Brian Peckford is the last living premier who actually was there in the 80s to negotiate and sign our Charter of Rights. He s also the lead plaintiff in our case against the federal government in our landmark Supreme Court case against their proposed ban on unvaccinated people flying across Canada.
00:04:59.000Very interesting, Ezra, your viewers might like to know,
00:05:02.780that a court in British Columbia, since this COVID business started, ruled against moot being used in this constitutional pandemic environment
00:05:17.680because the judge said that we don't know when this is all going to be over, when they're going to perhaps reinstitute it again.
00:05:26.120And, of course, that was one of our arguments before the federal court,
00:05:30.960that this is not a moot at all because the Minister of Transportation and other members of the federal government
00:05:38.480had indicated that they would really bring this back in again at a moment's notice if they felt in their wisdom,
00:05:46.620in my view, in their own wisdom, that it was needed.
00:07:30.800Right. Well, I'm very glad you are doing that appeal.
00:07:33.840And I presume it's with the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms.
00:07:38.840Well, they're excellent, and we know them, and they really do set the standard.
00:07:43.960And I'm a supporter of theirs as well as the Democracy Fund, two great civil liberties groups.
00:07:48.340You know, there's a circular argument to saying, well, we ought not to take up the court's time with this travel ban because it's gone.
00:08:02.540Well, the thing is, I don't know if the phrase is a circular argument, but if it's in place for a number of months or let's say even a year,
00:08:09.340if the court moves slowly, which is the court's way, and then the government removes the flight ban,
00:08:19.760if you could not possibly have been in court any faster, if they move so slowly, we'll never know if it was legal or not.
00:08:29.300And they could bring it back and then take it out and bring it back.
00:08:31.620And I suppose theoretically, technically, they could, every year, they could suspend it and say, oh, you can't take us to court because it's moot.
00:08:40.080I mean, just because the courts are slow doesn't mean it's not an important matter.
00:08:44.080And the government has not repudiated it or renounced this.
00:08:47.820As you say, they would do it again in a flash.
00:08:52.220And I can't think of something that's more in the public interest to more people than this.
00:08:57.680Absolutely, Ezra, and you make an excellent point, because guess what?
00:09:05.000We applied for this to be an expedited case, and the courts accepted it, and the federal government accepted it as an expedited case.
00:09:13.100Then they turn around after agreeing to speed it up and slow it down by going back to the court and asking for changes as to how many people they would have arguing the case two or three times.
00:09:28.900And so they are the people who have contributed to us not having the case heard before the federal government took away the mandates.
00:09:42.140Yeah, I think their very slowness, it's on them.
00:09:45.980And then for them to say, oh, too late, you're out of time.
00:09:48.680Well, listen, I wish you good luck with that.
00:09:50.620And it sounds like there are many steps yet to go.
00:09:53.720But do you think there's a chance that the appeal could be heard in 2023?
00:09:59.260Or do you think this is something that won't be heard until next year?
00:10:02.460I mean, boy, these courts move slowly, don't they?
00:10:47.580Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, locked down churches but gave exemptions to some Hollywood productions.
00:10:55.880And I forget which judge it was who said, if you can sing at America's Got Talent, you can sing in a church.
00:11:04.740He wasn't saying you can't lock down a church.
00:11:07.000He was saying you can't lock it down any harder than the governor.
00:11:10.460And that was one of the things the governor said.
00:11:12.500You can't go to church because there's all this singing.
00:11:14.860And the court said, well, if you can allow, it was just a beautiful short ruling that said, if you can sing on America's Got Talent or American Idol, you can sing in a church.
00:11:26.740And they quickly swatted down these unconstitutional moves.
00:11:32.640And in Canada, our Supreme Court has yet to weigh in on any lockdown or pandemic matters.
00:11:40.560Our Supreme Court has literally not ruled on a single case.
00:11:50.600It's an embarrassment to Canadians to think that these courts in Canada can move so slowly.
00:12:00.060And here, our neighbor to the south can move so much quicker.
00:12:04.560I mean, what can you say anymore about the way the court?
00:12:08.240And the other thing about this case now, as I said in my introduction, is that there was a court in B.C., in the Supreme Court of B.C., which actually said that the mootness argument was not valid.
00:12:19.560So you have one court, a high court in one problem, saying moot is not valid in this pandemic area.
00:13:43.540What can the provinces fight back with?
00:13:45.060That's been really an animating feature of the Quebec separatism.
00:13:50.000I want to draw your attention to a statement made by the Justice Minister Lamedi when he was at an Aboriginal gathering.
00:13:59.560I think it was the Association Assembly of First Nations.
00:14:02.480And he was asked a question about indigenous sovereignty over resources.
00:14:08.380And he mused, he was asked would he consider turning over a constitutional agreement that's almost 100 years old, about 100 years old, between provinces like Alberta and Saskatchewan and the feds that gave those provinces the rights to resources, which all the other provinces have.
00:14:28.160Without further ado, let me play the clip of Justice Minister Lamedi, not agreeing, but saying he would review it.
00:15:07.600It won't be uncontroversial is the only thing I would say with a bit of a smile.
00:15:13.180Well, I'm sure he did that to please the audience right in front of him.
00:15:16.920But the thing about the 21st century is what you say to one group of people is often caught on tape and is shown to other groups of people.
00:15:24.260So you better keep your story straight.
00:15:26.400That led to outrage and panic by the two provinces I mentioned before, Saskatchewan and Alberta.
00:15:33.320Basically, here's the Justice Minister saying he will review the entire constitutional order.
00:15:40.360And those two provinces put out press releases.
00:15:43.000And I don't know if it was serious, but the Justice Minister then put out a statement denying he said it.
00:15:50.020Premier, is this much ado about nothing?
00:15:52.120Is this just a Justice Minister sucking up and trying to pander to a group of people in front of him?
00:15:59.300Or do you think that Justin Trudeau and his Justice Minister would seriously consider taking natural resource rights away from Alberta and Saskatchewan and giving it to the feds or the indigenous people?
00:16:25.580The other thing one could say is that if it's neither of those, then the man is incompetent and should be fired from his job.
00:16:34.700The prime minister should fire the man, because if he's just not pandering or testing it with the prime minister's blessing, then this is absolutely ridiculous.
00:16:45.540The section, as you know, Section 92A of the BNA Act clearly gives jurisdiction for natural resources, non-renewable natural resources, to the provinces.
00:16:58.280And this transfer to the two provinces when it was done was consistent with that provision of the Constitution.
00:17:07.080And furthermore, to even make it more difficult for the prime minister and the justice minister to make good on this silly notion, myself, you're surely here, negotiated, my administration negotiated with the federal government, the Atlantic Accord.
00:17:28.000Only a few months before we negotiated, the government of the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that offshore oil and gas resources belonged to the federal government.
00:17:40.000And yet, a few months later, we were able to negotiate an Atlantic Accord which transferred the enactment of royalties and the collection of royalties as if the oil and gas was on land and that we would have significant management rights as well.
00:17:58.280So, a very current situation exists whereby a province which has no jurisdiction over oil and gas, over non-renewable resources offshore, has de facto provincial jurisdiction.
00:18:14.560So, for the federal government now to turn around and to try to violate Section 92A of the BNA Act and violate the spirit and words of the Atlantic Accord is something that will not fly.
00:18:30.800And the minister of justice might as well go and crawl away into a corner and get out of politics altogether because that is ridiculous.
00:18:39.300Huh. You know, I'm so glad you reminded me about that Atlantic Accord and you're right because if you can take those natural resource rights away from Alberta and Saskatchewan, why couldn't you take it away from the Atlantic provinces too?
00:18:51.040And although that may suit Justin Trudeau, who's always looking for more sources of revenue, that's just not how Canada is built.
00:18:57.380And, you know, it's just so – when Stephen Harper was elected prime minister, you know, his critics, oh, he's a cowboy, he's from Calgary, he's a wild man, he's going to torch the place.
00:19:07.200He's – he pacified separatist movements.
00:19:10.800When he left office, Quebec separatism was at a once-in-a-generation low because he did not inflame things.
00:19:19.680In fact, the one comment he made, you know, a decade earlier about Atlantic Canada having maybe a welfare mentality, he said that once and he never lived it down.
00:19:30.780Other than that comment, which he made long before he was prime minister, he was meticulous at not antagonizing the regions.
00:19:39.900In fact, you could say he gave too much away to the regions.
00:19:45.100It's so ironic that Stephen Harper, the outsider, the Calgary conservative, was more respectful of regional differences than the Quebec – the son of Quebec, Justin Trudeau.
00:19:59.200And you see that again here, the cavalier way in which the Trudeau government pokes the bear.
00:20:04.880It makes no sense to me, but he's doing it.
00:20:10.000And I really think that the prime minister seemed to be very weak here because this minister had no business musing like that at any forum in Canada where it's – and we all know from the national energy program that his father brought in and how that was – you know, that's still causing Alberta and Saskatchewan to vote conservative today.
00:20:36.460Many decades after that attempt by his father to do it, that they would have learned their lesson.
00:20:42.860But they don't seem to have learned their lesson, and they're still trying to – they're the ones who used the word balkanize the country.
00:20:49.960Again, when they attacked the provinces, that it's really the federal government that's balkanizing the country.
00:20:56.280You know, when you say did he learn his lesson, I think the lesson he learned was that his father, Pierre Trudeau, could win election after election by antagonizing Alberta because it's a small place that always folks are conservative anyway.
00:21:11.820So I think, unfortunately – I mean, remember, he was – I think he was born in December 1971.
00:21:19.580So he was just a boy of around 8, 9, 10, 11 when that real national energy program was in effect.
00:21:29.220So he would have been – he wouldn't have had a deep knowledge, but he would have known something was going on.
00:21:33.640He would remember some names and faces, and apparently he was around the supper table when Pierre Trudeau had, you know, Mark Lalonde, the minister of energy, natural resources, others around.
00:21:45.180I think that Justin Trudeau has a child's memory, which is a simplified memory.
00:21:51.940But if anything, he would have – the last years of his father's tenure as prime minister were amongst the most antagonistic.
00:22:00.760So if he has any memory of – or of lessons learned from his dad, it would be smash Alberta, to hell with that oil province, screw the West, we'll take the rest.
00:22:12.440Like if he learned anything, it was what he could get away with.
00:22:26.920But he's got very poor advisors and very poor people from the West advising him.
00:22:32.560I mean, no doubt the Trudeau of today visiting Saskatchewan and Alberta has heard when he's shaking hands with people how they would obviously bring up the national energy program.
00:22:46.480And his people are reading the newspapers every day.
00:22:49.560And so there's no excuse for this man and for this minister getting on like that when there's so many other issues that are important to the country that they should be putting their minds to, as opposed to trying to steal away jurisdiction legitimately given to the provinces.
00:23:07.840You know, I want to ask you about one more thing, and I suppose it's a quasi-constitutional matter.
00:23:13.640In the United States, foreign treaties have to be ratified by the U.S. Senate.
00:23:18.420The president can negotiate them, but they don't become American law until they're approved by the Senate.
00:23:26.100And I think there's some wisdom there.
00:23:27.360In response to Lamedi's statement, and then his half backtracking, Justin Trudeau and Lamedi put out comments saying, they were actually, they tried to flip it around and go on the offensive, saying that Pierre Polyev of the Conservatives doesn't respect indigenous people.
00:23:46.040And that, in fact, it's Lamedi's goal to bring Canada into compliance with this UN treaty called UNDRIP, United Nations DRIP, which is a declaration on rights of indigenous persons.
00:24:00.800Here's Trudeau trying to flip it around.
00:24:03.340Instead of being apologetic or saying, oh, it was nothing, he actually doubled down in a way saying, we're going to do more for indigenous people than those conservatives.
00:24:10.880Hi, I'm Malak from the Free Press. I wanted to ask about the Natural Resources Transfer Act.
00:24:16.240Is it appropriate, in your opinion, to review the agreements? And how do you address the concerns raised by the Prairie Premiers?
00:24:22.040Let me be very clear. The Minister of Justice said no such thing.
00:24:27.960If you actually look at his remarks, it is very clear that we're talking about the importance of the federal government living up to our responsibilities under UNDRIP,
00:24:37.580something that, unfortunately, the Prairie Premiers have not taken seriously, and they are instead trying to elevate fears that have absolutely no grounding in truth.
00:24:49.180We know we need to move forward in true reconciliation and partnership with indigenous peoples,
00:24:54.060and that's something that we certainly hope we're going to be able to work on with the Premiers and with indigenous peoples,
00:25:00.480to be able to grow the economy and create those great jobs, including in natural resources,
00:25:06.920that are going to be there for decades to come as we move towards a net-zero world.
00:25:11.080That's Trudeau in question period, and here's Lamedi, again, not really denying the essence of it,
00:25:15.860saying that he intends to make Canada's laws harmonize to the UN.
00:25:21.460Again, Premier, the UN is not in our Constitution.
00:25:26.540The UN was not voted for by Canadian people.
00:25:46.900And again, I wish we had the American checks and balances where their Senate has to approve it.
00:25:51.860The situation is that I have come to the conclusion, and last year I issued my own Magna Carta on the steps of the legislature of the BC legislature in Victoria.
00:26:05.480And one of the provisions of what I was proposing for Reform Canada is that this business of signing deals, either with the UN or trade deals, which in any way affect our sovereignty, must be opposed.
00:26:24.280We must go back to first principles as it relates to our Constitution and our sovereignty.
00:26:29.820Yes, we are a trading nation, but we trade, and it must be fair trade, without any semblance of somebody else deciding upon that trade and what can be traded and what can be.
00:26:43.360The same way as it relates to our rights under the Constitution, we must reform our policies so that we're not signing on to things as members of the United Nations, which would come back to violate the constitutional principles which established the country in the beginning.
00:27:01.360I tell you, there's a lot of things broken. I want to ask you a partisan question, and I don't want to put you on the spot because I think your advice is more nonpartisan.
00:27:12.140I mean, people of every political stripe can respect the Constitution, respect the Charter of Rights, respect national sovereignty.
00:27:19.200And I think, by the way, the lockdowns during the pandemic, there were people in all parts of the spectrum who had reasons to oppose it.
00:27:28.320So I like to think of you as nonpartisan.
00:27:32.460But in many ways, the solution to the current crisis would involve, in our system, replacing the current prime minister with the leader of the opposition.
00:27:40.600And I'd like to ask you, first of all, for your assessment of Pierre Polyev as a prospective prime minister, and second of all, your prediction, do you think he's got a shot?
00:27:52.740I think there's a chance we'll have an election this year.
00:27:56.160Polls show that the Conservatives are actually leading, not by a lot, but leading.
00:33:03.520Yes, I will vote for Maxime Bernier in a flash, because I'm looking long term.
00:33:08.700We have to change the whole structure of this country.
00:33:12.780We can do a lot within the existing constitution, like I just proposed, as it relates to CBC, as it relates to tightening up the conflict of interest legislation, as it relates to the political parties publishing their audited financial statements of their party every year, as it relates to sovereignty and signing trade agreements and so on.
00:33:32.660We can do a lot inside the existing constitution, but we need to do more.
00:33:37.300And therefore, we have to start somewhere to begin that reform.
00:33:43.080And so I'm looking long term, and long term, the policies that are on the PPC website today, on Mr. Bernier's website, most align with my views now as a Canadian and as a former first minister.
00:34:19.180And so in however many years I got left, as long as Mr. Bernier sticks with those principles that he has actually put in writing.
00:34:26.260And by the way, his expenses are right there on his website as well, his financial statements, which I'm asking the other parties to do.
00:34:34.000I will begin anew to assist him in getting, look, if he could get three or four seats and to become, to have to be interviewed by the press, to start the ball rolling.
00:34:47.440I think that would be a really good start.
00:34:50.320And having him part of the national conversation and his views could really assist.
00:34:56.360So you start small, you get a couple of seats or whatever, you get a chance to get your ideas out there.
00:35:02.640And that could lead to over the next two elections to them being a very big political force.
00:35:16.520And therefore, this is a long-term project.
00:35:19.800And we must start now with honesty and real, pure system to begin rebuilding our nation.
00:35:28.740And I can't think of any better way to do it practically than through the PPC.
00:35:33.680Well, that's a very passionate case for Maxine Bernier.
00:35:36.760I should point out that every single poll I see shows the PPC with dramatic strength among young people.
00:35:43.520It's, you know, typically conservative voters skew older, but the strongest demographics for the PPC are the under 30s, the 18 to 29s, which I just thought I'd mentioned.
00:35:56.780And on that note, Mr. Levan, look at the U.S.
00:36:02.300Coming out of the U.S. just yesterday was a situation where a lot of young people are returning to traditional religion, traditional values.
00:36:12.180And I think that's why you see the young people in Canada starting to move towards the People's Party of Canada.
00:36:19.560Well, listen, it's great to catch up with you.
00:36:22.300And you're a wealth of wisdom about the law, but also historical details like the Atlantic Accord.
00:36:28.740I'm so glad you mentioned that earlier.
00:36:32.640I think it's because I'm a Westerner, so it wasn't top of mind for me.
00:36:35.220It's always a pleasure to catch up with you, a very principled man who's lived our history, and I look forward to talking to you many more times.
00:36:43.700And if I had to go back into history, I would love to go back and be a part of the jury that listened to Socrates.
00:36:51.920Wow, the jury that listened to Socrates.
00:36:53.760That's, you know, for me, I'll tell you the moment in my mind, I would have loved to be in London in the time of Shakespeare when the New World and India were being discovered.
00:37:17.860And I taught Shakespeare in high school, and that's one of the things that I read almost every day, is something that Shakespeare wrote or one of these plays.