QAA Podcast - Episode 253: The Canadian Save The Children Convoy

Episode Date: October 31, 2023

In January and February of last year, the normal operations of Canada's capital city of Ottawa were disrupted by the so-called Freedom Convoy. The convoy involved hundreds of trucks and personal vehicles and thousands of protestors at its peak, who made a lot of noise and blocked traffic before finally being cleared out. The initial convoy movement was created to protest vaccine mandates for crossing the United States border, but later evolved into a protest about COVID-19 mandates in general. Beginning January 22, 2023, vehicles formed convoys from several points and traversed Canadian provinces before converging on Ottawa on January 29, 2022, with a rally at Parliament Hill. The convoy was condemned by the trucking industry and labor groups. The Canadian Trucking Alliance stated that most protesters had no connection to trucking. That all came to an end on February 14, when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act for the first time since its passing in 1988. Between February 17 and 20, a large joint-operation police presence in Ottawa arrested organizers and protesters, removed parked vehicles, and dismantled blockades from Ottawa streets. Just a few months ago a new protest movement emerged, taking inspiration from both that convoy movement and anti-gay and trans protest movements. This one is called The Save the Children Convoy. Since this new convoy was announced, it has been subject to allegations of plans of criminal violence, infighting, and the leaders have invoked sovereign citizen and QAnon concepts. We talk to Luke LeBrun, editor of the publication PressProgress, about this developing story and what members of the Save The Children convoy want. REFERENCES Canada’s Far-Right is Planning a Convoy to Toronto to ‘Save the Children’. It’s Already Spinning Out of Control. https://pressprogress.ca/canadas-far-right-is-planning-a-convoy-to-toronto-to-save-the-children-its-already-spinning-out-of-control/ Far-Right ‘Save the Children Convoy’ Gathering at Rural Base Camp Outside Ottawa https://pressprogress.ca/far-right-save-the-children-convoy-gathering-at-rural-base-camp-outside-ottawa/ ‘Save the Children Convoy’ Leaders Plotted to Capture Police and MPs at Secret Meetings, Participants Allege https://pressprogress.ca/save-the-children-convoy-leaders-plotted-to-capture-police-and-mps-at-secret-meetings-participants-allege/ ‘Save the Children Convoy’ Leader Calls for Jailing Politicians and Replacing Government in QAnon-Inspired Speech https://pressprogress.ca/save-the-children-convoy-leader-calls-for-jailing-politicians-and-replacing-government-in-qanon-inspired-speech/ ‘Save the Children Convoy’ Says Conservative MP Invited Them Into House of Commons as ‘VIP’ Guests https://pressprogress.ca/save-the-children-convoy-says-conservative-mp-invited-them-into-house-of-commons-as-vip-guests/

What's up QAA listeners? The fun games have begun. I found a way to connect to the internet. I'm sorry, boy. Welcome listener to the 253 chapter of the QAA podcast. The Canadian Save the Children Convoy episode. As always, we are your hosts. Liv Egar.

Julian Fields and Travis View. In January and February, February of last year, the normal operations of Canada's capital city of Ottawa were disrupted by the so-called Freedom Convoy. The convoy involved hundreds of trucks and personal vehicles and thousands of protesters at its peak who made a lot of noise and blocked traffic before they were finally cleared out. The initial convoy movement was created to protest vaccine mandates for crossing the U.S. border, but later evolved into a protest about COVID-19 mandates in general. Beginning on January 22nd, vehicles formed convoys from several points and traversed Canadian

provinces before converging on Ottawa on January 29th, with a rally on Parliament Hill. The convoy was condemned by the trucking industry and labor groups. The Canadian Trucking Alliance stated that most protesters had no connection to trucking. That all came to an end on February 14th, when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act for the first time since his passing in 1988. Between February 17th and 20th, a large joint operation police presence in Ottawa arrested organizers and protesters removed parked vehicles and dismantled blockades from Ottawa streets. Just a few months ago, a new protest movement emerged, taking inspiration both from that convoy movement and anti-gay and trans protest movements. This one is called the Save the Children Convoy.

Since this new convoy was announced, it's been subject to allegations of plans of criminal violence, infighting, and leaders have invoked sovereign citizens, and QAnon concepts. But what do the organizers say the convoys about? The lead organizer of the Save the Children convoy, Gordon Berry, told the Canadian outlet press progress this. Save the Children is basically a generic statement, obviously. There's a multitude of things you could be saving them from. Oh, my God.

You could be saving them from falling over, maybe? Yeah. Like, that hurts children, you know. Oh, they keep, they're sticking little paper fish to the back of our kids on the April Fool's Day at some sort of French tradition. We need to save them from the French. You know, Kinder eggs, that's a toy

and, you know, food. They could choke on that. They could choke on it. We're not supposed to eat eggs. Eggs are for the chickens to be making out of them. Barry has also said that he wants the convoy

to save children from the human trafficking industry, but also from mandating the shots to kids and kids getting sick and frigging education and all the stuff they're teaching them in schools and the trans agenda and the math agenda, gender dysphoria, all of these things, you've got to

save them from the whole system. Oh, boy. So, so, so. I saw that quote before. What is the math agenda? Well, it's like they want to teach the kids mathematics. We got to save them from that. But I think that the trans agenda for me is just like a wonderful pink trapper keeper with like a bunch of stickers of like monsters and, you know, but the math agenda, you're right, Liv, what is that? We don't want to count anymore. Friggin' friggin one and two and three. We hate it, folks. So unsurprisingly, you know, the convoys also involved love classic conspiracyism. On the convoys private Facebook groups, Barry and others have shared graphics claiming that the World Health Organization and the United Nations are instructing elementary schools around the world

to have pedophilia normalized. Imagine any school listening to the United Nations. Like, yes, sir, yes, Mr. Kofi Annan, yes. In all of history, this has happened. Like every guy who runs the UN just gets to call elementary schools across Canada. What are we teaching them now? Pedophilia is good. Okay, thank you.

You know, the model UN is a gateway to the one world government. That's so true. That was like, I did wonder why that one year it was like, pedophilia good? And that was up on the agenda. And it was like, okay, gather your countries. Let's make some, let's write some stuff. And this is my favorite bit. So they're also apparently pretty fixated on the Freemasons.

One graphic on this private Facebook page also features a photo of a QR code tattooed on a child's forehead next to a symbol of the Freemasons. So all this pretty wild is pretty sprawling and complex. So to help us understand what's going on with the Save the Children Convoy, we are joined by Luke Lebrun. He is the editor of Press Progress, and he's been following the convoy very closely since its inception. Luke, thank you so much for joining us. Yeah, thanks for having me on. Yeah, this is a really wild unfolding story. So I think let's start by kind of understanding the men behind the convoy, the organizers.

Most notably, Gordon James Berry and Elliot McDavid. So it's my understanding that this is not the first time that these men have made the news. So Gordon James Barry, he's a. one-time political candidate, right? Yeah, that's right. I mean, Gordon's kind of an interesting character. You know, he basically, for all intents and purposes, functions as the leader of the Save the Children convoy.

In some senses, you might even say he is a bit of a spiritual leader in addition to being a lead organizer. As you say, yeah, he did run provincially for kind of this fringe party in Nova Scotia, which is on the east coast of Canada. It's called the Atlantica Party. It is, you know, ultra-libertarian in the sense that they are in favor of deregulating everything abolishing taxes, but they were also pretty vocal in opposing public health measures during the pandemic. And yeah, but it's interesting. Like Gordon doesn't seem like he had much of an interest in politics before the pandemic. If you take a closer look at his social media history and so forth, he doesn't really talk about any of that stuff until about like 2020 or so. And before the pandemic, you know, he was a contract. He was installing bathtubs. He was a repair man at Tim Horton's franchises, I guess, repairing coffee machines. And then, you know, you start to see like around 2020, he just starts going down this rabbit hole. And, you know, he's posting anti-vaccine stuff, COVID-19 conspiracies. And as I later found out also a lot of stuff kind of touching on QAnon and Pizza Gate and, you know, satanic pedophile cults and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, the other interesting thing, too, is he also, I mean, he was involved with, uh, Freedom Convoy events out east.

He wasn't in Ottawa, but he was organizing events in the Maritimes. He was also involved with a group that was serving police stations with legal documents about alleged crimes involving the administration of COVID-19 vaccines. So I guess he wanted police to investigate these crimes. It was very much tied in with this sort of sovereign citizen stuff. And I mean, the other thing to say about him, too, is I mean, he does believe in a wide, wide range of conspiracies and also kind of new age spiritual beliefs. I actually spoke to him on the phone this summer and at one point, just completely unprompted, he started telling me about this belief he had that, so I guess there

were some floods in Nova Scotia in the summer. He started telling me this whole theory that he had that this was geoengineered by the federal government in Canada to put out wildfires that were also happening. So, you know, they created one weather event to put out another weather event that I guess he also probably thought they had also geoengineered, you know, but he just believes in a whole wide, wide range of stuff. And to be honest, I mean, given, given some of his wacky beliefs, it is pretty impressive just from a purely organizational or logistical perspective that he's managed to set up a base camp that, you know, is housing about 150 or so people. And, you know, they've been able to carry this on now for about three weeks. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's, it is in preface. But as we'll

get to it. It seems like it was kind of a rocky road to get to that point. The other organizer, another kind of leader involved in this, is a man named Elliot McDavid. And Elliott McDavid, he previously made national headlines for harassing a member of parliament. So what was that about? Yeah, that's right. I mean, so Elliot McDavid, he was one of the original organizers, and he also has been credited with actually coining the name Save the Children Convoy along with Gordon. But yeah, so basically last year, he kind of went viral for a couple of days because this video came out showing him sort of confronting and aggressively harassing Krista Freeland, who is a member of parliament for the governing liberal party and also Canada's

deputy prime minister. Also, I think at the time, Canada's finance minister. And this video just shows him chasing Freeland around this building in Alberta. He's, you know, basically yelling at her and calling her a traitor. And the video kind of ends with Freeland escaping into an elevator with her staffers who all look kind of shaken up because this is like a pretty big guy he uh you know his very uh you know has a big booming voice and that kind of a thing you know and at the time too it sparked a lot of uh commentary in the media in canada uh just about the dangers of these sort of far right convoy groups and you know there people were drawing comparisons to stuff that had happened in the united states as well as the united kingdom where you've seen

politicians who've actually quite literally been assassinated or been subject to kind of violent attacks by these sort of lone wolf uh type characters who have been radicalized by uh you know far right content. Now, Elliot McDavid, he's also active on TikTok, where in there he announced what the Save the Children Convoy is all about. It's time you stepped over that proverbial line in the sand and joined with us because we're peaceful, man. We don't run around this countryside for money. We don't run around the countryside for fame and fortune and all that horseshit. We do it because we love each and every one of you. We love the children. The children are the future. Humanity is at state,

guys. If you ever look in history, go back in history and look at what, whenever they came for the children, that's when there was an uprising, a revolution, whatever you want to call it. And the date is coming soon, guys, very, very, very soon. And we'll let you know that. Okay, two small notes here. It actually looks like the sign was drawn by a child, and also he's not wearing any shoes. Yeah, he's standing in front of a sign about the save the children and is, is sloppy. It looks like crayon. It's done spray paint, but someone with not a very steady hand, definitely. And his little toesies are out. He's got no shoes on, but he's got the Save the Children's shirt, which has tastelessly repurposed the bloody handprint, which is a symbol of, you know,

the kind of like native women that have been victimized and disappeared, which is obviously horrible. But this is obviously, just, he strikes a very comedic and ridiculous figure here. Yeah, he's threatening revolution. Also, like a historical point, there's like revolutions happen when they come for the children. I don't know. I don't think that's any historian would agree with that kind of analysis. No, it's when they come for the taxes. It's when one ruling group decides that an external ruling group that is geographically removed is taxing them too much, and they want to be taxing the local working class instead of paying up.

Yeah, so this is a very absurd video. So there's another. TikTok video in which Elliot McDavid cites another partial inspiration for the convoy which is the film Sound of Freedom starring cue-pilled actor Jim Coveeal. Like the Sound of Freedom movie, I haven't watched it, but I mean, I just

watched stippets of it here and there, like the people are posting, and it's not really heartbreaking. And it goes way gone on that movie guys. I mean, yes, I believe they got in depth in the movie, but it's way worse than that. Oh my God, being inspired to start it in

tire convoy by a movie you haven't watched is, uh, that's incredible. So, yeah, Luke, uh, you've also noted that, uh, Elliot McDavid believes that the government of Alberta is colluding with insurance companies to produce child pornography and has claimed, uh, that children are being hunted down like animals and thrown in a rail car by degenerates on horseback. This is a very strange detail, very, very elaborate story. Rail cars and horseback and hunting children. What did you watch, man?

What did you watch? Yeah, so I'm not really sure where that specific allegation is actually coming from. You know, usually if you listen to what they're saying and kind of dig a little bit beneath the surface, you sort of find some half-truth somewhere or some kernel somewhere hidden in there. But I really could not figure out what he was actually referencing with the, you know, people on horseback hunting down children. It kind of sounds a bit like something out of planned of the apes to me. At least that's the image that kind of invokes.

The thing is, though, I mean, if you do watch his videos, he is a very, very intense guy, you know, he'll talk and he starts getting himself worked up and he starts getting more and more emotional. And you sort of see him making increasingly more and more outlandish claims as he goes. And, you know, it seems like in this case he just invented a completely bizarre scenario because he was just so emotional at that point. You know, even compared to other members of this movement, you know, McDavid does seem particularly emotionally unstable. The only thing that I can think of that is even remotely like this is unfortunately and tragically the American like border guards that were lassoing people trying to cross. And so, you know, some of those people are, you know, crossing with children. So, yeah, of course, once again, you know, just these horrors like repurposed, transformed, beyond repair, beyond recognition. Oh, my God. Yeah, it sounds like an 18th century, like, settler fear of indigenous people.

Like, that's sort of, like, maybe there's a spaghetti western influence here. Yeah. They bring them back to the damn teepees and the squaws are throwing them in big pots and cook in the children. It reminds me a bit that when the Q drops were still active, Q referenced the fact that the Rothschild family in Austria was selling their hunting lodge in the black forest. And Q kind of implied that they were selling this because the Rothschild family was being

taken down. Also, this particular hunting lodge was used to hunt humans. I don't know how, like, involved in the cue drops or a Q-in-on he is, but it just remind me that basic, bizarre kind of claim of, like, you know, human hunting is going on. Where do you think Black Forest Ham comes from, Travis? That's right. It's the children. So it's also my understanding that despite McDavid's passion for saving the children,

he has no actual children of his own. He's the uncle at school meetings, sort of energy. My man went to like some sort of fucked up rodeo and he was probably on a good amount of PCP and there were small people being lassoed and he's like, he's fucking degenerate on horseback, man. This is a hallucination. This man is on like a fear and loathing style trip. I want to start talking a little bit about the kind of like concerns about like possible violence activity. or like plans of violent activity, because these were concerns that were brought up by some other kind of like right-wing figures before the convoy even started. So one of the first people to denounce

and distance themselves from the convoy is a man named Corey Sager, who is a, you know, a right-wing figure. And in a Facebook live video, Sager claimed that he attended a meeting with sort of these convoy planners. And during that meeting, he saw a document detailing violent plans that included convoy supporters performing roles associated with police officers, basically, like, taking over for the cops and, like, being the cops. So here's what he said. Towards the end of the meeting, they start to talk about some things that aren't all really that peaceful. They somehow think that by presenting a document that regular citizens that are playing parts of authority like the police officers and other people like that, that they're

going to accept this document as something that overrides the legal system, which is just absolute nonsense. I'm sorry. That's no, no, you're not going to be able to do that. That doesn't, people aren't going to, are, they're not going to fly with that. This is very, very concerning. Of course, publicly, the convoy organizers, they've denied that they have violent plans. But Sega is not the only one who is alleged that this convoy involves like criminal behavior. There's a woman named Jody Leisurewood. And she's a real estate broker from Ontario who was involved in the 2022 Freedom Convoy Occupation. And Luke, you write how she told Press Progress that she attended two secret save the children convoy meetings this previous summer. And she claimed that the meetings

involved this multi-phase plan that includes like forcing the police to surrender detaining members of parliament and finally confronting the Freemasons because on the assumption that the Freemasons are really the puppet masters of the everything that's going on. So here's what Jody Ledgerwood said in the video. We're going to, you know, all the activists are going to Toronto and we're going to protest around the financial district. We're taking the financial district down because follow the money, right? Money talks.

Fantastic. Sounds great. When the police come in and surround us, much like they did in Ottawa, 2022, then they're going to have a second slew of protesters and activists come in and surround the police. And police mandates are typically when you are overtaken like that, you're supposed to stand down. When that second group comes into Toronto, then there was a phase two that was going to activate in Ottawa. And their special skills were going to go to Ottawa and surround eight buildings in Ottawa and also surround the tunnel entrances into those buildings. And they

were going to detain MPs, MPPs until they met with them and succumbed to their demands. At the same time as that happening, a third group was going to go to Tafino and take the head off the snake at the masons in Tafino. Those were the plans that were told to us. If anybody understands our criminal code here in Canada, that is, one, talking about a conspiracy to commit treason. Two, if you actually do it, it is treason. Okay, so a lot of this is just like people larping so fucking hard. Like, oh yeah, then we're going to do this, and then we'll do that, and then we'll send this a group over to, The Freemason Lodge up in Tafino.

I hear it's a pretty fun town, too. Yeah, I mean, Luke, this is something we often encounter when sort of researching these conspiracies movies. On one hand, it's totally absurd. Well, the other hand, is kind of disturbing because based upon the testimony of people who say that they're been involved, and again, these are like right-wing figures, who claim that they're involved in these meetings, that sounds like they have some possibly dangerous plans.

I mean, what do you think we can sort of, like, piece together from, like, what their initial intentions were for this convoy. Well, I mean, the first thing is that, I mean, at least in Ottawa, they did succeed at, you know, basically bringing hundreds and hundreds of vehicles into Canada's national capital and shutting down the city for three weeks. And it just, you know, everything turned very lawless. That was kind of the biggest, because I'm based in Ottawa, you know, one of the most surreal things about the whole thing. It wasn't, you know, the honking. It wasn't the, you know, streets being shut down. It was like, actually the lawlessness in the streets. Police were nowhere to be found there were thousands of these people just with conspiratorial signs everywhere.

You know, it's very, it seems hard to believe, but, you know, it actually did happen. So I think a lot of people in Canada are taking it seriously when people associated with this group are talking about these sorts of plans. The other thing that happened is in Toronto, the police actually, just, you know, at the end of September, actually shut down parts of downtown Toronto. They brought in garbage trucks to block key roads because they got intelligence that the save the children convoy was actually heading to downtown. Toronto to, I guess, presumably, you know, start phase one of this kind of ludicrous sounding

plot that they've detailed. The thing, though, that I got to say, though, like the part of this plan that is most head scratching and surreal is this part where, you know, the third phase, the final phase, where they're going to have a confrontation with the Freemasons in Tofino. You know, if your listeners aren't too familiar with Tofino, this is a small surfing village on the west coast of Canada. It's about several hours west of Vancouver. Kind of hard to get to. To get there, actually, you'd probably have to take a ferry and, you know, drive through some mountainous terrain. So the idea that they would send this convoy here is like just, you know, on one level, kind of funny to think about. But also, you know, I wasn't really clear why they, well, I'm still

not clear why they think, you know, Tofino is this epicenter of like Freemason activity. But it does seem like they, from what I can tell, like in their, inside their private Facebook groups, they do talk about sort of these, you know, kind of pedophile rituals that they think are happening in secret in Freemason Lodges. So I think that that might be kind of what they're getting at. Yeah, it's kind of the biggest head scratcher in all of this. Something that's so interesting to me about these sort of plans is how much, I think this is just the case internationally, how much like far right actors want to recreate January 6th, despite how much of a failure. that was for the American far right.

They're like, yeah, let's just, let's do that. Oh, like, our attempt to do January 6 didn't work. Let's do a bigger one. So it really feels like January 6th. I mean, it really does show, like, the general intent, the general direction that these movements are going towards. Despite how much these increasingly violent attempts have failed, they're like, well, no, clearly the problem is that we're not being violent enough.

Yeah, the idea that January 6 was kind of inspired by 1776, or some form of like the American Revolution and then this one is just going to be inspired by January 6th. That's what we're aiming for. Aspirational. Yeah, I mean, I almost like kind of want to see what would happen if like these guys and these convoys really confronted like small town freemasons, which, you know, for them probably functions as like a drinking club with like occasionally weird rituals and costumes. Like it was just like, you know, ruined their Monday night away from their families, I think would be the worst case scenario. I also know, like, there has been previous, like, attacks on Freemason Lodges in British Columbia.

I believe one was, like, almost burnt down. Is there, like, a specific enclave of Freemasons in British Columbia out of all Canada, or is there just conspiracies in BC are more obsessed with it? I have honestly never heard of that or of any kind of specific, you know, Masonic presence in BC that's different from anywhere else in Canada. So that's, that would be news to me. Well, you have lovely forests there, so there's a lot of, like, places that they could be happening. A lot of lodge making material.

Mm-hmm. That's true. The lodges would be made of the wood. So the wood, you need the wood. And Tafino, Tafino, we need to go surfing. I think just a group of them wanted to just go have a nice vacation. They're like, yeah, the final stage is we're going to take down the cabal on fire island, and we're going to have a good old time. So, I mean, the convoy it did.

You know, they started, they did manage. get a group of people who are on board with this plan, I guess, and as absurd as it sounds. So the convoy first met up in a base camp in this rural area about 40 minutes east of Ottawa, and leaders of the convoy said that they're going to use the area as a staging area before marching into Ottawa. So, Luke, I saw pictures that you posted of a staging area, and what struck me was like the total absence of like big rig trucks. It was just, it was like cars, pickup trucks, there are a few RVs. I mean, what, uh, what was the scene, uh, like at this initial staging area? Yeah, it's actually kind of interesting. I drove, uh, drove out there, uh, early on.

And originally there were about like 30 vehicles or something. And then within a week, it had kind of ballooned to like over 110 vehicles. And like you said, too, I mean, there are, it's mainly cars, a lot of pickup trucks, a few RVs. There are some, uh, there's kind of like these school buses that have this, uh, like psychedelic burning man. aesthetic to it where they've painted it and kind of put some wacky uh wacky things on it you know and a lot of the people are just sort of sleeping in their vehicles or you know in some cases they've actually set up tents and that kind of a thing uh but the actual base camp itself is kind of interesting because they've like it's almost turning into a little miniature village or something like that where you know they have

like one of these mobile office trailers like you might see at a construction site and this thing is just loaded up with all their food and their supplies and that kind of a thing then they have these almost like party tents like a network of little party tents that are uh you know they have like their dining area and their cooking area and just the amount of logistical effort that goes into setting up something like this is actually kind of uh you know kind of surprising and in some ways impressive i guess to see i don't really see too many left wing protests in canada that have the same sort of uh you know going to the same level of logistical sophistication i guess you could say but i mean the other thing too is like we saw this during the original freedom

convoy also. There were several base camps that were set up in the rural area just outside of Ottawa that were kind of providing, they were kind of being used as staging areas and also providing logistical support for the stuff that was happening in downtown Ottawa. And a lot of the media reporting didn't focus on that. Like it focused on the stuff that was happening right in front of the parliament buildings, which is, you know, Candace Congress, I guess, would be the best analogy. But yeah, you had all these base camps that were kind of, where they had their supplies and they were sending stuff downtown to kind of refuel and support stuff that was going on downtown. One of the most, like, striking images, I mean, during the convoy in Ottawa was they actually

took over our local baseball stadium. So Ottawa used to be the home of a AAA farm team for the Montreal Expos, a major league baseball team that went defunct about 20, 30 years ago. And it's a stadium that's got about capacity for 10,000 people. These people basically took over the entire stadium, built this camp that almost looked like a fort in the parking lot. They had all these wooden crates and sort of skids or whatever you call them that they had used to kind of build this wall around the perimeter. And the inside, it was much like the base camp that we're seeing near Castleman, Ontario, you know, had like kind of this network of tents and semi-permanent structures. They had like hundreds of gas canisters that were being used to,

they would like load them on to pickup trucks and then sort of ferry them downtown to refuel the the trucks. So, you know, it is one of the defining features of this convoy movement in Canada. I don't know that there is something similar in the U.S. that I've seen or even internationally, but it is a very defining feature in Canada. So yeah, basically they set up these base camps and then they try to attract people to the base camps themselves. You know, in the evenings, they're hosting these like kind of open mic nights. They're having like concerts and things like that. And then they live stream their videos and tell people to come down because this is where the party's happening. It really is a very strange and surreal part of these convoy protests. Yeah, it's some, some mutated form of

Burning Man meets just the will to have any kind of political volition, you know, I mean, getting together, driving across the country, and feeling like you're a part of something instead of separate. There is definitely that element that I can see as a kind of, as a kind of positive, at least, you know, a satisfying element of it for some of these people who feel disaffected. Yeah, you know, yeah, Liv, you mentioned. how like, you know, that January 6th was a total failure. But I think that for like people who otherwise feel like totally disaffected and like they, what they want is just cause disruption, you know, that feels good, that you had disrupted the people who are in charge. The fact that

they all got arrested and like it fell apart and then Joe Biden was present anyway, kind of beside the point. The point is that they very temporarily did cause an inconvenience to people in power. And I feel like the convoy movement was in the same way. All right, didn't really accomplish anything they get any concessions but for for a few weeks there they did they were a thorn in the side of people in power even if the end result is meaningless i feel like that's that's just like a win just just being just feeling like you're being irritating the people you don't like is the same as feeling like you're powerful this is preferable to how they feel generally so i think this is how they generally approach these things right the real coup is the friends we made along the way

and i guess in a certain sense it is effective if it continues to inspire these sort of things regardless of how bumbling they are. Yeah, there's an idea of like, yeah, it didn't work that time, but next time it will. I mean, the fact that they even managed to be that disruptive and cause like such a big kind of backlash to their actions, for them, I think, tells them that they're onto something. I think, too, for a lot of them, if you actually ask them, they will say that they derive like a sense of community out of this. In many cases, these are kind of like IRL in real life meetups for, you know, people who are meeting in. in private Facebook groups or, you know, people who are meeting online. And so this is sort of like the physical manifestation of an online community in many ways.

While the participants were gathering in the staging area, there are some immediate clashes in infighting. There are some in the group accusing others in the group of being infiltrators. Someone from the convoy posted a video of one of the chaotic scenes from this time. He beat our protesters. He put our truckers in jail. Save the country. We need to save the country and make democracy happen. Our government is entangled with the World Economic Forum, and we can't let that happen.

Trudeau for treason stand for thee. Trudeau for treason. There's infiltrators behind us. There's infiltrators behind us. Trudeau for season. So, again, another man in sandals, toesies out. Yeah, lots of toes. Both about Trudeau and the infiltrators in his miss.

He's fighting a two-front war immediately. I think we need to bring back John Dunsworth, RIP. Fantastic, man. And just get a good Mr. Leahy just kind of plowing his way through this crowd drunkenly and falling into like a children's swimming pool or something. You know, this chaos has actually not reached a paroxysm. They need to amp it up a little bit. Turn it to 11 there.

So this infighting also led to, like, like a physical confrontation. There's a, there's a video that captured a moment where two convoy members physically attacked a vehicle belonging to another convoy member. A man can be seen getting thrown from the hood of a moving vehicle as he repeatedly punches the windshield. It was a really weird nasty. So why exactly did the convoy seem to like start to break apart before they even like reached their destination? Well, infighting is a defining feature as well of this convoy movement. I mean, they've had multiple, multiple downs three weeks. I mean, I think they had another one just a few days ago, too. You know, with the incident with the person getting thrown from

the car, I mean, that was all started where you had one. So basically the leaders of the base camp decided that they were going to have a live stream video where they were going to announce that this base camp is now open and welcoming everyone to come in. But one faction of the convoy was left out and they felt jealous about this. So they tried to interrupt the live stream, which led to, you know, basically the scene that we just listened to and, you know, people arguing. Next thing, you know, they're punching a car and a guy's getting thrown off of a car as it's driving out of the parking lot. You know, but I guess the important thing to understand is that this movement is also very much driven by influencers and live streamers. And many of these people are

trying to build audiences and they're trying to crowd fund money for themselves. So I think That is one of the reasons why you see, you know, there's an attention economy at play here where, you know, there's a finite number of eyeballs and a finite amount of crowdfunding money to go around for these people. And so they do tend to get very jealous if one person is getting more attention than them. Or if, you know, one group of, uh, of convoy leaders are presenting themselves as the, you know, lead spokespersons and leaving other people out of it. So we've seen that, you know, just repeatedly over and over again, uh, throughout, I mean, not just in the last three weeks, but, you know, going back a year or two. So last week, you know, one of the TikTokers with the Save the Children Convoy, he actually got kicked out of the base camp because he did a media interview where he was sort of presenting himself as one of the spokespersons for the group. And this led to, you know, this led to a lot of, you know, jealousy and people getting rubbed the wrong way because they, they were taken aback by the fact that he was presenting himself as a voice

of the movement, basically. And then, you know, this led to kind of this flame war, uh, erupting through different live stream videos where people were just sort of unloading on one another. One person actually put out a video where he said that he had gotten a phone call from another person who was one of the leaders of the Freedom Convoy. He's currently in a criminal trial right now in Ottawa. He says that he got a phone call asking them to knock it off because they're taking attention away from his criminal trial and he wants to get more attention for that. So this is kind of the dynamic that we see in the Freedom Convoy movement. Oh, Cloud is a hell of a drug.

It's interesting. Like, is there really any, are any of these schisms, like, ideologically driven or, like, pseudo-ideologically? Or is it really just, like, interpersonal drama? It's a lot of interpersonal drama. And I do think, though, that there is, like, a material, you know, thing underlying it, which is, you know, this competition for followers and who's going to have the biggest Facebook group and who's going to, you know, be able to capitalize on those Facebook groups by raising crowdfunding.

money and so on and so forth. Right. But no one arguing about like how to save the children where it's like, no, you're saving the children the wrong way. No, they can't even decide what they're saving them from. Like ideology, they don't even agree on material reality. These people's brains are like different blurry JPEGs like sewn together. You know, there's, oh my God, ideology. What is the 1950s live? You expect people to actually argue about something tangible. They're going to have a trucker's international. That is genuinely sad. I do, I do wish we could. at least be describing some kind of coherent ideological fight. Instead, it's just pieces of gum stuck together rolling around on the floor. Yeah, kind of like interpersonal market

competition. Yeah. There's a certain funding going here. I want the funding. No, I want it. Yes. Yes. I mean, yeah, I think the revolution will be led by whoever gets the most likes, unfortunately. Yeah. And what is the revolution? Well, it's being at the top of the feed. is getting more likes. This is like it's self-eating. Yeah, unfortunately, there's nothing where they're going nowhere. They're going nowhere. The truckers, the trucks are going in circles. It's a convoyed in nowhere. So, I mean, yeah, Luke, as absurd as all of this is, like, you've also pointed out how, like, some of the rhetoric coming from Gordon Berry is really concerning, as you've, like, you know, you've highlighted. You talk about, he does this, Gordon Barry, he does these, like, nightly,

kind of like speeches to the crowd and sometimes I mean he just talks a lot about like you know basically like taking over the government and you know obviously in ways that don't sound perfectly peaceful these police should be arrested these politicians there's mountains of evidence when I talk to maxim about that and he talked about the you know the parliamentary investigation committee and the rcmp they're all corrupt they all swear the roost of the crown they don't care about the people if all of these systems have failed us to this point there is no no other option but the people. We are here for this reason.

We are the only solution. We've had the legal right for almost 100 years or better to set a Dejure government in this country right alongside of this existing corrupt system. So what is wrong with putting these people in prison for the crimes that they've committed and setting a system in place that benefits the people for the people? There's nothing wrong with that,

and nobody will convince me otherwise. So there, I mean, he's kind of like touching on the kind of the strange sovereign citizen kind of concepts that you, like you mentioned. So what role does that play in their kind of like their beliefs and their ideology? It is pretty a pretty significant thing that keeps coming up time and time again. You know, he referenced in that clip, the idea of a du jour government, which is basically the idea that he wants to return to, you know, a sort of natural or organic sort of system of governance that is rooted in these. I don't know, like kind of natural social order or like something that he thinks is natural law, that kind of a thing. You know, and he's got lots of theories that basically amount to him thinking that he's got a loophole that takes him out of the legal system and why he thinks that laws don't actually apply to him personally. He talks a lot about birth certificates. He calls it the birth certificate fraud. You know, there's times where he starts talking about, he's basically advocating that people don't register their babies with the government because if they do that, then, you know, they will be subject to the laws of the state. And, you know, but if you don't, if you don't get a birth certificate for your newborn, then, uh, they can, you know, they can be free

men or women or babies or whatever, free babies. And, uh, so, so I mean, this is just a thing that you, uh, it permeates like everything that they say. The thing that's really fascinating to me, though, from listening to Gordon specifically, but all of them, uh, you know, in different ways, is just the way that you sort of see different discourses kind of overlapping with one another. And, It just kind of, it's, it's sort of got, you get the sense that they've just been consuming so much content online, and it's all kind of just bouncing around their heads and that kind of comes out in this sort of, you know, in this really strange kind of stream of consciousness. So you also see Gordon, uh, sort of, he talks a lot about sort of new age spirituality. You see him frequently bringing up, uh, kind of this idea of energy and wanting to kind of focus their minds on things so that they can sort of manifest this new reality. And it's really interesting to me, the overlap. between the New Age stuff and the sovereign citizen stuff in the sense that they're both kind of like, you know, fantasizing about just being, you know, sort of this escapist fantasy of wanting to, you know, just sort of manifest a reality that is completely divorced from all the constraints of, you know, of the reality that we, the rest of us live in. I mean, yeah, that reminds me a lot of like the QAnon claims where they often think that this massive political unheaval will be paired with a spiritual revolution. There's going to be a great awakening.

And there's also going to be a storm of mass arrest that sweeps away all the bad guys. So it seems those two concepts are often intertwined and like, you know, political activist conspiracies. But what about saving the children? Like, I still haven't heard anything coherent about that. Yeah, they don't, it seems like save the children is more like, it seems like they got the sense that this is what's playing. You know, there's a Save the Children movie that, you know, that made that they haven't watched a lot of money. So it seems like a popular thing to latch yourself onto, and this is a way to get attention to your movement. I mean, this is what it sounds like to me.

Here's a quote from a book that they haven't read. I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff. I mean, if they're running and they don't look where they're going, I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'll do all day. I just be the catcher in the rye and all. Yeah, that's them. The catcher on the chance.

Yeah. We've got to get the children. They're going off the cliff, and I just, oh, God, save us all. Yeah, you've also discussed how members of this convoy have invoked QAnon theories. At one point, during these speeches that Gordon-Berry gives in the evenings, he referenced the Q&N claim that there are these white hats who are secretly battling the one-world government agenda behind the scenes. And he seems to like entertain the idea, but he also encouraged his followers to consider

what they would do if it isn't true. You know, people say you guys are wasting your time because, you know, the military and the white hats and all these things are taking place. Well, if that happens, that's a bonus. And we get to go back home and live our lives. But what if it never happens? What if that's nothing more than a distraction to keep us pacified until they get more control,

more totalitarian control? If you have to look at this in a broader scope. So it's like calling your convoy, the Q and on convoy, except Q was lying. And if he's lying, then we got to do something because we could be entirely motivated and named after someone who just

lied to us and is a Psiops to keep us pacified. And QAnon is also about Canada. You may not mention it, but. Quebecanon. Yeah, I mean, this is something actually I sometimes saw like the Q&N followers on 8 Koon discusses that they talk about Plan Z. And Plan Z would be like all, well, what if like the White Hat? They're like a minority of Q&O followers who are willing to entertain the possibility

that the plan wasn't going to actually happen. And so they would say, okay, well, then it's just revolution time. That means that, you know, America has fallen and therefore we need to, like, you know, get our guns and make the revolution happen for ourselves. And this was plain Z. That kind of sounds like what he's talking about. That was always my biggest concerns. Like, all these people, they're so certain and so hopeful that there's going to be these massive revolutionary changes. And what happens when they get blackpilled and they start believing it isn't going to happen?

But that desire for big change still remains. it could get into a lot more ugly, dangerous, violent situation. Yeah, if Q doesn't come through, it's time to get our toes out, our tarps up, it's time to get our mics going, and get that live stream running. Let's go. We got to make some change. We got a case of Labats blue. Come on.

Come on down to the fire. So, Luke, what exactly is the relationship between members of this convoy and Qadon as you've seen? Yeah, I mean, at first, I sort of would, you know, here or there, see people kind of references cunon slogans or things that sort of sounded like something kind of vaguely Q&on adjacent. I didn't really think too much about it, but, you know, I just increasingly kept seeing more and more sort of signs of, you know, things that sort of seem to reference that these people were at least, at the very least, very familiar with QAnon. So, you know, I mean, obviously the Save the Children name itself is a, you know, QAnon slogan. It was used as a hashtag for a while.

But, you know, and then you would also see people would post in the Facebook group stuff that would reference the where we go one we go all slogan you know still not to you know it could doesn't necessarily mean that they're like really deep into the Q&on stuff but you know then you started to see like I saw truck show up that had a giant where we go one we go all sign right on the back of it yeah and then I noticed that Gordon Barry gave a speech one night where he was referencing the white hats as you mentioned and that's when I started to notice that you know they do seem to be a lot deeper into this mythology than I had originally thought so I had actually started digging into Gordon's social media history, and I found multiple posts where he's, you know, very clearly referencing QAnon stuff. I mean, there's memes claiming JFK Jr. was murdered by Hilary Clinton, and it literally says hashtag Q&ON on it. He's got posts where he's talking about pedophile rings that run Hollywood and explicitly mentions Pizza Gate. He actually posted this one video that talks about satanic rituals and child sacrifice, and it goes on to talk about the deep state and Planned Parenthood and Child

protective services. And, you know, at the end of this video, it tells people don't worry because Trump's working on it. And, you know, these sorts of things really do clearly map onto the whole Q&on narrative. But, you know, that being said, you know, it's, I don't get the impression that these are the kinds of people who were, you know, waiting with bated breath for, you know, Q to post things so that they could get together and piece together the puzzle of what he was actually talking about. But this does seem to me more like people who have just been saturated with this content to the extent that it's now just kind of their lived reality. Like they just take it as truth that there are these white hats out there who are

working behind the scenes. Like it's just a fact for them. And whether or not they succeed or not, it's, you know, doesn't really matter. It's just like this is something that's happening as far as they're concerned. And, you know, so I guess in some ways this does feel like kind of a post-QAnon phenomenon in the sense of, you know, we're a couple years after, you know, a lot of social media platforms cracking down on the, you know, explicit QAnon content and, you know, Q's no longer, you know, sharing his cue drops. But you do have all these people who have been consuming this content for

a couple of years now, at least, who are now living with the after effects where they have, you know, this is basically shaped their reality and now they're just taking it as a given that this is, you know, these are the circumstances in which they exist. It does strike me. that, you know, if there is a kind of ideological difference, it's really just about, like, how do we organize ourselves to feel community? Should it be Romana Didulo? You know, should we be in RVs? Should we be in cars? Should we have a base camp? Should we stop in this town? Should we head to the East Coast? You know, that's just about as much as, as much thinking as you can get, because as soon as they try to kind of coherently organize, there's like this infighting.

People are turning on it. People are making videos against. it because there's a lot of content production at the core of this. And content is going to kind of diversify just to cover different aspects of the market and explore if there's, you know, a viewership for whatever idea. Is there a viewership for the Ronan who went on his own? Is there a viewership for the man who betrayed, you know, this particular movement? So, you know, I mean, I'm sure we'll cover it in the future. But, you know, Saskatoon, you know, has been kind of asking the government to take care of Ramana Didolo now that she stopped there. And I'm sure with any of these convoys, it's like wherever they stop, the local government and local population has to start

contending with like, ah, fuck, do we have like a compound, you know, building itself here? And so they do kind of become itinerant by default. So Romana didulo is an interesting contrast because, you know, if listeners aren't familiar, she claims to be the queen of Canada and sort of has this, a group of followers that kind of worship her. And it's all very strange. And she's now set herself up in an abandoned school in a small town in Saskatchewan. And it's almost like her palace, like the Queen of Canada's palace is this abandoned school in Saskatchewan. But, you know, there is a contrast here, right? Because in that case, you know, there is this very top-down hierarchy in the, you know, Romana de Dulo universe. Whereas with the Save the Children convoy, it actually is like a lot more community oriented. And, you know, just research. recently, just yesterday, actually, they announced that they are, they have, a farmer has given them land and they, uh, they're getting a barn and they're planning to build a permanent camp there. And they're, you know, kind of sharing these utopian ideas about how they're going to plant seeds and, uh, grow, grow, grow food there. And it really does kind of have the vibe of like a, like a, like a 1960s hippie commune or something like that. And you can sort of see this, you know, there is like really this, like you said, like a community oriented, uh, direction that they're heading in versus Ramadadadou, who. who, you know, is demanding everybody kind of worship her. I'd like to apologize to Canadians for confusing Saskatoon, Saskatchewan and Richmond, Saskatchewan, which is where Romana is currently trying to set up this little utopic community.

Yeah, so it almost seems like they're trying to use that, like, organizational power that's been kind of building up from convoy stuff to create some weird, like, dual power system. Like, you create your own government. I guess that relates to, like, the not having your kid. in like the Canadian birth system. Like, we'll give you a real birth certificate from the real Canadian government. From the Queen of Canada.

How absurd that is, obviously. It seems absurd, but who knows the scale that they'll be able to draw from this. Although, I guess the threat with creating some actual community will always be that they'll just tear each other apart. And they're posting these memes, like we mentioned at the top, you know,

of like a child with a QR code on their forehead, which is not happening. And I mean, that's, I guess it's like, again, you're fighting a phantom of like what you imagine, you know, a birth certificate or being registered in some way by the government as part of the population. They want it so badly to be something as kind of clear and aesthetic as a QR code on a child's forehead. But they have nothing. It's like, I'm sorry, but like the average person, if you ask them to find their birth certificate, they probably don't have it. You know, it's purely off in some computer or in some. drawer of like some government building, everything is completely intangible. And so you can keep

kind of, you know, fighting windmills. So the latest development in the saga involves the save the children members getting kind of close to power. So as you write, so members of the convoy say that they were invited into the House of Commons as a VIP guest before suddenly being kicked out. So what exactly happened there? Yeah. So I guess about a dozen members of the base camp went down to the House of Commons last week. And actually, to go before that, they staged a protest at a local media outlet where they were, you know, railing against fake news and whatnot. And a conservative MP, which is the opposition party federally in Canada, decided to show up.

He took photos with them and sort of, you know, expressed his support for the aims of the convoy and I guess, you know, their opposition to the media. And I guess at this, when he showed up there, he invited them to come down to. to Parliament Hill, go into the House of Commons, and they could see how, you know, democracy is practiced in person. So about a dozen of them took them up on that offer. And they actually got into the House of Commons and they were being kind of led down the halls. They started posting videos, sort of showing themselves hanging out and wandering the halls of Parliament Hill. And I actually saw this and I called up, they were saying on the live streams that they had been invited in by a

specific conservative MP by the name of Arnold Viersson. He's a very, very socially conservative, right-wing guy from Alberta. So I called up his office and I asked them about it. They told me that they were going to look into it. And then next thing I know, they're all angry because they've been kicked out of the House of Commons. In subsequent videos that they posted online, they basically they've said that they have tried to get into the House of Commons a couple of times now, but they are now on some kind of a blacklist. It is pretty concerning, though, because, you know, it does show that, I mean, In this case, I don't really know if the conservative MP, you know, if he actually shares the aims of the Save the Children convoy or if he just sort of saw them as maybe natural allies and didn't really realize just how, you know, weird some of their beliefs are. But, you know, it is pretty concerning to see that they are, like you said, getting this close to power.

Well, could you actually elaborate a little bit more on like Pierre Puellev, who I believe is the current, like, head of the conservative party, right? And I mean, he is a kind of radical figure with some pretty wild beliefs himself. So, you know, how would you kind of connect the dots between something like this, this kind of like dysfunctional grassroots movements, the remnants of an earlier, much more disruptive convoy and the politics and beliefs of Pierre Pueleev himself, who's going to be a candidate for prime minister? Yeah, that's a good question. So Pierre Paulyev, he is a creature of the, you know, kind of the conservative movement. he's the kind of guy who uh you know he's kind of was incubated in like a like a right wing think tank kind of thing uh he's a real true believer uh of i would say i would line him more with the sort of like libertarian wing of the of the republican party maybe like in the tea party era like i would say that's kind of more his ideology i don't think he is someone who uh believes in you know q anon he's definitely not someone who you know believes in some of these like really really far right conspiracies but he is very he has no problem inviting people to think that he's kind of like on their side. He has definitely referenced a lot of conspiracies involving the World Economic Forum, which is a big thing in Canada. I'm not sure

if it's as big of a deal in the United States. Oh yes. Oh yes. That's all we ever hear about is Klaus Schwab. Okay. Okay. Yeah. So that that's a big thing where a lot of the people in his base in the Conservative Party, I think Justin Trudeau is just sort of like in lockstep with Klaus Schwab in the World Economic Forum. So anyways, I would say that, you know, he is a he is a creature of the conservative movement. And I think he is, well, I don't think he personally believes in this stuff. Like, I think he is, he will invite people to believe that he's on their side when it comes to it. And he's very, he will give them permission to share these beliefs and express these beliefs. And how much of a shot does he have at becoming the prime minister?

Well, currently he is leading in the polls, which is actually quite, you know, I think a lot of people who were following Canadian politics 10, 15 years ago would find that very surprising because he, He got elected in his early 20s, and he kind of was known as the, he was kind of an attack dog and would just go out and make really outlandish statements and very inflammatory statements attacking the opposition parties. But, you know, he's tried to reinvent himself as someone who has gravita and can be a leader. And, you know, he's currently leading in the polls. Going to be a beautiful future in Canada. Well, yeah, will be your MP. It is interesting, especially in relation to, like, I guess what.

we would kind of classify as like, like, right-wing American political influence. It seems like it doesn't really have a place in the kind of traditional Canadian Overton window where, like, now you have a much more, I think, significant portion of the conservative party who's, like, explicitly anti-trans, explicitly, you know, anti-abortion, which, like, a decade ago, the idea that, like, abortion was a partisan question in Canada seems, like, far more strange than it is today. And, like, the question of where Polyev navigates in that seems like, it still seems kind of like an open question insofar as during the like conservative policy uh convention which is this

kind of like big event where the conservatives like delegates from the conservative party vote on these non-binding resolutions and the the party leadership like says the direction they want to go the conservative delegates are like pretty overwhelmingly anti-trans for instance and polyev didn't seem like he wanted to comment on those particular issues so it is like you know as a canadian trans woman it's going to be interesting to see our interesting uh troubling to see where he relates to a lot of the kind of beliefs that seem to be coming from like right wing conspiratorial almost content that Canadians that are American made made for American political discourses that Canadians are viewing. Yeah. Do you have the do you have a sense that he's just like

feels a little more like hey, you know, we don't need to do some of this more frivolous American culture war to win, you know, and he's just interested in kind of more old school conservative talking points? No, he's definitely very steeped in the online right-wing culture war stuff. Like that's the thing that I'd say he really leans into. I'd say generally in Canada, you know, the conservative movement, conservative party kind of has three factions. One is, you know, social conservatives, kind of religious right type people. There's sort of this libertarian conservative movement type people. That's the second part of it. The third part would be kind of the more fiscally conservative Bay Street, Wall Street.

type, you know, conservative. And Pollyev is definitely more of the libertarian conservative movement type person. Unfortunately, the libertarians don't have a great track record when it comes to laws protecting children from sexual advances. So good luck with saving the children, guys. You know, it's going to be great. And would you say Pueleve and like that kind of faction is ascendant? I mean, is that like a bit like maga over here? And is there a bit of, like friction with the old school conservatives? I mean, what are we looking at in terms of the way it's shifting? He seems, uh, you know, he really does seem more like a, like a early 2010's Tea Party

character than a like a Trump MAGA type character. You know, I do see sort of elements of like maybe DeSantis to where he, uh, he does seem to be embracing this, um, while not, you know, explicitly, you know, anti-LGBQ, he is very, you know, I think he's, again, like, I think he, he will well. welcome those people into his coalition for sure so I mean as far as the the future of the save the children convoy I assume there still have plans to try to make it to the the streets of Ottawa but I you know I check the the weather report and it's getting colder and rainier in that area so yeah I feel like the window for you know comfortably you know

organizing a protest movement is closing so do you think are they are they still you know planning to make it there in the next couple weeks or months here Well, they say that they're in it for the long haul and we'll never leave. You know, you would, one would think that the weather would become a factor at some point, but, I mean, they have demonstrated great resiliency in the Canadian winters by, you know, spending three weeks camping out in, you know, in Ottawa back in January and February of 2022. So, you know, they have demonstrated the ability to survive in winter conditions. So I don't think that will be a problem for them.

If they do see this whole thing fall apart, it will probably be due to infighting more than anything else. That is fantastic stuff. So we've been talking to Luke LeBron at Press Progress about his reporting on the Save the Children Convoy. I'm going to link to all of his reports in the show notes. Check them out because it is in-depth stuff. Luke, where can people follow you to learn more developments in this bizarre story as it unfolds? Yeah, so, I mean, you can find my reporting at Press Progress at Pressprogress. We're a non-profit news organization based in Canada that, you know, in addition to covering the far right and right-wing politics, we also do stuff like labor reporting and, you know, reporting on issues like social and economic inequality and such things.

You can also follow me on Mastinon and Blue Sky at underscore Ella Brun, and I am also on the website formerly known as Twitter. Thank you so much, Luke. Yeah, thanks so much for having me on. Thank you for listening to another episode of the QAA podcast. You can go to patreon.com slash QAnon Anonymous and subscribe for five bucks a month to get a whole second episode for every main one plus access to our entire archive of premium episodes and our mini-series. For everything else, we've got a website, QAnonanonymous.com. You can find live at live agar.com and search for that name on pretty much all the different platforms. Listener, until next week, may the deep dish bless you.

and keep you. It's not a conspiracy, it's fact. And now, today's AutoCube. This trucker family has been parked in Ottawa for 13 days with their five-year-old. There's not a parent down here that would jeopardize the safety or the health of their child. We brought them down here so that they can be proud of the moment.

Kathleen Callahan says it's sad. Police are now working with the Children's Aid Society over concerns about safety. The risk of carbon monoxide and fumes, the noise levels, concerned about cold. We're concerned about access to sanitation, the ability to shower. There's a multitude of concerns.

We've had a ton of support from a lot of the Ottawa residents who have opened their homes for showers, using their bathrooms. So, you know, it's not like we're locked in these trucks. I think it's disgusting that they would take the chance of traumatizing the children to CAS. There was no media availability with police Wednesday and the Children's Aid Society declined multiple interview requests. In a joint statement, the organization said police would report any potential dangers they observe to the CAS and that there have been ongoing reports around welfare concerns.

But the CAS wouldn't respond to a number of questions by deadline, including how many calls they've received, what type of concerns they're looking at, and whether they'd consider removing any children from here. We've seen no indication of anything unsafe at all. I mean, the only things we've seen that say it's unsafe are reports from legacy media. These cabins are designed to be slept in while vehicles are running. So, I mean, at this point, it seems like they're trying to pull straws

and anything they can to try and add scare tactics. Parents, Global News, spoke to, say, they want to teach their children about protests and call for change. She has no idea what a birthday party is, family gathering. If she has a doctor's appointment, we can't even go in as a family. But this family says if police were to move in in some kind of raid, they would leave immediately for the sake of their daughter's safety.