Freedom of Choice: The Grassroots Trucker's Protest in Canada | CLIP

What you're saying is something that was actually genuinely grassroots to the point where it was having trouble staying organized in the first place because it was so grassroots, but being portrayed perhaps as being some kind of nefarious conspiracy against the government. Oh, that's so incredibly accurate. It's wild how accurate that actually is. As we're driving across the country, we're embedded with the group, we're speaking with the quote-unquote organizers, which is debatable in and of itself, because at the end of the day, I don't know if we could say who the organizers were to this point in time, because the honest truth is it was so incredibly grassroots and no one individual could have come up with this or orchestrated this. And as we're driving across the country, we're realizing that these guys basically have one plan and it's to drive to Ottawa. And that's it. And that's actually it. So we're like, okay, maybe you should start to come up with a plan as to how you land this and make sure that you're communicating with OPP, with the Ottawa Police Department, with politicians, start talking to some lawyers, start talking to different groups. And it was so beautiful how so many people came together around this movement, grassroots, because it started with the truckers and then the Canadians jumped on board and they said, you know what? No, we stand with the truckers. And then the lawyers and the doctors who've been fighting for this from day number one said, wow, there's actually a platform for us to stand on and speak to. So they got on board. And then the police officers who've been let go because they're unvaccinated, the military who'd been let go because they were unvaccinated said, you know what? We can bring our structure to this movement. We can help. And everybody started to come together. And it was so grassroots. And it worked because of that. But yeah, it was it was a wild, wild story to follow, because as cameramen, we're trying to think, okay, we want to follow the story. Where's the story? Okay. Is this the story? Okay. Is this the story? Is this the story? Like, who are we supposed to be following here? And the honest truth is we couldn't. And on that note, we the very first day on the road, we put together a website because Andrew and I realized that there's no way that we're going to capture this movement with our cameras. So we put together a website and put up a WeTransfer link. And we asked Canada to support this story and asked them to send in their footage of the movement, whether it be cell phone footage on overpasses as the trucks drove by or cinematographers that were out there with their cameras or drone pilots that were shooting. And at certain points in time, we were getting 60,000 hits a day to that website, dropping us footage. And we had a team back in Calgary that was sorting all of that footage and storing it and allocating it in different folders. It was a huge operation behind the scenes. And we really, at the end of the day, can't even take credit for this documentary. We can take credit for editing it. But this is truly a story by Canadians for Canadians, and we couldn't be prouder. So some serious crowdsourcing going on here of footage. So do you have an estimate of how many hours of footage you ultimately got between all these uploads? Hundreds and hundreds of hours of footage. I would say breaching over into the thousands would be likely. The exciting stuff is the behind the scenes captures we were able to get. Some of the behind the scenes boardrooms, seeing the humanity of some of these individuals that have were really just leadership was thrust upon them in a less eye, not in an ideal situation. That's what I go back to of it being a human story. You were the subsequent chapters you're going to watch is there's a lot of sleep deprivation. You know, there's a lot of paranoia. There's a lot of people leading with their hearts, but not a lot of calculation. And that in itself is very fun to cover. We live in an era of censorship and disinformation, and it can be really hard to know what's true and what's false in this information climate to get honest information and insights. You can trust. Join us on Epoch TV. You can sign up for your 14 day free trial at ept.ms slash free trial. That's ept.ms slash free trial. J.A.N. So what would you say you mentioned a little bit earlier that, for example, the soldiers and police and first responders that were let go because they weren't able to follow the rules for whatever reason joined on. So they had they had something on their minds. But what would you say were the key reasons or the key points of why people joined? And so, of course, we have this question. Some people joined because they simply didn't want to get vaccinated or couldn't get vaccinated with covid vaccines. Other people did it. And this comes through in the in there that simply they just didn't like the idea of being forced to do something like this. What else was there? I think the foremost reason would be in support of freedom of choice, freedom of thought. Above and beyond that, I think a lot of people were brought to this movement for a sense of purpose in and of itself over the past couple of years. I know I can speak I can't speak for all of Canada, but I can speak for myself. I never lost my job, but even without losing my job, even without losing my my security, there was a feeling of helplessness. There was a feeling of hopelessness and there was a feeling of depression, as we're told over and over and over again that we're just we're just shutting down for two weeks. Oh, it's just two more, two more weeks. We'll flatten the curve. OK, eight weeks and 60 percent vaccination. We're shooting for 60 percent vaccination. Oh, OK, well, I went and got my vaccine or vaccine because I was told that at 60 percent we would go back to normal. Oh, now it's 70 percent. What did I just do that for? Now, 80 percent, now 85, now 90. When is this ever going to end? And I think that type of gaslighting broke down Canada in a way that we've never been broken down before in our history. And I think that one of the biggest reasons why the people came together in the millions to stand for freedom was purpose, was to stand for something, because the old Western saying goes, if you if you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything. And I think that's been a lesson, a hard lesson that Canadians have been learning. And it was it was incredible to watch people to come together with their own strengths and support a movement together with one with one solid purpose to support freedom and freedom of choice, to watch the soldiers set up camps in minus 30 degrees Celsius outside of the war monument to guard it and to to stand in in loyalty to what Canada stands for, for people to stand outside of Parliament and make sure that everyone was safe to to the to the mass groups that were shoveling the sidewalks of Ottawa, making sure that no one would slip on the ice to to the groups that picked up garbage every single night to make sure that it was cleaner than when they first came. Everybody played a role and everybody had their purpose. And and it was beautiful to see. It was truly astoundingly beautiful to see everybody come together and find joy and happiness and and unity in purpose. And I think that's probably the biggest thing aside from a support for freedom of thought.