Shaun Newman Podcast - #634 - Nikki Thom

Episode Date: May 9, 2024

Wife, business owner, freedom fighter and advocate for the Coutts 4.  Political Prisoners of Alberta https://www.facebook.com/groups/622318705558931 Freedom for Chris Carbert https://www.facebook.com/groups/1372655066704865 Let me know what you think. Text me 587-217-8500 Substack:https://open.substack.com/pub/shaunnewmanpodcast E-transfer here: [e-mail] Website: https://silvergoldbull.ca/ Email: [e-mail] Text: [phone] – and be sure to let them know you’re an SNP listener.

This is Brett 14. This is Doug Casey. This is Tom Romago. This is Alex Kraner. This is Viva Fry. You're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the podcast, folks. Happy Thursday.

Okay, this is going to be an interesting ad read for you. So hold the phone, okay, hold the phone. We're going to have a little fun today. You know, I got asked, when I lost my voice after the Cornerstone Forum, I got reached O2 by a couple saying, hey, would you ever have somebody else do your ad reads? Because obviously Jack had done an ad read. And so I'll try anything once and see how, goes. So they reached out. I sent off an ad read and she came back and so reading today's,

part of today's ad read is Becky Anderson. So Becky Anderson from Grand Prairie, let me know what you think. And if you're a listener out there that wants to take a crack at doing the ad reads or part of the ad read, because I'm cool with having a little bit of fun with this if other people are like, this could be fun. Or maybe you got a great voice. Maybe you're like, I can do great ad reads. Hey, I'm not beholden to being the only one who gets the ad read this sucker. So Becky, take it away for a little silver gold bull, would you? With government deficits running out of control, now might be the perfect time to diversify some of your hard-earned savings into physical money that can't be printed, gold and silver. Silver Gold Bowl is my

favorite precious metals dealer, offering a full suite of services to help you buy, sell, and store precious metals. They ship your metal discreetly, fully insured, and with tracking, straight, to you. They are offering special feature pricing on everyone's favorite silver coin, the Royal Canadian Mint, Silver Maple Leaf. This offer is not available on their site and is only open for Sean Newman listeners. Text or email Graham for details at silvergoldbull.ca. Not too shabby, Becky, not too shabby at all. I might add in that down in the show notes, text or email Graham for details. You know, it's my own fault. I sent her the ad read and I'm like, I do it with everyone.

And then I'm like, I ad lib a lot on what is actually on my sheet, I realized. So moving forward, anyone wanting to do an ad read and have a little bit of fun with it, I'll see if I can't send off a little more precise of like, hey, this is what I actually try and say. I don't know. Silvergoldbill. Dot, da, down in the show notes, text or email, Graham for details. Would love it if you do that. The next one, McGowan Professional Chartered Accountants, that's Kristen and Team.

They have been, well, they offer accounting, bookkeeping, business consulting, and training, financial planning, and tax planning. And they've been looking to hire a new CPA. They're hoping to grab somebody here in the local area. And, you know, if that's you, reach out for more information at McGowanCPA.ca.coma.com. Now, Becky, what time is it? Now on to the tale of the tape. wife business owner freedom fighter an advocate for the coots four i'm talking about nicky tom so buckle up here we go welcome in the sean newman podcast today i'm joined by

nicky tom so thank you uh for hopping on thanks for having me sean now if it wasn't for gourd i go i don't know if i'd know who you are i honestly i um i i must live under a rock or i like to think really do a good job of keeping us all in our little silos. So we never know that there's somebody just across the creek, you know, fighting the good fight, I guess. And that's how your name comes to me. And I'm like, okay, yeah, sure. Like, how the heck don't I know who all these people are? And yet, for some reason, even in the world I operate, I don't know who a whole chunk of, you know, this community is. So, Nikki, you got to do me a favor. I'm sure there's tons of people who know who you are. But let's just start from the beginning. If you

you don't mind and give me a little bit of who you are and the lead up to where we're at today. So my husband and his family and myself, we own an oilfield business at a clericum. And they've been blessed for four years. And, you know, just fighting a good fight for the last few years. The government's been, as we all know, corrupted by itself. and yeah that's that's who I am. But if you go back, if you go back 10 years, you're obviously married. You have kids.

Do you? And then were you always, you know, what was your red pill moment? You know, was it, was it COVID? Was it other things? COVID was a big, a big start. I think my big start of a red pill moment was. when Trump come into office. And a lot of people, you know,

Trump pointed out fake news, fake news, fake news. And just started to do some research and some investigation. And just seeing what was wrong was the world. And I think my biggest wake-up moment was 9-11. And saying that something was really wrong in the world. And I think that's where you climb out of the box. And once you get out of the box, you don't get put back in the box.

I've heard a lot of different people's perspectives on 9-11. I was pretty young. I was still in high school at the time. What was it about 9-11 that stood out to you? Like, was it the actual event, or was it things that happened after before? Well, I'd been to, originally I had a hockey scholarship to go to Princeton, and I had declined it,

which now I'm very grateful that I, had not went. And I had been in New York City and I sat on the harbor in one of those buildings and there must have been something about those buildings that just caught my eye. And then to see the steel columns in the window of such a narrow base and to believe that airplanes, when a bird can take out the front of an airplane, slice through steel, the logic doesn't add up. You don't have buildings fall at free fall speed. You know, and then you just start doing your investigation. and having a passport from a Saudi on the ground that everything else is obliterated and find a passport.

It didn't make sense. So that was my starting point to know that something was real wrong. It's interesting. Because, you know, like I remember, you know, 9-11 for me is like one of those events I knew exactly where I was sitting. I was in English class, Mrs. Paterson's English class, rolled the TV in and we all sat there in, I don't know, I can't, I want to say disbelief, but I actually don't know. I just remember thinking, we got half of having to do writing at the time.

And it was the first time I'd ever had a teacher tell me, shut up, just shut up, just watch this. And so, you know, it's, you know, doing the podcast since 2019, and probably since the middle of COVID, it's one of the things that I never even really thought much about. And I've had different people come on and say different things about it. And so for you, it's like, well, the math just doesn't add up. There's different things that just don't make sense. There's two other ones that really stick out to me, Nikki, that I found very fascinating. One was, I believe, the best damn roofer. I believe, if I'm not mistaken, he said it was the way he made him feel.

He said he was ready to go kill anyone. And he said, that doesn't make, you know, he caught himself willing to go and just kill anyone. you know, like certainly what he was meaning was going off to war and being, he goes, anything that makes you feel that way, you got to, you got to analyze that and really think on it. And the other one was Donald Best. And he, he really shocked me when he said, I thought he was going to say something along the lines of, you know, like, you know, I don't know, the building,

they had placed charges at the bottom of the building and that was it. It was actually, it was just a story from one of the guys who was in one of the towers. And they said, oh, don't leave. The building will be fine. And he left. And he went down and grabbed his girlfriend and then took the elevator, which they say never take the elevator. But if he'd taken the stairs, he wouldn't have made it out because of the time it took to get out on the stairs. And instead he took the elevator, he got down.

And once down at the bottom, cops were already chaining the doors shut to keep everybody from probably breaking loose pandemonium onto the streets. Now, whether I'm right or wrong on this, folks, we can argue about later. Regardless, that's how the story plays out. And so they just went out a side door, got out and they survived. And that was his story, right? And then what Donald had said was, you know, government doesn't have your best interest at heart, right? Everything they just told that guy to do, he did the opposite and survived. And if you'd done it, you were dead.

That just right there, that isn't getting into the deep woodworks of 9-11. That's just different views on how that event, something doesn't add up. So I appreciate you telling me that because I'm like, 9-11 is a long freaking time ago, right? like 23 years ago almost that that happened. Even with COVID, so when they first started bringing out and in China saying people were frothing at the mouth, dying in the streets.

And I was a little more in tuned to kind of what was going on and researching and it didn't make sense. And then you've seen it, you know, in Italy and it seems sets with the clocks in different spots with the same time. You know, like it's just like, was like a movie set and there would just be certain things that you would pick out and you'd say that this is not normal so you know it's yeah there's a lot of problems well fast forward to COVID you know um

you start noticing all these different things you're a business owner right you guys uh you're not in the big metropolis of calgary what what are you what's claire's home uh hour and change from now Oh, very. Yeah. And and so, I mean, certainly everybody has their story of walking through COVID. How hard was it on your guys's area of business of what you do? Did you, did you notice any changes? Was it a big deal? Yep, you bet. We had companies fault and say to us, you can no longer work for us unless all your people are vaccinated. And my husband said, you can go to hell. I will never work for you ever again. Cancel our contracts, cancel whatever. I am done. I'm not working. for you. We're a full belief of your body, your choice. We actually paid employees basically

for two years not to get vaccinated. And if they work, they still got paid. And you know what? To this day, it's not about money. It's about being a good person and doing what's right. And if you can, out of all this, save one person, you've done your job. What is you, who, we better make mention of this then. Who, what, where is your company? Actually, my husband, it's funny because after Coots, he had said he'd had enough. So my father-in-law started this company. We own Triple T Energy Services, small oil-filled business that I've cleared some here. And, yeah, I've been in business for 40 years.

And after we went to Coots, my husband said, I can't do this anymore. I can see what the government's doing to us, rules and the regulations, when they're forcing people to put something into their body that you have, you have your God-given rights to put whatever you want in your body, but you shouldn't be forced or bribed to put anything into your body. He just said no more, I can't do this. Just stick them with Triple T for just one sec. Oilfield Company, what do you offer?

I guess I have different companies that have supported the podcast and have taken stands very similar to your, and I got all the time in the world for it. And so somebody's probably listening. Some are going, what company is this now? And maybe they can use you, maybe they can't. Maybe you're too far away. Maybe you're, I have no idea.

I just want to make sure we pause for one second here. Triple T and what do you provide? And if there was a way for a company to contact you, how would they do it? Well, actually, we are in the process. We have sold probably three quarters of our equipment already. So we are actually fully in the process of shutting our business down at this point. but we did offer services of back trucks, tank trucks, winch tractors, picker trucks, bed trucks, rental services, you name it, fluid services.

So when you're selling it off, is that because there was no support, like you were, sorry, we're struggling or we're like, this is, we can't do this anymore? No, my husband just said, I'm not doing it anymore. I am not going to, the rules or regulations of the business change substantially. and the government oversight is absolutely through the rules. It's no longer about quality of service. We always prided ourselves on good service, good customer service, and it's not about that anymore.

So he just said after Coots and the government was bribing people, he said, enough. As long as I'm in business, I'm complicit with what's going on. He says, I can't be complicit with the government anymore. Well, let's talk about Coots then. You know, I got to go to Ottawa, and I've heard a lot about Coots. I'd love to hear your, I don't know, not version. That sounds terrible.

More of what you saw. So I guess your version in a sense. Well, to start out, I was sent, somehow, I don't know if I was sent a poster or come across a poster. And I wasn't sure if it was something that was actually going on or what was going to happen. And we knew that we certainly kind of show up with two tracks or ten tracks. or, you know, there was a little bit of concern before we went down if it was just a small amount of trucks or people that it would be kiboshed right out to get go. And so we did some phoning around investigating and, yeah, people said, yeah, that's what's going

on. So I'd been phoned around to some farmers and I'd known Tony my whole life and I know that he's on the side of freedom. And I'd phone Tony and said, what do you think about going? Coots. And he said, yeah, sure, what are we doing? And I said, well, nobody knows what we're doing. I said, we don't know if there's how many people are coming, how many people are showing up or what's kind of going on. And I was sitting right in this chair and I could remember like yesterday and he said to me, can we get into trouble for this? And I said, my comment back to him as well,

I guess if they're going to rest one of us, they're going to rest all of us. And what are they going to do with a whole bunch of truckers? They're not going to want to have anything to do with us. And his concern was the Critical Infrastructure Act. And I said, nobody knows what's going to happen. And so a couple days, we were just busy trying to gather flags. And we had asked a whole bunch of people with our yard in Clarison. We said, you know, whoever wants to come, show for a yard,

five o'clock in the morning and we'll leave from here and we got to the shop about four 30 in the morning and there was probably 30 35 cars outside our shops trucks you name it um people just ready to go so we left the shop and um travel to let'sbridge and we weren't sure they're what the response would be from people i don't think people really knew what was um happening or i mean we didn't really know what was going on and we got through Lettsbridge and we had a guy off and overpassed or a rock at one of our trucks which could have ended in a bad scenario but it didn't thankfully and traveled on towards Coots and the more um we got going through traffic the more more people you could see and it took us five hours to get down to Cootts which it should never take you five hours

but the traffic was just so slow. And we got, I don't know, probably 20 minutes from Coots. And we had all stopped on the side of the highway because none of us had, this is how grassroots it was. Nobody knew exactly what was even going on or where we were to go. And my brother got on the CB. And our company itself, we had taken back trucks, straight trucks. We had seven trucks and two pickups, so we had nine total.

of our company trucks. And my brother and my dad were in their semis in front of us. And so I got to Coots. And I honestly cannot even tell you the feeling of what it meant when we showed up and the people and the amount of trucks. And it was just absolutely overwhelming. of people were standing in unity like it just to this day i have no words for the overwhelming feeling and um we seen where the one truck had you know had been kind of blocked around so i mean

we were still driving got to the inspection station and made the corner of turn back around and and uh we had a gentleman say this lane if you're staying this lane if you're going home and we saw said well we're staying full in here in part and I actually just had my foot operated on five days prior, so I actually couldn't even walk at that point. And we pulled up, and right across from our trucks, there was a catiliner and five or six people on top of the catalyiner, like it was absolutely surreal of the people

because we had been silenced for so long. And then to see little kids out in the ditch and saying, this is the best freedom party I've ever been to and waving flags and kids even said, oh, we don't have to wear a mask, you know, and truly, and Tony and I had this conversation because neither one of us have children. And we're in the full belief that you always leave this place a better place than when you come into it. And I think from seeing what's happened to the kids in the last couple of years, it's important that we stand up for other people's

children. And it was just truly the most remarkable, fun-loving. I have no, like I said, I still to this day, I have no words for the feeling everybody had. How long did you stay in Coots, Nikki? So our group stayed five days, five, six days. our issue was we had taken so many trucks and the trucks inserted quitting because it was cold it was 30 35 below and sitting there for days on end and they were throwing every cold and bunk heaters had stopped we actually thank goodness one guy had come over um he had got boosted one of our trucks and uh like there there was miserable conditions and finally we were kind of forced to leave because we only had one truck that was old enough that wasn't throwing

codes and going to quit and we had employees in our trucks and one had a one was a wife and a husband couple and they had a child at home and that back truck was on the verge of it had thrown every code and we had nobody there to plug a computer into it and get it gone so at that point we having too many trucks was our detriment because we kind of keep, you know, enough trucks running. They're just not meant to sit there for days on end and run. So when you leave, obviously you don't go, well, that was fun and I'm never paying attention to this ever again. I'm sure when you get home, you're you're kind of glued to what's happening there, is my guess. When we left, there was a hardest decision we've ever, actually

my whole life I've ever had to make because my husband had said, I'm not leaving. I'm not leaving till everybody leaves and having being forced to leave that way to this day, he has still said, I never wanted to leave. But we couldn't let our employees take trucks without if something were to happen. And we had to limp them back to Lethbridge with 30-clogers an hour to get them back. And, you know, we left and he had went into the saloon and said to some of the guys, you know, like, I don't want to leave. But right now I'm kind of being forced where I have to leave.

leave and we were escorted through you know the place were all down the road and we got to milk river and we did not know what was at milk river and we called up to milk river and seen the people and even my husband and everybody the tears started rolling from everybody's eyes because you knew the support that was there and you felt like you were abandoning what you had been set out to do. But at that point, when we were forced, we didn't have a choice. But it was, yeah, it's, even to this day, you just sit here and it, yeah, it's, can't make this stuff up.

No, you most certainly cannot. How did you first hear about the arrests and all the news coming out of Coots with Tony and the group? Well, I talked to Tony several times. after we had left. And one of our friends was still down at Milk River. And he had phone and he said, actually something, something's going south right now.

And I talked to him for a few minutes. And so I said, well, I'm going to try and phone Tony and see what's going on since he's there. And Tony always answered my call. And no answer from Tony. And I know he had been posting some, videos on Instagram so I pulled up his Instagram account had a look and I'd seen he had just posted a video and I thought okay well maybe he's busy posting or he doesn't want to take my call

fair enough and tried 911 I phone him steady and no answer and I just had a gut feeling that something something was wrong and I paced the house for a while and he said as I was trying to phone him, he could hear his phone ringing in the police car. You know, I don't know of, certainly I've had several different people on to talk about the Coots 4 or the group of them now, now the two of them still behind bars. You might be another one of the fine folks who knows as much of this situation as anyone. you know so you find out they're behind bars they're they're taken into custody i don't know i don't know where you want to start in this and where you want to end but i am curious your viewpoint on the

events that unfold from tony being arrested and the rest of them for that matter to where we sit today you know what is it 800 and 15 days 815 days today yep right like uh just and so when this releases, it'll be 816 days just for people to keep that in the forefront of their mind on how many days Tony and Chris have been, still remain behind bars. But I've had different people on here talking about these guys. I've obviously had Tony a few weeks back via phone call and we had that. But, you know, I don't know, give me, give me what you've seen and what, what, I don't know, whether it's concerns or what sticks out to you that's really bothering you besides the fact that these guys are still behind bars 800 days later.

Well, when I at first, I guess, when they left, they pulled out of coupes, I was watching the video because I had been waiting to see if Tony's truck was coming out. And at that point, I had not seen Tony's truck come out. and I knew at that point something had gone drastically wrong here. I've known Tony my whole life. And we've worked business together. I mean, he had a construction gravel company. And when I seen the first news release with the place,

and my first reaction in a weird sense was, we're going to play this game now. Like, it was so surreal because all as I've ever known, Tony, the man's, oh, he was a working fool. That's all he ever did was work, work, work. And so then our first task was to try and get a hold of his mom. His mom's 80. And got a hold of her.

And Tony had a girlfriend at the time and trying to make sense of what was going on, trying to get a lawyer, trying to figure out where he was, trying to get a hold of him, you know, trying to figure out, you know, I mean, he couldn't, I mean, everybody just touches the name on their phone now so you don't remember everybody's phone number if you had to dial it. And so when his phone was taken away, first he had no way of, you know, he had his mom's number and finally got hold of his mom. And we were a few months into the bail hearing and really hopeful at that point that, I mean, everybody in Canada makes bail. but not these. Everyone.

Right. And I mean, I don't even know if Tony would have a speeding ticket or, you know, like he's just, he's just that type of guy that would go help anybody. And like I said, a working fool. And so to see what was transpiring, he just looking. And I remember I was able to watch his bail hearing. And I sat at the computer absolutely sobbing because I thought, how can, how can this is so unjust of sitting here watching his face on the screen knowing that he was basically helpless at that point. And so it's, it's funny how the longer kind of goes on, the strawberry you kind of get, and you have, you know, you prepare yourself, you have good days, you have bad days. and my friend Danielle and I

we basically sat in court for the last two years we've hardly missed a day and to sit there in court and just to listen to this and they're trying to paint these guys as monsters that they are a threat to society

that they were up to something nefarious it's absolute lownessy to to see any of this. And before I had not known any of the other three, but since then I've got to know them. And they're good, hardworking people.

They're single fathers, blue-collar workers, and were just there like everybody else to protect their God-given rights. And to prosecute people like this. And it's hard to sit here because all you see is the justice system, weaponized against the people and I don't think people are fully aware of the gravity of the situation because every time that they do this to somebody

they built case law and then it's used against the next person so if there's another protest and somebody decides to stand up and speak to the police or if they want to pick you out of a crowd and whatever comes out of this these cases can be used against people and this is why it is so important to defend this cases because it will be used against brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, children for generations to come and it will be weaponized against the people. Yeah. That's why talking to Tony and then Marco was so, I was saying before we started, you know,

I had Tony on with Granny Mackay, he called in the minute of our interview, so that was the one brief interaction I'd had. And then Marco had been on, Jesus, a long time ago, you know, 2022 I wanted to say. Forget what the timeline wasn't on. And, you know, I'm just glad I got pushed to bring them both back on. Because in my mind, and still to this day, you know, if you're going to stand up against the machine, which is, you know, our system of governance, the end, the end, Well, and as you point out with case law, it's becoming more and more cemented in. You will go to jail. Like, they're just going to haul you off.

And, you know, I'm curious on your end, if you were shocked, you know, you know, Tony, you'd be, I would assume in court of law, you'd be a great character witness because you could just be like this guy's, you know, he works a lot. I don't think he's planning to murder any cops. That's just my, you know, two cents. Um, were you shocked at how when they came up with that photo and said, conspiracy to commit murder, everybody just went like this. Um, I'm out of here. That was when I first seen the picture, like, that was my first thing. I was, we were going to play this game now because it was so unbelievable, um, that this,

that this, that they would even put this narrative, um, But, I mean, they needed to stop this blockade. They needed to set precedence to show people, you will never do this ever again. And if you do this, this is what's going to happen to you. And at the start, the Harper was even for Tony's first bail hearing, we had to go around the community and get character reference letters. and a lot of people really wanted to write character reference letters for Tony, but were terrified of the government, terrified of the repercussions,

terrified of maybe their bank account maybe being seized, terrified of being maybe watched by the police. And it took a lot of work. And people had all said, well, glad they write a letter for Tony. I mean, all I've known him is a hard-working man, but scared of the government. And that was the hardest part. It probably took Daniel and I, probably three weeks.

And some of the people we had to beg, but they were scared to put their name on it, just to fear up the government. And took them to the bail hearing, and, you know, they had them all. And here, here we are. You know, it didn't seem like, I mean, anybody in our community would tell you, Tony's a stand-up guy who would help anybody. We actually had a one of his friends had a house fire. A couple of years ago, we had a fire come through Clarison.

And he went over there with all his equipment. And for three days, help clean up the yard, clean up whatever he could and no charge. And Elsie asked was his friendship in return. I, myself and my husband had a house fire. And Tony had his whole at the time. And my sister had worked on and off for Tony for the last. few years. And Tony brought us hole over. My sister had always said, well, I'd sure like to tear down your house. And so Tony brought his home where my sister tore our house down. And Tony says,

you know what? No, he says, I'm just going to charge you for the hours. He put on my machine. And he says, we're just good friends. Thanks. And I've never forgot that because when people do good things for you, you don't forget. And to this day, that's why I will stand by these men. because they are good men. I'm going to get asked all over again, and to all the listeners who text me, and I don't know if I ever put it back to a few of them, how do people support this, Tony and the others?

Where would you direct them to? To the Alberta's page, the Alberta political prisoners. We've set up a go-fund meet for Tony. There's an email for Chris. There's an email for Tony on the page. And what is the page specifically? Alberta political prisoners. And is that Facebook?

Okay, Alberta political prisoners on Facebook folks. Just so we're clear on that because I do know there are people that are going to hear this. They're going to be like, Sean, how do we help these guys? And Chris Carbord has a, I believe it's freedom for Chris Carbord. And he's got all his Chris posts daily updates on his page. his page. People can go to Chris's page also to help support Chris too. Okay. Sorry, I'm writing this down so I don't forget it because I'm going to get done this and I'm going to forget all what she said, folks. I want to make sure when people text me because

they will because they'll be going, they'll be searching, you know, they'll be driving somewhere and there'll be a, where's a pen? Where's a pen? I'm just going to text Sean. I know how this goes. No, cool. Okay. So I got those two down. Let's talk about, you know, you've written letters, you've, you've documented. You know, when, when these guys finally get out, they're probably for a multitude of reasons they're going to give you a hug. But when I look at the detailed work that you and I'm sure others have done, like documenting some of the conditions they've been through, some of the emails sent, and I'm sure there's, this is just a snapshot of it. like that's going to speak volumes in the future when they try to uh well i assume uh when they not only try but win a case against the government saying this was unlawful whatever that uh legal

term turns out to be regardless you've been documenting um the conditions and different things like that for the audience for myself let's talk about that i i you know coming into this uh nicky part of my brain goes and this is just the way my brain thinks. I'm not upset about conditions behind bars. I think it should be rough, right? You didn't, the problem I got is these guys are like, 800 days. This is insane.

Like, what are we doing? But you, when I read your detailed work, I feel like you're going to change my mind on that. So please, have at her with me. what has been going on? What are you seeing? Why the concern? Explain it to me.

So what all started out, Tony's got a condition called Sable, small intestine, bacterial opacroats, and he had been treating it. Tony had been going to a naturopaths treating it with a probiotic and magnesium citrate. And so went to court one day, and I looked at Tony, and his face was, was all sunken, his eyes were sunken, his color was poor, as skinny as could be.

And you could see his mom almost in tears in the courtroom looking at him. And he said to me the one day, Nikki, I don't know if I'm going to arrive at the day. I am so sick. So the first adjournment, we went out and I went into the office and I said in his lawyer, he needs medical treatment now. He is skinny. He is sick. and he's saying to me he doesn't know if he can make it through the day.

And his lawyer said, okay, I'll take your information, I'll write the facility and get him some medical treatment. And so I actually have her letter, her letters in the report that I had sent you. And that was on June 13th. And so Tony went back to court. We went to take him another pair of pants, and he had a size 28 pair of pants.

fell off. And I finally said, enough is enough is enough. And so years ago, I worked at the hospital. And I guess this is where my starting and my advocating maybe started. I worked at a senior's facility. And they had changed all the food. We had a fully functional kitchen at the hospital. And they started bringing in food from Ontario.

and just in like your microwave little plates. And we had people that would sit there and people who had dementia, people, they weren't eating, they were getting bladder infections. And so finally, I had said that at that point I'd had enough because at that point I had said, I work for the people. I don't work for this facility. My phone the news. And I said to my boss in the morning, I went to her and I said,

listen, this is what I've done. I'm not hiding anything from you. And I phone the news because this is wrong. And I basically told either shut my mouth or you'll be fired. And to this day, my biggest regret was I shut my mouth. I told the news not to come, but I went to the families and started telling families what was going on. So then the families started doing investigating. And so this is where I've kind of got to to this point here, where this point I'm not saying, no, I'm not giving up. I'm not quitting. And so then I would hear a little bit from Chris Carver and started hearing some more from Jerry Moore and then I started hearing some more from Chris Lysick. And then the more I started hearing that this isn't just them that this is happening to,

that there's more people. And Chris Carbert had phoned granny one day because there was a gentleman in there getting serious distress of thinking he was having a heart attack and he was in so much stress, Chris phone Granny to say, listen, you need to light at the phone lines because this gentleman, there is in serious need of medical attention and nobody will help him.

Well, the phone lines lit up, and this gentleman gets some help. And so now this gentleman is in one of my reports, and he hasn't seen a doctor in the last five months, and he needs to go have an angiogram. And

in his reports, he's been you know he's been writing in health care um health request forms for help and can't get help and tony with his letter from the lawyer he the lawyer sent the letter on uh june 13th he never seen a doctor to the middle of august and so in the process i mean i've never i mean this the three men or jails is it's a foreign thing um to us and so trying to i can see what people get lost in the system and why people don't get help because it took me months of phone again some days i would spend six to eight hours a day phoning emailing getting told no and then i'd phone the ombudsman and they'd say well no you can you we can't help you then i'd phone um Alberta health services uh no we can't help you

i'd phone the Alberta human rights commission no we can't help you this we don't deal with standard of care and so finally i got a hold of aHS started a file number and because of being in court for the last two years I have now become a very evidence-based person and so I had asked Tony to write me a letter and write a delivery health services where I could obtain all Tony's medical records and there was over 180 pages of medical records that he had been writing in for help begging for help and it would that's of the hardest read that I've ever had to do because he is begging for medical treatment and being told no it's um i don't know it's uh i always think when um if you went to your

doctor and your doctor's told you to shut up and and if i give you this will you shut up and go away would people take it no and that's exactly what's going on in these facilities um in this report, it took me a month to compose this report, get all the information, get all the facts, get all the health records, talk to the guys. And we're learning. There's more people like Chris, Tony, Chris and Jerry, what they've experienced in these facilities. And I don't believe this is an Alberta problem. There's been reports come out in Ontario. I've read reports in Europe. This is a worldwide stomach problem. And in these facilities, I don't think people understand that these remit are the correctional

facilities. When you're a sentence person in these facilities, your sentence is two years or less, or you're awaiting trial. And so every time I go to see Tony, and he's in the last bridge now, that full courtyard is empty. You never see people outside. And I said to Tony, one day does nobody ever get to go outside?

And he said, but if you're sentenced, you can go outside in the courtyard. If you are not, if you are waiting for trial, you only get to go in this small little area that's screened over. You can barely see sunshine. It's just concrete, concrete walls, and you can barely see the sun. And I said, well, this is asked backwards because if you are sentenced, you get to go outside. and in the courtroom and you can go sit under the tree or in the grass. But if you're waiting for trial, you only get to sit in this little area with concrete walls.

I said, this is where it's asked backwards, where if you're sentenced, put yourself in that little whole area. But if you're awaiting trial, why are all your rights being stripped from you when you're still awaiting trial? The system is absolutely broken. And I say to people anymore, we just can't go along to get along because this could be anybody being stuck in this position. And from these other men that I've talked to, they're in the same position as Chris and Tony right now.

And no previous criminal history and being denied medical care. And when I've reached out to the health minister, I actually went to a meeting. and I got a hold of three MLAs, and I actually took Chris Lysk with me because I thought, I'm going to take him, I'm going to take all the medical records. I give them all packages of all the medical records. We sat down and had a chat and said,

the best thing is sometimes you're going to have to look that man in the eye and see what's happened to him. He's a single father. He's had two children that now have trauma because they have not had, they've been two years away from their father. And so Chris could tell this story and they could hear it right from the horse's mouth.

And it's pretty hard to see a grown man sit there with tears running down his face to see what they've done to him for the last two years and see what they've done to his children. And they were appalled. And I had read out the reports and stuff. And care we still? sit um i've i've never got a response back from the health minister and you know what i'm i'm

learning um in court um if you say nothing you're complicit so um when i can't get a response back from the health minister um adrianna lagrange was confronted last august um and sylvan like about the men um she's i've people have been sending me back emails they've um got back from the minister's office or emilates they've been submitting and saying that basically you know that it's been looked after the the there's no mistreatment in these facilities that we've we've started a misinformation campaign and that they can assure the public that there's been no problem in these facilities but I I myself cannot get a response back from the health minister

and I've actually in my last report went to the public interest commissioner they had put a through my research they had put out a report um October 25th 2023 and there were seven inmates that a whistleblower um had come forward with with medical treatments or medical complaints and there was violation with all seven people so this is not something new and the government just seems to want this to go away they don't want to deal with the problems there's a big problem. Adrian Lerrange, you can't deal with, you have problems in the remand facilities. The MLAs, it seems to be, they know there's something wrong, but nobody seems to want to investigate this or touch this. And I can't understand why.

Well, when it comes to the Coots 4, I understand why. Yep. Or I shouldn't say I understand why. I think I understand why. Right? Like, I mean, I look at, I look at, uh, Like, where is Tony at with his case? And Chris, for that matter. Like, are they, like, are they months away or we still don't know any, like, what update could you give everybody on where it sits? So, May 27th, there'll be one more week of pretrial applications, and then the trial will start the following week.

So, yeah, it's trial starts here right away here. And then do they have any timeline on the trial? not that that matters. It's like, you know, just like a Tamara and Chris going east. It's like, oh, yeah, it'll take 16 days. Right. Right. Okay. Sure. Do they have a timeline on how long it's going to take? They say six weeks of wasting taxpayers money. So that's the time allotted so far. At that point, that's all I can give you because I don't know. what can what can people do to help

you know people the lovely thing about my audience I always say they're smarter than me because they are and as a group there's a lot of them that we just love to you know if it's just financial then I'll

maybe put it in the show notes maybe I'll put the links there folks for the Alberta political prisoners Facebook and then freedom for Chris Carbert as well if people are interested in that is there anything else you know that to you're like, you know, I don't know, maybe it's with each individual MLA.

We have this, this, I've been, I don't know, asked, I guess asked to host this injection of truth town hall in Calgary on June 17th. And they're bringing doctors in and they're bringing all the MLA, they're trying to get as many MLAs in as possible. And they're trying to get rid of the shots for children. And I found that very fascinating. And fascinating in a good way, like, oh, this actually, you know, maybe could work. And I go from this side with these guys.

Is there anything that, you know, people can help with? Heck, maybe I can help with. I don't know. Like, certainly talking more about it. And I'm trying to do that, especially as the trial gets closer and things, you know, like to put pressure on this thing and keep it in the limelight as much as we can from this end because it's important. It's important for people to understand where it's at, how close it is.

and what they're going through. Is there anything else that can be done by people, Nikki? Well, first of all, financial help for the guys mean they, the lawyers bills are through the roof for these guys. That is first and foremost. Second of all, the health. You know, I applaud Chris Carbert and Tony for coming forward because they're exposing the system for what it is.

and I didn't know the difference between a jail remands and our correctional facility. I did not understand what was going on in these facilities. I do think it's important that people reach out to the health minister and let the health minister know that this is not okay and we are not going to put up with. And I put in my report torture because this is full on torture what they are doing to these men. Reach out to MLAs.

We need to keep pushing as much. pressure on these government officials, they need to remember that they work for us. We don't work for them. Grant Hunter is the MLA out of the Lethbridge for the Lethbridge Correctional Facility. Nathan Newdorf is the MLA for Chris Carverett. Chelsea Petrovich is the MLA for Anthony Olinick or Tony. Keep putting pressure on them. I do believe that we will get some changes out of this.

and I do think a big thing right now is Granny had started a letter of writing campaign to these men and these letters mean more than anybody could ever imagine for support you know I'm going to see Tony here in a couple hours taking his mom

and when I went to see him last time he sends all his mail back with me and there's been times where I've dumped buckets out on the floor and just people say them, you know, send a little scripture, send, you know, just a little writing, you know, that they can't get cards in Lusbridge, they can only accept letters, and written letters. And those mean a lot to these men.

And trial is coming up. I do think it is very important that the crown and the judge and everybody sees people. We need to fill the street with people. We need to fill the courtroom with people. We need to let them know that we are not okay with this. Yes, okay. I was just, while I was doing it, you reminded me at Granny McKay's, McI's, man, I'm sorry, Granny, I do it all the time.

She'd sent it along. So anyone who wants the details on writing letters, I would appreciate it. Just text me, because then I can just text you exactly what she wrote me, and you can have all the strict rules on how to write them, what you can and cannot do, inmate numbers, the address, on and on and on it goes. If that's something you're interested in doing, if you're interested in donating some money,

certainly then I'll post links of where to go for that. And then to fill the courtroom, to fill the street, what day, again, just for my slow brain, because I'm trying to do 12 things at once, and I shouldn't be doing that. What day again does the pretrial start? And is that what you're talking about or the trial or both?

So the pretrial will run right before the trial. So pretrial will start May 27th again and it will carry on right through into trial. So they'll have one week of pretrial and then the trial will start the following week. So as many people can come down, support these guys. It's really, really important that we let them know they have all the support. and we're not just going to go along and begin long with us anymore and that we have political prisoners in our country and people think that you know this stuff happens in third world countries which we should have never allowed it but it's here that should terrify everybody

I agree anything else Nikki before I let you out of here I appreciate you giving me some time this morning and for the listener answering we were planning to do this at a different time and I forced the issue. So I appreciate you, you give me some time this morning. Is there anything else you want to say to the audience before I let you out of here? Yeah. I just would really like to say thank you to everyone. It's been a long, hard, tough two years.

People are tired. People are exhausted. It has been exhausting. I guess nobody said this was going to be easy. And it hasn't been easy. but please keep supporting the guys. They are very, very thankful. I know Chris Carbert yesterday, he had some crosses

that he had some beadwork he had made selling yesterday. If people can go support him. Tony's been doing a little bit of beadwork for auction items and building necklaces. Any support, I know these guys are truly forever grateful for. And, yeah, free to us with. Thanks, Nikki, again, for hopping on this morning. Thanks, Sean.