A protester holds a sign on Wellington St. during the Freedom Convoy protest in Ottawa on Feb. 12, 2022. (Noé Chartier/The Epoch Times)
At the Public Order Emergency Commission hearings last week, a number of Freedom Convoy participants and the lawyer representing several of them testified that the far-left, anti-fascist group Antifa posed a risk to peaceful protesters while they were in Ottawa.
Tamara Lich, one of the convoy’s main spokespersons, said on the stand on Nov. 3 that safety at the protest was the “number one priority,” in particular “safety for the drivers, safety for the participants, safety for the public” and “things like keeping the emergency lanes open.”
“The first weekend we got there, we had some problems with, I heard, Antifa, that were spray painting vehicles and breaking windows and putting nails under ties,” she testified.
It prompted the convoy to designate individuals as “block captains that could monitor throughout the evening to ensure that people were going to be safe from, I guess, anti-protesters or whatever they are,” Lich said.
‘Strange’ People Showed Up
Wilson, who was in Ottawa during the protest from Feb. 2 to 21, testified on Nov. 2 that he was told Antifa was threatening violence and that it ultimately did vandalize convoy vehicles.
He described “strange people” who descended on the protest, often in the evening and on the weekends, as being “constantly” a challenge for the convoy organizers.
“Everybody had a block captain, and if Antifa was going to show up, the rule was, you phone the police, you call 911,” he said.
Wilson testified that the Freedom Convoy feared that potentially violent protesters may cause trouble and that authorities would then try to “blame” convoy participants for violent behaviour.
Describing the scenario where three people from Antifa may come and vandalize trucks, Wilson said the police chief potentially “would hold a press conference and say ‘last night, we had three charges for property damage in the downtown core,’” leaving the public to assume this was violence perpetrated by convoy participants.
“I was impressed continually by the [convoy’s] repeated message of peacefulness, of not engaging with the police, and not engaging with Antifa when they would come and vandalize the trucks, but instead turn those people over to the police for arrest,” Wilson told reporters following his testimony at the public hearing.
Lawyer Said Antifa Stabbed Tires
The convoy had regularly issued assessment reports during the protest in Ottawa.
At the Nov. 2 public hearing, Wilson was questioned by a lawyer representing the federal government regarding the Feb. 3 report, which read in part: “Freedom Convoy 2020 assesses that potentially violent protesters may arrive in Ottawa to vandalize property. Following that, they will then attempt to blame convoy members for the violent actions.
“The protesters are likely to arrive in Ottawa either late Wednesday or Thursday. Violent actions are likely intended for Thursday and Friday. The actions from the protesters are likely to consist of harassment of citizens and damage to vehicles and properties.”
The assessment report also described how the counter protesters would be dressed.
Wilson testified that the convoy had “received a separate briefing” on this issue, which he said “was raised by GoFundMe executives and their legal team … and it was Antifa.”
Wilson said Antifa “had previously come in on occasion and knifed trucks, cut the air lines, stabbed [or] knifed tires.” He testified that he was told the Antifa group was “going to be coming in a larger numbered force and trying to do more damage to the trucks.”
Speaking to reporters following his testimony, Wilson elaborated that suspects caught vandalizing vehicles “had the hallmarks of Antifa,” describing them as dressed “in all black skinny jeans, a hoodie,” and wearing black backpacks.
He added that Antifa made “braggadocious comments … on social media” and said there was “spray painting of graffiti,” on vehicles with Antifa-style messaging.
On Nov. 4, Danny Bulford, a former RCMP officer who had served as a sniper on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s private security team, took the stand and testified that Antifa could be dangerous to protesters and police.
In an affidavit, Bulford said, “My primary concern is individuals or groups with potential to deliberately instigate conflict with the Freedom Convoy movement and to discredit the Freedom Convoy.”
He told the commission that “a lone wolf or small cell … could potentially try and leverage the large crowd for their own agenda.” He said that based on his law enforcement experience at protests in Ottawa, he saw firsthand “how aggressive groups related to the Antifa can be when they are much larger in numbers than the group that they’re counter protesting against, and how aggressive they can be over-running the police line as well.”
‘Deliberately Provoking People’
Bulford was asked whom he was referring to when he used the word “instigators.”
“People who would deliberately try to initiate a violent interaction with a Freedom Convoy protester, or maybe even someone who would try to infiltrate the crowd with a racist-type flag to try and bring discredit” to the protest, Bulford answered.
He also testified that he had expressed displeasure to the Ontario Provincial Police about what he described as a “psychological operation” being conducted against convoy participants by various parties.
“There was a lot of rhetoric,” he said, referring to “a council meeting or a Police Services Board meeting” where this occurred. He said allegations were made that the convoy had “extremists, insurrectionists. I believe even the term ‘domestic terrorism’ may have been thrown around.”
“That also coincided with a lot of that same rhetoric from the legacy media,” he said, adding, “We’d already heard and seen the Prime Minister using similar language.”
He said it was “definitely heightening the anxiety of the overall crowd, [causing] fear that they were going to be labelled such and dealt with as such by law enforcement, because they were under so much pressure from the different levels of government.”
Bulford added that information was also starting to circulate about the involvement of the Children’s Aid Society, insinuating that authorities could take away the protesters’ children.
“That was a clear red flag to me that if you are deliberately trying to provoke people to take action, if you make them believe that you’re going to take their kids away, that’s going to elicit a very strong emotional response, and I believe that that was deliberately done in order to bully the Freedom Convoy protesters,” he said.
On Feb. 4 during the protests, Pat King, one of the participants, had also alleged that Ottawa police encouraged a counter-protest by Antifa members who will try to stir up violence.
He said then that police were “putting a lot of peaceful protesters at risk.”
