There’s a New QAnon Convoy in Canada. They Want to ‘Pick Up’ Homeless People.

A leader of a far-right “convoy” camped out near Canada’s capitol has said the group plans to “pick up” homeless people off the street to join its a conspiracy-drenched movement to overthrow the nation’s government, which it views as part of a global cabal of pedophiles. 

In an instagram live video that was saved and edited by Reddit user “Mr-MayorMcCheese,” convoy organizer Norman Blanchfield said, in a heavy Quebecois accent, “The homeless people they want to fight with us. Those ones they want to change and they want to have a life. So we’re going to take twenty with us, and I never said that on live before. But we only have three homeless people here.”

In the video, Blanchfield, who hails from Gatineau, Quebec, suggests homeless people will be given food and work in exchange for their help. “Everyone gonna work,” he said. 

“Twenty person, we’re gonna go pick up,” he says, “if they want, and I’m sure they’re gonna say yes. We’re gonna tell them we have a fight to do against this corruption. And I really know they have a lot of them, they’re mad against this corruption government, and they’re gonna be willing to fight with us.”

Blanchfield says in the video that the city made sure they had a septic tank in their camper. He warns people not to send homeless people to the convoy or to tell people it’s an encampment. “Don’t say everywhere it’s an open camp for homeless because we’re not able to take the homeless everywhere and every kind of homeless,” Blanchfield says, adding that he doesn’t want people with mental illness or drug problems to join.

An advocate with a legal clinic assisting unhoused people in Blanchfield’s home of Gatineau, about an hour from the convoy’s camp, told Motherboard they weren’t aware of the situation, but called it “extremely concerning” and said they had to investigate more.

The convoy calls itself “Save the Children” and, according to Press Progress,  it consists of about a hundred people in vehicles parked in a field 40 minutes outside Ottawa.

Several key members of the convoy were affiliated with the anti-vaccine “Freedom Convoy” that occupied downtown Ottawa in 2022. Members of the Save the Children Convoy profess a wide-range of conspiratorial beliefs, including the QAnon conspiracy belief that Donald Trump is fighting a global cabal of pedophiles in the government who conduct Satanic rituals. (Although some members denounce this particular theory, according to Press Progress.) Members also subscribe to New Age spirituality, “health and wellness” culture and believe they are legally separate from the Canadian government. Blanchfield is also associated with a group called Bridges to Freedom which posted a manifesto calling for the government to resign.

The movement’s self-appointed spokesperson Gordon Berry advocated for arresting politicians and dismantling the government. Attendees of early meetings told Press Progress that the group had initially intended to send caravans to Toronto and Tofino, British Columbia in a plot to target politicians, police, and freemasons. 

While unhoused people, just like housed people, are free to join roving convoys of conspiracy theorists, Blanchfield’s description of the arrangement suggests they’re being lured with work and services and aren’t yet on board with the group’s mission, which includes fighting an imaginary threat of world government leaders openly endorsing pedophilia.