Freedom Convoy Leaders are Trying to Stop a Planned ‘Election Convoy’ to Ottawa
Convoy leaders are publicly disavowing a brand new convoy that is aiming to force Justin Trudeau to call a snap election
Leaders of the original 2022 Freedom Convoy are scrambling to pour cold water on plans for a so-called ‘Election Convoy’.
The proposed ‘Election Convoy’, which is being planned to coincide with the Freedom Convoy’s 3-year anniversary, is pitching itself as a protest against Justin Trudeau’s prorogation of parliament to force a snap election.
Organized largely in far-right Facebook Groups, the 2025 ‘Election Convoy’ is being spearheaded by figures previously associated with the anti-LGBTQ+ “million march for children” protests and the “Save the Children Convoy,” a conspiratorial group that aspired to arrest political leaders.
#Convoy2025 trended in recent days on Elon Musk’s X.com.
Barber and Quiggin out
Among the most prominent voices speaking out against the planned ‘Election Convoy’ are Chris Barber and Tom Quiggin, two people with leadership roles in the 2022 Freedom Convoy.
Barber is a founding organizer of the 2022 Freedom Convoy while Quiggin, a former RCMP intelligence officer, advised the convoy’s leadership team by producing “daily intel reports.”
“This is a bad idea on so many different levels,” Quiggin said of the planned ‘Election Convoy’ Friday on X. “I will be staying as far away as possible from this event should it get going.”
“Agreed, innocent people will get hurt again,” Barber replied.
Activists and influencers give ‘Election Convoy’ the cold shoulder
Other activists and influencers linked to convoy and convoy-adjacent groups are also telling followers they’re steering clear of the ‘Election Convoy’:
Eddie Cornell (co-founder of convoy spinoff group Veterans 4 Freedom): “I too do not support this idea.”
Jeff Evely (V4F leader and PPC candidate): “I wonder if Convoy 2.0 will result in the ‘emergency’ the Liberals need for them to continue cleaving to power until the fall of 2026.”
Yukon Strong (convoy influencer): “Meh, sorry guys, don’t think I’m on board this time around, it just seems kind of redundant to me.”
The Pleb: (convoy influencer and Pierre Poilievre admirer): “This convoy is completely pointless.”
Gordon Berry (Save the Children Convoy leader): “The admins, the mods on that page, all bullshit, nobody knows who they are. Nobody knows who these people are. So boom, that’s controlled opposition movement.”
Patriot Smoothie (“Wellington Street Regulars” livestreamer): “A lot of these people I'm not sure if they were even in Ottawa for Freedom Convoy 2022, if they sacrificed anything at all. A lot of them are anonymous accounts … A lot of them are pushing narratives like we need to separate, we need to join the United States.”
Something’s off: ‘Election Convoy’ responds to Freedom Convoy leaders
“It’s funny how the head organizers of the original convoy are going against this one,” ‘Election Convoy’ organizers said in a statement Saturday. “Something seems off.”
‘Election Convoy’ walks back plans to obstruct highways
Although the ‘Election Convoy’ explicitly bills itself as “Convoy 2.0,” the group issued a public statement Friday insisting they do not condone “blockades” or any “obstruction to public infrastructure or essential services”:
“We are aware of the public’s concerns regarding the upcoming protest scheduled to begin on January 22. To clarify, this event is not a recreation of the original Freedom Convoy and will not involve blockades or any form of obstruction to public infrastructure or essential services.”
Despite this claim, the group has, in fact, advocated obstructing highways.
Who is behind the ‘Election Convoy’?
Chatter about reunion convoys marking the anniversary of the Freedom Convoy often pop up at this time of year, but Trudeau’s resignation and prorogation of parliament adds new urgency to that chatter.
The official ‘Election Convoy’ Facebook Group first appeared on January 7, the same day Derek Fildebrandt, Publisher of the Western Standard, published an op-ed advocating a “new convoy” to force Trudeau to call an election. Though the Facebook Group has shared Fildebrandt’s op-ed, there’s no indication the Western Standard and the Facebook Group have deeper links.
The convoy’s spokesperson, Freek Schep, graduated high school in 2022 and now runs a business importing Canadian maple syrup to the Netherlands. Schep was previously “head Halifax organizer” of the anti-LGBTQ+ “one million march for children” rally in 2023 and says he has also attended Dutch farmers’ protests in the Netherlands.
“I’m doing a lot of the media stuff for this convoy, for this ‘Election Now Convoy’,” Schep says in one video to convoy supporters. “We have a lot of people behind the scenes to make this happen.”
One ‘Election Convoy’ organizer working behind the scenes is a convoy livestreamer named “Qweenie ShanaLee.” Qweenie was a participant in the 2022 Freedom Convoy and was present at the Save the Children Convoy’s base camp near Casselman, Ontario in 2023.
Qweenie has also voiced views echoing sovereign citizen ideology. In a 2023 livestream video depicting her arrest, she told a police officer: “You have no rights over me, I live by common law — I’m sovereign.”