Calgarian Going To Trial For Heckling Justin Trudeau At Pancake Breakfast

There seems to be a deliberate move right across Canada to dissuade citizens from openly disagreeing or giving negative attention to elected officials or different woke initiatives. 

It just got a bit worse with the news surfacing that a Calgarian was charged for an incident that happened last year at a Calgary Stampede pancake breakfast involving Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Liberal MP George Chahal. 

Below is a video from City News talking about the situation.

Kent Manning was charged and is awaiting trial on March 28 for allegedly “trespassing” and “resisting arrest” after attending a pancake breakfast open to the public, and briefly heckling Justin Trudeau before being pushed by a plainclothes police officer, and later arrested by the RCMP.

Below is the photo of the public invitation released by George Chahal’s Electoral District Association. 

It was not presented as an event for only Liberal Party members, evident from the fact that United Conservative Party MLA Leela Aheer also attended the event, in order to drum up support for her failed run for the leadership of the UCP. 

Manning spoke to The National Telegraph to explain the situation, and why he sees it as ridiculous he was charged for what is a pretty common occurrence in politics. 

Manning stated about his appearance at the pancake breakfast:

I was invited by my friend Mark Noel to accompany him and his visiting New Brunswick family to attend a public Stampede Pancake Breakfast.  The event was broadly advertised by the host, George Chahal, the Liberal MP for Calgary Skyview – the area where my friend Mark has lived for two years and is a voting constituent. 

Manning made clear both Noel and himself are not supporters of the Liberal Party, MP Chahal, or Prime Minister Trudeau, but was both curious to see the turnout to Chahal’s breakfast and of course get some free food. 

Manning continued and explained what happened when Trudeau showed up to the breakfast unannounced, stating that:

Chahal and Trudeau passed by very closely, plainclothes RCMP officers were crowded closely around to guard the PM, and frankly, I think they are supposed to appear like he is mobbed by adoring citizens. The group moved toward me, and because I was already standing there I didn’t feel like I was doing anything wrong by remaining there. 

Manning added that he was not intentionally staying in the crowd’s way as he was standing next to Leela Aheer and another Liberal supporter – Manning’s decades-long-time friend Gerard S during the whole interaction until he was arrested.

As they came closer, MP George Chahal was a few feet away from me and Trudeau was on the other side of George. I intended on asking a couple of pressing questions I had for George and PM Trudeau. I had my cell phone in hand and I asked MP George Chahal, “hey George, do you think I could get a selfie with porch pirate and groper together with me?”  As expected, George recognized me as a Conservative political campaign worker and said with a smirk, “not likely .” I could see that PM Trudeau had heard this interaction between George and myself, and then I said to PM Trudeau, “Hey Justin, what did it feel like when you violated that young girl?

Manning’s sharp comment to Justin Trudeau was in reference to the prime minister’s shall we say ‘touchy’ history with women, including a 2000 story where he allegedly groped Rose Knight, a then-young reporter. Knight, according to reporting at the time she stands by as accurate, said Trudeau apologized to her the day after, allegedly saying “I’m sorry, if I had known you were reporting for a national paper, I never would have been so forward.” 

In 2018 when the incident reemerged, Trudeau explained:

I have been reflecting very carefully on what I remember. I feel I am confident I did not act inappropriately…The same interactions can be experienced very differently from one person to the next.

At the pancake breakfast, after Manning made those comments at Trudeau, he recounts that Trudeau then turned and stormed up to his face, separated by just inches, and spitefully said something along the lines of “And you have a nice Stampede weekend too !” before walking away. Manning likens Trudeau’s behaviour to actual intimidation, in response to what was a heckle. 

It was shortly after Trudeau shot back at Manning that Manning was pushed back by a plainclothes officer who walked direcly into him, causing Manning to bump into another officer standing behind him. Manning says he exclaimed to the first officer, “Hey, don’t push me! I’ve been standing here all along.”

Manning was then arrested for “refusing to leave” despite no event organizer or property manager asking him to leave.

Manning’s momentary resistance to leaving is what resulted in the “resisting arrest” charge, which Manning disputes even being realistic as he has a torn rotator cuff (which he proved with medical records) and obviously would not be looking to get into a physical altercation. 

Manning after being charged and released by police filed a complaint with the Calgary Police Service alleging that he had been mistreated by police who seemed to have artificially generated a confrontation. 

The Calgary Police Service rejected Kent Manning’s complaint as having “insufficient evidence to prove misconduct”. Manning says it was a flawed investigation, hinged on painting him as having been a “protester” arbitrarily determined to only be at the Genesis Centre pancake breakfast to disrupt the event. 

Obviously, nothing Manning did would be considered by a reasonable person to be worthy of being arrested and charged, but it seems like Canada has become a place where it’s considered an offense to openly disagree with a Liberal politician. 

If what Kent Manning did actually constitutes “trespassing” and “resisting arrest” then anyone who heckles a politician, let alone protests one, could be charged and potentially convicted, in order to dissuade all opposition.

In order to fight this nonsense charge there is a GoFundMe campaign started to help pay for Kent Manning’s legal bills that we would encourage anyone who opposes the draconian crackdown on freedom of speech and movement to donate to.

Story Update:

Kent Manning’s Trial was postponed before the original trial date on March 28, due to scheduling issues with one of the lawyers involved. The new court date should be within a few weeks to a couple of months. Manning has said he may also pursue having the charges preemptively thrown out through a special application.