to leave our location and to go to an undisclosed hotel to tell no one, because she wanted us to be available to coordinate with the team of criminal lawyers in the event that the arrests began.
	So we moved to a new location, but we had a great vantage point, unfortunately, and we could see the masses of police coming.
	Some people have asked me if I was scared when I was there.
	And I wasn't.
	I'm not trying to sound like a tough guy or anything.
	Maybe.
	I'm not.
	I just wasn't.
	I just knew what we were doing was right.
	And I knew what the government was doing was so wrong.
	So, Eva and I were...
	Chris had been arrested.
	Chris Barber.
	And Tamara had been arrested.
	We were about to observe, and we're assisting with the bail hearing for Chris, and we're getting ready for that.
	And we were in my hotel room, and we overlooked the street and the front of the hotel.
	And a bear cat rolls up, and three black SWAT SUVs with a string of police cars and a van.
	And I said to Eva, uh-oh, and they stopped right in front of our hotel.
	And I said to her, I said, you know that you and I are the only people in this whole hotel with the convoy.
	And she said, yep.
	And I said, well, this is going to get interesting.
	So we watched and we thought, like, really?
	They're going to bring that many people to come and arrest the constitutional lawyers?
	Wow.
	I did.
	They had, it was a fancy hotel.
	So the ice room, they had to use a key to get into the ice room.
	And I'd gone in there the night before to get ice.
	And then there's this tall ice machine against the wall.
	And I kind of looked at, I could actually slide behind it.
	And I thought, well, maybe I should go hide in there.
	And I thought, no, no, I'll just, if they pound on the door, I'll just lay on the floor so they don't have a reason to shoot me.
	Anyway, we watched and I said, the longer those doors stay closed, the better.
	And about three minutes later, the door still hadn't opened.
	And about five minutes later, they pulled around the corner and they went up to another place where some trucks were.
	So they were just staging.
	But that was the only time I was kind of had some fear for my personal safety.
	But so we maintained our operations there.
	We had previously set up a network of criminal lawyers.
	We'd set up a 1-800 number.
	We had a cycle system where...
	First trucker calls from the lockup.
	He gets lawyer number one.
	Lawyer number two is now on standby for the next call.
	So we had that system.
	We were making sure it was working.
	One of the things that was remarkable was when I reviewed, excuse me, when I reviewed all of the emergency orders and not just me, the team of lawyers, like to be clear, I was.
	I was kind of the guy on the point.
	I was the guy with my head out of the trench the furthest, but there was a whole team of lawyers behind us, and I just commend them.
	They're tyrannical, but I don't think they're quite yet at the Eastern Bloc level of tyranny where they're going to arrest the lawyers, unless the lawyers do something egregious.
	Well, you know, I thought they might, and the only reason is because they kept overstepping all the time, right?
	Remember, they would always overstep.
	They overstepped on, no one can bring food, fuel, or supplies to the truckers.
	It'll be aiding and abetting.
	Yeah, aiding, abetting, and mischief.
	It's like, what?
	Have you guys read the criminal code?
	You just can't take words and sort of smush them together and create a new crime.
	Anyhow, what happened when the government overplayed that hand?
	What did everybody show up with when they went downtown?
	It was beautiful.
	In real time, they converted them into water containers, lunch boxes, empty ones, and everybody was walking.
	It was like the I Am Spartacus, except it was with I Am Jerry Can.
	It was brilliant!
	But let me tell you a really funny little vignette, and I was in the middle of dealing with something on the street.
	And there was, you know how you were there.
	Remember how the police would walk around?
	And what's the right word?
	Flank center or whatever?
	When they walk around like in a group of 8 or 10 or 12. But whatever that term is.
	You know what I'm trying to get at.
	It's got a poof sound in it.
	And somebody in the chat will give it to you.
	Give it to us.
	So you'd see these guys walking around, you know, marching.
	And everybody's like, hi, how's it going?
	And they're trying to be serious.
	So they were all gathered on a street corner.
	There was a mom and dad, and they had two little kids.
	And I would say the kids were about five and six years old, and they were in their snowsuits.
	And the mom and dads had medium-sized jerrycans, and the little kids had the little ones like you get at the corner gas station.
	And the kid was laying on the ground because, you know, he was bored, right?
	And he's in his snowsuit and there's fresh snow.
	Well, what does a little kid with a snowsuit and fresh?
	He starts making like angel things and he was using his snow can to like do little symbols as he's right at the feet of all of these police.
	It was the juxtaposition was so moving, you know?
	Anyway.
	Because we'd seen them overplay their hands so many times, Emergencies Act, freezing bank accounts, outrageous statements and false allegations about Russians, arson, guns, all these things.
	Threats of...
	Sexual assault, according to me.
	Yeah, they had to add that in after.
	Yeah, rapes.
	And, you know, I never once felt uncomfortable.
	And I'm a guy, but you talk to the women.
	And by the way, someone wrote me and said it was a conservative MP.
	It wasn't.
	I don't remember her name now.
	Even the liberal MP was so oblivious to the risks that she was facing.
	She was asking Mendoncino, how could they have let her walk to the office when she was in such grave risk?
	I mean, it was so dangerous, they didn't even know they were in danger.
	Parliamentarians walking to the office.
	So when we first, the lead criminal defense lawyer, we called once we got the call immediately.
	So if you look at the video of Chris Barber being arrested, as he's leaning over the police car in his hands behind him, one of those guys was literally on the phone with me.
	Like, Chris is being arrested right now.
	So thank you.
	Bye.
	Immediately called Diane's office, got her...
	You know, I did the lawyer code talk to get past reception.
	And she misunderstood the message.
	And she phones back because she thought I was arrested.
	And she's thinking, oh, that's interesting.
	You know, arresting a constitutional lawyer.
	But it wouldn't surprise me if they did it.
	But it would have been another mistake, just like everything else they did.
	So, yeah, it was remarkable to be there.
	The level of violence that the police used was just disgusting.
	They didn't need to do it.
	Oh, I know what I was going to say.
	So the emergency proclamation says right in it, the federal one, says, because they kept saying this is an illegal assembly, right?
	And we know under our charter we have the right of peaceful assembly, freedom of expression, all these things.
	It said, and I'm going to look at my screen here, it allowed for...
	So the invocation of the Emergencies Act allows the Cabinet to A. Measures to regulate or prohibit any public assembly, dash, other than lawful advocacy, protest, or dissent that may reasonably be expected to lead to a breach of the peace.
	So right in it, it said, look, you're still allowed to engage in lawful advocacy, process, or dissent.
	Then within the order itself, and sorry for looking at stuff, but we've been going for a bit, and my memory's only so good.
	Here's what you had to do to put yourself in the position where the police could prevent you from going into downtown Ottawa or arrest you.
	A person must not, this is Section 2, participate in a public assembly.
	That may reasonably be expected to lead to a breach of the peace by, and ask yourself if anybody in downtown Ottawa was doing this, okay?
	There's three things.
	A, the serious disruption of the movement of persons or goods or the serious interference with trade.
	You could freely move goods and services and trade throughout downtown Ottawa.
	I did it.
	You did it.
	Your videos show it, Diva.
	B, interference with the functioning of critical infrastructure, which was defined.
	There was no interference.
	And get this third one.
	Listen to these words.
	I'm reading them off the page.
	I can put them right up to the camera.
	C, the support of the threat or use of acts of serious violence against persons or property.
	So if you're threatening or engaging in serious violence against persons or property, why'd they put the word serious?
	So minor violence was okay.
	Like, what the heck?
	In any event, so if you were going to go there to threaten or engage in serious violence against persons or property, you weren't allowed to be there.
	If you were going there and not doing, interfering with international trade, interfering with critical infrastructure, or not going to get involved in violence or threats to people or things, then you're allowed to peacefully assemble, dissent.
	And engage in lawful advocacy.
	So I'm like, everybody's allowed to be here.
	So we actually issued on the Friday in the afternoon a cease and desist letter to the police chief.
	It's publicly available.
	You can search it.
	Go to the Justice Center's website.
	Putting them on notice that these announcements he's made, they set up 100 checkpoints around the downtown to stop Canadians from coming in.
	To show their support and protect the truckers.
	There's no legal basis for that.
	That was completely unlawful breach of charter rights.
	I'm reading from the emergency order, the federal one.
	So we put him on notice that these public statements he's made are inaccurate and any orders he's given to his police to interfere with lawful protests are unlawful and actionable.
	I also started getting phone calls from the various police liaison, and I put them on notice.
	I said, you guys are looking, and I said, you're looking for your Tiananmen square moment, aren't you?
	And I said, I really hope you're not.
	And I said, you know, get some legal advice.
	Because if you're part of this, and you can be associated with doing something to someone, when they're lawfully complying with this order, guess what?
	You can get sued.
	But they went ahead anyway.
	And, you know, I wasn't naive enough to think they're going to, oh, sorry.
	Thank you, Mr. Lawyer.
	And I think I remember my brother saying, if I'm not mistaken, that I think it was you, saying basically, yeah, you're allowed to be there, but good luck telling a cop after they've erected a fence and beaten up veterans and hauled them off outside of Ottawa and arrested people.
	Good luck telling them you're allowed to be there and expected to go anywhere when they weren't even letting journalists go in to begin with.
	Legal question I've been asking, Keith, and I don't expect a legitimate legal answer, but the Emergencies Act was invoked.
	The directives were implemented before they were ratified, and then they were, let's say, revoked before they were rejected or ratified by the Senate.
	They passed the House.
	They were never ratified or rejected by the Senate because they were rescinded, revoked by Trudeau.
	What about the legality of what was done then?
	I mean, if it was never ratified nor rejected, were the directives lawful?
	And more specifically, the immunity that the government promised to the banks when they froze bank accounts, did that ever materialize?
	Or can they face lawsuits and will they be facing lawsuits?
	No, yes and yes.
	Okay, let's break this down.
	There's been a lot of confusion.
	About whether or not the emergency order actually came into effect.
	And the reason is because we knew there was a process.
	We were watching the process, both in the House of Commons and the Senate.
	However, a careful read of the Emergency Act, Emergencies Act, the successor to the War Measures Act, will show you that Remember to ask me about sumo suits, by the way, and I'll tell a funny story.
	Hold on, I'm going to take a note.
	Yeah.
	So under the Emergencies Act, it says that as soon as the federal cabinet, and their fancy formal legal name is Governor General in Council, passes the proclamation through regulation, it comes into force immediately.
	So it came into force on that Monday.
	However, the Act goes on to say that within a certain number of days, I think it was 10 days, it doesn't matter, a certain number of days, the proclamation must be laid before the House of Commons and the Senate and voted on.
	So it was enforced as soon as they did it, but it has these other checks and balances to keep it in place.
	So if they can't overcome those hurdles, it goes away.
	It also required that it be laid and tabled before each of the provincial legislatures as well within, I think it was 30 days, a time period set out in the Act.
	So it was in force upon the Cabinet bringing it into force, but it has a level of scrutiny and checks and balances it has to go through to stay in force.
	And in any event, it has to...
	There's a mandatory inquiry requirement within 60 days, I believe.
	And that inquiry by MPs and the committee has been struck is about to start meeting either next week or the following week.
	So that's the legalities of it.
	Now, you asked about liability and immunity.
	So just because they followed those steps.
	It doesn't mean that it was lawful for them to bring it in in the first instance.
	So there's certain criteria, factual criteria, that have to be present in order for there to be a true emergency, in order for them to be able, for the cabinet to even bring in the order in the first place.
	The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms has launched a judicial review and a legal challenge, as has a few other groups.
	Anyway, there's been a couple of legal advocacy groups that have also launched challenges, or the government of Alberta has launched one as well.
	Taking the position that the federal government, the cabinet, never had the conditions precedent, the requirement factually on the ground.
	The test wasn't met for them to invoke this and therefore it wasn't valid.
	The Justice Centre is going to proceed with this even though the order's been revoked because the courts need to rule on whether or not the government behaved properly.
	So that's my answer.
	Hopefully I've answered that.
	Yeah, good enough.
	And do you think the banks are going to face any lawsuits?
	And did their immunity ever formalize?
	Yes, I think it did.
	So here's what happened with the bank freezes.
	Have you seen the RCMP or the police document that was the basis for the freezing of the bank accounts?
	I don't.
	It's about 100 pages.
	Anyway, I'm happy to share it with you, but it's ridiculous.
	I've talked about this before.
	Somebody leaked it to me.
	So the bank, the government announced and Freeland announced that anybody who was supporting this were going to freeze their bank accounts.
	So what happened was the basis upon which the, well, whose bank account are you going to freeze?
	So the police talk about, well, we did extensive investigations and we used our intelligence agencies and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	Well, I get this document.
	And all the people I represent, nine of them who had their bank accounts frozen, are all within the first few pages.
	There's a group of 20. And they got their pictures and their home addresses and their date of birth and something about them.
	And then I go, it's about five or six pages, and then I go to, it's got the source of evidence.
	You ready for this?
	Source of evidence.
	Hyperlink to CTV News website, who's who in the Freedom Convoy.
	Okay, well, did the CTV get the information from the hack of the individual, or was this just a broad CTV?
	No, it was just them doing investigative reporting, seeing who was at a press conference.
	And, you know, they had people in there I never met.
	They had people in there who were heavily involved in their volunteer roles that they didn't add.
	It was just CTV's best guess as to who the key players were.
	That was it.
	This investigator never left his chair.
	He didn't even...
	He just clicked on it and cut and paste.
	So that was enough evidence to have these people bank accounts frozen, to cause them to miss mortgage payments, to cause the spouse to not be able to pay the dentist, the spouse not to be able to get his diabetics medication, and other serious things that they faced.
	Going to the checkout at the grocery store full of groceries and discovering your visa and your debit card don't work and the embarrassment of that, but more serious things as well.
	One of the interesting things that happened when they started freezing the bank accounts, and it was the acting police chief, the one who sent in the goons from Ottawa.
	Who announced a couple times, you may recall, that we're going to keep investigating and we're going to go after the donors.
	And then Freeland made a similar comment that we're going to go after the donors.
	Well, I had donated.
	You had donated.
	I only say that because you just announced it.
	No, I don't.
	I said it before the hack.
	Apparently, I'm on the hack as well.
	Okay.
	I've got to check the list to see if you're on the list.
	No, I had people reaching out concerned.
	I was like, guys, I talked about it the day the GoFundMe shut down.
	I was like, you don't get to say who people can donate to and then reimburse.
	I was like, I'm going to give it on GoFundMe.
	I had mentioned it even well before the hack, but yeah, someone was concerned.
	Here's what happened.
	You can look this up.
	In fact, was it last week?
	The head for the Canadian Association of Credit Unions testified before one of the House committees.
	What happened was there was a run on the banks.
	I sent my wife down to get a whole bunch of cash out because I didn't know if they were going to freeze my bank account and I wanted to be able to keep to caring for my family.
	And she said there was a lot of people at the bank leaving with a bag.
	And they apparently...
	Had such a run that they lost their reserve limits.
	So, you know, the bank's got to hold a cash reserve.
	So they had to go to some backup, the international banking backstop system.
	This senior representative at the credit unions testified last week that I have the quote here.
	She said, Martha Durden.
	As she said, the combined effect and the panic it created that Canadians could have their accounts frozen, made by small donations to the coalition, it led to people withdrawing large amounts from their credit unions, sometimes in the hundreds of thousands, and on a few occasions, millions of dollars.
	And then people started opening bank accounts at other banks.
	As kind of spreading out your pots, right?
	To make it harder.
	Decentralize banking.
	Someone just, I pulled my money out too.
	And Keith, you're confirming it.
	I received a bunch of calls, a bunch of emails.
	People from Western provinces said that they were actually told they were limited to several hundred dollars and they couldn't get in.
	You had to just run out of cash.
	Yeah, I couldn't.
	I'm not confirming it.
	Keith, you seem to be quoting someone who confirmed that the run on the banks was a very real thing.
	I had heard rumorings that Trudeau and government were getting calls from the banks saying, what the hell did you just do?
	We can't deal with this and fix it.
	I don't know if that's true.
	I don't know if you know if that's true.
	There's a website that tracks cash volumes, and I wish I had kept the link when I found it, or someone sent it to me.
	I might even saw it in a tweet.
	I think I saw it in a tweet.
	Anyway, it was real.
	You could see this massive spike.
	And now we have testimony last week to a House committee from this president and CEO of the Canadian Credit Unions Association confirming that's exactly what happened.
	So the rumors are true and the anecdotal stories are proving to be true.
	So I think what happened was, so why did the Emergencies Act order get lifted?
	You might recall there was some tension as to whether or not Trudeau was going to get enough votes in the Senate.
	And I have it from a very high source that what happened was a couple of things.
	First of all, the banks sort of realized when they saw how their customers reacted and how they saw, like the banks all right now, as we all know, are all about reducing costs, right?
	Automating, don't go to branches.
	Well, all of a sudden, if you have a lineup of people trying to open up new accounts that they're only going to marginally use, that's increasing your operating costs and not giving you a lot of profit.
	When you have people not trusting your institution, that's bad for your business model.
	So I think the banks quickly realized that maybe they were a little too enthusiastic.
	So here's how the mechanics work.
	The mechanics work because people are confused about this because I'm judging by the comments and questions I've had.
	The mechanics were...
	The economic measures order was issued under the Emergencies Act.
	It placed every bank, credit union, trust company, like RBC, Dominion Securities, securities company, so where your RRSP and your stocks are, and I said insurance companies, to when you're provided with the name of a designated person.
	Remember that investigator who spent five minutes and found the who's who on the CTV site, that guy.
	And if your name's on his work and has a coffee spill and the smudge from the donut on it, sorry, I just can't believe they did such shoddy work.
	And it was such a trivial thing that would trigger you becoming a designated person.
	The law placed you as a bank, an insurance company, a securities broker, et cetera, under a positive legal duty.
	A positive legal duty to go through all of your customer lists to see if you have a designated person.
	And if you had a designated person, you shall immediately cease providing any financial services to them.
	Okay?
	Which technically meant, and they even talked about it, cancelling your insurance policy.
	Right?
	So on your house, which would put you in default of your mortgage.
	Well, they couldn't even give you a mortgage.
	Like, what are they doing here?
	There was a legal consequence to the banks by not complying with it, a penalty, but also an immunity for doing it.
	So that was the background legal mechanism.
	You can look up the order, economic measures order under the Emergencies Act is what they used.
	But I think the banks realized, okay, wait a minute.
	Maybe we were a little too enthusiastic about doing this and too cheerleader for the government.
	Because it certainly pissed off a lot of our customers and created some problems for our business model.
	But more importantly, what I heard is the big players in the finance investment community said, wait a minute, what just happened to Canada?
	I thought it had the rule of law.
	I thought we had checks and balances.
	And is this now a banana republic?
	Is this like me investing in Venezuela or Cuba?
	Kind of seems like it.
	Okay, I don't like this.
	And what about all my investments?
	So apparently there was a phone call from the U.S. up to the PMO, and it was, we are going to publicly distance ourselves and criticize your action.
	You have 24 hours.
	And so the Prime Minister, the circumstances have changed, and it's now time for Canada.
	The circumstances have now changed.
	We now have the tools a week later that we didn't have a week ago.
	And that's another thing.
	I keep watching some of these testimonies.
	Like one of the MPs said to the police, how many protesters or organizers, whatever that means, who had their bank accounts frozen left downtown because their bank account was frozen?
	I know the number.
	Zero.
	It didn't work.
	Nobody was there for the money.
	This wasn't a money enterprise.
	This was about people genuinely.
	Disturbed to their core about the future of our country for their families, their communities, their neighbors.
	They weren't there for money.
	They weren't there for economic gain.
	So anyway, that's the story.
	And we just still don't know, you know, the fact that Deputy Prime Minister Freeland, Finance Minister, said early on, these powers are so good, we're looking at making them permanent.
	But don't worry.
	Why not?
	It'll be limited in time and they're going to respect our charter rights while they do it.
	Justin Trudeau said they would.
	I had another question.
	Hold on a second, Keith.
	Let's see this here.
	Okay, the freezing immunity, I asked.
	Oh, so bottom line, you think that the banks would in fact be immune from lawsuit for anyone that they had frozen?
	I'm not sure.
	I mean, what is the effect if it turns out that the judicial review of the proclamation is successful?
	Does that mean that the protection has fallen down?
	They might be.
	Like, on its face, the intention of the law, if it's properly applied, is for them to have immunity.
	But what's the consequence if it's not properly applied?
	So I don't want to close the door on that, and I want to be very clear about that.
	It may well be the case that the banks do have liability.
	What I was forceful in meaning to be forcefully clear about is the intention is to give them immunity.
	Whether they successfully got that coat on, I don't know.
	And what happens if that coat's taken off?
	Well, that's it.
	And now, ordinarily, things would be such an emergency, they wouldn't wait a week to debate the directives that they invoked under the Emergencies Act.
	They would do it overnight.
	They'd do it the next day.
	They wouldn't suspend it five days later on the Friday to put up fences so they can then take a week to do this.
	And ordinarily, the banks would have acted after this would have passed the House and the Senate and their...
	Whatever promises would have been ratified by the government.
	Some rumors going around.
	There was a conservative MP who tweeted that a woman had her bank account frozen over a $50 donation.
	I was skeptical.
	I said, as far as I understood, nobody out there had their bank accounts frozen solely by virtue of a donation.
	Are you aware or familiar with anybody who had their bank accounts frozen solely by virtue of having donated to the convoy?
	I have not found a single instance in the cases that I've been involved with and all the information and behind the scenes information.
	And as you can tell, I got quite a bit of it that would say that that is true.
	I have not seen an instance where someone's bank account was frozen for the sole reason that they donated.
	So if some guy in a retirement home in Lethbridge, Alberta made a $50 donation because this was important to him, I think he's going to be just fine.
	And as far as I understood, the only bank accounts they froze, 206 of them, were organizers or people who had parked their cars on Wellington.
	I noticed as the trucks were leaving on the Saturday when the cops came in, there was an officer very, what's the, conspicuously, very obviously taking pictures of the license plates as they were leaving.
	I suspect that's how they went about doing it.
	The Conservative Minister, I mean, I appreciate people get, you know, people don't always get their facts right.
	In that video, by the way, everyone watching, Viva Clips, five minutes of Justin Trudeau getting roasted by the members of European Parliament.
	One of them referenced that anecdote.
	I still think there's some facts missing from it.
	I don't think the woman, all that she did was donate $50 if her bank account was frozen.
	It could have been frozen for another reason and people immediately start associating.
	Well, let's be clear about something else, though.
	They said they were going to do that, the government, and they could have.
	The fact that they didn't is not a tremendous relief.
	Well, my understanding is that even if they said they would, only for donations made as of the invocation of the Emergencies Act.
	My theory at the time was, even if they said they could, you can't retroactively criminalize something which wasn't criminal at the time.
	Let me tell you something else that's serious but funny.
	The level of incompetence with some of the police and the government officials was just knew no bounds.
	The other pages in that document that caused people to be a designated person was because of where the truck was parked.
	It was parked on Wellington.
	And it says that.
	Because if you, and I researched this right to the ground and went to the acts and the regulations.
	There's the parliamentary precinct, okay?
	It's a defined area, bounded by the Rideau Canal, the Ottawa River, Kent Street, and Wellington Street.
	The police thought that when you say bounded by Wellington Street, that it's inclusive of Wellington Street.
	It's not.
	And even in my discussions with the mayor's chief of staff, he said to me in a different context, When it was the mayor's idea to move them up onto Wellington, that the parliamentary precinct police said, well, they can't because that's our jurisdiction.
	And he's just like, these guys still...
	Like, how long has Ottawa been our capital?
	Like, forever?
	And these guys still haven't even figured out that Wellington Street is actually municipal jurisdiction.
	And it's clear when you read the law, it is.
	So the RCMP thought that a truck parked on Wellington was different at law than a truck parked on Bank Street.
	And it's not.
	So, like, it was just like the Three Stooges comedy of errors time with these guys.
	Like, the Emergency Act didn't have the proper basis to invoke it.
	The provision in the order said everybody could still come down and engage in lawful, peaceful dissent by its own terms.
	The people they designated, they designated either because they found them on a website from a reporter or they thought they were parked on a street that was in the precinct and it wasn't.
	Unreal.
	Can I comment?
	I really got to get this one point out about the MOU.
	Go for it, please.
	And I had mentioned that, the memorandum of understanding as to what the demands were from that particular...
	There was all these different groups that showed up.
	So we've got a lot of groups across Canada, Take Back Our Freedoms, Freedom Something Else, Canada Unity.
	They all existed, some of them for months, some of them for more than a year.
	And once they saw the momentum that the convoy had and the Freedom Convoy, They saw this wave, and they were trying to ride it.
	And they were also trying to make it be successful, too.
	I don't think there was, like, evil motives here.
	So they all come to Ottawa, and they're all kind of trying to take control of this thing.
	And one of the groups was Canada Unity, and they came out with this thing called the MOU, Memorable Man Understanding.
	And I...
	Just glanced at it.
	It was something that if you got enough signatures and enough phone calls to the governor general, then she could hop around on one foot and ride on a unicorn and throw fairy dust.
	And then a committee could be formed and the government would be disbanded and this committee of citizens would run the government.
	And I said, you guys, look, the only way we change governments in Canada is through a general election.
	And the only way we have a general election is when the Prime Minister contacts the Governor General and drops the writ, asks to dissolve Parliament.
	Or by Parliamentary Convention, there's a non-confidence vote, and that triggers an election.
	That's the only two ways.
	So the Freedom Convoy had always said, we don't support the MOU.
	We're not calling for the overthrow of the government.
	We're not even calling for an election.
	I interviewed Ben Dichter during one of the days in the hotel.
	I forget what day it was.
	He specifically said, there's no overthrow.
	If there's no confidence, hold a new election.
	Nobody's here for violence.
	Nobody's there to overthrow.
	Nobody's there to insurrect.
	It was clear.
	It was the classic example of trying to take some crazy idea of one group.
	Well intended.
	I guess.
	And then paint the rest of them with it, right?
	So just so everybody's clear, at no time was the trucker movement in Ottawa asking for the overthrow of the government, supporting the MOU or anything like it.
	They were there because they wanted the COVID restrictions lifted.
	They wanted the rule of law followed.
	They wanted civil liberties respected and the constitution and our charter respected.
	Full stop.
	I was trying to type an answer.
	By the way, when I said that Jagmeet's brother said he didn't, it was obviously to highlight what an idiotic excuse it was.
	Jagmeet's brother donated $17,000 to the convoy, and then when the MSM found out about it, he asked for a refund because he didn't know what the convoy was about.
	My sweet tushy.
	I do that all the time, don't you?
	Drop $17,000 on things that you don't care about?
	What even happened that caused Jagmeet's brother to not understand how bad this conflict was?
	He didn't want to support bouncy castles and hot tubs and dancing.
	There's someone in the chat.
	We all know who she is.
	I don't want to bring heat on her.
	Or she.
	I don't know if this person is legitimate.
	Just going to address a few points.
	They were not blocking roads full stop.
	In fact, anyone watching my streams would have seen, I remarked on it all the time, there was always a lane to go through, with the exception of Wellington from, I forget what the streets are, and they blocked off the street to allow for any traffic as needed.
	In fact, so much so, one day when I was walking, a fire truck blasted through an intersection, easily at 70, 80 kilometers an hour, so fast that everyone was like, Holy cows, that's really dangerous because anybody crossing the street would have gotten nailed.
	So they were not blocking the streets.
	And by the time the Emergencies Act was invoked, the blockade in Windsor, which in fact was never really a blockade to begin with, that had already been lifted as well by court order.
	Second thing, it's illegal to donate to a terrorist organization.
	Yeah.
	When you're designated as a terrorist organization, like the Proud Boys, whether you like the designation or not, they've been formally designated, so you can't donate.
	The Trucker Convoy rhetoric and whatever you want all day long was never a terrorist organization.
	On the contrary, it was a federally incorporated not-for-profit that got all of the paperwork done by the government.
	So, yes, it's illegal to donate to a terrorist organization.
	No, the convoy was not one, never designated one, and you can't just make it one because you don't like it.
	Any more than donating to BLM can be, you know...
	So, there's that other talking, there's other points.
	I don't know if you're a bona fide individual making these comments or this is just a troll, but for the clarity for the rest of the people out there who might not have seen.
	Not a terrorist organization, so it was never illegal, period.
	And call it what you want, you're entitled to be...
	Not use language properly or the law.
	And they were not blocking the roads.
	They made it their business to make sure there was a lane open so traffic could go through.
	There was some traffic in certain areas.
	But every emergency vehicle could get through as needed and did get through as needed.
	Rant over.
	Can I add some detail to that?
	Go for it, please.
	You guys, you know, I saw Tom Marazzo on here.
	Army Tom, as we call him.
	And the reason why we had to make up nicknames when we got there, I'm meeting all these people for the first time.
	I'm just literally parachuting into this war zone of activity and people.
	And so there was three Toms.
	And so I started coming up with these nicknames.
	There was one guy whose nickname is Red October.
	Anyway, it was because I...
	I didn't realize this, but as I would be moving around and in a war room, I'd be like, what's your name?
	And he's like, Sean.
	I guess I asked him his name in like four minutes, five times.
	So finally he looked at me, he goes, Red October.
	And I went, what?
	And he said, now you'll remember.
	And I did.
	So anyway, and we had nicknames and so on.
	But I would see Tom and he had this like classic army captain, right?
	Big map of downtown, marked up, huge map, covered like this whole section of the boardroom table.
	And so you'll see it in the background sometimes in some of the videos they did or versions of it.
	And highlighted and little stickers and everything.
	He would check every day to see who would come in through the night and who would laugh.
	Remember, this was organic.
	We didn't know there'd be a convoy from Kitchener would arrive with 20 trucks.
	It was like, what?
	Where are they?
	So Tom would, and where would they go?
	They would sometimes go into the emergency lane.
	So he was constantly making sure, talking to the block captain, you make sure that thing's clear.
	And then he would get up and you say, I gotta go.
	He grabbed his coat and he was out the door and down around three blocks and move your truck, move your truck.
	He was committed to ensuring that those emergency lanes were all the time.
	He had a very, very personal reason for it with his own family that I won't get into.
	But that's absolutely...
	I remember I came out on the street at one point, was moving from one hotel to another because we ended up setting up also war rooms at the Sheridan as well.
	And same thing, this fire truck comes barreling through and I looked at the truckers.
	I said, next time that happens, you videotape that.
	I captured it.
	I remembered it.
	I saw it.
	I actually thought it was fast forwarded, but your hair didn't flutter.
	I was flabbergasted.
	There could have been dogs, whatever.
	Let me bring this one up.
	Space cowboy.
	I'm not reading this to agree or disagree with it.
	I just want a detail that I forgot to mention.
	Just want to tell Canada that the Proud Boys are not...
	There's a reason...
	Sorry.
	There's a dog here floating around.
	It just distracted me.
	There's a reason also why the government wants to designate entities terrorist organizations because it makes it easy to freeze bank accounts, seize assets of designated terrorist organizations.
	Agree or disagree with the designation for Proud Boys, I had never heard of them until the government issued that declaration, but that's the strategic reason.
	Funny thing now is, you know, now the government's realized it doesn't even have to designate an entity, a terrorist organization, to freeze their bank accounts and seize their assets.
	They can find other ways of doing it.
	Mere accusations or emergencies invocations.
	So it's like...
	Media reports.
	People have to appreciate that.
	There is a strategic reason for which you would like to designate an entity a terrorist organization.
	Generally, it's necessity and actual danger for law enforcement.
	It facilitates law enforcement, but it facilitates seizures and freezing of bank accounts much more than not.
	The other thing I saw just to emphasize, there was a lot of streets downtown blocked, like a lot, by the police.
	Do you remember seeing that?
	Like the big concrete barriers they had and then they have police cars.
	That's where the blockages were.
	So they created this.
	I was always struck.
	We cycled in lawyers in and out on the team.
	And the first thing I said is you guys got to get down here and see this.
	And they were just like, wow, this is not what I saw on the news.
	Not what I saw in the news.
	I'm going to tell you the funny thing about the sumo suits.
	I was just about to remind you.
	I don't know.
	Keith, you seem to have a good bladder.
	Mine is about ready to explode, but we're nearing on three hours, by the way.
	I know.
	This is fantastic.
	Can we do two more things and then...
	Oh, yeah.
	Absolutely.
	Please.
	We'll go.
	So, one is...
	Okay.
	So, in the morning meeting, there would be a morning meeting at 8 o 'clock in the operation center.
	And all the different...
	The truck captains would be there.
	The guy responsible for the porta-potties would be there.
	These are all logistics people.
	It was just amazing their skill levels.
	Danny Bulford, you know, head of security would be there, former RCMP.
	And we knew, we sensed that this big goon show was going to show up and it was going to get like it.
	We were fearing what happened was going to happen.
	So they brainstormed, right?
	So I don't know.
	Have you ever seen those inflatable sumo suits you can get?
	Yeah, and then two guys kind of go.
	And then have you seen those inflatable translucent bubble type things you can get in?
	So they actually were about to order 250 of those.
	And we were going to put happy faces on them and balloons and kids' dinosaur symbols and hearts and Canada stickers.
	And when the police goons lined up...
	And their riot gear and all their stuff, we were going to put all the guys in the sumo suits and the bouncy things, right?
	Could you imagine the image of the police trying to stab to pop the air?
	So I just love these guys because they were so creative all the time, like the gas cans, the bouncy castles, the playing hockey, all the different things they did to try and...
	Demonstrate their resolve to fight for freedom.
	The last thing I really got to say is the Justice Center does not operate on oxygen.
	They operate on dollars.
	Operating.
	I volunteer in my time.
	I'm still getting paid an hourly rate, but at a very, very significantly reduced hourly rate.
	I'm happy to do that.
	And even better yet, I have the full authority of my higher authority.
	I remind her that she volunteered me for this and she points out, no, I voluntold you.
	And I said, yes, dear.
	However, we have...
	We have criminal defenses.
	We are dealing with trying to get the money to the truckers.
	We've got the charter challenged.
	We've got the challenging the Emergencies Act order.
	We're defending the justice centers, defending doctors and nurses, lung transplant patients.
	If people are getting their refunds from Give, Send, Go and would like to help the truckers and would help to help The Fight for Freedom.
	Please consider donating.
	Tom Marazzo had talked about working on something.
	We now have an arrangement where the Justice Center will be looking after Tom's legal needs as well through me and funding it.
	So if you can, please consider donating to the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms.
	They're a registered charity.
	It's a safe donation.
	You will not get your bank account frozen.
	If you do, the lawyers will be closed.
	Who knows?
	Wait until the government gets closed.
	Hold on a second.
	I was going to look for something.
	I was going to say, who knows what the government designates the lawyers who represent people that they've designated as whatever.
	Everyone, everyone is the enemy.
	Yes.
	So, you get the nice thing about donating.
	Unlike your Give, Send, Go or your GoFundMe, is you get a tax receipt because it's a registered charity.
	So you get some relief at tax time.
	You get tax credit for it.
	So I would urge you, and when you go to their website, the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, jccf.ca, there's a dropdown on Donate, and you can decide whether you want to support Peckford's travel mandate charter challenge that I'm lead counsel on, or whether you want to support the...
	Truckers Legal Defense Fund or whether you want to just throw it generally in or any one of the other cases.
	So I hesitate to do this, but there's so much heavy lifting going on.
	I think you're getting a little bit of a feel for how much work we've been doing and how hectic it's been.
	And we've got a lot of work to do.
	If you care about freedom and want to try and take your country back, one of the many things you can do, among others, is help us by making donations.
	To the Justice Center, if you consider that, I'd be very grateful.
	And don't even be reluctant to do it.
	I've pinned the donate link to this stream.
	I'm going to put it in the pinned comment.
	And the thing is, look, there's a bunch of fundraisers, and you never know which ones are the good ones, which ones you're going to get screwed on.
	You can go directly to people that you want to support.
	I put the link for Dr. Crystal Lushku, who I interviewed yesterday.
	There's the iconic cafe who's got to give, send, go.
	So you pick and choose.
	And then you do that at your own risks because you can never do any thousand percent secure due diligence with the exception of JCCF, certain recognized charities that have been around for a while.
	You can feel good knowing that the risk is less there.
	But if you want to go direct...
	JCCF has been around for 10 years.
	I was approached by some other groups to be external counsel to them.
	And I picked the Justice Center for a reason.
	I think they're the most credible.
	Other groups are doing tremendous work.
	I'm not trying to be negative towards them.
	But to me, it's the organization that's got the ability to do the heaviest lifting on the most important cases.
	So that's why I decided to do this work for them and volunteer my time.
	Phenomenally reduced hourly rates.
	And again, I'm happy to do that.
	And as I mentioned, my wife improved.
	I can tell everyone in the chat this from my own experiences.
	JCCF, Rebel News, through their various legal projects.
	I can't think of many other lawyers or entities in Canada that are challenging these measures.
	And people say, Viva, go out and do it.
	Look, we all do what we're good at.
	And we do what we think we can make a difference doing.
	I think I would be a liability at this point in front of a judge.
	And I'm not cutting my hair, so I know what a judge would say.
	But no, JCCF truly is doing the legal lord's work.
	And I would also echo, I've known Ezra Levant and I went to law school together.
	Can you imagine how much fun that was?
	It was a lot of fun.
	We had the laissez-faire club where we were taking on political correctness and Ezra was a character then as he is now and matured into a very important figure in our lives and our society.
	I would echo what you said about Rebel News as well.
	The two entities categorically doing what needs to be done.
	And we cooperate.
	We work together because the Democracy Fund, through Ezra and Rebel, they have a number of Freedom Trucker clients as well.
	And we work together the way that lawyers properly do when you're on the same side of something.
	And so we collaborate with them.
	We're not competitive with them.
	We all have the same goals, which is stopping injustice, advocating for civil liberties, and trying to get this tyrannical government under control.
	All right, fantastic.
	Now, not to...
	I might have another guest next week on other constitutional...
	Well, not next week.
	We may have another good constitutional discussion coming up sooner than later.
	Keith, you will come back on and give us the updates as things progress.
	Doesn't have to be a three-hour.
	You can pop in for 15, 20 minutes.
	Yeah, whenever you'd like, I'd be happy.
	Thanks for having me on.
	And yeah, your announcement that...
	Former Premier Brian Peckford is likely to be sitting in this place on your screen soon.
	Excellent.
	I would be super...
	He's an amazing man.
	The stories he can tell you and the illumination he gives to what was happening behind the scene and how our charter was birthed is absolutely captivating.
	Fantastic.
	So stick around, people.
	We'll see what happens there.
	Sunday night, live stream with Barnes.
	Probably go live tomorrow.
	We'll see what happens.
	Keith, stick around.
	We'll say our proper goodbyes.
	Oh, hold on.
	I'm sorry.
	Hold on.
	Just before we go, there were a couple of rumble rants.
	One said, 214 Montreal, fascism is alive in the parliament.
	Thank you very much.
	There was...
	I'll skip this one.
	Viva, can you and Keith acknowledge where I got to that one?
	And there was one more rumble rant, which I think I missed.
	Son of a beast thing.
	I missed it.
	Well, the rumble rant, thank you.
	Keith, stick around.
	We'll say our proper goodbyes.
	Everyone out there, thank you very much.
	Cut, clip, share.
	You know what to do.
	And don't lose faith.
	There are people fighting for our rights, even if some of us don't know that our rights need to be fought for and vigorously defended.
	Keith, thank you for doing what you do.
	And everyone else, enjoy the rest of the day.

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