#POEC Take aways: first and foremost, there were two Convoys, the convoy of bouncy castles, conga dancing in -30, free food, a few beers and a 3 week block party and then the convoy of occupation/insurrection/those people/potential violence. 1/
There are hours of video of what I will refer to as the "fun" convoy. Everyone had a phone and lots of people live streamed daily. There is no video footage of the "dark" convoy which only existed in legacy media. There are a couple of still photos of a swastika flag far away. 2/
A quick video of a fully masked guy carrying a confederate flag being told to leave the convoy; but that is it in terms of dark convoy hard evidence. The rest relied on largely retracted legacy media talking heads. 3/
The "fun" convoy had excellent logistical and security organization but poor political and communications work. A fact the Trudeau regime took full advantage of. The fun convoy barely articulated why it was protesting and could careen off message. 4/
Of course, that is inherent in a genuinely organic, popular protest. The fun convoy was at its best being "anti vax mandates", weaker with a general anti-Trudeau line, and hopeless proposing positive change. 5/
Which is to take nothing away from the fun convoy's organizers nor to ignore its real victories: the end of O'Toole, the end of Kenny, the end of virtually all provincial vax mandates can all be credited to the fun convoy. 6/
The #POEC barely looked at the fun convoy. After all, the Emergencies Act was invoked against the largely imaginary dark convoy with its latent violence, foreign funding and crew of domestic terrorists. 7/
The testimony of the Ottawa mayor and the two city councillors early in the hearing and then the testimony of senior civil servants and politicians all took for granted the dark convoy narrative. 8/
As an aside, there was a good deal of evidence taken from various police officers. People who were in actual contact with the protestors. Two things stood out, first, they all took the Charter rights of the protestors seriously. 9/
Second, each of the policemen stated that there was a remarkable lack of violence or trouble from the protestors and that there was a good deal of co-operation. Even the head of the RCMP and Director of CSIS made comments to that effect. 10/
The police on the ground were dealing with the fun convoy and were not buying into the legacy media/politically constructed dark convoy narrative. In fact, in general, the closer an official was to the actual protest, the less dark their view. 11/
All of which was a problem for a PMO looking for Canada's very own version of the phoney January 6th US Capitol "insurrection". The politicians needed there to be a sense of menace, at least a hint of insipient violence for the dark convoy story to fly. 12/
The fun convoy was having none of it. As the cops testified, the fun convoy, while a bit annoying, was resolutely peaceful. So how did the dark convoy narrative get off the ground. Well, the pols and senior civil servants actually told us. 13/
With all of the intelligence apparatus available to them, Cabinet Members and the ladies of the PMO/PCO read about and heard about the "violence, arson, Nazi flags, harassment" from the legacy media. None of them actually witnessed any untoward behaviour. 14/
And, from the testimony of the police, the reports coming in from the field confirmed the non-violent, largely co-operative nature of the fun convoy. Hardly the stuff of a national public order emergency. 15/
What seems to have happened is that the useless legacy media nitwits of the Parliamentary Press Gallery, used to being Court stenographers to the Trudeau regime, were forced to cover an actual story on the ground and failed horribly. 16/
For the precious flowers of the Parliamentary Press Gallery, the fun convoy was filled with those people with beards and trucks and women and children to be used as human shields. BBQs with fire hazards, jerry cans potential bombs. 17/
There was a class war in front of Parliament and the latte class had the awful sense that they were losing. And they were because the fun convoy (and the blockades) were unlike any protest Canada has ever seen. 18/
For the exquisites of CBC/CTV/Global/Toronto Star/G&M burly men in work clothes waving Canadian flags stapled to hockey sticks were, indeed, the sans culottes storming the Bastile. "Those people" were in town, fetch the smelling salts. 19/
There was, in effect, a legacy media riot in which no negative story about the fun convoy was worth fact checking: dancing on the War Memorial, putting a flag on Terry Fox, trying to light an apartment building on fire? Run it. 20/
All of which was being lapped up by the PCO/PMO and various Cabinet ministers, including the AG who had fled to Montreal. The Prime Minister was in hiding behind a re-enforced RCMP presence (yup, half the additional horsemen dispatched to Ottawa did guard duty.) 21/
For official Ottawa there was only the dark convoy narrative created by legacy media (probably with an assist from various political types who were feeding stories to their pals in the Gallery). The fun convoy was gradually painted as domestic terrorists with guns. 22/
Added to this narrative was a story of police "failure" in the face of the "occupation". There was no "plan" testified Trudeau who, on being shown a 72 page plan, admitted that he had heard about it but not read it. The Ottawa police were seen as too chummy with the convoy. 23/
Out in Coutts, the RCMP's plan to smuggle guns into the blockade failed but the protestors were not going to stick around to find out the next genius move. They sang Oh Canada, hugged the cops and left (before the EA). 24/
Windsor? The Ambassador Bridge was cleared by local cops and the OPP before the EA...but "those people" might come back testified our twitchy Minister of Finance. 25/
What seems to have, in fact, been happening is that the police, at all levels, were reluctant to use violence against the peaceful, Charter protected, fun convoy. They wanted to use liaison cops, rather than the riot ready, public order wideboys. 26/
OK, this thread is getting too long and there are things to do in the real world. I will leave this here but there is a lot more on the actual invocation of the EA, the banks and the dark convoy narrative. 27/27
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