Shaun Newman Podcast - #951 - Chris Dacey
Episode Date: November 13, 2025Chris Dacey is a Canadian independent journalist and founder of Dacey Media, based in Ottawa, Ontario, and a member of the Independent Press Gallery of Canada. Known for his on-the-ground livestreamin...g and reporting, he gained national attention for covering the 2022 Freedom Convoy protests, which led to him and collaborators being restricted from House of Commons access. In late 2025, his viral coverage of the CFIA-ordered culling of over 300 ostriches at a British Columbia farm—documenting RCMP heavy-handedness, property destruction, and inhumane treatment—drew millions of views and widespread calls for mainstream exposure.Tickets to Cornerstone Forum 26’: https://www.showpass.com/cornerstone26/Tickets to the Mashspiel:https://www.showpass.com/mashspiel/Silver Gold Bull Links:Website: https://silvergoldbull.ca/Email: SNP@silvergoldbull.comText Grahame: (587) 441-9100Bow Valley Credit UnionBitcoin: www.bowvalleycu.com/en/personal/investing-wealth/bitcoin-gatewayEmail: welcome@BowValleycu.com Use the code “SNP” on all ordersProphet River Links:Website: store.prophetriver.com/Email: SNP@prophetriver.comGet your voice heard: Text Shaun 587-217-8500
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Now, let's get on to that tale of the tape.
Today's guest is a Canadian independent journalist
and content creator who founded Dacey Media.
I'm talking about Chris Dacey.
So buckle up, here we go.
Welcome to the Sean Numa podcast today.
I'm joined by Chris Dacey.
Dacey, Chris, welcome to the show.
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Now, before we get into everything, ostriches and what's happening there,
first time you've been on the podcast, which actually kind of shocked me.
I was going through and I'm like, I've had Chris on before.
I'm like, I've never had Chris on before.
Just maybe quickly or long, it doesn't matter to me.
Just explain to the audience a little bit about yourself.
Yeah, so I'm a carpenter by trade. In another life, I was a carpenter. That all kind of disappeared during the nastiness of COVID. I ended up living in downtown Ottawa. Long story there, but I was in basically in right downtown Ottawa, a few blocks from Parliament Hill when the convoy rolled in. So I've been kind of stuck down there, not knowing what to do for a year. Convoy came to Ottawa, and it surrounded me, basically. So I started filming during that time. But when I really started getting into the bigger media stuff,
after the convoy got pushed out.
I was left behind basically still living there.
I was surrounded by police.
And I just started going out and filming everything I saw.
Didn't really know what to do.
So I went out, filmed checkpoints and just wandered around downtown
and kind of grew from there.
I started covering the protest scene in Ottawa,
politics in Ottawa.
And it's turned into something I never would have imagined could happen, really.
Well, and now it's taken you all the way across the country.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I mean, this was kind of the dream.
I guess, well, not the nightmare that just happened, but, you know, it can be able to travel to the story, right? And I was blessed enough to be able to do that now. So I, you know, it's something I would like to do. I like to get my eyes on things. I like filming stuff. I like these kind of dynamic situations. So being out here has been, it's been hard, but it's been a dream as well. Well, walk me through it. Because you've been there, I think, by all accounts, over a month now. Yes? Yeah, yeah, over a month. I think it'll be five weeks on Friday.
I believe. So walk me through day one to where you're sitting today because I you know like I think
there's been a lot of different eyes on this. There's been a lot of great reporting honestly done
from yourself and others. You know, on our side, we've talked to Katie several times. But you're a guy
who, you know, walks in, independent journalist sits down, starts looking at things going, this is
odd um you know from your eyes from day one what did you notice and and just walk us through i don't
know the weeks the days weeks and now months uh later um yeah it was pretty whirlwind coming in
i have to say you know i kind of kind of made the decision i was going to try to get out here and
within a couple of days i was uh was on a plane i uh flew into colonna and uh mike rude from the
rude awakening to our Canadian forces veteran anybody who follows me would probably know who he is
by now um he picked me up at the airport and uh we drove in here and i honestly
Like, it was like the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen driving through the mountains.
I was so excited to see Mike.
I hadn't seen him in a while and come rolling in.
And as we roll up to the farm, you see a giant A-kill pen and privacy fencing.
So there was always this constant, you know, you're in paradise, but you look a layer deeper.
And it's a dystopian nightmare kind of thing.
It was a lot of excitement when I first came in.
There was quite a few people here.
It was a whirlwind, honestly.
There was constantly stuff going on.
um it was really hard to figure out what the c fia were doing um you know it's not normal to see
rcmp surrounding a farm and armed checkpoints on a family farm so uh a lot of it took some
adjust into and uh it was really up and down so like you know there be times you think you
have a little break and then then something would happen across the field somebody would call
and i kind of spent the first week almost just chasing my tail um it felt like you know running
from one thing to the next and not really knowing uh exactly what i was doing but kind of as i got
the lay of the land and my feet under me, it started getting a bit easier. Oh, easier in one way.
There was a lot of strange things going on here. And we worked really hard to try to get to the
bottom of it, but they were so secretive that it was very, very difficult.
When you talk about strange things, walk me through some of the strange things that you
witnessed. Yeah, well, for one, there's been a problem with the number of birds, or it appears
there's been a problem with how many birds there were. So since before I got here, the family
had been asking to get a count. Many people were trying to count the birds. The CFIA refused to
give a number. The RCMP weren't allowed to help. They did try one time by a drone and they were
reprimanded almost immediately by the CFIA. So Mike Rood and I went up to, went up to mountains.
Mike went up a bunch of times to try to get photographic evidence and video, which we ended up
doing very high quality video. And it seemed like pretty much every time someone went up to
mountain, the number of birds was dropping. The other thing we noticed is that, so the male birds are
black, dark colored and the females are, the hens are a lighter color. And it seemed to us that
there was far too many males and not enough females. There should normally be like at least two to one
male to female. And certainly didn't appear to be the case, especially towards the end. That was
probably the biggest thing. But everything around here was was kind of shocking on its face, right?
You have people in hazmat suits or, I mean, they're like paper painter suits, walking into biohazard zones and then just walking straight out, you know, trucks driving into the field that's supposed to be completely contaminated and then driving out, kicking out, kicking out, kicking out of the slaughter.
You know, you got blood soaked hay being strewn about destroyed fields and the police vehicles coming out, kicking the stuff all over the place.
They're just onto the highway and gone.
When you say, you're trying to get the number of birds, how many there are.
Did I hear you correctly say the RCMP tried helping and then the CFIA basically reprimanded them for that?
Yeah, yeah, correct.
So they tried to fly a drone high.
So there was an incident earlier on when the farm was first seized early on where the RCMP were flying their drones low.
And they scared or spooked in ostrich.
They ended up getting injured.
Then later died while under the care, quote, care of the CFIA.
So I don't want to confuse the two like that.
that very unfortunate incident happened earlier.
In this case, I think they were trying to be helpful.
And they put the drone up pretty high.
And I heard I think it was almost immediately.
Same day, they were reprimanded.
And I think this has happened a number of times, right?
So this is the CFIA's warrant.
And the RCMP say they're here for, you know, to keep the peace more or less.
But, you know, they've seized the property and they're doing the bidding of the CFIA.
And I think at times there's a lot of frustration on the part of the RCMP.
they're probably not used to be embossed around and some of the footage that came out of here was pretty
nasty about the stuff they were doing and that embarrassment I think got taken out on me and others
but I think the you know the problem was more with the CFIA than with any of us well the CFIA
is a Canada food inspection agency did you know much about that before you got there you know
like I highly dope many I think some definitely in my area of farmers know exactly
exactly who they are. But, you know, to go there, I, I would assume most Canadians are thinking
RCMP up here and CFIA, somewhere below that. What you're telling about is a power
dynamic that is opposite of that when it came to obviously livestock. Yeah, it's very, very bizarre
to see, actually. I mean, I guess I'd heard of the CIA and maybe had a cursory knowledge of
them, but I'm not a farmer and don't really have a lot of dealings with that kind of stuff.
I've come to learn quite a bit more about the CFIA and one of the most shocking parts about this is how much power this unelected bureaucracy has.
You know, they're able to wield basically unlimited power.
They're unelected and they have a paramilitary RCMP force doing their bidding here.
So it's, I'm still trying to accept it, honestly.
Like it's a very strange, strange dynamic.
And, you know, it lends to the question, if this unelected bureaucracy has so much power,
and has the RCMP as a protection force or a paramilitary enforcement for it,
what other bureaucracies do?
Do all our bureaucracies?
Can anyone do this?
It's a lot of questions there.
Yeah, well, I guess that it's interesting when you talk about the CFI and the RCMP kind of budding heads.
Like once again, just sitting here, that seems odd to me.
You'd think they would all be kind of on the same page.
Oh, yeah, this makes sense and whatever.
but obviously not everybody was in tune with what they were supposed to be doing
or what the orders were meant to be.
And to see that power dynamic would be interesting to see firsthand, I would think.
Yeah, I mean, even just seeing any of this was pretty, pretty wild.
One of the things that really, really got to me initially was there's another property here,
like an adjoining property on the corner.
It's family members that own it, but it's a completely separate farm and separate owners and separate private property.
and the CFIA and the RCMP sees this property for logistical purposes mainly.
But there's a family that still have to live in there when they're here.
So they have to go through an armed checkpoint to get into their property, like literally an armed checkpoint.
It's surrounded day and night by RCMP vehicles.
Drone operations were being done out of there.
They were following the family around with drones day and night.
There was the daughter of the family in there was, I would say, terrorized multiple times by the RCMP.
And it's a pretty nasty story, actually. The RCMP were briefed about her. She has a history
of PTSD from stalking and gun violence. And she was surrounded by armed officers. They were
following her with drones. You know, and some of this kind of was when I got a little more
involved with the RCMP and my lens turned from trying to film the CFIA exclusively,
mostly to that story a little bit. But, you know, that's just one example here. They have
multiple drone pilots flying day and night, following people around when they leave,
you know, 30 plus RCMP units at a time. It's, uh, it looks like a, I mean, like nothing that
should ever happen in Canada. When you talk about the, uh, the second farm being seized,
why was it just proximity to the location or was there other things that the reason why they
keyed in on it? Yeah, I think it was purely logistical, uh,
purposes and operational purposes it uh it's covers a large area coming into the farm and uh yeah i
think it was purely logistical honestly it kind of made me think right like if if the police are
going after a crack house can they seize the neighbor's house and keep it as long as they want
while they do it that's what it made me feel like right yeah it very in like like interesting
i i i guess i hear what you're saying it's like this is it and then you're like wait a second
And a horrific thing has happened here.
It's interesting from just the sense that they have the power to take over a person's farm while they're still living in it.
And then be worried about following that person and have armed checkpoints going into it.
That seems really strange to me.
Yeah.
And I mean, it's completely flipped, right?
Like these RCMP officers made it acted like it was an inconvenience or this family, poor family and the seized property was giving them a hard time just by wanting to exist on their own property.
And, you know, it's, I don't know if you've ever gone through arm checkpoints at night, but it's not real fun.
You know, they blast high-powered lights in every direction to blind you.
They're pretty aggressive.
They're annoyed every time anyone wants to come in and out.
And there were multiple incidents at this.
The RCMP labeled it arrest gate for their operation.
One great name, a rest gate.
And there were many, many issues at this gate.
Well, walk me through the arrest gate.
Yeah.
So it's just, it's a gate where they,
have their police tape and police line it would be visible in a whole lot of my videos then in
beside behind that police tape line there's the uh so i'm just doing an interview
sorry okay yeah um and in behind that there's the gate to this property so you can't go past
that line unless you're part of the property the RCMP um their main visible force is normally
has four or five units parked kind of along this gate and uh yeah it's uh it's just kind of the
main area too where the supporters were together earlier on um you could see ostriches from there so
there's pens in the front there's bleachers so the supporters would come there kind of live streamers
would go down there and eventually they ended up moving those ostriches back it pushed them all back
eventually um but that gate was a constant source of trouble you know um one of the videos that
uh really caught the attention of not only myself but a whole bunch of people was the cops driving
with their license plates, covered.
I assume you witnessed that.
I assume you're right in the middle of those interactions.
That seems, once again, I'm going to keep using the word strange
because I don't know what better word to use.
What was that like?
And I guess, like, walk the audience through what was going on with the police
and covering up their license plates.
Yeah.
So, I mean, the police units, Morris probably had their license plates.
visible, but anything else coming in, like the CFIA trucks, super saved trucks that are very
recognizable. Had like green tape over their logos. I had their plates covered. These things
would also often come in with like a police escort in front and behind. People wearing masks
and, you know, I think there's a lot of people here that weren't too happy about what they're
doing. There was also a pretty big narrative spun that these people were being attacked
or threatened. There's a lot of questions here. People were worried that birds were missing. The
The CFIA has zero transparency.
They don't have, they don't have spokespeople,
they don't answer questions,
they don't even answer questions for the family.
So people were taking it into their own hands
to try to get answers, right?
So when 10 bins come in and out a day on trucks,
you know, and people are worried about the number of birds
and everything's so secret,
people were trying to find out where these birds were going
or what was happening with these trucks.
And they kind of turned that implied that, you know,
people were on some sort of stalking
or specifically targeting employees.
And I don't think that was the case at all.
When you go back to this number of birds, how many birds were supposed to be there?
Like the family goes, we had X because they would know how many was in the flock.
Like that would be pretty specific, wouldn't it?
Yeah.
So as far as I know, the family has a manifest, I think they were keeping that, that exact number kind of under, under their belt for legal purposes.
But when the CFIA went to the attorney general or to court, the initial number they used was 330.
Eventually, that changed to 300 to 330, like a range.
But initially, the number that they put into court was 330.
I think with Mike and I and the videos that we released, I mean, we had thousands of people
trying to count and we had some pretty high quality video and pictures from the mountains.
And we never got close to that number.
As things got closer to the end, you know, we were looking at maybe 200 or less, the best
we could tell.
So essentially, you're like from where?
you're sitting you're taking all these videos and you're going like maybe there's maybe
there's 250 maybe but that's still if that's generous that means you're missing a hundred and
like 130 birds yeah yes this isn't like 10 this isn't 10 we're talking a huge chunk of the flock
is gone yeah and it's uh i mean i try to take the the the kind of the devil's advocate
perspective like i tried to be a skeptic about this but i mean my eyes in the pictures and videos
weren't lying to me.
We were trying to figure out what's happening,
but we couldn't prove anything.
You know, we could speculate, I suppose,
the females, in theory, are quite valuable.
The eggs that they lay have antibodies.
It could be useful for all kinds of things.
And there would be interest that would want this either shut down
or to take that technology.
So, I mean, there's a lot of things that could be at play.
I think Big Pharma is probably the most likely,
but, you know, it's hard for me to dig into those more complex.
deeper things when I'm running around in the field trying to cover this yeah well I come from a
farm and and when we round up cattle you know if you if you count and you miss let's say your
counts off by five with cattle you know like I think I think we better count again saying you
count again oh I got now we're missing two now we're missing 11 that is I mean whenever you're
counting a large number of animals that is to be expected you don't miss count 100 birds that
I mean, you don't sit there and go, I think we got 200.
Maybe I was off by 100.
No, that doesn't make any sense.
That actually makes zero sense, which means there is missing at least 100 birds.
And you go, okay, so where did they go?
And then you go to your comment of, well, they're bringing in 10 crates a day.
Well, obviously they're removing birds out.
And then the next question probably becomes, well, where are they moving said crates too?
And that becomes, well, where did they go?
Yeah. And I mean, the secrecy here, like, right, you got a 20 foot tall giant hay kill pen that you can't see in. The only reason we were able to see in is because Mike can climb mountains quite well. And then they have, you know, the whole place is surrounded by miles of fencing. A lot of it has black, like this construction fencing, but it's got black so you can't see through it. You know, everything's done back in the cloak of darkness and secrecy. So just that in the first place breeds paranoia. But the more evidence we gather, the more. The more.
it seemed like there was a major problem here.
And that's before the shooting started.
Well, tell us about it.
I mean, I don't think I'd want to be any, like, I am a, sorry, folks, I am a touch soft when it comes to killing animals and I come from the farm.
But, you know, there's certain times where you do it for, like, food purposes, like, or lots of times, I guess.
but to just mass slaughter a whole bunch of animals,
that'd be rough to listen to or be around.
Yeah, well, so, yeah, and exactly.
And there was no warning when the slaughter was going to begin.
I guess we had an idea that they were going to be shooting them.
There was two shooting platforms in the kill pen.
I'm not sure how many shooters they had,
but I saw a picture of at least one walking through the field all casually with his rifle.
And there was no warning as to when this would start,
that it was going to be starting.
All of a sudden, I think it was about dark, it might have been six o'clock, gunshots rang out in the night.
And the first volley was something like 150 or 160 gunshots.
When this happened, people were falling to the ground, like screaming, blood-curdling screams, family members, supporters.
This happened numerous times.
And these gunshots, there was at least five volleys, and I mean, could have been 100, 150 per volley.
And that went well into the night.
I think I was sitting down around 1230 or something.
It's kind of calmed down, and I was going to try to get some rest and all of a sudden a few gunshots go off that.
I basically jumped out of my skin.
Yesterday morning, someone's chopping wood.
Same thing happened to me.
And, you know, I've been around guns and I've shot since I was 12, I think.
Started shooting cadets when I was 12.
So guns shots and guns and firearms never bothered me before.
But they certainly do now.
There are a lot of traumatized people around here.
The police as well, they did not have a good night.
You could see them being like morally injured, like incurring a moral injury.
in real time like they were not okay and neither were the supporters and uh it seems like they did
all of this about as about as gruesomely as they could have they made it they made a basically
impossible situation even worse than it had to be um on the police on the supporters on the
family um it's uh it's honestly just disgusting i'm still just i think i'm kind of only
starting to come out of the shock now um for a couple of days most people were just really now
i'm getting tired the emotion starting to come a little bit but uh i can't really believe
that that was possible, that that could even happen, like hundreds, almost a thousand gunshots
ringing out into the night as hundreds of healthy ostriches are shot and maimed. I mean,
this wouldn't have been quick. They would have been scared. It seems like it took multiple shots
per bird and some of them were still alive in the morning and had to be dispatched later. So
pretty gruesome scenes, certainly not humane. And it was also completely inhumane to do that
to the people around here. Like they have traumatized a whole bunch of people. And often,
zero helper resources in that regard. There was a time where the RCMP brought in,
if you call them grief counselors or victim services. A gentleman had suffered a medical
emergency here and unfortunately passed away despite valiant life-saving efforts by everyone.
And they brought in victim services for that. For this, not a thing. And in fact,
the time leading up to it, at least from my perspective, they spent quite a bit of time
trying to antagonize me in particular. They even threatened me with arrest for my trouble
after and all. So it was pretty nasty stuff.
Yeah, I saw the video of the, the threat. Walk me through that.
Because like, I, I guess I, you know, that I think a nerves, a lot of independent
journalists, what, what the cops are saying to you. Yeah, I'm sorry, you cut out for a minute
but I think I got what you're saying. I mean, so it started with a female PLT officer, a police
liaison team officer. Those are special positions. Their whole job is to develop relationships,
communicate between parties. They're supposed to be liaisons. And this woman, on more than one
occasion, came out to clearly try to provoke me. And then after all this happened, they came in
and they threatened me with the section of the criminal code, basically suggesting that I was harassing
or intimidating or causing a state of fear in the RCMP when in fact they were doing that to me.
They also read part of the code and they put in the part about a peace officer, but immediately
after that they left out or journalist.
And then they left out subsection C of that code, which would have should in theory protect
a journalist from this kind of nonsense.
So yeah, it was pretty gross stuff.
And to have that guy roll up on me the second I came out to farm gates basically, someone
must have radio to head to him, he came straight for me.
But when he said I want to talk to you, he didn't have gloves on, said, I need to tell you
you something. I figured I probably wasn't getting arrested. But it was certainly a nasty,
nasty thing. And I don't know how I stayed so calm, honestly. Kind of ended up dismissing him at the
end, and he just put his head down and turned around and walked away. And I haven't had anyone
talk to me since. I have talked to a lawyer, but it seems like they were probably pretty far out
of line there. I certainly didn't break any laws. And I don't think I did even anything
unethical or immoral for that matter. You know, if you go back to your carpenter days,
And you fast forward to now where you have the RCMP rolling up on you.
I mean, I assume a surreal feeling when all you're doing is documenting what they're doing.
Yeah, yeah, I'm just trying to, like, I mean, I didn't come here to fight the RCMP.
I don't want to get it.
You know, I'd rather not be doing this, but they force my hand.
I'm just putting a camera on what they're doing.
And I guess the fact I have some experience in this help in this regard.
Being born of Convoy, I had Ottawa police after me for quite a while.
Um, there was a time where auto police officers would tell me to go off by name, like they'd flip sirens at me as I was driving. Um, they've wellness checked me. So, um, you know, I've dealt with, with, what's, what's, what's a wellness check? Okay. Normally a wellness check would be if, if you were concerned about, about a citizen or a friend of yours or, or whatever, um, the police could go in and, and check on that person. There's a lot of, not in there to, to, it's not a legal investigation. It's a wellness check. Um, but this can be weaponized. So they can say, oh, I have to do a wellness. Um, I have to do a wellness. Um,
But then it's just police banging on your door, right?
And when police are already giving you hard time and you don't really trust them,
that's not a very nice thing for the police to be doing.
That also is a strange thing to have happened to an independent journalist.
All of this is strange, like all of it.
And I say that coming from someone who covers really extreme and strange stuff.
Like I cover the protesting in Ottawa politics, all kinds of stuff.
A lot of it's kind of shocking that it can happen here.
it doesn't compare to what I've witnessed here
and some of the broader implications
about what happened here honestly
I mean they kind of rocked me to my core
it's terrifying to think of
to think of the greater implications
when you think of the greater implications
what are you thinking of Chris
well I mean we have
unelected bureaucrats with unlimited power
in a paramilitary organization
taken over farms and slaughtering animals
that in and it itself is pretty bad
the government won't address it the media is lying about it or the mainstream media
anyways they're spinning the government narrative and uh you know in my experience these things
don't abate right they get worse and worse and worse you know you give an inch they take a mile
and this happens again and again and we're at a point where like we can't afford to give another
inch they're out here taking farms slaughtering animals destroying lives shooting thousands of rounds
a thousand rounds through the night and then they're they're acting like the people are the
problem yeah yeah i know i know i know i know i i sit here and i um i don't know if i got
anything to add to that right like i just like it's it's beyond wild times in canada right
like i thought the freedom convoy and what was witness there and what happened there was going
to kind of stop some things in its tracks.
And certainly it's put people like yourself and others on a more known stage, if you would,
to expose some of the things happening in our country.
And yet the things continue to happen.
And they've been operating under a veil of secrecy.
And when that gets exposed, instead of like course correcting and being like, yeah, you're
right, these are healthy birds.
Maybe there are some things we could learn from them.
they just up the tactics and put more sheets on a wall to make sure nobody can see and you know
I I don't I chuckle in a way that I'm just like man you got a got a hats off to Mike Rood and
yourself and others for climbing a mountain with a high power camera to capture images right like
yeah and that that really flipped the table I think on them when when me and Mike came back
and the next day we came out with this this first high you know high quality video that could
see the entire area. I could see into their secret of kill pen. We didn't have the best angle.
I climbed the wrong mountain the first time. But, you know, we knew that once we got up there,
we had proof of concept for sure that we could, we could expose some of this stuff. And the more
that came out, they weren't happy about it. They were expecting to just be able to go on about
their dirty business and no one to challenge them. And then they come in, they kill everything
and they leave. This is what CFIA does. They pretend that they, that they're protecting
animals or people. But all that, it's a scorched earth type of bureaucracy. They just
just kill everything.
And you don't even need proof.
A mere accusation is enough for something like this to happen.
So if you get a disgruntled neighbor, you know, like think of to like Salem witch
trials.
You say that your neighbor has a bird that's sick or an animal that's sick and the government
can come in, seize everything and murder it all.
Destroy your family, destroy your life, take your farm.
It's, uh, it's pretty nasty.
I'm curious.
Like, was there at any point, like, I assume there was ebbs and flows to this.
But like, I feel like as I watched a place,
head. I'm like, oh, maybe there's a little bit of hope here. It's going to go get pushed. You know,
you got a First Nation stepping in. You got rebel flying a helicopter over this thing. Like,
you got, you got Americans talking about it. Like at some point, the pressure I would have thought
would have broke them to where like, yeah, maybe this just isn't worth the squeeze. But after
all that, they still fire off a thousand shots in the middle of the night. They still go through with
what they're doing, no matter all the videos and all the things that have come out, no matter
how many people are talking about it. Um, I don't know if there's a,
question than that. I just like, I assume like the ebbs and flows of it, there had to have been a
couple high points. You're like, holy crap. They actually backed off for a day or two.
There was definitely some high points. And I mean, no matter what happens, you have to find a way
to keep hope through this, right? Like the family needed hope and to believe that things could be
okay. Otherwise, like, I don't know how anyone could even navigate this at all. It's basically
impossible. The fact that it was dragging on so long, you know, it had been quite a while. We were
wondering about the Supreme Court, then when they finally said they were going to make the
decision right around budget, that was a bit of a, I didn't have a good feeling about that.
I don't think the timing was a coincidence.
As far as the ups and downs, I mean, that happened continuously.
There'd be something like really amazing and heartfelt, and then, you know, in the background,
you get devastating news five minutes later.
The day of the decision was a brutal example of that.
We were all up pretty early.
The decision came in, I think, at 9.45 Eastern.
And so it was like before 7, 645 here.
Everybody was up and waiting.
I was in the kitchen with the family and Dreia Humphreys from Rebel News.
And Katie got the email about the decision.
And she just started reading the top and I guess she misread it.
So there was a number of cases.
And I think the first one they were taking maybe and the second one, the ostrich farm, they weren't.
But she read that initial one and thought that they were taking a case.
They'd won.
So there was this moment of elation, pure allation, screaming, hugs.
And then Drea kind of took a second to read it and had to break the devastating news to everyone that that that's not really what it said.
And it went from just pureation to like crushing crushing defeat basically.
I guess one other, you know, before I let you out of here, because I'm like, I don't even know what else we can.
I mean, this is this is something.
One of the things that I was watching was them around.
arresting different people.
You had front row seat to that.
Was there specific reasons for that?
Or were they targeting people to arrest them and remove them from the situation?
Yeah.
So in my case particularly,
I think they were attempting to provoke me into action so that they could arrest me
and then ban me from the area.
This is a technique.
They use in Ottawa now and all over the place where they charge you for something.
It doesn't even have to stick.
But because you get charged,
they restrict you from an area,
effectively taking away your ability to work or protest or,
you know, infringing on some pretty fundamental rights.
So that happened to Jim Kerr, who was a pretty prominent figure here.
He'd been here for months and months and has a pretty big Facebook account live streams on there.
So, I mean, getting him out of there was probably really good for them.
The other arrest was someone that was trying to track down some of these bins.
So it was just following a truck, find out where it went and was arrested for that.
And he was banned from the area as well.
Other than that, the only arrest is.
They arrested, sorry, they arrested a guy for following the trucks with the bins.
Yeah, I think it was bin trucks.
It might have been the CFI ARV.
Anyways, it was one of the vehicles that came out of here.
And Jim was actually arrested for attempting to feed the birds.
Like he was kind of him.
The feed didn't get over the fence.
So at one point, the RCMP were kind of letting people feed birds over the fence at night.
And that went on for a while.
In this case, there was a bunch of feed that didn't make it into the pens.
And it was kind of, it was on the outside of the yellow police tape, but like right beside or behind.
the fence, you know, the construction fence.
So, I mean, that'll be a legal argument that could be interesting when that goes to trial,
where the police line actually is.
But, I mean, the guy was trying to feed starving birds and was arrested for his trouble.
Well, the RCMP are watching on as these birds.
We know at least one bird for sure died under the care of the CFIA.
And they implied that that bird was a sick bird, like, as it maybe it had avian flu or that wasn't the case at all.
This bird had been previously injured and I think it might have had arthritis also.
So there's an area where some of the birds that need a little more care are kept.
And that was the case with this bird.
And when it got spooked by the RCMP drone, it ran into a fence twice, flipped over, and it injured itself pretty badly.
But then the CFI didn't care for it.
It got dehydrated and eventually it died.
And the cause of death, I think, was listed as sepsis.
But it was neglect after an injury, not a sickness.
And the injury was caused by the CFIA and the RCMP.
I guess one final one for you.
You got the Save Canada hat on.
You're a guy who's been on the streets of the Freedom Convoy now here at the Universal
ostrich farm.
When you think of saving Canada and you're out there on the ground reporting and seeing
some of the ways that power is holding onto power, what are your thoughts to the audience
on saving Canada?
on on giving them hope or or trying to rouse them out of their sleepiness yeah i mean this is a
kind of thing where i i had no idea how to do or what to do right especially during the convoy i just
i wanted to fight back or do something and i've managed to find an outlet in a niche um not everybody
can do this um in my experience like what we've shown here particularly the slaughter um
it's gruesome no one should ever have to see that certainly no one should ever have to experience
it but the world is seeing what happened here and it is shocking people like absolutely shocking
there's people that have been kind of my enemy let's call it for lack of a better term for a long
time um i've heard people saying that they have family members who have been like you know
fundamentally opposed to their positions and and what and who they are and this has snapped people
into into at least at least looking a little deeper um you know that's kind of what i do with
all of this i'm not out to do shock journalism like if the stuff i'm showing is shocking well that's
That's because of the people doing that.
I'm just out showing, trying to show the world how crazy things actually are here.
Chris, I appreciate you hopping on and giving us some time this morning and all the,
well, I don't know, all the coverage on the ground.
I think there's a ton of Canadians and elsewhere that are very appreciative that you're sitting at ground level,
giving people a view into some of the things that are going on there.
And, yeah, just safe, safe travels whenever you leave.
like you're there for for some time yet yeah a little bit um i guess mike and i will have to
discuss that we uh we were supposed to be so like i mean this is a big deal actually we were supposed
to be back in ottawa for uh for november 8 for the sound of remembering ceremonies at the
national war museum mike carries a guitar with him called journey and it's got 158 names of the
fallen from afghanistan um also has a banner called the portraits of honor that he takes around
with them and we were supposed to be at that event at the war museum um you know he invited me as his
guest and that was one of the biggest honors of my life to even be invited to that.
And he had to make a very difficult choice to stay here. I think he made the right one,
but even yesterday it was Rembrands Day. He was, I think, in the morning with a guy from PPCLI
that he used to serve with, but he wasn't at the ceremonies like we normally be. Normally we go
to Beachwood when he visit the Fallen and he tells me about them and their families and couldn't do
that this year. In fact, he was in an airplane flying over there. He did a flyby right after we did
I rememberance day.
Art really did a moment of silence, and we played the last post here over a loudspeaker.
And not too long after, Mike flew over just outside the no-fly zone.
But, you know, even on a day like that, Mike's out serving.
And I can't thank him enough.
Yeah, well, Mike, Mike Rood, folks.
Shout out to him, airborne veteran, 28 years in the Canadian military.
And if people want to hear more about them, they can obviously go check out your social media.
or they can go back to episode 7-11.
That's when Mike was in studio,
and I heard his story firsthand.
He has...
It's a wild one.
Yeah, yeah.
Appreciate everything you guys are doing.
Keep up the good work of showing Canadians,
what's going on on the ground level.
And hopefully it's not the last time you're on the show, Chris.
Thanks for hopping on again and giving some time this morning.
Awesome.
Thanks for having me.
