One of the initiators of the Freedom Convoy protest in February said there were power struggles within the movement, and while his main purpose was to have the vaccine mandate for truckers repealed, other organizers had other interests.
“There’s different organizations that came and went. ... It was a power struggle a lot of the time,” Chris Barber told the Public Order Emergency Commission, the inquiry into the use of the Emergencies Act, on Nov. 1.
Barber, a truck driver and owner of a small trucking business out of Saskatchewan, said he was at the origin of the Freedom Convoy.
His videos on social media criticizing the decision of the federal government to impose vaccination on truckers at the U.S. border in January, and suggestions about taking action against it, caught the attention of other truckers, including Brigitte Belton.
“For the most part, we stayed as a close group: Tamara [Lich] and myself and Brigitte. The core group of actual truckers stayed together,” Barber said.
But he spoke of a conflict with Canada Unity, headed by James Bauder, which he said revolved around “power and control.”
Bauder was behind a “Memorandum of Understanding” (MOU) which suggested protesters should be in league with the Senate and the Governor-General to remove the Trudeau government and pandemic restrictions.
Barber said he had not read the MOU, but nevertheless didn’t agree with it.
“Improperly written MOU according to the people I’ve spoke to about it. It wasn’t something on our agenda. It wasn’t something we were pushing for. It had nothing to do with the reason why we actually came to Ottawa,” he said.
Barber said Lich eventually called Bauder to have the MOU removed from the Canada Unity website, which occurred on Feb. 8.
Pat King
Barber said he also had a power struggle with Pat King and discussed his involvement with the convoy.King was among the first organizers of the convoy and brought in supporters with his social media presence, Barber said.
“Pat and I had a power struggle between each other, that was pretty evident right from day one. It was a power struggle back and forth over control. It wasn’t anything that couldn’t have been managed,” he said.
Barber was presented by commission counsel with comments made by King that related to the use of violence.
“Trudeau, someone’s gonna make you catch a bullet one day,” King said in one social media post.
King’s presence at the protest in Ottawa has been cited by the government when making allegations of extremism against the Freedom Convoy.
Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino quoted King during a meeting of the special joint committee of parliamentarians reviewing the Emergencies Act on April 26. He said some protesters wanted a violent insurrection, and quoted King as saying, “The only way that this is going to be solved is with bullets.”
Barber told the commission King’s previous comments were not a concern for him.
“He explained to me that it was taken out of context and edited to make him sound worse than it was. I took him for his word on it.”
“Do you today still accept that explanation?” asked the commission counsel.
“I believe Pat had all the right reasons and a good heart,” Barber said.
‘It Changed Me’
Barber said he wasn’t aware of King or any of his supporters committing or inciting violence during the protest.He acknowledged that he himself had made some “nasty” racist and anti-Muslims social media posts in the past, but said the events around the Freedom Convoy changed him.
“I was a different person nine months ago,” he said.
“Coming out here and seeing the amount of love and the people of all different colours, all different races, everything. It was was such a diverse crowd of people here. There was so many tears, there was so many hugs, there was so much laughter. There was so much [that] it changed the person. It changed me.”
Barber, like Lich and King, face a number of charges related to his involvement, including mischief.
