Keith Wilson
Keith Wilson spoke 361 times across 2 days of testimony.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I’ll swear on the Bible.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Ian Keith Wilson, w-i-l-s-o-n.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Good morning.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
That’s right. I’m originally from Burlington, Ontario. I spent the first part of my life here in Ontario and the balance of my life out west.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
That’s correct.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I think I’m 27, 28 years at the Bar now.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
That’s correct.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I’ve typically, throughout the course of my career, dealt with people who are up against bigger forces than them. I have represented many landowners, and farmers, and ranches in Alberta in disputes with oil companies, but I’ve also -- much of my practice has been focused on helping people when governments, in their mind, has gone to far, affecting their life, or their business, or their livelihood, and so I’ve done a lot of judicial review, and administrative law, and tribunal work.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
That’s right.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
That’s correct.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
That’s right.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
That’s right.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I do.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
No, other than, as we’ve heard from so many witnesses, there were so many events occurring and it was some time ago, but to the best of my recollection, this is accurate.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Thank you, Commissioner.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Thank you.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
That’s correct.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
The -- what happened was, in the fall of 2021, my wife, who is a retired nurse -- we’ve been married forever and have four kids and she became very concerned about what she was seeing in terms of government policy, health policy, felt that things were badly going awry, and she did something she’s never done before where she encouraged me to get involved and take a case. She’s normally the gatekeeper because I tend to take too many cases. And Ms. Chipiuk, who I’d practiced law with in the past on other cases, approached me and asked me if I’d be willing to take a case at the Justice Centre. They needed senior litigation counsel. I agreed. I -- they told me I could pick whichever case I would like and I wanted to -- I had been studying the travel mandates and I thought they were all ultra vires the Aeronautics Act and I wanted -- and obviously breaching Charter and so I agreed to lead that case with Former Premier Brian Peckford as your lead applicant.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
We just got struck on mootness and we’re appealing that to the Federal Court of Appeal.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
We got struck not last Thursday, the Thursday before, while I was here. And then that led to -- on the 1st of February, I had a legal-team meeting set up, noticed some extra people in the Zoom room and let them in, and I was informed by one of the lawyers who I’d met for the first time on that Zoom call that the truckers in Ottawa, that morning, had reached out to the Justice Centre and asked the Justice Centre if they would provide legal support. The lawyers on the call told me that they’d assembled a team and they’d asked me if I would come to Ottawa the next morning and lead that team, and I agreed.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Well, I got spousal consent very quickly, so that helped tremendously, and yeah, I was.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
That’s right.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Eva Chipiuk.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Andre Memauri, Tim Turple, and Allison Pejovik.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yeah, I was very fascinated with how the convoy started to form. I took -- I was amazed at the rate at which the donations were coming in, just from following social media and the legacy media as well. And I thought I really want to keep an -- this is prior to February 1st, of course, and I thought, “Well, I really want to keep an eye on this,” and I realized probably the easiest way to do that would be to make a nominal donation and then I would get the email updates, so I donated $15. I’m a little embarrassed about that but just for the purpose of tracking and getting the regular email updates. I had no idea that a few days after I made that donation that I would be in Downtown Ottawa.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Well, I had a view -- I think there’s two questions there. Obviously, I had grave concerns about the government’s policies and the harm that I’d witnessed in my own family with our children, with my neighbours, with my friends, with my colleagues. So, in that context, I have a very strong view that I think tremendous mistakes were made at a policy level. But with respect to the convoy, I felt that it was providing an opportunity for people who were also concerned to symbolize that concern and demonstrate it.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
My instructions were to work with the leadership group to provide on-the-ground legal support. One of the things that we thought we would likely be doing, which we didn’t end up having to do, was to obtain an injunction. We anticipated that we would have to defend injunctions, provide legal advice as to the types of activities that they’re allowed to do and the things they’re not allowed to do. Also, it was clear at that time if you recall -- I apologize if I'm talking too fast again, sir -- if you recall that around that time, GoFundMe had publicly announced the suspension of the fundraising campaign. I was also told at the time of being engaged that work was underway to set up a not- for-profit corporation, Canada Corp., to ensure a proper organizational structure for the administration of the donations. Something else that I have done in my background that proved to be extremely useful, not only in Ottawa but in the event since, is I've represented not-for-profit groups and I've represented various industry organizations, so I've dealt with conflicts and strong personalities on boards of directors and seen the interpersonal quarrels that can arise, and some of the groups that I've represented have been comprised of independent ranchers, and upon arriving in Ottawa, I immediately realized this person had similarities between independent Alberta ranchers and independent truckers. So that’s some context.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes. It was a small bumpy -- I forget the name of it -- but it's a twin prop and we left at 8:00 a.m. on -- we left at 8:00 a.m. on that February 2nd and we landed in Ottawa at about 10:30. So it was not a luxury experience. We went up and down many times. We stopped in Medicine Hat, we stopped in Regina, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, and then Thunder Bay. All the stops were to pick up additional lawyers and the accountant, or the last one to get fuel.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Because at that time, the understanding of the interim orders under the Aeronautics Act is that it did not extend to private charter aircraft, and some of the passengers on that aircraft were unvaccinated, so that was a way for us to get to Ottawa quickly under the interim order.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
There was confusion about that in the same way that there was confusion about -- there was two other groups that had allegedly made arrangements for us to have hotel rooms when we arrived, and so the justice centre made a backup plan to have a third hotel ready, and that’s the one we ended up using. As we were boarding the plane, whoever was supposedly going to be paying for this charter turned out they weren’t going to pay for the charter, and the justice centre made the decision to send us anyway, and if necessary, they would pay for the charter if whoever was going -- who had originally said they were going to pay for it didn’t.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I believe it was -- and I'm not certain about this -- but I believe it was paid from funds donated through Chris Garrah, this "Adopt a Trucker".
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Disclosure of, sorry?
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Okay.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
No, that’s not correct.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I had no discussion with Ms. Belton about this flight. I had no concerns about the flight. I'm double vaccinated. It wouldn't have mattered what aircraft I was on.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I will. And just so everyone's clear, I do, in July, my clients instructed me to make myself -- to consider making myself available as a witness, and granted a waiver with respect to these matters, this proceeding, and we've subsequently confirmed it in writing to avoid any confusion that I am here today with a waiver from my clients with respect to solicitor-client privilege.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
The clients include Freedom Corp., so the -- that’s their short name for the full legal name of the not-for-profit. It includes Tamara Lich, Chris Barber, Danny Bulford, Tom Marazzo, Sean Tiessen, Miranda Gasior, Joe Janzen, Dale Enns, and Ryan Mihilewicz, and I believe that’s the full list.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
That’s correct.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
He was offered an opportunity to become a client and did not sign a retainer agreement.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
That’s fine, and out an abundance of caution, I -- we can respect that. I do know that the absence of a retainer was confirmed by him in writing, so -- to me.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes, sir. I absolutely will. Thank you.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
That’s correct.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yeah. There was -- I was in a taxi with Dwayne and I can't recall specifically who else was with me. And then the others rented a car, so there was -- we had two modes of getting there and the decision was to get me and Dwayne downtown as quick as possible because we had so little time to deal with whatever we anticipated coming. While we were on the plane, we received a briefing on and reviewed the emails from GoFundMe, which are in the record here, setting out all of their concerns, and then we drafted during that flight, a substantive -- I think my letter is four or five pages -- addressing each of the issues that GoFundMe had raised, so we were working on that flight. We wanted to get downtown to meet the clients, sign retainer agreements, and brief them and give them an opportunity to review that letter to GoFundMe, so to get it to GoFundMe as soon as possible.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
That’s correct.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yeah. The vehicle we were in drove right up to the front door of the hotel just like it would today.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yeah, Miranda Gracer was there, Sean Tiessen was there, and I believe that’s it. There might have been one or two other people in the room, but that’s the best, to my recollection.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
No, never.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes, I heard about her, but only in the context of the Freedom Convoy. Anything else I learned about Ms. Lich, I'm pretty sure I Googled her as soon as I was starting to watch the convoy forum, so this would be in, you know, late January, to try to understand who she was, but I have had no prior dealings with her or awareness of who she was or what she was engaged in until I Googled her because of the convoy.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
My memory is it was about 11:30 at night.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Sure. Well, I mean, first of all we drove through the downtown so we could -- that was my first chance to see where all the trucks and the protest vehicles were, and all the signage and so on, and how you could still drive around. There was always one lane open. That’s how we got right to the hotel. When I walked into the lobby I could really feel the tension. There was truckers everywhere. There were supplies stacked and piled everywhere. And the tension was -- I could really feel the tension.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes. André Memauri had the paperwork and had them sign.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Well, I should clarify one thing, that the way the Justice Centre operated at that time the retainer has their name on it, the Justice Centre ---
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
--- as the legal provider. Was the retainer different? No. The nature of my anticipated involvement remained constant.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yeah.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Not that long. Everybody was exhausted. We had just had, you know, landing and taking off several times in a small aircraft is a little bit hard on the body. And not to mention I’m sure all of the people on our team were the same. And this happened so fast we had very very little sleep. We could tell the fatigue and that was when I first was informed that Tamara was aware that some group was calling a press conference for the next day and they wanted her to speak. And I immediately started asking questions about -- okay, who has called the press conference? What’s its purpose? Who all is speaking? Was there a media advisory? She didn’t know. You know, this is not her world. I've dealt with high profile cases and communication specialists extensively. So she didn’t even know what a media advisory was.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Well, what happened as I had no intention of being in the media. I was there to not be in the media but to provide guidance. And even in that first meeting I started hearing these different groups’ names and I was -- okay, well, who is this group and why are they here? And what -- this other group -- it was -- the chess board was starting to -- the fog was starting to lift and I was sort of -- oh boy. This is going to get complicated. The major concern I had was two things. Tamara made it clear to me that she did not feel comfortable -- appreciate, she was absolutely exhausted. They all were. I could see the fatigue. And she didn’t feel comfortable being exposed to a long format press conference where every media person could come at her, basically. And so I was already giving some thought as to how we could possibly restructure the press conference to make it more orderly and make it more effective in conveying some information that I thought the public and the world wanted to hear.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
So the next morning my legal team was adamant that I should take a more active role in the press conference. I was initially reluctant. When we got from our hotel which was out of the downtown to the ARC, and went into one of the logistics rooms on the main floor -- it’s a big boardroom -- I got more information about the plan for the press conference and that was it was going to include a number of medical doctors.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
There was -- Take Back Our Freedoms had an external communications consulting firm that had prepared a speech for her. A number of us including Tamara Lich reviewed it, did not like the messaging, so Ms. Chipiuk and another individual, a medical doctor, rewrote it. It still wasn’t in Ms. Lich’s voice, so I assisted Ms. Lich in revising that statement and it was finalized in very short order because we only had less than an hour. And then she proceeded to the press conference to deliver it.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
No one told me that.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
My brain.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Well, I observed what was happening and I noticed that -- this is again prior to me being engaged -- that she seemed to be the organic leader. She was the one that was doing the Facebook lives and other videos. She was the one who was sending out the messages. And she seemed to have the personality of a natural leader that inspired others to get behind her.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
That’s correct.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Just one moment. Yes.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I think it might have been either in some of the drafts that Mr. Eros had prepared, and understand that we did a draft on the plane, so that would have been the -- is that the Wednesday night? Anyway, the February 2nd. Then we had the letter reviewed by the clients, and then the letter the next morning was reviewed by the Finance Committee back in Alberta, and a number of people requested, as normally occurs if you circulate a draft, that words and sentences be added. So I don't know exactly ---
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
--- whether that arose on the very first draft, or whether that was something that some of the leaders in Ottawa had added, or whether that was something that the Finance Committee wanted added.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yeah, and I've heard that a lot. And what I've always struggled with is at what point in time did those officials believe it became an unlawful assembly and on what basis, because it just seemed to be a terminology that started to morph and become adopted with no particular triggering event or explanation as to what that individual or official thought constituted an unlawful assembly.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
That's correct.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
That would have been on the -- sorry, that would have been on a Thursday afternoon.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yeah, all of the lawyers that were with me and a number of the Board members from Freedom Corp. were there as well as Ms. Lich.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Sure.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I don't remember reading that.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Well, I mean, what does that mean? When I -- I led the meeting. Someone needs to lead a meeting from -- when you have two parties. Mr. Eros spoke, other lawyers spoke. Mr. Eros spoke extensively in explaining to the GoFundMe executives and their legal team, because there was -- I would estimate by memory, there was 10 to 12 people from GoFundMe on the other side of the conference call. This was a call, not a Zoom.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
And ---
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
--- and we relied heavily, at least our side, on Mr. Eros explaining the financial controls and who he was and his background in banking and as a CPA and in his role as treasurer, but, yes, I did lead the discussion. That is true.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
My memory is, as I indicated in my witness statement, and it wasn't just Take Back our Freedoms, this was happening extensively and it happened immediate -- or I observed it immediately after the first day when I actually started to, you know, appreciate I'm coming in at night and go through the lobby and up to a hotel room and then back out. The next day, I'm now starting to interact more, and I'm now in a big boardroom and there's these different people coming and going, and I'm trying to figure out who's who. You know, there was no organization chart or introduction session. It's not even like a meeting where you go around the table and introduce one another. That didn't happen. It was constant chaos. So I learned that there was a group and then I learned there was this TBOF. I didn't even know what TBOF meant initially. And then I'd heard about this Canada Unity, and then there was Mr. Bourgault's group, something for Freedom, and there was Veterans for Freedom. I could go on. There was so many different groups I was starting to learn of. And what I observed was that the different groups were trying to take certain -- trying to take control. And what I observed and believed 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 seemed to want to reshape the Freedom Convoy into their own event, branded theirs, and I got the distinct impression from some other that they were trying to get their hands on what, at that point, was $10 million in donations. And my impression and my recollection from the discussions that I would have with Ms. Lich as various people would demand private meetings, or, you know, play games and say we weren't allowed to use the boardroom because it was their boardroom, those sorts of things, that she was under pressure from a lot of these different groups for the reasons I've given.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yeah, and it's interesting because he's more of a symbolic chairman. In all of my discussions with the Honourable Brian Peckford, I would speak with him, not every evening, but, you know, maybe every second or third evening. My telephone logs confirm that, that I've tendered in evidence. And I was looking for guidance from him. He was -- you know, he's an elder statesman. He's been through a lot. He's one of the founding fathers of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms, very seasoned politician. And so at no time did we ever have any discussion around Take Back our Freedoms was -- did I feel he was speaking on their behalf. Him and I had become somewhat close through my work on his Federal Travel Mandate Charter challenge in Federal Court, and I was using him as a resource and someone to run ideas past and get guidance from.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
That was never raised at any time. I don't feel I was in a conflict because at no time did Mr. Peckford ever ask of anything of me. I was the only one who asked of things from him. And the concerns that you're referring to are concerns that were never aired at any time during Ottawa by Mr. Eros, and only some months later after the Ottawa protest had concluded.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
No.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
At a Best Western, I believe it was in -- it was about a 20-minute drive towards the East.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
So that’s, what, 20-minute drive from downtown.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
So each day it took us 20 minutes to get into the downtown core.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
That’s correct.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Our stay there ended -- it would have been approximately around the Sunday of -- just trying to visualize a calendar here -- the second Sunday would have been -- anyway, it was -- I think we stayed there for about 10 days.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Then we went to the Swiss Hotel.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
We stayed there until the Wednesday, which would have been the 16th. It was on the Wednesday that it was apparent -- this was when we -- I had had the phone call from Steve K., City Manager, advising me that the third attempt to move trucks was going to be unsuccessful, and he was very disappointed, as he himself testified here.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
And ---
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yeah, I’m -- sorry; I’m trying to contextualize things, and I have to remember things by events because I wasn’t calendar focused. And so it was that day that it became apparent that something dramatic was about to happen by the government and the police, and as a result Ms. Lich instructed Ms. Chipiuk and I -- because we were the only two lawyers left on the ground at that point -- to relocate to a new hotel.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Le Germain.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I stayed there until the Sunday, which would be the 20th or the 21st, I believe.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I went home, yes.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
No. And if I did it might have been where I was in a room or in a hallway or on a sidewalk and he shook my hand, but I met so many people ---
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
--- the interaction would have been unremarkable.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yeah, very early on I was approached by many people, both within the client group and others asking me about it.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yeah, they would ask me. I didn’t make it a topic that I felt I needed to discuss with others, but I did get asked it a lot.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
And what I -- you know 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; and in any event I would explain -- when I was asked by the Board, to brief them on it, I explained that -- and I apologize for my voice, I’m suffering from a cold.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yeah, thank you. That I explained that there’s only two ways that governments change under our Parliamentary system. The first is when the Prime Minister contacts the government, the Governor General, and dissolves Parliament and asks 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. In that second instance, the Prime Minister would similarly contact the Governor General. This idea that a certain number of people could sign a document, and that would somehow compel, or incentivize, and lead to a changing government, I explained, consistently and repeatedly, is legal nonsense.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I didn’t now the number; I knew that it pre-existed the convoy. I knew that Canada Unity pre-existed the convoy as a group by at least a year or two; that it was not a creation of the convoy. It was one of these hanger-ons.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I am very surprised at -- this is not the first time I’ve run into this; I’ve had to litigate opposite the Sovereign Citizen folks, and quoting Admiralty law and think that if they present a flag in a certain way in a court, the Judge loses jurisdiction. I’ve had to encounter this many, many times in my career, so I was just like, here’s another one.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
That’s correct.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yeah. Not everyone who was named at that time, is my memory. That pleading has been amended a number of times and is a evolving document, is to be expected in a litigation of that nature.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
What we did was, we received it at approximately 4 o’clock. That was at the same time that we also received notification publicly that GoFundMe had determined that the fundraiser violated the terms of service and they were stopping it, and either going to send the money to some other group or refund it. We had a lot going on. We were served with a motion record, emergency motion returnable the Saturday afternoon at 1 o’clock. So my legal team and I prepared through the night. Through the night Mr. Champ continued to provide supplemental materials in the magnitude of hundreds of pages. We had everything ready to go by noonish the next day but not even enough time for me to read the factum. So I took ---
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I’m answering your question, sir. We took the position that it was just improper for the Court to hear it on the Saturday. We agreed to come back on the Monday. I had informed my clients that there is no way the Court was not going to grant the injunction, and that the best we could do was to ensure that the terms of the injunction order were not excessive, were not prone to abuse and arbitrariness, and had an acknowledgement of their right to protest. So we -- the real argument before the Court was, what is the terms of the order going to be and get -- overcoming the challenge of in rem versus in personam orders.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yeah, the Ottawa Police Service, that’s correct.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Precise.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yeah. And we had -- to the extent we had the opportunity because, as you can appreciate, it was a very, very, fast-moving, chaotic environment with so many either interpersonal issues arising between the players or logistical issues or whatever. But we did have occasion when we were -- Ms. Chipiuk and I were leaving our hotel, we worked -- it must have been -- it must have been the Monday when we were in Court because we ran those from our hotel outside of downtown. And we heard Ms. Deans in an interview on CBC’s “As It Happens”, and her language was deeply troubling and that, combined with Mr. Marazzo expressing concerns about the change in tone from Chief Sloly, it heightened the urgency of trying to find a way to open up dialogue. And I had -- if you look at my phone records, you’ll see that my first attempt to bring in Mr. French occurred, actually, that weekend.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Well, in my past I’ve been involved in two international scope crises. The first was the 2003 mad cow disease outbreak in Alberta where I was representing a government agency, and the second was in 2009, H1N1, where I represented the people who were patient zero for the Zootonic (sic) transmutation. And so I’ve been in Emergency Operations Centres of government on two major incidents and I’ve seen the chaos that occurs in there and, you know, I know the importance of dialogue and communication and I can sense the danger of the parties not talking even if it’s back channel. So I had a strong desire to open up back channel communications so we could bring the temperature down and start to see if there’s ways to resolve this, to deescalate this, wind this thing down, so that was a heavy focus of mine at all times.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
That’s correct.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yeah, he laid down some ground rules, sort of base conditions for his willingness to get involved and try and be an intermediary. And so we had -- I still remember, and Eva Chipiuk reminded me of it, that we had a very, very intense phone call where he was testing me and I was testing him. But what he made absolutely clear was that the truckers had to be willing to move out of the residential areas and I had to be honest with him about whether I thought that was achievable. And once he learned to trust me and I learned to trust him, we both thought it was achievable, so then he proceeded to go to work.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
To go to work on it, go behind the scenes. And I wasn’t asking for the details. That’s not it works if you’ve ever done this before. You just let them go do their thing behind the scenes and they will come back to you at the appropriate time.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yeah, what had happened was I first met Mr. Marazzo on the Thursday that we had the press conference. It was later in the day that I was introduced to him. It’s the first time I had met him. I immediately was impressed with his calmness and his levelheadedness. He didn’t -- there was a lot of emotion up and down with various individuals in these rooms, but Tom was always just completely calm. And he had been observing for longer than us, and he had been working with the police liaisons and felt that he was in a circle where nothing material was arising. And he advised in the meeting room -- I remember he came in, he left a meeting with the PLTs and had told them that he didn’t want to speak with them any more and he needed somebody that was more of an Inspector level, somebody who had some actual decision-making capability and greater authority. Things went quiet. The next morning, this would be now the Tuesday ---
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Correct. Tom told Ms. Chipiuk and I that he wanted us to come to a meeting at City Hall at noon, and I said, “Okay. What’s this all about and does the City know we’re coming?” because one thing that is a certainty a lawyer will -- of any experience will share with you is that it’s always a bad idea for your client to unexpectedly bring lawyers to meetings. It never goes well. So I’ve never before consented to that in my 27 years, but this being such an unusual circumstance, I agreed that we would go. And we arrived at City Hall and had quite an interesting interaction in order to get upstairs to meet with Steve K.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Animatedly angry, yeah.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
That’s correct. We -- the only thing -- you know, you kind of -- you go through your pockets and see what do I have, and I had nothing. And Ms. Chipiuk is astute, and she has pointed out that there was one thing that we did control, and that was what recommendation we could make to the Board about what position they would take on the continuation of the injunction because Justice MacLean had issued it for a set number of days. I can’t remember the number of days, but it was only set and we had a returnable date that was coming up in the following -- either the -- later that week, I believe. You can figure it out from the pleadings. So we said that we would seek instructions from our client not to oppose it becoming a long-term injunction, so the quiet that had resulted from the injunction would remain, and that was what we offered.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I had not yet received instructions at that point.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
There was a couple of sort of nuanced details, but -- that I think he might have just been misremembering, at least, or, alternatively, I am, but nothing of substance.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Sure.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yeah, he’d given us a list of three -- so I led by saying once Eva and I went into the room -- and I know there was some conflicting testimony. There was three PLTs in that room. There was seven people in that room. I know someone testified. I think it was one of the -- it might have been Drummond -- that there was no police in the room. That is absolutely false. And he likely just wasn’t accurately briefed, I suspect. And I led by saying, “Okay, give us your top three. If we can get movement at three locations in the downtown -- if we can move trucks and protesters, where can we provide the most immediate and effective relief?” And they gave us the three locations and one of them was Kent and I can’t recall the other two. But what I also picked up on, as did Tom Marazzo and Eva Chipiuk, is that they spent almost the entirety of their time talking about Rideau and Sussex. And so even though we had this list it was clear to me and to us as a team that Rideau and Sussex was in a category by itself. So we promised them at the end of the meeting that we would keep the meeting secret. And the reason that that was important is in these situations it’s always about building trust and it’s the littlest things you can control that build the trust. And so we agreed to keep the meeting secret. And in fact no word got out about the meeting. And I said -- and I'm not from Ottawa so, you know, I was stuck in buildings and then when I was on the move it was often at night so I was very spatially disoriented all the time. And so I said to Eva Chipiuk who had done her -- I don’t think it was her Master of Laws; I think it was her undergrad or her LLB here in Ottawa so she was very familiar with the area, and om obviously was. So I said, “Can you please take me to Rideau and Sussex?”
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
That’s correct.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yeah, I took several pictures including a picture with Mr. Marazzo and Ms. Chipiuk in it. I started doing that just to help keep track of things, you know. You get metadata on your phone so it shows exactly what time and place so I started taking these pictures.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yeah. We decided -- and this is the way things worked, particularly with the people that were there involved in the protest, is if something needed to be done you did it right there and then. You never waited. So the decision -- we had a discussion and it was Eva and Tom were like, well, why don’t we try and move this intersection right now? So I said, “All right. I’ll go back to the Sheridan.” And the reason that we agreed that I would go is because we had so little to negotiate with in terms of tools and tactics with the protesters. Because I had been on the stage at the press conference the week previous, I was recognized as the truckers’ convoy lawyer. So the idea was that if they made significant progress but needed just something more to get the truckers to agree to clear this intersection that I would -- that they would say, “Well, we’re going to have to have Keith come.” And then I would come and try and use whatever influence I may have. So that was the plan. And to be clear -- because there’s been conflicting evidence about this -- our focus at this intersection was to clear it, which is very different from the dal with the mayor what the objective was.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
This was to clear this intersection and as soon as we got there we could see why it was such a concern. I think there are six streets that come together. There’s the very high end condo tower. There’s the U.S. embassy down the road. The Senate. And on and on. And we were like, “Okay, we understand why they want this cleared.” So our goal was at least to clear up the west bound lanes.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Correct. It was not -- what had happened was my briefing is that we had an advantage because the first three big trucks that would have to move were the ones that had the Polish immigrants. And Ms. Chipiuk is Polish background and can speak Polish fluently. And she very quickly developed a rapport with these truckers. And we knew if we could get the first three to go it would incentivize the other ones to join in. There was a sense of each of these areas that people didn’t want to be left alone, that there was a real group think going, we picked up. So but this was an intense group. There’s no doubt about it. I mean, you've heard about that. There was this -- the first time I heard it was in this Inquiry so it was never on our radar. But so Mr. Marazzo gathered about 80 of them together and in the middle of the intersection surrounded by their vehicles, and got them to pick amongst themselves two representatives. And he moved forward in effectively a parlay in a military sense with the police to the west up closer to Wellington. And then the particular police liaison, Sgt. Fung Li, had a little bit of an aggressive personality. He could really turn aggressive very quickly. And Mr. Marazzo was concerned about him interacting directly with the trucker leaders from the intersection. So Tom went up and spoke to Fung and said, “Okay, bring in the equipment. We’re ready to move at least half the intersection, the westbound, up into that space on Wellington.” Fung Li’s phone rang. He stepped back. And then turned around and said to Tom, “The deal’s off. They’re not going to move the barricades.” And we now know from the record and the testimony of others that others higher up the command vetoed that movement. So Tom ---
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
But this is important. Tom did not go back and disclose what actually happened. He said, “They just can’t get the barriers moved,” because he didn’t ant to destroy what little progress we had made. We agreed to have a cooling off because a lot of the truckers were upset. They had had arrangements to make the kinds of moves before our involvement and they felt that the police had double-crossed them. And so we decided to give everything a colling off and to try again on the Thursday.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
On the 9th, the PLTs about 4:45, 4:40 p.m. contacted me through Eva Chipiuk. That was -- the protocol we had is that if they needed to get me urgently they would call her because she was always at my side. And they came over to a meeting in the main floor of the Sheridan. It was an intense meeting. But we briefed the Board that evening and Tamara Lich requested that all of the road captains, all legal, the board members all assemble at Sussex -- or Rideau and Sussex the next morning prior to 10:00 a.m. in an effort -- an all-out effort to use their persuasive skills. We had an initial success where there was a LoadSafe truck that you’ll see lots of picture -- LoadSafe is what was on the logo on the side of the cargo trailer of the semitruck and it was parked by the valet area of the Chateau Laurier and it was pulled up on angle almost jackknife blocking almost four lanes and the police did not like it all. They had been trying to move it and I was standing with a large group of PLTs, Ms. Lich, and others. Mr. Barber came up. We said, “Hey.” I said, “Chris” -- or one of us said to Chris, “Is there any way you could go talk to that guy?” And as you heard, we all watched in amazement; Chris jumped up on the step and was hanging onto the mirror, the window came down, he started visiting with a few minutes and all of the sudden, Chris hollered out for truckers to come and set up a perimeter to safely back him up and the backup alarm went on and they repositioned him so he was right up against the curb. And I remember, we all thought, “Okay, this is a good sign. Maybe we’re going to do this.”
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Would -- just a little bit more detail because I think it’s important for context.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I’d like to contextualize it first if I could?
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
So what happened was we had a bunch of failed attempts to get the -- enough truckers to agree. We always had the Polish guys at the front that were ready to go. So a lot of the team -- or those of that were there to try and clear that intersection were done. It was a very, very cold day. I was back and forth trying to keep warm in the lobby of the Chateau Laurier. That’s when I got served with one of the seizure orders and was dealing with the TD Bank on interpleader. There was so many things going on all the time. In any event, we had largely given up. It was just about to get dark and then one of the PLTs came out of the area. And he came up -- and Tamara was with me and a couple of others -- and said, “They’re ready to go.” And Tamara’s like, “Well, then let’s do it.” So they called in the big heavy-lift equipment to lift the barricade and they ended up bringing a tow truck as well a flatbed tow truck because, as you may have saw in one of those pictures, they have these orange mechanical devices that are actually bolted to the ground and when the vehicle drives over it, it comes up behind it. So we were waiting. It was now getting dark and, as was typical, is you get into four or five o’clock, six o’clock, the number of Ottawa residents and others that would start to converge in the downtown would significantly increase each night. This was typical of that. Well, when the trucks and the heavy equipment arrived, they’ve got yellow flashing lights; they have backup alarms. That caused even more people to come. Because we were anticipating moving the trucks up past the War Memorial to Wellington, we needed -- the police were obviously handling this part of it -- more police to create a safety corridor so that no one got run over. And as the one vehicle backed up, and its alarm was very loud, people started to rush in. Tamara had been removing from the barricades the signs. No one else -- the police were smart not to go and taking signs down. It was Tamara. And she was recognized so she would place the signs over on another railing by the Senate to get the barricades ready to be removed safely without controversy, hopefully. Just as the equipment was going, people rushed behind the tow truck because they seemed to think that the police were about to do something bad to the truckers. I was talking to them. Tamara was individually talking to groups of people, “It’s okay. This is a cooperative move. We’re trying to clear this intersection. The truckers want to move up to Wellington.” And then people would sit on a barricade. Tamara would go talk to them. They’d apologize, get off the barricade. She’d turn around and they were on another -- different people were on another barricade. And then the police were further in. Tamara and I were trying to talk to as many people as we could to explain that it was okay, “This is a cooperative move. We’re just trying to clear an intersection.” And then the people just swarmed in, and that’s where the video plays.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
And I’m in the orange, high- visibility coat ---
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
--- which they jokingly called my “trucker camo”. (VIDEO PLAYBACK)
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Thank you.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
That would have been on the Thursday, sir. That would have been February 10th, the evening. That would have been about five o’clock.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
That’s correct. And the proposal was not -- was never just to move up to Wellington. It was always recognized that probably only 25 percent of the vehicles could go to Wellington. The more dominant theme of the plan was for the vehicles to move to the remote locations at Embrun Exit 88 and Arnprior and to have -- expand the shuttle busses that were already running. And there was also -- this is a very important point and I don’t know that it’s come out yet, is a lot of people who were there, the truckers, never planned to stay that long but the Canadians they met along the way, and the stories and the heartache that they heard, and the trust and plea that they heard from those people, many of the truckers I talked to felt this obligation to stay as long as they could but they also needed a way to leave gracefully and respectfully. And one of the things we recognized was that if 75 percent of the vehicles were going to be given an opportunity leave and go out to Embrun or Arnprior, that some would actually use it as an opportunity to go home and do so respectfully. So that was an important part of the plan.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Correct.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
It’s in reverse chronological order, so that would be the latest response. I had prepared -- following the Board meeting on the Friday evening where the Board decided to approve the deal, they were all there in person except for Mr. Dichter, who was incapacitated due to his broken leg and had to stay at the Sheraton, but we had him join by conference call. And because of the significance of this, even though on Friday they had all agreed to proceed to proceed with the deal with the mayor, I wanted to get something documented, so I sent an email to all of the Board. You can see where it says right just by where the mouse is, a little bit up and to the left, GIDG. That’s part of Brigitte Belton's email address. You'll also see -- you can see Mr. Dichter's emails on this as well. It's the first one on the CC line, actually. And I received responses from everyone approving it. It makes reference to the arrangement with the mayor. The plan was how are we going to get the truckers on side? So the decision was made to do this Freedom Manifest document where Tamara, with all the Board members, signing at the bottom, would say, "It's time. We've had an impact. It's time to do something differently. It's time for us to focus our presence on Wellington where our beef is with the federal government," for them, and for them to have the other trucks move out to the other locations.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
That’s correct. About 850 copies were printed. We decided to go old school, Gutenberg printing press. In fact, I took a little video and had forwarded it to Dean French so that he could see that progress was being made on the efforts and the plan to get the information out to the truckers. Chris Barber, Tamara, and others went out onto the streets and met with truckers, and the road captains handed these out. And Tamara even went out to Arnprior and Embrun to inspect them to make sure that they had sufficient capacity to take all the 75 percent of the vehicles and to meet with the owners of those lands to make sure they were comfortable with that many vehicles showing up in the coming days.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yeah, it is. And I think 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, and because if it was successful, we were going to have had the downtown cleared out by the Wednesday but for Wellington up to the Sir John A., and you know, a defined area -- which they actually in logistics meetings shored it up because of the issues about the hospital and so on access, and the truckers agreed to make it even a smaller area -- said it was 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. 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 anomaly at this time in terms of our mandates; the other G7 countries weren’t doing these things -- to try and persuade the government to review its policies.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yeah. Well, I was directly involved, and on the Monday, and my text messages and my phone logs confirm it, my text messages with Sgt. Le, with the mayor's chief of staff and with the city manager. We -- the reports I was getting from the ground were that the police were not in a position, they were getting blocked at different phases by the police. They finally got some trucks moved. We were ready to move trucks again on the Tuesday. Chris had worked and others, Joe Janz and Ryan and Dale and others had gone out and worked hard to get a whole bunch of trucks ready to move on the Tuesday. Police completely blocked it. We now see all the bad communications and infighting that was going on. We didn't know that at the time, obviously, and then again, on the Wednesday. And the other thing is, we realized, when we discussed it and I listened to the road captains and to the Chris Barbers, is they felt that once the big trucks moved, there would be stragglers, but they wouldn't want to be alone, and that they would either leave or they may go and infill a little bit, but so we recognized that. And there was also discussion that if -- and this is controversial, but there was also discussion that if we get down to a few areas where everybody else has either gone up to Wellington, or gone out to the base camps, or gone home, and we have a few holdouts, that Freedom Corp. would no longer provide any supplies, fuel, or materials to those areas to incentivize them to follow the lead of everyone else who was leaving downtown.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
M'hm.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Correct. And just to clarify, the letter's signed by Ms. Chipiuk, but I did review the letter, and we also had at least four or five other lawyers from the Justice Centre reviewing the same statutory regulatory instruments, and we had all reached the same conclusion that the description that the government officials and the police were using to describe the measures was not even close to what the Emergency Proclamation actually said, and that as long as you were not seeking to interfere with international trade, disrupt or interfere with critical infrastructure or engage in serious acts of violence against persons, you continued to have the right of political advocacy, protest and dissent. And so the labelling by the Police Chief and others that any Canadian citizen was no longer allowed to walk in downtown Ottawa or hold a sign in front of their Parliament is -- was not legally accurate and was against the Charter.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I had -- we were in the seventh-floor boardroom at the Sheraton. I'd just finished briefing the Board on the legal review that had been completed of the proclamations, and Mr. Barber turned to me and said, "Come over here. Sit on the arm of the chair. Let's do a Tik Tok." And it literally happened that quick.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I didn't know for sure. What I did know is that there was numerous times where information would come into the Operations Centre from various police sources that a raid was imminent and it happened many times, and then the raids either did occur in part, such as Coventry, or other evenings where they would go and take firewood and fuel or food from one of the blocks. But it did appear from the buildup we were seeing on the ground, it was obvious and the information we had about a number of -- I don't know, there's some Lansdowne Park or someplace had been set up as a processing centre, so it seemed that there is a shift occurring.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
No, because I'm a Canadian and I never imagined that our government, our federal government would use that level of force against non-violent, peaceful Canadians.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Bourgault.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes, I met Joseph a number of times. He's an amazing human being and very concerned Canadian, but I have no knowledge of any bills he was paying.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Who would have paid my hotel bill? I'm pretty sure the first hotel bill went on my firm visa card, and then I was reimbursed by the Justice Centre. The Germain was on my visa card and was reimbursed. And then the Swiss was paid for, I believe, I don't know this with certainty, by Chris Garrah through Adopt A Trucker.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
No. I do know that he helped pay for some meeting rooms. I don't think -- when Mr. Marazzo and Mr. Bulford were holding their press conferences at the Lord Elgin, I don't think he paid for that, but he might have. And it was mostly -- the only firsthand knowledge I have was hotel rooms.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I knew of Mr. King prior -- over a year prior to going to Ottawa. He had a court matter in Red Deer where he was all over social media saying that he's found this magic recipe for defeating all government laws, and I researched it, read the court's decision, and it was clear he was misunderstanding how the law works. So I knew of him from then and I knew that he was a very loud voice. When I found out that he was here, I told him I was -- I told the clients I wasn't prepared to be in the same room with him. There was one instance where he was brought into a room, and I immediately requested that he leave. The reason was that I had heard of his language at times, and maybe it was unfair to him, maybe I was duped by the media. I don't know, but there was inuendo of violence, and it was completely unacceptable to me, but more importantly, Ms. Lich. Because the Legacy media was repeating it so many times and it was needing to be explained so many times, the Board made the decision to issue this press release. This is the only press release of this nature that was issued where they identified a person and made it clear that they did not agree with, as it says, "He does not speak for us. We expressly condemn any talk of violence from him or others.”
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
That’s correct.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I received on a daily basis 10, 20 or more media requests. Everyone from the New York Times, Washington Post, BBC, France 24, Belgium, Caribbea, Japan and every Canadian news outlet. I did agree to do one interview and I agreed to go on FOX with Premier Peckford.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
That’s correct.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Good morning.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I think you misspoke. I think you meant to say "justification." Does it say jurisdiction?
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
No.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Was the -- we had -- so I had lawyers with me on the ground. I also had teams of lawyers that were back at their normal place of business. When an issue would arise, I would delegate it out. I would say, "Okay, this team in Toronto, I want you to review this." We even prepared a draft judicial review application for the -- both the City's Emergency Proclamation and the Ottawa -- or, sorry, the provincial government one. Media assessment is what does this change? What impact does it have on the rights of the people on the ground? And we concluded that it was largely benign.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Well, I can help you by telling you what was in my mind. And our concern was, I believe that it was early in the previous week -- by early I mean the Tuesday, and if not Tuesday, the Wednesday for certain, that we started hearing rumours that the Federal Government was contemplating invoking the Federal Emergencies Act. So all of the references in any of the communications that you have at that time would be, unless there's one that's more specific, about that. There was -- we weren't concerned about the -- either the civic one, nor the provincial one.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Well, first of all, this was not a normal file.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Can I finish my ---
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
--- can I finish my answer, please, sir? This was not a normal file. You did not -- I did not have opportunity to document things. And I'm telling you under oath that at no time was the -- either the Ottawa State of Emergency Declaration, nor the Ontario State of Declaration a matter of concern for me and the other lawyers with me. We were very concerned about the potential and the rumours we were hearing for the Federal Government to invoke the Federal Emergencies Act.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I can't remember the specific individual, 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. And it was -- so MPs, some MPs had shared with people involved in the convoy and they reported that to me.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I might, but I can't recall any offhand.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
No, that's correct.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Correct.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
M'hm.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
That was my assessment. Probably I reached that conclusion in my mind within, I would say, three to five days of being here. I'd had sufficient interactions and repeated interactions with different individuals from different groups that that was the pattern that I felt was present.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yeah.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
That's what they called themselves and they were doing weird séance things and burning things in the lobby.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yeah.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yeah, you bet.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Like moths to a flame.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes, and it was a constant effort by Ms. Lich and Mr. Barber and others to fend them off, so to speak. And 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.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
That's correct. Yes, I would agree.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I don't think I would have referred to -- no, I don't know that I would have referred to them as bad actors.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
No.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I would have characterized without a doubt some of the individuals involved with that group as being manipulative, a hundred percent.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Absolutely. It was an incredibly diverse, dynamic -- remember, that if you walked into the Operation Centre at any given moment and said how many people in this room knew one another before January 15th, and the only 2 people would put up their hands would be Chris Garrah and Chad Eros. These people all came together for the first time.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yeah, and the tensions with -- -
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
--- the police and the political tensions. It was time to deescalate and reduce the footprint and relieve the pressure.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
There was no gridlock. I've described how I was able to travel freely.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
No, the idea was to concentrate, and this was discussed in the negotiations with the Mayor. The Mayor's message that I received through Mr. French was that he recognized that the grievance -- I think it's even in his letter, if I'm not mistaken -- that was with the Federal Government primarily was the triggering event, the federal mandates that you've heard about.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I just -- sorry, sir, I haven't finished and I'm just -- that was slowing down because I -- Commissioner has reminded me that I'm speaking too fast. So it was recognized that trucks would remain on Wellington. And to be clear, there was no understanding that it would be a grant of immunity. It was recognized that at any time after those trucks repositioned, the police could come and move them out. It was recognized that there would be an interference in the flow of traffic on Wellington but I note, because I was up there the other day, it’s blocked today, this very moment, by government barricades.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
No, it was absolutely to remove the pressure on the downtown residents and business, focus the attention on the grievance with the federal government, build from the success of de-escalation and negotiation to incentive and encourage the federal government to come to the table, open up a dialogue and set a pretext for the truckers to go home.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I don’t know. Do you want me to repeat my answer a third time?
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Complex problems require complex solutions. Complex solutions require phasing.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I had faith. I had confidence of the good will of the -- of -- look ---
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I have been able to resolve at least more than 90 percent of all the litigation files I’ve been involved in by opening up dialogue between the parties and I remained optimistic that through applying those skills and those tactics that we could have had a peaceful resolution and a respectful Canadian dialogues about important policy issues.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
You’ve described them. That’s accurate.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
That’s correct.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I had faith and my faith in the same way -- I would have quit practicing law, sir, a long time ago if I didn’t have faith in the ability of people having civil and respectful discussions to resolve disputes.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
It -- fair, but we’ve already established, sir, that the road’s blocked. So if -- I’m not sure if your concern is about the presence of trucks and Canadians or whether your concern is about the road being blocked. It can’t be the road being blocked because it’s still blocked to this day by the government.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
M’hm.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I’m aware of the allegations - --
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
--- and I’m also aware of what I experienced, which was Canadians, particularly immigrants of all ethnic backgrounds, coming together in a very peaceful, respectful way with deep concern about what the federal government and governments were doing to their rights and freedoms.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
No, I don’t know that I’d agree with that. I’d need -- you have to be very contextual- specific. Our free speech rights are very broad and just to say that someone made some vague allegation of racism is not enough for me or anyone else to make a reasoned conclusion.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes, and I find the Prime Minister’s hate speech towards unvaccinated people and saying, “How do we deal with these people,” deeply troubling.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I do not believe that anyone, either morally or legally, should be threatening anyone else’s life and I have received many death threats myself since representing the Freedom Convoy.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Correct.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes, obviously.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I was asked many times every day by truckers when they recognized me, and they would say, “Mr. Wilson, am I allowed to have my truck here?” And if they were parked in the parking lane, I would say, “It depends. What does the sign say about how long you can park? You might get a ticket.” If they were parked in a driving lane, I had the same response to all of them, which was, “You tell me this. If you were to stop your truck in the number 2 lane on the 401, then get out and leave it, what would happen?” And they would say, “The OPP would come, they would ticket it, and they would tow it away.” I said -- I would say to them, “You’re in the exact same situation here. No, you cannot lawfully park your truck there.” There is an interesting argument because they were told to park there by the police as to whether they might have an officially induced error defence, but that was the answer that I would give them.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Of course.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Well, there was -- and I’m not trying to be cute about this but you’re asking me a very nuanced question because Charter rights, especially when you get into freedom of expression, are nuanced, is there were times where these dance parties on the weekend -- and I said this, and it’s in the transcript when I was before Justice McLean, because we did have a discussion about whether there was an artistic element -- and the trucks would start -- with the different frequency of their horns would start doing dance beats, so there was that. But it’s clear Ms. Lich and Mr. Barber were clear that they did not want the horns. Before the injunction -- the week before the injunction, the truckers agreed amongst themselves to have a quiet time from 8:00 p.m. to 8:00 a.m. because they wanted to get sleep, too. The injunction allowed that to be expanded.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I witnessed people dancing a lot to the horns with the music. I’m sorry, sir, that’s what I saw. I’m under oath.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I wasn’t on the street at three in morning so I can’t say but I was at least once or twice leaving meetings at one in the morning.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I believe that was a press conference that Mr. Dichter has asked that was primarily focused on Bitcoin. It was in the Sheraton Hotel and I and Ms. Lich were asked to come to attend the first part of it to provide a legal update and an operational update on where things were at.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
They're part of the Freedom Convoy. That’s about as far as I'd be prepared to go.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I worked with lots of people every day on a wide variety of issues.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
That’s my understanding.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
He was mostly -- I almost never saw him in the operation centre at the Swiss. He was almost always at the ARC and he was doing these, on is own initiative, these daily situation briefs. They were not reviewed by anybody. In fact, I still haven't even read most of them. We had no time to even read them and he was circulating them to the truckers.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
That’s my understanding, yes, and I've read some of them since preparing for this.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Sometimes I did and sometimes I didn’t.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yeah. I've since reviewed his CV and confirmed these things to be true.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I don't know if it was every day. I -- it was a few days in that I learned that these things were occurring. I think they were distributed to the block captains, if I'm not mistaken, in the morning.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yeah. I recall that. In fact, we were -- received a separate briefing and this actually was raised by GoFundMe executives and their legal team on our call on the Thursday. And it was Antifa. They had previously come in on occasion and knifed trucks, cut the air lines, stabbed -- knifed tires, and they had announced on social media, I was told, the Antifa group, that they were going to be coming in a larger numbered force and trying to do more damage to the trucks.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
No, there was never any of the rooms I was in -- and I was usually with the leadership at all times -- any effort, attempt, or even discussion about reaching out to any tow companies to discourage them, and we know from the evidence from the police in the previous days of this inquiry that in fact, the governments were able to get tow trucks.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
And corroborates my evidence that sometimes I agreed with him and sometimes I didn’t.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
M'hm.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I believe so. I think that’s the name of the company.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
That was the allegation by CTV, and my understanding is an investigation was commenced but no action was taken.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I'm not, as I testified earlier, entirely clear on who was offering. I don't remember it to be Bourgault. It might have been Take Back our Freedoms. I believe there was a couple of people, and as I explained, we had this pattern where people would come forward and say, "Oh, we'll look after this, we'll look after that," and it didn’t happen. There was some uncertainty as to whether or not we were even going to be allowed to get on the plane. But the Justice Centre said, "This is too important. Get on the plane. We'll sort this out later."
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
It was on the evening of the 1st. It was -- the reception they had in the hotel was terrible, terrible. They only heard probably a third of what we talked about. Mr. Bourgault was not on that. There was a doctor with a British accent, a very nice man. I can’t remember his name. And Mr. Peckford was most definitely not on that call. hours is probably some other conversation that we had. Do you see that?
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Was not.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I have never had a virtual call at any time in my life involving Mr. Eros and Mr. Bourgault ever.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yeah. And even if you walked the streets when we were moving from one location to another, it was remarkable, the people that would come up and stop her and politely ask if they could have a hug. And the tears would just start to flow and often I was standing behind her and I would hear what these incredibly tragic stories that these people would share, and the grown men, and about how they had lost children to suicide. They’d lost their businesses, they’d lost their marriage. And it was Tamara and seeing what Tamara was doing that had given them hope. Hope.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Tamara figured out something the day before I did. And I remember we got -- it was my fault. I thought someone was coming up to hug her. We were leaving the Westin Hotel after coming out of the meeting with Dean French on the Friday night when he had presented the Mayor’s proposal. I thought it was someone wanting a hug. And it turned out it was a TV crew from Berlin TV, from Germany. And I felt bad because we tried to protect Tamara from that. But when they asked her about the 10 million, she responded by saying, “The money is symbolism. The money is symbolism.” It was -- and if you look at how much money actually got to the truckers and how much was actually returned to the donors, the vast majority ended up back at the donors and as you know very well, otherwise it’s in the escrow fund under court supervision partly over which you must receive notice before anything can happen to it. So the money was symbolism in Tamara’s view and I think she’s right. It was a way for Canadians to demonstrate and add their voice to what they thought the convoy stood for which was holding the government to account and advocating for respect for our Charter, return to the rule of law.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Thank you. I honestly can tell you, Mr. Champ, and as you know, one of the things that happens to me when I come to Ottawa, I meet you. And I mean that in respectful way. You've been very professional in your dealings and I thank you. I actually -- as I was asked that question I couldn’t remember whether I actively opposed. So if that’s your memory, I agree that I probably did do, as lawyers do, oppose. But I do -- what I remember more clearly is advising my clients that there was no way that the court was not going to grant that injunction.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I don’t but I have confidence in you; if that’s your memory, then I’ll accept that.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
That’s correct. And my memory, I'm hoping, is correct that you recall we did not oppose that?
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Well, actually we thought we did. But after having observed the proceedings since the last few weeks, we had no idea of the level of dysfunction of in-- fighting that was going on. We assumed that when information filtered in to the Operations Centre, that a raid was going to occur at nine o'clock that night at this location, that it was real. And then when it didn’t happen, the assumption was it was a test, not that there was something happening where different inspectors and forces were in conflict about a plan. We did not -- that was all new revelations through this Inquiry.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
That is correct.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes. There was -- the remarkable thing was that all these different individuals who had experienced -- you know, I was never prior to this a big believer -- a huge -- I didn’t think they were a bad idea -- about mission statements. It was remarkable how efficient everybody worked because they all had the same mission statement that they had formulated deep to the core of their being. It was that they felt the country was badly off track, that their families and their communities were being harmed. And this was their opportunity to try and make a difference. So we had former police officers, miliary, Navy, CSIS, airline pilots, doctors, nurses, teachers, carpenters, chiropractors. The whole breadth of society was there and the cream just rose and they organically came together during the time, and those who were getting things done -- there was very little in-fighting. There was a lot of people coming in that we were trying to manage but it was really remarkable, the organic way in which the enterprise ran.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes. Well, then I ---
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
--- still remember ---
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
--- one really illustrative example was in the operations centre mid-morning, super cold outside, you know. Some people are -- a big huge square table, people working, people standing in groups, people looking at things on the board. And then someone came in and said, “Some situation is occurring at Albert and Kent” or wherever it was and everybody stopped for a minute. No one said what needed to be done. Two people got up, threw their coats on, grabbed their toques, and they were gone. And then everybody carried on. It was so efficient that there was no point even discussing what needed to be done and who was going to be doing it. Once the information came in then the people who knew they were best suited were dealing with it, did. It was spectacular to watch. That’s why I now believe mission statement are very important.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I observed it, yes.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yeah, that was really Chad Eros’s department and he has given interviews that are online where he describes -- Chris Carson’s interview where he describes the processes that he put in place. But I did observe cash being counted. My understanding was it was coming from the stage and from other places and being put into envelopes and then teams would go out and distribute it to the truckers.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
He was not only a director; he was the treasurer and he was a paid accountant.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I would hope so.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
He was, yes.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I think the first time I saw cash would have been probably around -- I’m just trying to visualize the calendar here. Probably around the 11th or -- 11th maybe? Yeah. And that weekend, the 12th, and be -- that was after the provincial government in Ontario, the Attorney General, issued the seizure order that you’re familiar with, with respect to GiveSendGo funds. And much like what you saw happen with -- when the police said, “No more fuel” to “If you bring fuel to downtown, you’re going to be charged with counselling mischief” or something, the next day Ottawa residents and other one -- everyone showed up with gas cans; it was a “I am Spartacus” moment. And what I observed was people were so determined to support the truckers that, because the GoFundMe got shut down, and now the GiveSendGo was being frozen, they weren’t going to let that discourage them. I heard anecdotal stories from many truckers, where they would get the tap on the door and someone would be there with their family and give them $20, or $100, or $1,000, or $5,000.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Not the vast majority because I just -- that wasn’t why they were there. There was always -- there’s always opportunistic people that are more focused on money than others of us. That all I meant.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Not as much as if they’re pulling a load.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I know there’s -- we put in to -- well, in your action with the Mareva injunction, there’s details on that in the affidavits. But I also know that I was told by a businessman who wanted to donate fuel that he had contact -- or had his office contact three different fuel suppliers in the bulk of suppliers, and he wanted them -- he wanted to pay for a shipment of fuel from each of them. They declined because they said the best they could do was put him on a waiting list. They had so many people phoning from across the country to pay for fuel to be delivered downtown that they actually didn’t want his money and they said all they could do is put him on a waiting list.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yeah, like I wasn’t at his house or anything.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yeah. He had gone on this highly misinformed rant on social media, and he was attacking a reporter and so I -- it’s always dangerous on Twitter, I jumped in and explained the law and showed the pleadings so -- to show where he was misunderstanding how the law worked, and he hadn’t set this big precedent. So I had -- but he’s a loud voice, like Chris Sky.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
So I was aware of it.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yeah, Mr. Sky made his way across the country a few times.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
You know, there’s four million people in Alberta, right?
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I -- the first time I was in physical presence of Mr. King was when he showed up in a boardroom in Ottawa during the protest, and it was about two or three days in and I immediately instructed him to be -- to leave the room; not him, I told the people around he’s got to go. The only other direct interaction I had with him was on Twitter in the previous -- about 18 months prior to that where he was misunderstanding a ruling by a court judge.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I wasn’t aware of that. It wouldn’t surprise me, but I wasn’t aware of that.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I was never -- I’ve never formally been involved in those movements. I have been very concerned about the merits and the fairness of our Confederation. But seeing, as you’re heard, and I saw it myself, a Quebecer with a Quebec flag running towards an Albertan with a cowboy hat and an Alberta flag, and embracing; seeing a Quebecer trucker, who could not speak any English, with a Cana -- a trucker from elsewhere in Canada, I don’t know where he was from, who couldn’t speak any French, and they were using Google Translate in a Tim Horton’s to communicate, and they were laughing and getting along, it restored my faith in the future of our country.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I believe that’s in the text message, yes.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
It’s clear I -- you’d have to ask him, but it was clear to me that he -- that he also had concerns about government overreach, and that the truckers were protesting that.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
He did, but I also received phone calls from Fox News, I received emails from Fox News; they were all about the same time. I mean, that’s how these guys work; ---
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
--- when they really want to get somebody, they reach out to everybody they can. I don’t know that it was because of Dean that I got it; it might have been. But I had emails and phone calls from Fox News, independent of those, just like I had contacted -- or had been contacted by the New York Times and the Washington Post, and everybody else.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
He was -- he -- I wouldn’t say he was assisting me. It was something he did on his initiative; I think he thought I would be a good interview.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Well, you know, I guess we all get surprises.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
He never did, but my clear sense was -- I’m not very familiar with the goings on in Ontario politics, but I had a general sense -- I think I might have Googled him, and I think I got a sense there was some estrangement or some falling out between him and the Premier, but I ---
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
No, he never brought up -- the only time he would have made a reference to the Premier was -- oh, like the whole Twitter account thing, because we had the problem with BJ Dichter logging in to Tamara’s Twitter account and sending out that one Tweet, and he said, “Multiple people have access to this, right?” And I said, “Yeah,” and he explained to me that when he was Chief of Staff to the Premier, they had a rule; three people had access to the Premier’s Twitter account, but two of them had to agree to a Tweet; no one person. And I said, “Yeah, it would’ve been nice to have known that.”
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
That’s not true.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Thank you.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
That’s correct.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
That’s correct.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
At times, yes.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Not universally, but some of their messages they did not agree with.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yeah, James Bauder -- there was a number of times where they were preparing a press release to distance from the MoU, or they were going to add it to a paragraph of a letter. But if you’ve ever drafted by committee, you know that everybody wants their piece, and certain things get left out. But I think they made it pretty clear that they did not support the MoU, and nor did they support, and they were very concerned about, any inuendo of violence from Mr. King.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yeah, and it was more than that because one of the things that I -- I mean, I’m a lawyer but I’m also a dad, and my wife and I have four kids, and it was remarkable to me, meeting many of the families with younger children -- I mean five, six up to 12, 14 -- and the amazement on their face. They’re interacting with all these different truckers of every ethnic background and other Canadians and the excitement and the pride was really historic and I commended those parents for having their children learn from this and participate and experience it firsthand. It was very safe. I never imagined that the police would use the level of violence that they did.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
The warnings really accelerated on the Thursday. And when I did the -- when Mr. Barber asked me to do his TikTok, that was on the Wednesday.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I’m not following your question. What do you mean?
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yeah, I’ve only had a chance to skim through parts of it.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I do know that the statistics were clear that the crime rate had gone down. I do know that the -- because of some of the former police, paramedics, emergency services people that were in the operations centre explained to me what happens in Ottawa after, I think it’s called, Bluesfest and the amount of assaults and violence that - - and even on Canada Days, the amount of assaults and violence they said -- they told me, having attended and participated and be on duty on those events, they had never seen this number of people come into the downtown core and with this level of safety and absence of violence, so that’s what I knew.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Well, I mean it’s a peaceful protest. Were there some people within a large crowd of five, or eight, or 10,000 people, as there were on the weekends, that engaged in criminality? That’s called normal.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Absolutely.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Okay.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Mr. Dichter has confirmed that he was the one who did it.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
M’hm.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes. And once we found out, Ms. Chipiuk and I got to the bottom of it in that Mr. Dichter acknowledged that he had done his own Tweet, and then he logged out and logged back in as her and then retweeted with a quote that said it was him. We said, “You’ve got to fix this and you have to fix it fast,” because I have an email from him where he agreed to -- confirmed his consent, “Good to go,” so he was the one -- we were trying to think of wording that could go out to confirm the deal was still going ahead and he decided that he would play the Tweet as though the reporter had made a mistake and I think he said something like, “Nice try, so and so. We were talking about the federal mandates. The deal to move trucks tomorrow is going ahead.”
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Sure.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I think you just passed it.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I can’t dispute that. I can’t remember -- I know that we were able to correct it around -- it was either 10:58 p.m. or 11:02 p.m. Dean had strongly recommended that we correct it, get to the bottom of it, figure out what happened, correct it in advance of the 11 o’clock news hour shows and I moved as quickly as I could to get to the bottom of it because I was completely blindsided by it.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
There was many times where Mr. French and Mr. Peckford said, “Oh, it would be nice if you could do this,” and I was like, “I don’t think you are appreciating the dynamics of this environment.” It was extremely chaotic.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
As was I. I was ---
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yeah, I was -- I received feedback from a lot of the people I was around that they were -- they were struck how calm I was most of the time. There was one notable exception where I was arms flailing, yelling, likely swearing, and a very loud voice when I was like, “Who did this and what just happened here?” I was very -- because I and other had worked very, very hard to get us to this point. We had the logistics meeting at City Hall with Ayotte and the City manager, and Drummond. We had report -- heard back that the trucks were ready to roll and some of the guys were packing up some of their gear. And I was like, “Oh, my goodness, we’ve come this far and we’re going to get sabotaged?”
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
There was that lack of clarity even prior to that because this is the Sunday night. So when the pamphlets were being circulated and people would get them, they’d go, “Oh, this is fake.” Some people thought that it was actually counter-intelligence propaganda either by the government or by the police. That’s why the plan that we developed had teams of recognized road captains and other truckers who were very much recognized from the journeys to Edmonton to go in teams to the various blocks to personally talk to as many truckers as possible so they knew it was real.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I don’t -- I can’t recall. I think that was played yesterday, sorry, yes.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Correct.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I would say -- I would say it differently. I would say that subsequent to leaving Ottawa, when they reflected, they’re remembering events differently, because there are emails.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Fair enough.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I believe so.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Actually, if you scroll down a little bit, I can tell you if it is. Yes ---
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
--- it’s the final version.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
It was one of three sites that existed at the -- 88 is the exit 88, which I understand is near Embrun.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Obviously.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
There was a lack of clarity about many things, but most of the truckers would have -- some of them wanted to go, some of them wanted to go -- well, just like look at Mr. Barber. First he had his truck downtown on Wellington, and on his own initiative, he moved it out to Arnprior or Embrun, one of the two, on his own initiative. He didn't want his truck downtown. Others wanted to do the same thing. These trucks were covered in salt. It's not a good thing to do for a long time. There was -- they'd set up truck washes at these places. Mr. Barber wanted Big Red cleaned. So this was not to be a precise document to enumerate every nuance of what we felt was going on at the time.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
It is, and that's the learning from the video, because I -- you saw me walking with the PLTs. We kept walking and I had a meeting with them, and Tamara was there as well. If you pause the video, you'll actually see us walk past Tamara and then she comes up and we talk. And we're, like, okay, what are our lessons learned here? How do we do this differently? And number one was don't do it at night. Don't do it at night. That's why we shut down the moves partly on the Monday because it was getting dark. That was a huge error. And Tom Marazzo had actually said earlier on, "We don't make any moves at night. It's just too dangerous." But it also changed the dynamic of the crowd. But and that's why we needed this coordination with the police. We were very optimistic with the truckers, and a lot of them went out. It wasn't just Chris. There was several of them that were on their feet moving. If you look at some of the videos, you'll see them running along the sidewalk. You'll see the police cars and then you'll see the trucks, then you'll see Chris running. And we were doing it.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
They weren't trying to get truckers moved. They were trying to get the other people and the police to agree that the truckers could move. On the Tuesday morning, a delegation of PLTs arrived unexpectedly for the first time ever at the Swiss Hotel. I was in a room working on the letter with Tamara for the Prime Minister and the Premieres with the one that's been put in evidence. I got a knock on the door. The PLTs were there. I went in, and that's on the Tuesday they said -- they sensed something was wrong, and, like, the trucks are all wanting to move, but they said to me it was only a 24-hour deal. I said, "Look at the letter. With a large logistical exercise, the mayor's letter will take 24 to 72 hours." He looked embarrassed. He went over into the corner by the bathroom. He got on the phone, turned around, his face was a little red, and he said to everybody, "Sorry, major miscommunication. We're going to go out and try and get the trucks moving." So it was -- the PLTs were not trying to convince trucks to move. They were dealing with the police hierarchy and trying to get them, whoever kept blocking to stop the blocking.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Not on the Tuesday.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Oh, yeah.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Over a hundred vehicles over two city blocks were cleared on Albert, a hundred vehicles left the downtown, including around 40 trucks, 23 of which -- I know it was 23 because I reported the 23 count from Chris. He phoned me, and he -- I said, "How many do you have on Wellington?" He said, "We moved 23 to Wellington. If you look at my text message, you'll see 23 onto Wellington." But it was 40 semis moved in total. The others left, and we know for sure one of them went straight home.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
No, we anticipated that there would be some holdouts, but we also knew that they wanted to be part of the group, and we anticipated that once the big -- most of them moved, the holdouts -- we didn't want to just be sitting there by themselves, and they would move.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
We -- that was our expectation and it bore out to be true on the Monday.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Thank you.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Good afternoon.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Nineteen (19) days, yes.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes. The vantage point we had, Ms. Chipiuk and I, we set up a little, you know, operation centre of our own because we also had to monitor the bail applications and coordinate with the criminal legal teams. And we could see -- we had the view of the backside of the Weston and that tunnel, so we saw all the police -- all the highway buses coming in with the police filing off, and then we also, of course, had the television on, so we were watching the live streams from CTV and CBC as we were looking out our window and actually watching. We were quite high up, like, the 17th floor. And then getting various reports. It was a very, very active environment.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I had given advice to the Board, as I've testified, on the Wednesday. I had done the Tik Tok that the Board and Mr. Barber requested on the Wednesday. I wasn't -- because Ms. Lich instructed myself and Ms. Chipiuk to go to an undisclosed location because she was concerned, she had no idea what was going to happen to us, we followed her instruction. And after that point, I lost any ability to do any large-scale communication that I can recall.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
To be precise, sir, when I say yes, there was -- they had a big blue outline and some of them had a red outline. They were placed on the windshields. And I saw that was the calm before the storm, so it was the Thursday. The Thursday there was a ceremony at the war memorial that I attended along with my wife, and I remember stopping and reading the warning that if you didn't leave -- and I'm going by memory -- that your -- you would be ticketed, your vehicle would be impounded. And I can't recall what else it said.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
That's correct.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I had interactions with -- chance meetings with other -- some OPP and other police. They were extremely friendly, very cordial, very -- non-threatening. But in terms of any, you know, official, formal interactions, it was the PLTs.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yeah, reminded me of the ranchers in Alberta, yes.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I think they were inspired and they felt charged with a new responsibility to ensure the protest was successful, a responsibility they didn’t realize they would be invested in when they set out. However, I do know, having reviewed the evidence that in every instance that I have seen Ms. Lich was clear that at no time did she say we’re leaving after the weekend. I believe she said, “We’re going to stay until the mandates are lifted.”
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Correct.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Do you mean the opposite of what you just said?
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yeah, thank you. And I wasn’t trying to be unfair to you. I had a number of truckers say to me that they had originally planned -- as you've already heard from Mr. Barber, you know, to be in the convoy for a day, to join it for a certain distance and then turn around and reverse course home. And then they found themselves in Ottawa and found themselves in Ottawa for a long period. Yeah, that’s part of that synergy of growth that occurred.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yeah, I mean, I think he was very angry and frustrated and really wanted to fight hard to get the government to change course. And not all of us used the same approaches.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I ---
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yeah, I've just never been able to understand Mr. Dichter. And the other thing is that he wasn’t there that much because firstly, he had left early before I arrived in late January. And then he’d had a car accident, I believe, near Kingston. And then he returned on the Friday the 4th of February and then early that evening at approximately 6:00 or 7:00 p.m. as he was leaving the front door of the ARC Hotel he fell and badly broke his ankle. So then he was away at hospital for a period of time. Then he was restricted to his room because he just had a wheelchair and crutches. Then he had to go back for some surgery. So he was out of the loop a lot.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
A distraction and false hope.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
It was impossible.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
That’s correct.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yeah. And that’s why we had to use other approaches of moral suasion, of leadership, of recognizing their fatigue, recognizing the desire of many to find a graceful and respectful way, a proud way to get back home.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I have to assume that to be true.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Well, if you and I -- and I mean you and I -- happen to be walking down Wellington on February 10th and we were having a chat, lawyer to lawyer, I don’t think that we would conclude that you and I were breaking the law by walking down in front of Parliament, you know, on the sidewalk of Wellington Street. So this was the challenge is that you had individuals who were -- who I had told consistently when they asked, you know, of course you can’t park your truck there and I always used the analogy to the 401 which they got. “Yeah, I wouldn’t be allowed to do that. This is no different.” But for this potential, I really wouldn’t get into it with most of them about it because they were told to park there and then they were barricaded in place. So it was this weird mix where you had people lawfully, in my view, walking, mingling, shopping, interacting, some showing signs, some not, some just wanting to take it in with other who were breaching various parking bylaws and municipal ordinances and provincial statutes.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Constantly.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes. And thee was a good cooperation there. You know, when -- that was the rule. So everybody had a block captain and if Antifa was going to show up the rule was you phone the police, you call 9-1-1. And the frustration for us was the next day, you know, three people from Antifa came in and vandalized trucks. The next day the police chief or whichever one would hold a press conference and say, “Last night we had three charges for property damage in the downtown core.” And we were like ---
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yeah. Our most acute concern was the level of pressure we saw building on Police Sloly from the Police Services Board. That’s what motivated Mr. Marazzo to take a series of steps to cause the City meeting to facilitate some action to reduce pressure.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes. And the first one though was to -- it was two distinct strategies, One was immediate acute, which was the pressures saw on Sloly before he was no longer chief. And the other one was a broader exit plan.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Thank you.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes. Just to be clear, There was three instances related to freezing that I was dealing with -- well, four -- and no random order, just off the top of my head. The earliest one was the threat of an interpleader application by TD Bank through their external counsel. The next one was the ex parte order obtained by the Attorney General of Ontario under the Criminal Code declaring the donations proceeds of crime. Then the next was a freeze order of sorts, and then we had the emergency measures, the financial measures, and then after that, we had the Mareva injunction.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Every one of them did in real time, and they were finding out at different times. I still remember one of them coming to me and saying, "I just got a phone call from my wife. She's at the supermarket. She was with the kids, grocery cart was full, she wanted to pay with the debit card, it didn’t work." There's the line up of people. What's going on, because now the conveyor's full with the next person's groceries. And then she tried her Visa card and her second credit card, and none of it worked, and she had to leave the store in great embarrassment, and phoned her spouse and said, "What is going on?" We had other people that were trying to put gas in their vehicles and couldn't. There was more than one incidence where people needed to get prescriptions filled, could not. And then subsequent to that, as we worked to get the freezes lifted and reach out to the bank, we developed this template email to write to the bank to ask the bank to respond to us as lawyers, Ms. Chipuik and I. Then we have received reports since and it's recently that a number of these people, even though their bank accounts were unfrozen -- sorry, Mr. Commissioner, just realized how fast I was speaking -- after their accounts were frozen have been denied credit applications, and I have explained to my clients and others who contacted me that the Canadian Bankers' Association representative who testified before the House Committee said that each of these persons will have their accounts -- their names marked -- flagged for life.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes. We heard it a number of times over the course of the week prior.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
No, it would have been someone coming into the operation centre that had heard from an MP. I remember hearing -- because I would say, "Well, what's the source?" and it was some MP, and I can't remember -- I don’t believe it was indicated as to which party, whether it was the Liberal, New Democrat, or Conservative MP, but it was -- I guess there was strong rumours over in Parliament that it was active - - under active consideration.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
The truckers had agreed amongst themselves -- and this is in the transcript and represented, I believe, in an affidavit actually -- before the Superior Court and the injunction application that they put in this informal protocol of being silent between 8:00 p.m. and 8:00 a.m. Justice McLean, on the Saturday application, had suggested the parties consider agreeing to maybe allowing one hour for horns during the noon hour, but when we returned on the following Monday, that was something he wasn’t interested in entertaining.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
The Board was split. Other members and some of the truckers felt that it was something that shouldn't be -- that they shouldn't be restricted, other than the agreement they had for night quiet from being able to blow their horn. They thought it was part of their right of protest. So there wasn’t unanimity in the client group on that point, and the instructions that I and Ms. Chipuik received were to oppose it, now that Mr. Champ has refreshed my memory.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yeah. No, there wasn’t, and that was one of our frustrations, Mr. Commissioner, was that we were always faced with this zero-sum choice with police liaisons. We were trying to -- I really believe that if we could have a stepped type process, you know, a ramping down and building off success and building trust, but no, it was always the number of calls in a day, and if you look at my phone logs, you'll see the number of calls in a day I was receiving from the PLTs after I became more involved in that, and it was always the same question. "Keith, what's the exit strategy?" You know, it was always, "When are everybody leaving?" sort of thing.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
There was an area, I believe, along -- if my geography is correct, and it may not be -- along the Sir John A, where they had set up, and you'll see this. There's photographs of it. And I don’t know, but there was never any discussion or offer from the PLTs for anything other than ending the protest in its totality.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
No, I did not, other than taking the steps of this de-escalation and reducing the footprint to Wellington.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Correct.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Good morning, sir. My name is Keith Wilson, counsel for the convoy organizers. I apologize for my voice; I’m recovering from a cold.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Thank you, sir. Sir, we’re not in a position to proceed with cross at this time. There’s two reasons. One is the federal government has disclosed over a week ago an extension volume of documents that are highly redacted. It is obvious from the face of the documents that they don’t meet the criteria for lawful redactions. A motion was made last week for those redactions to be lifted. The submissions closed on Thursday evening. We still have no ruling; a number of days have passed. For the cross-examination and the discovery of truth process to be valid and effective, the parties require access to the documents; we don’t have that. So we would appreciate some indication as to when the Commission is actually going to rule on that and hopefully compel the proper disclosure of the record so that cross- examinations can be effective. I emphasize that these documents are not related to future witnesses, but present witnesses, so we’re making the process inefficient, with all due respect, by not allowing the parties to have access to unredacted documents. The second reason we’re not in a position to proceed with our cross-examination at this time with this witness is our lead counsel, Mr. Brendan Miller, who had prepared for the cross, as you know, sir, has been removed by the room by you when he was raising a motion to find a way around the absence of a ruling on the redaction. So we’re just not in a position to proceed on cross, sir.
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Keith Wilson (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Thank you, sir.