Canadian 'Freedom Convoy' Part 2: Border Blockades & Political Ramifications

As the Convoy occupation expanded beyond choking a single major city, the blocking of supply lines and border crossings raised more questions regarding how the government's reaction might effect political movements in the future.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to it could happen here and the second part
of my little mini series going into the occupation and
blockade protests all across Canada that's been happening the past
three weeks. For part two, we'll be starting off with
a change of scenery. Instead of the loud, cramped streets

(00:25):
of Danton, Ottawa and the castle like Parliament building, We'll
be taking a detour to the snow covered prairies and
oil fields of rural Alberta. As the convoy officially arrived
in Ottawa on January, smaller protests against health mandates were
also happening across the entire country. One of these mini

(00:47):
protests was happening in the small city of Lethbridge in
southern Alberta, but unlike the majority of other non Ottawa protests,
the one based around Lethbridge didn't turn out to be
a bull weekend of fair With hundreds of vehicles, including
some semi trucks, RVs and farm tractors all gathered together.

(01:08):
It was decided to take part in a little mini
convoy of their own, but instead of going to a
capital building, they rolled towards the international border crossing used
by truckers in the area. I was able to interview
gen a left Bridge local who also happens to work
near the area of the Alberta border blockade. And they

(01:29):
kind of gathered in left Bridge here and took off
about four thirty in the morning. And so they made
it down to the village of coots Um, which is
essentially right on the border, is the last stop before
you hit the border at Coots Alberta, sweet Grass, Montana.
And they blocked off the highway completely heading both northbound

(01:53):
and southbound, and they've been camped out since. So it's
my understanding that at that point in time, throughout you know,
day one, two and three of their protest um, there
was no getting in or out out of the village
of Coops, which is it is a small village about
two fifty residents UM. And it was so bad that

(02:17):
not even emergency services could get through um again, blocking
both lanes of the highway in either direction in the
ditches Um and just weren't letting up. And so are
they even driving anywhere or is it are they just
like camped there, just camped out there, parked um. And
of course you know there's people that will drive down

(02:40):
to the border and participate for a couple hours and
you know, turn around and go home kind of thing.
But there is that core group, um, the majority of
which are actually farmers bringing down like their tractors, and
of course there is um some semitruck drivers who are
all a part of it and just not allowing anyone

(03:00):
to get through on either side, so you know, holding
up a lot of a lot of our supplies, a
lot of our um food and things like that. At first,
local police and RCMP just waited out the blockade, I guess,
hoping to see if the people would just get tired
of camping out in the cold and then you know,

(03:20):
go home. But after a few days that possibility seemed
less and less likely. Then when the RCMP did start
to get more actively involved with kind of managing the blockade,
albeit you know, with a very gentle hand and extremely
start contrast to how our CMP handles blockades, you know,
defending indigenous land. But at that point it was already

(03:43):
kind of too late and the pacified police action only
spread the protests efforts. On day four of the blockade
at the border um, the RCMP had kind of moved
in a little bit to try to break it up.
So some of the the protesters had kind of broken
off and decided to blockade's mother areas. So there was

(04:03):
a blockade that happened on Highway three just outside of
the town of Fort McLeod, on the way to the
town of Brockett, which would be on the Blood Reserve
here in Alberta. Um they blockaded the highway and wouldn't
let anyone through, and then they set up another blockade
um on Highway twenty three, which of course would be

(04:25):
the the next north south route given that Highway three
was now blocked off. The Highway three going to Highway too. Um.
So they've blocked off Highway twenty three. Um At there's
a traffic circle or a roundabout kind of in the
middle of nowhere in the highway at the village of Nobleford,
sorr town of Nobleford, and they set up a blockade

(04:47):
at the roundabout as well. Wouldn't let anyone come in
north south east west didn't matter. Um. So that was Tuesday,
Tuesday to uh four three. Yeah, so in effectively shutting
down any kind of like travel for like food and
supplies for like all four directions pretty much exactly. Yeah,

(05:10):
Like there was a lot of chatter on social media. Um,
we have a local Facebook group for road conditions, and
there was a lot of chatter, you know, where do
we go, how do we get around this? What back roads?
Should I take? Secondary highways? That sort of thing. And thankfully,
you know, there was still I suppose some ways to
get around it. The RCMP we're kind of setting up

(05:32):
detours and things like that. But those main routes were blockaded,
um on Tuesday, which would have been I guess what
days that February one. The static highway blockades preventing traffic
in all four directions were mostly a one day affair.
The next Wednesday morning, more effort was put back into

(05:53):
the main blockade at the border near Coots, with some
folks still participating in the rolling blockades of sorts, you know,
on the surrounding highways. So instead of just blocking the
roads by staying parked people in vehicles kept a slow
loop of traffic moving through the highway system to clog
up travel. And then like the contingent at closer to

(06:13):
the border has been more consistent, would say, yeah, definitely,
the contingent at the border on highway for like I said,
at Coots, Alberta. They've been set up all the way
through since the twenty nine UM. There has been days
where the tensions are definitely very high where those protesters
are saying we will not leave until UM or we

(06:36):
won't even come to the negotiating table until these restrictions
are gone, like we won't even attempt and so the
RCMP have been kind of in negotiations with them over
the last few days. There's been a couple of times
where they thought they had resolution to open up lanes
of travel to get some of these trucks with goods through. UM.

(07:00):
Of course there's been people stuck in their cars as
well for quite a few days without food. At that point, UM,
the protesters originally had come to an agreement with the
RCNP to let some people through and then turn around
and decided, well, we don't really want to. So that
was kind of ongoing from I'm going to suggest up

(07:20):
until about second UM. On the second the RCMP had
set up a roadblock at the town of Milk River
to uh, I guess, dissuade the the locals from coming
out and adding to the congestion and adding to the problems,
and at one point um there was a group of

(07:41):
people and videos are on TikTok, they're on Facebook, they're
on Twitter where people are blasting through the barricades, going
through the ditch, going through the media and just bypassing
it completely to get down to the convoy protest. As
I record this, the border crossing port of entry near

(08:04):
the town of Coots has been largely impassable for over
two weeks. It's a major trade hub where millions of
dollars worth of agricultural products like meat and feed trade
hands each day. The first day had hundreds of vehicles
participating in blocking access to the trade route along highway
for but after a week of blockading the Alberta, Montana

(08:26):
border crossing, around eighty big rigs continued to remain along
the highway for a majority of the time. Since the
twenty ninth of January, vehicle access has been either completely
stopped to and from the border or at least substantially
slowed down. The occasional day where vehicles are being let
through on one lane of traffic has an estimated seven

(08:47):
hours of stall time or to get through just that
tiny area of road. The blockade of that international port
of entry at Coots and the only seven commercial land
crossing in Alberta is a direct threat to the economic
well being of growers, producers, manufacturers, and many other businesses
that rely on the movement of both raw materials and

(09:08):
finished goods in and out along the can m X
corridor end quote. Lewington has warned that manufacturing plants in
the region will be forced to either reduce or cancel
production as their supplies run out and they're unable to
get their goods to international markets. This is something farmers
and food producers are dealing with as well, as agricultural

(09:30):
exports are one of the region's main economic drivers. In
the left Bridge metropolitan area exported nearly one point eight
billion dollars worth of goods, around eight percent of which
went to the United States. A vast majority of these
exports went through this Coots border crossing. That means for
the city of lefth Bridge alone, they're facing a roughly

(09:50):
three million dollar a day impact on the economic damage
based on the road and rail travel that must move
through that port of entry. The impact is, of course
four or five time is larger than if you consider
the movement of other Alberta goods in and out of
that same North South corridor. It's only more ironic and
frustrating considering that the idea of shutting down international capitalist trade,

(10:13):
you know, costing millions dollars in losses each and every day,
is exactly the sort of thing that these same conservatives
would complain that BLM or Antifa would do, you know, Like,
in terms of anti capitalist action, this is actually more
successful in causing damage to capital than really anything I've
seen the Canadian left do in recent memory. Now, obviously

(10:33):
police response to a left wing protest, you know, doing
similar tactics would probably greatly differ, you know, Plus the
fact that these people are participating in these blockades are
the same types of people that talk about their desire
to run down protesters in trucks, you know, whenever there's
marching in the street or an indigenous roadblockade to a
new oil pipeline. Nevertheless, on top of the police inability,

(10:57):
whether by choice or imagination, to handle the situation, and
considering both the conspiracy fueled political issues around masks of
vaccines and health mandates and the growing economic problems the
blockade is causing, it's not super surprising that the conservative
government of Alberta again the process of removing health mandates
as the protests striked on and unfortunately it seems like

(11:19):
the province is listening and they're taking it seriously. I know.
Um last night our premier had gone on Facebook Live
and had an ounce that come Monday, the caucus will
vote as to whether or not to scrap it um,
which would mean that, like I said, now, there's no
longer that requirement to access some of these these services

(11:41):
from private businesses, and then ultimately that would lead us
back into our letter rip model that we had last summer.
The Monday vote came in the next day, February. Alberta
premiere and premiers are like the you know, equivalent of
governors for the states, but Alberta Premier Pas and Kenny
announced that the provinces so called COVID nineteen vaccine passport

(12:04):
program would end immediately, explaining that the restriction program had
serviance purpose but is no longer needed since Alberta has
passed the peak of omnercron infections about three weeks ago.
Capacity limits were also next Tuesday night for venues with
capacity limits under five hundred, including libraries and places of worship,
an effect of this past Sunday, February. The province will

(12:26):
also no longer require masking for children and youth in
schools and for any Albertans aged twelve and under in
any setting. There is a second phase for Alberta's COVID
restriction and removal plan. On March one, the province is
set to remove any remaining restrictions, including the indoor mask mandate,
work from home requirements, any remaining capacity limits and limits

(12:47):
on social gatherings and screenings for youth activities. Jason Kenny
did deny that the move has anything to do with
the protests from those you know demanding the repeal of
vaccine mandates of all types across the country, including the
pockade that the government had condemned illegal at the Coots
Border crossing, saying, quote, none of that has anything to
do with a few trucks participating at the Coots border crossing. Um,

(13:10):
who added that keeping previous rules in place would invite
widespread non compliance for no purpose, saying why keep this
going on for a few days when we know that
in many areas were already having non compliance problems. So yeah, um,
of course, the demonstrations have continued despite Alberta dropping multiple
health measures and agreeing to a demand made by a

(13:32):
lot of the anti mandate protesters, which implies that this
protest is about much more than simple COVID health measures. Right.
It points to the movement being more about taking political
power and forcing everyone to comply with their own conspiratorial
and alienated understanding of the world. As someone who's like
living in Alberta, which is, you know, one of the

(13:53):
more conservative provinces of Canada. Um, how much do you
see this kind of this kind of you know, spontaneous
revolt and resistance to be actually tied to the health
man dates and how much do you see it? It's
more like a revolt around like Trudeau and Canada's like
Canada's like um veneer of liberalism, like like like how

(14:15):
like how much do you did you see? It's more
like a urban rule divide thing that's now just getting
pushed into the spotlight because of COVID um or do
you think it really is way more about COVID itself? Um?
I think that the pandemic has definitely had a role
to play in sparking a lot of this this fearer
and this uh, this disconnect, But the seeds have been

(14:40):
sown for many years, through many successive provincial governments and
and much rhetoric that um, the West has always been
ignored by the East, by our political institutions in the East,
namely otto our federal government, the seat of our federal
government in favor of you know, Ontario and Quebec and

(15:02):
what they want to Alberton's have always seen themselves with
a bit of a martyr complex where we are the
economic powerhouse of the country, but we are the ugly
stepchild and we are ignored in favor of the wonderful
children in the East. And so that that disconnect and

(15:23):
that divide has always been there, and the pandemic has
been the catalyst. UM. And of course, you know, whenever
there is a federal liberal party that's in in power,
the conservatives feel the Conservatives in Alberta and in the
West they feel even more disenfranchised. They feel that this

(15:45):
this government doesn't hear them, they don't listen to them,
they don't you know, follow the whims of you know,
the died in the world conservatives. And so that rhetoric
has built and built and built over the years, UM,
and it's all tied into other things as well as
tied into the economic policies and the policies of the
liberal government with in regards to climate change and carbon

(16:10):
tax and how how that's been hitting um Alberton's you know,
they our province is very heavily dependent upon the oil
and gas sector and it always has been for the
last i'm gonna suggest fifty six years. And so when
they see things like in Autumna where they're talking about

(16:32):
climate change and they're talking about you know, green energy,
it makes these conservatives angry because this has been our
bread and butter for years. This is what's fed our families.
They don't recognize that, you know, this is this is
the path forward. All they hear is we don't want you,
we don't want your jobs, we don't want your products.

(16:54):
And they're angry. And this has been the catalyst now
where they're just fed up. They're up with with not
being heard. Unfortunately, all that built up anger and resentment
towards the government and its leadership is ending up being
taken out against just any symbol of liberalism, not really

(17:15):
the government directly. You know. Within this worldview, homophobic attacks
can be then thought up as this weird form of
punching up because gainness is associated with liberalism, so it's
seen as almost this system of power, even though it's
that's obviously backwards. It's this kind of weird backwards thing
where you can view like attacking progressive things as an

(17:38):
attack on the system. So that means like being racist
or being homophobic. Is this rebellion against you know, the
system itself, even though it just ties into all those
same systemic issues. Just the other day in Edmonton, there
was a business owner, uh, a hair salon owner who's

(17:58):
been very outspoken about this Freedom Convoy and about how
she doesn't agree with their messaging and their their ideas,
and she was actually hunted down on social media, um,
hunted down in person. They found her, someone found her
her business, went to her business and confronted her and

(18:20):
assaulted her UM at her business, all because she uh
does not support the convoy and apparently this individual did. UM.
You know, we definitely we definitely see here that. UM.
The feeling is is that if you are a liberal
in Alberta, this is not the place for you. UM.

(18:41):
You know, if you if you believe in you know,
equal rights for everyone, this is not the place for you.
If you believe in the rights of marginalized and minority communities,
this is not the place for you. And I've seen that,
you know, and taking part in various protests I suppose

(19:05):
that could be branded as liberal protests, like the Black
Lives Matter protests and UM the protests and rallies that
were held in support of the indigenous communities last summer
upon you know, the news that kind of shook the
world regarding UM graves at residential schools, and you know,

(19:27):
you see it with the indigenous communities that protest pipelines
on their traditional lands and they block you know, railways,
and the same people that are screaming for jail time
and for violence and and police intervention on these various
protests are the same people that are taking part in

(19:48):
this convoy. Protesters at the Cootes border crossing will now
be charged or find according to the province and the RCMP.
R CMP Deputy Chief Curtis is A. Blocky said in
a news conference during the start out the second week
of the Alberta border blockade that police are actively working
to diffuse situation at the most important border crossing in Alberta,

(20:09):
but are trying to do so peacefully, saying, make no mistake,
there are criminal activities taking place at these protest sites
that violate both criminal code and provincial laws. We've seen
activities that are both dangerous and reckless and are having
a very negative effect on Alberton's who live in the area.
He then pointed to you know, dwindling numbers involving the
blockade from a high of around two fifty vehicles to

(20:32):
begin with two around fifty vehicles last Tuesday afternoon as
a success of their efforts to this point. But you
know this isn't convinced everyone, since the blockade is still happening.
So Acting Justice Minister and Solicitor General Sonia Savage called
the blockade intolerable and said that those taking part in
the demonstration can be charged under several different federal and

(20:55):
provincial laws, including the Federal Criminal Code, the Provincial Traffic
Safety Act, and the New Critical Infrastructure Defense Act, which
was enacted right in the middle of during the international
George Floyd uprising and the Cettain rail blockades in Canada.
I'm going to go into many tangent here just because
of how terrible this bill is. The bill gives law

(21:15):
enforcement and the judicial system extra power to dish out
significant monetary fines and extra jail time for actions deemed
to interfere with so called essential infrastructure quote unquote. The
stated goal of the bill is harsher penalties and charges
for quote damage or interference caused by blockades, protests, or

(21:36):
similar activities who can cause significant public safety, social, economic,
and environmental consequences. The Act builds on existing trespassing laws
to create offenses for trespassing on, destroying, damaging, and obstructing
the use or operation of any essential infrastructure, also under
the banner of essential infrastructure that includes public and private property.

(21:57):
By the way, the bill was obviously aimed at left
wing protests and specifically equal defense and environmental protest and
or sabotage, as the first two things defined as essential
infrastructure in the bill are quote pipelines and related infrastructure
and oil and gas production and refinery sites. So yeah.
There's also been pressure from government officials to include forfeiture

(22:21):
property in the commission of crime through the Civil Forfeiture Act.
Our CMP deputy chiefs the blocks that charges will be
coming for those taking part in the protest, and could
be as simple as the way they are illegally parked
on the highway. He didn't note that the RCMP has
attempted to hire local towing companies to move the trucks
and other equipment off the road, but have been unable

(22:42):
to do so, with the companies sitting concerns over damaged
their business long term or just safety issues in general.
This has also been a huge factor in attempts to
deal with the Ottawa occupation. Zablocki said that there are
concerns over safety and violence in response to the more
aggressive approaches to breaking up the blockade. So far, the
main action law enforcement has taken to dissuay people from

(23:04):
blocking the border is just giving out tickets and fines
for illegal parking. Premier Jason Kenny said that he is
supportive of our CMP handling this as they see fit
through the means that they already have, and has been
supportive of using the you know, pretty horribly authoritarian Critical
Infrastructure Defense Act, saying quote last year we passed the

(23:26):
Defense of Critical Infrastructure Act, which gives police enormous powers
and various defines the penalties, including the power of imprisonment.
We have made it clear to the RCMP who is
our Provincial Policing Service that they can and should use
all of these powers. They're dealing with a very fluid
situation and I have respect for their judgment. Prime Minister
Justin Trudeau addressed the ongoing blockades and protests across the

(23:49):
country this past Friday, encouraging demonstrators to leave, while also
passing the buck on any blame, saying, quote, I want
to remind everybody that politicians don't direct police depart wants
to enforce the law. Instead, Trudeau made vague threats around
revoking licenses and criminal records for those continuing to protest,
saying everything is on the table because this unlawful blockade

(24:12):
has to end and will end. The blockade at the
Cootes border crossing is not the only convoy a line
protest in Alberta. There have been many demonstrations in basically
every major city in Calgary. The Alberta Union of Provincial

(24:37):
Employees says that frontline healthcare workers, patients and people living
around the Sheldon Commuter Health Center have dealt with protests
for weeks, but things have only gotten worse since the
truck convoy hit the news. The vice president of the
Alberta Union for provincial employees said that protesters have blocked
the ambulance bain, they have harassed workers and patients as

(24:59):
they um to and from the center. They've banged on
the windows of the facility and upset people inside, and
they have blocked the roads around the center. Moving on
to the province of British Columbia. As the second weekend
of protest was set to descend on Vancouver the weekend
of February five. In preparation, fearing attacks would be carried
out against healthcare workers like they have in the past,

(25:21):
Vancouver's to health authorities issued internal mos telling health workers
to hide indoors as the convoy passed through the city
and to quote refrain from wearing scrubs and or your
ID badge outside the hospital during the demonstration. If you
do encounter any protesters, please do not engage with them
or respond to their questions, and please do not ask
protesters to put on a face mask. Similarly, ahead of

(25:45):
a protest in Toronto, the Toronto Police sent letters to
hospitals advising their workers to not wear any clothing or
markings that identified them as working in healthcare, fearing attacks
by protesters. As the second wave of the Convoy arrived
during the second weekend of the occupation in Ottawa, some
of the on the ground organizational structure started a morphin evolve.

(26:08):
The police estimated around this time that five thousand people
were still protesting in Ottawa and around one thousand vehicles
were clogging the streets during the second week of protests.
In an effort to improve optics. Considering the four original
organizers explicit connections to the far right, a new lead, organizational,
public relations, and bargaining team was assembled for the group,

(26:30):
calling themselves the Freedom Convoy. The new pseudo leadership team
consists of Daniel Bulford, a former RCMP officer who was
on the Prime Minister's security detail. He quit last year
after refusing to get the vaccine, and is now the
Convoy's head of security. Tom Quicken, former military intelligence officer

(26:50):
who also worked with RCMP and was considered one of
the country's top counter terrorism experts. And Tom Marazo, an
ex military officer who, according to his linked in profile,
served in the Canadian Armed Forces for twenty five years
and ours as a freelance software developer and just side
note in terms of you know, police and former military

(27:13):
participating in the protests. There was an organization full of
retired police that endorsed the convoy a few weeks ago
and said that they have people on the ground there,
and just got announced as as I'm recording this, that
two members of Canada's military counter terrorism unit is under
investigation for allegedly taking part in the Ottawa Convoy protests.

(27:37):
So yeah, that's fun. The occupation has been getting more
and more organized on the ground the past two weeks
and has been able to keep one step ahead of
any action taken against police against the occupation. Even just
what the convoy participants have physically built is impressive. Less
than a week after the convoy arrived, you started to

(27:58):
see one structure is being built on the roads and
a growing stockpile of propane and diesel fuel. There is
an impressive amount of tents and wooden structures used for
kitchens that local organizers have set up, and a whole
supply chain has sprung up across the city to keep
these people fed, working and protesting. I'm now going to
quote a good article in the CBC by Judy Trend quote.

(28:21):
The group is set up not only near the Parliament
in Ottawa, but they have also built two encampment areas
where they carry out logistical and supply work. Recent reporting
has painted a picture that these areas are far more
organized than widely thought. The group is also trying out
new tactics, such as attempting to clog up traffic at
the Ottawa Airport. Other tactics like swatting have been reported

(28:44):
as well. Ottawa Police say they're aware of a concerted
effort to flood our one and non emergency police reporting lines,
tweeting that this endangers lives and is completely unacceptable. Determined
to not be outdone by their fellow protesters in the
best After the second wave arrived, the members of the
Ottawa Convoy organized away for the Convoy occupation to stay,

(29:07):
but also put up a border crossing blockade of their own.
Starting Sunday, February six, scores of truckers blocked the Ambassador
Bridge connecting Windsor, Ontario, to Detroit, Michigan, disrupting the flow
of auto parts and other products between the two countries.
While this protest has been conducted more by pickup trucks

(29:28):
than big rigs, it has been holding up the lanes.
The bridge is the busiest US Canada border crossing and
a key cog in both the US and Canadian economies
as it carries around twenty five percent of trade between
the two countries. The effects of the blockade there were
felt rapidly. The bridge regularly carries around three hundred sixty

(29:48):
million dollars a day in two way cargoes, but traffic
is limited by its nineteen nine physical footprint. There's just
two lanes each way with no shoulders and and created
customs boots, with the northern side just emptying out into
the city streets. The bumper to bumper demonstration forced auto

(30:08):
plants on both sides the border to shut down or
scale back production. The halting of trade has bottlenecked automaker
Ford's ability to get parts from the US to its
Canadian plants in Windsor and Oaksville. Ford to shut down
the doors of its Windsor plant and reduced the work
schedule in Oakville. Forward set in a statement, the interruption

(30:29):
on the Detroit Windsor Bridge hurts customers, autoworkers, suppliers, communities,
and companies on both sides of the border. We hope
the situation is resolved quickly because it could have widespread
impact on all automakers in the US and Canada. Automaker
Toyota said that it's three D plants in Ontario closed
for the rest of the week because of parts shortages,

(30:51):
and a production has also been curtailed in Georgetown, Kentucky.
More on the U S side of things, GM, Jeep
and Honda all hours cut and assembly lines shut down
at their factories across Michigan and Ohio. Michigan Governor Gretchen
Whittemore urged Canadian authorities to quickly resolve the stand off,
saying it's hitting paychecks and production lines and that is unacceptable.

(31:14):
The federal Public Safety Minister has said that the Royal
Canadian amount of police reinforcements are being sent to Windsor,
Ottawa and to Coots, Alberta, where the other border blockade
is happening. With political and economic pressure amounting. Windsor Mayor
Drew Dilkins announced that the city would seek a court
injunction to end the occupation, saying that the economic harm

(31:36):
is just not sustainable and it must come to an end.
On Thursday, February tenth, the Biden administration urged Prime Minister
Justin Trudeau's government on Thursday to use its federal powers
to end the truck blockade. At the other side of
the Detroit border. Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of
products have been held back for days as fifty to
sixty vehicles and around a hundred anti mandate protesters camp

(31:59):
out on the main road that leads on and off
the bridge. And yes, it is ironic that the same
people who are trying to sell Canadians fake stories about
failing supply lines and empty shelves are now causing those
supply lines to fail and causing those shelves to go empty.
The irony is not lost on me, but it may
be lost on the convoy participants. Throughout running these episodes,

(32:21):
I was fortunate enough to get to talk to multiple
people who have been on the ground in downtown Ottawa.
One such of these people's is Peter Smith, an investigative
journalist for the Canadian Anti Hate Network. We recorded our
conversation and I'm going to include some audio clips throughout
the rest of the episode. We started off by discussing
what made this protest movement pop off in this specific

(32:43):
time and place. I do you think it was maybe
capitalizing on a moment, but also a fair amount of luck.
You know, since two thousand ninety, the same organizers have
attempted to put together other convoys, you know, generally never
rising to the amount of attention that they had into
that in nineteen Um. You know, this convoy was also

(33:04):
planned long before they specifically started focusing on truckers, and
then it was it was a galvanizing issue. It resonated
with people who are frustrated with the Trudeau government. Um
and just they're they're handling of of health measures as
well as just became a like a vehicle for expressing

(33:26):
their general dissatisfaction with their own provinces, like most of
our health mandates are provincial, like the Alberta government is
handing down what's happening in Alberta. UM. So it's it's
not just it's not just a federal issue, but coming
down here and occupying the streets of Ottawa and that
now we're seeing occupying most of our major cities. UM.

(33:51):
You know, ones like Winnipeg gets significantly less attention, but
are incredibly disruptive locally, um and in some cases more
kind of insinior than the one that we have out
here where you know, participants and organizers are desperately trying
to clamp down on on any individuals who's engaging in
haraspment or uh well or is more common blaming it

(34:13):
on liberal plants. Um. Yeah, it just it became this
kind of expression of all of the frustration and very
quickly drew attention even from people who have been dismissive
of it very early on because of some of the organizers. Um,
once it really started to galvanate, galvanized attention and of
course money. Uh if people couldn't couldn't stay away. I

(34:38):
mean to the point that we even have mainstream conservative
politicians now getting on board with it, including the man
who's very likely to be the future leader of the
Conservative Party here. I mean, we're in a very unique
moment um, you know, are our far right and kind
of conspiracy culture in Canada has also been getting better
at organizing over the course of the pandemic. Wants to

(34:59):
get like all major cities have and many small towns
continue to have anti mandate um anti lockdown protests. We
usually refer to them as the COVID conspiracy movement, just
because of how and heavily heavily informed. It is by
conspiratorial thinking. Um So, it's it's like you had a
large amount of people kind of spending the past two

(35:21):
years and like a on the ground boot camp of
how to organize within these cities and how to get
people's attention, and of course, like like a lot of
the far right here, it fragmented. There was a lot
of infighting. Uh. And then you know, once they became
a central point that was was galvanizing a lot of attention.
It started receiving international attention. You know, There's been some

(35:42):
questions about the source of some of the money, but
certainly the initial totals seemed to be organically Canadian. Yeah. Um,
it just became too big to fall apart, essentially, at
least at this point. Um. There has been some spats
of infighting, but mostly you know, the most polarizing figures

(36:02):
are either just keeping their head down or in some
cases even choosing to stay away from the main events
so as not to be a distraction. Um there's a lot.
One of the lines I see a lot is like
this is the moment, this is for all the marvels. Um.
So there's a huge amount of importance being placed on
that what actually happens, like whether they're able to paint

(36:26):
what we've the like the actual rolling back of band
adates that we were already starting to see before the
convoy began, um as some type of victory for them,
um or if this leads to further disillusionment. You know,
we don't really know at this point, but I think
this moment is going to be a propaganda tool um

(36:47):
and kind of a the point of I think it's
gonna be a propaganda tool and like a point of
motivation for a long time from your like both on
the ground stuff and just from monitoring stuff online. What
do you think like the actual actionable intention was once
they arrived in Ottawa, Like do you think they had

(37:09):
a clear plan of what to do or was it
more like let's go here and then we'll figure things out. Well,
initially there there was a manum Initially there was a
memorandum of understanding which laid out kind of the points
of what the initial organizers were hoping to accomplish, something
they called the Operation may Or hug Um, which includes

(37:31):
having the Governor General and our Senate, both of whom
are unelected uh dissolved parliament and reform the government immediately
after we had a federal election. UM. Since then, the
message has evolved like they're trying to stay very very
like on script with this just being about freedom, um,

(37:54):
this just being about mandates. You know, initially there was
a lot of attempts to even get people to stop
mentioning the vaccine, though those seems to kind of fallen
by the wayside, especially when you start looking at the speakers.
It is interesting to kind of wonder what the actual
goal is there. They've started meeting with public officials, you know,

(38:16):
there is some type of negotiation going on. Um. Obstensibly
the goal is just to have these border restrictions lifted
on people on truckers who are unvaccinated returning from the US.
You know. The obvious thing is the point out that
the US still has a very similar policy in reverse
agein here would have no impact um on their ability

(38:38):
to to avoid this quarantine. But um, it seems like
the goals are fairly murky, and that's almost deliberate because
then they can declare victory kind of when it suits them.
Ambiguity around protust goals, demands and purpose itself can be
a useful tactic. The Crime Think zine slash article titled

(39:00):
why we Don't make Demands makes such a case. I
don't have time to summarize it here, but I recommend
you give the article a look if you're interested in
this train of thought as an intentional tactic. But on
the flip side, you know, vague and directionless protest without
much of a focus on a specific goal can also
cause protests to peter her out without having any lasting

(39:20):
impact on the world. A discussion worth having is how
the individual people that make up the convay participants have
been convinced to take part in an occupation protest and
how what is considered valid political action has broadened in
their own heads if they are the ones doing the action,
of course, because from their point of view, since they

(39:41):
are doing it, the cause must be valid and therefore
the action is justified. In we had the Wetsuin rail
blockades UM that was put on by various members of
our first nations and then people who supported them, you know,
the same politicians they're meeting with the truckers, embracing them UM,

(40:03):
saying that our current prime ministers demonizing them UM by
kind of casting them as under desirables we're we're you know,
we're actively calling people sitting on train tracks as terrorists
who are disrupting our economy. Um. Obviously, in the context
of the pandemic pandemic, that's very different because there has
been kind of mass disruption too to our economy. But

(40:27):
this kind of picking and choosing, of of suiting the
narrative to court far eight voters seems to be popular.
You know how, Conservatives typically aren't seen as the protesting type. Right,
Conservatives are supposed to be the type of people who
drive by the protest and yelled get a job. They're
not the ones who are out in the streets picketing.
But first of all, that's not really true. Historically, in

(40:50):
just the past one years, there's always been conservative protests
for you know, regressive and reactionary goals. Also, conservatives have
been much better at organising off the street for their
political policies, specifically around like abortion or Christian dominionism, antiqueer legislation,
or recent stuff around anti CRT and just the mainstream

(41:12):
racism denial that's been propagated through media. But even if
there is historical precedent for conservative protest, bridging the gap
of what is seen as valid political action in the
minds of these convoy attendees did still take place over
just the past few years, just the past two years, specifically,
there's been so much conservative protests around COVID. A whole

(41:35):
bunch of the people at the Ottawa protest probably five
years ago would have never seen themselves going to protest
in the Canadian capital. Right Like, if you told them
a few years ago that you're going to drive all
these kilometers to the Parliament to camp out in the
cold for weeks to protest against the government and its
rules for helping not spread the deadliest pandemic in a century,

(41:58):
they would have probably laughed out of the room. So
what is the logical progression of conservative people who generally,
you know, look down on any type of protest, especially
occupy style protests, to the point where they are driving
all the way to the capital to camp outside the building.
To Hong Korn's day and night. A lot of that
political change the past few years correlates to the pandemic,

(42:19):
to the social isolation and the great opportunity for the
fast spread of conspiratorial politics that it offered over the
course of the pandemic. There's been this huge blending of
rhetoric online and especially in Canada, this kind of villainization
of the other side. Increasingly less and less criticism against
the current government is less based on its policy and

(42:40):
more based on its figurehead and the image of Trudeau
as a globalist politics as opposition to whatever Trudeau and
the Liberals are doing. The result of that is just
a whole bunch of escalation, because you have to keep
always being antagonistic and always being contrarian no matter what
the opposition actually does. The thing is a lot of

(43:01):
people who used to just be kind of more general conservatives,
as they get radicalized online and get caught up with
farther right extremest elements, most of them still view themselves
as like the norm. They don't think they've politically changed
the past five years, but if you look at their
rhetoric and actions, they definitely have kind of substantially, But

(43:23):
they still view themselves the same way they would when
they were voting forced to even harper. Unless you're a
self described extremist, you typically view everything that you do
and say as normal and reasonable. Like you, you are
the actual normal. Everyone else is shifted either way relative
to you. During our talk, I asked investigative journalist Peter

(43:44):
Smith on his opinions about what sorts of political and
social factors have allowed the occupation in blockades to have
enough numbers to last and continue on so long. Um.
Kind of having spent a lot of time on the
ground at the to a convoy just talking to people
as like as a normal guy without my press hat on. Um,

(44:05):
it does seem like one there's a lot of owner
operators there, like when it comes to the trucks themselves. Um,
these people are the business owners um or like very
close like they're kind of independent contractors exactly. Um. I
think there was a report that came out showing a
survey that done that like roughly half of the people

(44:26):
there were unemployed. Um. So like the financial promise of
all the money raised may have been a big draw.
Like not to say that these people don't legitimately believe
the reasons absolutely, um, but it created an incentive. Um.
But then having roughly half of them, you know, still
having jobs. You know, it comes down to a little

(44:48):
bit more than just money, Like it's about actual belief,
actual ideology. Um. But it is interesting for a large
amount of people who were extremely worried about supply lines
about people having enough food initially, um to kind of
creating this self fulfilling prophecy where where that seems to
be the main tactic is just to grind as much

(45:10):
to a halt as they can, using as much as
many people as they can muster. And then just the
kind of general hands off approach that law enforcement is
taking with them, um has allowed them to organize better,
to evolve their tactics to be more effective. Um. Like,
I certainly don't think a policing solution is is what's

(45:31):
going to solve this, and you know there's a lot
of calls for that, which is I think just going
to result in a lot of people getting hurt in
the street. Um. But but yeah, like it is interesting
that how it kind of it came from the West
mostly and then landed in Ottawa and then kind of
spread out from there once people realized it was effective,

(45:53):
once people realized, you know, there was there was safety
in these numbers. Um. It's it's ron, It's drawn so
many people to it, it's it's honestly shock. It's it
has been shocking, truly how quickly it is spread and
how effective it has been. It's not January six in
the sense that like people are running around Parliament and

(46:14):
like trying to find you know, every liberal politician, but
in the sense that it's a large amount of people
motivated by conspiracy. Yeah, and that's where I view the parallel.
And because they and honestly, the the actual sincerity of
it poses more of a political threat than the animosity
of January six. Um, in terms of like long term

(46:36):
like actual social change, and using this type of like
occupation as a tactic, the more sincere you are, the
more of an actual political threat you can be in
the long term, because yeah, if they start, if they
storm Parliament, then I'll get shut down in a day,
and then they will be demonized and then then the
problem is over. Um at least at least in the
short term. Right. Um. But if you actually like do
this sincerely and actually get people to buckle on deer pressure,

(47:00):
then that's like actual successful politics, Like that is you're
you're actually doing politics objectively. Well, um, and that's more
interesting to point out. The problem isn't protesting, Like protesting
as a concept isn't the issue. The problem isn't even blockade. No,
the problem is not blockades either. Yeah, all these things
are just tactics, and tactics are value neutral. Um usually

(47:23):
you know, it's until you get to take genocide when
it's usually that's a kind of kind of kind of
a downer generally. Um. But in generally I kind of
view put protest tactics as more value neutral. It's about
kind of what the underlying cultural motivation is and what
they want the results to be. And even still, you know,

(47:45):
some of the some of the points they have are
not completely invalid um, but once it gets caught up
in a cultural war kind of mindset, it's like you
have to oppose it just because they're on the other side. Um.
So I kind of want to talk about like the
re sens why they are actually kind of bad, like
like for like like a very sincere way, but then

(48:06):
also kind of point out some things that are like yeah,
maybe in the see these are things we should consider
and it shouldn't take this type of occupation to have
us reconsider some of these rules and regulations. Yeah, like completely,
Like I think there's no issue with having being uncomfortable
with mandates, um Like, even if you feel they're necessary,

(48:26):
Like being uncomfortable with the amount of state power that
is being accumulated. Um. You know, in Canada, you know
there have been sweeping changes to the way that we
live our lives. Like I know that that's been universal. Um,
but there there is not a province that hasn't really suffered,
like hasn't really impacted people's lives dealing with covid um.

(48:50):
And you know this is this is one of the
biggest issues when trying to point out disparate responses in policing. Um, well,
it's like, oh, it's like, so we should treat the
convoy participants like they treated everybody else. And it's it's
like no, Like like you know, the the police chief

(49:11):
of Ottawa got a lot of ship for saying he
doesn't think there's a policing solution, and it's like, I
do agree with the criticism of him because he has
attempted to kick responsibility to just about every other level
of government available. Um. But dragging people out like towing
their vehicles and taking away their livelihood and dragging a
lot of people out into the street and then into

(49:32):
jail is not gonna resolve these issues now, and if anything,
it could could bring more support. Like again, there was
another report today that I think it's of people who
have camped out have children with them, Like, you know,
this is gonna be an incredibly traumatic experience. It's gonna

(49:52):
help radicalize more people, and it's gonna lend credence to
their cause if they just go in and bust heads.
And it's like if main focus of this convoy had
been in Toronto, where we have an incredibly aggressive police
force when it comes to like homeless encampments for instance. Um,
you know, I think the result could have been very different. Yeah.

(50:16):
And then because a lot of stuff around the question
of governments and stuff. Yeah, it's it's the type of
things that can agree with with like right wing libertarians.
Is Yeah, you do have a lot of points I
can simplize with around the state and around control, but
the way you address them don't actually address the underlying

(50:36):
power structures which give the state legitimacy in the first place. Yeah. Absolutely,
And the world that you kind of want in the
end is still a world full of hierarchies, just hierarchies
that make your life easier and skew and your favor
just like asking for two unelected bodies to reoplate replace
your democratically elected government. It's like we had ten years

(51:00):
of Stephen Harper, like, um, people were unhappy and extremely
critical of that government from the center and from the left.
But you know, there wasn't this kind of broad support
for the idea that that government was illegitimate, which is
I think what we see mostly today, which is the
most disturbing and kind of anti democratic part of the

(51:20):
whole pot. Yeah, and that's the kind of what The
last thing I want to talk about is like, what
do you see like because eventually people will go home,
either out of exhaustion, it'll maybe fizzle away, like like
the protests in Portland did. Maybe they'll eventually police will
kind of clear out small sections, um Like wh who knows,
But like, this is not going knock one here, But

(51:44):
this this isn't gonna last like a year, right, It's not.
It's not gonna like that. I don't think they're gonna
have thousands of people campt out in front of the
government forever. Um. So what but what are the actual
long term political ramifications of this, because we already saw
the leader of the Conservative Party step down. Um, So,
like I want to talk about like specifically with the
guy who's probably more most likely to take his place.

(52:06):
How this just does kind of play into the more
negative aspects of the convoy, is like how they're going
to use this as a political symbol and a political
tool to push for policies and forms the government and
actions that will end up hurting a lot of h
and will up hurting a lot of people. Um in
terms of you know, how how it's going to be
used in propaganda and rhetoric. Yeah, well, certainly if we

(52:30):
have um, you know, strong legal ramifications put in place
that make it easier for provinces, the federal government whatever
to crackdown on on protests in general, which I think
is something that might be very attractive to our current government. Um.
You know that's going to have obviously very far reaching effects.

(52:52):
You know, one of our opposition parties, um, which is
you know, generally further to the left then than the Liberals,
the n d P UM, their leader was proposing ways
to stop foreign funding from coming in to supply to
the protests. Um. You know, once again, we we had
protests a couple of years ago by indigenous people and

(53:13):
people who support indigenous movements. Um. You know that that
raised money using the same platforms and the same methods.
You know, So I worry about like one of the
legal ramifications like to just this this idea, like if
the government does crack down very hard, this idea of
real grievance and alienation that the West has already been

(53:34):
struggling with. Like we've had a real renewed separatist movement,
not from Quebec um where it's generally been the most successful,
but from the Western provinces, you know, not not really
getting close to obtaining any real political power, but you know,
kind of steadily gaining support, pulling a showing that you know,

(53:55):
there is a real feeling of Western alienation, that they
don't feel represented, and you know a lot of the
ways our government are set up actually makes that true. Um. Yeah, Ultimately,
as people I think become more and more disenfranchised, Um,
when government action begins to kind of justify imagined ideas

(54:17):
of oppression, um, you're gonna have a real hardening. And
since the government in power is a progressive one is
or at least one that espouses you know, tries tries
to reach for progressive values, you know, there's a good
chance that those issues are gonna get caught up with
what is just like a quote unquote leftist agenda, whereas

(54:39):
up until probably a decade ago, those things were very
much seen as kind of inherent Canadian values that were
embraced by both sides. UM. The current candidate for leadership,
he hasn't been he hasn't won the seat in the
the Conservative Party yet. But Pierre Pouliver has kind of
always flirted to some agree with UM far right talking

(55:03):
points like I don't I specialize in hey groups, I
don't want to make too many pronouncements about mainstream conservatism. UM.
But even by kind of members of the very far
right who often have turned against the Conservative Party over
the course of the pandemic, He's often referred to as
the adult in the room. UM. And while still a politician,

(55:24):
kind of their best bet for getting someone in office
that they would actually like to see in power. UM,
which could I mean could be interesting to see how
they if they will be continued support for the PPC
and two to four years. UM. But yeah, I just
think there there is a real hardening of the right.

(55:45):
And it's not like the Overton windows shifting. It's just
like it's getting wider, like more and more is being
incorporated as opposed to be just going in one direction
or another. That disenfranchisement is a driving factor. Like they
view this populist kind of uprising or up swelling um
that they're seeing now as a function of democracy or

(56:07):
like part of how democracy is supposed to function. So again,
like if if you talk to them, they will quite
earnestly say many of them anyway, we'll quite earnestly say
it like this is about freedom, is about having my
voice heard, Yeah, but without a lot of thought about
how that will actually functioned in a broader scale. I

(56:29):
mean that just plays into like alienation as like a
general concepts, right, Like we're so disconnected from everything about
our lives, disconnected from you know, the way we work,
disconnected from our interactions with other people, were disconnected from
like you know, money, our food, you know, it's all
the stuff, and like disconnected from politics. Is that the
only way that you can actually something that feels real,

(56:50):
the only thing that actually feels like reality, is going
to do this thing in person because everything else is
so disjointed. Um, it's the there is so much that
space in between the phenomenon and the actual thing that is,
it leaves you wanting something, but you don't know quite what.
So yeah, you're going to drive to Ottawa because that
feels so much more real. That feels like actual politics,

(57:12):
and it kind of it's like that's like, that's that's
that's always when it feels like when you're when you're
like when you're when you're protesting, it's like, yeah, I'm
actually doing politics now, because that's how everything gets set up,
is by that type of like you know, getting people
on the ground, and it's it's such a more personal
way to engage than you know, putting a no into

(57:33):
a box every two to four years. Like yeah, I
I imagine it does feel substantive. And then I mean,
voting power is centered in our urban centers as well,
so there is there is a real disconnect with the
representation that that rural people again Western the Western provinces received.

(58:01):
I now want to specifically talk about police response and
the way that this occupation and blockades being handled will
affect the political organizing in the future. I think initially
the majority of police concerns and what they were actually
focused on responding to was fears around the convoy storming parliament,
or if the convoys were going to do something exceedingly violent,

(58:24):
which I don't think was necessarily the convoys actionable objective
from the beginning, if you listen to what they were
actually saying, it will it was more about choking out
the city and applying pressure on government officials. But the
initial non violence, coupled with the shield of being conservative,
white and middle class whom you know the police are
less likely to react as brutally to allowed time for

(58:45):
the infrastructure to rise. That let the protest turn into
a full scale occupation of a North American city. The
first real action police took against the occupation was on
the evening of Sunday, February six, demonstrators were gathering for
dinner than dozens of officers and riot gear carrying munitions
launchers raided a camp after footage of stockpiles and gas

(59:08):
cans went viral days previous, in an attempt to cut
the supply route. Police say they seized around three thousand
and seven hundred liters of fuel and two vehicles, including
a diesel tank, but within hours of the raid, protesters
from the camp broadcast reassurance to their supporters and continue
to organize just googlizing smarter tactics. The day after the

(59:31):
police raid, protesters continued to deliver fuel to downtown truckers
as they executed a coordinated effort to exhaust police resources.
Hundreds of demonstrators carried fuel cans, some empty, some not,
just right past officers who mostly stood watched as hundreds
of people trolled them with decoy cans, while others smuggled

(59:51):
in more fuel within the safety of the large crowd
right in the middle of the day. Ottawa Police Deputy
Chief Steve Bell said demonstrators were filling cast cans with
water to distract officers, attempting to subvert their efforts, and
that one officer was swarmed by the crowd while trying
to confiscate fuel. To date, police have made around thirty

(01:00:13):
arrests and issued thousands of tickets, launched more than eighty
criminal investigations, and four hundred plus hate incidents are also
being investigated. Earlier this week, Peter Slowly said that the
force would turn up the heat as the police started
to crack down on anyone bringing material aid such as fuel,
to protesters. Police dismantled a protest camp near the Redeau

(01:00:35):
Canal downtown and a fuel operation on the Coventry Road
east of the Core, but some trucks and demonstrators continued
to occupy downtown streets and the staging area on Coventry.
Police say that they need an additional eighteen hundred more
reinforcements from federal and provincial governments to help end the crisis.

(01:00:57):
The entire Ottawa Police force numbers on the twelve hundred,
but it's been supplemented with several hundred officers from the
Ontario Provisional Police and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, as
well as local police forces elsewhere in Ontario over the
past few weeks. Near the end of the second week
of occupation, dug Ford, the Premier of Ontario, declared a

(01:01:19):
state of emergency for the entire province, warning protesters demanding
an end to pandemic restrictions that if they do not disband,
there will be consequences and they will be severe. He
said that those who continue to impede the movement of
people and goods could face fines of up to one
hundred thousand Canadian dollars, up to a year in prison,
and the revocation of their driver's license. During the cold

(01:01:42):
morning of Sunday, February, police largely cleared the portion of
the self styled freedom of convoy blocking the Ambassador Bridge
US Canada border crossing on the road between Windsor, Ontario,
and Detroit. The clearing marked a week since the border
blockade had begun. Police made several arrests and towed vehicles

(01:02:03):
in connection to the demonstration that had disrupted traffic and
the flow of goods after law enforcement enforced the injunction
enacted two days prior, ordering truckers and our supporters to
leave anticketed and towed vehicles. A defined core of some
two dozen protesters had remained on foot as temperatures dropped
below freezing, but around nine thirty local time, police had

(01:02:24):
mostly cleared the streets to the bridge and were deployed
around the area. It was unclear, however, how large police
presents would remain to prevent vehicles and demonstrators from returning there. Meanwhile,
in the capital of Ottawa, police grappled with an influx
of anti government and anti vaccine mandate demonstrators for a
third straight weekend. Despite both local and provincial officials declaring

(01:02:46):
states of emergency, law enforcement appeared to be unsuccessful in
attempts to get the Freedom Convoy protesters to leave by
threatening them with fines, prison time, and loss of their licenses.
Police have not made any large or to astrupt to
the convoys in Ottawa similar to what they did on
Sunday in Windsor, Ontario. Ottawa Police say that over four

(01:03:08):
thousand demonstrators were in this city throughout the day. However,
on Monday, February fourteenth, police action was taken against the
blockade at the Coots border crossing that had shut down
cross border travel for almost three weeks. The RCNP said
in a press release early Monday morning that they became
aware of a small organized group within the larger protest

(01:03:28):
at Coots, which led to eleven arrests. They say that
they hit information that the group had access to a
cash of firearms and ammunition in three trailers. During the raid,
officers seized long guns, handguns, multiple sets of body armor,
a machete, and a large commantity of ammunition and some
high capacity magazines. Later that day, to other arrests were

(01:03:51):
made in connection to the blockade. Following the police raid
and the thirteen arrests, some other organizers of the protest
said a decision was reached voluntarily to leave the Coots area.
Around Tuesday morning. The organizers made a statement saying, quote,
we were infiltrated by an extreme element. Our objective was
to be here peacefully to keep that message going. We

(01:04:13):
wanted to peacefully leave Coots and return to our families.
As of Tuesday, both the border crossing at the Ambassador
Bridge to Detroit and the coot Sport of entry to
Montana are open once again. As the border opened back
up in Coots the previous blockade, protesters and police embraced
each other with hugs and handshakes. Meanwhile, on Monday, Prime

(01:04:38):
Minister Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergency's Act for the first
time in Canadian history to give the federal government and
police extra powers to handle the ongoing blockades and protests
against pandemic restrictions. Here's how the measures were taking today
will help get the situation under control. The police will

(01:04:59):
be given more tools to restore order in places where
public assemblies can constitute illegal and dangerous activities, such as
blockades and occupations as seen in Ottawa, the Ambassador Bridge
and elsewhere. These tools include strengthening their ability to impose
fines or imprisonment. The government will designate secure and protect

(01:05:26):
places and infrastructure that are critical to our economy and
people's jobs, including border crossings and airports. We cannot and
will not allow illegal and dangerous activities to continue. The
Emergencies Act will also allow the government to make sure

(01:05:47):
essential services are rendered, for example, in order to tow
vehicles blocking roads. In addition, financial institutions will be authorized
or directed to rent under essential services to help address
the situation, including by regulating and prohibiting the use of

(01:06:07):
property to fund or support illegal blockades. Finally, will enable
the RCMP to enforce municipal by laws and provincial offenses
were required. This is what the Emergencies Act does. The
Emergencies Act, which replaced the War Measures Act in the

(01:06:30):
nineteen eighties, defines a national emergency as a temporary, urgent,
and critical situation that seriously endangers the lives, health, or
safety of Canadians and is of such proportions or nature
as to extend the capacity of authority of a province
to deal with it. The unprecedented deployment of the Emergencies

(01:06:50):
Act gives police quote more tools to restore order in
places where public assembly is constitute illegal and dangerous activities
such as blockades and occupations, according to Trudeau, but the
thing is police already had all the tools they needed.
The illegal occupations and blockades were already illegal, they just
didn't want to enforce it. You can look at how

(01:07:12):
the coots, protesters and the police are hugging right. This
isn't a matter of having not enough tools. All this
does is set a terrible precedent for using this type
of extra power in the future to respond to protests,
because the cops are still going to take a very
gentle approach if they ever are forced to take physical
action against the Ottawa occupation while using the extra powers

(01:07:35):
of the Emergencies Act. The Finance Minister of Canada also
announced on Monday a broadening of the laws regarding financing
of crime and terrorism to now include crowdfunding and also
extra surveillance measures against people who donate and use crowd
funds for criminal acts, including illegal protests. As part of

(01:07:56):
invoking the Emergencies Act, we are announcing the following immediate actions. First,
we are broadening the scope of Canada's anti money lauder
laundering and terrorist financing rules so that they cover crowdfunding
platforms and the payment service providers they use. These changes

(01:08:18):
cover all forms of transactions, including digital assets such as cryptocurrencies.
The illegal blockades have highlighted the fact that crowdfunding platforms
and some of the payment service providers they use are
not fully captured under the Proceeds of Crime and Terrorist

(01:08:40):
Financing Act. Our banks and financial institutions are already obligated
to report to the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Center
of Canada or FINTRACK. As of today, all crowdfunding platforms
and the payment service providers they use must register with

(01:09:03):
fintrack and they must report large and suspicious transactions to fintrack.
This will help mitigate the risk that these platforms receive
illicit funds, increase the quality and quantity of intelligence received
by fintrack, and make more information available to support investigations

(01:09:29):
by law enforcement into these illegal blockades. That's kind of
all the information I have at the time of recording.
So now I'm going to talk more about the potential
political effects that this protest could have, not just on Canada,
but also in how we view protest in general. So
the actual result of liberal media framing this type of

(01:09:50):
protest as scary terrorism is laying the groundwork for brutal
police actions against massive, mostly non violent, intact smart protests
to be more normalized across Canada. An extremely brutal police
response and harsh charges are unlikely to be leveled against
a protest made up of these conservatives, but will absolutely

(01:10:13):
happen to any future progressive social justice cause, especially if
they use occupy style tactics. The more powers police obtain
and the legal precedents that are set well of long
lasting implications with legal consequences that will always come down
harder on the left than they do on the right.
Police will do a bare minimum to resolve this conservative

(01:10:35):
so called freedom protest, but then we'll use it as
a justification to grab greater resources and power and use
this movement to justify severe preventative protest suppression in the future.
If liberals can widely celebrate and thirst for harsh crackdowns
of a protest made up of white conservatives and their families,

(01:10:56):
calling the entire movement a criminal enterprise, and cheering as
police steal property of the protesters despite what the majority
of these protesters are doing, just being kind of camping
on side of a street. Think of all of the
ways that consent can be manufactured to clamp down on
any future large scale protest, especially when the movement isn't

(01:11:16):
made up of a bunch of regular white people and
their kids, and instead of actually challenges the underlying power
structures that prop up White Canada, instead of just reinforcing it,
like the convoy does. I have a similar issue around
all of the hubbub around the fundraisers right. Restricting where
crowdfunded resources can come from will only result in future

(01:11:37):
political social justice causes to be negatively impacted, whether that
be bail funds or supporting indigenous blockades from out of country.
On February ten, the Canadian federal government effectively shut down
the Freedom Convoys Gives end Go fundraiser, making it illegal
for the funds to be used in any way. Government's

(01:11:57):
setting the precedent for shutting down a protest crowdfunding is
not a good thing now. Any future of protest bail
funds and crowdfunding for the West set in blockade will
always be in jeopardy, and by no means saying that
action against a generally hateful, anti democratic, and dangerously conspiratorial
protest isn't justified, but just when governments start using it

(01:12:19):
as reasons for more power and creating new precedents for
years in jail and hundreds of thousands of dollars and
fines for an occupation. Protest like that shouldn't be cheered
on because those things will only come back to bite
progressive causes a lot harder than they will be used
against the conservative convoyers. There has increasingly been attempts at

(01:12:41):
counter protesting the Ottawa Convoy and the various Convoy inspired
protests around the country, many of which faced harsher police
response than any of the convey protests have up until
this point, but those community led counterprotesting efforts are vital.
The ram Ranch resistance actions are still ongoing. On Sunday night,
the u r L for the Gifts End Go fundraiser

(01:13:03):
was hacked by activists who redirected the page to a
video of the frozen song let It Go, accompanying a
manifesto condemning the fundraiser and the Convoy. And that's great,
and that is wonderful counter protesting. That is very in
terms of effective ways to shut down fundraising efforts for
basically pseudo fascist, you know, anti anti democratic, conspiracy led movement.

(01:13:27):
That's great, right, And this was hours after it was
officially confirmed to via data leaks that around fifty percent
of gives send go donations for the convoy came from
the United States, around came from Canada, and then two
percent came from the UK, although I think it's worth
mentioning that for the initial ten million dollar go fund
me we only have confirmation that around thirty three thousand

(01:13:50):
dollars came from the United States. To understand how the
convoy flash blockade is working, it's useful to get away
from painting all the participupends themselves as extremists, because the
fact that regular Canadian right wingers are what's making this
possible has a whole bunch of other implications that people
aren't really talking about. I'm seeing a lot of Canadians

(01:14:13):
who are just really upset about how the convoys affecting
cities and the country as a whole, which, you know, reasonable,
I am, it is a thing to be upset about.
But then just jumping to insist that it must be inorganic,
I think is kind of faulty. Focusing instead on theories
around foreign influences and ashotype organizing, elements of which have

(01:14:34):
been present, sure, but also the impact in which is
I think kind of been overblown. But even if those
things are completely true and major factors, that still overlooks
the fact that there are thousands of real Canadians from
around the country camped up in Ottawa, and the majority
of those Canadians sitting in the streets are not Nazis

(01:14:54):
right or really even extremists, and most of those people
are not receiving personal funding from dark money billionaires. They
consider themselves regular, working class, freedom loving Canadians. It's much
harder to reconcile a homegrown movement full of participants that
have slid further to the right over the past two
years due to rampant online misinformation coupled with ineffectual government

(01:15:17):
support during the pandemic. It's easy to point to so
called organizers who are definitely more fashion, large scale sketchy donations,
and far right media figures who are trying to jump
support for the convoy. But those things alone don't get
many of thousands and thousands of people and their kids
to drive across country for a cause that they earnestly believe.

(01:15:37):
In the years of political alienation and disenfrantisement that caused
that to happen is a lot harder to solve than
just cracking down on organizers and donations. Watching homegrown reactionary
street politics that one day can grow into an actual
far right, populist and fascist movement is a lot more
frightening than the idea of overseas astroturft organizing. Not that

(01:16:01):
those things are mutually exclusive always, but I'm just trying
to make a good point here, despite cries to make
this Canada's January six, in a way, the Convoy is
more effective the January six in terms of the evolution
of valid political action. It's pushed the boundary on what
is deemed as acceptable and even possible for large scale

(01:16:22):
occupations and supply line blockades in the major North American
urban setting. People who would never consider themselves militant are
now involved in multiple border crossing blockades. That's cost hundreds
of millions of dollars. And to get to this point,
so many things need to happen. COVID isolation offered fertile

(01:16:42):
ground for people's politics to unknowing these slide more to
the extreme. The many in person connections that help prevent
people from falling prey to conspiratorial thinking ceased to exist.
General frustration at Trudeau and the perceived notion of liberalism
and elitism has been steadily growing since, and all that
mounted up frustration is now being released, and as a result,

(01:17:04):
the invisible Overton window of acceptable political action has shifted
right in regular conservatives minds, and a movement like this
is hard to dissolve. Police actions have the chance of
escalating the situation and elongating people's willingness to protest, and
even if more mandates get removed, that doesn't mean the

(01:17:25):
protests will stop either. Removing the Alberta mandates didn't stop
the Coots border blockade, for instance, because you know, even
if all the mandates in Canada get rescinded, which which
they won't and whish they shouldn't, But even if they did,
that would still leave the US's Vaccine Board requirements which
are preventing on vaccinated truckers from entering the States anyway.

(01:17:45):
Similar tactics and protests inspired by the Canadian convoy have
broken out overseas in recent weeks. The convoy en blocking
inspired protests in New Zealand have led to frequent clashes
with police outside New Zealand's Parliament building for the past
two weeks. French protesters formed their own Freedom Convoy against
the government's vaccine mandates. The convoy converged on the Shan's

(01:18:08):
Aliza in Paris on February second, where protesters were met
by seven thousand police members and tear gas. Unlike Canada,
where the government failed to stop a blockade at the
U S border, French authorities got way ahead of this
protest by stopping at least five hundred vehicles before they
even got to Paris. Only a few decent cars made

(01:18:28):
it to the Seans Alize, and the police ticketed three
hundred protesters who were present at the demonstration. Protests against
government coronavirus restrictions have cut on in Europe and other
parts of the world in recent days, but they remained
more subdued than the Canadian demonstrations. A convoy of about
five hundred vehicles, mostly from France who are barred from
entering Brussels of just a few days ago, leaving several

(01:18:51):
hundred protesters to gather on foot at a city square instead.
Another convoy of several hundred vehicles blocked access to the
Seat of the Netherlands froment in the Hague on February twelve,
And of course, many political figures in the US are
really trying to get a convoy esque protest kicked off
here in the United States. Tucker Carlson and Fox News

(01:19:13):
in general has covered the convoy NonStop, giving it tons
and tons of support. Tucker has said that the Canadian
trucker convoy is the single most successful human rights protest
in a generation. Senator Rand Paul So that he hopes
the trucker has come to America and specifically two clog
up cities. At least nine members of Congress, all Republicans,

(01:19:35):
have all publicized their support for the convoy. Participants on Twitter.
Self appointed organizers for a US based convoy have found
quick support from conservative outlets. US convoy organizer Brian Brace
has been making the rounds on Fox News, sitting down
with Carlson, as well as the networks Fox and Friends
Morning Show. Brace says that he hoped to organize a

(01:19:57):
cross country convoy from California out to Washington, d C
starting around March fourth. Routes to converge on d C
from across the country are being planned, while the group's
telegram channel is actively soliciting volunteers and donations of items
like tents, generators, and p A systems. I kind of
hope people on the left can look at the tactics

(01:20:19):
being used in Canada, some that have worked and some
that have faltered. But in terms of like anti capitalist action,
you can't do much better than causing hundreds and millions
of dollars and losses to international trade between two of
the biggest countries in the world. Right now, no protest
movement can be replicated, but any movement can be analyzed,

(01:20:41):
and that can inform how folks approach future movements as
they spontaneously arise. And I at the very least hope
you have a better idea now of how only a
few thousand people can totally choke out a major city,
because we've talked about this possibility before. You know, a
group of people overwhelming local law enforcement and taking over
and shutting down a sizeable portion of a popular metropolitan area,

(01:21:04):
not to mention simultaneously blocking off supply lines, trade routes,
and international border crossings. The evolution of these medium scale
anti government resistance tactics is something we all should be
paying attention to as the political tensions continue to rise
right outside our doorstep, because it's always too late when
you realize the call it's coming from inside the house.

(01:21:28):
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