https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=a9jTY7P2rEI
Now you stood up for the trucker. So now you’ve had some time. It’s been a couple of months. You’ve had some time to consider your position. And so can you tell me what you think happened with the trucker protest? And then I’d like to segue into the imposition of the Emergencies Act, which, you know, is grist for the mill, let’s say, in terms of discussion. So tell me your response to the trucker’s protest and convoy and where you stood and where you stand. So I, as I said before, the truckers even arrived on Parliament Hill when media asked me about it. I support those peaceful, law-abiding truckers who came to Ottawa to peacefully protest for their livelihoods and liberties. And I simultaneously condemn any individuals who broke laws, behaved badly, or blockaded critical infrastructure. I think it’s possible to hold individually accountable bad actors without painting every single person with the same brush. If you went to any protest that had nine or 10,000 people, you will find bad actors. But that doesn’t mean that all nine or 10,000 are themselves bad actors. You know, for example, I was confronted by a journalist the other day who said, yes, but what about those journalists who, sorry, what about those truckers that were angry at journalists and behaved badly or conducted themselves poorly? What do you say to them? Well, I said, well, they should be individually held to account for their behavior. But he said, well, don’t you take some responsibility for supporting the cause? And I said, well, let me ask you this. Do you hold every single environmentalist personally responsible for the axe-wielding terrorists who went to the Coastal GasLink pipeline construction site and started trying to kill pipeline workers? Does every single person who’s spoken out against pipelines take personal responsibility for what those axe-wielding terrorists did? Or are the axe-wielders themselves personally responsible? I mean, even I would say, no, you can criticize a pipeline. I disagree with you. You can criticize a pipeline without taking personal responsibility for the violence of some eco-terrorist you’ve never even met. And so I walked around, I saw the truckers on Parliament Hill. By the way, most people weren’t actually there. The media depiction was total nonsense. If you watched it on television, you would think that it was Armageddon. Jordan, every single member of Parliament that condemned the truckers in the House of Commons during the protest had to walk right through the Tucker Trucker convoy, right? Because they were parked right up front. There was no way to get in without walking through them. And not one of them were prevented from walking through. It was peaceful. It was most of the time sort of a jubilant type celebration. And people came and went, they walked around on Parliament Hill. Members of Parliament of all political stripes walked through the protest every day without incident. And yes, some businesses were inconvenienced and lost money, they should be compensated. But by and large, it was a peaceful protest by people who generally don’t get involved in political activism. They’re truckers, they drive truck all day. Yeah, they have things to do, man. They have things, and you know the thing is, why didn’t they all go home after the first week? Jordan, they had nowhere to go because the government had taken away their jobs. They weren’t allowed to go back to their jobs. You can imagine if Trudeau had just said, we’re gonna lift the mandate on the truckers, they would have fired up their machines and hit the road to go back to work. But he took away their jobs and their livelihoods. No wonder they stayed there for so long. And it was absolutely unscientific and malicious. Look, if anyone is gonna spread a virus, it sure as hell is not the guy who’s sitting alone by himself all day in a truck. So this was never about medical science, it was about political science, it was about demonizing a small minority for political gain. And I’m proud of the fact that people stood up and fought for their freedoms in that case. Well, there is a contempt associated with that on the liberal and the NDP side that was really quite striking to see, like really quite mind boggling to see. And the other thing that struck me about the truckers, because I talked to quite a few of them also publicly when the protest was occurring suggested near the time when they did decide to leave that they should probably leave because the crazies were gonna show up and cause trouble. Cause I think if you occupy anything, if you protest long enough, and the people who wanna cause trouble are gonna gravitate. And I think they left about exactly when they should, and that they reached a lot of their goals. I mean, first of all, they did blow up the conservative party, which I know they didn’t exactly intend to, but that wasn’t nothing. And also, and maybe you disagree with that interpretation, but also Canada really started to move on the mandate front pretty much at the same time the truckers jumped up and down about it. And so I thought they did extremely well. And I also think the world responded that way because that protest became a model for similar and peaceful and useful protests all across the world. So now what do you think happened to the conservatives in the aftermath of the truckers protest? Am I being too harsh or? No, look, I don’t know that there’s a direct link between the two, but I think by and large, the concern was a difficult political challenge should hot potato for any political party to manage. But I can’t speak for how everyone else in the caucus managed it or commented on it, but I’m happy with where I landed. I pushed through the controversy and stood my ground. And I’m happy to say that my position on that protest is exactly the same as it was before it even arrived in Ottawa. And I believe I can defend everything I did and said on it. I’m gonna ask you one last question. I’d like to talk to you for about two more hours, but we can’t do that. And I don’t wanna push the patience of the viewers listeners either. Let’s talk about the Emergencies Act. So what do you have to say about that? Well, I mean, it’s ironic that Trudeau brought in the Emergencies Act after the border crossings were cleared of protest, which is the only, you know, the blockades at the border were wrong. I said so at the time, but that being said, they had been resolved by the time Trudeau actually brought in the Emergencies Act. And so what we effectively had at that point was about, you know, 10 or 11 blocks in downtown Ottawa that were blocked by trucks. You know, to put this into perspective, the Emergencies Act is somewhat like a war measures act, almost kind of like martial law. Yeah, a lot like it. We haven’t actually done that in Canada since this law was actually instituted. His father used the War Measures Act to tackle some terrorist attacks by a radical Quebec separatist group. But since that time, we’ve not done it. Even in 9-11, when 24 or 25 Canadians were killed in a terrorist attack in New York, or when a terrorist shot dead a soldier at the war monument and then stormed parliament spraying bullets around in all directions, we didn’t use it then. And so we’ve never really used this law. You would think that it would be used in a case where there was a foreign invasion or a monstrous terrorist attack or something of that magnitude, but we never did. And then we, Trudeau did it for this protest. I think he ultimately was just angry that he was personally facing a political protest and didn’t want to face the political consequences of a democratic protest. And he also wanted to be as malicious as possible to deter any similar protests. So he actually seized bank accounts, which caused a lot of people to have fear that if they ever donated to the wrong political cause, that the state might freeze their account and shut them out of business. So I think there’s a lot of fear as a powerful political tool. And I think that’s what he was trying to invoke with the use of this act. So what do you think should be done about the fact that he did in fact invoke it? Because this is a major league suspension of civil liberties. This along with the fact that unvaccinated Canadians still can’t leave the country or fly within the country or take a train. And I see no excuse whatsoever for the imposition of those restrictions as of now. It’s maliciousness, it’s revengefulness as far as I can tell. So how is the government gonna be held accountable when we have what’s essentially a coalition in place? Well, it’s gonna be hard. I mean, I think it’s gonna have to be voters that will hold them into account when we finally have an election. But they’ve appointed someone who was a former liberal staffer to oversee the inquiry into the use of the act. I think we need, I’m consulting with scholars, legal scholars on how we can curtail the power and limit the use of the Emergencies Act in the future. I wanna be very careful though in how I do it because this is an incredibly blunt instrument, but in times of war or foreign attack or something like that, you could understand why there might be an occasion where these powers might be needed. So we need, but I do think we need to craft changes to the act that will prevent it from being abused for political purposes like this again.