--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Welcome to today's show. I'm Sean Rameswaram.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This trucker convoy situation in Canada has become so bad that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had to kick off the week with a move unlike any the nation had seen since his father ran the country a generation ago. The federal government has invoked the Emergencies Act to supplement provincial and territorial capacity to address the blockades and occupations. He was turning up the heat on the convoy. Blockading streets and critical infrastructure and depriving your neighbors of their freedoms is a totally different thing. It has to stop. And the message was pretty clear. The time to go home is now. But even if the truckers go home, which they haven't yet, they've scored a pretty significant victory. Thousands of people have occupied Canada's capital with a demand for a dropping of the vast majority of our vaccine mandates. They represent the most coordinated effort of anti-vaxxers since the start of this pandemic. And this is about to spread much further than Ottawa.
--:-- Justin Ling: I've been covering the trucker convoy. We reached out to ask him how these Canadians struck such a chord with the world. This thing has taken on a life of its own. There's no clear sign when it's going to end. and it's now spread throughout Europe into Australia and New Zealand. And it's going to probably be an incredibly significant meeting of a number of far-right anti-vaccine groups in D.C. in a matter of weeks. Believe it or not, all of this kind of starts with QAnon.
--:-- Justin Ling: Yeah, so listen, at the beginning of all of this thing, there's a guy named James Bowder. About two and a half years ago, he took part in another convoy to Ottawa, But this time, the convoy was all about a price on carbon that Justin Trudeau had put into effect. To us, Justin just says one thing and does another. And we can't get our oil to Tidewater. We can't build a pipeline. We can't get one east. And the carbon taxes. Like, how much can Canadians afford? And when they arrived, it was sort of this hodgepodge event. You had some mainstream political figures. You had some oil workers, some truckers, and some white nationalist figures. So it wasn't terribly successful. It was kind of a big rally. Everyone left and went home. But I guess James Bauder got in his head that, you know, these convoys are super effective.
--:-- Justin Ling: So not long after he got back home to Alberta, he founded this group called Canada Unity. My name is James Bauder, founder of Canada Unity Foundation. So brass tacks all in is the Convoy for Freedoms is going to bring trucks, cars, vans, pickup trucks, semis are going to go to Ottawa and give Ottawa a big loving bear hug. And it didn't do much at first, but once the pandemic began, he started a Facebook page, a website for this group, and it was very clear that he was against all sorts of public health measures around COVID-19. He starts posting the where we go, one we go all QAnon hashtag. He starts sharing a whole bunch of conspiracy theories that have become sort of dogma of the QAnon movement. Obviously, he believes in the big lie that Donald Trump actually won the last U.S. presidential election.
--:-- Justin Ling: So he uses his group Canada Unity to start organizing a convoy to Ottawa. And his idea is that we're going to go to Ottawa. We're going to protest in front of the prime minister's house and tell him we want him gone. And we're going to deliver this document to the Speaker of the Senate. And this document claims that all vaccine mandates and measures are illegitimate and illegal under Canada's constitution and a whole bunch of international law. And it basically says that by signing this document, abolish all these vaccine mandates and requirements and set up a committee whereby him and a random assortment of citizens would be able to dictate policy for the Canadian government.
--:-- Justin Ling: Everybody got together and said, you know what? We're going to get on the road, and we're going to go to Parliament, and we're going to make history, and we're going to tell Trudeau that the drama class is over. We didn't hire a drama teacher. We hired somebody that was supposed to manage the affairs of our country and not destroy our country. So hopefully when he gets there, his resignation is in his hand, and he just exits out and leaves directing a country to those that actually know what they're doing.
--:-- Justin Ling: He's basically saying we should override our democratically elected parliament in order to abolish all these vaccine mandates and dictate what the policy of the government should be. But the thing about this convoy is that it didn't work. This happened in October of last year. He drove to Ottawa with maybe a couple dozen people, if that. They protested for a couple days and he left. And it wasn't until early January this year, he started planning a second trip to Ottawa, that other groups started joining, that other anti-vaccine influencers started getting in the know. And this thing absolutely took off
--:-- Justin Ling: What was different this time I think really they had a great sort of new frame for the whole thing In late December, early January, Justin Trudeau and the Biden administration announced they were going to basically remove an exemption for truckers crossing the border. And that as of mid-January, they would have to be vaccinated against COVID-19 in order to avoid a 14-day quarantine. So in practice, it meant that it would be almost impossible to be an unvaccinated trucker crossing the U.S.-Canada border. This doesn't actually impact that many Canadians. About 85 percent of truckers are fully vaccinated. But it became this sort of popular national concern that this could disrupt supply chains and that there would be a risk to greater inflation, to food shortages, so on and so forth, if this vaccine mandate came into effect.
--:-- Justin Ling: It's important to note, he never actually says it's about the truckers. He wants every single vaccine mandate and passport gone. And the trucker thing just becomes a really useful sort of news peg for him. And because it's getting so much public attention, you see a bunch of anti-vaccine groups take advantage of this. They notice that this is in the public discourse. They realize it's kind of their great opportunity to get some coverage, to get some news. And you see all these other groups start joining Bouter's effort. None of them are household names, but there's one that represents police officers who have been removed from the job for not getting vaccinated. There's one that's a coalition of doctors who have been thoroughly discredited, but who are passing on disinformation about the safety and efficacy of vaccines.
--:-- Justin Ling: You have another group that's against all COVID-19 measures, especially masks. You have a number of independent organizers, one of whom has peddled the white replacement theory that is a common trope of the white nationalist movement, who also engages in Holocaust denial. You have a number of organizers who have pushed to make Canada's Western provinces independent from the country. So you have this real constellation of folks who have been working at different ends for quite some time, who are now for really the first time getting on the same page, getting on the same email chains. using their own networks together. And it gets really big. It's super effective. Well over a thousand people lining the Trans-Canada Highway outside of Winnipeg in minus 30 wind chills, protesting what they call government overreach.
--:-- Justin Ling: You came from Calgary. What do you think of this? What do we think that it's time to take our country back? By like January 25th, 26th, you start seeing these images from way out west and way out east of these trucks starting to make their way across the country. You know, you're talking about hundreds of vehicles at this point, some trucks, some personal vehicles. And as the day goes by and they get closer and closer to the capital, you see more and more vehicles joining. You see these solidarity and support rallies coming out to meet the convoy as they cross the country. It's a togetherness like I've never felt before. This isn't about a vaccine mandate on truckers. This is about the entire thing. It's got to go. It's all mandates. It's for the freedom of everybody here. That's why I'm here. And I'm going to stay as long as it takes to change everything.
--:-- Justin Ling: How does this disrupt the day to day in Ottawa? It has made basically everything in downtown Ottawa grind to a halt, right? You know, most businesses can't be open. Most people are actually having a hard time sleeping or leaving their homes. People have decamped to anywhere else, gotten hotel rooms, gone to their cottage, gone to stay with friends. It's basically impossible to drive through the downtown core. People are literally afraid to keep their masks on because they're getting harassed by some of the occupiers. The people of Ottawa don't deserve to be harassed in their own neighborhoods. They don't deserve to be confronted with the inherent violence of a swastika flying on a street corner or a Confederate flag.
--:-- Justin Ling: But it has not been overtly violent thus far. I think that's important to know. There has not been an effort to beat up people in the street who disagree with them or attack police or anything like that. And meanwhile, this becomes not just an Ottawa thing, but an all over Canada thing. Yeah, absolutely. Protesters in Toronto are once again calling for an end to government imposed mandates. We want our freedom back. I want my country back.
--:-- Justin Ling: You've seen solidarity protests pop up in Toronto, Halifax, Calgary, Victoria, a number of places across the country where folks have come out to register their support for the occupation and to specifically, you know, spread misinformation and disinformation about vaccines. Protesters first gathered in Peace and Friendship Park in downtown Halifax early Saturday afternoon. The protesters made stops in different neighbourhoods in Vancouver, like Mount Pleasant and near Kitsilano. Calgary streets were a loud place Saturday, joining many across Canada. But the most sort of disruptive of all of those have been a series of border blockades that you've seen in Alberta, Manitoba, and very specifically on the Windsor-Detroit bridge.
--:-- Justin Ling: Trucks and other protesters blocking traffic at the Ambassador Bridge. That links Windsor, Ontario and Detroit. It's a major artery for cross-border commercial truck traffic. That is one of the most important corridors for the Canadian economy, which was shut down for a number of days, nearly a week, and only just reopened. Just before dawn Sunday morning, a man holds a flag as he looks out on police. Behind him, a small group of protesters who stayed out here all night. The remnants of a group that stopped traffic on the Ambassador Bridge linking Ontario and Michigan over the past week.
--:-- Justin Ling: And I believe that shutdown in particular cost the automobile industry in Canada and the United States millions and millions of dollars. And that's really one that led a lot of people to wonder where the police were in all of this. What is going on with the response to especially the shutting down of a major international thoroughfare? Yeah, listen, people have been asking that straight across the country since this whole thing began.
--:-- Justin Ling: I have some sympathy for some of the police forces that are trying to manage this. It one thing to go and arrest a group of people who are just standing and blocking a road or protesting in a city or occupying a park or what have you Yeah Luckily in Windsor when they finally went in to do this after much hand and jurisdictional squabbling and sort of trying to rationalize with them and negotiate with them after all that failed, they went in to go make arrests and it just worked immediately. You need to leave or you will be arresting and charged criminally. Police liaison officers told the group it was time to go or else they'd face arrest.
--:-- Justin Ling: This big rig driver complied, not wanting his truck to be towed away. Others had their vehicles removed from a nearby parking lot. These people either packed up and left or resisted relatively peacefully until they were arrested and charged with mischief. But the thing was cleared once Windsor police finally went in and basically said enough's enough, we're taking you away.
--:-- Justin Ling: From the onset of the demonstration, our goal was to resolve this situation safely and peacefully. And Windsor police chief Pamela Mizuno says that's exactly what happened.
--:-- Justin Ling: And how do Canadians generally view this protest? Badly, negatively. Every single poll we've had thus far suggests that two-thirds of the country reject this protest and are against it. And I think there's this feeling that is growing that our politicians and our police need to do something about this and they aren't. Where does that leave the country? Frustrated and without much of a recourse.
--:-- Justin Ling: You know, I'm really sympathetic to the spot the Ottawa police are in. They really do not have the capacity to end this tomorrow. That being said, in the last number of hours, the Prime Minister has invoked the Emergencies Act, which gives him a significant new latitude to use federal resources to declare this thing illegal, to support the Ottawa police, to take charge of coordination, to potentially start making some of those arrests.
--:-- Justin Ling: There have been attempts to freeze some of their fundraising. Their fundraising, by the way, has surpassed probably, I think, $10 million is a relatively good estimate at this point between a number of fundraisers, direct appeals and their Bitcoin reserves. So this is turning into a business at this point. These people are actually making money. They're going to be rich off this. They say they're going to dispense all that money to the truckers and the protesters to cover expenses, but they're going to have millions of dollars left over. So where that money actually goes is an open question.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Oh, Canada. Justin, you just mentioned that these protesters are actually raising a ton of money. And not only that, you earlier mentioned that this thing's kind of going international. Tell me more about that.
--:-- Justin Ling: This has found a whole bunch of purchase in other countries where you've seen more stringent and strict vaccine requirements and lockdown measures. You've seen it in the UK. Here we are, outside New Scotland Yard, Freedom Convoy. Finland had a relatively large solidarity protest. There was a planned convoy for Brussels. Canberra in Australia, New Zealand. I'm not against vaccination, because I am actually vaccinated. I'm actually against mandating people to be vaccinated. I think it's disgraceful forcing vaccination on people who don't want it.
--:-- Justin Ling: A number of places have seen these solidarity convoys and protests pop up, largely inspired by the Canadian occupiers. But in the U.S., things have been a little bit slower. But also in the last couple of days, you've seen some of the organizations pop up and say basically we been working behind the scenes we been toiling to get these plans together and we to kind of come out and announce our routes So you going to see in the first week of March at least three different organizations launch their own quote freedom convoys headed for Washington, D.C. And I have news for you, America. They're coming our way.
--:-- Justin Ling: They've already blocked one major bridge that has 20% of all the commerce. They're already organizing for a March 1st move from Oregon over to Washington, D.C. people want their lives back. What don't they understand about that? And it's funny because they're not really protesting vaccine mandates. They don't really have that many vaccine mandates to object to. What you're seeing is sort of a grab bag of grievances. To some degree, they're supporting the Canadians. To some degree, they're opposing masks. To some degree, they're just fundamentally rejecting vaccines and the Biden administration and sort of everything.
--:-- Justin Ling: What are they rejected? The mask mandates are ending across the country and a whole lot of people here aren't vaccinated and that doesn't seem to be an issue. Yeah, but, you know, in recent days, I heard one of the chief organizers say, you know, we're not just up against the U.S. government. We're up against a $30 trillion pharmaceutical industry, right? They're fundamentally not even asking for anything. They're just going to sort of register their rage at vaccines by and large. You're seeing the same conspiratorial thinking from the U.S. organizers as you've seen from a bunch of the Canadian ones.
--:-- Justin Ling: They believe the vaccines are dangerous. They believe they're all an effort to create a one world government. They think the world economic form is behind everything. They think their sort of patriotic revolution that has started under Donald Trump is under threat. And this is their attempt to sort of fight back. And it should not surprise anyone that a number of people who were at the January 6th insurrection are also organizing this freedom convoy. You've already seen a number of people, including folks who advocated for the arrest and execution of members of the media and members of the government, participate. You're already seeing an appeal to groups like the Three Percenters and the Oath Keepers to join in their convoy.
--:-- Justin Ling: And it's really raising the possibility that you're going to see a lot of the same people who came out for January 6th descend on the Capitol again in early March. You know, we've seen anti-vax and, you know, conspiratorial ideation in this country and abroad since the pandemic began. What was it about this trucker convoy in Canada that struck such a chord that you're now going to be seeing potentially these similar protests happening around the world?
--:-- Justin Ling: I think there is this innovation that I'm not sure the Canadian organizers realized would be effective until they did it. And it's just the reality of bringing these trucks along is incredibly impactful, right? If 10,000 people had descended on Ottawa, no one would have blinked. 10,000 people is a medium sized demonstration for Ottawa. The fact that they were able to bring these trucks and shut down the city and shut down these highways and overwhelm police in their response suddenly catapulted this into an international story. And it made them basically impossible to get rid of, at least in the short term.
--:-- Justin Ling: I think a whole bunch of organizers around the world saw that and went, oh, my God, they cracked the code. suddenly we can capture the narrative and dictate our expectations to city and local state governments. It's worth noting that the Canadian occupiers have already been super effective. Four provincial premiums actually now have announced an end to some of their vaccine mandates and their vaccine passport system. They've essentially won. This has been a coup for them, right? This has worked for them.
--:-- Justin Ling: You have to imagine there was a bunch of anti-vaccine groups who are looking on, you know, enviously, who want to repeat that success. And the one major innovation here is, it seems, is that everyone figured out they can use trucks to disrupt the country when they don't like the government's policies. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's I'm sure a lot of them are kicking themselves and not having it figured out earlier. But that's kind of it. I mean, it will also depend a lot on what police in D.C. do, right? If they can stop this convoy from showing up in Washington and sort of thwarting and short-circuiting those efforts, then maybe this innovation isn't so great. Maybe this is more of a failure of the Ottawa police than anything else.
--:-- Justin Ling: But if the convoy to D.C. makes it to the Capitol and they decide to embark on their own occupation of the city, well, this may kick off a method of protest that isn't going away. And then you can interview me for your podcast. Can't wait. Can't wait. Now, I'm moving to Aruba. I'm moving to somewhere with no trucks. Just come over it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Justin Ling is a freelance investigative journalist based in Montreal. He's got his own show. It's called The Flamethrower's Podcast. It's all about how right-wing radio radicalized America.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Episode 999 of today explained was produced by Hady Mawajdeh with Haleema Shah and Will Reid, edited by Matt Collette, engineered by Paul Mounsey, fact-checked by Richard Sima with Laura Bullard. I'm Sean Rameswaram.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm moving to Aruba.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts.
