Back by popular demand, our viewers' favourite, Manny Montenegro, joins us for a feature-length conversation about the year in Canadian law and politics. We cover everything from the use of the War Measures Act, to the introduction of the notwithstanding clause, to vaccines, and everything in between.
00:06:37.640Again, a suspension of individual rights.
00:06:41.580And the worst, Ezra, at this time, was using co-opting banks to do the government's dirty crushing of individual rights.
00:06:54.620Imagine, Ezra, you or I could have given $20 to the cause of this liberation movement or this rights return movement, and we would have had the state seizing our accounts, looking into us.
00:07:11.400I mean, this is, again, to a charter, a lawyer that's a charter baby, I would have never thought any of this remotely would happen in Canada.
00:07:22.640But it has, in a short, almost two generations, in short 40 years, you know, Ezra, JFK once said that freedom and liberty is only one generation away from being lost.
00:07:39.060Well, in Canada, we're close to two generations away from being lost, and it happened in my lifetime.
00:07:47.980And I, of course, went to law school probably about 15 years after you did, and the charter was treated as this sacred text.
00:07:57.360It has not been used to strike down any substantive public health order, curfew, flight ban, quarantine hotels, quarantine act, the kind of invasiveness of asking someone, do you really believe in that religion?
00:09:05.040The only thing the Supreme Court did was the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court unilaterally declared that the Supreme Court building will have a vaccine mandate.
00:09:20.300So basically, you know where he stood.
00:09:23.260And every other judge knew where he stood.
00:09:25.380So they knew, oh, okay, so if this goes all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, we know in advance that without any arguments on either side, without any facts, the boss of our courts just said he's all in favor of vax mandates because he's brought one in himself.
00:09:53.460And, you know, the committee investigating the convoy, I mean, just think of the madness, how it's almost dystopian.
00:10:05.100So just to bring some dates into being, December, January 2021, 2022, Ontario, and I think every other province, but I'm going to stick to Ontario because that's where I stand, locked down every citizen, vaccinated or unvaccinated.
00:10:28.560The Ontario data at that time showed that the vaccinated were spreading and getting infected at almost 40% higher than the unvaccinated on a per capita basis.
00:10:45.680And for that reason, it was important to lock down the vaccinated that were once going to vaccine passport protected places like restaurants and wherever they were.
00:10:58.440So Ontario was on a full lockdown because the vaccinated were spreading it more than the unvaccinated.
00:11:05.880And then two days or a few days after that, near the end, when we all, everyone should have known by then, you're at home, you're a vaccinated person, and the government says stay home.
00:11:23.620I knew by April of 2021, when you look at the numbers in Israel, that they went to the, they basically, the vaccinated, because they were six months ahead of Canada, the vaccinated were being infected and spreading it as much or more than the unvaccinated.
00:11:44.820But everyone, at least sitting at home, should have known that these vaccines do not stop infection, do not stop transmission.
00:11:54.180And what does Trudeau do weeks after that, or I think it was the 15th of January, I forget the date, but put in a new mandate on our heroes, our truck drivers who stand alone in their trucks, who sit alone and bring us our food and bring us our supplies that we need tirelessly.
00:12:13.920So can you imagine, at the end of the pandemic, when we all knew that the vaccines do not stop infection, do not stop transmission, he basically attacks the heroes.
00:12:29.280And I think, you know, obviously there's no science behind it.
00:12:33.260There's no, there's no compassion behind it.
00:13:13.740And no one at the trial, no one said, hey, wait a minute.
00:13:19.460There was no health reason to bring this mandate that caused these people to get in their trucks.
00:13:27.840The issue is settled, Ezra, at least in September.
00:13:32.760The CDC said there's no difference between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated.
00:13:37.640By now, by the time of the hearing, I mean, Ezra, from a legal point of view, it's almost like a trial was happening and they said, well, we don't care about the self-defense argument.
00:13:53.280We don't care about the guy breaking into his home and that's why we shot him.
00:13:58.460Let's just talk about why you had the gun and why you shot the person.
00:14:03.020And we don't care about the, you know, the law of self-defense.
00:14:55.700How can you force your neighbor to do so?
00:14:58.160Well, the false rationale was because he will transmit it to me, which doesn't really make sense if you think it's safe for you.
00:15:05.160But now it is established law and established science that the vaccines do not stop transmission.
00:15:11.840So the whole vaccine passport vaccine mandate business had no factual underpinning.
00:15:17.580And I bet you most people in public health, most people in law and politics in the establishment haven't really processed that because they're just they just know they're on team vaccine, team Pfizer, team Trudeau.
00:15:31.500So so so you look back in 2022, me as a again, I go back to the charter baby.
00:15:37.600It was, you know, I'm still shaking over what happened to the Canadian people.
00:15:42.980How could this happen with with this wonderful document, these wonderful protections?
00:15:48.500So 2022 and 2021, but 2022 predominantly was a great legal letdown.
00:15:56.240But there's also another legal and another trauma that happened, not to the legal community, not to the rights of law, but to our our our our I'll call our medical profession.
00:16:10.080I mean, the biggest I mean, I'll talk personally, and I know many that feel this way.
00:16:17.220I had an absolute trust of our medical system.
00:16:23.780I had trust the health candidate was going through everything carefully about every drug that has been submitted and everything carefully reviewed for the protection of citizens.
00:16:37.400Well, we watched there with with, you know, it's almost in front of us.
00:17:03.340We did much more harm to kids by closures and so on.
00:17:06.200So so I look at and I ask the question and we know we know that no one looked at the the the test data and it was hidden by by these large pharmaceutical companies to see if what their claims were were true.
00:17:24.580No one looked at and now I ask myself, how can I trust any doctor who says take this medicine, this vaccine?
00:17:34.260When I said, wait a minute, I watched it.
00:19:11.400And those few doctors who did stand up with a second opinion were hounded, prosecuted, suspended from practicing.
00:19:18.440Well, let me ask you this, because I mean, you and I have learned so much and we were skeptics by nature and we're skeptics of big government.
00:19:25.320And and. But let me put a few facts to you that are troubling.
00:19:32.220Justin Trudeau won reelection a year ago.
00:20:09.300Mathematically, you're on the right side.
00:20:11.600And then he said, because you did all this, we're going to punish the people that didn't.
00:20:18.200Whether and illegally not only punish them, that has no basis in science, because by April, we knew that there were just a few breakthrough cases.
00:20:28.880We knew that Israel's on its third dose and the vaccinated were again.
00:20:32.020We knew the science wasn't there, although they hit it.
00:20:36.280We knew the law and that is we had a charter of rights.
00:22:16.460And it wasn't just Trudeau, by the way.
00:22:18.160British Columbia, the premier there was reelected.
00:22:21.040Ontario's premier was reelected and he had a brutal lockdown.
00:22:24.520Quebec actually had curfews and the premier there was elected very strongly.
00:22:29.080You know, I after a great division in society, like I remember in South Africa, after decades of apartheid, they had something they called the Truth and Reconciliation Committee.
00:22:40.280Now, they they they did a similar thing in Canada on indigenous issues.
00:22:43.840And the whole idea is let's actually try and find some common ground morally.
00:22:48.480We're not necessarily going to prosecute people or jail people or condemn people.
00:22:52.540Can we just air out the facts and try and get along because we've got to live with each other?
00:22:56.780That's how it was in post-apartheid South Africa.
00:22:59.820And there was something similar after the Nazis were defeated.
00:23:04.040There was a de-Nazification after the Soviet Empire fell.
00:23:08.820Even in Iraq, after Saddam Hussein, they had something called de-Bathification.
00:23:13.460Bath was the name of the political party.
00:23:15.800In Poland, in Germany, in Czechoslovakia and Hungary, after the Soviet regime, those countries had to live with themselves and with each other.
00:23:22.480And they went through this process of airing things out and trying to build a common view again.
00:23:29.440And I don't think that's happened in Canada.
00:23:31.780I think that that we were still pitted against each other.
00:23:36.700There was no there was no truth and reconciliation.
00:23:39.140And as you say, he deliberately exacerbated the differences because he thought, well, I'll take the I'll take the bigger percentage and just win.
00:23:47.560Ezra, he called the unvaccinated bigots, misogynists, racists, people with views that shouldn't be long.
00:23:57.220This was at the time when the science was clear that the unvaccinated were correct.
00:26:43.700I understand the unknowns, what was happening in South in South Africa or Germany and all that racism.
00:26:51.960But this is discrimination was based on a lie on science that was untrue.
00:26:59.580That should be snap fixed in a minute.
00:27:04.800Let me shift gears a little bit because we've talked a lot about the pandemic and the vaccine rules and the convoy and Trudeau and the polarization.
00:28:59.340This country, this young country, not even a dominion, put more men at risk to fight for freedom and liberties in the First and Second World War.
00:29:10.380Remember, Canada was to the world, toe to toe, as strong as America in its ability to fight and spread human rights around the world.
00:30:32.660He picks the kind of the most trampled case of individual rights and said, this person who agreed that he committed murder still has rights.
00:30:44.320And that's a champion cause of Canada.
00:30:46.540Then he picked a fight with Saudi Arabia under Ralph Balwaldi case, where he basically called for his freedom, this journalist who's in jail.
00:31:02.460And he wanted to get, he wanted to do better than Harper in the sense that Canada was a place where individual rights were of great value.
00:31:15.760So he, those three, but what really happened, I think I'll tell you something.
00:31:23.540He truly believes in his core individual rights.
00:31:27.360You can tell that, that, uh, Justin, Justin Trudeau does not believe in it because what we saw in 2022 with the, using the emergency act on truckers clearly tells me that he's more of an autotrotic dictator.
00:31:58.260You would have let them test or whatever you want to do, but no.
00:32:01.520So, so if you ask me that broad question, we are, well, we're a mockery around the world on individual rights now because of the truckers, because of the mandates.
00:32:11.640And so we've lost, I mean, what are we to the world?
00:32:16.420You know, I mean, and I just think of China, how Trudeau sucks up to China so badly, but I don't know if you remember this little interaction where Xi Jinping gave Trudeau a little dressing
00:32:26.180down like a boss would berate an employee.
00:32:30.560Here's a little clip from their recent meeting in Asia.
00:32:33.660Everything we discusses and leaks into the paper, that's not appropriate.
00:32:44.420And that's how the conversation was conducted.
00:32:49.620If there is sincerity on your part, we will continue to have, we will continue to look to work constructively together, but there will be things we will disagree on.
00:33:11.060By the way, I like it when Canada and China are at odds politically and diplomatically.
00:33:46.200Well, look, Manny, 2022 was the best of times and the worst of times.
00:33:50.760It was the darkest moments of the lockdown, the flight ban, the martial law, but it was also a moment of courage where ordinary Canadians, working class people mainly, stood up and said enough and actually began to set us free.
00:34:03.540So, I saw the best and the worst in 2022.
00:34:07.100If I had to ask you to make a prediction about 2023, and it's always hard, predictions about the future are a lot harder than predictions about the past.
00:34:15.340What do you think, what should, what is something to watch for in 2023?
00:34:18.960Is there something that you're hopeful about, or is there something that you're trepidatious about?
00:34:24.500I'm actually moving towards more trepidation.
00:34:28.160I think there is a generation that doesn't understand values.
00:34:33.100I'm sorry, individual rights and freedoms and privacy.
00:34:36.140I think the test, what I saw with the vaccine mandates and the trucker, all that stuff is set aside, is how much will the populace subvert to the state?
00:34:53.560And once you break that, and once they've done it once, once, I mean, Ezra, let me put it very clearly.
00:35:01.060Once you've given up your body, your autonomy to your body to the state, you're done.
00:35:08.820And I think we're going to see much worse.
00:35:10.900I'm going to see, we're going to see, you know, fiscal, you know, financial autonomy.
00:35:44.420Because we, it took truck drivers, truck drivers who I respect immensely, for them to say, we are the residual part of what Canada truly needs.
00:35:56.960And to see that is frightening because I think once you've given up, so when you ask me for 2023, I mean, I think an election's coming.
00:36:46.780You know, I mean, you know, but go to Europe where they really lost their own autonomy over their own energy.
00:36:53.180I mean, there, there, there are people, people that I know that are cutting down trees to get through the wintertime.
00:36:58.660It's just like, how much can you allow the state to infringe on their life?
00:37:03.860And so I think we, I think 2022 was a big test.
00:37:08.240And the big test is, did we break the spine of people who understand autonomy, who understand freedom, who understand, and they, they passed that test.
00:37:24.220And, and, and I don't know, I think Canada is going to keep going on this slip and slow, maybe with the change of government, and maybe by hearing it, but we need the media on side.
00:37:36.540The media kind of likes, I mean, it's kind of neat.
00:37:39.400I mean, the media has its people in control.
00:37:41.780So it's, why would they want to give that up?
00:37:44.540I mean, so my team's, I mean, we, we, we saw that with, with Twitter.
00:37:49.400I mean, that's not even in the news that the, the bombshell, the Twitter was co-opted by the government to give this particular point of view.
00:38:02.360I hope we find, I hope we find out what Canadian government officials were meddling with Twitter in Canada, because I'm most certain that it had, why wouldn't it happen up here?
00:38:12.000The Canadian Liberal Party and the U.S. Democrat Party are in lockstep on their campaign tactics.
00:38:17.180And I'm quite sure that if we ever see the truth, we'll see that the, the government tried to get, for example, Rebel News censored the throttle.
00:38:26.200Well, Manny, it's great to catch up with you.
00:38:39.060I just think if the economy slows down, I don't know if Trudeau will want to go to the polls in the middle of that, but we'll, we'll find out.
00:38:45.060And I'll tell you one thing, as you know, we are journalists who are not on the payroll of Trudeau and it'll fall to us to tell the other side of the story.