What should we expect from the “freedom” protests on Canada Day?

Jordan Generally speaking, Canada Day on Parliament Hill is a big party. It’s a celebration. Celebration of all the good parts of an imperfect country, a friendly time for one and all. And it might be exactly like that this year. Then again, it might not.

News Clip It may have started with some truckers upset by the cross-border vaccine mandate, but it’s morphed into a rallying cry for people with a variety of grievances.

News Clip of Convoy Protester #1 Dan, I’m not leaving until the mandates are gone.

News Clip of Convoy Protester #2 Not going to end until they do something. It’s not going to end.

Jordan As thousands and thousands of Canadians celebrate their nation’s birthday, a much smaller number will be at Parliament Hill to resume the convoy protests that brought the capital to a standstill in January. Many of the organizers say that they will be there to peacefully protest, to hopefully win support for their cause. A couple of others don’t say that. A leaked intelligence document suggests that while the vast majority will indeed be peacefully protesting, there are dangerous and violent elements also making Canada Day weekend plans. So who is going to Ottawa and why? What should we expect on July 1? Should members of Parliament be meeting with organizers? And how ready are the police to ensure we don’t see a repeat of last time? I’m Jordan Heath- Rawlings. This is The Big Story. Justin Ling is a freelance investigative journalist who covers, among many other things, misinformation, conspiracy theories and extremism. He wrote this piece for Vice, but you can find a lot of his writing on these topics at bugeyedandshameless.com, which is his newsletter. Justin, that’s a great name for a newsletter. What is it about?

Justin Ling Thank you. I’m happy. It’s kind of a riff on a Talking Head song.

Jordan It’s beautiful and very memorable. And there’s people coming back to Ottawa for another convoy protest on Canada Day. Can you fill me in on what’s going on?

Justin Ling Yeah. So I think this has been in the cards basically since the convoy was first cleared in February. I mean, there have been sort of these prognostications from the convoy leadership that this is going to continue. They made a smaller showing back in April with a sort of bikers rally. But I think the idea has been for the entirety of this year that Canada Day would be the next big sort of flexing of the muscle of this movement that has sort of come out of the original convoy. So to catch you up a little bit, the organizations and the organizers and the participants who came together not just in Ottawa, but also in Toronto, in Victoria, Vancouver, Calgary, Winter Bank, you name it, those linkages were all very new. You had never seen the sort of collaboration and connections between these anti vaccine, anti government, right wing groups prior to this convoy, at least not on the scale that we saw during the convoy.

And coming out of the occupation, you saw a bunch of social media channels light up and continue to be active. You saw a lot of collaboration and cooperation between those organizations. You saw new groups pop up, new organizers emerge, new figures sort of take center stage. And it has been a really interesting sort of recalibration of this whole movement. Obviously, a bunch of the most public facing figures from the original occupation are either in jail or awaiting trial and are largely forbidden from taking part in this movement. So you’ve seen others step up to sort of fill that gap. And these are the folks who are kind of getting things in motion to show up on Canada Day. In many cases they’re already in Ottawa. They’ve been holding a conference for the past several days and they’re gearing up to try and show the country that they’re not done yet. It’s not time to count them out. Many of the vaccine mandates may be gone, but their work is not over.

Jordan So at the center of the, I guess I’ll call it a preview story of this convoy occupation that you wrote for Vice is a leaked intelligence report, which I understand you’ve since published on your newsletter. Where did this report come from? What exactly does it say about this protest?

Justin Ling The report comes from an agency called the Integrated Terrorism Assessment Center. It has been around for quite some time. Utility has shifted a little bit over the years. But where it stands right now is that it’s basically a channel for the federal national security apparatus to communicate possible threats to local law enforcement and other agencies in some cases. So in this case the center, or we call them, ITAC, has sent an omissive to local law enforcement, particularly in Ottawa, to say we expect there will be many of the same organizations and participants showing up in Ottawa on Canada Day saying we expect it will be peaceful just like they promised, we expect it will be rallies and demonstrations. But otherwise they have not seen evidence there will be a sustained occupation, no evidence that violence will be carried out, no evidence that there will be targeted actions against politicians or the Prime Minister or what have you.

But here’s the big caveat–what ITAC does in particular, it doesn’t have its own operatives, it doesn’t do wiretaps, it doesn’t have undercover informants. It largely collects open source intelligence and sort of receives some information from the other espionage and national security agencies. And what ITAC is really good at is sort of combing through a lot of the open source stuff. A lot of things that are being said on social media, on message boards being set by some smaller groups, some possibly they call them IMVE actors or ideologically motivated violent extremist actors.

And ITAC in this case is noting an alarming rise in anti government and especially violent anti government rhetoric in advance of Canada Day. It makes very clear that it does not expect that this rhetoric is going to translate into real world violence. But it says it can’t discount the possibility. It’s picking up on increasing language from some of these groups that they are tired of the peaceful protest, they’re tired of going through things the quote unquote, proper way. They’re increasingly talking about the need to arrest public figures in the Prime Minister. They’re increasingly talking about the need to carry out some sort of more kind of muscular response, in some cases maybe in retribution for the police operation that happened in Ottawa in February. And ITAC notes that this is a real problem and it could actually lead, maybe not on Canada Day, but maybe some point in the future it could actually lead to a lone wolf attack or to a small group carrying out maybe even just an unsophisticated attack or targeted harassment or what have you. ITAC is basically drawing a big red circle around this and saying we have to be worried about this.

Jordan In a second we’ll get to differentiating, I guess, the small groups that could be prone to violence from the large number of people that are apparently there to protest. But since you mentioned there’s a conference going on right now and a number of these folks are already in Ottawa. I understand a few days ago they were inside the Parliament buildings. What was that about?

Justin Ling Yeah, so it’s an interesting problem. So there’s been a guy who since earlier this year, around March, April, has been running from Vancouver to Ottawa. His name is James Topp. He’s a veteran, he’s a former member of the Reserves. He’s been in the process of getting released and being court marshalled because he recorded a video of himself in uniform endorsing the convoy. And the in uniform piece there is really important. He’s not being punished because he supported the convoy, he’s being punished because he used the uniform of the Canadian Armed Forces to do so, which is completely improper. So ever since then he’s been running across the country in opposition to vaccine mandates, in support of police officers, Canadian Armed Forces personnel, bureaucrats, civil servants who have been released from their jobs for refusing to get vaccinated.

Now, James Topp is not a particularly radical figure, best as anyone can tell. He has made some, I think, alliances with some more rabidly anti vaccine groups, in one case with a more extremist organization. But generally speaking, James Topp’s message has been, I don’t want to talk about vaccines, I want to talk about vaccine mandates, I want to talk about the public servants who have been, who have left their jobs because of this. And when he got closer and closer to Ottawa, he clearly made some good connections with Conservative members of Parliament, apparently also one NDP member of Parliament. We haven’t actually heard from them. He in some cases done interviews, conversations with some of those MPs and when he showed up in Ottawa, many of those MPs came out to shake his hand and in some cases, to sit and listen to him speak. That in and of itself, I don’t think is a great surprise. I mean, this guy is a veteran. He just schlepped most of the way across the country. And again, it’s specifically about vaccine mandates in his case.

But here’s the thing. When some of those MPs showed up to the committee room where he had been invited to speak, they noticed two guys flanking him. One of the guys was Tom Morazzo, the former spokesperson for the occupation, and another guy named Paul Alexander, who’s a former Trump administration advisor, he’s Canadian. But he has espoused some of the most ridiculous and anti scientific, anti vaccine nonsense you can imagine. He is one of the most influential and public anti vaccine doctors in the world right now. And I know a couple of MPs saw this and went, James, nice to meet you, I’m taking off. I know a couple of MPs sat in the committee room, listened to a part of the presentation, got up and left. But many of the MPs stayed. And we’re talking about somewhere around a dozen MPs who sat in that room, who listened to Paul Alexander wax about how these vaccines are incredibly dangerous and how they’ve killed children, and how masks are dangerous, and PCR testing is fake and public social distancing is a farce and a scam. They sat and they listened to this.

And they also sat and listened to Tom Marazzo rant about the tyrannical government that had cracked down on the occupation in Ottawa, including a line where he says that he thinks Canada is slipping towards a civil war and the only way to prevent it is to collaborate with him and his movement. So this is completely unhinged. And those MPs sat in that room, and towards the end, one MP in particular, Jeremy Patzer, put his hand up and says, thank you so much for coming. You have supporters. You’ve always had supporters. Good luck. Others shook hands, took pictures with them. And this has been probably the most high profile and significant platforming of this movement since this whole thing began.

Jordan So just quickly, before we get onto the more extremist stuff, you mentioned vaccine mandates, and that’s what Topp is there to protest. Haven’t most restrictions around COVID basically everywhere in the country being lifted already? Listen, if you could understand it back in February, maybe, that’s one thing, but there’s nothing now. What are they so angry about?

Justin Ling I think in many cases, it’s mandates for public sector workers. I mean, they are now advocating strongly that anyone removed from their jobs or suspended for not being vaccinated should be reinstated and reimbursed for the time they were off work, which I think it’s not a completely obscene position, but I think it’s a clear sign that the goal posts are moving a bit. This movement by and large is not going to be satisfied with any reasonable policy position. I don’t want to speak for James Topp because I do believe that there’s a real chance that his concern really is about folks who have been moved from their jobs, folks who have gone through hardships because they won’t get vaccinated. And fair enough.

But many of the other people backing this movement, the folks who organize the occupation, the folks who are supporting the Canada Day rallies, the folks who are behind James Topp, they don’t care about vaccine mandates. They believe the vaccines themselves are dangerous. And you’ve heard language from these people that has said bluntly, they won’t be happy until the government stops recommending vaccines altogether. They won’t be happy until, in some cases, Paul Alexander has said extremely clearly on multiple occasions, he won’t be happy until there’s a tribunal set up to prosecute public health officials, mayors, premiers, the Prime Minister for, in some cases, crimes against humanity or war crimes. I mean, Tom Marazzo was tweeting earlier this year that he won’t be happy until Doug Ford and Justin Trudeau are tried and prosecuted for attempted murder. I mean, this is what these people want in many cases. It is not a reasonable policy aim. It is nothing less than a retribution for many public officials.

Jordan Maybe explain to me the darker side of this and maybe start with just who is Marcus Ray and what is his freedom movement?

Justin Ling Yeah, so Marcus Ray was a participant in the occupation in January and February, but not one who I really recognized, not one who had a significant following. I don’t even think he was even there for the whole time. But coming out of police clearing the encampment in February, he started getting a little more and more vocal. I mean, he’s a guy who he’s a motivational speaker to begin with. He originally got into this work after writing a book about his life as a former exotic male dancer and sort of leaving his life as a stripper and getting back on the straight and narrow, I suppose. And he’s going to use his skills as a motivational speaker to start addressing crowds who’ve come up to various kind of pro convoy rallies across the country, started doing interviews and podcasts, started amassing a big social media following specifically on TikTok, where he’s posting videos constantly. And he is pretty compelling. He’s a pretty compelling guy, especially in a movement that has sort of lacked leaders for the last little while. He has carved out a niche for himself amongst folks who are looking for a new sort of person to get behind. And his language has been a lot more direct than some other organizers. I mean, he has explicitly said the time for peaceful protest is over. He specifically said it’s time to go back to Ottawa and not back down this time.

He has come up with this absolutely hair brain scheme alongside another organizer called Christopher James. This hair brain scheme, largely informed by the sovereign citizens movement, or sometimes we call it the Freeman on the Land movement. And it’s a belief that Canadian laws and the Canadian government are illegitimate, that by showing up to a courthouse and saying the right series of words, that they can exempt themselves from Canadian law, that they can bestow upon themselves the right and authority to enforce the constitution. He has started this movement called Constitutional Sheriff’s Association of Canada that is largely cribbed from a rather extremist movement in the U.S. That basically posits that enough of them show up in Ottawa around some unspecified courthouse, that they can give themselves the authority to administer the laws of the country, that they can have the Prime Minister and health minister arrested, that they can basically abolish whatever laws they feel like, and that they’re not going to leave auto until it gets done. He at least has said explicitly that he’s bought defensive gear to protect themselves from rubber bullets or pepper spray or what have you.

They said clearly they’re not going to back down when police show up. Their plan is to surround a courthouse and not leave until they get their way. This is an extremely concerning development, but I think it’s an inevitable one. I mean, the language from this movement has been since the very beginning, we are on the side of right. We are on the side of good. The government is tyrannical. It is authoritarian, is illegitimate, and we won’t stop until we get our way.

Jordan The one thing that I found fascinating in your piece was the sort of schism that seems to be developing between different parts of this movement, between folks like James Topp or folks like Marcus Ray. Can you kind of describe what’s happening there? Because it seems like a few months ago they were much more on the same page, and now there are some wildly different objectives.

Justin Ling I don’t know if they were ever really on the same page, to be honest with you. I mean, from the origins of the convoy, you always had a schism between some folks who are a little bit more interested in sort of the street politics versus federal politics. I mean, Pat King was the kind of leader of this more motley crew of individuals who weren’t terribly interested in following what the spokespeople for the movement had to say, weren’t terribly interested in meeting with the Conservative Party. Their view was any sort of negotiation, any sort of collaboration is capitulation. We have the power, we should enforce it. And he had a substantial following. There was an attempt, really, to discredit him, to say that he was just some hanger on. But I can promise you a sizable amount of this movement consider themselves followers of Pat King more than they consider themselves followers of Tamara Lich, for example, who was sort of the face of a lot of this because she started the fundraiser.

So there’s always been this sort of divide and there’s always been extremist movements integrated into this movement. There has been an attempt to say that the extremist movements are again only hangers on, only followers, only trying to exploit this grassroots movement. But I can tell you that’s wrong. There’s a group called Diagalon led by a guy named Jeremy McKenzie. It’s sort of a loose knit group of far right streamers, many of whom have expressed white supremacist, anti Semitic, almost in some cases neo Nazi beliefs. They have been celebrated within the Convoy movement. For example, James Topp has gone on Jeremy McKenzie’s podcast, they had a pleasant conversation. I mean, they are not ostracized by any means. And it is members of Diagalon who were arrested in Coutts, Alberta and charged with a plot to kill RCMP officers.

It is just wrong to say that there’s this big split inside the movement. It’s more accurate to say it’s sort of a hodgepodge of different groups with different aims. But by and large they don’t disagree. They kind of feed off each other’s energy. Now, I should say Marcus Ray in particular has been denounced by other members of this movement, including the folks around James Topp, including even very boisterous, anti vaccine advocate, Chris Sky. They say that his rhetoric is too extremist, it’s too inflammatory. But it’s really unclear whether or not that means anything. We don’t know. It’s really hard to tell how many people line up behind each individual sort of leader in this movement.

Ray says he has somewhere in the ballpark of 5000 people coming out for him to Ottawa, including many ex military, ex police. I think that’s probably a wild overestimation but I don’t think it’s bizarre to think that he could probably amass a few hundred people. And if it’s true that he has bought this defensive kit that he’s talked about, I think that should be extremely worrying to people. I mean, he actually has amassed huge crowds of people as he’s toured the country. I mean, he was in Dawson City a few matter of weeks ago. He was touring up and down British Columbia. He’s been crisscrossing the country, building this movement and according to his own people, recruiting followers to come to Ottawa with him. So this is extremely worrying. And we also should be very alive to the fact that just because some other organizers say he’s not part of their movement doesn’t mean that people aren’t listening.

Jordan So I won’t ask you to predict the future, but what should people in Ottawa or people watching prepare for? We can talk about the police response in a second, but just in terms of all these disparate groups who have sort of the same goals descending on the capital, but also as opposed to the other protest, Canada Day is also usually a celebration on Parliament Hill, right? So what could this scene look like?

Justin Ling Again, I tend to think that ITAC has it right, but this will be a relatively calm, relatively peaceful candidate. I trust folks like James Topp and Tom Marazzo when they say their plan is not to hold demonstrations or protests on Canada Day, their plan is not to occupy the city. They say they’re going to show up at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier or the National War Memorial and hold some sort of demonstration. Then I think we’ll probably be fairly lowkey, much like the one they did in April. That was certainly a stage for some wild anti vaccine nonsense and some intense conspiracy theorizing, but was otherwise pretty respectful and kind of assembled and dispersed within a matter of hours.

So I trust them when they say that because I’ve seen no evidence of the contrary that could change. But it looks like the main organizers are gearing up for a pretty low key Canada Day. They’re saying they want to really leverage the relationships they built with the Conservative Party and with other political movements and sort of stretch out their goals throughout the summer to see kind of what political leverage they can get in the months to come. So I think they’ve largely moved away from these big sort of really in your face events like the occupation towards a more sustained political organizing movement. And I think they may have some success on that front. I mean, the Conservative Party is clearly willing to deal with them. Pierre Poilievre has worked really hard to try and get support from those sorts of organizers. You’ve seen those Conservative Members of Parliament show up and shake their hands and say, we’re with you. So I think that’s what to expect from them in the months that’s come.

But I think as many of those organizers try and go more mainstream, you will see the more radical elements of this movement try and flex their muscles a little more. And that’s where Marcus Ray is coming from. We still don’t know what his Canada Day plans are. He actually has kept them relatively under wraps. He has previewed this idea of showing up at a courthouse in Ottawa. We don’t know which courthouse. We don’t know whether that’s the Supreme Court or the courthouse on Elgin Street. So what that could look like is a big question mark. And I think anyone coming out for Canada Day should be prepared for that.

I don’t think, and much like ITAC does not think, much like it seemingly at all, police don’t think, I don’t think, this is going to get harry. I don’t think we’re going to have our own January 6th moment on Canada Day. But these things are incredibly hard to predict. I mean, the big questions are how many people does Marcus Ray get out? Do Ottawa police do a good job of setting up a cordon around the courthouse in advance? Do they intend on staying there if and when whatever courtroom says to Marcus Ray get lost? What happens if things don’t go his way? And this is sort of the constant sort of worst case scenario planning you have to do in this situation. I think for the average person showing up to Ottawa for Canada Day, this is nothing to worry about. Listen to the cops, follow any good advice you get, follow the news, keep tabs on Twitter or Facebook or whatever, but I don’t think there’s a huge threat there. But again, things can move very quickly.

Jordan Last thing then, and you just touched on it. What do we know about how seriously the Ottawa police are preparing for this? What steps they’ve got planned, if anything? I mean, the first protest spiralled out of control because of an initial reluctance for police to step in. Is there a potential for making that mistake again?

Justin Ling I don’t think they’ll be making the same mistakes. At the very least, you’ve already seen a plan from them to basically block off most of the downtown core for cars. So I don’t foresee another occupation of downtown. And what’s more, like I said, the main convoy organizers are not talking about an occupation. They’re not telling people to drive into the downtown core. They’re not planning for any huge protest or rally. So I think on that front, the Ottawa police are probably pretty well set. The big question for me is whether or not they are keeping adequate tabs on not just Marcus Ray, but whether or not the Diagonal guys are going to come to town. Whether or not, let’s say the folks on the Gatno side, the Fufada, are planning–I think I got that name right–are planning something kind of more muscular with their elbows up. I think there’s a lot of moving parts to this.

There’s a lot of groups and organizations and organizers who have a whole bunch of different ideas about what things should look like. Some of them are probably being pretty vocal in that organizing and some of them are probably being pretty quiet about it. So I think there’s a lot of reason to be concerned. I think with the benefit of hindsight about what went wrong last time. I can only imagine that the Ottawa Police Service are heavily leaning on the Ontario Provincial Police, the RCMP, CSIS, any number of national security agencies that they can get on the phone, and that there will be a tightly integrated response this time. And I think that’s kind of, in many cases, the best you can hope for because that certainly was not the case when this convoy showed up in January. And that’s what stymied a huge amount of the response. Just a lack of communication, the lack of coordination, the lack of collaboration that went into this response.

Jordan I guess we’ll have to wait and see what happens on Canada Day. Justin, thank you for this. Are you spending your Canada Day on the hill now?

Justin Ling Unfortunately, yes.

Jordan Well, stay safe, man. Thanks again.

Justin Ling Thanks.

Jordan Justin Ling writing in Vice. You can subscribe to his newsletter for free, at least at first, by going to bugeyedandshameless.com. We don’t quite have that kind of URL, but you can go to thebigstorypodcast.ca to find the rest of our episodes. You can also talk to us on Twitter at @TheBigStoryFPN. You can write to us[click here!], and you can call us and rant as much as you like by dialing 416-935-5935. As always, if you’re listening in a podcast player that lets you rate or review, please do so. If you are not, you have to tell a friend in real life about with this show. I don’t make the rules.

Thanks for listening. I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings. We’ll talk tomorrow.

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