[00:00:00]

 

Shawn Buckley

So our next witness is attending virtually, Mr. David Freiheit. David, can you hear me?

 

David Freiheit

I can hear you. Can you hear me?

 

Shawn Buckley

We can hear you and we can see you. I probably pronounced your last name incorrectly. I know you’re known with your online commentary as Viva Frei. Is that right? Or Viva Free?

 

David Freiheit

Yeah, my last name is Freiheit. It’s verbatim: freedom in German. So it’s a good name to have.

 

Shawn Buckley

So, David, can you state your full name for the record, spelling your first and last name?

 

David Freiheit

David Andrew Freiheit. D-A-V-I-D, Andrew, F-R-E-I-H-E-I-T; F like Fred and T like tango.

 

Shawn Buckley

David, do you promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

 

David Freiheit

So help me God, yes.

 

Shawn Buckley

Now, you have a very interesting background. So you were a lawyer. You used to practise in litigation, but you’ve gone on to other things. You’ve become quite a celebrity as an online commentator. I’ve heard of you from individual after individual after individual. And I actually got to know your brother a little bit on some Zoom calls to see if I could get him to be volunteer counsel for the NCI. So I’m very pleased to meet you. You’re being called primarily to talk about your experience with the Trucker Convoy because we’re in Ottawa, and that was an experience that was really significant to people living in Ottawa. So I’m wanting you to share—because you weren’t living in Ottawa at the time—how you got involved and what your experience was.

 

David Freiheit

Well, I’ll let everyone out there know I didn’t always look like this. I didn’t always have the grimace wrinkle of a world-gone-mad on my forehead. I used to be a clean-shaven young lawyer. And some people might have seen me online from old videos, like the squirrel stealing a GoPro. But yeah, when the world went crazy, I had already started doing online legal analysis, sort of explaining lawsuits and breaking things down. Then the world fell off a cliff in 2020. If I may start, I’ll share my screen for one second.

 

Shawn Buckley

Absolutely.

 

David Freiheit

I didn’t make a PowerPoint presentation, but I’ve got my backups here. For what I’m about to talk about, it’s worth starting off with a quote from Benito Mussolini. This is not the exact quote, but it’s close enough: “The definition of fascism is the marriage of corporation and state.” What I have lived through and what we have all lived through over the last, starting March 2020, it has been fascism not in the juvenile sense of throwing the word around; it has been fascism in the actual Benito Mussolini sense: where I’ve witnessed the government working in tandem with corporations, working in tandem with the media, not to inform, not to control information but to purvey and propagate disinformation.

 

Shawn Buckley

Can I just slow you down? Because fascism is a term that is used very loosely now. And it’s used, actually, to deflect and to make people—that aren’t fascists at all—be not heard from. It is almost like the term “anti-vax” or “climate denier” now. My understanding, and you can correct me if I’m wrong, is the word corporatism simply refers to where the state interests and the corporate interests have largely become one and the two are working together. I guess Mussolini is very famous [for], when people would be talking about corporatism, saying, “No, no, you should call that fascism.” You brought that definition up, and so fascism—just so people understand who are watching your testimony today—when they see the word “fascism,” they need to understand that just describes the state of affairs where the state interests and the corporate interests are intertwined and working together. Is that right?

 

David Freiheit

Well, that’s my understanding of the actual historical definition, not the way it’s used this day. Like, you know, everyone’s a fascist—and not to get too distracted—if you don’t believe in certain things, you’re a fascist. It’s thrown around today, but it actually has a meaning. And it’s a meaning that I’ve come to understand the importance of, which is corporation and government working in tandem because they have shared interests.

 

I’ve now witnessed firsthand in my evolution how this happens. I was young enough to remember people saying defund the CBC, you know, pre-2016. I had no idea what that meant, why it was being said. And now I understand because we’ve lived through this together. We lived through the shutdown of the world. We lived through—literally, it’s come out now, and I’ll bring up some articles if the world needs to see the homework—a world in which the government

 

[00:05:00]

 

decided the pandemic was a good time to test propaganda techniques on the citizens that they were currently locking down, shutting down, subjecting to unconstitutional and unconscionable restrictions.

 

And what way to do that? Well, it helps when you have the media in your hand. And so how did all this happen?

 

I had my YouTube channel. I was doing legal analysis, trying to keep my opinion out of it, thinking you can make everybody happy by not sharing your own personal opinion. Little did I know that at some point silence became violence. And then the world shut down. And I started, you know, I didn’t want the channel—and I didn’t want my entire life—to turn into COVID stuff. But lo and behold, there was nothing left: we were shut in our homes literally for years. I was in Quebec where we had five and a half months of curfew in 2021, and then because it worked so well and it was such a good idea, we had another month and a half of curfew in 2022 despite Arruda, the chief medical officer of Quebec, saying, “You don’t use curfews to fight a virus.”

 

So all of this culminated in the trucker protest, which was, for a great many people, not the light at the end of the tunnel but the only ray of sunshine that they had seen in years. I mean that is where my awakening comes into this. My experience in Ottawa, which was life altering and trajectory altering, where— I’m doing my daily stuff complaining about the lockdowns in Quebec, the tyrannical governments, doing my Viva walking on the streets. And it started off with people in my chat saying, “Viva, why aren’t you covering the Convoy? “And I’m sitting there saying, “What convoy?”

 

I now understand the same MO—the same modus operandi that happens every time—it’s first a media that is reliant or adherent or subservient to the government. Well, their system is the same: Ignore something until you can’t ignore it. Minimize it once you can’t ignore it. Demonize it once you can’t successfully minimize it. And that’s exactly what happened with legacy media in Canada.

 

Shawn Buckley

So can I get you to slow that down because I think you’re saying something really important. We have quite a large audience, and the demographics actually mimics vaccine injury, which is quite interesting. So there will be people watching your testimony that will never have heard what you just said. So I’m just wondering if you can say it again but kind of slow it down to parse that out because it’s somewhat important. And then carry on with explaining how you found out what was really going on.

 

David Freiheit

I was doing my best to slow things down.

 

Shawn Buckley

Yes.

 

David Freiheit

I’ve been told that I talk fast. Step by step, it’s the MO of the media when they have an interest and they want to propagate a narrative: Ignore until the point that you can’t ignore it anymore, and then you either minimize or distract. Minimize or distract to the point where you can no longer do that because it’s gained sufficient momentum. And then you have to move into the demonize and lambaste. You can see this over and over again for populist movements, political candidates. It’s the classic MO.

 

So I was doing my daily rants on the street because I was allowed out of my house because I had a dog, after 8 o’clock. The joys of COVID. So people are telling me, “Viva, why aren’t you talking about the Convoy?” And this is a month or two before the Convoy, maybe a month before. And I’m saying, “I haven’t even heard of this.” Because the CBC and the state-subsidized and state-funded legacy media wasn’t talking about it. Then I start going on CBC to see what’s going on. And then, after the ignoring, we had the distraction.

 

CBC starts reporting about an alleged convoy in British Columbia going from one British Columbia town to another, but they’re protesting road conditions. Nothing to see here, move on. Then I notice the CBC, at one point, updated that article and said, “Oh, that convoy is not the one that’s headed to Ottawa.” And that’s when the CBC understood that this Convoy going to Ottawa was too big to ignore. Too big to distract or misrepresent, and so what did they have to do?

 

Step right up to item 3: demonize and lambaste. For the viewers watching, for everybody watching, if they don’t truly understand—CBC/Radio Canada is subsidized to the tune of 1.2 billion dollars a year under the federal law. It is true that the federal law was enacted prior to Trudeau. In theory, it is whatever federal government is in power at that time that subsidizes them.

 

But when you see the indirect distorted interests of the media to placate or favour one government that doesn’t want to defund them and to dehumanize the other— You’ll notice that the CBC, once upon a time,

 

[00:10:00]

 

sued the Conservative Party of Canada for copyright infringement for using some of their material for a campaign ad—but never sued the Liberal government similarly—using our taxpayer dollars to sue a political party, one of the two big federal political parties.

 

Understanding this now, the CBC could no longer ignore this Convoy that was coming from all corners of Canada. So once they can’t ignore, once they can’t misrepresent, they then have to move into demonizing. And that’s when they start demonizing the truckers as extremists, anti-science, anti-vaxxers, yada, yada. At this point none of us really understood how big it was ever going to get. And they’re doing their best to try to ignore the young children and the people with their flags of hope on overpasses across the country.

 

Shawn Buckley

And I’ll just stop you there because people that are watching internationally won’t understand. So when the truckers started moving from different parts of the country and driving towards Ottawa, the citizens would literally line up along the road, every overpass covered in flags and placards. And they couldn’t buy a meal and they couldn’t pay for their diesel—like, people were supporting them along the way and that was part of the experience that Canadians had. Because we have people watching internationally, I felt the need to jump in and fill that in.

 

David Freiheit

Please, don’t worry. And they were doing it everywhere. I mean, they did it in Montreal; they would stand on overpasses. You had these wonderful images of hope and people standing behind the truckers—the truckers who would ultimately become an international movement, which obviously upset Justin Trudeau even more. So the media has to demonize them, and so they start calling them all sorts of names at first. But at this time, also, nobody understood what this protest was going to turn into.

 

You had truckers driving across the country, not knowing how they were going to pay for fuel or not knowing— Just, enough is enough, we’re going to the capital. People also should appreciate Ottawa is not a random town. It’s the capital of Canada; it’s where protest occurs when protest needs to occur. So all of this is happening, and I’m starting to pay attention to it, starting to understand this is turning into something special. As luck would then have it—or bad luck would have it, although I think it all ended up well—I was in Florida for a Project Veritas event, back before Project Veritas turned into what it is today. But then people were saying, “Viva, what are you doing at a Project Veritas event? Get your butt to Ottawa.” So I’m like, “Okay, I’ll get back to Canada and I’ll go.”

 

In the meantime, I’m starting to see what the CBC and other legacy media are reporting from Ottawa: I’m seeing reports of Nazi flags. I’m seeing reports of Confederate flags. I’m seeing reports about defacing the Terry Fox memorial. People urinating or desecrating the [National] War Memorial that is in downtown Ottawa. But I’m simultaneously, literally, getting tweets, messages, video clips from people on the street saying, “This is all a big fat lie.”

 

I’m sitting there; it’s like, I’m seeing not one screen, two films. I’m seeing—someone’s telling me that they’re seeing blue when it’s red. And so, it’s like okay, “Well, I’m going to get to Ottawa the Monday I get back,” which is after it started on the Friday.

 

I had never done this before. I did livestream where we talk about subjects, but I’ve never done a walking around real-time livestream. I said, “Look, I’m going to drive down to Ottawa. I see what the CBC is saying. I’m going to drive down and I’m going to livestream. And if there are Nazi flags there, the world’s going to see it for good or for bad, for right or for wrong. If there’s Confederate flags, violence, and mayhem, then the world is going to see it in real time as I see it.”

 

I get down there. I drive down from Montreal. I drove down there and back every day, except for one night when I tried to stay in a hotel. But that was when I think the government either bought up all the hotel rooms or forced them to cancel reservations because they cancelled my reservation.

 

I get down there. And you understand them: It’s like eyes wide open for the first time, ever. I understood we’re being lied to. And not just lied to—because it’s one thing if you know someone’s lying to you—it’s a more insidious type of lie when they try to make you think that it’s reality. It worked on so many people. I get down there, the Monday after reading news about Nazi flags, desecrating the War Memorial, and desecrating the Terry Fox memorial. 

 

At this point, let me bring up one of my footnotes here: the article about the desecration of the Terry Fox memorial. This is CBC and this is how they reported it, and it’s so subtly insidious: “Anger over defacement of Terry Fox statue, a sign of his ‘unique’ legacy, says mayor of icon’s hometown.”

 

[00:15:00]

 

When I talk about the fake news—and people are going to immediately think of the Trumpian term—this is government-subsidized propaganda. And you’ll notice, in all of these CBC articles that I’m going to bring up, the tactic: They make a statement, but then they quote someone else, “says mayor of icon’s hometown.” So they’re not making the statement, but they’re saying the statement, referring to another government official who makes the statement—it’s misleading, and it’s utterly dishonest. So you read the headline, and for anybody who gets past it, you might see this picture of the defacement of Terry Fox [image of Terry Fox statue with a Team Canada baseball cap and Canadian Flag wrapped around his neck].

 

Words have meaning, as a lawyer, my father always said, “Words are the tools of your trade.” Defacement typically means something semi-permanent, more permanent than a cap, even if one were inclined to think that a cap is defacing a statue. They don’t show you the bottom of the statue, at least yet. So anybody who gets this far, and says, “Oh, my goodness”—well, even I thought this at the time—”there must be something going on at the bottom of that statue.” Spray paint, dirt, something along those lines. You get down to it—once you scroll down far enough—and this is the defacing of the Terry Fox memorial that they were complaining about [image of Terry Fox statue holding a sign: Mandate Freedom]. Now, again, they didn’t make the statement; they’re just quoting the mayor of Terry Fox’s hometown. Why is this so gleamingly insidious? That’s defacement.

 

And when you want to talk about a media that has a vested interest to demonize one group while lionizing another, this is a tweet from Sheila Gunn-Reed from back in the day. Let’s see if I can find this. Can we see that now?

 

Shawn Buckley

Yes, we can.

 

David Freiheit

Okay, it’s tucked down here somewhere behind all this.

 

You have a tweet from Sheila Gunn Reed, which compares, you know, historical defacement of the Terry Fox—sorry, alleged defacement—from the Convoy with what is otherwise “just celebration” [Sheila Gunn Reid Tweet comparing image of Terry Fox statue at the Convoy, with Team Canada baseball cap, Canadian Flag, and Mandate Freedom sign, with another image of Terry Fox statue celebrating Pride week, holding a Pride flag and flowers]. It’s the same media that’s doing this: they’ll take two images, which are by and large the same, and demonize one based on ideology while lionizing another based on ideology.

 

Who does it benefit?

 

Well, it benefits the government, and it benefits Justin Trudeau in effectively shaping—and as you say, not just Justin Trudeau but Doug Ford, all the provincial leaders—it helps them mislead an entire population as to what’s actually going on for anybody who gets past the headline, which is already a very small percentage, and even then, it’s buried in there.

 

And they do this so that they can create, promote a narrative that favours the government, a government which subsidizes them, and then people see this and think that they are informed. I knew people in Ottawa, not to identify anybody who doesn’t want to be part of this. I’ve known people who live in Ottawa who thought what was going on was what was being depicted in the CBC; none of them stepped foot in downtown. And they all believed that they knew what was going on and that the truckers were Nazis, that they were desecrating statues, urinating on them.

 

I went down there with my camera, and I ran around, literally, everywhere. And I go past the memorial: it’s clean; it’s shovelled. There might have been what looked like coffee on the side of it, but, by that point, the lie has travelled around the world and the truth, as they say, is still putting on its pants. I did this for 13 or 14 days: just drive in, see what’s going on and talk to people—just talk to people and hear them in the same way that they’re talking now and sharing their stories with the world now because our elected officials refused. They didn’t even have the courage or the dignity to come down and talk with any of the protesters—people who just wanted to be heard and share their story after two years of what can only be described as unconscionable inhumane abuse. They didn’t have the courage to step down and talk to them. I just went around hearing people’s stories, see what was going on firsthand. It wasn’t to misrepresent; it was just to show without a filter what was going on. And that, without a filter, led to CTV News’ “W5” attempting to make me look bad, as if to say, “This guy goes around with a camera with no filter; he’s very popular. What’s going on? Why are people watching this?”

 

Without understanding that that’s exactly what the people want: it’s just the truth of what was going on. And I went down there and I saw it with my own eyes. You know, when the CBC was talking about kids—hold on, I’ll bring this one up as well—kids being among the crowd, making it hard for police to do their numbers. Here, I think this is it; yes, this looks like it. Look at this. CBC, notice the tactic: They make a statement, “Large number of children among protesters hampering response, police say.” Oh, well, we’ll just unquestionably and unquestioningly repeat what the police say so that we can then continue with demonizing. And not just demonizing, by the way,

 

[00:20:00]

 

because I was there seeing people in tears because the implicit threat was that the government was going to come in and take children away.

 

This is not just demonizing and calling people Nazis or whatever. This is, you know, saying these parents are putting their children at risk, using them as human shields. But CBC says it again, “Large number of children among protesters hampering response, police say.” CBC is not saying it. They’re just repeating it for and on behalf of the government to the benefit of the government.

 

And then, look at this, if anyone thought— Is this the right one here? Yeah, this is it. Ottawa police [an Ottawa Police tweet]: The CBC is just repeating the Ottawa police, repeating it and not condemning it. When the Ottawa police come in and say, “Protesters have put children between police operations and the unlawful protest site,” they deemed a constitutional right unlawful just like that, willy-nilly. But set that aside. “The children will be brought to a place of safety.” To me that is a very sinister threat of government-sanctioned kidnapping, but it didn’t actually get there—but not for lack of trying from the CBC media. So I’m down there, oh, goodness. Yeah, sorry, go for it.

 

Shawn Buckley

Well, I’m just wondering, describe what you saw. So you’re telling us about all this demonizing and you’re telling us you were down there. So what did you see?

 

David Freiheit

I said I wasn’t going to cry because I think it’s weird when people cry. I cry when I get upset, but I also cry when I get really, really frustrated. What I saw there was one of the few times where I was on the verge of tears because of how magnificent it was. It was noisy: there’s no doubt about it. There were horns and there was a beauty in the horns. But it was nothing but the most beautiful thing I have ever seen, for those of us who had spent two years under psychological, economic, financial, and spiritual abuse.

 

You know the previous witness talking about how Peel region was talking about locking kids up as young as five years if they just came across someone who’s— We had lived through that. I saw people smiling. Hugging. And I’m never one to hug; I’m a bit of a germophobe even before all this. I even started to hug. You saw people smiling; you saw people wearing masks mingling among the crowd. But the media was saying that, you know, the truckers were demonizing people who were wearing masks.

 

Another grotesque lie because a lot of people, known to everybody there, were wearing masks so they wouldn’t get identified and fired from their jobs for participating, partaking, or even being at the protest site. I saw kids playing hockey. There was the jacuzzi towards the end of it, the hot tub. Kids playing hockey, dancing, smiling. There was a section by Wellington and the main intersection, right in front of that hotel, the fancy hotel—

 

Shawn Buckley

Elgin.

 

David Freiheit

I called it the dance-dance. It was, say it again.

 

Shawn Buckley

Elgin.

 

David Freiheit

Elgin Street, yes absolutely. There was this section, I called it the dance-dance revolution because they had trucks—they were playing dance music; people were dancing. I’m not saying this, because I don’t look at people and immediately see race, religion, identity, sexual orientation, I’m saying this because for a group that was called misogynist, there were women all over the place. For a group that was called racist, I interviewed Iraqis. There were black— I don’t know if they were Canadians, but there were people of all races there. They were called anti-trans; I interviewed a trans person who was at the protest, Ari was their name. I interviewed this person and we had a good time. And Ari said that the only time they felt any form of hatred was when they crossed the line from the counter-protesters to the protesters, when the counter-protesters realized, “Oh, this is no longer an ally, Ari is an enemy.” I interviewed people from all over the world. I interviewed Big Bear, a native man. And I’m listening to the media say that this group of trucker protesters was anti-black, racist, anti-Semitic, misogynist.

 

It was hogwash from day one, and I learned that after day one. Trista Suke, day one, I meet a beautiful young woman who’s walking around with a guitar. I had no idea who she was. She says, “I want to sing you a song,” and this was at the far end of the protest. And I was nervous for her because, you know, I was worried it was going to be like an “America’s Got Talent” bad audition. She started singing and she sang Amazing Grace, and it was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard.

 

This was what the protest was.

 

And then for two and a half weeks, you had the CBC running around with that lone picture of a swastika on a flag. No one ever knew who that person was. But, you know, very fortunately there was a professional photographer right near him, so he could get that shot. You know, diffuse it to the media who would then run it around saying, “Oh, we’re just reporting.”

 

[00:25:00]

 

For anybody who doesn’t know that one scene on day one when someone was there with a Nazi swastika flag: The media ran with that. Politicians ran with that. Marco Mendicino ran with that. Justin Trudeau, Jagmeet Singh, they all ran with it. The media helped them, and they had their disinformation-laundering campaign perfectly set up. It’s unclear what that person was even doing because there are some people who suggest the person was there with the Nazi flag to suggest that Justin Trudeau’s regime was behaving like previous Hitlerian regimes. Others are saying he was a plant. Who knows? Bottom line: that flag existed on one person for one moment, never came back. And after that, it was nothing but love, peace, and a sense of joy that Canadians had not felt—and the world had not felt—in two years. Sorry, I heard you want to say something.

 

Shawn Buckley

Well, no, you answered my question because we’ve all seen that image because the mainstream media just kept repeating that image. So, you know, it’s now a famous image in Canada, and it’s burned into our minds regardless of whether we bought into the government narrative or not. And so I was just going to ask you, because you were literally walking around live streaming day after day, if you ever saw a Nazi or Confederate flag at the trucker protest?

 

David Freiheit

I never saw one and I didn’t edit anything. I went for five and a half hours, sometimes every day, and I saw what I saw. And it’s not just that I saw what I saw because I asked cops. I asked the police: “Have you guys seen any vandalism? Have you seen any violence?” They said, “No, it’s cleaner and safer now that it’s ever been.” And I should add this, I’m very familiar with the city of Ottawa. I never felt comfortable in the city of Ottawa; I might be a bit neurotic and nervous, in general. But nobody liked downtown Ottawa at night because it’s not a place where you would go walk at night. No judgment. There might be, you know, reasons why the government has sort of failed the homeless population and the addicts of Ottawa. But it’s not a place where you would walk around; the Rideau area, it’s not a place where you’d walk around at night. I had never seen the downtown core of Ottawa cleaner, safer. The homeless people were being fed. And so when you read these bogus rubbish stories coming out that the truckers went and harassed a homeless shelter and demanded food—they were literally cooking food on the streets and feeding the homeless people.

 

And it was so in your face and so shocking what I saw. And I went to ask the cops, “Have you guys seen anything?” At one point, one of the policemen said to me, “Yeah, actually, there’s a broken window across the street.” I was like, “Oh, where?” And then he giggles saying, “I’m joking; it has nothing to do with the protest.” You could not understand what it—wasn’t—unless you had been there. But they did a good job doing what they’re doing in terms of making people think they understood what was going on, and it has its impact. And I always say, “The toxicity is a trickle-down and a trickle-up.”

 

Let me play a clip. I interviewed a counter-protester. I’m just going to play one section of this interview. Let me see if I can bring it up here. And I’m not bringing this up to mock the person. I have no idea who this person was, ironically enough, wearing masks, and nobody cared. But listen to what the protester said. I thought this rang interesting.

 

[Video] Counter-protester

The occupation of Ottawa has to end. I live just outside the Red Zone. It’s appalling. I cannot go to an office building. I can’t shop. I can’t go to church. I can’t—

 

Viva Frei

You can’t shop. You can’t go to an office. You can’t go to church. What do you have to say to the people who are protesting because they can’t go to church, they can’t go shopping, and they can’t go to the office because of the government.

 

Counter-protester

Get vaccinated,

 

David Freiheit

“Get vaccinated.” Listen.

 

[Video] Counter-protester

and do what you can.

 

Viva Frei

Okay, but now, if I may ask, could you recognize a certain inconsistency in telling someone that they have to do something with their body to do the thing that you’re complaining you can’t do now because it’s an inconvenience?

 

Counter-protester

It’s not an inconvenience, that’s an occupation.

 

David Freiheit

“Occupation.”

 

[Video] Counter-protester

I’m not telling them that they have to be vaccinated. I’m saying that if they want certain things, certain rights then they have to be vaccinated. If they want certain rights, you can’t drive a car without a seat belt without facing the consequences.

 

David Freiheit

Where she says, “without facing the consequences,” she goes on to say, “Get vaccinated or there will be consequences.”

 

[Video] Counter-protester

You can’t drive drunk without facing the consequences. If you don’t want to be vaccinated, then you have to face the consequences. 

 

David Freiheit

Where did we hear that terminology being used? I had to go back and double-check.

 

Shawn Buckley

So this is a counter-protester, just so it’s clear for everyone watching. This isn’t anyone involved at the Trucker Convoy, but they were counter-protesters. You went and interviewed this counter-protester.

 

David Freiheit

I interviewed a couple. I wasn’t there to pick fights or start fights, but I went to interview this counter-protester. The one thing people should remark from that interview is that you could hear it,

 

[00:30:00]

 

and this was barely four blocks down from the core of the protest. She went on later to say that it’s torture, the noise. We were conducting an outdoor interview on my iPhone, and you could barely hear the horns from up the street.

 

But “get vaccinated or there will be consequences”: where did I hear that terminology? This was February 2022. Well, lo and behold, you know, this was the exact terminology Justin Trudeau had used in August 2021. I had to double-check the dates to see which one came first. And you see how this all works: It comes from the “top down,” recycled and regurgitated by the media that doesn’t hold the government’s feet to the fire. I’ve been saying that the Canadian media has gone from being the government watchdog to being the government lap dog. And so you get the government, you get Justin Trudeau, the highest person in political power in Canada: “If you don’t get vaccinated, there will be consequences.” You don’t get a media grilling him for this Nuremberg-level violation of everything that history has taught us.

And then it trickles down, recycled, and then, lo and behold, you get your citizens regurgitating and repeating what would otherwise be atrocity-speak in different ages. I interviewed this protester. You could hear the interview. They were claiming it was an occupation: She said, you know, “The horns, it’s torture. It’s a violation of international law.” And I asked her if she knew about the Nuremberg Code, and, lo and behold, you know, CBC wasn’t exactly teaching people about the Nuremberg Code.

 

But that’s what happened. I walked around. I talked to people and I heard their stories. I interviewed a woman whose two sons died of overdose during the pandemic. You can’t listen to something like that and not have your heart hurt beyond any way that you can ever repair. But, you know, Jagmeet Singh, who goes down on Parliament Hill to protest with the federal workers, didn’t step down. They like to use the word “step up.” That’s the propaganda, you know, “people step up.”

 

The government wouldn’t even take a foot down into the protest to listen to these people. A woman who lost both of her sons to overdose during the pandemic. She was telling me how, you know, they were good; they got their lives back on track. And then everything shut down: they lost their jobs, and they relapsed and died. No, the government doesn’t have the courage to talk to her. The media doesn’t have the courage to talk to her.

 

You get the CBC down there, and this I saw also. The most interesting was not just seeing the distortion of reality but seeing how they do it. So you get the CBC—and others, I mean, I don’t want to only pick on them, but they really deserve it—looking for the drunkest people to interview, then interview the drunk people, and then say, “Look at this representative of the crowd down here. It’s a bunch of bums, drunken; they’re just looking for excuses to do this.” They look for the exceptions to make the rule, and they don’t actually talk to the people themselves. It was revelatory, but well, let me bring this one up.

 

This is just something that the world needs to see, speaking to what the CBC does in terms of reporting. This was an actual article. We’re talking about state-funded media that is there to parrot and condition the population to accept unconscionable government measures. Why? Because they’re subsidized by them directly and/or indirectly. This was an article, “The pleasure and peril of snitching on your neighbours during a pandemic.” And their only problem with it, by the way, “Experts say reporting on neighbours offers a sense of control but adversely affects minorities.” This is Canadian media, fully subsidized by government taxpayer dollars, and what they’re out there doing is parroting, pre-suasion— planting the seeds—preconditioning people to accept the unacceptable and normalizing it.

 

Shawn Buckley

You know, it’s interesting that reporter obviously hadn’t learned what we learned in Manitoba. Because when the Commission has been travelling to different provinces, we’ve had one of our video people assemble news clips of the government speaking during the pandemic. In Manitoba, they didn’t call them snitches; they called them “ambassadors.” It was really Orwellian. I mean, it was upsetting to watch. And what the government was saying, they were basically encouraging people to snitch as if we were in East Germany, and, you know, there was the Stasi.

 

David Freiheit

It’s the Orwellian newspeak like the previous witness was saying, you know, “We’re closer together by being further apart.” What is it? “War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength.” I forget the exact order, but it’s nothing less than Orwellian newspeak.

[00:35:00]

 

Just to show receipts as well, this was the CBC, and notice the tactic again; it’s the third time we’ve noticed it: “Protest convoy had ‘worst display of Nazi propaganda in this country,’ anti-hate advocate says.” So the CBC is not saying it. They’re just repeating what someone else says without holding their feet to the fire, without challenging it: it’s the “worst display of Nazi propaganda in this country.” This is, I like to say, “confession through projection,” on my channel: accuse your enemies of doing what you’re doing. This is the worst display of propaganda imaginable. You have the CBC, not saying it, just repeating someone else—the anti-hate network has its own problems in terms of reputation—but just repeating it: the “worst display of Nazi propaganda the country” has ever seen. And I went down there. Didn’t see one Nazi flag, and it wasn’t for lack of trying. Didn’t see anything but the most beautiful unification I had ever seen.

 

I should say, it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen until Justin Trudeau deployed the stormtroopers after having invoked the Emergencies Act. I didn’t see a lick of violence until the cops came in. Police, I should say the police—the RCMP, Sudbury Police, OPP, who are the other ones, Sûreté du Québec from Québec. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen until the government said, “We have been embarrassed enough,” and then called in the police.

 

I was down there the Friday and Saturday when they broke it up. And they came in, at the direction of Justin Trudeau, like literal stormtroopers in flank. One step at a time, knocking people, what do they call it, “the shove and grab,” knocking people over, arresting them. I was there the day that they had assaulted, violently arrested, Chris Deering, an Afghanistan war veteran. A war veteran—his body had been literally destroyed in battle where his other mates did not survive—violently arrested, cuffed, had his hands behind his back for two hours. Then they drove them outside of the city and dumped them off like trash and let them make their way back.

 

I was there the Friday and the Saturday, and they had snipers on roofs, drones in the sky. They were detonating concussive grenades. I was like five feet from a concussive grenade as it detonated, as they’re clearing the streets one after the other. Because Justin Trudeau, who promotes protest in India, promotes the rights of the citizens to protest in China— It wasn’t even a question of negotiating. We now know from the Commission [Public Order Emergency Commission, (POEC)] that they had effectively negotiated some form of an agreement whereby the trucks would leave. But Justin Trudeau was so desperate to turn this into a quasi-January 6th—

 

Shawn Buckley

Let me just stop you, and I do want you to continue. But I just want the people that are watching your testimony to understand. So what you’re communicating is the Emergencies Act was being invoked. So people understood that the troops were coming, so to speak, and the truckers had arranged to negotiate and had communicated “We will leave.” So it wasn’t necessary for the police to come in. And we’ve actually had one, I think, two witnesses that were involved in those communications, “We will leave.” So I think it’s important for people to understand, especially those that watched the troops come in—and there’s still the videos online—that was completely unnecessary. That basically the truckers had agreed to leave and disembark and vacate the capital.

 

David Freiheit

I have sort of taken for granted and, wrongly, that everybody knows exactly what I’m thinking. Yes, so the protest goes on for near three weeks and peaceful, but it wasn’t ending. The Windsor Bridge blockade, which everyone knows because that blockaded the border between America and Canada, Ontario and Michigan, had already been resolved via court order.

 

But Justin Trudeau was hellbent on invoking the Emergencies Act, which used to be the War Measures Act, which is the invocation of last resort for when there’s a national emergency for which existing laws are inadequate to remedy. So Trudeau was hellbent on doing this. We now know this from the Commission (POEC), which revealed that they were discussing it. And even though a negotiation had been reached between the truckers and the city to at least clear up certain areas, that settlement was basically set aside so they could invoke the Emergencies Act, which was after the Windsor Bridge blockade, if you want to call it that, had already been resolved via court order.

 

So I don’t care what the Commissioner Rouleau concluded.

 

[00:40:00]

 

It was the most egregious, unjustified, unconstitutional overreach to invoke the Emergencies Act for an issue of national security—a national crisis that cannot be resolved by existing laws—as relates to a protest in a four-block Red Zone, in pinpoint, geographically limited to Ottawa.

 

If nobody knows what an overreach that was, I’ve broken it down quite a bit on my channel. He invoked the Emergencies Act and then the police start coming in. Everybody knew it was going to end badly or more badly. The police came in flanks. You had multiple police [forces]. You had some with no identification badges coming in on the Thursday, Friday, Saturday, setting up fences, which people thought were for kettling, which is, you know, crowding people in so they can get arrested. You had heavily militarized police, armored vehicles, and police people, no badges. You didn’t know who they were, just numbers. You don’t know where they came from. And then all hell breaks loose of violence on the Friday and the Saturday when they decide it’s over.

 

I said during this event, “If this event does not end in reshaping and revolutionizing where the world is headed, it’ll be the biggest black pill following the biggest white pill that I’ve ever had.” The day that this protest was violently ended, violently suppressed, it was one of the darkest moments for me after having seen the last three weeks of peace, love, and beauty. Nationalism in the best possible way—Canadians proud to be Canadian again. The amount of people who said it to me while I was down there: “I’ve never been prouder to be Canadian. I’ve been depressed and sad for the last two years. I’ve driven 13 hours from Nova Scotia. I’ve driven 12 hours from Northern Ontario. I’ve driven from Vancouver.” The people were happy to be among other people. They were proud to be Canadians yet again, and then it was suppressed. The way it was suppressed also further illustrated the government-subsidized propaganda to downplay and deflect from the egregious over-the-top violence.

 

There was an image accidentally caught by the CBC, I think, of the police beating the ever-loving mercy—just kneeing a human being as though they were a sack of potatoes that they were trying to turn into mashed potatoes for dinner. It was accidentally caught live; they never spoke of it again. The media is covering this, you know, talking about violence—that could possibly warrant this action—when there never was. At one point during the protest, the police cordoned off the cenotaph, the War Memorial, to protect it. To suggest that the protesters, who were military veterans in large part—

 

Shawn Buckley

Many wearing medals at the time and telling the police that they were not going to be violent.

 

David Freiheit

Wearing their medals. When Chris Deering was violently assaulted, he lost one of his medals in the snow when they shoved him to the ground, when they kneed and assaulted him. They were wearing their medals. They were—and I learned this by being there and asking them because CBC sure as hell was not reporting on this—they had set up 24-7 video surveillance of the War Memorial. They were shovelling the snow every time I was there, salting it, because the city was no longer salting. They had a drummer in front of the War Memorial, doing the military drums, and then the police come in and section it off as if to suggest that it was out of control and that people were desecrating it or vandalizing it. The military veterans that I was talking to—I’ve never served; I don’t have this experience; I don’t have this, you know, reflex of my soul—they were outraged. They said, “This monument is a monument for me to go pay tribute—honour—to my fallen brethren. And now I can’t go step on it because the government is doing this as a sick ploy to make us look bad.”

 

Did the media ever talk about how it was the military— It was spinning. I interviewed these guys, shovelling the snow, salting the walks, and watching over the War Memorial.

 

Shawn Buckley

Viva, I just need to focus us, and somebody just flashed that we have five minutes left.

 

I want to give the commissioners an opportunity to ask you questions because you’ve brought us a very important perspective, and the fact that you actually went there to deliberately see what was happening and contrast it with government narrative is of vital importance. So I’m just going to ask the commissioners if they have some questions, and they do.

 

Commissioner Drysdale

Good afternoon, Mr. Freiheit. We had previous witnesses who were at the protest in Ottawa, as you were,

 

[00:45:00]

 

and you were talking about how the CBC only presented certain pictures and so did the rest of the mainstream media. But that area, Elgin and Wellington, in and around and in front of the Parliament buildings, is probably the most surveilled, video-taped place in the whole country. Have you seen or have you asked for or has anybody to your knowledge demanded that the Government of Canada release some of that surveillance tape so we can see, using the government’s own video cameras, what happened?

 

David Freiheit

I would say there’s—I haven’t done it. There’s no need to do it because with all of the live streamers there who captured all of this in real time, there’s no room for doubt. Thank you for reminding me of another fake news story that the media ran with but only corrected once it was well too late.

 

The arson, the alleged arson that the truckers had attempted to carry out on an apartment building. It had nothing to do with the protests and nothing to do with the protesters. By the time they go to correct that story, or attenuate it, it doesn’t matter; it’s already left its impact. When I was talking to the counter-protesters, they were just repeating the same things. They were just repeating the same things: people getting assaulted for wearing masks, the harassment. It was nonsense. But you don’t need to ask the government for these videos. Everything was documented in real time.

 

The only issue really became, say, algorithmic suppression or soft censorship on social media where that video of the police kneeing, I think, a veteran in the torso as they’re arresting him—that systematically gets demonetized on YouTube, which affects its visibility to others. But it was all captured. The only violence that occurred, in my experience and that I’ve seen, was at the hands of the government that came in to end this peaceful protest in the most non-peaceful way imaginable.

 

Commissioner Drysdale

Well, my only point, and I agree with you, it was documented by many people, including yourself. But my only point in getting the government videotape is it would be nice to hear from the voices of the government themselves, showing their own cameras, what their own cameras have shown. It would be difficult for people to say that the government edited or selectively videotaped when they have hundreds and hundreds of cameras. It reminds me a little bit of the Tucker Carlson thing earlier this year with their January 6th fiasco. It would be hard for the government to deny their own camera feeds, I think.

 

David Freiheit

Absolutely. Also, some of those camera feeds might show stuff that the government doesn’t want you to see. Like there was a video of the police, while arresting someone, appearing to butt them repeatedly with the firing end of a gun. I’m reflexively a back-the-blue type person. But what I saw on the days when the protest was crushed violently was just following-orders-type conduct, which will leave a lingering bad taste in my mouth.

 

Commissioner Drysdale

Thank you.

 

Shawn Buckley

And there being no further questions, David, what a pleasure it has been to have you share this, your personal testimony with us. On behalf of the National Citizens Inquiry, I sincerely thank you for coming and testifying today.

 

David Freiheit

Thank you for having me. I wanted to do this during the Commission, but I think too many people wanted to do that as well. But thank you for having me. I hope everyone really appreciates—it’s attributed to Denzel Washington, but I think it’s more Mark Twain: “If you don’t read the news, you’re uninformed and if you read the news, you’re misinformed.” You have to know the tricks in order to understand how to digest what’s being fed to you and make more people wake up to what is actually going on.

 

Shawn Buckley

Thank you.

 

David Freiheit

Thank you.

 

[00:49:10]

 

Final Review and Approval: Margaret Phillips, September 6, 2023.   

 

The evidence offered in this transcript is a true and faithful record of witness testimony given during the National Citizens Inquiry (NCI) hearings. The transcript was prepared by members of a team of volunteers using an “intelligent verbatim” transcription method.  

 

For further information on the transcription process, method, and team, see the NCI website:

About these Transcripts

Summary

David Freiheit, an esteemed lawyer and producer of the popular ‘Viva Frei’ podcast, testifies on the influence of legacy media in shaping public narratives.

In this insightful discussion, David delves into the portrayal of the Truckers Convoy by mainstream media and shares his firsthand experiences at the same event in Ottawa. He critically examines the biases, omissions, and misrepresentations often present in media coverage, highlighting the impact they can have on public perception and understanding.

Drawing upon his legal background and keen insights, David provides a compelling analysis of the role and responsibilities of legacy media in providing accurate and balanced reporting. He emphasizes the need for media consumers to be discerning and to seek alternative sources of information to gain a more comprehensive perspective.