How anger, faith and conspiracy theories fuelled the trucker convoy - The Fifth Estate

the following program may contain mature subject matter and course language viewer discretion is advised [Music] i'm jillian findlay on this edition of the fifth estate our nation's capital besieged i'm staying i'm not leaving until the mandates are gone occupying streets harassing people breaking the law this is not a peaceful protest but who was going to end it if the police have a strategy it sure as heck isn't obvious to us police seemed helpless [Music] at times even complicit [Music] i support you 100 thank you in terms of public safety response in terms of intelligence it's a failure of monumental proportion it's a mess as the demonstrators garnered support around the country and the world we want those great canadian truckers to know that we are with them all the way what became clear is that these were no ordinary protests this extremist movement is born in canada raised in canada and has proliferated in canada guys here we are downtown ottawa oh the organizers not simply the coveted weary canadians they claim to be you have said about mr trudeau somebody's gonna make you catch a bullet somebody is going to make you catchable yes for what you're doing to the people well do you not see that that's promoting violence that's not promoting violence that's my opinion which i'm free to have tonight where it started how it grew and how all that anger has changed this country maybe forever hey canada james here began with a man in a winnebago and initially had nothing at all to do with truckers i told you unity is contagious and we're gonna have fun with this big time welcome wendy and you're coming to ottawa i am right on last october james botter set out from calgary with a message of unity and as he told us when we met him in ottawa a mission from god i've been sitting here going god where do i fit into this how do i put unity out there and he said convoy for freedoms okay my wife honey we're we're gonna go do a convoy and we're going to ottawa can i ask you a little bit about how that conversation happened i got baptized and it really stuck hard deep in my every fiber of my being but how did god tell you to start a convoy uh through prayer through prayer [Music] prayer had taken him to ottawa before in 2019 he was part of what in retrospect looks an awful lot like a dry run protesters then united against the government's energy policies among other things i want a secure border like 88 of people and i'm a racist they call themselves the united way role convoy and it was a real mishmash of grievances there were a whole bunch of folks there who were frustrated about losing their jobs in the oil patch in alberta there were folks there who were convinced that global warming and climate change was not a concern that we need to address and there was a number of organizers and participants and speakers who were affiliated with some some more hard right white supremacist anti-government views in 2019 it was a three-day wonder and bought a return to alberta then came covet as canadians retreated into isolation and fear water saw a need for unity again and i'm seeing a country fall apart divided more and more and more i'm seeing families that over opinions and their relationships with each other this breaks my heart this isn't the canada i grew up in here we are folks and so in october with god at the wheel and his wife sandra at his side the freedom convoy hit the road again operation bear hug he called at this time focused on a new issue vaccine mandates we're having to defend our freedoms and there is no second chance on this canada we don't get a second chance wake up this time his timing was perfect a year and a half of pandemic had left canadians exhausted and frustrated as his winnebago headed east boughter's call for freedom seemed to strike a chord since the beginning of the pandemic and the lockdowns and the mandates i think we've been seeing that there is a growth in the anger about being locked up people have been tied up at home and they're kind of falling into rabbit holes essentially one of those rabbit holes of course was facebook botter's canada unity page started attracting followers as his posts became increasingly conspiratorial anti-covid anti-science and auntie justin trudeau the suggestion that justin trudeau has committed crimes against humanity in encouraging vaccines and requiring them in certain circumstances he starts sharing the idea that this is not a real public health emergency but is in fact a pandemic or a scam a political scam he starts suggesting that there is conspiracy afoot facebook would take down some of barter's post and in our interview which he insisted on recording as well both he and his wife chose their words carefully do you believe that there is a virus called covalent that kills people of course just like there's been flus so it's not that you you think it's a hoax even though in your facebook postings you have talked about this conspiracy between bill gates and george soros and glaxo klein and pfizer and and a lab we're trying to make sure we can let the money trail speak for itself you know just because it's a post does that make it a you know there's things called posting to actually see what other people are saying right but you have posted this and you have you have drawn a connection to all of these things which suggests that you think that the it's all a big hoax or it's all a grand conspiracy for somebody to make money just because i post it there doesn't mean i'm drawing connections i'm actually looking for validation validation they got in spades that summer and fall anti-vaccine rallies were breaking out almost as frequently as kovit by the time he got to ottawa in december barter was boldly demanding political change we are uh live here in ottawa on a historic international human rights day that's the senate of canada we're delivering the memorandum of understanding in what he called a legally binding memorandum he called on the governor general and the senate to strike a committee to essentially override canada's elected governments and end all vaccine initiatives you arrived in this city with a manifesto that essentially said we want the government of justin trudeau dismantled and we want it replaced with it with nobody it would be replaced with the committee of unelected people uh no may i no it would not be replaced okay the committee would do what then oversee to make sure that the government followed through with ending the unlawful mandates the mandates are not unlawful and they're not just federal most have been legislated by provinces but trudeau was their target and a month later the prime minister unwittingly handed them a gift a vaccine mandate for cross-border truckers was coming whether truckers liked it or not we have been clear for many many months since back in november uh that the exemption uh for truckers uh to not be vaccinated would be ending uh in january there's a lot of guys won't be able to earn a living now and that's not fair my god is bringing a lot of people together unity is what we need in this country not separation right we're just really tired of getting our freedoms traveled on so that's when botter's anti-mandate anti-trudeau protest morphed into a trucker's protest 90 of canadian truckers are vaccinated but even before trudeau confirmed the mandate there was a small vocal group planning their own convoy it's time to say enough come on guys we can do this we can get together we can bring canada to its [ __ ] knees in drumheller alberta high school teacher kurt phillips hunts right-wing extremists online he started following the convoy organizers and could see their support growing as time went on i saw well more and more people are getting involved in this and i saw the gofundme kind of just blow up initially they were hoping to get a hundred thousand dollars and they reached that relatively quickly uh the next hundred thousand was even quicker until they were ultimately got to 10 million dollars before it was shut down i was really surprised by that look at this oh my god look at all these people i really again started paying attention even more when i saw some of the other actors that were involved i'm tamara nice to meet all of you your support has been overwhelming and so appreciated we are we are really making this happen among the players tamara leech we're going here to hopefully speak to some people to get all these mandates lifted also from alberta formerly with the separatist maverick party her job was feeding that gofundme account guys i got great news gofundme is releasing some money we got her done then there were the others chris barber here he is with leech built a following on tick-tock where he was prolific spewing hate adolf hitler was a smarter [ __ ] than anybody wants to give him credit for let's go jeremy mckenzie an afghan vet has been linked to a number of extremist groups in canada [ __ ] you justin sit on it [ __ ] he joined the convoy from nova scotia one day after police seized weapons from his home are you ready are you ready are you ready and then there's pat king his roots go back to that 2019 convoy as well with an audience of more than 300 000 on facebook he ridicules people who aren't white you might want to change your uh your name to ishmael or drop a bunch of change down the stairs and call yourself he promotes race-related conspiracy theories that's what the goal is is to depopulate the anglo-saxon race because they are the ones with the strongest bloodlines and in the weeks leading up to his arrival in ottawa was predicting violence [Music] someone's gonna make you catch a bullet one day the only way that and i'm gonna say it out loud the only way that this is gonna be solved is with bullets this is a very loose knit decentralized assortment of agitators and activists and extremists and we need to recognize that that can be incredibly dangerous here in the trudeau wants our guns so does he want to bullets first or that way whether supporters understood who was leading the convoy the trucks became a symbol of some kind of change and some politicians whether they understood it or not were quick to capitalize we need to show truckers that we appreciate their hard work and that we're going to stand up for the right to peacefully protest but how peaceful would it be when we come back the convoys descend on a city unprepared and we sit down with pat king what are you telling your people out there what should they do so people will be arrested you accept that sure go ahead and arrest us [Applause] [Music] they've been coming for weeks from every corner of the country on friday january 28th the freedom convoy paraded into ottawa this is a city used to protesters but these would prove the visitors from hell freedom i'm losing my sanity because of you guys i'm losing my house soon as anger and frustration boiled over the city's embattled police chief admitted he'd been snooker all of our negotiations with the corps convoy stated that they would be here on friday and they would leave on sunday our core negotiations were a demonstration for three days in the nation's capital and the return of of those vehicles and demonstrators to the parts of canada they came from that is what we planned for but if police thought this was going to be a one-off weekend when he sat down with us organizer pat king said the protesters had been clear from the start they were coming to stay it was them who set up the roads and the routes in which we were coming in we were actually escorted in by police you don't get a police escort unless it's already been confirmed we told them we were staying here indefinitely they knew what we were doing the whole time you told the ottawa this is this is important so very clearly you told the people that you were talking to were coming and we don't know when we're leaving that's right we're not going to leave until justin trudeau gives lifts the mandate absolutely so that was clear to them that was clear as clear as it is as bright with these lights in here and what did and what did they say when you told them that no problem you have the right you have the right to freedom of assembly and peaceful protest i'm staying i'm not leaving until the mandates are gone it's not gonna end until they do something it's not gonna end we asked the ops about everything king told us but they wouldn't answer our questions chief slowly would later call what happened in his city unforeseeable i don't want to be too critical of the response but i was sitting at home watching and hearing these people coming to town bob paulson is a former commissioner of the rcmp who happens to live in ottawa in some sense i guess the scope and scale of it may have surprised some people and the intransigence of of the participants and the uh structured leadership of it probably surprised some people but it ought not to have why should it not happen well i mean the duty of the police forces is to uh keep tabs on that now we're standing at the senate and directly across the street here's the house and we're gonna go stand on the hill hey justin are you home we're looking for you baby now don't forget pat king is the organizer who once predicted violence against the prime minister so aside from how long police thought he might stay what intelligence did they have about him and others before they allowed them into the city this is crazy the ops the ottawa police service and the rcmp parliamentary protective service other police services in the area have a long history of coordinating and jointly responding to demonstrations and protests on parliamentary hill given that we know that amongst the many demonstrators who were coming were people who were coming very explicitly with the goal of changing the government people explicitly talking about violence should those kinds of things have triggered a response absolutely and and to the extent that that intelligence was collected and possessed and assessed it would have been distributed we now know canada's intelligence agencies were keeping tabs the day before the protesters arrived the integrated terrorism assessment center circulated a warning to police some ideologically motivated violent extremism followers had seized upon the rally a second assessment a week and a half later warned the protests could be an opportunity for lone actors to conduct a terrorism attack i would like to see our own january 6 event see some of those truckers plow right through that 16-foot wall ottawa police won't say what their threat assessment was but within days of the protesters arriving with his city's downtown looking increasingly like an 18-wheeler parking lot chief slowly was not sounding confident about his ability to end it the more this demonstration continues the more the risk the public safety increases that said there may not be a policing solution to this demonstration but if policing wasn't the solution what was even as the convoys were on route questions were being asked about whose side police were on people are super good the truckers have been having a good time they've been getting their point across and they can't ignore all of this [Applause] i really wanted to give a shout out to all the truckers i think what you guys are doing is incredible i get what you guys do i know i support you guys thank you true to their work protesters settled in for the long haul with supply chains and block captains they fed people kept them warm and entertained all of it brought in under the gaze of ottawa's finest including jug after jug of diesel the police response has been more or less consistent which is a very hands-off treating the protesters or demonstrators with kid gloves curious whether i should be extending my stay at the hotel how long is this going to be happening and the answer is nobody knows karima's side is a toronto lawyer who traveled to ottawa to document the protest posting observations to twitter and grappling with the questions she heard most often why on earth weren't police doing more in addition to being aligned to some extent with the the message of the group the way that the group presents also is perceived as less of a risk by police um and you know i can think of sort of encampment raids and like black lives matter marches and other events that have not had that same benefit of the doubt you know the rcmp and other police forces are representative and we seek to make them representative of the societies that we please so you know it's not a huge surprise that there would be people that would have those views do you have any sense from even your own time at the rcmp how much of a concern was that yeah well i think you know there i think there's a relatively senior rcmpx you know uh emergency response team guy walking around here making pronunciation so he's a fairly well trained been around the block a couple time guy so he didn't just come to these views he must have had these views for some time good afternoon my name is danny bulford i'm a former member of the royal canadian mounted police daniel bulford is also a former prime ministerial bodyguard who says he left the rcmp rather than be vaccinated his security team included a 32-year veteran of the ontario police as well as a former canadian forces combat soldier [Applause] [Music] they feel emboldened they feel invincible they feel like they won't have any consequences for anything they do the protests grew especially on the weekends but by weekend too angry residents were protesting back the cops aren't willing to help us we've got to do it ourselves but organizers clearly saw their arrangement with police as a license for everything that followed did you tell them that you intended to come here and blast your horns at all hours of night and make it difficult for people we're pretty quiet at night uh a lot of people learned at the beginning you went to the beginning well no at the beginning we were going to make sure you remembered that we were here and not to forget about us [Music] and it's just a horn [Music] each day ottawa police put out a tally of arrests made and tickets issued but all residents could see was that the trucks remained to change that chief slowly said he'd need help we are asking for an additional 1800 police and civilian personnel i interpreted that 1800 number as a as a political ploy to transfer responsibility around the various jurisdictions it may well be 1800 but you've got to have a plan that accompanies the demand for resources it's not just a matter of busing 1800 cops into the downtown area and wishing them well like who's in charge what's the plan how are you going to execute on the plan and then you get all the resources that you need fairly or not slowly was never perceived as having a plan he never got the 1800 officers he asked for the hows and the wise will be dissected in the months maybe years to come but slowly's future was now being measured in days 18 days after his officers escorted the convoy into the city the chief was out [Music] when we come back the protests spread and the stakes get higher it took to the point where we knew what was about to happen or inevitably to happen and we acted as soon as we could the tide would begin to turn two weeks in protesters were now blocking the border the ambassador bridge in windsor crossing points in alberta manitoba and bc it wasn't just residents being held hostage now but trade and jobs the prime minister who'd been dismissive of the protesters and largely absent for weeks finally emerged after a call from the white house president biden and i both agree that for the security of people and the economy these blockades cannot continue but the blockades did continue and in ottawa so did the protests the longer the standoff went on the greater the worry that all of this might end in violence peaceful non-compliance has always always always been the objective here peacefully with bear hugs with love with smiles the couple behind the original convoy assured us violence was the last thing they wanted but there were all those facebook posts do you yourself mr bowder have talked about and predicted world war iii starting on canadian soil you have called for the arrest of justin trudeau on treason yeah for treason i'll keep calling for that that's a violent thing no it isn't a democratically elected prime minister of this country you are calling poisonous all these laws all these laws that he has elected to uphold for all of us have been violated that's treason when you start throwing around words like treason and traitor that creates an environment in which somebody might decide to take action into their own hands we know that there are people associated with your organization who say this is not going to end without bullets that is not part of our association pat king is not i have seen you and pat king together in videos i have seen documents from your organization with your two names side by side as organized so i was going to get on that there's multiple organizers in this okay but he is an organizer and he is associated he's a captain ladies and gentlemen i had the pleasure of meeting these beautiful souls whatever his title as a protest wore on power seemed to shift in pat king's direction all of a sudden he was everywhere not just online but on the streets a convoy celebrity he's got an incredible charisma about him and he's again i've described him as this people seems like this kind of big teddy bearish kind of quality about him and people rally around that people people kind of love him when they do if they don't know him but he's also really good at convincing people of things that they heard aren't true he was clearly confident he could convince what he usually derides as the mainstream media too calling himself an investigative journalist now he agreed to our interview because he knew who we were my thing with it is my parents would be proud if i did it with the fifth estate that's just what it is your mom and dad would be proud so it is what it is we'll do it all right well i think i guess we'll see what the editors say after can i call you we talked for an hour during which he made all kinds of claims that simply aren't true vaccines are dangerous he said now they're saying children can get heart attacks it's a common thing children can get strokes it's a common thing part of a conspiracy to get rid of anglo-saxons he said and you think the vaccine's part of an effort to depopulate it is do your research despite all of his offensive facebook posts he denied being a racist there's never been a racist derogatory comment out of my mouth when are you saying i have watched videos i have watched just because of the wording and the verbiage that i used doesn't make me a racist that's just verbiage and then we talked about those rants against justin trudeau made he said after he was denied a flight for being unvaccinated you have said about mr trudeau somebody's going to make you catch a bullet those are your words in a heat there's been a lot more worse said about justice well i'm not worried about that you said that somebody's going to make you catch a bullet somebody is going to make you catch a bullet yes for what you're doing to the people well do you not see that that's promoting violence suggesting that that's my opinion which i'm free to have i have freedom of opinion and i have freedom of speech and that's what i said but you are an organizer people look up to you you're talking you you say this stuff and you don't think that that that that somehow influences the people who look up to you not at all political correctness is why we're in this problem right now if i don't have the freedom to say what i feel on my head and the top of my head in a heated moment at some point and i'm going to be ridiculed and raked over the coals in the media because of something i said people can't handle the truth anymore everybody wants to walk around with their eyes like there's nothing to see nothing to see well it's time we take those blinders off we're entering the third week of illegal blockades that have been disrupting the lives of too many canadians now clear on february 14th it was the gloves that came off three days after ontario declared a state of emergency justin trudeau said watch me the federal government has invoked the emergencies act to supplement provincial and territorial capacity to address the blockades and occupations this may have been part of the reason why earlier that morning in kutz alberta police moved in to dismantle the blockade through those goons and his guns rcmp said they'd been tipped off about weapons and they found them long guns handguns large amounts of ammunition fourteen would be arrested four charged with conspiracy to murder police officers it took to the point where we knew what was about to happen or inevitably to happen and we acted as soon as we could among the seizures was body armor and on the vest a patch a symbol of a far right extremist group called diagolon when we saw the badges on the vest uh the diagonal invests it's like oh okay that that kind of makes a lot of sense now this is a province that has some history of these kind of you know insurrectious kind of ideologies so um you know the aryan guard blood and honor uh these hate groups that were very violent i mean this is something that's not entirely unusual here this is our last shot man diagolan was founded by jeremy mckenzie the veteran who himself was arrested for possessing weapons before joining the convoy from nova scotia mckenzie is friends with chris lysak and lysic is one of the men charged with conspiracy to murder in alberta so people like jeremy mckenzie kind of creates the environment for this to occur so if you shout gun or rope when you feel somebody's a traitor and you shout insurrectionist kind of language you shouldn't be entirely surprised when people take you seriously and some people do take him seriously including some politicians he's been covering this i wanted to get him as a canadian uh on first to give us his take on how big this is and since arriving in ottawa mackenzie's had his own moment in the limelight a guest appearance on a popular right-wing online show in the states you know people are crying in the streets i'm high-fiving people out of the side of my truck it was insane the fence came down he helped protesters pull down protective barriers at ottawa's war memorial and was mom thank you what's up what's your name how's it going i'm justin man justin i watch your videos oh thanks man yeah man all the time dude cheers how dare they how [ __ ] dare you even try how dare you on his own streaming show mckenzie provides regular doses of anti-government vitriol this is a global moment this is happening your country has declared war on its own people and the people it considers enemy combatants are truck drivers so what did he tell his viewers about the gun hall in kutz a government job he said the weapons planted the diagon patch meaningless i have uh no idea where those came from who those belong to who put them there who brought them there did the police put them there i have absolutely no idea jeremy it's jillian finley from cbc news 5th state how are you the day after the raid we invited mackenzie to an interview he declined at all i've seen what you guys pray about the other people and myself and i uh i don't respect you guys as a media organization i'm a journalist i'm trying to get information there's concern about weapons there's a connection that where your name has come up so i'd like you to comment on that that's all i'm asking ask the police i'm asking you how the hell am i supposed to know anything about anything going on when was the last time you were in contact with chris lysak i don't know i don't know [Music] in ottawa the worry was that something similar to coots would happen here too the time for police inaction was over on the day the government invoked its emergency measures pat king said bring it on [Music] so when the police make their move and they will make their move that is totally clear what what are you telling your people out there what's your underground which means what hold your arms together sit on the ground everybody turn their backs on the men and women who are supposed to be out there to get our civil liberties and protect them so people will be arrested do you accept that sure go ahead and arrest us when we come back police move in and pat king gets his [Music] [Music] once the government decided to make its move and armed with unprecedented emergency powers it was all over quickly this is not the end i promise you what ottawa police had been unable to clear for three weeks was gone in less than 48 hours the city returned to its residence canada's parliament freed from the circus that had occupied its front yard we're here we ain't [ __ ] going anywhere i don't care what anybody says [Music] before the crackdown everyone knew was coming pat king told us whatever happened victory was already theirs you think you've won don't you we know we've won we have we have one look at it around the world and it's not a matter of winning it's a matter of coming to terms with the fact that people just want to live their lives can we please can we please just live our lives could you please step out of the vehicle sir what's that you're under arrest for what permission king was one of the first to be rounded up and recorded his own arrest disobey court orders uh i'd like to get my lawyer on the phone right away sir i have the right to a lawyer of course you do yeah so i'd like to call my lawyer presently at this point in time to make sure everything's safe so oh you're safe man and you always have been by the end of the weekend most of those identified as protest leaders have been taken into custody fundraiser tomorrow leech organizer and trucker chris barber the head of operation freedom's security team former rcmp officer daniel bulford though in the end he wasn't charged nearly 200 people were arrested and more than a hundred vehicles towed but now that ottawa was back to being boring the country had to take stock how had it all been allowed to happen and why this colossal failure of national security and a complete failure of this government to keep not only ottawa but the whole country safe from a well-organized well-funded extremist movement we should not be here in parliament the debate was about power the prime minister has created a new emergency what is his motivation of course it is to divide and conquer the prime minister widely seen as having provoked the protests got little credit for ending them and he wasn't the only politician to emerge weakened conservative leader aaron o'toole lost his job warning his party as he left not to go down a road that is angry negative and extreme the race to replace him will be a battle for the party's soul and where candidates stood on the protests will matter beyond the politics the last three weeks revealed huge questions about how we police in this country if we can't rely on police and law enforcement during this moment of crisis where there's literally blockaded access to parliament hill there's trucks parked outside the prime minister's office when can we rely on police and for what the questions are also about lines where does lawful protest and an unlawful occupation begin what are the precedents that have now been set i don't think there's a good understanding in the average canadian as to what is going on in some areas of our society this growing recalcitrance amounting to judgments against our institutions uh contributing to an abandonment of the institutions and the traditions and laws in canada is accelerating right and like i'm not suggesting anarchy but you know you need only go out here on the weekend to see anarchy that's going to keep accelerating unless we're able to uh get a handle on it i think but how do you get a handle on what you don't appreciate is real we now know the protesters had a lot of foreign support especially money but those who chronicled the rise of the freedom convoy and some of the people behind it warned that focusing only on that misses the point we need to wake up to the fact that this extremist movement is born in canada raised in canada and has proliferated in canada we need to stop thinking that this is a thing we're importing from the states that there's some shadowy figure around donald trump or around some extremists moving in down south that is really driving the the bus here this is a canadian problem my brothers and sisters have my back and thousands tens of thousands millions of canadians are with us and um you know we were willing to fight and die for this country before and we'll do it again but jeremy mckenzie never claimed to be a protest organizer and he remains free it's hard being slaves a video apparently placing him at a goat farm but a telegram post was far less playful our resolve is infinite he wrote recently their ammunition is finite and what about the botters who started it all with their god-inspired mission so you're willing to leave right now we don't need to take action at first it seemed they were going to be allowed to simply leave ottawa but then came this okay canada this is uh sandra and james we were arrested today we were picked up uh arrested charged with obstruction of justice obstruction of something else and mischief where the borders are now remains unclear they arrived in ottawa under the guise of freedom and unity i believe we're on the right side of law and right side of history on this that's true okay they like so many came believing they were going to change this country three weeks later canada has changed not in the way the protesters demanded and not in a way that most canadians yet understand [Music] you

Channel: The Fifth Estate

Views: 320,917

Keywords: freedom convoy, Freedom Convoy, freedom convoy 2022, convoy 2022, trucker convoy, trucker protest, Ottawa, insurrection, occupation, Trudeau, Justin Trudeau, Pat King, Tamara Lich, extremism in Canada, The Fifth Estate, CBC Fifth, CBC, CBC News

Id: y2OlAXDW7W0

Length: 42min 45sec (2565 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 24 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/Crux_Biscuit]

Don’t forget about stupidity!

[u/TheFinnstagator]

An excellent overview of how the convoy started and how its organizers tapped into frustrations around the pandemic to advance their own agendas

[u/EyeLikeTheStonk]

It is a weird mix of Anglo-Saxon white Christian Nationalism... It is definitely a weird animal.

[u/pattyG80]

Thise dumb fucks couldn't recite a single Bible passage.

[u/Iamthepaulandyouaint]

And in other news, water is wet.