(OTTAWA) Chris Barber, one of the organizers of the “freedom convoy,” said Tuesday that the original purpose of the protest was to get the federal government to listen to truckers who refused to get vaccinated to cross the border.
Posted at 11:41 a.m.
Barber, 47, is the first of many organizers to testify at the public inquiry into the federal government’s use of Emergency Measures Actlast February.
Chris Barber runs his own trucking business in Swift Current, Saskatchewan. He was greeted Tuesday morning with applause from onlookers in the courtroom.
Mr. Barber said he was contacted by fellow trucker, Brigitte Belton, to organize some sort of protest against the mandatory vaccination of truckers crossing the Canada-US border.
After that initial contact, he said, things fell into place organically and quickly thanks to social media.
Within two weeks, thousands of trucks and protesters converged on Ottawa, where they ultimately paralyzed the capital’s downtown core for nearly a month.