Vincent J. Curtis
22 Nov 22
Today’s hearings will be remembered for Freedom Convoy lawyer Brendan Miller getting kicked out of the hearings and being booted from the building. The more interesting develops nevertheless occurred in the hearing room. Public Safety Minister Marco “Mendacity” Mendicino and Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc were today’s witnesses. Luckily, lawyer Miller was allowed to return to question Mendicino.
What’s becoming clear in the hearings is that an echo chamber or a feedback loop began to arise before the Convoy even arrived in Ottawa on January 29th. We saw evidence yesterday that on or before January 26th, political appointees within the Federal government were planning and planting a narrative intended to discredit the Convoy. Alexander Cohen was seen to be coordinating political messaging with the PMO, and Mr. Cohen actually attended the hearing that morning. This was one cause, perhaps, for lawyer Miller’s explosion.
Mendicino took an opportunity to throw Brenda Lucki under the bus, again. He blamed her for his panicked views. When asked about his statements that the police services were asking for an invocation of the EA, it became clear that he inferred or concluded that that’s what they either wanted or needed. No police service ever asked for an invocation. I doubt the OPS or the OPP were even aware of the existence of the EA.
It came out in the hearings that Bill Blair spoke to Global and CBC reporters about a possible invocation of the EA on February 13th. He said that all measurers were on the table. But that these well-sourced reporters asked Blair specifically about invoking the EA meant that somebody leaked. This leak has not been investigated. Secrecy over and swift invocation after talking about the EA was deemed essential for its success by the PCO.
The political messaging from the beginning was to the effect that the Convoy was dominated or infiltrated with Ideological right-wing extremists who employed violent rhetoric and may engage in actual violence in Ottawa. The Convoy members were Nazis, etc. A January 6th could happen. Today, we saw a communication from Alberta Premier Jason Kenny to Minister LeBlanc describing the new mandate on truckers as being mere political theatre, giving the contagiousness of the disease, and calling the truckers Nazis was wrong and inflaming of opinion. Kenney, as a shrewd politician himself, could see what the Trudeau government was doing.
The emphasis on right-wing extremism is a dog-whistle to the mainstream media: CBC, CTV, Global, the Globe and Mail, and the Toronto Star particularly. The MSM are all, to varying degrees, on the progressive left; some leaning more into it than others. Rebel News, by comparison, is considered right of center and is widely condemned as a right-wing pariah. The prospect of a white supremacist revolt against good sense, with the prospect of a January 6th event in Canada, with guns, violence, violent and outlandish rhetoric and views, played into the prejudices of Canada’s MSM. It wasn’t long before reports of violence and violent rhetoric began to appear in the MSM.
Canada’s intelligence services are, not surprisingly, attuned to right-wing extremism. Ideologically Motivated Violent Extremists may consume as much as half the attention of CSIS. Antifa, BLM, Transgender Activists, and other extremism on the political left is cool, so far as the Liberal government, and consequently the intelligence services, are concerned. Prime Minister Trudeau famously took a knee on Parliament Hill in the midst of a COVID pandemic wave at the behest of BLM. Engagement with them was no problem. (Interestingly, Antifa made no appearance anywhere during the Convoy protests, which you would think they would do if the Convoy were comprised of fascist and Nazis.)
Yesterday, Convoy lawyer Miller entered into evidence that Brian Fox of Enterprise Canada, a strategic messaging group employed by the Liberal Party, was in fact the man carrying the upside down Canadian flag with a swastika on it. Today, both Fox and Enterprise were vociferously denying it, but today Miller said he had an affidavit to the effect that Fox was, indeed, the man. Miller also said that a photographer closely associated with Prime Minster Trudeau took the photograph of Fox holding the flag. This was the subject of media reports at the time, all saying that Trudeau’s photographer did not do so. Regardless, an affidavit is strong evidence. When Miller asked Mendicino about it, Mendicion put on a blank expression and said he knew nothing about Fox or the Liberal Party’s engagement of Enterprise.
The senior bureaucracy, and I include RCMP Commissioner Lucki, lived in a cocoon during the protests. They often testified to “getting reports of” violence, threats of violence, guns, and so forth. They were getting these reports from the television, on news reports that were getting fed information from political operatives elsewhere within the Trudeau government. They were faithfully reporting leaks from political operatives who supposedly had inside information that were discrediting of the Convoy. It would be like Adam Schiff telling the New York Times in February, 2017, that the evidence existed connecting Trump to Russia. Being the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, Schiff would be in a position to know, so the Times ran with story without a second source. Schiff may well have believed such evidence existed, but it didn’t.
The political operatives in the Trudeau government were feeding false and discrediting information to the media, and this news was being consumed as fact by the intelligence agencies and the PCO. Let’s keep in mind the private definitions of violence that ran rampant in Ottawa. Former Ottawa Police Chief Peter Sloly spoke of “assaultive behavior,” except that assault never occurred. The blowing of horns was “assaultive.” Nowadays, misgendering someone is consider violent. And the meaning of violence was also shown not to be “violence” in the common understanding of the term in the testimony of Minister Bill Blair, but had a proprietary meaning that Blair could assign to anything he disapproved of.
That the heavy handedness of the COVID restrictions were sparking a reaction was itself taken as a sign of evil mindednessat today’s hearings. President Donald Trump’s declaration of support for the Convoy at a political rally in the U.S. was offered as foreign malign influence by government lawyers at the hearing today.
No senior member of government, bureaucrat or elected official, ever put on mufti, mixed with the Convoy, and used their own eyes and ears to evaluate what was actually going on. It wasn’t dangerous, as Conservative politicians routinely walked among and through the protest on a daily basis.
Today, Mendicion said that government workers in his department were intimidated from going to work because of the Convoy, and many of those workers lived in the affected area. We’re supposed to believe this, notwithstanding that government workers worked from home because of COVID restrictions, and Mendicino only interacts with his office staff and does not take attendance of the workers of his department. Again, received “reports.”
The PCO and senior bureaucrats were panicked by fears of January 6th and violence through “reports” which they didn’t check for themselves by personal inspection, which was easily possible. The discrediting of the Convoy seemed to confirm everyone’s biases.
Finally, today, it was put to Minister LeBlanc, in the context of Premier Kenney’s derision, why wasn’t engagement with the protesters ever considered. LeBlanc was an impressive witness for his candor, and he said that the mandate was imposed upon the best advice to the government, and that was that. Engagement was never seriously considered because the Convoy was simply wrong in its demands.
The Federal government was frustrated because provincial authorities were not working strenuously enough to break up the protests, the country was reaching an emotional climax to the thinking of Ontario Premier Doug Ford, and the Federal government was starting to look really bad. Ontario, Alberta, and Saskatchewan began lifting provincial COVID mandates before the EA was declared, for both medical and political reasons, to lessen the press on the Canadian public.
Notwithstanding the opposition from most
provincial premiers to the invocation, and despite it not meeting the legal
threshold, Trudeau declared the EA at a press conference late on the afternoon
of February 14. The echo chamber had
prepared the PCO, the media, and the public for the invocation.
-30-
No comments:
Post a Comment