TrudeauYouTube screenshot of Trudeau addressing Freedom Convoy protests on Jan. 31, 2022.Prime Minister Trudeau addressing Freedom Convoy protests on Jan. 31, 2022. .The revelations continue to unfold at the Emergencies Act Inquiry, which is easily the best judicial show that Ottawa had in years — perhaps ever. Because this is a city — unlike Washington — that routinely hides its dirty laundry and will do anything to pretend the established order has done nothing to contravene the law or lied to the public, usually by boring its citizens to death with grandstanding judges who argue points of order, or witnesses who can’t quite get to those points of order. .From the moment the Freedom Convoy descended upon Ottawa, its detractors claimed they were scared, harassed, demeaned and had their hearing damaged by those truckers. But we all know who was really afraid of the convoy from the moment it arrived, who refused to meet with it and who quickly left town — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. .But apparently, there were others. The inquiry heard Friday former Ottawa Police Chief Peter Sloly told business leaders he was “scared” by the Freedom Convoy protests after they first arrived in the nation’s capital. .Now just why would he be scared when the convoy was obeying all the rules provided by the Ottawa Police Service and there was no evidence they were carrying arms or had any designs on executing an insurrection against the federal government? Was Sloly intending to make the businesses fearful as well and close their doors? Businesses that did not close their doors were harassed by police. .On Monday, Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson will testify before the inquiry. There was no more fearful a man than Watson who was obsessed throughout the convoy’s stay in Ottawa over the “bouncy castles” convoy organizers erected for the children of trucker families to play in. Watson couldn’t stand that and frequently mentioned his disdain for these folks not taking their protest seriously enough by allowing children to amuse themselves in the process. .At the time, I was covering the protest for a U.S. media outlet with no downtown office space and I spent most of the protest outside with the protesters and the Ottawa residents, conducting interviews and asking questions. Almost all the mainstream media huddled in their warm cubicles to avoid the sub-zero February temperatures and conducted interviews with talking heads who agreed with their assessment the Freedom Convoy was an “occupation” and a dire threat to public safety and democracy. .Those businesses that stayed open during the protest were rewarded with huge sales. They weren’t vandalized, their cash registers weren’t robbed. There was a lot of strange activity going on in downtown Ottawa; but that was just the usual behavior of the homeless, drug addicted and mentally ill who roam the streets because the city has no plan to confront their problems. But talk to the people — and not the bureaucrats who felt they had to reflect the feigned outrage of Justin Trudeau — and they wanted to talk about what it was like living in Ottawa before the convoy arrived. .There was so much blather about how the protest created financial unrest for local businesses and little mention of how rolling lockdowns had reduced Ottawa’s downtown core to a ghost town. That was the work of Jim Watson and that political chameleon, Ontario Premier Doug Ford who talks like a principled conservative when he’s communing with the so-called Ford Nation but who acts like a lockdown Liberal after talking to his political friend Justin Trudeau. .Those are the people we need to hear from in the next two weeks. Just as we need to hear Trudeau had no reason to invoke the Emergencies Act because there was no emergency. It was a peaceful protest. There were no weapons in Ottawa. There was no arson, no monument desecration. .There was only fear from Trudeau: Fear his political enemies were in town and fear his vaccine mandates policy was based on purely political objectives.
