Tom Quiggin gets around. He served as a self-styled intelligence analyst for the Freedom Convoy and posted a series of daily situation reports. These have now found their way into the database of the Public Order Emergency Commission. Quiggin is not a witness and, to the best of my knowledge, has not faced any criminal charges with regard to his activities with the Convoy protest.
He has what looks like solid credentials. His bio includes a stint in the Canadian military, including service in Bosnia, time spent in the strategic intelligence unit known as the Intelligence Assessment Secretariat in the Privy Council Office, work with the RCMP as a consultant intelligence analyst, and time spent on contract as a security consultant with the Bank of Canada. He taught for a while at a Singapore University.
He also lauds his qualification as a designated security expert on terrorism with the Canadian courts (I have one of those as well--its a small badge). In fact I knew a previous version of Tom Quiggin when he was working at the Privy Council Office and later when we both served as expert witnesses for the defence team in the security certificate proceedings against Mohamed Harkat in the Federal Court. I say previous version because at some point in the decade of the 2010s, after his last formal job with the Bank of Canada (which has disappeared from any resume I can find online) Quiggin veered off into a conspiracy theory-tinged world. In 2014, I was surprised to see that he had published a 200 page tract claiming that the Muslim Brotherhood was entrenched in Canada with a “significant presence,” an “aggressive posture,” and a long-term aim to “globally impose a virulent form of political islam to the exclusion of other faiths or systems.” Who knew about its Canadian tentacles? And who had ever heard of something called the “Terrorism and Security Experts of Canada network,” which appeared to consist of Tom Quiggin. I remember writing to Quiggin at the time to ask about this network. No answer.
Social media gave Quiggin a new platform to espouse his views and some organizations continued to lend him unwarranted credibility, including the Royal Military College of Canada, where he was allowed to teach for a time as a contract lecturer. I hope his military students did not retain too much. He also stirred controversy at a Manning Centre conference in 2017 by claiming, without evidence, that the Quebec City mosque which was the scene of a shooting that left six Muslim congregants dead, was likely targeted because it had funneled money to a terrorist entity. He was booted off Youtube in 2018.
Somehow Quiggin morphed from over-heated terrorism watcher to Freedom Convoy supporter. The twists and turns of that journey are not known to us, but he was quickly identified in the media as a self-styled intelligence officer for the Freedom Convoy.
What can we say of the role of this ‘intelligence guy’ with the Freedom Convoy? No surprise, his conspiracy theory outlook and anti-government rhetoric found a perfect milieu.
His very first Bulletin, issued on January 27, held nothing back. It included suggestions that there were elements of police interference with the convoys as they were making their way to Ottawa. He also broadcast (to whoever was paying attention—these were not protected or encrypted messages in any way) that the stated intent of the Freedom Convoy was to remain in Ottawa until all public health mandates regarding COVID -19 were lifted and that the number of vehicles converging in Ottawa will be more than sufficient to “block all downtown Ottawa and the surrounding areas.”
The next day, January 28, Quiggin went beyond suggesting merely that there might be “perceptions” of police interference with the convoys to a bigger picture of a conspiratorial campaign run by the federal government to make personal attacks on Freedom Convoy particpants, run smear campaign (“supported by the paid-for mainstream media”), encourage violence by various groups by creating a “political space” for it. Most outlandishly, he suggested that there might be paid agents provocateurs sent by the government into the Freedom Convoy ranks to incite violence.
Soon his bulletins/”intelligence reports” were headlined with pithy aphorisms. The report for February 1 provided this “thought for today:” “A cowardly leader is the most dangerous of men.” This bulletin claimed “civic officials are trying everything they can to block food and fuel to the Freedom Convoy.” According to Quiggin the convoy had found “workarounds.”
It is not my intention to fact check Quiggin, but more to convey the flavour of his reporting. That is not to say that some fact checking would not be in order, especially in regard to a special report he put out on February 2 which contradicted other media reporting regarding an incident at a homeless shelter in downtown Ottawa (the Shepherds of Good Hope). The incident involved a group of people who entered its premises, demanded food handouts and harassed staff. Quiggin claimed the Freedom Convoy could confirm that no one associated with the Convoy carried out the “harassing action” and that (although the grammar is unclear here) it was likely carried out by Anti-Fa, or an associated ideological group. Two things here—one is that it is hard to know how the Freedom Convoy leadership would be able to positively say that convoy protesters were not involved—as they had no idea even of the number of truck that had congregated downtown quite apart from all the thousands of protesters who joined the ranks of the Convoy demonstrations and occupation. The second is that Anti-Fa was a favourite target of Freedom Convoy messaging and an outside organization they repeatedly blamed for any incidents of violence associated with the convoy. Short-form story of Anti-Fa is that it is an anti-fascist organization that arose in Europe in the 1980s and later took a foothold in the U.S. It promotes aggressive counter-action against what it considers neo-nazi, far right and racist groups. A perfect foil.
On February 2, Quiggin was buoyed by the news that Erin O’Toole was voted out as leader of the Conservative party. He called it a big win and believed it was all due to O’Toole’s supportive policy towards the vaccine mandate. He continued a previous story line that Ottawa police and the mayor were attempting to starve out the Freedom Convoy. He suggested that there were members of police forces wandering around Ottawa with nothing to do and suggested they should go home.
Quiggin may have missed it, but his next report was 007. It dug further into the suggestion that violent protesters would soon arrive in Ottawa to engage in false-flag attacks and blame the Freedom Convoy. Once more he suggested that the Prime Minister was facilitating this by creating a “political space where violence against the Freedom Convoy appears acceptable.” He called this an indirect support to violence and believed it was of a piece with the Prime Minister’s refusal to meet with Freedom Convoy representatives or “discuss” the Freedom Convoy’s demands.
An intelligence bulletin for February 5 announced that the Freedom Convoy had a new crowd source platform for fund-raising. He accused the original platform, GoFundMe, of basing its decision to freeze the convoy account on false accusations and of acting in concert with the Prime Minister and Ottawa mayor Watson. The Prime Minister was also accused of issuing direct orders to the Ottawa Police Chief. As the previous version of Tom Quiggin would have known well, this just ain’t so. Sloly was later slammed by Quiggin (on February 9) for his connection to something called “corporatist” power structures. Hard to know what his readers made of this—it had a distinctly Marxist tone, no doubt unintended.
No surprise, Quiggin’s February 5 bulletin also announced that the Chief Public Health officer of Canada, Dr. Theresa Tam had been invited to a joint press conference on February 7, to “show the science that supports the lock downs and mandates.” This was a PR stunt. Quiggin, and the Freedom Convoy organizers, already knew the answer—”the science is on the side of the truckers.”
On February 10, Quiggin claimed to know that the Prime Minister’s office had directed that the Freedom Convoy be dispersed no later than Saturday, February 12. The only problem with this bit of mind-reading was that no decision had yet been take at the Federal level to invoke the Emergencies Act. Quiggin was presumably basing this morsel of intelligence on the fact that the Cabinet Incident Response Group first met to discuss the Freedom Convoy On February 10. The decision to invoke the Emergencies Act only came on February 14, following a series of weekend Cabinet meetings.
On February 11, Quiggin made another evidence-free call. He suggested that police forces and individual officers were turning against efforts to stop the Freedom Convoy and “are questioning the legality of the actions of their own forces.” He told his audience that arrests of Freedom Convoy supporters on mischief charges would be legally “doubtful.” He also stressed that resource issues were straining law enforcement agencies. In responding to the declaration of a provincial emergency, Quiggin informed his followers that “Canada continues to move away from a viable democracy towards a Venezuela-style failed government.”
If his followers did not catch his drift here, perhaps Quiggin’s effort at light relief might have appealed. His bulletins not only carried a weather report but efforts at humour. Here is one example:
“Who can upset the Prime Minister, the Premier of Ontario, the Mayor of Ottawa and the Police Chief of Ottawa all at the same time? “Jerry Can.” Yuck-yuck
Then there was the cartoon celebrating “the Hoonker,” a trucker image who “disrupts the status quo by not letting people sleep in tyranny.” This was repeated with an overlay of a quote from the Chinese philosopher, Sun Tzu (famous for The Art of War that he may have authored), “the supreme art of war is to tire the enemy with honking.”
The last available Quiggin intelligence report was dated February 16, two days after the invocation of the Emergencies Act. It made no mention of the Emergencies Act or the powers that might be used against Freedom Convoy protesters engaged in the occupation in Ottawa. Then he disappears from the scene, only to resurface months later with a self-published book, “Eyewitness to Deceit: Trudeau’s Infowar on Freedom Convoy 2022.” Please don’t take this for a plug.
There has been a legitimate concern that individuals involved with the Freedom Convoy with law enforcement, military and intelligence backgrounds—and Quiggin fits the bill—gave the protesters a major capabilities boost. Judging from Quiggin’s self-proclaimed intelligence bulletins, it is hard to reach this conclusion in practice. He was just one more megaphone in the crowd, one more honking horn.
Peter, thank you. I address this important question in my latest post.
You mentioned in an interview that claims of leaks from almost all law enforcement agencies might be self promotion by the convoy witnesses. I agree, but haven't seen this elsewhere, yet. Everyone seems to assume these leaks actually represent support from the police and others.