After questioning Ottawa’s interim Police Chief Steve Bell over the assertion loaded firearms were found at the freedom protests in Ottawa, Conservative MP Dane Lloyd breaks down what he calls “the spread of misinformation.”. The MP for Sturgeon River-Parkland, Alta, sits on the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security and in late March, questioned Bell on the government’s response to the Ottawa trucker protests which included Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoking the Emergencies Act..Canada’s Public Safety Committee met in late March where, during the review, Lloyd grilled Bell on the assertion from a “police source” that loaded firearms were found during the protests..In a video posted on Twitter, Lloyd asked the question several times, “Were loaded firearms found in the trucks during the protest clearing operation, yes or no?”.Bell, after repeatedly dodging the direct question, confirms “no firearms charges” were laid during the clearing operation but was reluctant to admit no loaded firearms were found..Lloyd needed to ask Bell several times to clarify, “yes or no,” to his question. Bell finally replied, “no.”.Likening his questioning of Bell to question period in the House of Commons, Lloyd said politicians “never really want to give you the straight answers.”.“We’ve seen from levels from police sources, from the media, from even members of the government claiming that, you know, the truckers were committing acts of arson, that they had found firearms, and yet, when we really delve down and asked the questions and looked for the evidence, we’re finding out the story is a lot different than what we were told,” said Lloyd..Lloyd asked Bell directly if a comment from “police sources” referenced in a March 19 Toronto Star article that indicated loaded shotguns were found at the protests was “false information.”.Bell said he was “unfamiliar” with the quote, but confirmed they received intelligence information, but had not laid any charges in relation to firearms at the time..“All throughout these protests, and in the aftermath, Justin Trudeau and the government have been saying, you know, ‘misinformation, disinformation is a threat to our democracy,’ that the truckers were spreading lies and the protesters were spreading misinformation, and yet, we see that in the media, in some cases, was also spreading misinformation,” said Lloyd..“The fact that no public notification was made, leads me to believe, well, I think definitively, that there were no firearms found in the first place.”.Lloyd said he finds it interesting that “despite this total lack of evidence,” the media and members of the government are still “trying to spin this tale that there were all these firearms in downtown Ottawa.”.“We had allegedly (sic) police sources telling media that firearms had been found, we had members of the government retweeting information that firearms had been found, we saw police intelligence claiming that they had evidence that firearms were coming into downtown Ottawa, that foreign funding was flooding in, that it was overwhelmingly foreign funding from dark web sources,” said Lloyd..“And yet, every time we’ve asked the experts, whether it’s GoFundMe, whether it’s the chief of police in this case; every time we’ve asked them to corroborate these claims, they haven’t been able to.”.Melanie Risdon is a reporter with the Western Standard.,.mrisdon@westernstandard.news
After questioning Ottawa’s interim Police Chief Steve Bell over the assertion loaded firearms were found at the freedom protests in Ottawa, Conservative MP Dane Lloyd breaks down what he calls “the spread of misinformation.”. The MP for Sturgeon River-Parkland, Alta, sits on the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security and in late March, questioned Bell on the government’s response to the Ottawa trucker protests which included Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoking the Emergencies Act..Canada’s Public Safety Committee met in late March where, during the review, Lloyd grilled Bell on the assertion from a “police source” that loaded firearms were found during the protests..In a video posted on Twitter, Lloyd asked the question several times, “Were loaded firearms found in the trucks during the protest clearing operation, yes or no?”.Bell, after repeatedly dodging the direct question, confirms “no firearms charges” were laid during the clearing operation but was reluctant to admit no loaded firearms were found..Lloyd needed to ask Bell several times to clarify, “yes or no,” to his question. Bell finally replied, “no.”.Likening his questioning of Bell to question period in the House of Commons, Lloyd said politicians “never really want to give you the straight answers.”.“We’ve seen from levels from police sources, from the media, from even members of the government claiming that, you know, the truckers were committing acts of arson, that they had found firearms, and yet, when we really delve down and asked the questions and looked for the evidence, we’re finding out the story is a lot different than what we were told,” said Lloyd..Lloyd asked Bell directly if a comment from “police sources” referenced in a March 19 Toronto Star article that indicated loaded shotguns were found at the protests was “false information.”.Bell said he was “unfamiliar” with the quote, but confirmed they received intelligence information, but had not laid any charges in relation to firearms at the time..“All throughout these protests, and in the aftermath, Justin Trudeau and the government have been saying, you know, ‘misinformation, disinformation is a threat to our democracy,’ that the truckers were spreading lies and the protesters were spreading misinformation, and yet, we see that in the media, in some cases, was also spreading misinformation,” said Lloyd..“The fact that no public notification was made, leads me to believe, well, I think definitively, that there were no firearms found in the first place.”.Lloyd said he finds it interesting that “despite this total lack of evidence,” the media and members of the government are still “trying to spin this tale that there were all these firearms in downtown Ottawa.”.“We had allegedly (sic) police sources telling media that firearms had been found, we had members of the government retweeting information that firearms had been found, we saw police intelligence claiming that they had evidence that firearms were coming into downtown Ottawa, that foreign funding was flooding in, that it was overwhelmingly foreign funding from dark web sources,” said Lloyd..“And yet, every time we’ve asked the experts, whether it’s GoFundMe, whether it’s the chief of police in this case; every time we’ve asked them to corroborate these claims, they haven’t been able to.”.Melanie Risdon is a reporter with the Western Standard.,.mrisdon@westernstandard.news
