Emergencies Act inquiry hears from protester Pat King, 'Freedom Convoy' lawyer

Tamara Lich emotional while talking about arrest Tamara Lich talks about the impact the arrest has had on her life, including not wanting her daughter to be seen with her.

Testimony from key players in the 'Freedom Convoy' protests continued in Ottawa on Wednesday, with the Public Order Emergency Commission hearing from lawyer Keith Wilson, and a few of the faces of the protests: Tom Marazzo and Pat King.

Kicking off Wednesday's public hearings into the federal government's invocation of the Emergencies Act was convoy lawyer Keith Wilson, who arrived in Ottawa to provide legal support to key organizers including Tamara Lich and Chris Barber, but quickly became a central figure, involved in negotiations around moving trucks near the tail end of the protests.

Wilson built on the picture being painted for Commissioner Paul Rouleau of the weeks-long event as a "very fast-moving, chaotic environment, with so many either interpersonal issues arising between the players, or logistical issues."

Next up was Marazzo, a former military captain who lost his college teaching job in 2021 due to the institution's COVID-19 vaccine mandate. Well into the protests, Marazzo came under heightened attention after he suggested at a press conference that a core group of organizers and their supporters could sit at a table "with the Conservatives, and the NDP, and the Bloc as a coalition." On Wednesday, he testified that when he said this, he misspoke.

It was then King’s turn to take the stand. King was a key figure throughout the protests. King livestreamed his arrest from his truck in February, and was released on bail in mid-July, with conditions including staying off social media — where even before the convoy, he had a sizeable following and a well-documented history of making offensive remarks.

While other organizers sought to distance themselves from King, they did have contact with him. His presence in Ottawa gained more attention after in one of his livestreams he suggested the only way the protests would end would be "with bullets," which he sought to provide context to during his testimony.

Here are the highlights from Wednesday's hearing.

'HANGERS-ON' AND 'HAND GRENADE' 

At various points in his testimony, Wilson called out what he saw as strange characters and "hangers-on" taking part in events in Ottawa, and went as far as suggesting some who were involved were in it to "hijack the message" or try to get a piece of the millions of dollars in donations.

"What I observed was that different groups were trying to take control. And what I observed and believe to be true is that some were trying to take control because they saw the organic, flat hierarchy, largely, of the convoy, and wanted to make it more successful and felt they had the organizational capability to do that. Other groups seem to want to reshape the 'Freedom Convoy' into their own event," Wilson said. "And I got the distinct impression from some others that they were trying to get their hands on what at that point was $10 million in donations."

One example of the "strange people" the convoy attracted was a "coven of witches" that Wilson testified was "doing weird séance things, and burning things in the lobby." He also mentioned QAnon.

"Like moths to a flame," Wilson said. "It was a constant effort by Ms. Lich and Mr. Barber and others to fend them off, so to speak. I do recall reading documents in the record where CSIS and the RCMP had also intercepted communications and reached the same conclusion, that there was a concerted effort by the mainstream group to resist these hangers-ons."

While King was part of the protests from their infancy, according to testimony from Marazzo that builds on other information the commission has received, other organizers were also concerned about his actions.

Asked why he thought someone needed to help keep him "well behaved," Marazzo said it was because of his reputation. Asked what that was, here was Marazzo's response:

"A little bit of a wild card… I had jokingly referred to him as a hand grenade going off in a room and scaring everybody else that it was going to explode. It was a bit of a joke. He laughed. Everybody else seemed to think it was funny, but it was kind of like funny because yeah, that's true." Marazzo then added though, that he did not have a concern that King would not engage in peaceful protest.

KING TRIES TO EXPLAIN 'WITH BULLETS' REMARK

On Wednesday, commission counsel played a compilation of some of King’s videos, including the one in which he stated “the only way that this is going to be solved, is with bullets,” and asked him to explain himself.

King said he had been waiting some time to get the chance to address this.

“That is taken directly out of context. One hundred per cent.”

Asked what was the context, here’s what he said:

“The context was, if you are Canadian and you want to exercise your political right to stand up and be [sic] freedom of protest and peaceful assembly, would you take it? Are you going to allow it to become bullets? Because if we keep going on the way we're going to be going on, that’s some possible endgame that's a prediction.”

Another video played was of King suggesting that someone was going to make Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “catch a bullet” one day.

King quickly launched into his explanation, saying it was “edited and spliced” to fit a narrative. King told the commission that while he agrees he should have never said this, he made this video after he was denied boarding a flight because he wasn’t vaccinated, and what he meant was one day someone was going to have a break down, “and if you push people too far, especially denying them their flight, you never know who you're gonna get.”

“I’m kind of a hothead, I kind of talk too much sometimes,” he testified.

MEMORANDUM WAS 'LEGAL NONSENSE'

Wilson was asked on Wednesday about Canada Unity's contentious and ultimately abandoned "memorandum of understanding" (MOU) that suggested protesters could have the Senate and Gov. Gen. Mary Simon join them in forming a committee to order the revocation of COVID-19 restrictions and vaccine mandates.

As the commission has already heard, core convoy organizers tried to distance themselves from the proposal—which later morphed into a suggestion suggestion from Marazzo that protesters could form a coalition with opposition parties and the involvement of Simon to unseat the government.

Here's Wilson's perspective on it:

"The first thing that's obvious about it is a memorandum of understanding in its simplest legal concept requires all parties to it to sign. And it was evident that the signature lines on the last page were not going to be signed by the Governor General nor someone from the Senate… When I was asked by the board to brief them on it… I explained that there's only two ways that governments change under our parliamentary system. The first is when the prime minister contacts the Governor General and dissolves Parliament, and asked that the writ be dropped. The second through parliamentary tradition is where a bill is identified as a confidence vote, and Parliament votes to defeat the bill… This idea that a certain number of people could sign a document and that would somehow compel or incentivize and lead to a change in government, I explained consistently and repeatedly, is legal nonsense."

On Wednesday, Marazzo testified that he didn't intend to mean that protesters were suggesting they become part of government, rather they were calling for opposition parties to come to the table to try to push back on the Liberals. He said he tried to clarify days later that he didn't intend to suggest an undemocratic resolution, but did not "see the point" of going beyond social media to do so.

As for the original MOU, Marazzo said he didn't think it was well written, and more than anything "muddied the waters" of the protests' messaging and aims.

When it was King’s turn to be asked about whether he ever made any statement suggesting forming a new government or seeing the truckers take power, he said no.

“I hate politics. I hate government. So why would I want to be the new government?”

MOVING TRUCKS MEANT TO CLEAR PATH FOR MEETING

Wilson—who played a role in negotiations with the City of Ottawa to see some trucks exit residential neighborhoods just days before the Emergencies Act was invoked—spoke at length on Wednesday about how the deal came to be, and how the convoy organizers tried to leverage the concentration of trucks in and around Wellington Street in front of Parliament Hill.

"What we were hoping would happen is that the success that we felt we could achieve with the arrangement and the agreement with the mayor, because if it was successful, we were going to have had the downtown cleared out by the Wednesday but for Wellington… It would focus the protest now on the federal government, and then the federal government would be encouraged by the fact that the truckers proved to be honest brokers. And that would lead to a meeting with some federal ministers," Wilson said.

"There was not a strong desire to have a meeting with the prime minister. It was more with the ministers, and that we could agree on a process of formally presenting briefs and information and scientific information to support, and comparative information because Canada was an anomaly at this time in terms of our mandates… to try and persuade the government to review its policies."

POLICE, MPS GIVING CONVOY INTEL?

Another noteworthy development in Wednesday's hearings was Wilson telling the commission that there were "numerous times" that the convoy's "operation centre" would receive information from "various police sources."

This testimony built on what he told the commission during a pre-interview, that while he was "unaware of the sources," the "Freedom Convoy" was "receiving leaked information from law enforcement."

Wilson indicated that while this happened "many times," eventually police caught on and tried to send through false intel to try to ferret out the source of the leaks. The commission has heard previous testimony that the Ottawa Police Service has looked into whether some of its officers supported the protests and shared information with protesters.

During another portion of Wilson's testimony as he was under cross-examination by a federal government lawyer, he said that around Feb. 12, protesters were starting to hear "rumors" that the federal government was contemplating invoking the federal Emergencies Act.

On Feb. 13, CTV News first reported that, according to an interview with Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair, the federal government was prepared to invoke the Emergencies Act to see the trucker convoy protests and blockades. The extraordinary powers were then enacted on Feb. 14.

Asked by the federal lawyer who told the protest leaders that the government was considering using the Act, Wilson said he couldn't remember. Nor did he recall any documentation he had to back up this assertion.

"But I do remember the source that they relayed, and they advised that they had heard from some MPs that there was active discussion over at the Parliament about the prime minister considering using the Emergencies Act. So MPs, some MPs had shared with the people involved in the convoy, and they reported that to me," Wilson said.

'CHECK YOUR F***ING EGO'

Building on testimony that indicated that there was tension between protesters, early in King’s Wednesday appearance he was asked about a summary of a conversation between himself and Lich on Jan. 28 before he rolled into the nation’s capital that indicated Lich told him to “check your f***ing ego.”

According to King, the summary was of a conversation at a rest stop in Sudbury about King not attending the protests in Ottawa because he was getting death threats.

“Good, you shouldn’t go into Ottawa Pat. This movement isn’t about you OR me, it’s about Canada, it’s something bigger,” the call summary reads.

“I know it sucks because I organized this whole thing and now I can’t even go,” King said, based on the document.

“You did NOT organize this whole thing Pat, all of us organized this Convoy, you need to check your f****ing ego and if you care about this movement at all you will not go into Ottawa,” Lich is recorded as saying.

Asked about this, he denied Lich asking him not to attend and said Lich asking him to check his ego “never happened,” and he of course, proceeded on to Ottawa.