Lawfare Archive: The Trucker Convoys and Domestic Unrest in Canada

Frank. Nine. Frank. [MUSIC PLAYING] I'm so nervous.

Internet law fair with an episode to walk our archive

for August 29, 2020. On August 21st, Canadian negotiators abruptly returned home in the middle of trade discussions with United States. Then, Canadian Prime Minister Carney

promised reciprocal tariffs, promising to match the US quote dollar for dollar, unquote. The talk will reportedly go well until they broke down over a set of new conditions requested by the US side.

“It will include in carve outs for key goods”

and limitations on Canada's ability to make trade deals with other countries. For today's archive, I chose an episode from February 11, 2022, in which Scott R. Anderson spoke with three Canadian national security

experts.

Omar North and R. Sankham, Stephanie Carvin, and Jessica Davis,

about that news trucker convoy, which blocked major points of entry along the border to the US. They discussed the protests in its origins, domestic violent extremism in Canada, how it at the time could affect relations with the US

and more. It's very difficult and some have argued impossible to get them out. And this is very clear in Ottawa. These are not just trucks.

These are entire encampments. These have supply lines. They have refueling practices. You know, just walking down town,

“if you lift up any of the tarps covering some of the truck beds,”

you'll see days, weeks worth of food and supplies. So this is sort of the thing that other cities are trying to avoid. I'm Scott R. Anderson. And this is the law fair podcast for February 11, 2022.

Over the past few weeks, Canada has been living through its own insurrectionary moment as a series of trucker convoys have used tractor trailer trucks to occupy much of downtown Ottawa, launch protests and other major Canadian cities

and block points of entry along the country's southern border with United States. While nominally objecting the Canadian vaccination mandates, particularly as applied to truckers, the Convoy movement has at times made even more ambitious

demands, including the dissolution of the Trudeau government. And as close ties to far right-wing nationalist and ethno nationalist organizations, both in Canada and the United States. And while the Convoy movement began in Canada,

there are signs that is beginning to spread with similar efforts appearing in Australia and New Zealand and intelligence reports suggesting the same may soon happen in the United States. To put these recent developments in context,

I sat down with three Canadian national security experts who have been following the Convoy crisis closely. A Marnaath Amarsingham, Assistant Professor at Queens University, Stephanie Carvin, Associate Professor at Carlton University, and Jessica Davis, President of Insight Threat Intelligence.

We discuss the origins of the Convoy movement. It's relationship with domestic violent extremism and what it might mean for both Canada and the rest of the world. It's the law fair podcast for February 11th. The Trucker Convoy's and domestic unrest in Canada.

Stephanie, I want to turn to you first.

And I want to pull back the curtain a bit for listeners as to why we are actually doing this topic for the podcast today. You were kind enough to come on and other one of our podcasts, rational security earlier this week,

where we had set aside a 15 or 20 minute segment to talk about this topic. And after running very long on that segment with you, me and my co-host sat down and had this immediate reaction, which is that this is a much bigger issue

than we fully even understood with a whole lot of underappreciated intersections with what's happening in the United States. And what we might be able to expect happening in the United States based on what's happening in Canada, our closest neighbor and ally to the North,

which is why we want to bring you and Amar and Jessica back today to talk about it with some more depth and some more length. But we know not all of our listeners may not have been fully cut into what exactly it is that's happening in Ottawa and has been happening for the last week or two.

Can you give us just a quick overview of the situation on the ground and some of the issues it's begun to raise

“for Canadians, particularly for us at its other city of Ottawa?”

- Well, thanks again for having me on. It's clear, this has been just an unreal surreal time.

anything like it in really kind of modern Canadian political history. Effectively, this is a convoy organized at its core

“by a group of individuals who, I think it's fair”

to say, hold conspiratorial and anti-government extremist views. They've also expressed Islamophobic anti-Semitic sentiments in a lot of their commentary and a lot of their political beliefs. And they have also tried to organize convoys for a number of years. They were moderately successful in doing so in 2019.

It was a much smaller convoy, but it petered out pretty quickly and actually led to some infighting within the Canadian far right political scene. However, what seems to have been successful this time is that they were able to frame their anti-government views

around the lockdowns and mandates surrounding COVID-19. Just to your listeners are aware, Canada is just now coming out of its fourth lockdown. It's been very severe here. We still have in most provinces of mask mandates

and some provinces who actually have to show vaccine passports to get into alcohol stores. So it's pretty strict, right? People are still wearing masks, all these things. And honestly, people are tired.

Our schools have been shut down. Kids have been affected by this. And so I can't fault people for suddenly seeing a movement that says it's about protesting all of these lockdowns

“because I think it's fair to say that the vast majority”

of Canadians, indeed, 54% of Canadians want to move on with their lives. We want to learn to live with COVID. Now, that's not to say 54% of Canadians agree with the tactics or this protest.

But quite a few do, and quite a few of now made their way to Ottawa.

But I think the problem is that effectively,

this is an extremist movement at its core. And they're now using extremist tactics, basically in their ability to try and create change. So as a result of that, we find yourself in a situation where they were very open about their intentions,

they said, we're going to come to Ottawa. We're going to blockade Ottawa until all the mandates are taken away. And for whatever reason, that wasn't taken seriously. It wasn't like they were hiding.

This isn't a surprise move. But for some reason, Ottawa police let them into the downtown core where they've now set up camp and refused to leave. The problem seems to be--

in this is where it kind of spirals out of a slightly more incomprehensible narrative. But the fact that is that no level of government seems to be either willing or prepared to deal with this. The Ottawa police have effectively said

that there's no policing solution to this crisis.

Basically, implying they want the federal government

to bring the military in, which would be extremely dramatic to put it mildly. The provincial government has largely been absent. They have not really said or done anything other than a couple of tweets condemning the protests.

And the federal government keeps saying it's going to send in some federal police forces, which are our Mounties, the Royal Canadian Mount of Police. But we haven't even really seen these police forces arrive yet. So I think this is some of the problems

is that no one really wants to take ownership of what is seen as a potentially volatile situation. And because of that, the movement itself seems to have become in boldened. As I speak, there's three ports of entry that

have been basically either blockaded or partially blockaded. And two of which are absolute economic lifelines for the country. The, as of this morning, parts of the convoy were circling the Ottawa airports.

And there are a number of convoys or attempted convoys in major Canadian cities.

“I believe one is set up presently in Winnipeg,”

which is in a province called Manitoba. So by failing to crack down, this movement has become in boldened. And it's now seems to be spreading all over the world. So that's a lot. That's pretty dire.

But that seems to be the history of it in a nutshell. I want to get into what the movement has become and where it may go.

But first, let's dig a little bit further back in time.

A very old where it's come from. A more, let me turn to you with this. Give us a sense about who the people who are involved in this effort are. Stephanie noted that there's definitely a strong element,

a leadership element centered around individuals involved with various kind of far right movements that have coordinated and passed on certain efforts. Although I don't know what to agree. That's true whether it's separate camps.

But a lot of people associate this, of course, with the trucker's convoy. There is a narrative that this was rooted in grievances brought forward by truckers who are at concern about losing their livelihoods over vaccine policies

into the United States and other United States. And which are US policies, not Canadian policies, it's worth noting, also potentially domestically in Canada.

“What role do those sorts of grievances play in here?”

Is that mostly a facade or is this a more complex coalition of different interests that have come together around this particular set of actions? - Yeah, I think it's the latter.

I think there's always been a kind of popular sentiment

in Canada, particularly in the West Coast. And there are a lot of West coasters in Ottawa at the moment. There was a kind of sense of the government in Ottawa doesn't care about us, the elite, and that includes academics, journalists, politicians,

et cetera, don't understand our concerns, don't take our concerns seriously. And so that kind of sentiment was always present in Canada, bubbling below the surface. And what happened with COVID and the pushback against COVID

lockdown and COVID mandate is that a lot of these separate disparate forces, movements and organizations really found a common cause, right? You find them all kind of playing in the same sandbox. And so, you know, Q and on supporters, militia movements,

far right activists, and so on. And as well as the vast majority of people

“who I think are in Ottawa, which are kind of genuinely”

agreed people with different kinds of grievances,

some of which, as Stephanie mentioned, are shared by a lot of us, right? It's that we're all kind of exhausted with the virus and the pandemic. But in terms of individuals, I mean,

there's a lot of these individuals like Jeremy McKenzie, who was one of the early organizers of the step-to-way and then came back. He goes by raging dissident. There's Alex Riend, who goes by ferryments toll,

who traveled across the country on a Holocaust denial tour not long ago. And so, you know, a lot of these individuals are very active. Pat King is now become quite influential in these spaces.

And so, I think what the pandemic has done is brought all these disparate individuals

who used to not like each other,

not get along live and quite different online environments and into the same kind of common cause. And so, that's why we're seeing, I think partly different voices present at these rallies, different goals present at these rallies,

different demands at these rallies. And I think we might see, in the long run, these same kind of ego battles and disparate goals lead to maybe some sort of factionalism as well, the longer this goes.

- One, a follow-on question for you. Amar, is that this tactic of the combo to Stephanie noted, isn't entirely new to this situation? So, there's been talked about in the past, although, you know, perhaps in different types of applications

would look somewhat differently. - Yeah, where does that come from? 'Cause in some ways it is, I don't think it's necessarily uniquely Canadian, but it's a tactic which,

similar groups at least in the United States, haven't to my knowledge settled on. The closest American parallax in the state law fair reader and listener noted to me in a conversation the other day,

might be actually not on the far right, but what people associate much more at the left might be the occupied movement. The idea that we're claiming public space and squatting on it to enforce a reckoning

with a particular political agenda, what do these sorts of tactics? And the view of this sort of step as a legitimate step come from in this constellation of groups that have come together

in this particular moment. - I mean, I think this particular, this particular one came about largely because of the mandate that the material government tried to pass in early January, which was about individuals

who are cross-border truckers who want to go into Canada and want to go into the U.S. need to be vaccinated. And so this became a kind of trucker issue from as the spark. And so you had the convoy largely related to that, I think. But I mean, even on a broader level,

I think there is a kind of much like in the U.S. there is a kind of romanticism around the working class, right about the true Americans, the coal miners, the farmers, the truck drivers, et cetera, which is part of the conversation in Canada as well,

is that these are the people, these are the people who run Canada, who help the economy move forward and that they're constantly victims of these elite governments in Ottawa and elite politicians and so on.

And so there is a kind of romantic element to what the cultural working class in Canada and in some sense the U.S. represents and how they're continuously victimized and so on. And so this kind of embattled identity

that they have with them is what's driving a lot of this populist sentiment. - Just go let me ask you,

“'cause if I'm not mistaken, I believe you live in Ottawa, is that right?”

- Yes, it's right, I live right downtown. - So let me turn to you then and ask you,

for the Ottawa resident. How is this group engaging with the city? Is this something more akin to a city? You know, I get an occupying this particular space or is there a more deliberate effort

“to interfere with, obstruct, make life more difficult?”

It goes beyond that. And I'm particularly interested in the role that violence is playing here in the United States because our relationship with firearms and our second amendment, frankly, violence is often very clearly

on the surface of a lot of these political encounters because you have armed groups present and involved,

not always but often, is that the case here

or is the violence much more of an implicit sort of threat and how close has it gotten to rising to the surface thus far? - Yeah, walking around downtown Ottawa is like walking through an occupation, but it's also very contained. So like I live right downtown, so I'm probably about five or six

blocks outside of the core protest area when it grows to its biggest space on the weekends 'cause it grows and shrinks depending on who's available and who's attending the protest. So on the biggest weekend, the protest was basically right

outside my door, you know, I couldn't go out with the street without seeing propaganda, trucks with Canadian flag, slone upside down, traffic was backed up through my neighborhood. So it was a very real experience.

And then what happens during the week is that shrinks back down and the real problem

in the downtown core, I would say,

has been lack of movement for the citizens. So we have been, had a really hard time getting around, a lot of people who live in the core occupied zones, are fearful of going outside. There's been plenty of allegations of harassment,

yelling, even some assaults, particularly directed towards people wearing masks. And frankly, you know, in Ottawa, it's not all that common for people to wear masks outside, you know,

“I think we've got a pretty good understanding”

of how the virus is transmitted. So, you know, we go outside without masks, but in the downtown core, that's no longer the case. You go outside with a mask on because of the density of the population that's down there a lot of the time

and also because of the fumes that are coming off these trucks. So people in the downtown core,

they're subjected to revving engines, diesel and gas fumes,

day and night, and the honking of the horns, which is fortunately largely abated at the moment because of a court injunction, but that was intense. It was one of the most disruptive things. I can't even really express to you how awful it was.

And I was very far outside of that core area. So for the people that were living downtown and there are lots of people in that immediate area, there's huge apartment buildings and condo towers in that area, it was insufferable, completely insufferable.

The violence so far, I would say, has been fortunately not as bad as people thought it would be or were fearful that it could be.

“There have been reports of weapons, I think that the protesters”

have rightly assessed that that would be an absolute non-starter and would require a very robust response of that were to become sort of an overt thing. But it is not safe to walk downtown, and it's particularly not safe if you're a person of color,

if you're wearing masks, any of those kinds of things. And it's also very strange to the setup because you'll be walking down one street and it'll be like very light traffic. And then you'll turn a corner and you'll suddenly be surrounded

by trucks and men and barricades. And so it's quite surreal and you can sort of wander into the wrong spot with very little warning. And I know that we've seen some of these activities expand other parts of Canada.

Sometimes with more or sometimes less success. So we saw a couple of kind of mini versions of what's happening on Ottawa, temp to setup in Toronto and other major Canadian cities seems like most of those have kind of collapsed

at this point or ended at this point or like could be mistaken about that. At least in the bigger ones that I was following. And then as definitely noted, we also are seeing these efforts to occupy major thoroughfares for commercial traffic,

kind of an effort to interfere with the broader opportunities of Canada as a nation. And to some extent, the United States as well as the main training partner on the other side of these sorts of crossings.

How of those efforts and manifested? Are those strategically similar to what's happening in Ottawa is it a sit and wait and be a something between an irritant and a blockade and it is a ways of dangerous blockade? Or is there a different sort of strategy

in tactic being pursued more or less successfully in these other areas where the convoy quote unquote is operating? It looks to me like the convoy itself is trying to replicate the tactics that they used in downtown Ottawa,

that sort of roll the trucks in an occupied territory. A lot of cities watch what happened in Ottawa with absolute horror and have rightly taken

around how they were going to deal with the protesters.

So in Quebec City, there were reports

“that they were doing full searches of the vehicles”

and they weren't going to be allowing them to become stationary at any point in time. We saw civilians blockading routes into Vancouver. And so just really different police strategies because the problem here really is

is that once the trucks become established in the territory and in the place where they want to be, it's very difficult and some have argued impossible to get them out. And this is very clear in Ottawa. These are not just trucks.

These are entire encampments. These have supply lines. They have refueling practices. Just walking down town, if you lift up any of the types of covering some of the truck beds, you'll see days, weeks worth of food and supplies.

So this is sort of the thing that other cities are trying to avoid. - Yeah, I can talk a bit about Toronto because I think, as just mentioned, there was a real lesson learned.

I think from the Toronto police who looked to look at what happened in Ottawa and chose a very different strategy. I think in Ottawa, if we look at some of the media reporting leading up to it

or even some of the online chat or leading up to it, there was a very kind of January six-ish concern about what might happen in Ottawa. So I have a lot of MP, friends who are members of parliament

and they were basically saying,

they were receiving emails about how to stay safe. I think the buildings were being protected. But in the process, they kind of forgot about the streets, or they neglected to secure the streets properly. And I think Toronto understood that very clearly

and they basically made it clear that you're happy. We're happy to have you come and protest on foot in front of any government building you like,

“but you have to leave the trucks elsewhere.”

And so we didn't really have a situation of occupation in the same sense. The added problem in Toronto is the downtown core is home to half a dozen or more hospitals. Some of the key trauma centers, sick kids hospitals down town.

And so that kind of occupation that we're seeing in Ottawa in downtown Toronto would have been absolutely devastating. And so I think Toronto police made a clear decision to say, we're happy to have you come down and protest in any manner you're like,

except with these massive trucks. So we've had a different reality on the ground here for now. That's actually the perfect transition point back to what I want to come back to you on Stephanie. And that's this question about how we've seen Canadian officials

begin to respond to this. I want to get into the policy response, certainly, from the city's municipalities and national government that are dealing with it. But I also want to get to the political side up

“and how have we seen these events fitting into Canada's”

political narrative? It's political scene between competitive political parties. Are we seeing efforts to co-opt this effort to bring it into a political coalition to capture and write on some of the popular mobilization.

It still seems to be achieving with at least some part of the population. Has it proven popular or has there been broader discomfort with what's been happening? So with the broader political scene, it's interesting.

I mean, I saw some polling about the convoy which suggested that the vast majority of Canadians or against it, almost 70% versus 30%. But that was about the goals of the convoy,

which is to, basically, or at least nominally,

get rid of the mask mandate. So I was really a question about the tactics. It was some kind of, it was kind of some lazy polling. But all that to say is that there may be a hard core of 30% of Canadians that actually kind of support this.

But it was really hard to say because the question, I think, was poorly phrased. But not being said for the politicians themselves, I would suggest this is either a magnet or a hot potato and there doesn't really seem to be much in between.

For the hot potato crowd, I would say it's what we've seen at the municipal level is that they've kind of thrown up their arms and just kind of said, this is basically they need the federal government to come in and intervene.

They basically give it up all responsibility. It is an election year at the municipal level and Ottawa, the mayor is not running again. So I'm not sure to the extent that he's invested in giving a robust leadership response.

He may just be wanting to avoid having spent a lot of time in an inquiry in the future. At the provincial level, this is really interesting. So unlike the United States, it's actually the provinces in Canada that have the most power.

The way our constitution works is that it is a federal system, but the provinces actually have control over most transportation decisions like licenses and things like that. Like you would have at the state level in the US. But also education, resources, things like this.

Like our premier is Doug Ford, who is famously the brother of Rob Ford, who is the probably best known as the crack sorting mayor of Toronto, unfortunately. But his brother, who kind of shares a lot of populist sympathies with his Rob Ford, who is now passed on,

is in fact our premier. And he's facing an election in the spring as well. It really just in a few months. So I strongly suspect that he is afraid to take action, because some of that 30% of Canadians who support this,

well, guess what? That's his demographic. So he's put out a few tweets, as I mentioned earlier, but hasn't really taken any action.

And finally, we have the federal government who,

they've come out, they keep saying that they're engaging. I mean, every day we see the Prime Minister come out and say he's had a phone call with someone. But beyond this, Dave basically said they don't want to deploy the military.

I agree.

“I think that would be the wrong decision to, to in fact do.”

And that's like a whole other conversation we can have. But they are cognizants that if the military is deployed, that this is going to be a prop again, who for the people who are in this protest, who are trying to make the government fall.

So I think they're trying to be really, really careful here, and they want to support the municipalities that are dealing with these problems, but they don't want to be seen as being too heavy-handed or controlling things.

So again, we've just kind of had the abocation of responsibilities

and the movement itself has been able to continue. One of the things I keep pushing for is some kind of administrative law solution to this. I mean, we keep hearing talks about, we need to send police officers.

Well, it's not clear what those police officers are coming from. We need to send in military equipment to tow the trucks away. Well, not clear that's going to look very good or that a lot of this military equipment will be able to do. So without damaging a lot of historic highway infrastructure.

I guess the question I have is like, there's kind of the Al Capone approach to this, which is not using, say, the police to go after murder or violating prohibition. But like, why haven't they gone after drivers licenses

or insurance? They could very easily just suspend licenses or say, hey, if you're on a bridge in the next three hours, we are going to look into suspending your license.

“I mean, I think there's a lot of non-kinetic options”

that haven't even been deployed yet. The final thing I'll say here is what's interesting to me and I guess something I've been thinking about at least from the political perspective is that you have different political parties.

The one that's probably most affected by this is the conservative party of Canada, which is probably normally aligned with probably some of the more centrist elements of the Republican party. But at the same time, there is within that conservative movement,

a much more populist viewpoints. We've seen a real split in that party, and it kind of reminds me of the Republican party in 2015, 2016, as it was grappling with what to do with Donald Trump.

Some people said, well, he's never going to win

so we can embrace him and then get his the energy of his supporters, but he ends up taking over the movement. And we have indeed seen our members of parliament from the conservative party, particularly from the Western provinces, where anti-mandate sentiments are perhaps strongest.

Go out and meet with the protesters.

“A former leader of the conservative party”

has been seen multiple times, speaking with protesters posing for pictures and talking to them. Knowing full well, what the origins of this protest were, and the fact that the citizens of Ottawa are literally being tormented, and that they're planning on closing bridges

and hurting infrastructure. There's a moderate conservative wing that seems to be trying to fight against this, but it's not clear if that's actually going to be the case. So that's a lot of information.

I guess all of this to say is that my concern is that this is not only undermining faith in all levels of government in the eyes of Canadian public, but it also may have really serious implications for our political parties moving forward.

Yeah, I just wanted to add on to what Stephanie was saying about the level of federal interest in this. So while the federal government has been really pushing back to make this a policing issue, particularly an Ottawa policing issue, there's a lot of interest from politicians

at the federal level in terms of studying. What exactly is happening? There's lots of concern about the potential extremist elements of this, such that they're studying the issue at our Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security

as we speak. They've called FinTrack Canada's Financial Intelligence unit in to talk about particularly the crowdfunding issue and how that is or is not covered by our existing legislation. And they're particularly seized with the possibility

of foreign influence on this campaign. I have heard, do you want to add a mobile phone for tracking? But it's not easy to come from. We were asked with a XXL streaming app.

No, I don't want to go back to the next one.

Whew, just a little bit of a dream. With mobile phones in real life, no one else, Frank. From the beginning to the beginning of the talk, it's possible that you can see Euro-Emonet. Frank, no, Frank.

Box, let me come back to you on that question, Jessica. That's another big part of this.

“And a part that I think is at least from an outsider's perspective”

seem to be getting more play and attention as this crisis has dragged on, which is the outsider element. We, obviously, there is some sort of financial support coming for this effort. It's not, possibly, I guess, it could be entirely self-funded,

but whole pallets of food, fuel generators, the things that are required to maintain on a patient like that aren't cheap, certainly some sort of organizational effort. And it seems more slightly some sort of source of funds coming to this.

You certainly have American political leaders that have been involved critically in recent days of vocally voicing support for the effort, press former president Trump being probably the highest profile governor to see a test in Florida.

People who are critical of U.S. vaccination policies

doubling down for a president Trump, although we're noting Trump himself does urge people to get vaccinated, but it takes other issues of vaccination policies. Unlike some other people who voice support for the convoy, former president Trump has come out and said,

you know, called Canadian leaders, socialists and extreme left-wing government, and voice support for this group. And then encourage them to come down, Washington DC, to do the same in the United States. I want to get back to that possibility

little later by what this all means for the United States, but for Canada, for what's happening there now, to what extent do we know or do we have any sense, whether this is the presents to which this is a homegrown operation, genuinely, generally grassroots,

and an astro turf operation, something that's getting external influence external inputs, no doubt there's some element of both, but but do we have a sense about how strong each of those factors has been in the emergence of this of this campaign?

I think the clearest element of foreign support for the campaign has really been as you described it, that those foreign influencers, so foreign president Trump, Elon Musk, other people tweeting their support for the protest. This is very clear, this has happened, it has probably driven

quite a bit more interest towards the protest, and probably some support as well. The interesting thing here, though, is on the financing side. So there's obviously been a few crowd funders that have been established to fund these protests.

The first one that was established on GoFundMe raised, I can't remember

“remember now, I think it was five or six million dollars maybe more,”

and what really led to this whole conversation around foreign influence on this campaign was the number of donations that appeared to be coming from outside of Canada, and I say appeared very specifically because there's no identity verification that happens on the public side of these crowdfunding

campaigns, so you can really write anything, and people have been writing anything, I think somebody gave some money in my name, which was a real delight for me, and they've been giving money in people's names who really obviously are not supporting the convoy, but then so it's makes it really difficult for us to

fully assess what is happening in terms of foreign support. My own view is that there's very clearly some foreign support, we see that particularly in the Bitcoin transactions, there's also Bitcoin fundraisers, of course, because that's how these things go, that have come from US donors. So this whole foreign influence piece,

though, is really being picked up by the media and amplified extensively because I think there's a real tendency in Canada to see threats and extremism is external to Canada, and really try to put that on other people. When in reality, this is at the very least a joint project between Canadian and US extremists,

certainly a serious number of Canadian extremists are involved in this, but it's also international and scope. There seems to be lots of support coming in from other people around the world, and there's, as we talked about earlier already, those other types of convoys springing up around the world, New Zealand, and Australia for two

“examples. I think the other aspect of the foreign influence, of course, is”

the media, right? I think just touched on this as well, is I remember thinking very specifically like when I saw BJ Dictor, who's one of the organizers of the convoy, go on Tucker Carlson, and he was very excited to be on Tucker Carlson, because people like him don't don't have that kind of megaphone usually, and Tucker was praising him and

praising the movement, and I remember thinking, you know, this is going to change all of these people's lives, right? At the insurer enough money started pouring in from donors in the US, probably don't donors all over Canada, you had all of these organizers who used to be fairly

basically skyrocket. So a lot, you know, now if you go on Facebook and Instagram

telegram, they have tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of followers, they've become minor celebrities in this movement, people try to find them on the street and shake their hand. And so I think the way in which the trucker convoy was woven into broader populist and to government sentiment in the US, kind of led by

“Fox News, the Fox News megaphone is also an important component to this. I think”

media matters just put out a report that said Fox News devoted almost nine hours of coverage to the trucker convoy between January 18th and February 9th, right? And a good chunk of that, or a small chunk of that was also Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson amplifying it to their to their tens of millions of viewers. And so I think that that is also an

important component to kind of see how basically celebrities were made and influencers were made of these organizers overnight. Well, so Martin, let me ask you, then, you know, that narrative you just put forward brings out the fact there's a lot of motivations behind what's happening here. There is stated objectives, often which are very

grand, at least from the ones I've seen of some organizers, essentially saying, you know, we want at least the repeal of vaccination policies, which would be a major policy reversal, obviously would also involve the US potentially changing its vaccination policies to have the impact they want in terms of cross-border trade. But also, it's a very

substantial dissolution of the current Canadian government, the imposition of loss rates of big policy swings. These are some of the official demands, which seem just well beyond the wrong reality of anything achievable, and that certainly would raise legitimacy questions if somehow they were implemented through this sort of mechanism.

What though are the actual objectives of the people involved with this? And what does that tell us about what the end game might look like? Is this something that continues precisely because it has become a focus of celebrity and fundraising and a vehicle for this sort of mobilization that once the novelty wears off and those lines of support

right up will begin to lose its appeal, or is there something more self-sustaining about this that's more likely to keep it going perhaps far longer than even the public interest in it may sustain? What does an end game begin to look like? And what is it that actors driving this are? Are ultimately hoping to get out of it that might lead them to decide?

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I mean, that's a good question. I think the more I watch them and the more I watch their rhetoric

and their goals, the more it's kind of clear from a sociological perspective that they're getting meaning and purpose just out of being out there and yelling and honking and being with each other. They wanted to feel like they have like-minded supporters and like-minded people around the country and around the world that this kind of anti-mandate anti-lockdown sentiment wasn't something that they themselves were holding, that it wasn't just, you know, kind of them in their house,

kind of anxious about this, that this was a kind of broad-based support. And so I think they proved that to themselves by being out there and being able to attract all this attention and money and

“people onto the streets. And so that part of it I think is important. It's not usually talked about”

but the importance of the protest moment itself for people and for these movements is quite

important. In terms of their end goal, it's not entirely clear, right? They've ranged from getting rid of the mandates to the dissolution of the Canadian government, as you've said, and everything in between. And so because the goals- I don't think they've thought through the goals very specifically aside from these lofty descriptions, that impacts how you approach them, right? That impacts how people can negotiate with them or whether there's even a negotiating

potential and how law enforcement should deal with them, et cetera. So, you know, there's a range of people out there, right, who are, who are sometimes even pro-vaccine but anti-mandate and on the one hand, and on the other hand, who are kind of rapidly conspiratorial, who believe that the whole coronavirus is a hoax that the vaccine is designed to enslave our children, that Fauci is a liar, and so on and so forth. And so, because it's such a diverse audience of people with a diverse

set of goals, it's not entirely clear how this ends. I think one of the ways it ends potentially is through kind of internal factionalization as they begin to maybe fight over money, or fight over who takes leadership of this movement overall, or it ends very badly in violence and mass arrests, right? And I think I don't know if I see any other solution, really. You know,

“Steph mentioned the kind of administrative alcohol and style approach, which I think is important”

to try out also, but at the moment, I'm kind of at a loss for how this eventually comes to an end. One of the other things that I think is worth mentioning here is that there are long-term preparations within this movement for what happens after the protest. They've established a not-not-for-profit organization to be the beneficiary of the funds from their new crowdfunding campaign.

There gives end-go campaign, which is now raised over $8 million American. So this was established

to be the legitimate beneficiary of that money, but the purpose of the organization is really advocacy against the government, against mandates, as they call it, against social credit systems, which are -- they describe as rewards and punishments for government compliance. So these are really about challenging the legitimacy of the state over the long-term. And this money will also very likely be used for the legal defense of some of the individuals involved, and gives end-go

has given no indication whatsoever that they're planning and closing down. This funder is

“in fact, they've basically come up and said the opposite. So the only way that this organization”

isn't going to get these funds is really if there's some sort of legal action against the crowd funder itself or against the individuals. So this amount of money is really the kind of thing that sets up the movement for really long-term disruptive activity in Canada. Well, Stephanie, that brings us back to your proposal about administrative law solutions, which is, I guess, one end of a spectrum of solutions, the other end being potential military action or, you know, strong police action

kinetic solutions. Give us a sense about where some of the policy solutions you see fall on the spectrum, elaborating a little bit on your prior comments. What is the toolkit that policymakers have available to them? And what is the direction they seem to be leaning and approaching this to the extent we know? And I'd be curious about your perspective as well as tomorrow and just go about which of these is the logical one to go to next. What is the solutions that seems to

offer the biggest return on risk and investment at this particular stage? So that's a really good question. And I would actually acknowledge like a Mars point there that, yeah, not every one of these guys is going to pay attention to parking tickets and fines and license suspensions, right? I mean, there is a hardcore of individuals in here that, you know, maybe maybe willing to, you know, go pretty far in terms of achieving what they think is

liberty and we keep seeing this narrative out there. So what can we do? Well, one of the things

rain cells are overrated. And what I saw was that the police moved in on one of the camps,

the place called Coventry Road, and they have a big camp there, a logistics camp. And, you know, very different from the, you know, I'm going to say party like atmosphere downtown. I mean, it's only, it's a very selective party and definitely not a party for the residents of Ottawa. But, like, you know, downtown, we've seen bouncy castles and, you know, donuts being given out and free coffee, free food, stuff like that. This logistics center on Coventry Road is much more important,

“I think, to the movement. And when they went in and just confiscated some fuel and some supplies,”

I mean, it wasn't even the vast majority necessarily of the fuel and supplies. It sent us signal to the movement and they were shocked. The people who were live streaming at, they said, you know, they, they were kind of surprised that, that this had happened. They were trying to justify it to themselves. They were trying to rationalize it to themselves. They were, you know, they were saying, oh, well, the police officers, they're really with us. But, you know, they had to

follow the orders that they were given. And you could see that they didn't want to do this and all these different kinds of things. There was an injunction brought forward by a woman in her 20s, very brave woman, I have to say, who, you know, said that, you know, the noise was, it was too loud. And the honking needs to stop. Well, they took it to court and sure enough, the honking,

“look, it hasn't ceased entirely. You still hear some honking, but it's really dramatically reduced.”

So just doing basic policing seems to either have an impact on taking some of the energy out of the movement or, you know, having an effect. And this is why I'm kind of surprised. We just haven't seen more basic policing. The police will often talk about, you know, resourcing issues. And yeah, it's hard. We're talking about large areas of space with a police force that is no doubt by this point exhausted. But much earlier, you know, much more could have been done with regards to parking,

tickets, noise, all kinds of things like this that we could have seen the police doing. Now, one thing I will note, or at least acknowledge, is that the concrete self is, is their crafty, right? They're crafty, they have conspiratorial worldviews. But when the police said that they were banning people from carrying gas and diesel downtown and Jerry cans, all of a sudden, you know, dozens and dozens and dozens of people start showing up carrying Jerry cans, some of

which just have water in it, some of which are empty, some of which have diesel and are able to sneak through. It's like a kind of game of a big game of cat and mouse. And this delighted the convoy, right? So they can adapt to some of these methods. But, you know, I guess one of the things that really frustrates me is that basic policing and basic policy options haven't been tried and

“do seem to have an effect, at least on the energy and response of the convoy. So I think I mentioned”

this earlier, but the provinces themselves have the authority to revoke licenses, handle insurance

issues, all these different kinds of things. The primary amount area could basically say, look,

anyone on a bridge in the next, you know, three hours, we're going to look at suspending your license. And I don't understand why this hasn't really been sorted out. So, okay, so let's go to more kinetic options that have been put out there. So auto a police, they say they're at their max that they did, that they're out of forces. So there's a couple other sources of forces for the auto police. Some of it is regional. So other townships or other cities have sent their

municipal police forces to Ottawa to help bolster. But as this campaign, as this convoy spreads throughout the country, that might not be viable in the long run. There are the Ontario Provincial Police, but we really haven't seen a surge. I mean, they may just be busy doing their policing work, but we haven't really seen a large number of Ontario Provincial Police come into

this city. And then finally, the federal government has said that it will be providing something

like somewhere between 1500 and 1800 RCMP officers. Again, I'm not sure, and it just has actually been the one in the crowds. I'm not sure where you've actually even seen that yet. So no surge in policing has really, I'm not sure at this point if a surge in policing is actually possible because it may just be the fact that there's not enough police officers in Canada really to handle this as we go for it, which is kind of a really scary thought having actually voiced it. Then we get into

more serious options. Famously in Canada, the Prime Minister's father. So peer trudo in response to a terrorist attack, or a series of terrorist incidents in the 1970s, invoked something called the War Measures Act, which if brought in essentially martial law to the country, which allowed the military to come in and protect certain assets and individuals in the country. And it was,

and in the streets of Ottawa, trying to prevent more politicians from being kidnapped by this group.

“And, you know, it was not the most democratic thing. It's often celebrated as a moment in Canadian”

history where peer trudo stood up to what was actually a terrorist movement and took action against it. But, you know, in order to do so, he had to really enact some of Canada's most strongest laws at the time. And the other thing I should say there is that I don't think the FLQ, the Federal Assault, do deliver us going to Quebec, apologies for my bad accent there, which was the movement responsible for this. It didn't have 30% support, right? So it was a much easier thing to do.

Today, we no longer have the War Measures Act. It was seen as too much of a draconian measure. So it's been replaced with the Emergencies Act, which is, again, federal legislation, in order for it to be invoked at the federal level, however, you would need to have crises in more than one province, right? And then federal jurisdiction can kind of come down. Otherwise, the attorney general of a province can request that the Emergencies Act be invoked

and that they can make an appeal to the federal authorities. No, that hasn't happened. Neither of those options have happened yet, but they're on the table. And they may allow for a military response. The final response here would be the National Defense Act, which does, again, allow the Canadian military to provide aid to the civilian power, particularly in a civilian crisis. So, you know, on the one hand, it could be to bring the military to help contain the protests to do actual

policing. I don't think anyone wants to see that. I just think that would just look so bad. But there may be other kinds of support that could be offered. A lot of people have, you know, mentioned to me on Twitter that, you know, military equipment could be used to to actually remove the trucks themselves, that it wouldn't be pretty. They'd probably damage the trucks, which of course are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, so that it may actually be an incentive in and of

themselves to remove those trucks. But, you know, again, the issue here is, is this a step that we want to take. One of the problems Ottawa's currently facing, which I don't think has been mentioned yet, is that the actual towing companies, which work for the cities, have either decided not to take part in this because they support the movement, or because they're being intimidated into not actually moving supplies, or or convoys, or anything, or trucks for the city. So a lot,

“I think the tow truck companies just want to stand at this. So we may need some kind of government”

resources for this. So lots of options, some of them much more severe than others, but it's clear to me, and, you know, I think Jess, maybe Amar, you want to come in on this. It's pretty clear to me that the federal government does not want to be seen as being heavy-handed, as Jess mentioned earlier, they are quite keen to push this away and turn this into a police issue, not because they don't care. The federal government is directly impacted by this,

but I think for all the reasons I've kind of mentioned that it would be seen as potentially a propaganda victory, it could be seen as draconian, and the municipalities and provinces really need to step up and look after themselves. And as well, I think there's a broader concern here,

you know, I've been hearing a lot from activists communities that I know that, you know, there's always

also a racial component here that is kind of irritating people, right? And in the sense of like we had BLM protests in Canada, we had indigenous blockades before, and they were met quite quickly often with arrests and brutal police responses, right? And so the idea that you could just kind of drive your trucks from across the country, park them in downtown Ottawa, and there's literally no response except confiscating some jerry cans, I think, is from some of the activists that I know

in the country, they're obviously pointing to a kind of racial question, is like what is up with that, right? And so is that because there are some sopism support for the convoy within Ottawa police or within the policing services in Canada, or is it just that they didn't anticipate

“that a bunch of people from across the country could do this? I think that that's an important”

element that's going to have a lasting impact as well in terms of how policing or how police forces are trusted in this country. The other thing I'll say is there are a bunch of children, right, in the convoy sleeping in the cabs of these trucks and so on, which is also an important element to take in mind, and I'm assuming Ottawa police is concerned about that as well in terms of any kind of heavy-handed action that they might to be thinking about, that I forget what the

percentage was, but one in four trucks in downtown Ottawa has kids basically sleeping in them,

which is not something to take lightly as well. And so I think all of that is also fact-factoring into the police response. It is to talk briefly about some of the things that Amara raised here

You know, you go downtown Ottawa and you see parents encouraging trucks to hunk their horns

and defiance of the injunction. You see children running around in the occupied space. They should be in school. The diesel fumes, the gas fumes from all of the trucks being engines being grabbed all the time. It's really quite a nutritious place to have children. That's certainly contributing

“to the, I think some of the reluctance in terms of how hard the police are going to go after”

some of this activity, but I also wonder a little bit about exactly what I was talking about earlier. It's inconceivable to me that any other group of people in this country could have broadcast their intentions so clearly called for the overthrow of the Canadian government and be met with

so little resistance from the police of Ottawa and, and frankly, the RCMP and the OPP and other

police services as well. There's literally no other scenario that I could imagine that could have had this kind of reaction or complete inaction from the police force. So I think that he's very right to point that out. I was also asked the other day about whether or not this was an intelligence failure on the part of the police. And I can't even conceive of how this could be an intelligence failure because the protesters, the convoy, it was broadcasting their intentions for several weeks

beforehand. You could physically see the money being raised on the crowdfunding site to support this convoy and it was very clear that they're going to have the ability to stay in Ottawa and had the intention to do so over the long term. We're unfortunately running a little on time for this conversation. There's still so many more aspects of it to cover, but I want to put one last question to all three of you coming out of what we know of this experience so far. What is the

big lesson that we should take away? Whether that is the we being Canadian officials or people dealing with specific scenario of Canada or perhaps even more elderly, at least for many offer listeners, those outside of Canada who are looking what's happening there and seeing so many parallels and similarities with political movements happening in their own country that it's not hard to imagine in Ottawa like convoy driving to downtown Washington DC. I'm trying to pursue

a similar sort of action. How should people be thinking about this and what should they be preparing for coming out of it? What are the big lessons we should take away? A Marlamyo

“start with you? I think much like Jessica just said, I spend more time than it's probably healthy”

in these platforms that these people are on. I swim in this content a lot and Jess and Steph know this well because I often send it to them. But I think what was obvious leading into this and much like what was much like all the other hospital protests and things that we've seen in the past in Toronto and other cities in Canada is they have they've been talking about this for a long time. They were very clear about what they were doing. They were clear about what

their objectives were and so it's just very surprising to me that this wasn't seeing coming. My broader concern is whether law enforcement has even has eyes on these alternative media spheres where a lot of these conversations are happening. I know our CMP and Cces are at least Cces is watching these spaces but what they're seeing and what they're learning about this online content actually trickling down to frontline police officers, frontline security guards,

at hospitals, at vaccination centers. I've been worried about that for a long time. I don't get the impression that what is happening online and what these organizers are talking about in the online space is actually trickling down to the people who are going to meet them on the street when they actually show up. It's kind of kept at an intelligence level or federal law enforcement

“level with some moderate training but I think we've seen an uptick in calls for violence”

and assassinations and kidnappings of people delivering vaccines and all sorts of things that

I remember texting a friend of mine who works in the hospitals downtown and I basically said

"Do you think you're security guard in the emergency room of your hospital? Has any idea what's going on in the online space about a protest that's happening tomorrow at that very same hospital?" And I don't think they do, right? And that's a problem. And so I think this Convoy I think has also brought that message home is that there needs to be a bit more easy knowledge sharing. I know that's a cliche term by now but some sort of knowledge sharing

between what's happening in these communities in the online space and then people who are actually going to meet them on the ground. Just let me turn to you. Yeah, I'm going to be a little contentious here because I think that one of the big lessons that we need to or something

foreign donations to political activities, not to political parties, but if there is a significant

“amount of foreign funding coming in for this protest and I think that there's pretty decent evidence”

that there's at least some. I think we need to have a conversation about whether or not this is something that we find acceptable in Canada, whether it's okay for foreign interests, whether they're individuals, entities, corporations, even states to be influencing Canadian politics with this amount of money. Of course that has a lot of implications for other activist groups and other causes, but given the scope of what we've seen, I think this is a very real and pressing issue that we need

to address. Stephanie, let me hand it over to you for the last word. I guess what I want to know is

“this going to be the rise of a populist movement in Canada. This is really going to be”

interesting. I mean, the protesters had some success here as I noted earlier because they really lit a spark that caught fire among a population that's exhausted, emotionally, you know, suffering mental health issues, all these different kinds of things. But as just noted, there's now this movement, which is well funded, they pulled off, even if it was unplanned, an event like

we've never seen before in Canada, and they're now well-networked. They've gotten international

attention. This movement has the potential to absolutely fundamentally change the Canadian political landscape, and I don't know where this is going to go. Now that being said, the people in this movement are fractious, there's a lot of infighting, and when there's millions of dollars at stake, controlling those millions of dollars is going to potentially be not just something that can mobilize support, but maybe something that actually could cause division among these organizers. So we don't

yet know what the long-term consequences are. I suppose the most disturbing thing to me, really, is we have a movement that, at its core, is comprised of extremists. And as a Mar noted,

“I think in an earlier discussion, these politicians still chose to stand with them.”

That is hurtful. That is something that does kind of keep me up in all of this, because this could go on for months. This could go on, and by this, I mean, the convoy, it could keep coming back and back and back, they have the resources and the networking, but also the fact that politicians saw a movement that was that where extremists are very clearly intermingling with a larger population, and didn't feel that they needed to speak up, and didn't feel they needed

to challenge that. And that, I think, is a very bad sign of things to come. Fortunately, we will have to leave the conversation there. But Stephanie, Jessica, Amar, thank you so much for joining us here today on The Law Fair Podcasts. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. The Law Fair Podcasts produced in cooperation with the Brookingsistitution. Please take

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