WBD459 Audio Transcription

Bitcoin & The Canadian Truckers with Greg Foss & NobodyCaribou

Interview date: Monday 7th February

Note: the following is a transcription of my interview with Greg Foss & NobodyCaribou. I have reviewed the transcription but if you find any mistakes, please feel free to email me. You can listen to the original recording here.

In this interview, I talk to Bitcoin Strategist Greg Foss, and NobodyCaribou who is documenting the growing trucker protest movement. We discuss the genesis of the protest, Canadian rights and freedoms, the importance of non-violent resistance, the scale of the movement, and how Bitcoin is a vital tool in this fight for freedom.

“Here’s the why, why are people gathered in Ottawa and why are people congregating in major cities in Canada, and the why is Canadians are tired of being lied to and now they’re taking responsibility to claim their freedom; it doesn’t matter if you’re black, white, Hispanic, Indian, Chinese, indigenous, vaccinated, unvaccinated, Canada’s a very diverse melting pot…and everyone is coming together to say no.”

— NobodyCaribou

Interview Transcription

Peter McCormack: Nick, hi, nice to meet you.

NobodyCaribou: Nice to meet you, brother.  Thanks for doing this.

Peter McCormack: No problem at all.  Greg, nice to see you, brother, how are you?

Greg Foss: I'm doing well, thanks for having us.  I want to give a quick shoutout to my buddy, I'm wearing his hat.  Ali gave a great speech to the House of Commons Finance Committee, Peter, and he had a five-minute opportunity to give a pitch and he absolutely nailed it.  If you haven't seen Ali's little speech to the House of Commons Finance Committee, it is off the charts.  Then my other buddy, Satstreet, I think I may have worn this T-shirt on your show before, but Satstreet's a Canadian Bitcoin exchange broker and doing a great job in Canada, bringing Bitcoin to the masses.

Peter McCormack: I'm going to be charging you ad inventory for this stuff now!

Greg Foss: I just need to get some of your Bedford swag, you know, your soccer team stuff.

Peter McCormack: It's coming out soon.  Well listen, Nick, Greg is a good friend of mine.  If he tells me I have to talk to somebody, I will talk to them, and obviously this is a really big, really important story and we want to get it out to as many people as possible, but also try and get it in front of people who might help support on the financial side of things.  You're a bitcoiner doing some work out there, but I think it's important that we try and explain the story to the people outside of Canada, or maybe even inside of Canada, who don't know exactly what's going on on the ground.

I'm aware of various details, but I'm not aware of the full details, and I'm certainly not aware of the full background.  So, let's go back a step.  Can you just explain to me how we've got to this point where the truckers are now protesting in Ottawa?

NobodyCaribou: Yeah, and thank you for offering your platform, Peter.  I think the only way the truth gets out is if people are willing to spread it, and what you said about people around the world maybe not knowing what's going on, and maybe even in Canada, I can tell you right now, I'm a 40-minute walk out of the epicentre of everything that's happening, and people in Ottawa don't know what's going on.  So, this is really important.

So, for anyone listening to this who might not understand what's happening, or worse, may have been misled by people who aren't reporting on it honestly, here's the why; why are people gathered in Ottawa and why are people congregating in major cities in Canada?  The why is, Canadians are tired of being lied to, and now they're taking responsibility to claim their freedom.  It doesn't matter if you're black, white, Hispanic, Indian, Chinese, indigenous, vaccinated, unvaccinated, Canada's a very diverse melting pot and everyone at the capital is a Canadian, and everyone is coming together to say no, essentially.  That's really the gist of it.  No lockdowns, no vax passports, no mandates.  Canadians are basically peacefully holding our ground and demanding that the lies stop and that politicians honour the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Based on my life experience, the vast majority of Canadians are peaceful, they're polite, they're hard-working and they're resilient people.  We have winter to battle with, and that's not an insignificant force, especially here in Ottawa; and more importantly, we know right from wrong and we're tired of seeing wrong, we're tired of being manipulated and controlled, so we said no.  The way we did that was we peacefully showed up at the doorstep of our politicians and we're still waiting for them to show up.  It's day six, and we're waiting for them to show up and address us and we have a really reasonable request to be heard.

Once freedom is restored, we're going to throw a massive party, everyone's going to go home, get back to work and get back to their lives, get back to living and start the process of healing this country from the past two years.  I don't know if that answers your question, but to me, that's the why, that's why we're here.

Peter McCormack: Well, I've got another question on that, but I will echo your point.  I've been to Canada, it is lovely.  I've been to Calgary and I've driven up to Vancouver through Salmon Arm, I've driven back, went to Jasper, went to Banff, had the most amazing time.  I was on my own, travelling on my own and everywhere I went, everyone was really nice, treated me really well.  It kind of felt like, you might not like this, I used to call it "Nice America"!  I had the greatest time.

NobodyCaribou: It's indifferent to me.  It says "Nice", I can't dislike that!

Peter McCormack: But look, I had an amazing time and I agree with you, Canadian people are very peaceful, very friendly, and to see what you've been subjected to over, I would say, the length of the Trudeau Government, but certainly over the last year or two, seems to be a lot worse than most places, especially as other places are opening up.  The UK is pretty much completely back open, the vax mandates for the NHS, I think they've deferred it and that might not be happening now; we've seen Denmark open up, so we're starting to see the power of the people is having an influence.

But what I did want to ask is, what was the trigger, because obviously there's been a lot happening in Canada, there's been a lot of lockdowns; what was the trigger that created this protest?  Am I understanding correct that it was to do with, those truckers who were not vaccinated would have to go into quarantine if they travelled across the US border and back; was that the trigger that kicked this off?

NobodyCaribou: Yeah.  I think the trigger was just the overreach reached.  Everyone has a line, and the overreach reached a point.  I'm not sure of the exact rule that did that, but the overreach on truckers, who essentially make this country work, make every country work to be quite frank; they deliver food to your table, they deliver everything you wear; every device you use was delivered by a trucker, and I think truckers started to realise the power they hold and essentially decided that we are the ones who can actually make this happen, we are the ones who are in charge of the infrastructure for our country to work. 

If we show and say, "We refuse to comply with the things you're doing, because you're breaching the most fundamental level of Canadian law", which is the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, they're blatantly ignoring that and choosing not to abide by it, and so they are the ones that had the power to do a show of force. 

I've got to tell you, I've talked to a lot of truckers in the past six days, a lot of them.  They come from all over the country, from all different backgrounds, and they are extremely resilient people.  Truckers live out of their trucks.  These long-haul trucks are prepared with enough supplies, and I interviewed a couple of truckers in their cab; it's massive.  There's two levels of queen-size bunk beds.  They can stay in there for a long time.  They have a microwave, they have a fridge.  They are able to endure long periods of time on the road. 

The masses of logistics and coordination to do something at a scale that actually makes a difference requires massive coordination and an understanding of logistics.  These trucks need to be refuelled, they need to get food, they need to get all the things they need to be able to survive and stay there until we get acknowledged, and until these changes happen.  So, I think you cross the people who make the country work to a level that is crossing their line, and a lot of these truckers actually have to stop working. 

I talked to a husband and wife, they're 25, they're from Alberta.  The wife was a firefighter paramedic.  She got fired, because they want to have children and she did her research and she can make whatever choice she wants.  I honour everyone's choices, and the sentiment here is that everyone can choose what they want.  So, she decided to become a trucker with her husband, and they do cross-border trucking from California to Alberta, they do produce.  They had to stop.  They became out of work, so essentially they had their livelihoods taken away from them, unless they took a medical procedure that they deemed for themselves not the best thing for their health. 

You have a lot of stories like that where truckers literally had to make a choice.  Either I get coerced into this medical procedure, or I get to earn a living.  And when you force people to do that and when you put them in a corner and the only thing that's left to fight for is their freedom, that's why they all came here.

Peter McCormack: What was it you were referring to, the Charter; explain, what was that?

NobodyCaribou: Yeah, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is essentially a national document that applies to every Canadian, and that's important; it applies to all Canadians equally.  It talks about the freedom of expression, the freedom of religion, the freedom to associate, the freedom to assemble, and I think a really powerful one is the right to travel anywhere in this country any time, and also the freedom to leave and re-enter the country at any time. 

That's a very fundamental document that applies to every Canadian today, and it's essentially been ignored by politicians.  They've chosen not to essentially abide by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.  So, yeah, it's a very powerful document, and I think there's a lot of lawyers here today in Ottawa and have been here for the past six days, and essentially everyone understanding what their fundamental rights are is actually very important for us to take responsibility for claiming those rights.  Rights aren't given to us, we must claim them.  And knowing what our fundamental freedoms and rights are is a big part of being able to assert ourselves and take responsibility for claiming those. 

So, yeah, that's been a really big part of this whole thing, is really the law in the Canadian Charter of Rights is on our side.  We are here to make sure our politicians are held accountable to that and stop breaching it.

Peter McCormack: Greg, how much overreach has there been from the government, and explain to me the geography of Canada, because it is obviously distributed into different regions?  And how much autonomy does each region have?

Greg Foss: Great question, Peter.  So first of all, Canada can best be described as a ribbon.  It's 5,000 kilometres long, and essentially about 200 kilometres thick, if you will, because 90% of our population lives within 100 kilometres of the US border.  So, think of Canada as actually being a country that the entire population is a ribbon.  It goes from West Coast to East Coast, Canada.  You've travelled from Calgary to Vancouver.  You went from the Province of Alberta to the Province of British Columbia.  I'm not sure if you went to any other provinces.

But we have Western Canada, which is British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba; and then you have Central Canada, which is Ontario, Quebec; and then you have East Coast Canada, which are the Maritime Provinces, and if you just go through, the Maritime Provinces are Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland, where John Vallis is from.  So the great Canadian, John Vallis, is from the absolute East Coast.

So, what do we have?  We have major cities firstly that's not -- Canada is not vertically integrated like the United States is.  So, the United States is vertically integrated and horizontally integrated.  Canada's not even horizontally integrated, because we have large populations that reside around the major cities.  So, the major cities in central Canada are Toronto and Ontario, and the Greater Toronto Area has a population that rivals Chicago.

Then, Montreal is in the top ten cities in North America.  That's the major city in Quebec.  And it too, both those cities are literally, I can drive from where I live to the US border in 30 minutes.  When I lived in Montreal, I could drive to Upstate New York in 30 minutes.  So, there's two examples of major cities that are within 100 kilometres of the United States border.  Then, it's the same thing with Calgary, not Edmonton, but Vancouver certainly.  Vancouver's a stone's throw away from the US border and Seattle, and so that's our country.

Now, there are regional differences.  It's not surprising to me that this protest was organised out of Western Canada to begin with.  I'm not sure how Nick feels, but I think that it's telling, because the Western Canadians, first of all they don't like being ruled generally by the central provinces.  Elections are basically decided before Western Canada even gets to vote, because it's essentially the cities of Toronto and Montreal who decide the federal election.  By the time the polling closes at Manitoba border, it's generally decided, the election is already over.  The poor people in the West are like, why did they even go vote then, because the decision gets made generally in the Greater Toronto Area, called the GTA.  So, the GTA, there's writings there that basically decide the outcome of elections.

So, Western Canada is not happy with the centralised Ottawa policies.  Historic Ottawa policies have included things like the Energy Act, which required Western Canadian energy to be distributed to the rest of Canada at below market prices.  That was done by Red Ed Clark, who was working for Pierre Trudeau at the time, interesting right, Trudeau and Trudeau. 

So, the Western Canadians not happy historically, the energy provinces of Alberta, a little bit Saskatchewan, but most of our energy is in Alberta and Northern British Columbia.  They're not happy with the Central Ottawa policies.  Then, the French Canadians mostly live in the Quebec Province area, so there's a French/English divide that takes place.  So, we're a pretty interesting setup, and then it's not surprising that we get people who aren't always seeing eye to eye.

Final thing to remember, Peter, the population of the entire country of Canada, the second largest land mass in the world, the population of Canada is less than the population of California, yet we are a G7 country, we take our freedoms very seriously, and I think they just got pushed a little too far.  This is Canadian, Nick, I think because it's happening in the wintertime.  The temperature I need to describe to you, Peter, is -20° Celsius.  It is not warm.  I mean, this is cold.  It's when you walk on the snow, it squeaks under your feet.  That's how I always knew it was cold growing up, is when the snow starts squeaking under your feet, you know it's like 0° Fahrenheit.  It's when it's cold. 

This is being done the Canadian way, people out on overpasses waving the Canadian flags, in sub-0° Fahrenheit temperatures.  It's actually a thing of beauty.  And I will tell you honestly, some of these videos have made me cry, as a Canadian, how proud I am to see these people standing up for our rights and freedoms, as a father who's got three kids.  I mean, thank you to the truckers, that's all I can say.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, when I was in Canada that time, I met a guy whose job it was to work in Northern Canada on one of the oil refineries, and he was an engineer who has to spend his time outside.  But every time he went outside, he would tell me there's a limited time he could go out otherwise his eyes would freeze over!

Greg Foss: Well, I don't know how Nick tells it's cold, but the way I also tell it's cold is when you inhale through your nose, you can actually feel your nose hair freezing!  So, you generally breathe through your mouth, because you don't want your nose hair to get frozen solid.  Canada warms up nicely in the summertime.  I don't think this protest would be as effective in the summer as it is in the winter, because there's an expression, "Canadians are nice, except on the ice".  We're nice until we get on a hockey rink, and then we can be some of the most ornery people you've ever met.

This is happening on an outdoor ice hockey rink, as far as I'm concerned.  These are some really beautiful pictures of people dancing in the streets.  Nick will tell you some of the video that he shot, but zero arrests.  I need to focus people on this fact: zero arrests.  I grew up in Montreal, and Montreal's a really good hockey city.  But let me tell you, Montreal regularly riots as a city, if the Montreal Canadians lose in the Stanley Cup playoffs.  Literally, people go out and loot stores, fires, I see people jumping on top of cars, parked cars, on their roofs.  I've seen four riots in Montreal in my life.

This is the best protest I have ever seen.  No looting, people cleaning up statues, I know Nick has helped do that.  This is respect, and I am a very proud Canadian.  I was losing that pride, I think I might have told you on some of your podcasts, "Yeah, I would consider moving to El Salvador".  Now, I'm regaining my Canadian pride, and it's all through guys like Nick, through my buddy, Ali, Egyptian immigrant, got nine stores, accepts Bitcoin; you know his whole schtick.  And it's not a schtick, it's absolutely a thing of beauty.

Here's what Ali knew.  His father was a maths teacher in Egypt, isn't that crazy?  And his father lost half their life savings during the, what was it called, the Egyptian Summer, or whatever that protest was where the banks went in and basically devalued the Egyptian currency by 50%; the something uprising?

Peter McCormack: Arab Spring?

Greg Foss: Arab Spring.  Okay, so he's seen it real life and he came to Canada to start his new life, and I couldn't be more proud to have Ali as a friend.  Nick and I have never met in person, but I was on his podcast, and everything happens for a reason, Peter.  I was on Nick's podcast --

Peter McCormack: I saw it.

Greg Foss: -- because Nick is the guy, I'm not sure if you know this, he was walking around with a sign that said -- okay, here's the funny thing, I'm like, "Damn, that's my man!", because I've only seen him on video, and then I was able to put two and two together when I saw this, "Opt out, buy Bitcoin".  So now, Nick and I and Jeff Booth are involved in this effort to bring Bitcoin to the truckers, because the GoFundMe --

Peter McCormack: Well, we'll come back to that.

Greg Foss: Yeah, okay.

Peter McCormack: Nick, can you explain to me the range of legislative changes that the government has put in place with regards to COVID, where we are with regards to kids in school, masks, passports and also mandates; who has been mandated that they must be vaccinated?

NobodyCaribou: One thing I'd like to talk about, Peter, just before we get into that is drawing a line and a distinction between a protest and non-violent resistance, because what I'm witnessing first-hand here in Ottawa, and I'm there every day, is the power of effective non-violent resistance, and I think it's fundamentally different than street protest, and it's a very important distinction to make.  Protests are a really good way to show people that you want change, but they don't actually create change alone, especially not at a fundamental level.

The reality is that people in power don't give you what you want if you ask for it nicely, or if you make loud noises.  Non-violent resistance works by essentially obliterating an opponent, not physically, but by identifying the elements that give the opponent power and allow them to survive, and then denying those sources of power.  The sources of power that our politicians have is the media; they need to be respected and trusted; and they need a functioning economy which is their proof of work that they're actually doing their job.

When you take those away, when you show the lies that are being said in the media first-hand, by people taking back control of the media, and this is very -- one of the most beautiful things is how aligned people are at this gathering, which is less of a protest and more of a celebration of freedom.  But really, at its core, is a non-violent form of resistance.  When you take away the trust in your politicians, by essentially showing how blatant the lies are, when you take away their economy, and let's get one thing straight, farmers grow food that feed the humans of this country, truckers actually bring everything to people of the country.  So, if you have those two groups of people that are saying enough is enough and actually take a stand, you don't have an economy.

I won't forget, one of the truckers was asked, "How long are you ready to stay here?  How long do you think Justin Trudeau will take to change his mind?" and the trucker said, "When he doesn't have any food to eat, he'll probably change his mind".  And the reality is that is actually the reality, is that non-violent struggle is a commitment to taking a stand and it neutralises a lot of opponent forces.  It neutralises the military by causing soldiers to defect, because if the military was called into Ottawa and they saw Canadian families, average people, kids, adults, old people, indigenous people dancing in the streets, whose side do you think the military's going to be on? 

So, non-violent struggle disrupts the economy, it disrupts the trust that the politicians require to remain in power, and a really powerful thing is that we're disrupting government propaganda by becoming the media.  People are telling the truth.  Everyone there has a cell phone in their pocket and coordinators have been very clear that if you see something that doesn't sit right or that doesn't align with love, honour and respect, you film it and you call the police.  And there are police there and the police are there to protect Canadians to make sure that this is peaceful.

What Greg said about no arrests can't be understated.  The Chief of Police in Ottawa said, "I've never actually seen anything of this scale and of this breed before".  There are hundreds of thousands of people, 24 hours a day for 2 days straight in a confined space, music, noise, celebration; sure, there's beer and there's pot.  They had less arrests in that period of time than they have on average in Ottawa.  The streets had no garbage on them, despite the city turning its back and not supporting this.  There was snow cleared from every sidewalk in the downtown core, despite the city not helping with that.

So, I think this whole idea that non-violent resistance actually works, like the women's movement was about non-violent resistance.  This has been used in the past and essentially, instead of asking things to change and asking for our freedoms back, we're giving politicians no choice, that's the strategy.  And it's a pretty complex form of military warfare, despite it not being physically violent and having no bloodshed, with a clear objective and consensus amongst everyone which is, "We're here until we claim our freedoms back". 

This may have been sparked by truckers, but what I'm seeing is people migrating into the capital to support the truckers and to support this movement themselves.  This has transcended vaccines, this has transcended truckers.  To be quite frank, I think this has transcended Canada, and essentially it's people taking a stand and taking responsibility for claiming the freedom that should never have been taken away.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, you say this, and then I read the Justin Trudeau tweet today in the House, "Members of Parliament unanimously condemn the antisemitism, Islamophobia, anti-black racism, homophobia, and transphobia that we've seen on display in Ottawa over the past number of days.  Together, let's keep working to make Canada more inclusive".  I did my research.  All I found was one Nazi flag, and I'm pretty sure they were using that flag to tell Trudeau he's a Nazi.

NobodyCaribou: You're correct and all I can speak for is what I'm seeing with my own two eyes from my own experience.  I have been in Ottawa.  Up until yesterday, I was doing two shifts a day, a morning shift and an evening shift, they were both four hours.  And all I was doing was exploring and covering as much as I could and just observing.  I wanted to really take in as much as I could.  Instead of being sucked into the experience, I wanted to observe it. 

I didn't see anything that resembles racism, anything that resembles violence or hate.  The only place I've seen that from is from the person claiming to lead our country, who by the way has been black-faced more times than he can remember.

Peter McCormack: I know.

NobodyCaribou: It's beautiful to watch him cancel himself in real time, because the cognitive dissonance amongst all Canadians when they see the truth, they can't unsee it.  And that unsettling feeling that you've been lied to starts to get stronger and stronger until people decide, "Enough's enough, I'm tired of being lied to.  This has to stop".

Greg Foss: Sorry to jump on.  Peter, you are aware of liar.com, right; have you seen that?

Peter McCormack: I'm doing it now.

Greg Foss: Punch in liar.com.

Peter McCormack: Fucking brilliant!

Greg Foss: Okay, so rumour is Elon Musk owns that.  He also donated $42,069 to the GoFundMe page and said, "Liar.com" and you know that Elon has his little tag thing.  So, the 42069 is a kid's slang about the --

NobodyCaribou: It's his signature.

Greg Foss: Anyway, you can look it up as well, 42069.  But rumour is that Elon owns that URL and allocated it to Mr Trudeau.

NobodyCaribou: So, Peter, to answer your question about all the different laws and mandates, to be quite frank, I'm not super-familiar on all the different mandates, because it does vary provincially.  Each province, and I think perhaps even each city decides how they implement these mandates.  All I can say is that if I walk into a place in Ottawa, I'm asked for papers, I'm asked to put a mask on, I'm asked for papers to prove that I've had a certain medical procedure, so that is being actively enforced.  A lot of people aren't allowed to do business, so it's gotten pretty intense.

The most hurtful thing is these things are all applied without actually any respect for the science, which is freely available, and indicates that these are actually harmful things to implement.  We might not have known about this when it first started, maybe there was a period of time these things were appropriate, just from a cautionary perspective, but we are long past that point.  The truth is out there, the actual true science, if you listen to the people who are putting out unbiased science, says that these are harmful measures, and yet they're still being applied.  So, people are just realising they're being lied to, essentially.

Peter McCormack: You're referring to the science of vaccine efficacy and the risks of vaccines?

NobodyCaribou: More or less lockdowns, so yes, that science.  And I think it's fairly -- a lot of people understand now, a lot of high-level people who are researching this are seeing that lockdowns do not work.  The intention of saving people, when you actually look at it, second-, third-, fourth-order effects of what are suicide rates like; what is alcoholism like; what is the status of mental health amongst the population; what is the economical damage that gets done when businesses collapse, or aren't able to actually do their business?  So, from that perspective, net harm versus net benefit, lockdowns do not work. 

I think the big thing is it's choice, it's really about choice.  If you are afraid for your safety, you can close your business down; if you think vaccines are the best thing for your health, you should be able to get a vaccine.  If you don't, you should have the freedom to say, "I don't think this is best for me [or] I don't think wearing a mask is appropriate for me for my health, I don't think it's best for me".  All we're asking for is everyone should be respected for the choice they make, and everyone, according to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, should be empowered to be able to make the choice for themselves; that's all we're asking for.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I mean the information's certainly changed during these last two years, and I've had to check myself.  There are things I've thought that I've had to change my mind on.  I was sympathetic to early lockdowns when we didn't understand what we were dealing with and data was coming out of places like Italy.  But I think it's pretty obvious now that there are these second-order effects, they are ineffective. 

I think another report came out recently that there was only a 0.02% drop in deaths from lockdowns, but yet they had all these second-order effects of mental health, rising abuse, rising use of drugs and alcohol, suicide rates.  So, it seems to me always with these situations is that the politicians, whilst we adapt to new information and we change our course of action, sometimes the politicians don't want to do that, they don't want to admit, "Oh, perhaps we're wrong". 

In terms just specifically on the passports and the mandate, what exists with regard to passports within Canada?  My experience has mainly been only in New York, where every restaurant or bar or club or wherever I want to go into, I have to show it.  I haven't had that here in LA or anywhere else.  I had to have, in certain countries, I've had to show -- I am vaccinated, by the way -- I've had to show it going into Estonia recently.  But in terms of actual passports, it's only ever really felt like, when you're within a country, I've only ever seen that in New York.  What's the status of vaccinations and passports in Canada?

NobodyCaribou: So, this was one of the big contentions of the truckers saying, "We refuse to comply with a QR code being our identity and having to show that every time we cross a border", and I can tell you that before this happened, probably within weeks, a couple of weeks before this happening, I was considering going to El Salvador, because I wanted to be there on the ground and see what's going on.  And I also was getting overwhelmed and rundown from all of the intensity of pressure from politicians doing things that I knew weren't right.  So, I looked into going to El Salvador, I was planning the trip, and I quickly realised that I'm not allowed into the Ottawa airport unless I show a QR code, basically.

Then it became a reality for me, right then and there, where I'm not even allowed to leave my country, even if I have a medical exemption, even if I have a religious exemption, it doesn't actually matter.  Unless I show a QR code that says who I am and that I've had a medical procedure, I wasn't allowed to leave my country.  So, all I can say from my experience is we were currently moving towards that and it's being implement, and was being implemented in real time.  So, I think that was a big element where people were like, "No, this is wrong".

Peter McCormack: And, has the government implemented any career, job-based mandates for taking the vaccination on health workers or emergency services?

NobodyCaribou: All of the above.  It's ironic, because some people in the Ottawa Police Force are not being fired for not being vaccinated.  People in the military are being fired for not being vaccinated.  One really ironic case is that -- so, our equivalent of the feds in Canada is called the RCMP, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.  There's a squad of RCMP officers that are in charge of Prime Minister protection.  One of those officers, Officer Bulford, was the sniper in charge of Prime Minister Trudeau's personal protection.  He was fired for not being vaccinated.  He's now the Head of Security for the convoy core team, so you have stuff like that.

It's very interesting.  We have military -- so, I've been working to find out, how do we -- and it's beautiful to watch this, because it reminds me a lot about Bitcoin.  There's no one running the show, and yet everything that needs to be done is getting done.  Emergent coordination is just happening amongst an uncoordinated group of people, knowing we need to get food to people, we need to get fuel in the trucks.  No one's coordinating it, everything is happening.

So, you have this effect where people that work for Canada, whether it's military, police officers or anyone that works for the Canadian Government is starting to see.  The federal government fired all non-vaccinated employees, threatened to fire them, so that tells you something right there.  I know a lot of federal government employees that essentially felt very betrayed and were very upset by it.  They haven't forced it on businesses, but at the federal level and at the police and the military level, they are enforcing it, so I think that's just going to stimulate a bigger and bigger wave of people saying, "This isn't right", and joining the movement to claim our freedom.

So, the reaction that comes from imposing really blatantly wrong restrictions on people is simply telling people the truth and showing them that they have to make a choice about what they do about it.  And if they choose to stand, there's a lot more people standing with them.

Peter McCormack: Okay, I want to know a bit more about the protests at the moment.  Greg, I've seen people on Twitter lambasting Trudeau for years, yet he still was re-elected in the last election, even though people think he's a fucking moron.  These protests do exist.  Is there opposition to -- sorry, let me reframe it.  This non-violent resistance exists --

NobodyCaribou: Celebration.

Peter McCormack: Celebration.  But are there people who oppose this who actually support the government, and what's the balance within the country, because I assume it's not 100%?

Greg Foss: Yeah, that's a good question, so let's talk mathematics, Peter, you know that's my favourite.  The reality is that only 31% of Canadians that voted supported Trudeau in this re-election campaign, but because of the geography of the electoral map in Canada, the city of Toronto basically elected Trudeau as Prime Minister this past election.  It's still a minority government.

But then you even go further.  It was 31% of Canadians who voted, but the reality is many Canadians didn't actually vote.  So there's arguments that it's actually 20-ish% of all Canadians support Trudeau.  This is a problem with Canadian politics.  We have three major federal parties, without including the French Canadian contingent, which has their own party.  So, we have a vote get watered down and the question then being, "Who supports Trudeau?"  Well, he has his supporters.  They are people who tend to be woke.  Even his Chief Statistician has gone so far as blaming, and this is key…

So, Trudeau conveniently got COVID last weekend.  He's doubly vaxxed and a booster, and he gets COVID and decides it's time for him to go into the quarantine.  So he quarantines, basically hides, and his Chief Statistician basically comes out and draws the conclusion himself that Trudeau got COVID because Ontario didn't shut down elementary schools.  Now, there's correlation and causation, but this guy decided to say that Trudeau supposedly getting COVID, which Trudeau did claim he got from his son, who goes to an elementary school in Ottawa in Ontario, the Chief Statistician said, "It's because they didn't close down the schools that Trudeau got COVID".

There's two things wrong with that.  First of all, you cannot possibly draw that conclusion with any type of certainty.  And more important, it asks you, you're triply vaxxed.  What is the problem with understanding the science behind it, as Nick pointed out?  So, yes, he has his supporters, they are very liberal.  And this is what I need to stress, having lived in the United States.  Liberal in Canada is almost like being communist in the United States.  Even our most right-leaning Canadians are barely Republicans in the United States.  It's a different culture.

Peter McCormack: That's similar in the UK.  So, I've only ever voted Conservative, and a lot of people who listen to my show think I'm a liberal!

Greg Foss: In the United States think?  Yeah, that's fair.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I understand that.  Okay, but is there opposition to this celebration?

Greg Foss: NDP is the other Canadian political party, they are supporting the Liberal viewpoint, basically saying, yes, it's extremism, it's what the liberals are saying.  So, there's two parties in Canada that are supporting the view that this is being run by right-wing extremists.  Then predictably, the Conservatives in Canada, of which Pierre Poilievre, a friend of mine, a friend of Jeff Booths, represents that viewpoint.  Pierre hasn't come out and -- well, he certainly has been on the bridges cheering the convoy, but it's basically divided down those party lines.

If you're NDP or you are Liberal, you support Trudeau and his fearmongering.  If you're Conservative, Pierre Poilievre is saying things like, "Freedom over fear".  That's where it lines up.

Peter McCormack: Nick, what is the size of this celebration and convoy; how many truckers have made it to Ottawa and how many people have been seen on the streets?

NobodyCaribou: That's a really good question.  It's actually really hard to get a sense of scale of this.  I'm doing better to collect intelligence from all of these different people who have a pulse on independent areas.  What I can say is that over the weekend, there were hundreds of thousands of people downtown Ottawa, more people than I've seen on a Canada Day every year, and that's a massive congregation.

What I'm hearing is that for every one truck there is in the city, there's 100 to 200 trucks being blocked outside of the city perimeter waiting to get in, and it's kind of a losing battle; because, every time the police blink, every time they put their car just far enough for a truck to come in, a dozen of them will sneak in and they'll nest in the right places. 

So, the police and the RCMP are making it very hard for us to accurately get an idea of how many people are coming here, because most people are being stopped outside of the city, which is quite frustrating, because we have, let's say 200 kilometres' worth of vehicles, and I've validated that and made sure that that's accurate.  200 kilometres of vehicles would actually shut down several square kilometres of the city of Ottawa, which is actually not safe.  If there's a fire in a building and firefighters or ambulances can't get to the right spot, that's not good.  So, they've made this compromise where we need to allow the city to be safe to be in.

But what they're not telling people is that they're still stopping trucks.  They're shutting down borders, they're stopping truckers from being able to come into the city, but it's a losing battle because the truckers have patience, and they have the supply chain to be able to stay there.  And, what you're seeing in some areas is farmers coming into this, and it's very interesting.  I've witnessed some videos that show the most shocking and beautiful civil disobedience that I've seen.

For example, the RCMP created a blockade on the streets of a freeway.  Farmers took their massive farm rigs and just went around the blockade, and there was nothing the police could do.  You have these massive, massive farm rigs that are going, and then truckers follow them.  So, it's hard to get a sense of scale.  This weekend will be very interesting, because there are a lot of people.

The people in Ottawa actually thought this was a chequers game.  They made a really bad fault in terms of their strategy.  They thought, "Truckers are going to come, we'll shut them down, they'll be gone by Sunday".  They're building wooden structures, they're building a community kitchen right now in a part of Ottawa, like hard structures.  And this is one of these funny structures that this misinformation went out and they said, "People from the protest are stealing food from the homeless", and I haven't been able to validate that.  There was no police report to report it, so that doesn't say it didn't happen, but if we can't find any footage or any police report even of this happening, who knows if it's real?

The ironic thing is that not only are truckers inviting the homeless people of Ottawa to come and have warm meals, they literally have pizza ovens set up in certain areas; homeless people are coming, they're getting a warm meal, they're getting their backpacks stuffed with food that people from all over Ottawa are donating, and now they're building a community kitchen, so that homeless people in Ottawa can eat any time.  They're taking better care of Ottawa than Ottawa takes care of itself.  So, it's just funny how these things manifest.

But I think this weekend is going to be very telling.  They thought it was a chequers game; it's a chess game.  The truckers settling in over the first three days was moving the first pawn and they knew that, but I don't think the city realised that, I don't think the government realised that.  So, this weekend is going to be very telling, because now that the truckers have lasted the first week, which in hard winter temperatures is actually very tough, people are coming in from Montreal, Quebec City.  I met a guy today on my walk home that came from Newfoundland, drove here from Newfoundland to be here for Friday, Saturday, Sunday and he has to go back on Sunday, but he's here to show support.  So, people are coming in from all over Canada.

It's impossible to get an accurate number of how many people, but all I can say is that visually, I've never seen that many people in downtown Ottawa in my life.  I've lived here for most of my life, I go down there every Canada Day, and this blew it out of the water.  And not just people, but semi-trucks.  I don't know if you've ever witnessed 18-wheelers up close.  They are intimidating, gigantic pieces of machinery.  Some of these trucks have train horns and it is to the point where it could do sound damage, or damage to people's hearing.  So, people are actually bringing earplugs.

If your politicians don't listen, you've got to make a louder and louder noise.  So, airhorns are now the sound of freedom, which is beautiful, but I think this weekend will be telling.  I don't know the actual numbers, but I know it's way underreported in terms of what people are seeing and I've never seen this many people in Ottawa before.

Greg Foss: And, I've just been told, I just saw in a Twitter DM, that they're organising Quebec City, that's where the Houses of Parliament are for the Province of Quebec, they're organising a trucker convoy going into Quebec City tonight.

NobodyCaribou: And Toronto this weekend as well.

Greg Foss: Last weekend, there were protests in Calgary, they weren't convoys, they were actually marches in Calgary.  So, there's various other -- Vancouver had a huge protest.  There was beautiful footage of guys in the Okanagan Valley.  Do you remember the Okanagan Valley, Peter?  They call that the "breadbasket" of -- it's the equivalent of California for Canada, the Okanagan Valley.  Beautiful British Columbia wine country, as well as peaches and everything.  They showed a convoy going through Okanagan Valley, but it wasn't going to Ottawa, it was just rallying support.  This was last weekend.

So, there's the Ottawa City protest, and then there's other various actions in other cities across Canada.

Peter McCormack: Are you seeing, or is there being seen any impact on logistics now and the delivery of food; are shops or stores running low on supplies; what's actually happening there?

NobodyCaribou: Well, it's very strange, because you have a gigantic congregation of peaceful-loving Canadians that are in the downtown core.  This could be a boom for Ottawa in terms of hotels, in terms of restaurants, and what's really sad is that the government has essentially, the police and the government have told these businesses to close down in Ottawa and they've said there's too many dangerous people going around.  I haven't seen one dangerous person.

So, it's weird, but all the businesses are shut down.  I can't even tell whether they have food or not, because they're not being allowed to open, despite people being around that area that would love to go in and support that business.  Some businesses are opening and helping people that are present, that are coming in from all areas of Ottawa, and what's really sad is those businesses are actually being vandalised.

There's the 3 Brothers in Ottawa started sending food to the convoy and remaining open, and they had their window broken.  What's funny is that within hours of that news getting out, that window was repaired and just random people paid.  I know a guy that gave a $100 bill and said, "Here's to contribute to fix your window".  And everyone is going there to support that business.  So, I don't know how long it will take for supply chain issues to start to develop, but I don't think it's going to take that long.

Some of the borders from US to Canada, a lot of our produce in the winter, we can't grow stuff here in Canada in the winter.  We can't grow fruits, we can't grow most vegetables, at least not on a scale that's required to feed Canadians.  And at a lot of the Canadian borders, farmers are going and they're parking their giant rigs and they're blocking the border, and they're going to show people how important truckers and farmers are, by essentially cutting off the supply chains and letting people see that your politicians don't deliver food to your table, truckers do. 

If you mess with truckers, you mess with the wrong people, because they're strong, resilient people, and they're the ones who keep this country running.  And so, it hasn't happened yet.  With that said, I've only been in the Ottawa core, I haven't been to grocery stores, and my family hasn't told me that the grocery store shelves are empty, but they will be eventually.

Peter McCormack: Okay, explain to me -- let's talk about the GoFundMe situation, because this is probably one of the most disgraceful parts of it.

NobodyCaribou: Yeah, so there were a lot of false flags.  The first legitimate threat, I believe, was yesterday, when GoFundMe actually stopped funds from being able to continue coming in.  It's up to Can$10.1 million, and it kept gaining steam.  And there were lots of rumours that the GoFundMe had been blocked or seized and they were all false.  I have a direct line to one of the core organisers.  There's a lawyer, there's an accountant, there's a bookkeeper overseeing all the disbursements and how this money gets spent, and it was all fine, it was all bullshit basically, until a couple of days ago when they stopped allowing people to donate. 

I'm told that it's simply friction.  They're creating legal friction where lawyers have to get involved and making it more expensive to be able to get those funds.  But the funds are actually not in jeopardy.  But I think it's a beautiful example that censorable money is a problem.  Even if they do get the money, the 48 hours so far that people haven't been able to continue donating is a massive source of friction.  Making it really difficult to extract that money is a massive source of friction.  So, even if the funds are safe, they're still creating huge amounts of resistance, and I think really Bitcoin got the spotlight when the GoFundMe had a serious threat on me and had to get slowed down, because it's an uncensorable pipeline of monetary support that can be sent to support the truckers.

We've been working on an initiative for a while now and setting things up so that the world can support this movement.  And I think it's a bigger opportunity than what I initially realised.  Initially it was like, "Okay, I'm not going to ask permission, I'm going to set this up, I'm going to let one of the coordinators know what we're doing and we'll just use this.  If I have to rent toilets, because a group of truckers need toilets, I will switch it, do a batch extract, convert to Canadian dollars, pay for toilets".  What I'm realising is that the amount of support from Ottawa makes it so that we don't really need resources right now. 

So, this whole idea that, if we can create -- I might be naïve or optimistic to say this, but from on the ground I truly feel this.  The truckers are setting Canada free, the truckers are setting the world free, because once this first domino falls and the world sees that if you unify and you hold the line, because freedom is at stake, you win.  The human spirit wins, love wins.  When the world realises the truckers saved us all, having an endowment that's there to support financially any trucker that was involved with spearheading this, and maybe even truckers around the world, I think is going to be a beautiful way for humanity to thank the truckers forever for what they did.  Like I said, maybe that's naïve optimism, but the way it looks right now, this is a big opportunity for Bitcoin to show what can happen. 

On an in-person basis, I'm going around and speaking to truckers and orange pilling individual truckers, sending them sats peer-to-peer.  I came in from the world of Bitcoin and I'm sending sats to a trucker in person after showing them how to boot up a mobile wallet and understand why we're fighting for physical freedom, this is very important; but without monetary freedom, we actually don't have sustainable freedom.  And explaining to them that Bitcoin is the separation of government and money, and how the government manipulates money to their benefit to maintain power, they start to understand really that this is a fundamental thing.

When I zap the QR code and money shows up, the hardest money on earth shows up on their phone, their eyes light up like, "Oh, shit, I don't really understand this yet, but that's pretty cool".  I just think the idea of the Bitcoin community being able to peer-to-peer support truckers, and even if this endowment eventually -- every trucker that's going to get money from the GoFundMe has to register, they have to say how long they travelled for, how long they stayed, it's all being done very well.  If we can literally just disperse directly to truckers, based on what their sacrifice was, and that's what happens with the endowment, that's a pretty special thing, because you circumvent all the friction from traditional payment rails, all the fees, all the rent-seeking, and you go from an individual…

It's funny, because on this Tallycoin thing that BTC Sessions helped us set up, you can donate sats with Lightning and you can also write a message.  The other day, I read a message that said, "Thank you from a doctor in Nigeria".  The fact that a doctor in Nigeria can donate to a pool of funds, and I can go and speak to a trucker from Saskatchewan, who has sacrificed to come here, left his family and sacrificed to come and claim freedom, and the fact that I can take sats directly from a Nigerian doctor and give it to a trucker from Saskatchewan is pretty special, and I don't think people understand how insanely innovative and ground-breaking that is, but this is going to show them.

The best place to go right now, if you go on Twitter -- I've got to say, full credit to Ben for the branding, the marketing and setting up all the infrastructure for this, because my initial setup was, "Get the blessing of the person in charge and just open up a wallet, so that we can start bringing stuff in", and we accumulated a good 16 million sats.  Then people were saying, "We need a Lightning rail, and we need something set up that's more formal", because all I was doing was posting a QR code in the actual address.

So, BTC Sessions came up with this beautiful idea of starting a Twitter account, called @HonkHonkHodl, and attached to that is a Tallycoin crowdfunding platform.  And people can pay on mainchain and with Lightning, and you can attach a message to every donation that you make, and they show up.  So, @HonkHonkHodl, if you go there, at the top, you can click the Tallycoin, you can see the donations page, you can see how much we've raised, you can see all the messages that people are streaming in, that's the best place to go. 

So, it is set up, it will eventually be a multisig with either a lawyer or an accountant as one of the multisig signatures that's representing the convoy, but for now it's just, "Let's create a fund and show the world that Bitcoin is unfuckable money, and that when lawyers interfere with people being able to receive funds from the world for a good cause, because it can disrupt their power, that Bitcoin doesn't have that problem.  Bitcoin fixes that".

Greg Foss: And, Peter, it's Jeff Booth and myself and Ben Sessions who are currently planning to get the multisig, as well as Nick.  So, 3 of 5 multisig wallet, and it will support the truckers.  But there's a chance that we will decide to make reparations to this food shelter, food kitchen, if it was truthfully overrun by the crowd of protesters.  But we haven't found that to be true yet, but certainly that was something where the left was accusing these of violent extremists.

Peter McCormack: Right, so I'm glad you came on and talked about this.  We're running against a time limitation now.  Nick, do you want to just close out and get the final messages you want across to people, and by the way you're welcome to come back on in a week or two weeks and update on this anyway.

NobodyCaribou: Yeah, I'd love to, and by that point there will either be further developments into this strategy game, or we'll be free.  Either way, it will be great to come back on and reconnect.

I think what I'd like to convey is just a couple of things that I'm seeing, as a human that's here, and I'm not going to be able to convey the energy and the atmosphere of what's actually going on, but I'll try and put a few things into words so that people can grasp what's happening.

What I'm seeing is people speaking to each other instead of at each other.  What I'm seeing is thousands of smiles and proud Canadians that are wrapped in Canadian flags celebrating love, truth and freedom.  I'm watching doctors talking on stages about getting punished and hunted down for writing medical exemptions for people who are truly at risk of being harmed by vaccines because of their current medical status.

I'm watching black, Indian, Chinese, indigenous and white people come together in a peaceful celebration and unity and pride of being Canadian.  I'm watching legacy media spread blatant lives and self-cancel themselves in real time, which is beautiful.  I'm watching families bring food, handwritten notes, fuel, heaters and love to supply the trucks and the truckers' hearts and it's pretty special.  I'm watching homeless people be fed by Canadians who have congregated here because this is a sanctuary of freedom. 

I don't think people realise, this can't be stopped, it has too much momentum, there's too much steadfast understanding of everyone that when our freedom is at stake, stopping and quitting is actually not an option, and I don't think people fundamentally realise that.  I've even heard some truckers talk about how wonderful it's going to be when summer hits and days are longer.

So, these people are well-fuelled with money coming in, through the GoFundMe and now through Bitcoin.  They're well-fuelled in terms of motivation, because their freedom is at stake.  I talked to a farmer from Alberta yesterday who left his wife, child and farm to travel 3,700 kilometres to be here to sleep in his truck in freezing cold weather, because the freedom of his family is at risk.  So, I'm seeing people take responsibility and essentially, hold the line, truly hold the line.

I think, what I would get across is that everyone can make that choice, it doesn't matter where you live, in Canada or in the world; if everyone says no, it ends.  And I think Canada is going to pave the way and prove that it's actually possible to do, it's possible to do peacefully and it's possible to do it with love, because freedom is important and we can do this the right way and set a template for the rest of the world to follow.

So, @HonkHonkHodl on Twitter.  My label on Twitter is @NobodyCaribou and on the bitcoinstoa.com website, if you click 2022 Freedom Convoy coverage, I do an update every day of very short-format bullet point notes of things I'm observing, things I'm seeing and links to videos that I think are powerful demonstrations of what is actually happening, because the truth is not getting out unless we put it out.  And, Peter, thanks again for giving me space to talk about this and for giving your platform for this, because I think it is important for both Bitcoin to show what it can do, but also to the world to show what's possible if we unify.

Peter McCormack: Well, listen, thanks for coming on.  You've got the freedom to come back on this whenever you want.  Anything I can do to support, let me know.  Thanks for coming on, Greg.  We'll get this out, we'll get people talking and just reach out if I can do anything.  Peace out, good luck, and I'll be sending you some sats.

NobodyCaribou: Love is going to win, baby, we're doing it!