Brigitte Belton says she thought she was going to be arrested when posting a TikTok video in late 2021, as her truck was detained at the Ambassador Bridge because she had defied a mask mandate.
“I thought that time was the time they were finally going to take a truck that they did not own, take a load that did not belong to them, take my dog and euthanize him, and take me to jail,” the Ontario truck driver said, wiping tears from her eyes during testimony about this year’s Freedom Convoy.
“I was done with CBSA [Canada Border Services Agency]. I was done with the crap that Canada was going through. And I was definitely done with the behavior of Canadians.”
When plans were introduced for a vaccine mandate that would apply to cross-border truck drivers, the idea of a broader protest came to life.
Belton was among Freedom Convoy organizers who were making their first appearance before the Public Order Emergency Commission that is exploring the federal government’s use of the Emergency Act to crack down on protests including an Ottawa occupation that lasted almost three weeks.
The idea for the convoy was inspired by an earlier CBSA job action that stranded her on the Blue Water Bridge, she said. “My husband and [fellow convoy organizer] Chris Barber told me that convoys never work. They just never had a woman do it.”
Planning for the convoy “exploded overnight”, and originally focused on slowing traffic and causing a nuisance, she said. James Bauder then connected with her and discussed his work on a previous Canada Unity convoy, and she signed his Memorandum of Understanding calling for the government to be replaced — even though she said she never read the full document.
Once in Ottawa, Belton said she was involved in various tasks. “When a fire came up, if I could put it out, I put it out.”
Demeaning measures
She described the protests as the best thing to happen to Canada in two years.
“We worked eight months with no sanitizer, no face masks. Nothing. We had no bathrooms. We had no showers. We were refused everywhere we went. You have no idea what it’s like to pee in a park on your way home from work,” Belton said.
“You have no idea how demeaning those Covid measures were to our industry and yet I felt it my duty to support Canadians and bring you the goods and services that many hoarded.”
Belton was among organizers who had bank accounts frozen under Emergencies Act measures, and learned of that during a phone call. Other protesters fronted her cash to help her and her husband make their next truck payment.
“We weren’t there to disrupt the city residents. We were there to be heard,” she said of the Ottawa protests, noting 32 emails to MPs and MPPs went unanswered.
“When CBSA sent me a reply, pretty much ‘suck it up buttercup, this is the way it’s going to go and you’re about to lose your job so don’t worry about it’, what did you want me to do?”
