Most of Canada to receive emergency alert test today
The federal government will test its capacity to issue emergency alerts today, with the exception of Ontario, where the test will take place on May 15.
A pickup truck decorated with a Confederate flag at the “Freedom Convoy” in Ottawa early last year was driven by a local roofer who supported the protests, not by Liberal government “provocateurs” as convoy organizers alleged at the public inquiry into the invoking of the Emergencies Act.
Maurice Landriault told CTV National News that it was his Dodge Ram 2500 seen on Elgin Street and at a protest site at Confederation Square, but he denies the flag he mounted on the tailgate next to a Canadian flag was offensive.
“It’s a sign of independence,” he said. “I look at it as a rebel sign. In the biker community, a lot of people have the Confederate flag because we’re rebels.”
But to many, the flag is a racist symbol and a disturbing reminder of the U.S. Confederacy’s fight to preserve slavery. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau denounced their display at the Ottawa protest, saying his government wouldn’t give in to “racist flags.”
Landriault says some protesters asked him to take it off his truck.
“They’re telling me it’s racist. It’s not racist. You guys are making it racist.”
At the Public Order Emergency Commission in November, convoy organizers brought a motion to compel evidence about Nazi and Confederate flags seen at the protest, claiming the Liberal government attempted to use them to wrongly portray protesters as racists and extremists.
Their lawyer, Brendan Miller, argued they had “evidence and grounds to suspect that the flags, and purported protesters using them, were not protesters with the convoy at all, but provocateurs.”
He asked Commissioner Paul Rouleau to order the Ottawa Police Service or the Ontario Provincial Police to trace the pickup truck’s licence plate to uncover the owner’s identity.
Rouleau declined the request, saying there is “no proper foundation in the evidence to believe that the registration information for this vehicle would disclose the existence of an agent provocateur.”
Miller also alleged that a man photographed holding a flag with a swastika near Parliament Hill was Toronto communications consultant Brian Fox, in an attempt to discredit the convoy movement, possibly at the direction of the Prime Minister’s Office.
Fox and his firm, Enterprise Canada, called the claim absurd and despicable, and are suing Miller for defamation.
Still, convoy supporters continued to promote theories that offensive symbols seen on Ottawa streets in January and February were the work of “antifa” – short for anti-fascists – or other saboteurs working in league with the federal government.
CTV National News obtained Landriault’s name from the registration of the licence plate filed with the Ontario Ministry of Transportation.
He says he bought the Confederate flag in 2019 to take to a concert by rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd.
He says he eventually traded the flag to another protester for a flag with a NSFW (not safe for work) slogan from a Frank Zappa song.
On the day Trudeau testified at the commission, Landriault attended the hearings dressed in a “Beetlejuice” costume and wearing a Harley Davidson baseball cap adorned with a Confederate flag motif.
During a break in the proceedings, he says he approached Miller.
"I told him I'm the one who had the truck, and I didn't work for no government," he said.
Landriault, who is unvaccinated, is a motorcycle rider and helped organize fellow bikers to participate in a 2021 protest against COVID-19 measures.
He says he attended the convoy protest last year to send a message to the government about vaccination mandates.
“We’re fed up,” he said. “You’ve taken too much control of people’s lives. You’re forcing a person to take a vaccine to go to a restaurant, to go to a movie, to travel, to go to school.”
He says he used his truck and trailer to help bring fresh supplies of diesel fuel to keep the big rigs running.
The pickup truck he drove to the protest was totalled in a collision last year, he says.
The federal government will test its capacity to issue emergency alerts today, with the exception of Ontario, where the test will take place on May 15.
Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex, has made headlines with his recent arrival in the U.K., this time to celebrate all things Invictus. But upon the prince landing in the U.K., we have already had confirmation that King Charles III won't have time to see his youngest son during his brief visit.
An Ontario man found out that a line of credit he thought was insured actually isn't after his wife of 50 years died.
After more than a century, Boy Scouts of America is rebranding as Scouting America, another major shakeup for an organization that once proudly resisted change.
With Donald Trump sitting just feet away, Stormy Daniels testified Tuesday at the former president's hush money trial about a sexual encounter the porn actor says they had in 2006 that resulted in her being paid to keep silent during the presidential race 10 years later.
In March, Indonesian officials and local fishermen rescued 75 people from the overturned hull of a boat off the coast of Indonesia. Until now, little was known about why the boat capsized.
An Ontario woman said it would have been impossible to buy a house without her mother – an anecdote that animates the fact that over 17 per cent of Canadian homeowners born in the ‘90s own their property with their parents, according to a new report.
Canadian immigrants threatened by hostile regimes are urging parliamentarians to quickly pass the 'Countering Foreign Interference Act' so they can feel safe living in their adopted home.
A long-simmering feud between hip-hop superstars Drake and Kendrick Lamar reached a boiling point in recent days as the pair traded increasingly personal insults on a succession of diss tracks. Here’s a quick overview of what’s behind the ongoing beef.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.