Freedom Convoy organizer Chris Barber responds to a question as he appears as a witness at the Public Order Emergency Commission, Tuesday, Nov. 1, 2022 in Ottawa.

Image Credit: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

OTTAWA - The "Freedom Convoy" protest that gridlocked downtown Ottawa for weeks last winter started with two truck drivers on TikTok and quickly evolved into something no one organizer could control, a public inquiry heard Tuesday.

Organizer Chris Barber testified that the idea sprung up after he received a message on the social media site from a fellow truck driver, Brigitte Belton, out of the blue.

She was talking about organizing a protest against the federal government's COVID-19 vaccine mandates for truck drivers who cross the border between Canada and the United States, Barber said.

Before long, the two had assembled a loose group of core organizers, including Pat King. Within two weeks, thousands of trucks and protesters were headed to Ottawa.

There was no official leader of the convoy, Barber said.

But they hadn't even arrived in Ottawa before rifts between the organizers began, Barber told the commission investigating the federal government's use of the Emergencies Act to ultimately clear the protest.

"It was a power struggle a lot of the time," Barber said on the witness stand Tuesday.

Those ongoing power struggles made it difficult to co-ordinate the trucks that arrived and eventually gridlocked most of downtown Ottawa, the inquiry heard.

And Barber insisted that organizers in Ottawa had nothing to do with similar protests that blocked border crossings across the country.

Barber, 47, was the first of several organizers to take the witness stand at the public inquiry this week.

The Public Order Emergency Commission is tasked with determining whether the government was justified in triggering the never-before-used Emergencies Act on Feb. 14. It is holding public hearings in Ottawa until Nov. 25, and has so far heard from Ottawa residents and business associations, city officials and police.

Barber, who runs his own trucking company in Swift Current, Sask., was greeted with a smattering of applause from spectators when he entered the public hearing room.

He is a self-described internet "troll" who admitted to posting racist, anti-Muslim memes online. He also displayed a Confederate flag in his businesses. He said those flags are still there in his garage, but not on display.

Barber was arrested on Feb. 17 and charged with mischief, obstructing police, and counselling others to commit mischief and intimidation. He's co-accused with fellow organizer Tamara Lich, and their trial is expected to take place next year.

As drivers were making their way to the capital, Barber said some of them became concerned about the role of Pat King, who helped to organize the convoy.

King, who had a large following, had suggested in one of his social media videos that the prime minister was going to "catch a bullet." Several participants wanted him to stay home as a result, Barber said.

In response, Barber put out a short TikTok video calling on people in the protest to keep their actions peaceful and to respect law enforcement.

"Anybody that joins this protest or this convoy, from either coast to coast, is to adhere to the rules of the convoy and I am dead serious," he warned sternly from what appears to be the cab of his truck the week of Jan 24.

But by the time protesters arrived in Ottawa, Barber said he had a hard time getting some trucks to even agree to clear lanes for emergency vehicles.

"I remember the first time we visited Kent (Street), we worked all day, we got that lane wide open and we were so proud of ourselves. We came back the next morning and it was completely plugged again," he said, referring to one of the arteries that runs north to Parliament Hill from Ottawa's central highway.

Clearing lanes at one major intersection east of the parliamentary precinct was particularly difficult, Barber said. The intersection was mainly occupied by members a group from Quebec called the Farfadaas.

Ontario Provincial Police described the Farfadaas as an anti-government, quasi-sovereigntist group in an intelligence report submitted as evidence in the inquiry.

Steeve Charland, a member of the group who is facing criminal charges related to his involvement in the protest, told the commission Tuesday that he had little contact with the original convoy organizers.

The testimony made clear that various groups associated with the convoy could not even agree on why they were in the city.

Barber said he was often at odds with another organizer, James Bauder, who runs a group called Canada Unity. The group already had a route mapped out to Ottawa by the time Barber and Belton started working on their own plans for a protest.

Bauder's group had also prepared a "memorandum of understanding" demanding that Gov. Gen. Mary Simon and the Senate force Trudeau and provincial governments to eliminate all COVID-19 restrictions and vaccine mandates.

"That was never anything that we came to Ottawa for, that was not even on the cards," Barber said about the memorandum. He said he didn't agree with the MOU, and told the commission he hasn't read it and "will never read it."

The number of people who came to be involved in the protest was beyond Barber's wildest dreams, he told the inquiry.

When his own convoy group arrived in Ottawa from Western Canada, he expected to be escorted by police to one of two staging areas set up at parks near Parliament Hill.

Instead, he said police escorted him right onto Wellington Street, outside the Supreme Court of Canada. The street was already packed with trucks that had arrived before Barber and his followers.

"I don't know how things went so wrong when we first arrived," Barber told the commission investigating the federal government's use of the Emergencies Act in an effort to end the protests.

He said it would have been better if the trucks were led off the main streets in the first place.

"Occupying or parking all over the city was never part of why we came," he said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 1, 2022.

News from © The Canadian Press, 2022