A pickup truck decorated with a Confederate flag at the “Freedom Convoy” in Ottawa early last year was driven by a local roofer who supported the protests, not by Liberal government “provocateurs” as convoy organizers alleged at the public inquiry into the invoking of the Emergencies Act.
Maurice Landriault told CTV National News that it was his Dodge Ram 2500 seen on Elgin Street and at a protest site at Confederation Square, but he denies the flag he mounted on the tailgate next to a Canadian flag was offensive.
“It’s a sign of independence,” he said. “I look at it as a rebel sign. In the biker community, a lot of people have the Confederate flag because we’re rebels.”
But to many, the flag is a racist symbol and a disturbing reminder of the U.S. Confederacy’s fight to preserve slavery. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau denounced their display at the Ottawa protest, saying his government wouldn’t give in to “racist flags.”
Landriault says some protesters asked him to take it off his truck.
“They’re telling me it’s racist. It’s not racist. You guys are making it racist.”
At the Public Order Emergency Commission in November, convoy organizers brought a motion to compel evidence about Nazi and Confederate flags seen at the protest, claiming the Liberal government attempted to use them to wrongly portray protesters as racists and extremists.
Their lawyer, Brendan Miller, argued they had “evidence and grounds to suspect that the flags, and purported protesters using them, were not protesters with the convoy at all, but provocateurs.”
He asked Commissioner Paul Rouleau to order the Ottawa Police Service or the Ontario Provincial Police to trace the pickup truck’s licence plate to uncover the owner’s identity.
Rouleau declined the request, saying there is “no proper foundation in the evidence to believe that the registration information for this vehicle would disclose the existence of an agent provocateur.”
Miller also alleged that a man photographed holding a flag with a swastika near Parliament Hill was Toronto communications consultant Brian Fox, in an attempt to discredit the convoy movement, possibly at the direction of the Prime Minister’s Office.
Fox and his firm, Enterprise Canada, called the claim absurd and despicable, and are suing Miller for defamation.
Still, convoy supporters continued to promote theories that offensive symbols seen on Ottawa streets in January and February were the work of “antifa” – short for anti-fascists – or other saboteurs working in league with the federal government.
CTV National News obtained Landriault’s name from the registration of the licence plate filed with the Ontario Ministry of Transportation.
He says he bought the Confederate flag in 2019 to take to a concert by rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd.
He says he eventually traded the flag to another protester for a flag with a NSFW (not safe for work) slogan from a Frank Zappa song.
On the day Trudeau testified at the commission, Landriault attended the hearings dressed in a “Beetlejuice” costume and wearing a Harley Davidson baseball cap adorned with a Confederate flag motif.
During a break in the proceedings, he says he approached Miller.
"I told him I'm the one who had the truck, and I didn't work for no government," he said.
Landriault, who is unvaccinated, is a motorcycle rider and helped organize fellow bikers to participate in a 2021 protest against COVID-19 measures.
He says he attended the convoy protest last year to send a message to the government about vaccination mandates.
“We’re fed up,” he said. “You’ve taken too much control of people’s lives. You’re forcing a person to take a vaccine to go to a restaurant, to go to a movie, to travel, to go to school.”
He says he used his truck and trailer to help bring fresh supplies of diesel fuel to keep the big rigs running.
The pickup truck he drove to the protest was totalled in a collision last year, he says.
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