“It wasn’t that they just wanted to be heard. They wanted to be obeyed,” Canadian PM Justin Trudeau, on 25 November, told the Public Order Emergency Commission in Ottawa that is looking into the government’s use of the emergency powers. “I am absolutely, absolutely serene and confident that I made the right choice in agreeing with the invocation.”
Photo Credit: The RINJ Foundation / Toronto, Ontario.
Organizers of the Freedom Convoy Movement became leaders of an unruly mass of hooligans attracting more hooligans who caused some three dozen women, especially Ottawa nurses, to make complaints of sexual harassment. There is no color of right to the Freedom Convoy Movement considering the number of instruments of crime confiscations and serious criminal charges brought.
We always need to hear both sides of the story.
And the lights are all on, the world is watching now
People looking for truth, we must not fail them now
Be sure, before we close our eyes
Don’t walk away from here
Until you hear both sides.
No penalty must be levied against Canadians in the matter, unless their side of the story has been heard & fairly adjudicated by a credible court of jurisdiction
Weapons confiscated by the RCMP from Freedom Convoy-2022 18-Wheelers in Coutts Alberta. Photo Credit: RCMP
The (Canada) Emergencies Act R.S.C., 1985, c. 22 (4th Supp.), was a legal device available to the Canadian federal government when the Canadian capitol came under attack by a nation-wide, well-armed anti-vaxxer movement, seeking to change health-care regulations in Canada, and change the government.
Specifically, the movement wanted to end the vaccine requirement for Canadian truckers mandated to get a COVID-19 vaccination in order to cross the border into and out of the United States. It was a moot point because it was a reciprocal law. The US required the jab to enter their country.
Sensible people identified the Freedom Convoy movement as civil disobedience or civil unrest without a clear purpose. Many just inserted their own anti-vaxxer demands.
Lawyers defend their Freedom Convoy clients admirably
Lawyers we have heard arguing the case for the so-called “Freedom Convoy” do so with zeal. That is good. That is their job: blabber endless jabberwocky in the cases of clients who make no sense.
But here is the problem. It relates to the difficulties of the credulous Canadian who is credulous enough to believe Donald Trump and his bare-naked brain-fart about radiating the American population with deadly UV-C and pouring Draino or Lysol down their gullets.
The least bright lights in Canada shone brightly on that one. There are laws in Canada that protect credulous Canadians from malfeasance initiated by an exploitive advertiser but none against dreadful, really ignorant, dangerous American politicians like Donald Trump.
Even credulous Canadians know that they must not use heavy equipment as a weapon to change the Canadian government or change the course of public policy. When anyone carries a weapon to a demonstration, or drives a weapon to a demonstration, they are far outside the law and on their own.
If you are a 15-year-old schoolgirl protesting anywhere in Iran, you run the risk of being beaten, raped and killed, hence carrying a spray can of bear-repellant is not such a bad idea.
Maybe in Canada bear-repellant in the purse is not such a bad idea, depending on the prevalence of “bears” in the area of the protest.
Threatening to ram the government with 18-wheelers as some did in social media, isn’t fetching intelligent support.
In this case “bears” would be a freedom convoy trucker alleging his handle was “WoodPecker” who tells a scared nurse breaking into a run in downtown Ottawa as the still drunk “Wood-Pecker” explained his ‘woody-wood-pecker’ sure does get hard when he is a long way from home away from his wife and thus, she [the nurse], should join his party. She filed a complaint.
But bringing a 25-thousand-ton 18 wheeler to a protest march is off the wall. Bringing hundreds of such things demanding the Prime Minister be dragged from office is outright sedition.
Just like a Canadian may not use their passenger vehicle to attack anyone, they may not use their 35,000 to 80,000 pounds (36.3 thousand kilograms) 18-wheeler transport trucks as sledgehammers against the Canadian people for the purpose of forcing a change in government or a change in public health-care policy.
The government wasn’t asking people to drink Lysol or anything else unreasonable, it wanted folks to mask up and get vaccinated against an infectious disease that has killed some roughly 50 to 64 thousand Canadians. It was a moot point anyway to urge the government to remove the requirement for vaccination to move a rig across the border. It was a reciprocal regulation. The United States already required the jab.
Video: 11 February 2022 Editorial Still Stands
The conundrum over the question: “Was the Freedom Convoy Movement a threat to Canadian Security?” The answer is that the threat was arrested. Stopping the destabilization caused by the Freedom Convoy Movement prevented most potential security breaches.
The whole matter is in the Canadian courts to some extent. The rest is in the court of public opinion. Everybody has one, it seems. But few people have a qualified opinion. Like Phil Collins wrote, there are two sides to the story. “Don’t walk away from here until you hear both sides.”
Clearly, the Freedom Convoy was funded by foreigners, at least, America, Russia, Serbia and more. None of these countries do we give the right to change Canadian public policy.
In over 50 years working in journalism, including a good chunk of two decades working for Canada’s Maclean Hunter, I have developed many sources in the East and the West. Like Phil Collins wrote in his song, one always needs, “Both Sides of The Story”. That’s becoming rare but still the right way ahead.
To this day I have never revealed a source no matter how much pressure I have been exposed to by many authorities. That way I have maintained contacts for decades.
Why is that important?
Because I know the Freedom Convoy was funded partly by foreign instigators in a hybrid war with Canada. They were Russians using what could easily be described as legitimate methods via United States-based third parties, to help along a destabilizing movement that had the potential to shut down the capitol of a NATO country.
I know that information from reliable sources trusted for decades. I have those same types of informants in Canada and in the United States. We all agreed that this Freedom Convoy nonsense was exploited as a potential destabilization effort related to the incipient war in Ukraine. It certainly made for great propaganda. Ottawa was turned into a malicious fiend or in the alternative, at the least a bad joke by the Russian media. That is not a good thing for a NATO capitol city. But, at the same time, the West was playing dirty too.
I don’t see any reason to kick the crap out of the hapless organizers of the Freedom Convoy movement. Their purpose and their methods were wrongful and they got themselves exploited. They welcomed the support. That seems to have run a little bit deeper with some people. They disrupted at times nearly a $billion dollars per day of US Canada trade when they blocked three or more bridges. That irresponsible malfeasance has consequences. Those people specifically involved in taking control of the Canada / US border may have some serious consequences to face in the next ten years or so.
The Missing Money is another Fishy Part
The Freedom Convoy raised over $30,000,000 in the USA, claiming only $24,000,000 and able to produce accounts for $16,000,000. It has a lot of explaining to do, but that is explaining it likely will not achieve. This is not to say that the organizers were complicit in a foreign funded hybrid war against Canada. They did not care where the money came from. But, raising funds in the United States to change public policy in Canada is no different than raising funds indirectly in Russia and Serbia. Not Russia, America nor Serbia are allowed to make public policy in Canada.
$24 million shown to be raised for the winter 2022 ‘Freedom Convoy,’ via two primary American crowdfunding web sites, roughly half through the website GiveSendGo. (Graph Credit: CBC)
FPMag was in this instance able to reasonably verify what was already reliable. I know that some efforts were made to force a change in the mechanisms of the American fundraising. That only created obfuscation and made it harder to track the money.
The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), some of whom, in the spirit of many RCMP anti-jabbers, told me they are supporters of the Freedom Convoy, and said the demonstrators are being persecuted wrongfully. Probably that is true in part but hopefully due process will clear that up.
It is also true, they weren’t local cops in Ottawa whose wives were getting their butts wacked as they walked to work.
But if I said “white” CSIS would say “black”. The only time I ever assisted CSIS, they betrayed me, back in the 1980s. Maybe they were neophytes in those days but there are standards of trust that the Americans never honoured that the Brits, Australians, New Zealanders and Canadians once held true. Now the Canadians have adopted the American lack of accountability and worse yet, the lack of integrity. Hence, they are no different than our enemies inasmuch as they have a bureaucratically indigenous unique political agenda and comprise an antigen to the rest of government.
Five Eyes (FVEY) is now a scurrilous, racist political organization, part of the USA hegemon, and their original purpose is forgotten. Five Eyes keeps nobody safe, in fact, Five Eyes is a clear and present danger to Canadians.
The trusted security establishment in North America is now, and only, the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation. Nothing else should be trusted. The political institutions, try as they might, have not taken control yet of the FBI.
Whatever courts decide about the players in the recent (Canada) Emergencies Act R.S.C., 1985, c. 22 (4th Supp.), matter is all that makes any real difference, the rest, like this article, is mostly opinion.
Part of the Coutts Alberta border crossing blockade. Photo credit: Dale Carter, Medicine Hat, Alta/FPMag