The Paikin Podcast - Redline Debates: How Should We Remember the Freedom Convoy?

Episode Date: February 24, 2026

Welcome to the first edition of The Paikin Podcast "Redline Debates." Four years ago this month, a convoy of truckers essentially took over the nation's capital, and beyond disrupting life there, it became a Rorschach test on how you felt about everything from vaccinations to parliamentary democracy. Justin Ling from the Toronto Star and Candice Malcolm from Juno News join to debate what the Freedom Convoy was all about, how history should remember it, how the media covered it, the fact that the vast majority of Canadians opposed the convoy, and the decision to use the Emergencies Act.Support us: patreon.com/thepaikinpodcastFollow The Paikin Podcast: APPLE: https://apple.co/4m81G7KSPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.c....X: x.com/ThePaikinPodINSTAGRAM: instagram.com/thepaikinpodcastBLUESKY: bsky.app/profile/thepaikinpodcast.bsky.socialEmail us at: [e-mail]

Hi, everybody. Steve Paken here. About seven months ago, we started this new little venture called the Paken podcast, which is essentially three elements. We do something called Everything Political with two former members of Parliament, Martha Hall Finley and Tony Clement. We do that every other week. We also do something called World on Edge, which is with Janice Stein from the Monk School. We do that every other week. And we sprinkle in some one-on-one interviews as well. We're going to try a fourth thing today. You have been telling us that you would like to see some more one-on-one debates on the Paken podcast. And so we figured we've got a good subject to start off with that. Four years ago this month, a convoy of truckers essentially took over the nation's capital. And besides disrupting life there, it really became a Roershack test on how you felt about everything from vaccination policy to parliamentary democracy. Four years later, what did the convoy achieve? And what was it all about anyway? We will tackle that coming up next on the Paken Podcast Debates. It's my pleasure to welcome for our first Paken podcast debates,

Candice Malcolm, who is the founder of True North and Juno News, and Justin Ling, the investigative journalist and columnist for the Toronto Star, who also writes a substack newsletter called Bug-Eyed and Shameless. He's also the author of the 51st State Votes, and I'm delighted to welcome you to our little effort here. Let's see how this goes. Justin, where have we found you today? the Daravis hotel room in all of Toronto.

Okay. And Candace, beautiful background. Where are you? Well, thank you. I'm in my studio and I'm actually at my family's vacation home. Down south, I'll just put it that way. Down south is good. With the weather lately in Canada, that is a good place to be. Let's start by setting this up and I'm going to read a couple of different quotes here. I think you know both of these people. This is conservative MP Andrew Lawton writing on his substack on Valentine's Day in 2023, so three years ago, he wrote, the Freedom Convoy was a watershed moment in Canada.

Its power came because it turned into a movement that cut across ethnic, regional, and even political lines. The Freedom Convoy did what former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau failed to do, unite people. That's why it was so threatening to the government. For a different view, here's Andrew Coyne, writing in the Globe and Mail. This is on July 29, 225. in which he wrote,

the Ottawa protest may not have been violent, but it was anything but peaceful. The forcible occupation of a city center is still the use of force, even if no actual violence is deployed, and all in the service of extorting the government or in the fevered imagining of some of the organizers, replacing the government with a junta

made of the governor general, the Senate, and themselves. Those are two different views. Now I want to get your views. Candice, how would you characterize what the convoy four years ago this month was all about. Sure, Steve, I think we have to remember, first of all, thanks for having me. It's great to be here. Great to see you, Justin.

We have to remember the context of 2022, right? We were in the long-running lockdowns. Our society had ceased to become free. Voices like mine, voices like many others on the political right, were sick and tired of government overreach, sick and tired of mandates. and what I saw is just total government overreach, unconstitutional limits on people who chose not to get vaccinated. Okay. So in that context, we saw a bunch of brave Canadians stand up and say, enough is enough.

We don't want to live under this tyranny anymore. They were peaceful. They went across the country. They picked up support from honest to goodness Canadian-loving working-class people who might not have had the same privileges that the three of us had, right? We're part of the laptop class. I got to work from home. COVID was actually great for me in my family. We got to spend a lot more time together. It didn't harm me the way that it harmed working class people who in many ways were prevented from their livelihood. So we have to remember the pain and suffering, a legitimate pain of suffering, born mostly again by working class people in

this country. And so when we saw the truckers say enough is enough, right? It wasn't just happening in Canada. It was happening all over the world. Canada was one of the worst. examples of government overreach during the COVID pandemic. I think most of us look back now and think that we all collectively lost our minds. It was insanity. Some of the things that were forcing upon our fellow Canadians. I mean, we could go into that. But anyways, you know, you had these people.

Maybe they were a little rough around the edges. Maybe some of the people online were engaging a little bit in conspiracies, which is what Justin spent the time really focusing on and pretending that that was really was happening. But what we saw were these working class people saying, You know, we just want to get back to work. We just want to carry on our lives. Also remember the time we had the Omercron variation of COVID. So all these people went got COVID vaccines.

And then people were still getting COVID. And the vaccine wasn't actually stopping the spread of COVID like we were originally told, right? So people were kind of saying, you know, enough of this nonsense. Let's stop it. The truckers took a stand. I thought they were incredibly brave, incredibly patriotic. They did change the world. It was the beginning of the end of the COVID lockdowns.

Maybe you don't have to agree with everything everyone said, every one of their tactics. You know, maybe the way that we feel about peaceful protests really actually at the end of the day comes down to what they look like, what they sound like and what they're saying. But the way that the Trudeau government acted in response led in large part by reporting in the media, the way they spun it as if these truckers were, you know, some kind of insurrection or that they were there to overthrow the government or that they were far-right terrorists, as Dustin Ling like to say. You know, that was all nonsense.

And in the end, two federal judges have determined that actually was unconstitutional. It was wrong to use the emergencies act. That was a huge overreach. We will get to that, Candace. Okay. Let me just jump in. Anyway, I think the truckers were brave. I salute them.

I think it was a wonderful moment in Canadian history. I think that they will go down. They have gone down in history as being one of the forces that ended the completely ridiculous government overreach. I'm proud of them. And I reject, like, so much of the government talking points that was informed by fake news reporting and the media at the time. I'm looking forward to getting into this debate. Great. Justin, over to you on how you would characterize what the convoy was all about.

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Steve. If I can mix metaphors a little bit. I think a Rochark test is a pretty good descriptor of how people come at the convoy, but if I can mix it a little bit, you know, it's kind of like that old adage about feeling different parts of an elephant and having radically different views about what the thing is based on whether you're touching the tail or the tuss. I think that's really what goes on when we talk about the convoy. If you were there, if your pals were there, if you decided to listen to and agree with a subset of the organizers or the influencers involved, you would come away with this wonderful. What Andrew Lawton describes is this big unifying event that made everyone feel rosy and happy. And, you know, I am actually quite fond of Andrew Lawton.

It's probably one thing that me and Candace can actually agree on that he's just a swell guy. but I radically disagree with his very, I think, myopic take about what the Freedom Convoy was. But that's not to say that what he's describing was completely untrue because parts of it were. There were people there who developed friendships, who developed this community in the occupation of downtown Ottawa. But that's not the full story. And of course it's not. If you lived in the city at the time, you were tortured every night, staying awake with the sounds of partying and reveling happening. in the street with the sounds of horns going all night, all day. I know I was there. I spent a ton of time in Ottawa, despite the fact that I didn't live there. I spent a ton of time in Ottawa during this

occupation and I got to experience both those dual realities, the partying, the hot tubs, the community, the enjoyment, the festival that was happening in people's front yards that was just basically disrupting their entire lives. And I don't sink. You can talk about the convoy, but they're talking about the people who lived in Ottawa who experienced that, nor can you talk about the convoy without acknowledging that it basically held the Canadian government hostage. It blocked members of parliament from actually entering the House of Commons and the Senate.

It basically held up the work of the government of Canada demanding this ultimatum be responded to before they would pack up and leave. I should say, I'm radically in favor of civil disobedience and protest. The big differentiator here between this and, let's say, the Occupy Wall Street movement of years before is the fact that these people did not show up with tents and just placards and a message to get across. They showed up with trucks and an infrastructure that they built on public land.

They used to blockade the capital of a G7 country. And I think it's really worth underlining that fact when we talk about the country. convoy. This cannot be permitted going forward, whether you're a right-wing group or a left-wing group. Part of the problem here is not what they were protesting. It's how they protested. But when it comes to what they were actually demanding, I'll also say, I actually agree with some of the objectives, and I actually told one of the truckers this during the convoy itself. I said, listen, pal, if this were just about curfews and state-home orders, I'd be right there with you. Well, maybe not. At the very least, I would feel some more sympathy to you. You know, I live

been Quebec for most of the pandemic, probably the pandemic, rather. I had to experience an APM curfew that was not justified by science, by the Constitution, or by basic logic, and Ontario was just as bad in many regards. But let's face facts. If you actually listen to what the truckers themselves were saying, including those who were not actually truckers, if you listen to the organizers, the influencers, the media organizations that were present, it wasn't just about curfew orders. it wasn't even just about vaccine mandates. This was about so much more than that. And I think to pretend as though it was this narrow, thoughtful focus,

a disagreement on public policy, a rejection of these civil liberties infringing measures, I think that is, again, a really myopic take on what happened here. This was about so much more than that. This was, as Andrew Coyne points out, for some people, an effort to remove the government of Canada and replace it with this obscene, stupid, made-up conspiratorial junta, as he puts it. For some people, and that was a minority. It's fine. For other people, this was a rejection of the carbon tax, the liberal government, and basically, you know, gender ideology, you can go down the list of right-wing talking points. For others, it was about vaccines themselves. It was a common allegation that these vaccines are murderous, genocidal tools of a dictatorial regime. And for yet others, it was about a hodgepodge of other concerns. And you didn't need to look very far to find evidence of this. Trudeau for treason, signs, guns or rope, referring to how they would prefer to execute our members of parliament and our public health officials.

These signs and slogans were commonplace. Did everyone agree with them? I highly doubt it. But you can't tear apart, you can't really analyze the Freedom Convoy without recognizing that these elements were there. They were common and they were at least tolerated by the vast majority of participants. We can get into the specifics of all of this. but I think to try and only take this incredibly narrow view of what the thing was about is a real disservice to the people who actually lived through it and saw this day to day and who

recognized that this was not just a bunch of people peacefully protesting on a public policy grounds. This was a three-week occupation of the city that made people's lives help. I'm sorry. Let's go back and forth. Candace, go ahead. I just have to ask, Justin, like, what you're presenting is such a naive understanding of human nature. They're like, have you ever been to any protest? Have you ever looked at a protest where you go from

person to person ask their views? Go to one of the Palestine protests and ask like 50 people what they're there for and what they believe. They won't all say the same thing. That's the nature of, I don't know, human nature, freedom of democracy, freedom of speech. Not everybody agrees, right? The overall, the overarching thing that brought them there, obviously, was a totally dystopian government encrouchment on all of our personal lives and freedoms. It was out of control and these people were standing up. Did some of them have kind of cranky views and weird thoughts on, you know, this or that. Of course, that's civil society.

That's Canada. Everybody has their own views, right? But the reason that they were all there was obviously because they wanted an end to the government lockdown. And you can like use a hyperbolic term like, oh, they were took a hostage and oh, they blocked parliament. I mean, hello, that's what happens during any of these protests. Like you said, Occupy Wall Street was the same thing. If they had trucks in their possession, they probably would have used them too. Just so happened that the people at Oregon.

We're truckers. That's what they had. They had trucks. They used what they could to try to get a message across. Justin? You want to come back on that, Justin? Absolutely. Let's let's talk about that, Candace. Let's say the pro-Palestinian movement rents a bunch of semi-ton trucks, drives them to the capital, and sets up an encampment blocking parliament. How would you feel about that? Quite genuinely, how would you feel about that? You'd be opposed to it. This is literally what happens, though, with the people that are protesting our critical infrastructure. Hello, the same groups of people. on like the political left are blocking pipelines, stopping people from being able to get to their worksites. There are all kinds of occupations that happen. And do you support those?

Exposing the most radical and fringe views amongst them, right? It's like, it's like, you know what? Yeah, I can say I oppose blocking critical infrastructure. I wasn't in favor of them blocking the Ambassador Bridge and trying to halt trade. That's different. Parliament is different, Justin. I was there last year. They didn't just block parliament, though. They weren't on the front lot of Parliament. They were downtown Ottawa. They were blocking ambulances and fire trucks. Which is constantly under construction, by the way, and the streets are constantly blocked. Try to go down there on Canada Day. You can't get anywhere. They close those streets all the time. Because it's Canada Day. For a single day. This was three weeks.

But any time, there's like a crime in March or March on Life. I mean, there's lots of big protests in Ottawa. That is the purpose of having a capital is so that Canadians can go and speak their mind and speak what they believe is true. And there are protests. And I wrote it at the time. They blocked streets in some way. And that first weekend, I said, listen, if this is a weekend long, there was, of course, the United We Roll protests many years earlier, which did a very similar thing that largely blocked just Wellington Street in front of Parliament and then kind of set up shop on the front lawn. That was around for a day and a half, two days. I wrote at the time, if that's what

the Freedom Convoy is, maybe it's annoying. We don't have to love it. It's still worth looking in to the kooky beliefs of these organizers, but that's fine. You have the right to be annoying. You do not have the right to be annoying for three weeks blocking all activity in the capital of the nation. There is clearly limitations on this. And to present this false dichotomy to say, oh, it's like a climate march is so, I think, offensive. I think it is an affront to our intelligence. Because the climate march, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took seriously and was willing to hear them and was willing to meet them. Immediately, before the Ottawa, before the truckers even got to Ottawa, the legacy media had already painted them as a fringe, far right,

menace. They were trying to gear it up as if it was going to be Canada's October 6th, and they were going to enter into Parliament and try to take it over, which never happened, right? We were on the ground reporting as well. Despite the fact that some of the organizers said they were going to. There wasn't any violence. Unlike many of the political protests that happened on the left, there was. They were well behaved. They cleaned up after themselves. They were looking at all. Sorry, can I do a little follow up here on which politicians either should or should not have met with the convoy people? I mean, the prime minister of the day, Justin Trudeau famously did not meet with them, and the opposition leader of the day, Pierre

Pauliev famously did meet with them. What do we think about that? Justin, go. Listen, I do not think it was sensible for the prime minister to meet with them, because if you actually listened to what they were saying, they were saying very bluntly, publicly, they were saying, all we want is a meeting, all we want is do is talk. Privately, they were saying, once we get that meeting, then we can keep making more demands. They were not genuinely being to have a conversation and to get their grievances submitted. They wanted obedience. And again, I'm not making this.

This is not a belief that I'm enforcing on them. It's what they were saying to each other. I spent a lot of time listening to these organizers talked. And again, I will always underline. There was a ton of super reasonable, thoughtful people there who thought that they were exercising their democratic rights in a reasonable way, who believed that they were. trying to get their voices heard in Parliament, and I'm not putting this on them. What I am putting it on is people like Thomas Quiggin, Benjamin Ditchter, Pat King, Tamara Leach, who were talking to each other

and saying, a meeting will not end this. This will not be over until Prime Minister Justin Trudeau resign until all the mandates are gone and until we get our way. So why would you meet them in that context, right? It would be absurd for the Prime Minister to create the standard that if you occupy the capital with a bunch of trucks, you get a free meeting with the PM. That is a horrible standard. Did you have a problem with, let me just get the other side of the coin, which is, did you have a problem with Pierre Pahliev meeting with, taking pictures with, etc., members of the convoy? Yeah. I mean, I'm not morally repulsed by it. I understand the linkages he was trying to make. And I think he was trying to be a bridge for those concerns into the House

of Commons, which is how this is supposed to work. I am perpetually concerned that he didn't just try and bring them into the political fold. He often tried to mirror and mimic their talking points, their beliefs, and their concerns in a way that I don't think was helpful. I always borrow the phrase from Aaron O'Toole that he made on his way out the door after getting ousted around the time of the Freedom Convoy, where he implored his party and Pierre Pollyev indirectly to be leaders and not just followers of your followers.

And I think that's exactly what Pierre Pollyev ended up doing. Okay, Candice, Trudeau met with them. Trudeau rather didn't meet with them. Poliev did meet with them. Your views on that. Just a couple of facts to insert the story here. Pierre Polly was not the opposition leader at the time. Aaron O'Toole was. Forgive me, you're absolutely right. That's the exact same way as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was, did.

And he got ousted. That was one of the really positive outcomes of the freedom convoy is they got rid of a fake conservative as the leader of the party, right? Justin, when you're sitting here saying that, oh, a lot of these guys had legitimate grievances and I would have been right there with them. And yet at the same time, it's absolutely unacceptable that the prime minister would speak to them. Why wouldn't the prime minister speak to a group of Canadians that wanted to have a change in policy? We have a free country.

We're supposed to be a free country. We should be able to protest. And the prime minister should take this seriously. He could have ended this whole thing on day one. Had he just gone out there and said, okay, I'll have a meeting. I'm willing to cure you out on my government being too heavy handed. Instead, what did he do? He called these people a small fringe minority of Canadian.

He labeled them. He accused Melissa Lansman of standing with those waving swastikas. So he told the Canadian public, these people are Nazis, these people are fascist. And that's why I refuse to meet with them. That wasn't true. That was not true. What about this, Candace? You can imagine the RCMP might say, we can't let the prime minister into a circumstance

where we can't guarantee a security. What if he had invited some of them to come into his office for a chat? Would that have been okay? He could have ended it on day one. He could have ended it and said, yes, let's hear you out. yeah, you're probably right. Yeah, someone's sitting in their truck by themselves probably doesn't need to have a vaccine. It doesn't really help stop spread as we learned around that time. So these truckers had a legitimate perspective. Rather than hearing them out, we use the power of the state and all of the resources,

including declaring the equivalent of martial law to try to squash them. That is not a good precedent for a free society. Yes, of course, Pierre Polyiv should have met with them. More politicians should have heard about their Canadians, they have a right to free speech. And that's why they went to Ottawa. The way that the elite class, including Justin Ling, treated these people just all more justifies the fact that they weren't treated fairly, that they had to go to these extreme measures just to get their point across and that people are still trying to lay in the in the future saying, oh, actually what they really wanted was to overthrow the government. Look at any protest, Justin. You know, I keep going back to the Occupy Wall Street that you mentioned. Do you know that the

the organizers of Occupy Wall Street really just wanted to overthrow the government and install communism, that was one of their demands, right? Anytime there's a big protest, you're going to have wackos, you're going to have people saying, actually, our demands are, like, you know, to move the goalpost all the way to the other side, right? That's not the purpose of the mandate. What they really wanted was to end the mandates, and eventually they got it. So they were successful.

I'll keep on a chance to respond to whether or not he thinks he's a member of the elite class of the country. Let's start there. I do enjoy. Of course he is. I don't even disagree. I'm a columnist in a national newspaper. I'll take the title of being of the elite classes.

Still, you know, find it hilarious. I hail from mining company, mining town, Cape Breton, family of coal miners, but I guess I've acceded. I finally made it to the elite class. Listen, you accused me earlier of being naive and perhaps you even had a point. I'm going to throw it right back at you. And point out that the idea that the protesters all would have gone. home, if all they had was a quick chat with the PM, I think it's unbelievably naive. What's more,

I think, asking people to accept that the folks who came out to the convoy, both those who I think were reasonable and frustrated. I mean, listen, I talked to a guy, you know, whose best friend committed suicide and he couldn't even go to the funeral because of, because he wasn't vaccinated. Like, I feel for people like that. But on the other end, you know, people like Thomas Quiggin, who, you know, just came off writing a book, fantasizing about Trudeau getting murdered, and who believed that Klaus Schwab in the world economic form, I think probably like you, Candice, secretly controls the world. The idea that if we just met with these people for a few minutes, that all of their kind of

paranoid grievances would dissipate into the air and everyone would sing Koubaiyan to drum circle, I think is unbelievably naive. and I would put to you that if Occupy Wall Street, again, hires a bunch of trucks and occupied the capital for three weeks, your position would not be, oh, ignore their demands to install communism. These are just a bunch of freedom-loving people who have been down for too long and are now exercising their civil liberties. You would not be arguing that. And nor would I. I would also be saying it is intolerable that someone can occupy our capital without the police exercising their authority to remove them. them. I would not be saying the prime minister ought to go meet with them so Occupy Wall Street can

get their way and can finally go home. No, this is a terrible standard. You agree with this. You agree with the premise of the Freedom Convoy because you agree with their grievances, their aims, and their organizers. I mean, like, I think it is naive to think that people can't see that for clearly what it did. Let me give Canada. I can't. I can't. I think correct one thing. I don't think that Klaus Schwab and the left control the world. I think that they want to. That they'd like to, but I don't think they actually do. So let's not put ideas into my mouth, please. Fair correction. What about the notion that he's raised that if it were a group that whose mission you disagreed with, you wouldn't be as sympathetic to a convoy taking over Ottawa?

As you got a point there. I'm for peaceful protest. I mean, find, find an example of me saying that you shouldn't be able to protest. I don't like what a lot of the groups say. I really don't like that there are pro-Palestinian groups harassing Jews in my neighborhood in Toronto. I don't like that. I don't like the fact that many of my Jewish friends are actually leaving the country because they feel so harassed by this aggressive violent group that takes place in Toronto. I wish Justin would spend some of his investigative efforts trying to investigate the fringe connections over there. But talking about Ottawa, we can play revisionist history and say what would have happened. But if Justin Trudeau was actually receptive to listening to his critics and actually say, hey, you know, maybe we did go too far.

Maybe I shouldn't have called anyone who's an anti-vaxxer a racist and saying that they have no right to travel and that they can't leave their house. You know, maybe if it was more receptive to that, I do think that the convoy would have ended. I think that the people would have felt gratified. It wouldn't have wouldn't have solved all their grievances and wouldn't have all of a sudden made them vote liberal and stop having concerns about globalist forces. But at the same time, they probably wouldn't have stayed in Ottawa for three weeks and blocked traffic had the prime minister to listen. And then I want to raise something else. Yeah, I'll agree with you on something quickly. I think the way the Prime Minister responded to this was totally irresponsible.

I wrote repeatedly both through the pandemic and during the after the convoy. The way the Prime Minister talked to the group of people who felt alienated from the state, those who didn't want to get vaccinated, those who opposed the state home orders and whatnot, was totally irresponsible. I think the Prime Minister did worsen this by basically attacking their values. I think there was a huge mistake. But at the same time, Candice, you just, you just, did it. You just said,

Palestinian protesters are violent and dangerous and harassing people, and it's a problem. Yeah, because they're getting arrested. There's people getting arrested at the freedom convoy. There is a list of charges laid against protesters at the convoy that includes weapons charges, that includes harassment and assault. We have police reports. We have

first-hand accounts for police officers who went into the street, who went into the street to make arrests, who got swarmed by the trucker, the protesters, whatever you want to call them and basically prevented for making arrests. That's not peaceful. That's not civil disobedience. That's criminal. And I think to, again, focus on protests that are, you're going to have to provide examples, Justin, because I reported the day after the first weekend of the freedom convoy, I spoke to out of police, there were no criminal charges. There was no one arrested

the first weekend of this freedom convoy. By the end of week three, there was a list of charges, I have them. Saying that, oh, someone's trying to burn down a building and half of parliament repeated the lie that one of the freedom convoys was an arsonist, turned out that was an Ottawa local criminal who was not part of the convoy at all. So there's a lot of fake news reporting. Let me check in here. Steve, can I just really quickly? Because I think this is a good point.

This gets thrown at me constantly. I'm always trying to correct this. Because you're right. We made a mistake. What we had at the time, and I wouldn't say necessarily mistake, we report the facts we had, which was that there was an attempted ours, or a successful artist, I suppose, in a downtown apartment building. We had reports for people in the building.

saying that some of the truckers, protesters had been around the building arguing with the residents in the hours before. We report that out. Some politicians took that too far and said an arson had been committed by the convoy. But I'll tell you what, I actually ended up speaking to people who, once the, I think, photos of the surveillance photos were put out, speaking to people who knew those who actually committed the arson, and I helped connect them to the Ottawa Police Service. I'm not trying to give myself credit here.

I'm saying, we did the reporting necessary. to help actually clear the convoy of that. So I think to constantly accuse the media and the elites in this country of being these ideological crusaders against the convoy is wrong. We reported the news as best we were able and we presented the facts as they happened.

You might not like those facts. No, that story was debunked. Let me jump in online. I was in Ottawa and I knew it wasn't real and somehow everyone on the ground was still confused by it. Okay. I'm going to jump in friends and we didn't have enough information. I want to put a new topic to both of you.

And it was like a blue-haired person. obviously not part of the convoy, but it was convenient for you. Let me jump in here. One of the things, we've talked about how the media covered this thing, and I want to get the two of you on this, in as much as to pursue this angle. There was at least one swastika. There was at least one Confederate flag, the stars and the bars. And those ended up on mainstream media and part of the coverage.

And it certainly at some point conveyed an impression that there was, were, you know, extremists involved in this thing. And, okay, Justin, to you first, I want to understand whether you think the reporting of those elements of this thing kind of skewed the coverage in some way and allowed the movement to be defined by some of its most extremist elements. What do you think? There's truth to that. And I'll help make Candice's argument for her, at least briefly. on the first day, and I was the one who published some of the photos, and the first day there was a swastika, big swastika, Nazi flag being flown in the melee of the crowd.

And I reported this at the time, based on what we heard from the participants, they heckled those guys, told them get the hell out of here, you morons, what are you doing, get lost. We never saw that flag again. That is true. We saw instances of the Confederate flag at a couple of times. Here's a more interesting example. Chris Barber, one of the organizers, comes out and says, wow, though some Yahoo's have brought those flags around, they don't represent us, none of us would ever fly that flag. Well, found a video of Chris Barber in his garage with

three Confederate flags on the ceiling. So there was an element of kind of misdirection here. But, you know, what actually bothered me more than a couple of flags, you know, was the fact that people were frequently writing swastikas often in the context of accusing the government of being a Nazi state, but writing swastikas on their placards and signs. Michael Cooper, the MP, actually got photographed talking to media in the backdrop. There was one of those swastikas on a sign. I think that should have been a big red flag that maybe you shouldn't be showing up on the hill and participating in solidarity with protesters, but more important than that. And this is the thing that I think does actually belie an element of extremism within the convoy is that people

would often write Trudeau for treason, showing Trudeau behind bars. And, you know, showing Trudeau behind bars guns or rope, like I said earlier, you know, photos of gallows on people's signs into their trucks. And some of those were up for days of more than weeks. You also had instances, and, you know, I have seen the both myself and I have the internal intelligence reports of actual extremist groups in the midst of the convoy, Diaglon being a prime example. You had, of course, we haven't even talked but the fact. Then at Coots, Alberta, the RCMP made arrests of seven or eight people with a cache of weapons, though they were ultimately convicted of some of the charges they faced.

I think to just kind of put blinders on it and ignore all this and pretending like it wasn't there is really irresponsible. That's not to say. As some media and politicians said, everyone there was an extremist. That's just not true. Not even that everyone there tolerated extremism per se. But you can't ignore that there was extremist rhetoric. There were extremist groups.

And there were occasionally in isolated instances hate symbols. Dustin Ling of 2026, I think that you would, you know, be just shocked to me, Dustin Link of 2022, because it's not what you were talking about at all back then. And I remember because we were arguing with one another one. Look, the media hyper-focused on that one dude with the Nazi flag. I was one of the people who mapped out where he was, the times that this video was shown,

there's all but one, there's one picture of this guy with the Nazi flag. He was actually not on the grounds of permanent. He was up by the Chateau Laurier there. We put out a bounty. I raised, I think it was like $300,000 for the identity. of that individual. Who was he? Like, where did he come from? I think he put in a bounty for who took the photo that I published, which is different. Okay, well, I'm just saying, one ever forward saying, oh, I know that guy. Oh, yeah, that guy was part of the freedom combo. No one

knows who he was. You know, he, he, for all I know he was to say. This is, again, repeatedly put forward by you and other people like you, that it was some plans that the government that put in there, which is ludicrous. Now it's my turn to speak, Justin. I let you speak. Okay. So again, go to any protest in Canada and you will see this kind of rhetoric. I don't like it. I don't, I don't I don't think it's good when they're calling it, when they're calling Daniel Smith, treasoness, which, by the way, BC Premier David Ebby recently implied that and actually use the word treasonous. So it's not just one way here, right? You see this stuff about Donald Trump. You see a dangerous, hateful rhetoric against that guy. I don't hear you guys

complaining about it or saying that somehow threat to our system, right? You know, you go to any of these Islamist protests and you will see people with Nazi flags and they're actually, actually talking about it in the actual context of the Nazis like, hey, let's burn the Jews, let's kill the Jews. That's literally what they're saying. It's gross. But you see these kind of fringe lunatics maniacs at the convoy at any protest in the country, right? So the people that drew the swastikas on the flag and you brought up the Michael Cooper example, perfect example of fake news. An MP shows up on the hill to meet with his constituents, to meet with concerned Canadians. Someone in the far background has written something on a Canadian flag and that becomes a top

So we're still talking about it four years later, then CBC pushed out. Totally fake news that somehow Michael Cooper was a Nazi because he was at a protest and someone in the background behind him, he was supposed to go because they were saying that the Trudeau government is acting like Nazis with these government overreach policies. Okay, I don't agree with that line of reasoning, but we should at least be honest about what they're saying, right? They're not saying gas to Jews. Actually, that's what some of the Islamists are saying. What these protesters were saying is we feel like the government is stepping on us and crushing us and we don't like it. And that makes us think that your government is like not so determined.

Again, not my view. But let's at least be honest about what the people were saying and not put words into their mouth and pretend that they're actually extreme. Again, I say go to end up in this country and you'll find crazy people. You'll find crazy people. Go anywhere in the country. And you'll find people with views that you will find shocking, right? And this is again why I call you Justin Ling and elite.

And guess what? Anyone in Canada can play this game. Oh, I come from working class blue collar, or as we all do. Okay, we all do. It's a country of resource extraction. So we all come from those backgrounds. But I call you an elite because you sit there from your laptop and you judge and you look down on these people and you say, oh, look at these extreme views. I'm going to apply them to everybody.

And then, no, we shouldn't talk to them. We shouldn't talk to them. There's hundreds of thousands of millions of Canadians that were represented by those truckers. I wanted them to talk to my leaders. That's the purpose of a democracy. I wanted my leaders. Okay. give Justin a chance to respond.

And they refuse to. Justin, you know, you pointed out that, you know, I don't spend a lot of my time focusing on the crazy views and statements of other protesters or the crazy organizers. And, you know, I actually have written about some of the extremist rhetoric at some of these pro-Palestinian rallies and the danger that many Jews in Canada rightfully seer or have now because of them. So, you know, but I largely don't spend my time doing them because those protests do not occupy the capital of the country. I think that is the thing I have to keep underlining. I'm of the very strong view that there is lawful and awful speech out there that if you want to go fly a Nazi flag,

you can do that. But we should all judge you for it. If you want to go and write a swastika on the Canadian flag, that is your right. But you don't have the right to be free of criticism. You don't have the right to be shielded from public scrutiny for that obscene decision you've made, it's not criminal law that ought to be governing that. It is the body politic that ought to be focusing on that. And I largely think that we do do that in this country. We do criticize, rightly so, when people say obscene and anti-Semitic things at these protests, and there is no lack of coverage of that. If those Palestinian protesters opted to occupy the capital and make those statements for three weeks and to demand a meeting with the prime minister,

You bet I would be covering that. You bet I'd be focusing on the obscenity of that. So they're allowed to block traffic in Toronto. They're allowed to intimidate people in neighborhoods. You know, they're not protesting any government. They're actually protesting Jewish schools and synagogues. You're okay with that just because it's not Ottawa. So as long as you don't do an Ottawa guys have nuts, like block the streets,

intimidate people, make totally crazy race stroke. My point is just in is you're taking it out of context, right? We can create criticism. No, we're putting it in context. I mean, Nazis more than anybody. but I'm going to at least be honest about what they're saying, right? They weren't saying, we're Nazis, we're here because we want a Nazi government in Canada. Obviously know what they were saying.

They were saying, you're acting like Nazis. That's, that would produce. You excuse me earlier of changing my views from 2022 to today, but I haven't. I wrote that at the time. I did not focus. I published those photos, like I said, which you fixated on. I did not spend my time saying all of these people are Nazis. I did say, listen, they're using the swastika, more importantly, they're using

swastika to accuse the government of being nuts, but more importantly, they're making direct threats against our public health officials and politicians. That is what concerns me, particularly because it wasn't just an idle threat posted online. It was a direct threat, often written on a sign or set on a stage, happening in the context of an occupation of the Capitol on the front steps of parliament. I think it's kind of insulting to our intelligence to say that there's basically no distinction between a protest that occurs over a couple of hours and a protest that occurs over several weeks that involves infrastructure, that involves machinery, that involves thousands of people. Those are just radically different things. And I think demanding people

treat them as though they're the same. And by the way, you're basically denouncing one protest while saying the other one is wonderful and peaceful, even as you're kind of acknowledging there's many similarities between them. And I think that is really hypocritical. And there's a double standard. There's frequent arrest. There's frequent actual calls for violence. You're saying that the Chuck, the Freedom Convoy was threatening public officials and public health. I don't know what you're talking about, to be honest. I think that they wanted to make. There's two sides. There's two sides to this story. The Freedom Convoy showed up because they were done with the government overreach, right? Trudeau government, rather than listening to them, demonize them and said, those people are fascist. Those people

are Nazis. We refuse to talk to them. It escalated. It escalated. We all regret that. It went too far. I totally agree. But I'm just saying that the Trudeau government is actually the ones that were responsible. They're the ones that hold the power. And they were fueled by the legacy media, that was all too happy, Bush's story. You know, back in 2022, you weren't making these caveats and saying, oh, these people have the rights. Of course it was. Yes.

Oh, no, these people aren't. That's not what we were doing. Here. Let me jump in with some numbers here, because the Canadian public has certainly rendered its verdict on this, both at the time and certainly in the most recent numbers that I saw as well, which is to say this issue generally went about 65, 35, 35, 75, 70, 30, opposed to both the protesters, their mission, their behavior, their approach, et cetera. I want to know from both of you what we infer from, because there are very few issues in the society where you get that kind of disparity between those four and those against.

Candace, what do you read into those numbers? Yeah, I think Canadians are unfortunately some of the most propagandized people in the world, right? You watch your media. You sit at home. You're captive to the CBC, which is government funded. You're watching your media from government-funded, government-bailed-out media and newspapers. And so if they sit there and they say those people are bad, those people are Nazis, even, the prime minister is saying those people are bad, those people are Nazis. Most Canadians, good-hearted,

well-meaning, they'll say, oh, oh, that's bad. I don't like that. I don't want to be associated with those people. They went too far. No, they're propagandized. They consume a diet of false information propaganda. And so they believe it, right? Jordan Peterson made this point that it's easier for someone to believe the prime minister and saying these people are evil, these people are Nazis, then to realize the truth that these people are righteous, fighting back against government overreach, and rather than the government listening to them and give them any credibility, it's just easier for them to totally demonize them. The media went along with it.

You know, there was a monk debate in Toronto a couple years ago about the fake news press. And they basically, the whole panel was in agreement that the way that the Canadian media covered the freedom convoy was a perfect example of this, like how much the media lies to people and how completely propagandized. It is the Canadian media and their coverage of, you know, even in New York Times, was much fairer and more accurate and more reasonable about their coverage of the Turkicomac than any of the Canadian media. You were all whipped up into a frenzy.

Talk about the elite press. Fine. But yeah, an outsider elite press actually came in and said, wow, what is happening here? Like, the freedom people are actually having a pretty good point. And it's wild to see that the way the media is spinning out of control. Let me tell you, I cannot go to Ottawa in anymore without people coming up and shaking my hand and thanking me for our alternative coverage of this project. test. It's part of the reason I'm sitting here today. Part of the reason why I have the number

one biggest independent media outlet in the country. My substack is the third biggest in the entire world on politics, in part because of the freedom convoy, because of the way the media totally twisted it in a proportion. So many Canadians saw the light and said, wait a minute, I was there. I saw what the freedom convoy is doing. And then I watched it on the CBC and it was like seeing two different things, right? And so people appreciated that's part of the reason why we have a huge following is because the media failed Canadians so badly. Unfortunately, most Canadians are paying close attention, right? They're sitting at home. Everyone wanted the COVID vaccine to end. Everyone wanted the COVID lockdowns and they thought maybe

taking a vaccine would help them and they believe the media. I don't blame them for testing institutions. I think it's good. But I am just saying that the reason that the issue, sorry, let me just finish. The reason that the issue was a 7030 issue is because of the complete one-sided media coverage of it, obvious. You clearly think Canadians are stupid. I'm sorry. There is no other conclusion to draw from what you're arguing. You're arguing that 70% of the country, right, is so gullible and that the media is so evil that they basically live in a state of unreality, right? Like that, that's what you're arguing. And that the people who came out for the convoy could believe that COVID-19 is a bioweapon, some of them, not all of them, but I'm saying

these are views that are present at the con. You're talking most like ridiculous. I don't know. I've talked to these people and let's let them finish. It supports this. There is a belief in Canada, roughly 10, maybe 15% of the country, maybe a little bit less, believe COVID was designed in the lab as a bio weapon, something I know you believe as well. I don't believe it wasn't. You wrote a story arguing now. Actually, that was another story that you push out. Let me finish going through as we can come back to this in a minute if you like Candace,

that believe maybe the vaccines are dangerous or murderous. You know, there was a belief stated on stage repeatedly to much cheering that hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people have died in Canada and around the world because of the vaccines from the vaccines, a belief that the world economic form either controls the country or, you know, caveat it is trying to control the country and runs Trudeau's cabinet. You know, those beliefs are part of that 30%. You know, that is the propagandization we ought to be focusing on, something your independent network often does promote. The 70% of the country who was frustrated and annoyed by the convoy, you know, I think there are people in that 70% who would say, listen, I hate the mandates too, but this isn't the way to oppose them. I think there is a view of that. 70% that you have the right to protest, but not like this? That 70% is not stupid, Candace. You're not gullible.

You're putting words into my mouth. You said they're propagandized, but they, they punched themselves in front of the CBC and they believe everything they hear. Unfortunately, as we saw in the 2025 election with the elbows up thing, right? Even Canadians whose lives are objectively worse because of the liberal government, 10 miserable years of Trudeau and liberal governance. They're willing to work again because the CBC told them elbows up. I'm not saying they're stupid.

People have heard the arguments you made and they don't believe them. And they trust the institutions and the institutions are lying to them. That's what I'm saying. Let me jump in. Everyone's like another thing. I'm going to put another thing on the table here. Yeah, everyone's lying, including the Lab League theory. That's a legitimate theory, Justin.

And when I speculated about it, you called me a conspiracy theorist and linked me with Alex Joe. And let me just tell you, your piece got translated into all kinds of communist propaganda. I was getting Google alerts from your piece translated into like every government, communist government was like quoting your piece saying, oh, anyone's saying it's lab leak is a propagandist. that's actually a leading theory now, okay? So I think that that's probably not something to bring up as an example of how you're right.

Jumping in here. Hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on. Let's, I want to bring us to more recent events, which is to say the federal court of appeal in Canada ruled just, I guess it was just last month. It was in January that the government, quote, unreasonably invoke the Emergencies Act to clear the convoy protests. And I guess I want to find out from you to, whether that changes how you viewed. what transpired four years ago this month.

Candice, what do you think? I was vindicated, of course. Of course. You know, clear-eyed, sober second thought. When we look back at what happened and what the Trudeau government did, it was absolutely ridiculous. It was totally unnecessary, unreasonable. I'm proud of the courts for making the right decision twice.

It doesn't change what I think we're vindicated to say, hey, we were a peaceful protest. You know, Justin's saying, oh, a lot of Canadians said that they didn't like the lockdowns and they didn't like the mandate, but there was a different way to do. do it. Like, what other than peaceful protest is a way to voice your opinion against the government, right? Peaceful protest that doesn't occupy the capital. Well, it did that first. You know, like I said, it escalated and we regret some of the escalations, but there's two sides to that, right? Okay. Let me get Justin on this. Justin? The fact that the Emergencies Act was ruled ultra-virus, as they say? What do you think? I think it was probably correct. Like, I'm sorry to make this a little

complicated, but, you know, I think it is really important that the government of Canada has something akin to the Emergencies Act that it can pull out to basically remedy the divergences in provincial federal jurisdiction. I think this is a pretty good example of that. It is not the War Measures Act, right? It is not martial law, as Candice said earlier. I think on a high level, the Emergencies Act should have been used here. Here's the caveat. The way in which the Trudeau government wrote the regulations around it, the mass freezing of bank accounts, not just for the main corporations and the organizers, but also for a whole bunch of other people, a few dozen people, I think, in the end, I think went way too far. The prohibitions

on any kind of protest in a huge swath of the country went way too far. I think the Trudeau government made their own bed with this. It was their responsibility to write super tight and reasonable regulations to allow police to go in, clear the capital, make arrests where necessary in a limited sense. I think the Emergencies Act was necessary for that. I think, think they went way too far with it. And I think this, they're now, this is chickens coming home to roost for them. Ultimately, it's going to go to the Supreme Court. I'm really keen to see what happens there. But I think the federal court decision was more or less, right? Yeah. Okay. Let's do, because I'm just keeping an eye on the clock here. And I want to give each of you

one sort of last chance to make the point, because we are now, you know, what people believe at the time and what they believe years later may change. You know, history has a way of rendering its verdict differently. Four years isn't a ton of time to give history to render its verdict, but I wonder how you think the verdict of history four years to the month later should view all of what transpired back then. Candace? Well, I think that, I mean, obviously we're still living at. I think most people, even Justin Ling has totally changed this tune since 2022, right? Like the COVID restrictions were totally insane. They were huge overreach. So many of the things. we did. We're not based on science. We're not based on fact. A lot of it was because of the media

whipping everyone into a frenzy. And I think we need to be clear-eyed about that, right? Like, look, there was a news coming out of South Korea last week that the president will be jailed for life over the use of martial law, right? Like, governments shouldn't be able to do this. And there should be some accountability when they do. And I think that history will be very unkind to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. He certainly ruled over the beginning of the decline of candidates up to us to turn a country around at this point. I think most people agree that Canada isn't what it used to be. And I think this is just one of many examples of how Trudeau just completely mishandled the governance of this country. Justin, I think it is incredibly important and probably something

me and Candace can agree on that we do go back and actually analyze, never mind the freedom convoy, but the lockdown measures and the public health orders that we put in place because I wrote at the time, I was writing before the convoy I wrote after. bunch of them were unbelievably unreasonable, whether it's flight restrictions at the federal level, whether it's banning kids from going outside in Ontario. And I think, you know, when you cannot find a public space to bring all those voices together and let them argue and duke it out, then you wind up with people going down rabbit holes and living in, in some cases, alternate realities, finding conspiracy theories that explain the world that doesn't make sense to them anymore.

And you do have instances of that here. I think we're going to look back at this. time and realized that we all lost our minds. And that ranges from people who think COVID is by a weapon that the vaccines kill to people who also believe that all, you know, anti-vactors should be locked up and deported or whatever, right? We all went a little kooky during the pandemic. We all did stuff that maybe looking back on we're not going to feel so great about. I think one of the things we're going to look back on and not feel so great about is allowing, you know, 10,000 people to occupy the capital of the country for three weeks. But I will say, this is what happens when globalization can't be resolved. And I don't think we all lost our

during COVID. I think that one side did. I did. Another side is pretty relatively sane. It is still saying the same thing in 2026 or saying in 2020. The 70% who's propagandized and delayed to. But listen, I do think debates like this going forward, actually having both sides come to the same place and do get out for a little while and actually try and get at least on the same page where possible and clarify their position where it makes sense is what we need. Having more silos and having more kind of camps that never talk to each other is a mistake.

I think an inquiry into the end of the pandemic is a good place to start. I think having those conversations at the Supreme Court about the Freedom Convoy and the Emergencies Act is a good follow up to that. But I still worry that we don't do enough of that in this country. And if we want to make it great again, I think we're going to have to. Great again. Okay, it's quoting Donald Trump over there. I just want to make one point here.

And I don't think this is Justin's fault. I call him an elite, but he's not this powerful. The legacy media in Canada purged conservative voices out. You were not welcome if you were a conservative in the media. Ezra Levant, myself, Andrew Lawton, we all got pushed out of legacy media. We used to be part of the legacy media. I used to write in the Toronto Sun. I used to go on CP24 and CBC and all those networks.

And then they decided that conservatives weren't allowed. And so they pushed us out. That's why we operate in the independent sphere because we got purged from the legacy media. So if you actually want to have discussions and debates, then you cannot say that anybody to the right of Justin Trudeau is not allowed of part of the conversation is too far right. And therefore you can have the conversation. I apply you, Steve Paken, for hosting this debate and actually being willing to have a conservative voice on here because you won't find these kinds of conversations on the legacy media because they have decided that all conservatives, people who are true conservative views are denialists and we're racist and we're unacceptable and that we're not allowed to have our voices heard on these platforms.

Candace and Justin, I'm going to say, since you both complimented this experience in your last comments, I'm going to infer from that that this was worth doing. and I think we're going to do it again down the road. So we encourage people to go to our Patreon page, which is patreon.com forward slash the Paken podcast. Leave us your ideas about what kind of debates you'd like to see us have going forward. I agree with you. I think this went rather well,

and I'm pleased at the vigorous yet civil tone that you two took to this debate. So my thanks to Justin Ling and Candace Malcolm, all of our shows are archived at stevepaken.com. Thanks for joining us, everybody. And until next time, peace and love.