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VIDEO
With transcript AS OF
12,655 views
Oct 12, 2022
Keith Wilson joins us now Mr Wilson
thank you for having me now this inquiry it is looking into the invocation of the emergencies act whether or not it was justified or an overreach on behalf of the government and you've already stated insinuated that it wasn't overreach why have you come to that conclusion well we're under law we know that this is the successor to the war measures act uh the legislation is only supposed to be invoked by cabinet when we're facing existential threat to the to the country to the nation to our You Know The Enemy is within the Border type of a situation and what we know was happening when the emergencies Act was invoked when the cabinet decided to invoke it on the Sunday evening of the 13th of February that weekend the border blockades at Coots and at Windsor had cleared those borders were all open the only protest left in Canada at that time was the protest in downtown Ottawa and over that um myself as as one of the the lead counsel for the freedom uh protesters had negotiated uh with them a deal with the Ottawa city mayor to de-escalate the so a deal as you said between the organizers and the Ottawa mayor but really what would that have done how would that have ended the protest because my understanding of it it was just about moving Vehicles rather than vacating the Parliamentary Precinct the point of aggravation was the number of of large trucks and protest vehicles in the downtown core and you know in in the downtown area of course there's hotels and and there's apartment or sorry there's business Towers but there's also condo towers and there's and so the the concern that some of the trucker leaders had was sort of overstaying the welcome a de-escalating tensions and so and there you can see on the screen the truck's moving um so the arrangement that the mayor's Vision was de-escalate the pressure on the downtown core uh consolidate the trucks to the extent there was still space on Wellington and then move the balance out of town to these remote locations that have been set at an armed prior and another place and then the truckers could shuttle in on on buses shuttle buses that were already in place and attend protests during the day but but move the protest Vehicles out of the downtown core to allow normalcy to come and uh that was the The Vision that the mayor had the trucker leadership agreed to it and we were well on our way to to implementing it on the Monday well the mayor of Ottawa is Jim Watson currently he says he will not comment on the deal because he will be appearing before uh this inquiry but there is a spokesperson for the public safety Minister and according to the spokesperson cabinet did monitor uh actions after that deal was struck and apparently they they saw the deal being denounced by key organizers which in part is why they moved forward with the emergency Zach how do you respond to well uh it's it's going to be interesting to see what they have to say when they're under oath and cross-examined because here's the facts um there was strong buy-in from from the truckers to make this move to de-escalate the facts speak for themselves which are on the Monday morning after Sunday night there was a logistics meeting at City Hall with the super one of the superintendents of police the city manager the head of Emergency Services some of my legal team and the trucker leadership and they put plan together that they implemented Monday morning it resulted in 102 Vehicles leaving the downtown 42 of which were large trucks 23 went up onto Wellington as you can see on the screen with police escort and then the balance left town we cleared two city blocks we were on track to the mayor agreed and it's right in the letter that's publicly available and it's filed in evidence that the mayor recognized that this was a large logistical exercise and it could take three days to clear the downtown but for Wellington and that's uh that's what we were on track to do we made great progress on the first day cleared two blocks and we were on track and then we had problems on the Tuesday with miscommunication there were so many different police agencies from Windsor and Kingston and the different police forces the communications between the police were really bad and as we kept trying to move we got blocked and then on the Wednesday I got a phone call from the city manager because we got blocked again and as we were trying to do further moves and he said that the new interim Chief as well as the federal government didn't want the deal to go ahead and it was stopped at that time so they ended up bringing in police on the Friday and beating up and arresting Canadian protesters clearing downtown by Sunday if we hadn't had those interventions we were on track to have the downtown opened up by the Wednesday so so the fact that there were one or two organizers uh on social media denouncing the deal is inconsequential yeah well I mean this was this was an organic event there was you know when I was in the logistics Center the Operation Center we'd get a report that 20 trucks were arriving you know from from Kitchener and then 30 trucks were arriving from Nova Scotia and there was a conv they was like where who what you know this was not like uh an orchestrated event it was purely spontaneous and so the idea that that there was some Central Command that could make everybody comply was just not how it worked in the real world and uh the buy-in was terrific uh it was proven by the fact that the first two blocks that we attempted to clear were completely cleared out of all protest Vehicles now it is true that the vehicles were consolidating onto um but that's where the grievance was the grievance was with the federal government and the covid mandates and you know interestingly I just went for a walk Wellington's closed right now it's been closed ever since by the government um with the barricades that they have up so the the reason that that I and others believed this was an overreach there wasn't a national security incident to begin with the basic trigger to meet the law wasn't there and what's troubling for me and others is that had there not been these interventions we knew that the borders were open on the weekend well all that was left was Ottawa we had a deal working with the mayor and his vision to restore uh his downtown to the residents and businesses and we were well on track to implementing that until it got stopped well respectfully Mr Wilson there there may be residents out there many of Ottawa center Town businesses as well uh people that lost money lost their shifts felt trapped in their home that might argue that there was a security threat as a security to their uh to their to their person not having the freedoms that they should be having because of this protest what do you say to those individuals who may be more sympathetic to the use of the well the crime date is empirical crime dropped so that's going to come out that's they're not even anybody suggesting that anymore that that narrative's gone but does that mean to say that individual residents were not harassed or felt trapped well I know I'm not I don't think they were harassed that's not not the prevailing thing the evidence that I've seen and I observed my firsthand but let's talk about something that's clear which is they were inconvenienced they were they were um uh it wasn't a pleasant experience for for for some of the residents for sure in the same way that it wasn't a pleasant experience for Canadians to be to be uh facing mandates too but these individual residents but these individual residents did not enact rules and regulations they were just living but they chose fair enough sir but they chose to live in the capital city and if you're going to suggest that the protesters should have gone to some remote rural community and protested there uh when you live in the capital city and you you enjoy the benefits of the incredible architecture and capital infrastructure that's here we all know know that protesters come here this is not novel you know well that the capital city of a country of a nation is where people go to protest when they feel their governments have crossed lines that's what happened on a grand scale but I think I think though you know the difference being that when there have been protests in the past it might be a March to the hill it might be a protest on the hill certainly not an occupation that lasts day after day and in two weeks so very different and certainly not protest that in the past have involved big rigs that are honking horns 24 7 and emitting uh carbon into the air that people are choking on what do you never before in our history sir has a government the federal government invoke mandates that prevented six million unvaccinated Canadians from traveling by plane and train in their country the second largest country in the world by land mass never before did thousands of people who worked at airports baggage handlers clerks security people lose their jobs because they exercise their choice over bodily autonomy I can keep going military the number of people that have left our military that we invested in all their training because they were concerned about the uncertainty around the rushed approval of the vaccine this was an incredibly you know I know you're not going to suggest to me that the pandemic was a minor event nor that the government's response was unprecedented unprecedented action by government will bring unprecedented response I would suggest by its citizens when they think the government's gone too far and that's what happened in January and February in Ottawa yeah I think so Mr Wilson I think Mr Wilson and respectfully I think the disconnect here though is that the people that ended up paying the price for that in many ways during the course of this this protest were not actually the people enacting the laws creating the regulations the people who are just trying to live their lives who are all sudden trapped in their home and many of them not feeling safe to walk their own well Michael I think that's why those who were trying to keep uh the protest urge the truckers that the time had come for them to move out of the downtown um there's this is what civil disobedience is and and lawful protests involves is it involves sometimes making government and people feel uncomfortable in response to the discomfort that that the citizens felt by the government policy so this is part of our Democratic process is that when people and citizens feel that a government's gone too far as they engage in protest and and that's what happened was it of a grand scale yes but it was spontaneous and I think it was reflection of the depth of sentiment within Canadians that something had gone terribly wrong in our country and the impact on their children with the school closures now admittedly the federal government didn't do that but for those things that the federal government controlled they felt they needed to come here and voice their concerns and and ask for the the rule of law and the charter to be respected so at the end of the day then Mr Wilson what do you hope this inquiry flushes well I hope the accurate information um that we hear all perspectives really the question for the inquiry is whether or not the the freezing of bank accounts and the impact that that had on people and isolating them and how that could be done so arbitrarily and uh preventing them from paying mortgages and and getting gas and getting groceries and um the uh the the level of violence that we saw from the police during the uh the clearing out of protesters on the Friday and to a lesser extent stratter day was that really Justified why didn't the Prime Minister meet with the protesters and try and be proactive like mayor Watson was in de-escalating the situation I think those are questions that hopefully will get answered Keith Wilson really appreciate the time today
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