Armchair journalists, who didn’t bother attending the United We Roll protest in Ottawa claimed the protesters were racists and white nationalists.

However, the people True North spoke to on Tuesday were by and large ordinary blue-collar folk from across the country concerned about their and Canada’s economic future.   

“I think [the Trudeau government is] doing a disservice to all Canadians. I mean let’s face it, the number one source of the economy in Canada is resources, oil being at the top of the list. And then Justin Trudeau came out awhile back, even on his Twitter account, and said he would like to see in his lifetime the oil sands shutdown. He’s not for oil at all,” said Brent Lockwood, an Ottawa man wearing a yellow vest who came out in the minus 20 Celsius weather to protest the Trudeau government because his two sons recently lost their jobs in the oil industry and are currently unemployed.

“Moving by rail cars is, as we’ve obviously seen, dangerous. The safest way is always by pipeline,” says Lockwood about why he thinks the government should do everything in its power to get more pipelines built. “I think [Trudeau] bought the pipeline knowing he won’t push it forward.”  

Steve Bacovsky, a Calgarian in the tourism business, joined the convoy to show his support for his fellow Albertans.

“When it takes ten years for a pipeline not even approved — or approved and then disapproved — and all the politics that go behind it, when you have 54% of BC people wanting the pipeline… And governments are pushing for something different, and stalling it, delaying it, the delay tactics have to stop,” says Bacovsky.

“Every three to five miles there’s someone standing out on their driveway … when we were driving, all the time. I mean it was 34 below in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, and it’s cold in Ontario, but people are out there… They’re not standing, watching this in a window, they’re coming out to show they have support for it.” said Bacovsky about the overwhelming support they received on the journey to Ottawa. “There’s a tracker on the motorcade so Canadians know when they’re going by.”    

Some journalists on Twitter circulated a bird’s eye-view picture of the protest to cite how few people showed up. But that picture only showed United We Roll protesters on the field out front of Parliament Hill, completely cutting off all the trucks and protesters on the blocked off road.

“It’s a lot of expenses to get here from [Alberta], so it’s a good showing. I’ve seen a lot of protests here before, when you consider how cold it is it’s actually a pretty good turnout,” said Lockwood.

Journalists also cited a few outlier individuals at the protest with more extremist views and/or affiliations with extremist groups, even though they were only a few in the public space out of the hundreds of people that showed up.

These individuals with more extreme views were mostly down by the road arguing with Indigenous and Antifa counter protesters.

Regardless, some journalists not at the event jumped to the conclusion that Conservative Party of Canada leader Andrew Scheer showing up to speak to the crowd near the stage by Parliament somehow meant he was endorsing white nationalism.

Journalists had also cited the vitriolic and racist comments some in the Yellow Vest movement have expressed online. However, the United We Roll convoy distanced itself from the Yellow Vest movement for that reason, rebranding itself.

Nevertheless, the Facebook page Yellow Vests Canada has 110,000 members, many of whom are everyday Canadians upset with the current government’s policies, so many of the people that showed up in Ottawa at the United We Ride protest wore yellow vests to represent their opposition to the same issues it first represented in France: the carbon tax and an increasingly centralized, globalized government.

The people True North spoke to also expressed concerns about illegal border crossings and Canada potentially losing sovereignty over its own immigration levels if it follows what’s outlined in the non-compulsory UN compact on migration, but didn’t express anti-immigrant sentiments.  

“I’m against the UN migration compact. I don’t think that the UN should be dictating to us how many people we should be taking,” said Lockwood. He knows it’s non-binding but still believes it shows the government’s intent to eventually make it binding, which would in effect allow the UN to give Canada quotas of people to take in.  

“Of course, I don’t believe [the government is prioritizing Canadians],” says Bacovsky. “I think there are a lot of Canadians out there that do need the help for a lot of things.”

Dozens of trucks and a few hundred people arrived in Ottawa Tuesday morning to protest the Liberal government’s handling of the pipeline, the federal carbon tax and the border crisis.

The main convoy was organized by United We Roll and began its several-day trip in Red Deer, Alberta towards the nation’s capital.

The convoy has managed to fundraise a total of $135,000 from everyday Canadians pitching in.

“We are in favour of pipelines to move our products in the oil and gas sector to the rest of Canada as well as the rest of the world. We are opposed to the current format of the carbon tax as well as the UN impact [sic] on Canadian borders,” read a statement on the convoy’s website.

Along the route, people came out in support for the convoy, often waiting outside in minus 20 Celcius weather to catch a glimpse and cheer on the trucks as they honked their horns and parked in front of Parliament Hill.

The convoys were joined by a number of Canada’s Yellow Vests who held signs that read “NO TO RACISM; FIGHT FOR JOBS; HOMES & DECENT PAY FOR ALL!!”

Another sign read, “The Canadian government has to stop treating filipino people as slaves & cheap labour!”

Andrew Scheer, the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, spoke alongside Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre in support of the group’s aims. People’s Party of Canada leader Maxime Bernier also gave a speech at the event.

A small contingent of Antifa and left-wing protestors also attended the event and were separated from the main protest by the police.

Signs brandished by masked Antifa members depicted soviet hammer and sickels and read “No pipelines, no fascists on indigenous land.”

The protests continued for several hours as truck horns repeatedly blasted and parliamentarians convened on the hill for question period.

Gerald Butts — Justin Trudeau’s Principal Secretary, a close friend, and mastermind behind the Prime Minister’s dealings — has resigned.

This resignation, shared over Twitter, comes at a time when Butts and others in the Prime Minister’s Office are accused of pressuring former attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould to abandon the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin.

“I categorically deny the accusation that I or anyone else in [the Prime Minister’s] office pressured Ms. Wilson-Raybould,” Butts said in his statement.

“Any accusation that I or the staff put pressure on the Attorney General is simply not true.”

In a shocking report from the Globe and Mail, it was accused that PMO officials pressured Wilson-Raybould into abandoning the prosecution of Quebec-based multinational SNC-Lavalin, which is accused of using bribery to win government contracts.

His resignation comes after opposition parties have called for him testify to the Justice Committee on the matter.

The Liberals used their majority on the committee to block Butts and Wilson-Raybould from being called as witnesses.

“This is a massive new development… He would not be leaving the job if this were not extremely serious,” said Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre posted to Twitter.

Ms.Wilson-Raybould has since resigned from cabinet and has taken retired Supreme Court Justice Thomas Cromwell as her lawyer on this matter.

Butts and Trudeau have been friends for years, dating back to their time at McGill.

Prior to joining Justin Trudeau federally, Butts was the Principal Secretary of former Liberal Premier of Ontario, Dalton McGuinty.

Butts, often perceived as the brains of the PMO, has been a longtime champion of carbon taxes and believes in phasing out all carbon-based energy sources.

Both Trudeau and Butts have denied the allegations against them, but it is unclear how deep the SNC-Lavalin affair really goes after this bombshell resignation.

Three men staying at a 24-hour homeless shelter in downtown Toronto told True North they were not offered hotel or motel rooms to live in like the many refugee claimants who illegally entered Canada have been provided by the City.

“There were [some] Nigerians. And they got hooked up with housing pretty quickly,” says a 28-year-old man from Whitby who has been in the shelter system for the last 12 months. The past couple months he has been staying at Fred Victor, a temporary homeless shelter located at 545 Lake Shore Blvd West and known for the majority of its occupants being drug addicts.

“The showers are dirty, the washrooms are dirty. There are needles everywhere,” says the 28-year-old man.

He also said if he had a few months to live in a hotel room he believes he would be able to get his life together, but is finding it difficult living surrounded by drug addicts (he is not one himself).

True North has previously reported that refugee claimants are staying in four hotels and an undisclosed number of motels for upwards of six months at a time.

The amenities at some of these hotels include WiFi, personal TVs, cleaning services, food allowance, etc, far better than the one TV and telephone, as well as extremely slow WiFi, available to those staying at Fred Victor.  

“Every other night there’s a fight going on at three in the morning or there’s an OD or something like that. … A guy died here the other night, people die here. It’s traumatic, for sure,” says the young man from Whitby.

In contrast, a Syrian man illegally entering Canada recently and staying at hotel in downtown Toronto the past months said it was “five star” accommodations compared to living in America the past four years.

The Whitby man says the social workers in charge of helping them find permanent housing “aren’t as engaged” in actively finding places for homeless people at certain facilities compared to others.   

Last week, City of Toronto chief communications officer Brad Ross told True North there is no preferential treatment given to certain homeless people within the system.

“Hotel, respite or shelter all provide different services — they are not positioned along a continuum from ‘better’ to ‘worse’. The City works with each individual client to identify and respond to their specific needs — including the right facility, e.g. hotels work much better for families who can all live together on the same room, while respite tend to accommodate people with more dynamic schedules, as the curfew requirements are unique to that program.”       

A Canadian man originally from Tanzania living in the shelter system the last five months and staying at Fred Victor also says the majority of his fellow occupants are drug addicts openly using inside the facility despite the rules forbidding it.

“Damn right, damn right,” he says laughingly when asked if he would rather live in hotel room. “Have you ever been here at all? It’s just an open area [with beds].”

“I think the [City’s] rationale is that somebody who is new doesn’t know where to go, doesn’t have any way to know anything… They tend to get better facilities than Canadians.”  

With the influx of thousands of asylum seekers into the Toronto shelter system over the past two years, the city has spent tens of millions of dollars in additional funding to add thousands of additional beds.

However, Shelter, Support and Housing Administration general manager Paul Raftis still warned City officials the shelter system is in “immediate danger of being overwhelmed.”

A 26-year-old man, addicted to crystal meth and fentanyl, was turned away from Fred Victor on Saturday night.

“Oh yeah, sometimes I’m out in the cold… All night man.”

On the same street as Fred Victor, but on the east end a couple blocks away from the Distillery District, up to 100 homeless people are staying in one of three tented structures costing $2.5 million each.

Two of the prefabricated structures opened at the end of January, including the one next to the Gardiner which is an empty lot of land closed off to the public by a locked gate and barbed-wire fencing.

Check out our newest product – The True North Field Report

Listen on iTunes

Listen on Spotify

Listen on Soundcloud