Front Burner - The convoy protesters take the stand

Episode Date: November 4, 2022

This week the leaders of the self-described "Freedom Convoy" protest in Ottawa were brought in front of the inquiry into the use of the Emergencies Act. And for some of them, those facing charges, it won't be the last time they'll be held to account. We learned a lot. About the chaos, the infighting and the money. Plus, even more about what the police did, and didn't do to tackle the protest. Host of CBC's Power & Politics, and our good friend, Vassy Kapelos joins us from Ottawa to get us up to speed. We will also spend a bit of time talking about the mini-budget Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland released yesterday.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Jamie Poisson. This week, the leaders of the self-described Freedom Convoy protest in Ottawa were hauled in front of an inquiry into the use of the Emergencies Act. And for some of them, the ones facing charges, it won't be the last time they'll be held to account. We learned a lot about the chaos, the infighting, and the money.

Plus even more about what the police did and didn't do to tackle the protest. The level of disinformation and misinformation was off the charts. It was crushing to the members' morale. It was unrelenting. It was 24 hours a day. And I think by the end of the weekend, it had become a global story. You were getting information from sympathetic police. Is that right? That's correct. I was purely here for the mandates.

I needed my voice to be heard. It was basically a cry for help to come in and sit down and do this democratically. I'm a believer that if you're a leader of a country, you have to lead all of your people, even if you don't agree with them. You see, we've been locked down for two years, and people are complaining that they heard horns for 10 days. Do you remember what we went through for the last two years? What's a little bit of horns for 10 days?

Host of CBC's Power in Politics and our good friend Vashie Capellos joins me now from Ottawa to get us up to speed. We're also going to spend a bit of time talking about the mini fall budget finance minister, Christopher Freeland, released yesterday. Vashi, hi. Hi, Jamie. I'm very cognizant that you just spent four hours on live television talking about the mini budget. So I thank you very much for letting us pester you into coming on to the podcast.

My absolute pleasure. I'm sorry that you have to continue to hear the sound of my voice. I love it. Since that's where your head is right now on the mini budget, let's start there. What was a real takeaway from what Finance Minister Christopher Freeland announced on Thursday afternoon? I think for me, the takeaway is that the government

is now concretely saying the economy is not headed into a good place. It's important, as both the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance, that I'm honest with Canadians about the challenges that still lie ahead. And raising the specter that this quote unquote soft landing, meaning we could avoid a recession, might not happen. In the document, they present kind of two scenarios to that effect. One is that the economy slows down, and the other one is the economy contracts. Not a huge difference when you're looking at the numbers themselves, but clearly one thing means, you know, a flat economy, and the other one means a contracting one. And if you have an economy that contracts over time, that's not a great thing, because it could mean job losses, it could mean businesses closing, you know, all the stuff that

we're worried about that we thought we were finally over because of the pandemic. And I think just the acknowledgement for me that that is possible, even though there's actually some criticism that they don't sort of factor in how bad it could get to the furthest degree. Right, right. I saw people saying like they were too sunny about it, right? Like their downside, like their almost worst case scenario was what the private sector is saying is probably going to happen. Yeah, totally. So like normally in a budget, they're like, here's the good scenario, here's the baseline, medium, whatever, and here's the crabby one. And this one only had the baseline and the crabby one. And it was sort of formulated in September. And even just a few weeks later,

like I think our colleague Peter Armstrong was like, well, the base, like the downside one, which I so eloquently call the crabby one, is actually more the reality right now. So then you have to add in an even more down downside one, and that isn't in there. So even that is interesting to me, right? Because it's like, look how fast this is changing. Like three months ago, the government was like, we don't need to do extra stuff on inflation because, I'm paraphrasing, but it's not that bad. We're going to have a soft landing.

Yeah, it's crazy out there. Yeah, there's a lot of external factors, but like we can weather it really well. Three months later, they're like, eh, not so great out there. I think we'll still be weathering it okay. And then a few weeks after that, you know, it's like, oh, it could be really, really bad. So I draw from that.

There's huge political risk, huge political stakes and a lot of uncertainty among all of us about what's to come. And what is the government going to do, if anything, about this right now vis-a-vis money? if anything, about this right now vis-a-vis money? Yeah. So basically, like, to address the problem that we're all facing around affordability, they have said, we're not going to help everybody. We just can't. Because if we did, it would make inflation even worse, right?

Because by increasing demand, that's what's going to happen. So instead, we're going to target our help to people who need it the most, so people who have lower incomes. And we've already introduced some stuff for them. And then today they also included, for example, like help for students, a freezing of interest on student loans permanently after introducing that in the pandemic. And then also like taking the Canada Worker Benefit, which is to help people who are working but not making ends meet, and slicing it into four payments instead of just one payment yearly. So they're doing stuff like that. But the idea is that it's only targeted to the people who

are most affected by inflation. And then the other part of the kind of mini budget was around this whole thing called the Inflation Reduction Act in the U.S., which is this massive piece of legislation that effectively makes it like a super competitive place to invest into green energy. And they've given like hundreds of billions of dollars of tax credits to encourage that to happen. And it's so much at a huge disadvantage. Yeah. OK, so that's the mini budget. Let's move on to the Emergencies Act inquiry, our bi-weekly update. Big picture, what else has emerged since we last spoke? So the last time we spoke, we were kind of remarking how what had emerged so far from various municipal politicians and officials with the city

and in the beginning of some testimony from police forces was nobody had a handle on anything. I think we can accurately say nobody was prepared or wanted to step up and lead the effort to try and disband the convoy and its occupation of downtown Ottawa. And the revelations that I think stick out the most or did to both of us was like the level of dysfunction between all of those people and how like nobody seemed to know, even though there was intelligence, that this wasn't such a temporary thing, that like that was actually going to be the case and then a plan accordingly, like none of that happened. And so now what we are seeing is what's quite remarkable to me. We have heard from convoy organizers, so the people who were behind the protest. And there's all sorts of different figures here from,

you know, really nefarious figures to people who just wanted to protest. And there's no real sense, like what I walk away thinking is, like, this is not some grand organized effort that should have been like the hardest thing in the world to deal with. There's tons of dysfunction between the organizers themselves. Lots of infighting, for example, and some really interesting revelations about how despite all of that, they were able to organize themselves. Yeah, I thought the testimony from Chris Barber was particularly interesting when we're talking about the infighting and factions. There was different organizations that came and went. The core group of actual truckers stayed together. It was a power struggle a lot of the time. He talked about how there was a power struggle between this group of mostly Western Canadian

truckers and then other elements like Canada Unity and Outfit, opposed to mask mandates and vaccine passports. And Canada Unity, people might remember, produced a memorandum of understanding calling for the overthrow of government. Barber talked about how he clashed with Pat King. And when you talk about some of the more controversial elements in the crowd, Pat King would be one of them. Pat and I had a power struggle between each other. That was pretty evident right from day one. It was just, it was a power struggle back and forth over control. I think what you're just talking about illustrates is there's also like different motivations for why people were there that manifested in the level or lack thereof of organization.

So Chris Barber says he's vaccinated. Meanwhile, the entire purpose of this protest was supposed to be against the vaccine mandates, which some people, yes, do view separately from their desire to get vaccinated. But that was just like another kind of odd discrepancy. And then where Pat King is concerned, I mean, like Pat King is sort of a different figure. And then where Pat King is concerned, I mean, like Pat King is sort of a different figure. Again, he says he was motivated by the vaccine mandates and the restrictions placed on Canadians during COVID. The reason I did it was basically I have gone through my own issues with these mandates and I have my own stance and my own beliefs on these mandates and what they're doing. And now I want everybody to remember a mandate is not a law.

And they were pushing this. And I finally found people that didn't want it pushed on them anymore. And he kept circling back to that. But what commission lawyers were able to kind of effectively lay out is all the other motivations around him, which are like, you know, range from repugnant to abhorrent, I think is fair to say. You know, the white replacement theory, my apologies, is something that he's advocated. He talked about in videos that the lawyers showed threatening to put a bullet in Justin Trudeau's and the prime minister's head. I'm stuck in Toronto, Pearson International Airport, all because I cannot be vaccinated with medical exemption. Trudeau, someone's going to make you catch a

bullet one day. For the rest of this government, someone's going to fucking do you, Zinn. And said that, you know, now I regret it. You know, sometimes you just say things in the heat of this government, someone's going to fucking do you, Zinn. And said that, you know, now I regret it. You know, sometimes you just say things in the heat of the moment. That's where I was mad. I was denied my flight, of which I absolutely regret saying that. I was mad. A lot of things that he said that were also other things I don't even want to repeat, kind of, that were racist. And then bottom line, also talking about replacing the government.

And this was a theme that had emerged kind of early on that there were some figures who were there and certainly not everyone. But there were some who espoused this idea of trying to overthrow the government and that that was their objective. And once again, the question circles back to like, OK, if that was the motivation, he is part of the group Diagon, which was essentially this group, which wants like a violent separation from this country to make their own, I guess, country. And some of the men who were arrested at the Coots Alberta crossing and had weapons on them were also part of that movement. So again, that theme that you're talking about. I just want to pick up on one thing you said about a threat that Pat King was confronted with. This suggestion that someone was going to make

the prime minister catch a bullet one day. This is also, this idea of threats against politicians was also brought up. Someone threatened to put a bullet in Krista Freeland's head, and Chris Barber said he had nothing to do with that. But I just want to bring this up because I can't help but think of what just happened south of the border to Nancy Pelosi's husband. And it feels like these threats against political leaders are taking on even heavier—they feel even heavier this week. They feel super heavy. And I would say even in this country, that extends to Pierre Polyev's wife, right, where

there was like a threat of rape made by the same groups who are threatening or similar ones that threatening the prime minister. So it's, it does feel like a different level. I don't know if that's because this is like all out in the open, but certainly what you're saying about Paul Pelosi like underscores in this case, these are threats, right? These are vocalized threats. But in that case, you can see how quickly it goes from that motivation to like physical harm and like serious, serious physical harm. The violent attack by a stranger inside Nancy Pelosi's longtime San Francisco home sent her husband to hospital with serious head injuries. Somebody literally broke into their home saying, where's Nancy? The phrase allegedly uttered by 42-year-old David Depepe.

Police say they found him inside the U.S. House Speaker's home, fighting over a hammer with the Speaker's husband, Paul Pelosi. I mean, what happened there is he went looking for Nancy Pelosi, motivated by his political beliefs, and, you know, bashed her poor husband's head in. And he is severely injured because of it. Like, that's a huge deal. And I think there have been warnings here by various figures about how that possibility exists. I know there's a live discussion around the lack of security, for example, for cabinet ministers, or even other politicians, even the prime minister,

there's like a number of security positions for him right now with the RCMP that are unfilled. It feels so crazy to think about that after listening to a lot of this testimony. And I think you're right, that it sort of like adds another layer at a time when we are paying attention to what's happening south of the border about the sort of like severity of the threat, I guess is the way to put it, because it's not, look, a lot of people don't like the government. A lot of people don't like politicians. I hear about that every day. But there's like a clear delineation between criticizing them, wanting them out of office, for example, and advocating for them to get hurt or talking about putting bullets in their head or raping them. I mean,

that is, and I think there is like a concerted effort to condemn that among politicians from all political parties, but it almost feels like it might be too late. Yeah. Also worth noting the same day that that threat was made against Freeland, police arrested a man in Ottawa who was wearing body armor and carrying a large knife and several smaller knives. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization,

empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo, 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. The other thing that I wanted to talk to you about was the testimony from Keith Wilson, who is the lawyer for the convoy organizers, right?

And he, at one point in his testimony, talked about law enforcement. And he essentially said that the convoy was getting leaked information from law enforcement. And talk to me a little bit about that. Yeah, he did say that. And he said not only like from one level of law enforcement, but from multiple levels of law enforcement. There was a steady stream of information and leaks coming from all of the different police forces and security agencies. We're talking about OPS, OPP, RCMP, CSIS, all of them?

All of them. That's like very potentially consequential. And I want to add the caveat that this is an allegation. And we haven't seen a whole lot of proof. There is an investigation, for example, going on with the Ottawa police into one incident. And the RCMP were said to be looking at it. But like we don't have a lot of proof outside of this allegation yet. I think that's a really important caveat. That might change.

But right now we don't. Still, the fact that that allegation is being made. and I will say we heard it from other protesters as well, that not necessarily that they were always being leaked information, but that they gave police who they had, quote unquote, worked with before at other protests, like the United We Roll convoy, to prep them for what was happening. to prep them for what was happening. And they got information from them also about routes and how to set up and all that kind of stuff. So what I draw from that is the perception among protesters was that they had a friendly, if not extremely friendly, relationship with police.

And that is potentially problematic for law enforcement in this country on a number of fronts, but primarily because I think that people watching all of this unfold, because remember, it happened live on TV over the course of three weeks, were kind of struck by the fact that police did not seem to be stopping it, right? And we kept asking ourselves, like, why is that? Do they have the tools they need? Okay, in some instances, they don't. And we heard that from a number of different law enforcement officers who've testified and people in charge of the forces who have. But also, is there something more to this? And there had been speculation at the time of the convoy that there was some kind of relationship or some level of sympathy being expressed from police towards the protesters. is that not only was sympathy expressed,

but some police of different levels, and even CSIS, Canada's spy agency, he alleges, was leaking the protesters' information that would allow them to circumvent any efforts that were being made to block them from continuing to occupy the downtown core. And so if that bears out, if there is proof for that, oh boy, that I think is really consequential. Okay, and just sticking with law enforcement for a little bit longer,

I also just want to talk about Peter Sololi's testimony. So this is the former Ottawa police chief who stepped down right after the government invoked the Emergency Act. And he testified this week. And I think it's fair to say he was on the offense. He was on the offensive for most of his testimony. And what really struck you about what he had to say? about what he had to say. A couple of things. I think you're absolutely right in characterizing it. It was like more confrontational, maybe than I naively expected. But then when you think about it, I mean, essentially his entire career was ruined during this convoy.

He resigned in the middle of it. And he was brought to Ottawa initially to become police chief, to really reform the way the force works and to impart a different sensibility. And a lot of that you could see backfired during these events. And he was really defensive because others have characterized his performance as lacking in the past. And so he definitely tried to defend himself against that, but by placing blame elsewhere.

Again, this like reminds me of all the other testimony we've heard. It wasn't me, it was them. But he invoked the RCMP Commissioner Brenda Luckey, then Public Safety Minister Bill Blair, really criticized a lack of resources that he was given. So he tried to make the case that he had himself made the case for more resources, that he didn't have the tools he needed, that he implored other levels of police

and government to provide him with that, but never got it. What this event did to Ottawa, to Ontario and Canada was exposed that type of structural deficit. We can't afford to duct tape our way through these incidents anymore. And unfortunately, this reads afford to duct tape our way through these incidents anymore. And unfortunately,

this reads like a duct tape effort to get through a really complicated dynamic situation. And in particular, with Brenda Luckey, the RCMP commissioner, he claimed that she undermined his efforts by repeatedly questioning whether he had plans in place for how to use those RCMP resources. And sort of quote unquote, he said, going around in circles. And so he made a lot of suggestions that it wasn't his fault, basically, and that he was dealing with a really poor set of circumstances and a poor level of resources. But that didn't always jive with the case we've heard laid out by other people who were involved in the police response, who had criticized him for kind of not making great decisions at the right time. And certainly,

certainly, bottom line, underestimating the kind of will of the protesters to stick around for a long time, and even at a certain level, ignoring evidence that they were going to do so. Yeah. The other really interesting aspect to me that came out of slowly testimony, but also from the testimony from current interim police chief Steve Bell, was that we got more insight into how the Ottawa police used a communications firm, the communications firm Navigator, to try and deal with the public relations nightmare that they were faced with. And I don't know, I found this really eye opening. Yeah, it's another look kind of peeling back the curtain, right? About what we could see from the outside was like, unreal communicate, lack of communication, I guess I could say. Like, I just remember that first few weeks, everyone was like, what are they doing? Why are they doing this? Why aren't they in there? How did they let the trucks

get in there in the first place? And then even when it seemed like they were really dug in, the protesters, it didn't even seem like there was a huge police presence there. And so I think getting a sense of how they were dealing with the communications and the level to which, at least while Peter Slowly was there, that they relied on that firm, Navigator. And I mean, Navigator has a reputation as like the people you want to go to when you're in a crisis, right? So I don't know if this is saying one thing or the other about them. It's more just the idea that they were counseling, you know, the police chief on what to say and how to say it. And the new police chief who took over in the interim for Peter Slowly, Steve Bell, was really critical of that. You also had concerns, did you not, Chief, that Chief Slowly

appeared to be taking operational advice from the PR firm Navigator. That was your impression? So I don't believe it was that he was taking operational advice. It was the fact that a PR firm, a crisis communication firm, was involved in that level of operational discussions. It was atypical to me. And he said in his testimony that he had serious misgivings about it, in that, like, you know, they were looking at tweets and polling. Yeah, they were, like, polling to see what the reaction was. To certain, like, people's opinions to certain police responses. Yeah.

Yeah. And Steve Bell was highlighting that as like a major issue and something that probably shouldn't have happened. And I think, you know, that argument has some saliency when you think about like the logistical challenges they face with the truckers. Like, why wasn't that your focus? Why are you worried about how the public's reacting right now? Like, just get it done. The last thing I want to talk to you about is the money. Because I know we talked about this last time that there was going to be more information coming out in this inquiry. And some actually came out particularly around the money that was raised for the truckers and the sources, like where that money was coming from. And a lot of that came out during Tamara Leach's testimony this week. She finished testifying Thursday. And talk to me about the big revelations there. I think I'll say just as a preface to my comments that the reason, I mean, funding was a big issue before, during, and after the convoy because, of course, the

funds of people involved were frozen thanks to the invocation of the Emergencies Act. But then prior to that, the speculation was, OK, what's moving this? What's allowing the protesters to have this kind of money? Is it an influx of the kinds of groups represented here? But they're American subsidiaries, for example. So these far-right groups in the States or in other parts of the world who are largely funding what's going on. And at some points, the accusation was actually made that that's the case, right? So that's just sort of like the pretext for why the fundraising question and the money question is of such significance here. The inquiry this week basically broke down that money flowed to convoy protesters

through a variety of means. So cash, envelopes of cash, to cryptocurrency, to obviously GoFundMe, which was a story in and of itself. Tamara Leach says that they raised $10 million through GoFundMe before GoFundMe cut them off. But another part of the inquiry heard that some of the fundraisers didn't necessarily originate from other parts of the world that, in fact, they were entirely Canadian. So GoFundMe, for example, mostly Canadian, though GiveSendGo had a majority of American donors. And then the bottom line is all this stuff was frozen. And there was also lots of scrutiny over, like, what's it being used for? So what came out is that only a fraction of the money really was used to

feed or fuel or house them. Most of the donations have been refunded according to the commission conducting the inquiry, except for about $5 million that was set aside for this litigation, for the legal process. All right. So I think that hits the major kind of moments that we've seen so far. What are you looking forward to coming up? I feel like maybe we'll talk again in two weeks. Yeah, perhaps. I think there's a couple of things. I mean, just on the if I could offer like a quick takeaway from everything we heard this week from protest organizers. from protest organizers. I do think that for me, I walk away thinking these are not sophisticated, highly organized people who, you know, the cops had no chance against or government had no chance against. What we are walking away seeing is sort of the lack of organization, the level of

disorganization and disarray that existed even within the convoy and the people who organized it. And so it further for me underscores how kind of jaw-dropping it was that nobody could really address the problem early on and that it took three weeks to clear. The other thing is that I think is important, and I hope I say it without judgment, it has been worthwhile, I think, to listen to people testifying about why they took part in this and why they wanted to organize it

and the degree to which they really felt like their rights had been taken away because of the stuff that happened during COVID, because of vaccine mandates. And I know there's obviously a greater good being served by them and there was a public health imperative, but there are people who have really real concerns about it and who it really did affect. And like I said, it's not to say that they're right or wrong in the way they acted on that. But I think understanding where they came from or what motivates them better enables law enforcement and government in the future to be able to deal with events like this one. Again, like, you know, there's lots of variants there. Some of them had awful motivations. Some of them were really just upset about vaccine mandates.

And so I think in order to, like, truly respond to something like this in the future, that part of this story is important. As far as what I'm looking, you know, ahead to, a couple of things. And first up would be RCMP Commissioner Brenda Luckey. She's supposed to testify November 15th. And this week she was, like, asking, reporters were asking her questions. She didn't supposed to testify November 15th. And this week she was like asking reporters were asking her question. She didn't want to answer a single question. She was like, wait till November 15th. And there's kind of a lot of focus on whether or not she was doing the government's bidding insofar as she said initially it looks like the Emergencies Act wasn't needed,

but then retroactively might have changed her position on that. And there might be some communication to that effect. So I expect her to be cross-examined quite severely on that issue. And she's been under the kind of under the spotlight on a number of different issues and faced a lot of scrutiny. And so I'm interested to see how she navigates this one. And then, of course, as we come to the end of this all, we'll be hearing from the prime minister and ministers. And like I said to you a few times, I mean, that's where the rubber hits the road. On the ultimate question the inquiry is supposed to be looking at, which is whether the Fed's invocation of the Emergencies Act, the never before used Emergencies Act, should have happened.

Yeah. OK, well, I we will definitely be talking to you then. Fashi, thank you so much for this. Really appreciate it. Anytime, Jamie. Thanks for having me. All right, that is all for today. Front Burner was produced this week by Shannon Higgins, Allie Janes, Lauren Donnelly, Imogen Burchard, and Derek Vanderwyk.

Our sound design was by Matt Cameron and Sam McNulty. Our music is by Joseph Chabison. Our executive producer is Nick McCabe-Locos, and I'm Jamie Poisson.

Thanks so much for listening, and we'll talk to you on Monday. Thank you. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.