Federal government already preparing for what organizers call ‘Freedom Convoy 2.0’ | 24CA News
The federal authorities is already getting ready to take care of a brand new convoy protest being deliberate for February, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s nationwide safety advisor instructed a parliamentary committee Thursday night.
Testifying earlier than a particular committee of MPs and senators set as much as research the federal government’s use of the Emergencies Act to close down the protest that paralyzed downtown Ottawa and blocked a number of border crossings final winter, Jody Thomas mentioned officers are conscious a second convoy protest is within the works and her colleague Mike MacDonald, assistant secretary to the cupboard for safety and intelligence, has already begun to organize.
“Mr. MacDonald has already chaired meetings to start looking at how we’re going to respond,” Thomas mentioned in response to a query from Senator Peter Harder. “DMs [deputy ministers] will be meeting for the first time about it this week.”
Her feedback come every week after James Bauder, the founding father of a gaggle known as Canada Unity and one of many organizers of final winter’s convoy protest, posted on social media calling for a Freedom Convoy 2.0 to descend on Ottawa from Feb. 17 to 21, 2023.
Bauder, who was amongst these arrested final February, is going through a number of fees. Among his bail situations is to not return to downtown Ottawa.
Lessons from final time
Thomas mentioned the federal government has discovered a variety of classes from final winter’s convoy protest — classes that it has already begun to use.
Thomas mentioned two points got here out of the protest: the menace posed by some ideologically motivated violent extremists (IMVE) who participated within the protest and the way the federal government understands open-source home intelligence.
“You can’t just sit on Twitter and understand what is going on,” Thomas instructed the committee. “You need to use tools, artificial intelligence, those kinds of things.”
While Twitter is public, there are nonetheless rights to privateness so a authorized framework is required, she mentioned.
“Understanding the information and the trends that are out there without associating it to individuals who are not persons of interest to law enforcement or intelligence agencies is a big, complex issue and it is something that we are focusing a significant amount of work on but we don’t yet have an answer to.”
MacDonald mentioned the teachings discovered from the convoy protest helped officers deal with the Rolling Thunder motorbike protest final spring and a protest on Canada Day. Thomas mentioned not permitting vehicles to cease was one other lesson discovered.
The authorities has additionally discovered it has to take ideologically motivated violent extremists in Canada extra critically, Thomas mentioned.
“We underestimate and underestimated — probably no longer — the ideologically motivated extremists,” she instructed the committee. “This problem exists in Canada and it is here to stay. We need to understand what it is and have the tools to do something about it.”
Threat of weapons
Thursday night’s listening to got here shortly after a search warrant was unsealed, revealing that the variety of firearms, ammunition and pipe bombs seized on the blockade of the border crossing in Coutts, Alta., was a lot bigger than beforehand recognized.
Thomas mentioned she hadn’t been conscious of the extent of the cache however the presence of weapons in Coutts influenced the federal authorities’s occupied with the Ottawa protest.
“We had knowledge that Ottawa was far from clear and we were starting to hear the same language — weapons in the rigs, weapons in Ottawa, knowledge of weapons … it would have been negligent not to make the same presumptions about the potential of weapons in Ottawa.”
Thomas additionally instructed the committee that on-line threats in opposition to public officers rose sharply across the time of the protest. “It was a significant concern.”
Thomas additionally got here underneath questioning, notably from Conservative MPs, in regards to the authorities’s use of the Emergencies Act and the edge it utilized to invoke it.
Later, the committee heard from Jacob Wells, co-founder of the crowdfunding platform GiveSendGo who mentioned 59 per cent of the cash raised for the convoy got here from Canada whereas 37 per cent got here from the United States.
Wells additionally confronted questions from the committee on among the crowdfunding campaigns his website has hosted, akin to ones for members of the Proud Boys. Asked by NDP MP Matthew Green whether or not he was conscious that the Proud Boys had been listed as a terrorist group in Canada, Wells identified that it wasn’t within the U.S.
