Tom Marazzo
Tom Marazzo spoke 336 times across 1 day of testimony.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Good afternoon.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes, sir.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes, it is.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes, I did.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
No, sir.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Niagara Falls and St. Catherines, Ontario.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Just outside of Napanee.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes, sir.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
No, I had the MBA when I was currently serving. And then when I retired from the military in 2015 I went back to school and did a Bachelor of Technology in software development.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Seneca.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I was notified that the College had adopted the province-wide COVID 19 vaccine mandates and I had some interactions with my union and realized that the union was not going to be supportive. And so subsequent emails came out from the president of the college herself. And my response to that was to send an email to the president of the college as well as deans, the VP of HR, and as many other faculty as I could put on this email. I sent it internally to the college, not publicly, looking to express my concern and question -- you know, I'm not a lawyer, obviously -- questioning the legality and sort of the morality of what they were doing. And a few days later I was terminated with cause.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
September 13th of last year. So a year September.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yeah. My former spouse and I sold our house and we purchased land outside of Napanee and then we moved to that area. And the plan really this year was to build a house. I cashed an RRSP to live off of while I was trying to build the house and really just focus on that, focus on my family. The level of tension in this country was extreme, to say the least. And I really wanted to focus on putting my family in a better situation which meant actually going off grid if that was even possible because as an unvaccinated person there was a lot of rhetoric about actually being able to participate in society. So we chose to sell the house. We purchased land. We were going to build a house. And I ended up -- we ended up in an apartment together, the three of us with my daughter in just outside of Kingston. And we were there working on plans for the house.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
No, I was not.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
No, sir.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Through a mutual friend of mine and James Bauder and his wife Sandy, I was contacted on the phone that Sunday morning. And I was asked if I would take a phone call with James and Sandy just to discuss some logistical organizational ideas around the convoy. I had been tracking the convoy as it was coming across Canada and I was absolutely a supporter of it. I really loved what this whole entire Freedom Convoy was about. So in that discussion which lasted approximately 15 minutes, James had asked me if I would come to Ottawa and support the convoy in any way that I could in terms of getting organized with logistical stuff. And within three hours of that phone call I was actually at the ARC Hotel.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Her name is Jane Moffatt, I believe. I had only ever met her once in person. And that was -- I actually -- I think I've spoken to her one time since the convoy.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Nothing.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I learned that there was a great need to get organized and from him personally the details -- I never got any details about him personally or his wife Sandy. I knew they were two people that were trying to effect a change in this country and I wanted to help them out. So there was an opportunity for me to employ the skills that I have gained over my career, and so I recognized it as a great opportunity to get involved.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I think Jane had mentioned to him that I was retired military. And I think that’s pretty much it.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I had seen James when I first arrived at the ARC, and then it was somewhat sporadic. I think he moved to a different location. I don't know where. I know he had a room in the ARC. And I would occasionally run into him. My contact with him was very sporadic.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Really, when I walked into the -- like, I was brought into a boardroom and thee were several truckers and two OPS police officers, Sgt. Fung Li, Sgt. Lou Carvelho. And the meeting had already begun and I was asked to turn my cell phone off or remove it from the room and give the police my name, which I did. And then I just quietly sat there. James actually brought me in the room and introduced me and I believe he oversold my career. I know there was people in the room that actually thought I was a retired General, which is clearly not the case. And so I sat there quietly and I just listened. And it was a very telling meeting. I got the feeling that after two days of the convoy being there this was the very first collective meeting that they had actually had in a room. I could be wrong about that but I didn’t get the sense that this group of people had ever come together with the Ottawa Police or any representative of the government of any kind.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
They were.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
The details of that are a little sketchy. They weren’t all truckers. Dana Metcalfe was somebody that I sat beside. Joe Bourgault was in the room and Ryan Olsen, his son-in-law. There was Brigitte Belton, I believe was in the room. Some of the other names I just -- I didn’t know who they were when I first walked into the room so I can’t really account for who everybody was in the room.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
To be perfectly honest, I think it was a case of fear. I had over the time of COVID noticed things that I had never before believed that I would see in Canada related to the way the police and bylaw and the government were going after Canadians. And for the first time in my life I was, you know, actually afraid of police. And I have several friends that are police officers. And I had a phone call with Randy Hillier one day. And Randy didn’t know who I was. This was -- I sent an email to him and Roman and other people and months later his office had returned the call. And Randy doesn't even recall the conversation. And I said, “You know, I spent 25 years of my life in the military and for the first time I'm actually afraid in my own country.” And he said, “You know, never be afraid. You can’t be afraid of the police or the government. They’re here to serve us.” And I think for me that kind of flipped a switch where I was like I went from thinking I'm afraid to get arrested or beaten by the police or getting an $880 fine to, “You know what? Now I want the fine. I’m done. I’m not going to hide from these people anymore.” And that started to mentally transition the way I thought. And then we came to a point where I thought, “Well, at some point the lawyers are going to step in and intervene and start protecting the public,” and they didn’t, except for a few. Then when the Covid mandates -- the vaccine came out, I thought, “Well, the community’s going to stand up and put a stop to this because of informed consent.” And they didn’t, except for a few. And it was the truckers that gave me an opportunity to actually get into, you know, fighting for my kids’ rights.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
No, it was months before when I still was employed and still lived in -- I don’t know if I was employed. I think it was -- I still lived in my old house prior to selling it and moving to the Napanee area.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
No, I -- I had bag with five changes of clothes. I believed that at the time I would go there, get organized, start to just kind of develop a daily sustainment plan and a routine, and then I would like for somebody who was able to basically take over for me and then I would move on if I wasn’t required anymore.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
That particular meeting actually got quite animated, very loud. I remember Brigitte being quite upset with Sergeant Li where she had made a comment of -- basically to the effect of, “What, are you going to shoot us in the streets?” Like, that’s where the level had gone. And it had started to calm down. Eventually, the two police officers departed from the meeting and we all just kind of sat around and regrouped. I think people went for breaks. And then we -- people left the room. I remember Brigitte and I being in the room and right around that time I think somebody brought in the map. And so I had learned there was a list of places that the OPS had requested that we not go near, like roads that we stay off of, and I said, “Okay, great, we’ve got the map. Let’s start marking the map.” And for me what was really important, because I had spent -- my son has a very severe heart condition and I spent Christmas this year in the hospital with my son. And so, you know, I’m very aware of keeping the emergency lanes open; it’s an important issue for me. So the first thing we did was start identifying hospitals. We identified the police station, fire departments, vulnerable infrastructure, and then started to plan out the routes to those in an effort to really make sure those lanes were always accessible. So that’s really where we started. And then we -- I needed to get a handle on where all the vehicles were located and that was a monumental task because, at the time, trucks were coming into the city, trucks were leave the city, there was a huge just change in our overall size of the convoy overall. So really, that first day was about getting a handle on where everybody was and the size and scope of the convoy.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes, everybody.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
James had introduced me initially into that meeting so everyone just realized there was an army guy in the room and so I think -- my sense was right away that nobody was in charge, particularly. There were strong personalities, people with strong opinions but, for some reason, and I don’t know why, I think it was just the fact that I was an army guy that people assumed that I was going to be able to get organized. And to be perfectly honest, it was quite -- it’s nothing unusual for an army officer to be able to do what I did, but it was just trying to get organized.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Logistics. My focus was really just on logistics and a sustainment plan, not any other -- I wasn’t thinking in a tactical sense. I was thinking just purely in sustainment to make sure that people could get food, fuel, money, if they needed it for whatever purpose. That was really what my thinking was at the time.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
There was -- a big task, which was really, really difficult, was to find the numbers and the composition of all the different types of trucks and where everybody was scattered. And then I learned that we had trucks out on the parkway. We had vehicles out on 88, Arnprior, locations I never actually made it to. But it was just trying to get a good situational awareness, or SA, of what was happening on the ground.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I did not know that until, I believe, late that first evening, and that is when I met Tamara and found out that there was an alternate coordination centre at the Swiss Hotel.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Just that it had existed and that, in those conversations, it was agreed that my scope of what I was interested or involved in was now going to be really cut in half. And I was quite happy about that because I didn’t want to get into a situation where I had to think about security, public speaking and a stage, and all of that stuff I had learned about. I didn’t have to worry about doing first- aid; that was going to be handled by the other group. We were just really going to focus on the logistics in terms of feeding, fuel, and then truck movement. So that was another piece of my responsibility would be moving vehicles in and out and around the city.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
No, and that’s the surprising this because that was happening. I mean that just -- that just does happen. I mean the number of supplies and fuel that was coming into the city, it actually did make what I was trying to do a lot more easy because that was just organically happening anyway. I mean, when people are hungry, they go on -- go searching for food.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Sure.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
To be honest, I don’t know where -- where they were getting their supplied enroute to Ontario -- or to Ottawa. But I had seen a lot of social media videos and seeing people on the overpasses, at truck stops, so I know that all along the way they were collecting food and donations -- everything that I had seen on social media. And so when -- I believe when they arrived in Ottawa, the -- it was the intention of the public to continue to come to the City of Ottawa and give more supplies as much as they could possibly give.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I learned about it a few days later. I didn’t really know much about it. I -- my interactions with Chris were very little. It wasn’t inside -- it wasn’t something inside of my area of influence that I was concerned about. It was something that was kind of going on in the background so I didn’t interact with it.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
There were, I think, different sources coming. Sorry, I can’t remember the name of the type of vehicle; it’s a fuel truck. It’s probably written. I’m not a trucker so some of the lingo, I wasn’t fully conversant on. I just -- I know that they were getting a lot of fuel but it wasn’t until after it was forbidden to bring in more fuel with bigger trucks and stuff to refuel them that people started to bring in the jerrycans by hand.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
No. No, that was -- by that point, my role had kind of been modified a little. It had sort of transitioned a little bit later on, about a week after or so. I just knew they were getting in fuel. The truckers were taking care of their own fuel. And there was no shortage of the fuel up until the Ottawa Police forbid them bringing in trucks of fuel, and then it was jerrycans. And that was not my idea. That was just people being very, very industrious.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I did not have to, no.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I literally had to go and send people out and count trucks in the streets.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Well there was different areas so I remember speaking to one person who after -- it took four days just to get that magic number of 322. That was a head count; that was literally somebody going out with sticky notes on streets and then actually breaking down by vehicle; it was incredibly difficult to get an accurate count because trucks kept coming and trucks kept going in and out of the city or out to different locations. So at some point I just kind of gave up on that as a -- something that I really needed to focus on. I was just kind of more interested in, you know, general terms, where do we have vehicles sent for a mass kind of thing; I didn’t need the details of where they were.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
That was our count and I knew -- and honestly I knew that that count -- I could I shouldn’t say “honestly” when I’ve sworn an oath, but I really -- I didn’t have a lot of confidence in the number just because of the influx and outflux of vehicles. So even when I got that number it wasn’t overly valuable to me.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
It always changed; and, again, it just -- it lost value in knowing that specific number. The point of interest for me was that we had more trucks concentrated on Wellington.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Sometimes, yes, that’s true.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
My understanding was when that did happen and it happened occasionally -- for example, Sergeant Lee had been let’s say vigorously contacting me to clear out one of the intersections and he kept asking me, you know, if I had gone down there and checked it. So I finally -- I didn’t send a runner; I went down for myself, to see it for myself. And what I discovered was, there was heavy equipment owned by the City, concrete barriers and five Ottawa Police officers standing in the intersection; it wasn’t being blocked by any of our people at all. So I -- you know, there was a give and take where we were sent or I was sent or other people that I was with were sent to go look at an intersection only to find out it wasn’t even us. And I had two members that I was working with that routinely, when we were asked by OPS to go and check on a safety lane or an intersection or something that was blocking safety, our two people would go down and physically speak to the drivers and get them to open up those lanes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I can’t say the street; is that -- Kent is right near the Rideau -- or sorry, I’m fuzzy on some of the streets.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
No. The only sticking point was Rideau. And even on Rideau, I spoke to one of the drivers personally and I said “You need to make sure you keep a safety lane” and he said “They have twice moved out of the way; they sit in their trucks and they listen for ambulances or they listen for sirens and if they hear it, they move the truck out of the way because three times they had listened to the Ottawa Police who said, “You know, can you please move the vehicle?”, and they would move the vehicle and the Ottawa Police would move their cars in that spot and they would trick the drivers. So the drivers at Rideau said “We’re not falling for it again; we’ll sit in our truck; we will listen for sirens and when we hear it, we will move”. And he assured me that on two occasions they did exactly that.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I don’t know his name; I know where he was parked. He was parked -- I know where he was parked. I don’t know his name; I know he had a paper bag full of letters from children.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes, sir.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
There was a polish contingent, a Polish Canadian contingent; there was French Canadians and I know there was Anglophones on that corner; there was many different groups of people on that corner.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I know there was a reputation prior to me going there and speaking to some of them. I didn’t get the sense that they were difficult. I got the sense that they were -- they were there for their own reasons which were separate from the overall convoy itself, most of the people that I was interacting with. But I got the feeling they were there for their families, for their communities. I know one driver I spoke to said that he didn’t have anything to go back to until these mandates were lifted and they were quite determined. I didn’t find them to be difficult; I just -- there was a little bit of a language barrier with one of the French-speaking men that I spoke to, but I didn’t find it difficult; I just found it a different style of motivation.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Not until I’ve been sitting in the audience here.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Just that they were more independent than the rest of the convoy.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Very, very decentralized. I learned that the truckers were not from big organizations, that they were actually independent owner/operators of their vehicles, and that you really -- you really had to be respectful of the position that they were in. They were individual business owners; they weren’t going to take orders from anybody. You know, they weren’t going to take orders from me just because I said, you know. I had no legitimate or legal authority to tell anyone to do anything and I wasn’t signing anyone’s pay cheque. This was a case where you -- you know, you had to use your soft skills to communicate and get people to buy in with what you were trying to do collectively.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I think there were people that were in leadership positions. You know, for example, Chris Barber is a very charismatic person. He’s an honest person; he’ll just tell you the way it is and he was very, very effective at communicating with truckers and it didn’t matter what their backgrounds were. They were all truckers. And so Chris was very influential speaking with truckers. Tamara was very influential. Brigitte was influential in her own way and many of the other people that were there working under the ARC had developed networks and they were always trying to broaden the network to communicate the things that we were all trying to do. And that was -- a lot of stuff was -- like we’ve got speeches on Saturday and trying to communicate that to the public and really work the social media angles because we were getting vilified badly, in such a grotesque way by the legacy media, that we made a conscious effort at one point to go into the trucks with cameras and get truckers to tell their stories on social media. So they were -- the leaders were out there developing that kind of messaging to get out to all the supporters across Canada that had given us $20 million to be there.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I did.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Really, my interactions were very little with Pat King and it was overly impactful, to be honest. I just -- I had spent maybe two to three occasions in his presence, and it was very little. I know that at one point there were some slow rolls and I had requested that one of the other members go with Pat because I know Pat was leading that convoy, and I made sure that the person I sent kept him well behaved.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes, sir. Yeah.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Because I only knew Pat through reputation and one or two interactions with him, and I didn’t want there to be any confusion as to what they were there to do. It was to really just do a slow roll and to guarantee that in no way did we stop at the airport because we were well aware that there was an orange helicopter route for the hospital. We wanted to make sure that we had no impact on any air ambulance ability to get in and out of that airport. We had no intention of slowing down or disrupting the airport, and I wanted to make sure that we had somebody that was going to guarantee that we weren’t there to close down or lock down the airport or disrupt the air ambulance. We just wanted to basically send a message that, you know, we can still move around the city.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
It was just on my part, to be honest, and some of the others that we discussed it. It was just a precaution, just to make sure we -- we also believed that if we told him not to do something like that, he would listen. I don’t ---
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes, just solely on his reputation. That was it.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
A little bit of a -- a little bit of a wild card. I remember in a meeting once that I had jokingly referred to him as a hand grenade going off in a room and scaring everybody else that he was -- it was going to explode. And it was a bit of a joke. He laughed. Everybody else seemed to think it was funny, but it was kind of like, funny, because yeah, that’s true. But just reputation-wise, he was a little bit of a wild card, and I just wanted to make sure that we were able to contain anything like that.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
That was never a concern that I shared or had.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes, sir. I did hear of the Memorandum of Understanding. I learned about it once it was submitted already to, I believe, the governor general. And I think the media had a copy and I had read it. Again, I'm no lawyer, but I know it wasn’t written by a lawyer. It wasn’t very well written, and I remember having a conversation, once I learned about the MOU, with somebody that I believed to be involved in drafting the MOU and it was a private, one-on-one meeting, and I said, "You must retract that. If you do not retract that or pull it back or put the genie back in the bottle, we are going to denounce it." It made us look like we were here for a completely different purpose than what we were there for. It really muddied the waters, and I don't know if as a result of that conversation they pulled it back. I just know that the next day it was sort of retracted.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Well, I had read it, and as far as I was concerned, it was -- we were there for the mandates. That MOU was there for a different purpose, and I don’t remember the details of it, to be honest. I skimmed through it. It was not very well written. And so I didn’t think it was credible, I didn’t think it was appropriate, and I certainly didn’t think that the government was ever going to suddenly resign because somebody sent them a memo.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
What I believed when I read it was that they thought that it was a legal process that they were -- that they believed it was a mechanism of government that they were trying to initiate. Even though I'm no constitutional scholar by any means, but I could tell that it was not going to go anywhere.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I believe his name is Martin, Martin Broadman.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes, sir.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I think he was upset. It didn’t -- the meeting didn’t end on a bad note. It wasn’t -- like, he was upset about it. He had been working on this, I believe, since the year before the convoy had even arrived. This was something that they were working on that they thought they were doing something that was legitimately recognized by the legal system. And he was upset that he wasn’t getting support, but I believe at the end of that meeting, he said, "Okay. We will -- we'll pull it back."
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
No, sir.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
No.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
The last two days, on the 18th and 19th of February was the one -- or the two times only during the convoy that I had chosen to speak without being -- or without discussion with other members of the convoy, and that was because I felt that given the previous media stuff that I had done, alternative media or livestreams, that I would be recognized by the public as somebody associated with maybe some of the other people like Tamara and Chris and Brigitte, because everybody else was either out of the city or were already incarcerated, so there was nobody left that I believed the public would recognize as a credible person to deliver those two final days' worth on the 18th and 19th. And that’s the only time. Other than that, I was always asked to speak on the livestreams.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
The 7th or 8th, yes, and then on the 10th, and I did clean up some of the confusion that I had caused on the initial.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I do.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I do not remember the person who asked me or the group of people who asked me to speak, but I had -- I believe just previous to that, we -- it was the night after the -- or the night of the Coventry raid that we did a livestream as a larger group. And it seemed to go okay with, I guess, my presence on the video. So I was asked the next day to deliver a message on a livestream. And I don't remember who asked me to do it. I just know that I was asked to do it, and that I would be accompanied by several members of -- well, I think the entire Board as well as two doctors who were in attendance in that video.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes, this is it.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I was.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Can I just continue to answer, because I've been ---
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
--- vilified in the media for that one.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yeah.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
It's a joke. I literally meant to comment on the man's intelligence. It was a joke. Sorry.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yeah.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Thank you.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
In no way did I ever mean or intend for us to be part of the government. I wanted them to come and sit literally at a table and start figuring out a way to be an effective opposition to the Liberal Party of Canada, because we weren't seeing any opposition at all with the official opposition of Canada. You know, if the Conservative Party had been effective as being an opposition, we may not be in this room today. But instead, they just didn't oppose anything that was happening to Canadians as to why we were there. And when we got there, there was no attempt at any level of government, municipal, provincial, federal government to even talk to us, to get in a room with us. And you've heard the testimony here, nobody ever wanted to even have a conversation with us. So I want to say that I was quite sick throughout my time during the convoy. And, you know, I was exhausted. I was dehydrated. I -- you know, lots of stuff, and in that particular moment of that video, I did misspeak. It wasn't very clear what I was getting at. Two days later, I tried to clarify that, or three days later, but what we wanted was for the government, anybody. We were desperate. It was a -- basically, a cry for help to come in and sit down and do this democratically. And that is a mechanism of government, because as we've seen since then, or even during the convoy, the NDP and the Liberals were forming a coalition that the public had not yet known about. And so, you know, forming a coalition seemed to be something -- like, we were trying to nudge them, motivate them in any way we could just to talk to us. And to this day, they've never spoken with us ever.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yeah.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
M'hm.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yeah. Like, that ---
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
That is, and that's -- that is my fault, that the way I phrase that in the video. That is not what my intention was, but the way I phrased it, I can understand that being confusing, but it's not what I intended. We wanted no part of being the government. We wanted the government to do the governing, but to listen to us.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yeah.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
No, I was not in charge of direct contact -- I had no direct contact with the media, and as far as I was concerned, my belief was if they actually started to do their job and report fairly, we would reward them with contact, or I would, or whatever. Not necessarily me, but if they continued down the path of constantly vilifying and lying about us, I didn't see the point really of talking to them at all. We were effective, highly effective at getting out everything we wanted to get out to the public through alternative and social media.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
No, sir.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
No.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
No.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I don't know. And they never reached out to talk to me from my knowledge either.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I do. Vaguely I do, yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
My interactions with him were very -- like, I think if I added up all the entire time I've ever spent with him, I'd be lucky if it was 15, 20 minutes that I've ever spent in a room with him. So I can't really say for certain when or what was ever discussed with him. I was just not interacting with him at all.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Okay.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes, sir.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I actually didn't. I didn't. I had grown incredibly frustrated with the Police Liaison Officers that I was dealing with, and I had requested through them to talk to an Inspector. And I had also made that same concern known to the Police Liaison Officer from the Ontario Provincial Police. And I didn't want to interact with the two Sergeants that I had been dealing with anymore. I wanted somebody who was in a better position to make decisions and, also, I wasn't a hundred percent sure that our concerns were being raised up the chain of command in a way that I was comfortable with. And that's not to suggest that, you know, the two officers from Ottawa Police were bad people or anything like that. It's just I didn't get the sense that they were taking us as seriously as I would have hoped. And so I was requesting to not talk to them anymore. I wanted an Inspector. And I was led to believe that I would be talking to an Inspector one evening, and I was waiting patiently in a room by myself to speak to the Inspector, and this mystery Inspector never arrived, even though I was led to believe I would get one. So I walked away from the meeting when I found out I wasn't going to be talking to somebody more senior, and the next day, I believe, is when the offer came to us, or to me, to meet with somebody at the City. I -- and I had no interest in meeting anybody from the City at that point. I knew where my focus needed to be was with the police. I wasn't interested in any level of the City.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yeah.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
M'hm. Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
No.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Not to my knowledge.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes, sir.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
From my recollection, I never had any interest in meeting with any of the elected officials in the city. I was perfectly satisfied to deal directly with the police. I wanted an Inspector. I didn't really feel that -- I certainly had no interest in meeting with the Mayor. Steve K. was -- you know, when I finally met with him I realized that maybe that was an error, that it was good to meet with Steve. But I certainly never requested, to my knowledge, to speak with any of the municipal level elected officials.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
M’hm.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Because really at the time I believe that was -- if I’m understanding the time right -- the timeline correctly, this is the next day after the raid at Coventry. I believe the Coventry raid was the sixth; that was the seventh. I wanted to deal directly with the police because I felt that the police were the ones that were getting the most pressure and I thought that I would be able to have a conversation with the police and try to work with them, build a rapport, because I wasn’t getting anywhere, that I felt, with the two police liaison sergeants I was dealing with. I felt that if we could develop a better rapport with the police, then things would change. Second to that is, the Police Services Board meeting that we had seen the rhetoric from Diane Dean, was just incredible. And I don’t know if that meeting was before or after the 7th. We just knew we needed to deal with the police.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yeah, I had seen the recording of the Police Services Board meeting that Diane Dean had been the Chair of the Police Services Board at the time, and I was extremely concerned about the things that I had witnessed her say on the video. And so I wanted to see the reaction from Chief Sloly. And I got a little bit more concerned again so I rewound it and I watched it again; I watched her comments; I watched his reaction and I knew right there and then that the situation had fundamentally changed for all of us, them as well as us. And I realized that if we didn’t do something to take the pressure off of the Chief, things were going to dramatically change for the worse. And so that’s when we started to completely re-shift our focus to taking the pressure off the Chief, thereby taking the pressure off of the individual police officers and hopefully ourselves.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
He did, but I think I heard -- we actually had -- we were -- to use a football analogy, we were on the one-yard line with all the trucks on that corner. And Eva and I had spent hours on that corner. Eva was talking with the Polish truckers, I was talking with the English-speaking French truckers. We spent hours there. And we finally got -- because Sergeant Lee was there and despite his best efforts, sometimes he can be a little bit hostile. And we -- I had asked the truckers to basically, as a group, come to an agreement with themselves and then also elect two people to go in and deal directly with Sergeant Lee, because I was actually concerned that if he went into the center of those 80 truckers, he would do something that would put his own safety at risk. So instead of him going to them, I said you elect two people, come out and then we’ll talk. And then Sergeant Lee got that phone call. He walked away and he came back and the look on his face said everything. I knew that he had just had the carpet pulled out from under his legs and he said “There’s no deal”. And so I was very concerned. I knew I couldn’t go back to the truckers and say, “Hey, we spent all day convincing you to do this and now the police have reneged on it”. I knew that there would be no further chance of ever getting them to even be open to the idea of moving had I gone back and delivered that message to them. So it was -- we were there; we were there that night to move them. And I just basically went back and I said, “Listen guys, it’s a safety issue; we’re not going to move at night because it’s too dangerous for the safety of people with decreased visibility. That’s all I could come up with at the time to satisfy everybody.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Absolutely, yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
The one with Inspector Drummond, Kim Ayotte and Steve K.”
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes, I was at that meeting.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
No, I believe at that meeting we were just there to go over more of the details on how we could properly do that and then reposition -- or redistribute the trucks in different locations. That’s what my recollection of what the intent of that meeting was and the discussion. And I believe Kim Ayotte or Inspector Drummond were the ones that brought the map and we were looking at the map from sort of trying to work out how to redistribute that based on the map that they had marked themselves.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I believe that it was indicated that it would be more difficult given the events of the previous two days, the prior two days; it would be more work, more challenging but I also believe that there was a will on, you know, our part to go up and we thought we could actually get it done.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
If they were on foot.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Just based on some of the briefings from Keith Wilson and discussions with Eva; and not with vehicles, clearly, and I don’t believe they would have been successful trying to get in with a vehicle anyway.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes, sir.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
No, I don’t think that my conversations with my regular police liaisons were like that. I did receive one phone call from an unknown OPP officer who said that he was the guy that they call for really difficult negotiations. I don’t know who that person was; I just know he was OPP and he had a lot of extensive experience with negotiating. And I knew from that phone call that the mass arrests were imminent. I didn’t get a date or a time, I just got -- I understood the vocabulary in the context of his comments. He didn’t come out and tell me exactly when they would come in and start making mass arrests, but I knew that it was imminent.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
It was right -- I believe it was right after the Emergencies Act was invoked. It might have been the 15th. I can’t be certain of that detail and I have no idea who that officer was.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I hadn’t seen that until I was here in the audience seeing that.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
No real reaction.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Not until the first day when they started attacking people up in front of the Senate.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
The 18th.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
No, sir.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I did not.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
No, not at that time. That’s not really where my head space was. I was quite concerned about the things that I had personally witnessed that day. I was there when the two people were trampled by the horse. I had seen some things that I never thought that I would see in this country.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
No, sir.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Hello.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
M’hm.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I’m sorry, I’m not understanding.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I thought that -- actually, at the time, I thought that that was somewhat questionable, that you would be within your right to be -- from my conversations and the briefing from Keith, that you would be within your right to be in the red zone. I just didn’t think you’d get a vehicle in there but that you could remain there as long as you weren’t, you know, bringing in a vehicle or anything like that.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I -- it’s in and around there. I don’t know the specific date or the time that I received that phone call. I just know that that phone call was somewhat impactful, enough for me to remember. And it was a short call.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
M’hm, yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Right.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I would. But I would also say that -- you know, combine that with the fact that Justice McLean had ruled that we were legally within our right to be there in Ottawa during -- to have this protest, and then, you know, you’re seeing an email from a lawyer who is saying that it is, you know, “my understanding”. So if it is not completely set in concrete for a lawyer, what chance do we have for having a definitive bit of legal advice that we can make a 100-percent absolute decision on what is going to happen to us if we remain.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I had -- just from what I was briefed on, the result, and that -- that -- I do remember reading the decision. And I’m not -- again, I’m not a lawyer so when I’m reading it, it’s from a very unsophisticated perspective. But I do remember reading the part where it said, to the effect, that we had a legal right to be there.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I see there on the email that they are -- this person a lawyer.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I believe we handed out a French/English, double-sided piece of paper that we printed to everybody -- I think we printed out hundreds of copies and it from the pro bono legal team that we had -- that if people were arrested that was a description of what their rights would be and also the phone number to call if should happen to them.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
No, it’s the one-year anniversary of the Emergency Act being invoked.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes, because I have a team that is helping me and they also need -- well, they need support.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I wouldn’t say “as his” because, to me, it was the convoy. I -- he was somebody participating in the convoy, but yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes. I don’t know who he delivered it to. I just recall the Governor General was a name that was thrown out there.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
From what I remember reading it, I was -- I didn’t believe it was a very well written document. I knew by looking at, it wasn’t written by a lawyer.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Okay. Yes, yeah.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I have no idea what he called it, and I don't know what Operation BearHug Ottawa is.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I would agree with that.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
That’s my understanding.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Can I just -- looking at this, this is a 15-page document. This is not, from my recollection, what I've read.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
This is not what I read during my time in Ottawa. I believed it to be more of a two-part, two- page document. I don’t recall ever looking at this particular document broken down like this.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
It was a media release of some kind they put out, but I don’t remember ever reading this.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yeah. So in my -- I -- from my perspective, I was thinking not even more as a mediator. It was really just an SOS, to be honest with you. It was just a little call for help and inspiration, stop ignoring us, come and sit at a table. We've got a table. You guys -- you know, we'll get you a conference room, but just do something instead of taking cheap photo ops and opportunities with people and making this into a political joke for you guys. Get off your butts and come here and do something meaningful for the, you know, six million Canadians that are affected by this crap in this country right now.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
No, because our issues were not with the municipal government. Our issue was with the federal government. We were here to end federal mandates.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
In what regard?
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes. He just -- he was the only police officer in the room.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes, because I was informed after leaving Ottawa that there was a task force of RCMP, OPP, Ottawa Police, as well as the statements publicly made by Acting Chief Bell that said that you would be identified, investigated, and there would be criminal charges and other punishments coming your way. So that statement is true, because from my perspective, I was one of the ones that was not charged during the time in Ottawa, but I was led to believe that I was under investigation and I have since learned different versions of that. But it was my understanding that I was being investigated as the 42 of us on the -- one of the lists were identified to me.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Well, I asked Keith Wilson a few months ago when would I find out that I'm no longer being investigated, and when will I find out that I'm not going to be charged?
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes, sir.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
He does -- he has a podcast and he does a lot of political satire and comedy. He does some serious videos sometimes. He is the creator of a fictitious meme on the internet known as Diagolon, which I assume what you're going to ask me about, and the vice-president of Diagolon being a time-travelling cocaine addicted goat. That is just an internet meme that has no meaning at all, and I had spoken to Jeremy the first time when I was in Ottawa on the phone. And the second time I spoke to Jeremy was when the Liberal government was debating whether or not they should use the Emergency Act, and they were citing this fictitious goat that time travels as a domestic terrorist group and justification for invoking the Emergency Act. And I saw a video that Jeremy and his friends were doing, and they were laughing hysterically, showing clips of the government actually talking about Diagolon as being a real thing. Everybody knew it was a joke. When I saw the video I contacted Jeremy and I said, “Tell me everything there is to know about Diagolon.” He said, “If you draw a diagonal line from Alaska through Alberta to Texas it makes a diagonal line. And that’s why it’s called Diagolon. They’re the only states and provinces that don’t have mask mandates. And he used it as a joke. He made the symbol for Diagolon in a second on his cell phone because it’s a joke. And it is meaningless. He did it to attract attention for people to come to a barbecue and to have a lot of fun that were, you know, people wanted to have a barbecue without masks on, a bunch of strangers that didn’t know each other. And yet here he was, watching member of Parliament and the Liberal Party actually seriously stating that the reason for invoking the Emergency Act was because of Diagolon. Like, it was the most outrageous ridiculous thing I had ever seen. And I think this Commission should be investigating that as the biggest Intelligence joke of the last decade. So it’s a joke. Diagolon is a joke. It’s not even a real thing.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes, sir.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
No. I believe my lawyers felt that I would not have my Charter rights protected if I voluntarily gave a statement.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
The ARC.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
It’s possible that he paid for it but I cannot confirm who paid for my hotel room. I just know I didn’t.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I do not know for a fact who paid for it. I spoke to Joseph’s stepson, Ryan. But I don’t know if he was paying for the rooms or he just had control of a block on behalf of somebody else. I don't really know because they belonged to some sort of an organization and I don’t know if it was the organization or Joe or somebody specifically who did it. I just know that I went to Ryan when I needed a room.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
There was occasions where I was buying my own food. And whatever food was donated in the conference room that we had -- like I said, I was sick So I ended up losing 14 pounds and I've gained more than that back. And I wasn’t eating very much, The few times I ate I actually bought myself if I wanted more of a meal.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
No, sir. No.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Well, when I initially got there I was focused in on the logistics. And then after the raid at Coventry I had notified a former military officer that I personally knew and I asked him if he would come to Ottawa and help me. And he did. And so I was able to actually hand off some of those day to day things that I was working on and then move towards -- so my role actually did transition less day to day logistics, more strategically working with Keith and Eva to get this -- get something going here.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Well, I really was directing the people on the ground, you know, figuring -- like, basically steering people in the direction of things that they needed to focus on -- truck locations. There was occasions where we wanted to -- people wanted to move trucks around.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
But that became a little bit difficult as well. And then oftentimes I would deal directly with the police so that became something that was impacting my day greatly. I would have conversations with the liaison sergeants and then go back and talk to the truckers. So physically was I out there filling trucks up? No, I wasn’t. But I was trying to facilitate, you know, organizing that better, developing trucker captain organizations and stuff like that, only to find that really the truckers were organically doing that themselves.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Well, that’s ---
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
At some point I had the two people that I was working with that actually started to monitor that -- my friend that I just mentioned, that was retired military as well as one other individual. And every time that the -- the other issue was this that we recognized was that the police liaison teams were going and talking to everybody. So they would talk to me, leave, and go have the same exact conversation with somebody else. And there was multiple teams and the information was getting very confusing. So for example, they would talk to me and if you were there they would go over and talk to you and say the same thing. And then everybody is chasing their tail going in circles. So at some point we just kind of -- people took on responsibilities for certain functions and they just would maintain that. And so the two individuals I’m speaking about, when it came to safety, the police would go to them for safety lanes. They would immediately go out and do the best they could to clear it. But then again, sometimes they got blocked.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I would say -- because I believe if I was on Metcalfe is what the ARC was on. I believe they could have got through there. I don't see any reason why not. There was days I went out there and the street was wide open.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes. Well, I don’t want to say “all day long” but I mean, there were several times where, you know, it was wide open. I moved my vehicle right in front of the ARC Hotel on that street and no problems.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
As you got closer to Wellington, it became increasingly more difficult.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Do you mean the shorter buses that are meant for wheelchairs?
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I don’t think that that’s entirely accurate. I think again -- I would say that for that type of transportation as you got a little closer to Wellington it would probably be more of a challenge. But it would be up to the individual bus driver himself or herself to see if they could negotiate through those intersections.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
No, I did not.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
That’s my understanding but they were coming to me directly. They were coming from other sources and then I would have conversations with people that had -- that information was passed to them.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
No. I tried to decentralize that as well in the sense that you could -- you know, I wasn’t a police officer. I had worked al lot with police officers in my military career but I wasn’t a police officer. So we had police officers that were retired that -- you know, everybody knows Danny Bulford was one. If I had questions, you know, maybe him or Vince Gircys maybe. But at that point -- at some point I stopped actually caring about certain things, and I just left it into other people's more expertise or more capable hands.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Just so much as I wanted to make sure that there would never be a complete blockage or stoppage of operations for the airport.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes. And that discussion centred around what happened at Coventry when the police went in on the Sunday night ---
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
--- and raided and stole the fuel and stole the food. And my conversations with the Ottawa Police the next day was, you know, if you want to provoke a reaction from this organic movement, from individual truckers, that's the best way to go about it, and if you want to keep it as civil as it has been, don't get it -- don't put us in a situation where there has to be a tit-for-tat kind of a situation. And I said, "And by the way, we will never exceed the level of stupidity that you guys are doing to us. We might match it, but we'll never exceed it. And by the way, your Coventry was your freebie. We're not -- you know, we're not going to do anything because of what you did at Coventry because we don't see the value in it. We don't want to escalate this into something terrible." And so we just tried to always keep the temperature down, keep the tone down with them, but, you know, they were incredibly provoking constantly.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I don't -- you know, I'm not comfortable with the word retaliate, but, you know, you could split hairs on that word, but it wasn't meant as a retaliation. It was meant really to send the signal that, you know, we've got the ability to move around, and do we want to escalate to that level? No. What we're trying to say to you is that if we really, really want to escalate to the level you guys are ramping up, then we can play that game with you, but we don't want to play that game. So they'll do the slow roll just to let you know that it is possible.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I don't really -- I didn't see it lawful to go in and steal people's fuel or their food. I didn't actually see it as a lawful act on behalf of the police.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I saw it as theft.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yeah, that was the sense I got, but I knew -- somebody had also told me, those comments were like for two years prior to the convoy and it was just a complete headpiece by somebody, whoever put that video out there. That it was just meant to discredit him and make us look bad. And it was a video ---
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
From the testimony I saw here in the room the other day, the context of that had something to do with something completely unrelated to this convoy.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I know nothing of those comments.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I believe he owned up to that himself yesterday.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
All right. So ---
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
--- the ---
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
If you were to meet some of Jeremy MacKenzie's friends and the ones that were on the video that I was describing earlier where they were laughing about the Liberal Party using Diagolon as a justification, you'll see clearly that one of Jeremy's best friends is a black man. There's -- I don't -- I can't even comment on how somebody ---
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Sorry?
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I ---
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
--- don't even know what that means.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I've seen some of his rants and some of them -- you know, some of the things he says I don't agree with and some of the ---
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
--- things I think he's absolutely spot on, but that's up to me to make a decision on whether or not I find that the content is appropriate or not. And I have seen Jeremy say things I don't like, and I've seen Jeremy say things that I thought were brilliant.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I'm not entirely sure.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Okay. I'm -- my recollection, I know there was a letter that was posted all over the city. I honestly never bothered to read it. I know there was something that was posted places, and I know there was two different coloured ones, but that's the extent of my knowledge of the documents.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Well, what I meant, like, as in you weren't going to be able to bring in a large truck. I wasn't really thinking about it in terms of individual vehicles. I know my vehicle was there and I got 5 parking tickets in 24 hours and my car hadn't even moved. So I knew there was an issue with vehicles, but I -- my mind at the time was focussed on people that wanted to come to the city came in on foot.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Well, that's based on, you know, a document that was posted around the city that was not actually served to me personal, so I didn't look at it. I can't really explain why I couldn't -- I didn't look at it, but you're posting that, but I'm getting -- I was getting different interpretation from the lawyers that were accompanying us.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes. And the interpretation from you.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I vaguely even recall ever seeing it. Like I might have seen something posted in an elevator once; that’s all I even remember noticing that there was something there and I -- but honestly, until the violence came to the protestors from the police, I didn’t see this as something that we -- I didn’t see it as something that needed to be abided by because it was a peaceful protest and I knew that Justice McLean had already ruled that we had a right to be there. Whether or not the Emergency Act was invoked, you know, we’re getting conflicting information from the Police, we’re getting -- we have information that I trust a lot more from our legal team, because we were dealing with pro bono lawyers; there was five of them that did criminal law and we had the two lawyers that were on the ground with us the entire time. So we were there to do a protest and we took the Judge’s -- I personally took the Judge’s word as well as Keith and Eva’s word, that what we were doing was lawful. And so that’s how I conducted myself, according to that.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
At the time I wasn’t really considering that as direction because at no time did the police actually come up to me and say that in no uncertain terms. It was something that was stuck to the wall on a piece of paper. So when it’s stuck to the wall and not handed to me, it didn’t really seem overly credible. And I don’t want to say credible, but if it was so important to them I would have thought that any one of those police liaison officers would have walked up and handed it to me and explained it to me, either a puppet show or a box of crayons so that I could understand it, but that was never the case. It was just posted on a wall.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
No.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I was not; I was not.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
No, I was there -- I was only 15 feet away from the horses when they trampled the two people.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
No, I did not hear them verbally. The front line of police officers were extremely quiet. The front row of protestors were trying to engage the police in dialogue and to convince them to stop doing what they were doing. And there was no reaction from the police on the front line. There’s no shouts; there was no -- I didn’t hear even so much as a bullhorn telling the crowd to disperse during the time that I was there on the line, from what I had personally observed.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I did not hear that personally; if that’s what was done, I did not personally hear that.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
They were not leaving.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I don’t believe that to be the case. I never encouraged anyone to leave until the 19th.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
After what I saw personally on the City, the level of violence that the police had brought to the protestors, what I saw, I was so disgusted. That day Danny Bulford had also been arrested later in the afternoon. And the following morning on the 19th I had a meeting with the remaining people that I knew to be leaders or truck captains in my hotel room with other people and we -- my advice to everybody was to depart the City of Ottawa and to peacefully withdraw, but that would be -- it would have to be up to the individual owner/operators of their own vehicles. They have to decide for themselves, but our recommendation was that they left the City of Ottawa as peacefully as they could, and I -- at 10:03 in the morning I remember the phone call; I notified them and I said “We will peacefully withdraw; you need to move your concrete barriers and allow us to get fuel into the trucks and we will start making arrangements to leave as soon as possible”, but that each truck driver had to make their own individual decision. And, you know, there is a video of it I’m sure of me bringing it up, and you know, it was a very frustrating phone call that I had with the OPP, but I said we would recommend it. It's not my proudest moment if you do show the video; my language is terrible, but I was angry and I was frustrated, but I advised him to allow the truckers to leave. Move the concrete barriers because we couldn’t get out and allow us to get fuel because, you know, fuel was a bit of an issue trying to get out.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
There was a group of protestors that were set up with tents; there was a -- it was an outdoor kitchen basically with a big pig roast and stuff and that individual who was -- I think owned that tent or was in control of that tent, had started to pack up and recommend to his people that it was time to leave. And I just know that various groups took the advice and some didn’t. But by the morning of the 19th, from our perspective, the violence just actually got worse. And when they moved down to the War Memorial, that’s when things got really quite disturbing about -- and even on the 18th things were incredibly disturbing. You know, you’ll hear testimony here I’m sure from Chris Deering, the horrific things that he had, and he's a combat veteran of Afghanistan. So after hearing that, and seeing the footage of all of that stuff, after that, there was no way there was any point in staying any longer. I mean I understand violence. There was no way those truckers were ever going to be able to repel the police, in any way.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Those who remained and those who didn’t -- were not allowed to get out because I think at that point in the 18th and 19th the police decided they’re going in and -- you know, we had seen the text messages of RCMP officers laughing and joking about bringing – like don’t do it all in one day, let us get our turn on the next day. The police were getting geared up; that was leaked to the alternative social media where they were joking and laughing about using jackboots on people.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
No, it was my understanding that it is against the law for a Police Services Board to direct police operations and from my perspective, what I was watching, was her covert or very -- I don’t know what the word is, but Diane Dean’s deep desire to start directing police operations to Chief Sloly. And when I listened to his response, I had to listen to it twice to understand what really was going on in that meeting. It was very clear to me that he was getting pressure from every different direction, especially because -- Diane Dean effectively was his boss and she was putting an enormous amount of pressure on him and combining that with all the other rhetoric from the mayor and the other politicians locally, it was my opinion that if we didn’t do something to help him, to take the pressure off of him specifically, there would be a very negative reaction from the entire Police Service of Ottawa.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yeah. And that was the strategy, was to take the pressure off the residents and thereby get less complaints to the police. And then if the politicians were getting less pressure, they would put less pressure on the Chief.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
At that point it was far too early to tell because I knew that there was -- Parliamentary police were local, were here. I knew that there was -- Gatineau Police were close by; I knew OPP was in the area, and I knew there was probably RCMP in the area. But it was our -- or my belief, because I knew that the liaison teams were interacting with us, at least, that we had an exceptionally good chance to work with the police. This is why we made a concerted effort to constantly work with the police because we knew that, you know, we had a measure of power, in terms of the convoy itself. But they actually have the force, the physical force, to change the situation. And so we thought if we could just keep the temperature down constantly and effectively with the police, there wouldn’t be a need to bring in other police departments.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes. All of my bank accounts, my joint bank accounts with my former spouse, were all affected. My credit card that was on file with my son’s pharmacy were suspended. My former spouse, her credit rating was dropped 109 points. Yes, so everything was frozen; I had access to no money other than cash.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes. They were joint -- joint accounts were frozen, as well as my ex-wife’s -- my first wife’s financial institution reached out and cautioned her that potentially her accounts were going to also be frozen; and I haven’t been with her in over a decade.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
During the entire time of the Emergency Act.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
My -- sorry; go ahead,
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I was just going to say that luckily we had cash in the house because my son’s heart medication, we couldn’t purchase it; my account had been frozen. And if we didn’t have cash, he wouldn’t have been able to get his heart medication. He had -- a month and half previous had myocarditis and was on some pretty intense heart medication.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I was never notified that my bank accounts had been frozen. And I was never notified that they would be, and I was never notified that they were reinstated, at no time.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Could no longer ---
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Could no longer access any of our financial assets at all.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
We just continued -- once we discovered it, we would check every couple of hours to see if we had access to our own money.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Just to get in -- you could log in but it -- there was a message on it that said access to your financial whatever was denied.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Well, the biggest thing for me, which was incredible, was that informed consent was being absolutely ignored. This is, like, prior -- are you talking about prior to the convoy or just during?
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
It -- you know, if you were to look at what the City of Toronto was doing, because I was living, at the time, close. I was just in the Barry area, so I was looking at what the Toronto Police were doing, what the Premier was doing with all the lockdowns. The lockdowns made absolutely no sense. The vilification of Canadians by the Prime Minister of Canada was shocking; so deeply disturbing to hear him talk about Canadians the way he did. That’s just one of the examples. Premier Doug Ford, in the rhetoric that he had -- and the other big thing for me, which was really, really shocking to me, was that they did not exercise or use Emergency Management Ontario to manage this entire pandemic for this province. It was mindboggling to me, and I knew about them because I actually worked with the EMO representative, who was a retired Brigadier General, when I was posted to the Headquarters in Toronto. And so my expectation was to handle this pandemic, you would have used the very institution within each province that is meant to handle a pandemic. So I knew things were fundamentally upside down with the approach that the government was using. And you would see subsequent effects of those decisions, which were, you know, shut down a department store, stop selling kids clothing, and stuff like that. But you can go and get a case of beer, that’s no problem. Right? So there was -- there was a lot of stuff that were just so absurd. And, cumulatively, after a while that starts to build up this amount of anxiety and fear. And I know a lot of people that I was talking to, especially when I was campaigning, were recounting their time during the lockdowns. And they felt the same fear that I did of the police, which is really unusual. I didn’t want to go out in public because honestly, I thought that I was going to be -- it would take nothing for the police to come for any infraction and start arresting people for the most bizarre things. I mean, we saw a year and a half ago two Calgary police officers pointed a taser and threatened to arrest a young kid who was playing hockey out in Calgary, you know? And the next day, Police on Guard went public because there were law enforcement in this country that were just appalled by what was going on in this country, and they decided to start becoming public in defending what they thought was massive breaches of the Charter, which they spend their whole careers defending the Charter. And so when the police started to push back to organizations like Police on Guard or later on, the Mounties for Freedom, when the police started to push back, that was a sign that things had really, really gone off the rails, for me. So cumulatively, there were just too many things to ignore in this society right now. But I think the worst thing for me was when the convoy was rolling through and I wasn’t part of it, the statements coming from the prime minister of this country were terrifying, disgusting, just unbecoming of a prime minister of a country, you know, of people that actually voted him into represent, and he was acting like he was a king. And it was appalling. And it's certainly not what I joined the Canadian military to defend; nothing of the sort. So I just didn’t know how we could possibly call ourselves a free country any more if our prime minister was allowed to get away with the rhetoric he was getting away with. And nobody stood up until the truckers.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Thank you.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes, sir.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Just from what I saw on his social media, short videos, that’s all.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
No.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes, I was, which is one of the reasons why I followed him.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I did.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Not physically. I phoned him on two occasions and I had a couple of text messages with him back and forth.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I don’t believe I do. I'm on a different phone and they were just basically as a, "Hi, it's Tom. I want to have a phone call with you." There was -- I've had two phone calls with him during the time that I was in Ottawa.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
The first one was -- I actually, now that I think about it, somebody that I knew had Jeremy's contact info and they reached out and said, "I just wanted to meet him," because to be honest, at the time, I was just a fan of what he was doing on his podcasts. I knew there was a veteran in town and I kind of wanted to get his thoughts. We had a conversation, reminisced about both being posted to CFB Petawawa. But then later on, the next phone call was when I saw the video of him laughing about what the -- what was going on in Parliament regarding Diagolon, I just called him and I said, "Tell me everything there is to know about Diagolon because we may get asked about it, and I'm just curious."
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I honestly don’t know. That was somebody that I probably met when I first got to Ottawa, and I did not know any single person. I never met even James Bauder until I stepped into the conference -- or into the lobby of the ARC and he brought me into the conference room. So I don’t even know who gave me his phone number.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
It's a good question. I can't -- the only thing I can remember, it was a female that gave the phone number, and I can't remember how they came to have his number.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
In Coutts? No, I had no communication with anyone in Coutts.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
There was one message that somehow came through either text or email from somebody that was in Windsor, and I don’t -- I cannot honestly -- I don't know who this person was. I know they were in Windsor and my only reaction was, "Whatever you do, make sure you keep at least one lane open across that bridge so that there can be traffic going back and forth."
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I don’t believe I do. And I -- and because I don’t even know who the person was, I don’t. And to be honest, I really did not want to have contact with any other protest around the country. I had my hands full with what I was doing, and all of these convoys and protests were all organic. They started all naturally on their own from citizens that were absolutely fed up with what was happening to this society and this country. So I was perfectly happy to have no contact with any other protests other than the one I was involved in.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
No, sir.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I didn’t start to learn about the protest until I was already in Ottawa. The only one that I knew about was in -- I was in Ottawa and then people would just say, "Hey, there's another protest in Windsor," or the people in the room, they would just be discussing where they had heard about another protest somewhere else. I had just assumed that it was very much like this protest in Ottawa where citizens just said, "We're seeing Ottawa as an example that you can actually do something." And I think the Ottawa protest was an inspiration for a lot of people, and what I later learned was that there was 20 convoys around the world, and they were all saying that they were inspired by the convoy in Ottawa. So it seemed to be a logical conclusion to me that there was further convoys being inspired by Ottawa around Canada as well.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
It's an assumption.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
No, sir.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I understand the confusion. We -- I was asking for a head count of all of the trucks in the downtown, so Wellington being the sort of centre of gravity, and all of the perpendicular and parallel streets, based off of Wellington. And I had asked for people that I was working with daily if you could go out and get and find out how many vehicles we have on every street.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yeah. These were convoys. From my understanding, what happens -- so for example, a convoy came in from New Brunswick, and as they got into the city, they had a plan to stick together. And as soon as they got here and they interacted with the Ottawa Police, the Ottawa Police started directing that particular convoy, as an example, New Brunswick, and that entire convoy got spread out all over the place. Same thing came from the West, same thing came from Quebec. So when they came in here, they expected they drove in together, they'd stay together, but they were spread out like buckshot all over all of the streets. So you couldn't say that hey, the convoy from New Brunswick that started with 50 trucks, as an example, were still confined to 50 trucks over on a certain area. They just literally got spread out all over the place and nobody can control that. So we were trying to organize ourselves in a way that we could get effective communication going between the ARC and the -- and every single individual truck driver. We just wanted to reduce our span of control to the convoy leader from New Brunswick just to talk to that person, you go share it. We couldn't do that because we were spread out everywhere, and so communications were near impossible for us.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
At the time, I believe that was just to the downtown. That did not include the parkway. That didn’t include 88, didn’t include Arnprior. That was just in the city on that given day. It was 322 trucks that was given to me on a sticky note as the total number of trucks in the downtown core on that day.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
No.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes, all of the trucks.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
We would get -- we would get reports that there would be a substantial convoy coming in from a new area and then only to find out that that convoy either didn’t show up or was much smaller than what was reported. And then sometimes convoys would show up and we didn’t even know they were on their way. So the -- our ability to track convoys was very, very difficult. So there’s really no clear answer as to -- to that question, unfortunately.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
It would have been because then we would have been able to, as a group in the Arc, discuss and figure out what the best way to get then into a good spot would be. So where I was to the Arc, yes, we would have handled that movement into the city and put them somewhere appropriate.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I would say that was probably about the first week and a half that I would be involved in that kind of -- those discussions. But my role started to evolve and so, after I brought in a couple of people, one individual who was another military officer -- once I brought him in, I kind of handed that off and then I worked more strategically with Keith and Eva to do different things, so really about a week and a half, max.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
For me, only the ones that were coming directly into the city. I wasn’t involved in the ones going to Arnprior, or 88, or to the Parkway. I was only involved in the ones in the downtown core.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
We would go through truck captains and we also had people that were in the Arc that would go out an try to meet with them and sort of direct -- create that contact between them and then guide them in where we wanted them -- or where we could find space for them.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
I would not.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
No, I basically was -- I -- I rarely got out of the Arc. Not many occasions could I detach myself from the Arc.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
If there was an opportunity to involve the police, we would have always sought to do that, yes.
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Tom Marazzo (Freedom Corp / Convoy Organizers)
Thank you.