Canada Convoy Update

A few of right last week were earlier this week we discussed the uh the truck or scheduled our episode recorded before the truck convoy for after the truck convoy had already done a bunch of things, which was really good. So we we recorded to talk about the trucks that were that we're going to show up at Ottawa and

thing things did happen? Maybe not that not because like I've been listening some of their claims or like an Alex Jones is parenting there now that it was like eight hundred thousand to a million truckers and there's three hundred thousand truckers in all of Canada, like but it was like it was like it was a lot of people like not to not to downplay what happened. So we're to give an update on what happened there and kind of discussed maybe any ramifications that stuff like this

could have going forward. But to help with that, um, we have Dan who came on last time to help discuss Hello, thank you for coming on again to talk about the same thing. Thank you for having me. We last less off with you saying that you hope I don't come back on again, because that would be a good thing and it would mean that the bad things

did not happen. So sorry to be here under such circumstances. Yeah, you want to go over the bad Yeah, So let's let's briefly do like a recap of like what this thing was like, like why why was it happening, and like what was the idea. When we last left Canada, a bunch of truckers were angry that they had to present evlations evidence of vaccination. This spiraled and, as I'm

understanding it, at some point them rejecting all public health measures. Yes, actually, the the exact demands are for the federal and provincial governments to quote terminate the vaccine passports and all other obligatory obligatory vaccine contact tracing programs UH, to terminate COVID vaccine mandates UH, and quote respect the rights of those who wish to remain unvaccinated. Uh And here's where it gets weird. Uh see a good devisive rhetoric attacking Canadians

who disagree with government mandates. Kind of hard to say when that one's fulfilled and finally ceased to limit debate through coercive measures with the goal of censoring those who have varying or incorrect opinions. That's what the convoys for. I mean, do you all know what a government is? Evidently I was at some debates with the state that went a lot uglier than it looks like this. One went oh yeah, yeah, we we we can talk about that.

This this the standoff has been well, there's been just that, it's been a standoff in that regard. So it seems like they've kind of hooligan around a bunch of towns and threatened a homeless shelter if they didn't give them food and that left trash everywhere, and set up a checkpoint on the border, or just a blockade on the border. I think it's probably more accurate. There's been blockades going on and up the border. I think the most noteworthy is an Alberta and coop right now, but I might

be pronouncing that wrong. And what was the police It was something along the lines of we don't think there's like a policing solution to this problem. Oh yeah, so you're totally up to date that that happened today. Yeah, so a little after two on lafter two pm today, the Ottawa Police Chief Peter Slowly said in a press conference that quote, there may not be a policing solution

to this demonstration. Is it really that easy? It's evidently it's that easy if you wait till kind of like the media has had a few days and most of the coverage is just like breaking bad things still happening. Uh so it's it's not great. So what what was the lead up on set? Right? Because they were all they were all all the trucks and caravans and stuff. We're supposed to live on Saturday? What was the lead up on Saturday? Like and like what what what happened

like the actual like first day? Yeah, so Saturday was technically the first day, actually Friday. Throughout the day a lot of people started arriving. So the occupation has been we're recording now Wednesday. Um, it started on Friday and and the main like the largest contingent of the convoy was staying overnight Friday night in a nearby town called Armfire west of Ottawa, and they moved in from our empire to Ottawa on Saturday morning. At the same time,

people converged from other parts of Canada. Um to Ottawa's east is Quebec and to Quebec's east of the Maritime provinces, and three thousand people at least came from Quebec and met with the convoy to on Saturday, kind of coming in from different parts. The day between Friday night and Saturday afternoon and Saturday was kind of the big day,

the big party. UH. The main point of contention and the main thing that happened was some major streets are gridlocked by vehicles moving into the city into the very crowded core of Ottawa, my hometown and staying stationary on busy roads. Both commercial and residential roads are part of this. Driveways for both businesses and residences were blocked off. Fire roads were blocked off, and Owen's routes are blocked off. Local businesses that stayed open had to close throughout the

day Saturday, largely UH. Some managed to not and many of you just stayed closed already because they knew what was going to happen, and this happened. Closures that happened on Saturday are mostly still going on today as I'm

speaking to you. Wednesday night, UH closures followed patterns of harassment, some alleged assaults which Robert mentioned before, else happened at a homeless shelter in downtown Ottawa, and pretty much everyone I've spoken to, I've I've been in Ottawa, visiting it to my hometown, and pretty much ever what I've spoken to who lives in the downtown core is that a slew of story since Saturday of either harassment at work

or just harassment walking through the streets. And the worst part of it all is that right now there's not a clear ending in sight. What is it like on the ground there in terms of you know, there's like kind of like a blockade around the border. They're like, what else is like around Ottawa? What's like what like what what is what's it like to walk around in these places? And like how big is the area that these people are staying at? Like where are they staying at?

Are they all sleeping in their trucks. Who staying at hotels, what's like what's like the It's an excellent question. There's a there's a mix of hotels were booked up the week leading up to the weekend, as as the new cycle kind of exploded, more and more people called into hotels in Ottawa. A lot of people actually brought tractors. People are also sleeping in their trucks. Uh. Of course, people have like family and stuff staying in Ottawa. Sometimes

they're staying with them. Um, it's a mix of everything. Actually, I know a guy who even his car was like blocked off in the parking lot. He has to parking because he's downtown. He doesn't have street parking or driveway parking, like it's in a public lot. And he couldn't get his car out for over a full day because an RV camper set up near him and just blocked him off. So it's a mix of everything. Uh. Starting on Saturday, there's like a lot of partying, a lot of music,

a lot of kids. Uh. It's gotten a little bit more chaotic and less condensed since then. And also the area is hard to gauge because streets are actually constantly as vehicles move out for one reason or another. Streets are kind of being retaken back organically by the city, but then sometimes throughout the day getting retaken again back by the convoy. So the occupation has been a little

fluid on some of the outside streets. Wellington's Street, which is the street outside of Parliament in Ottawa, has been consistently occupied, to my knowledge, blocking off kind of not actually blocking off, but you have to walk past them as a pedestrian to get onto Parliament Hill. So that's where the kind of the core is, the action of the action is, and everything else spreads out from that and near hotels, Uh, there's a little more action because

that's generally where people are staying. How has members of Parliament and like local Poul Titian has been reacting since Saturday? I know there was there was some videos of like I think one of the MP's from Alberta was giving an interview that gained some traction online. Um, but yeah, it's kind of curious, like how the like different government

officials are talking about this. I'm actually so glad you asked that because as of today, the divide in members of Parliament has actually led to some pretty incredible political ramifications. So last time we spoke, I think Aaron O'Toole had just earlier in the day endorsed compoints that he'd be coming down. Erin o't tool, for those unaware, is the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada. He's a real real otool. Wow, whoa whoa mind blowan, no one, no

one could have seen that joke coming. Every every Canadian listener just like collectively mold. Yeah. So aeronauts tool and just endorse the convoy. He'd been getting some tough questions about it. Following everything we just talked about and more, aeronots will walk that back and said, you know, he didn't approve of the way that the convoy was acting in Ottawa. This led to a swift referendum on his leadership and earlier today Aeronot Tool was voted out as

the Conservative Party leader in Canada. And that does have pretty big ramifications. I know. I talked about Erino Tool a decent amount in my previous Canada episodes for cadapp and here. Um, so yeah, that'll be really interesting to see. Who uh what's do you have any idea of when the new person is going to try to get voted it. Like, when when do you think that process is going to happen to fill that spot. I'm actually not sure. I

haven't looked up when it's gonna happen. It feels like there's been months before where there's an anti leaders of the Conservative Party. The main concern right now for the outside of Conservative politics is because erin o Tool was considered relatively moderate. He talked about in the Fascism Canada episode how erin O't tool kicked out Darren Sloan from the party for being pretty coy on donations from neo

Nazi Paul Front on his campaign. Uh. Overall, like, that's a pretty great thing, that Erino Tool that kicked him out of the caucus, Like regardless of other elements of that leadership. Uh, there's worrying that that kind of there will be continued forward, especially because Sloan was also in the leadership race and Sloan has only gotten further right since then. Yeah, it is this despite Aerono tools not great aspects, which there are lots of. He did he did,

he did take it. He did kind of hold back some of the more problematic, uh conservative like elements, whether that be you know, people from you know, from his own party, like like Derek, and then I'll so keeping kind of the people's party stuff at bay um. Yeah, and that will be an interesting kind of power struggle. Now, that will be something to observe. I think the thing that concerns me most about all of this is the

implication of the implications for this is a tactic. We saw a version of this that was more limited in scope and time in Portland when this huge Trump caravan rolled through downtown, blocked off big chunks of downtown and like just maced and shot people with paintball guns at random, and it was kind of like, I think everyone there was surprised at how many folks they got for it. Um. This is a much more evolved version of the same tactic, and it's kind of stuff we talked about in season

one of it could happen here. This idea of like people coming from these conservative majority areas in a place where the vast majority of people are liberal but centralized in the cities um and blocking those cities off or otherwise disrupting their ability to transit UM, potentially their ability to get things shipped in like food, UM, like their ability to use free movement UM. And we've seen pieces of this again in a bunch of places in Oregon

during the wildfires. You had these rural communities setting up checkpoints and stuff, looking for people from the cities that they could bill as Antifa. And it's this it's this world worrying trend for a couple of reasons. Number One, when you get ten people to do something like this, even if the city has hundreds of thousands of people, that's effectively too large a group to police UM. And the police don't want to police it anyway, so there's

not even really an attempt to stop them. UM. And it's a way in which the vast majority of Canada, at least based on the polling I'm aware of, UM, is not in support of the causes these guys are backing. Was it like sevent of the country supports some level of like vaccine mandates, UM, if I'm remembering correctly the last one I read. So this is not a popular movement. It's not even super popular among the truckers. Like the actual it doesn't matter how many people in the cities

you can get. If you can get fifty people to do something like this, the police won't will not take action, and you can negatively impact the lives of a huge number of millions before it gets radical, right, That's when these guys are not coming in with guns with the express plan to eliminate people or trying to specifically block

up food. They're just kind of sucking around now. But it's this kind of is this thing we've talked about where you have this is the thing in Canada and the United States, you had liberals kind of outsourcing the protection of society to this group of increasingly heavily armed and radicalized people who are now in a lot of

cases fascists. Um. And that means that when there's a problem with a large chunk of people who hate everything you stand for, the people that you have completely outsourced protection to are all unfavor of fucking with you because they hate you. And it's it's a problem in Oregon, It's going to be a problem in fucking New York City or whatever at some point. It's a problem in Ottawa. Um, I don't know, am I am I off base? Here? Am I am I? You're not on base at all?

And uh like there isn't there isn't anything to to really elaborate on past what you said the last time we spoke, I think, Robert, you said there's not a whole lot. It was what you said that could really really be done with the vehicle occupation tactic, and this unless a lot of people are willing to meet them with an equal force, which unfortunately Ottawa didn't have. Like it's an Ottawas. Ottawa's a relatively large city in Canada's

there's over a million people that live here. It's also by land mass, I think, the largest city in Canada, like east to west. It's it's very spread out, so it's a low population density. So even the affected area downtown is actually like pretty small in relation to the city itself, which is pretty unfortunate. And like it's not a particularly packed downtown for a large downtown. I am.

I am curious kind of on the violent aspect um has Like I know there's been like um of increase in death threats to members of parliament, like specifically liberal members of parliaments, specifically liberal members of parliament who are women who are maybe not white. Um, so I would curiously if if you have any more kind of information on that side of things, and then how how violence has popped up in a few places throughout the past

like a week. Basically, yeah, there's been a lot. So I mean, even if you're going by what's reported, like right now, there is by most estimates, under a thousand maybe at most a few thousand, very fars spread out people as part of the convoy. As of yesterday, there's thirteen active police investigations. The police of the city, the City of Ottawa said in the An Oppressor. We obviously know when there's like thirteen active investigations in anything this big,

there's way more that's not being reported, not being invest stigated. Um, like they took you know, like these things are going to thirteen is going to be resultful of something bad. So some of the things that happened Robert mentioned before the illegit assault on a houseless person inside of Shepherds of Good Hope in which a security guard was also called a racial slur. Uh. There was a house that diplayed displayed a rainbow flag outside of it, that had

harassment and poop thrown at it. Um they have been we need to get a hundred thousand people together to throw their own poop back at these people. It's the only way they'll learn. Yeah, fighting fire with fire is that that expression? I'm sure just emerged from just tossing poop at each other's strategy. It's meant for this. Yeah, there's been suggestions all of our social media channels on like here's how you can poop in snowbanks without getting caught.

Businesses have been harassed, the violenced, So like what I think maybe some context that isn't always known. In Ottawa on Saturday and until recently, dining in in restaurants wasn't allowed. We were actually in a relatively strict lockdown following around a chrown wave, and a lot of people even coming like didn't know that. Like I spoke to people on Saturday who were like, hey, do you know like when the restaurants around here open so we can like sit

down for a meal. And I was like, there's no sitting down on autous. So what people were doing they were going inside cafees like two horns and stuff, and they were just refusing to leave in eating their food there anyways, and if there was no seats, they were

just like eating in line. It was also minus twenty eight degrees in Ottawa on Saturday and very very cold On Sunday there was an extreme cold weather warning, so especially when people brought their kids, there wasn't a lot of other options other than like swarm the malls and swarm restaurants. And even then the mall, the main mall downtown Rito Center was closed probably throughout the day because it was not a safe place. So I already talked

before about routes getting blocked. Also not physical violence, but honking has been keeping people awake. There's been endless honking if you watch video footage from it, and even in the background right now, I'm coming from Ottawa, like I can hear honking in my background. Um, some people allegedly parked and then urinated on the tomb of the Unknown Soldier, which is yeah, this isn't political. Is even the wrong way to describe a lot of the what's fun about

this for these people, it's that they suck. Yes, fucking it's just coolly. It's just fucking cooliganism. Uh. And that's yeah, it's it's fucking cooliganism. There's gonna be a lot more stories coming out, for sure. Uh as things progress. Um of stories of harrassment, Like I've talked to people who have gotten a cat call in the night. People getting violent altercations, street fights. I'm sure you're going to break out. It's kind of at a very tense point right now.

And Auto we're at that point we're like, okay, we're seeing some signs like pops getting thrown at the houses. What's gonna happen next? Because the police are saying they don't have a plan, and the truckers are saying they're not leaving. What's it like outside of Bottawa, across across all the other places where there's like similar activity happening. They're all looking to us and being concerned. From what I'm talking to, UH, anti fascists and Alberta are particularly

concerned right now with the goop protests. There's ongoing to UH. It keeps seeing popping up like US Canada border activities in the same there's a few attempted convoys by Americans and even before in Europe there was a few attempts. Some got turned away, some Americans got turned away the Canadian borders. They weren't vaccinated. M Yeah, which is you know, like it's like you think, because that's the reason they're saying they're protesting, they would have remembered that and thought

maybe that's gonna like come into play, but I don't. Yeah, I don't know, because mean, there is a certain point where if you get enough people going, it would be interesting to see people really do just try to like drive through the border. Yeah. Yeah, And I mean there's been people like you look at social media channels, a lot of them saying like the borders are blocked right

now with thousands of truckers supporting our cause. So if you saw that and you believed it, and then you went to the board and your turn away fading in vaccine, you meant thought, well, I thought I had you know, nine people the same causes being we're ready to use for us, which begs the question, but what happens when you do exactly? I don't want to find out. Yeah,

that's yeah. That's the thing is like if if if they do, if they did have what they say they had, would they just start doing those things and not even think about it and not even think about like the politics of it. They're just doing it to do it. Yeah. I should also mention too, we talked last time about

a Plaid Army slash Diaglon members comments. Uh, they were broadcast on the news about doing another quote January six, uh and it came out the news to do was first reported by Frank magazine and I think by the Canadian antiad network that he was arrested on fire up Striges and no a scotiap before coming here. Worth noting he was reporting live on Info Wars on the Alex

Jonestones on Saturday before this came out and Derek still coverage. Yeah, Derek Sloan and Ezrael Event were also on the same program. So I mentioned Info Wars before. That's that's great, That's what's going on there. Can you see any like beyond the conservative leadership? What other kind of political implications are people thinking about in Canada. It's really tense seeing what's

gonna come for other cities. Also, Otto was expecting a second wave some other people in other places that kind of didn't think the first one is going to be huge success. We're saying, well now that it's an occupation, we're coming and police are even saying there's a second wave. It's a very tense place right now. We don't really know what to do. Community places are taking direct community members are talking about taking direct action. Because it's been

so long. This isn't something that the city of Otta is particularly used to, unfortunately in my lifetime, and so the ramifications of the future pretty jarring. But what's alarming is how successful this occupation was with a relatively small number. I think the highest estimate it was eighteen thousand people into a city of over a million, which isn't really that many when you think about it, but the strategy

was very, very effective. You think about how many fighters it took for Josh to take control of mosl it if people if there's not resistance, like, there's only really a few areas of a city that you need to occupy in order to have a great deal of control over what can be done. Yeah, and that's the tough part is they have a lot of control over that small area in residents lives. They don't have a lot of control over Parliament, which is what they're protesting for. Yeah.

I've also just to see has the Canadian mility, Harry you said anything about these protests and the situation. So the Attawa police chief in his pressure day was asked a lot about that, and he's still shying away. He's still saying he doesn't think military is the only option, which if you're an activist on the other side of things and worried about police escalation hurting you in the future, that might be a good thing to hear. Ye, and I see your shitty news. I'm not convinced that the

military would fix the problem. I'm not either. And also Ottawa had other police forces coming to They said they're spending eight hundred thousand dollars a day, uh, initially to just cost of policing. Yeah. They also said they've only, like bylaws, only had a hundred fifty tickets since this whole thing started in the occupied zone. So it's it's unclear what a lot of them did other than you know,

keep up appearances. Uh. Like I was walking around, I saw York Region police officers walking around with their patches. That's hundreds of kilometers away from Ottawa. So the police presence, especially on the weekend, was not low. We we had plenty mhm. They either didn't know what to do, I thought it would die later, or a mixture of all

the above. And there's been talked to mixtures of Some police officers have not been happy with it, but there hasn't been really anything in the news yet, because no one's come forward. A lot of like tweets of like from reporter saying I have an anonymous source in the auto police. It says they wish more actions were taken, some saying otherwise, it's not really united right now. And yeah, it's scary. Is there any counter protests being planned for Ottawa?

If I knew, i'd say so because by the time this errors, it would have happened. So I think it'd be safe to talk about. But fortunately, I'm not really insure. I'm not actually sure that it might not be the best person to ask. Yeah, we're keeping an eye out. Well, the good news is that all men die, and so long as men die, liberty will never perish. Right, that's good. It's an upside. That is an upside. That's an up positive shot. All right, Well, that's gonna do it for us.

We'll keep an eye on this and um what what results from it, because it's all pretty concerning, um and worth having having an eye And I'm particularly curious is to just like what kind of direct community responses to this develop because I think that's going to wind up being the only long term solution, you know, it's kind of what people saw in Portland that there's a there's a degree to which like the only thing that really

works as a response is is outnumbering them. Yeah. On on that note, it might be maybe not the smoothest transition, but there are actually some Autoo mutual aid funds and then Avoca Secret Yes that are doing some some cool stuff and there's stuff with that. There's too many of a list for every but others have compiled list and I'm gonna point to you there. So Rose Ottawa, which stands for Rainbow Outawa Student Experience, serves two s l G B t q I A plus post secondary students

on unseated algonquin On a Shnave territory. Though they have closed opt nations for themselves following a wonderful spike recently. They have a list of black lead and black empowering organizations on their website with donation links, and you can reach that at Rose Ottawa dot org slash donations. Uh. There's a cool little Instagram account called transis Beautiful. O T T O T T stands for Ottawa and that's all one word. It's been plugging small fundraisers for queer

folks affected by the convoy, including housing support on their Instagram. Again, that's trans is beautiful. O t t on Instagram. Uh, something we didn't get to talk about, which is ram Ranch Ram Ranch dot c A r A m Dash Ranch dot c A. A website was set up in the name of trolling the convoy Zelo chats and has been doing a fantastic job about There's a whole army of trolls in the trucker's elo chats and it's been really entertaining to tune into. They've compiled a list of

charities on their website. You can check that out at ram Dash Ranch dot c A and clicking on the Rancher's donation song. And yeah, where can where can people find you on the internet? People can find me on the internet. I'm super active on Twitter at at spineless lt where it spineless the letter l fantastic. Well, hopefully, hopefully this gets all resolved and I don't need to fly up to Canada to go to a protest, and if if we do, that'll be fun. I've been wanting

to go to Canada for a minute. Yeah I can, we can. We can take drugs at to Morton's. That would be fun. Yeah, god, you know, I haven't vomited into Tim Horton's bathroom in a long time. Our local McDonald's that got famous on the internet for fistfight that someone pulled a record in another backpack during had to actually stop being twenty four hours after the mayor pleaded with them because it was using up too many police resources. That is the best kind of place in a year.

That's so dope. Oh god, yeah, I want to I want to set up somewhere on the border in the East coast to Tim Horton's, directly across the street from a waffle house and just let him fight. Well, yeah, we we do we we do this. That here. That's that's what you'll have to bring that for. You have to bring that over, bring a waffle house. Fives over. All you need to do is watch a man get stabbed and then spiritually you're at a waffle house. That and that that ties back to the future of the convoy.

You're right, well that that does it for us today, everybody, We will see you later. It could happen here as a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts, you can find sources for It could happen here, Updated monthly at cool zone media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.