Senator Tannas: First of all, I think I said no one wound up in the hospital. I think we all saw a lady that got hit by a horse and got back up and was interviewed. By the way, my comment was not necessarily about the virtue of those that were at the barricades. It was more around the discipline of the police and the tactics that they deployed in order to safely bring the Ottawa protest to an end.

You could be right. I don’t know the people from Alberta that have been pointed at as the ring leaders in all of this. I don’t know what their motives were in starting it, but I can tell you that the millions of people that expressed sympathy and support in one form or another saw something in that which gave voice to their frustration or part of their frustration. So I don’t know in truth whether the protest was co-opted by ordinary Canadians with very real frustrations or whether the convoy of real Canadians with real frustrations was somewhat co-opted by a very small group of people. I looked when I walked up and down there. I could not see flags — I sure saw a lot of flags. In first place was the Canadian flag by a mile. In second place was a flag that had a comment about the Prime Minister and a maple leaf on it. Really, anything else could not have been said to be prominent. The placards up and down that were attached to the fence were overwhelmingly about personal freedoms and vaccination. I can’t comment. It’s not in my area of expertise as to whether or not White supremacists are on the rise, on the wane or the same as they have always been. In a free society, we are always going to have those kinds of people. They are always going to be around, and we need to stand up to them in whatever form is necessary.

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