Full Comment - They crushed our rights for COVID. We still haven’t won them back

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00:01:58.000 the covet 19 pandemic haunts us still and one of the ways it does is how our charter rights were

00:02:08.320 just shredded in the name of keeping the public safe hello welcome to the full comment podcast i'm

00:02:14.400 brian lily your host today a review of the book corrupted by fear how the charter was betrayed and what

00:02:20.160 canadians can do about it john carpe is the founder and president of the justice center for

00:02:24.640 constitutional freedoms and all through the pandemic and since they have continued to launch

00:02:29.600 charter challenges to some of the lockdown methods that were in place some of the mandates that

00:02:34.480 governments tried to put in force and order in some instances they've been successful and others

00:02:40.240 less so but in his book corrupted by fear john carpe lays out how the media the politicians

00:02:48.240 and the judicial class in this country betrayed canadians and their charter rights it's

00:02:54.240 difficult for me to go back and think about what happened there covet is a time i'd rather not

00:02:58.800 think about but thankfully we have people like carpe and the justice center working hard to ensure

00:03:04.560 that this sort of thing doesn't happen again here's my conversation with john carpe so john i'm in the

00:03:12.080 camp of people who say covet was really bad experience and they don't want to talk about it or think about

00:03:17.840 it anymore i i'd prefer to forget those dark dark years of our lives you continue to write about it you

00:03:25.360 and the justice center continue to fight uh battles over it tell me why it's important to launch these

00:03:33.440 charter challenges that you've been fighting for years what you know covet's over but the court battle

00:03:40.000 continues why is it important to see them through well what we saw in 2020 was the

00:03:47.440 largest violation of citizens rights and freedoms in decades um you know we had the october crisis

00:03:56.080 in 1970 where a lot of quebecers were locked up you know without facing specific charges there was 1.00

00:04:03.600 a lot of human rights violations the the lawyers stepped up to the plate and provided legal defense

00:04:08.160 for all these people uh we had the internment of the japanese canadians in uh in world war ii

00:04:14.720 as well as italian and german canadians and in ontario there were camps there as well that had you

00:04:21.120 know not as much known about it as the the japanese canadian experience but you know it was illegal to have

00:04:28.560 christmas dinner with your own parents uh it was illegal to connect with a friend at a pub and so there's

00:04:37.440 there's massive mental health damage psychological harm people's livelihoods destroyed there was a lot

00:04:45.120 of damage i could go on and on and on well yeah i think we all know people who were damaged by covet

00:04:52.080 either because they uh are still living in fear uh much of it generated by the media and government

00:04:58.800 overreach or they're so anger angry at uh and have lost faith in institutions because of what happened

00:05:06.080 we we all meet these people in our lives and i think of the uh the kids going through schools

00:05:12.720 who had their schooling whether it's elementary or high school interrupted lost years of life experience

00:05:19.200 yeah the part of socializing is part of it's important uh pre-lockdowns actually pre-2020

00:05:26.720 there was already abundant uh evidence in the medical literature that we need face to face we

00:05:32.960 need in-person uh contact for to be well to be mentally healthy and physically healthy we need

00:05:41.280 to actually connect with people this is why every christmas you know canadians spend millions of

00:05:45.120 dollars to fly somewhere when really you could just have a you know a zoom christmas or or a telephone

00:05:50.400 christmas but you know people uh people want to see each other in person so to to respond to

00:05:56.400 the question it's it's about you know why why bother why care my my reason is that these um

00:06:02.640 violations were not based on science uh they didn't have a strong evidentiary basis they inflicted

00:06:09.520 massive harm we have to learn from that experience if we don't what's going to happen is uh there's

00:06:15.040 going to be some other virus that the government says oh it's really scary it's going to be like the

00:06:20.080 spanish flu of 1918 it's going to be like the bubonic plague so we're going to take away all your 1.00

00:06:24.240 rights and freedoms because we have a scary virus if we don't learn anything from what happened 2020

00:06:29.520 and onwards we're going to get locked down again or what i think is more likely is not another virus

00:06:36.240 but we're going to be told that we have to give up our rights and freedoms uh in order to save

00:06:41.760 ourselves from a climate holocaust and again it's the it's a very precarious shaky not strong basis for

00:06:51.600 taking away rights and freedoms to i mean there's a whole bunch of layers there that could be a whole

00:06:57.200 you know it could be a one-hour discussion but if we don't learn that governments never take away our

00:07:03.040 rights and freedoms without offering a nice sounding pretext that's the key point and so if we don't

00:07:10.080 learn that a government's going to come along in you know three months or three years or 30 years and

00:07:15.760 they're going to have this nice sounding pretext and we have to give up all of our rights and freedoms as

00:07:19.840 we did in 2020. there was no easy way to challenge what was going on because you had municipal ordinances

00:07:26.880 you had provincial you had federal and the provinces even enacted their laws in different ways alberta

00:07:33.840 used the public health act ontario used the emergency powers act and rebranded it as reopening ontario so

00:07:40.480 you know you couldn't just have one challenge and say okay these things have to stop because they were

00:07:44.480 all done differently but in your book corrupted by fear you do write about uh ingram versus alberta

00:07:55.360 explain the the future impact of of that the importance of winning on that one it already helped

00:08:02.320 clear away uh you know some prosecutions and hopefully you can touch on that but going forward

00:08:07.600 do you see that as a a case that will be a marker set out for governments yeah ingram versus alberta

00:08:16.480 was a it was very it was a very mixed result uh we we won in the sense that the lockdowns were were

00:08:24.720 struck down let me back up a little bit so the the claim was filed in december of 2020 against uh jason

00:08:31.680 kennedy's lockdowns and uh we didn't get a decision until two and a half years later which is a

00:08:37.680 disgrace but that's a whole other topic we don't have enough judges we can talk about that in a moment

00:08:43.280 so the ruling that came out two and a half years later in july of 2023 was that the alberta's lockdowns

00:08:52.720 were illegal because the court action and the testimony of the chief medical officer dina

00:09:02.240 hinshaw revealed that the real decision maker in alberta was not the chief medical officer it was

00:09:08.240 jason kenney and the chief medical officer dina hinshaw said that she was advising jason kenney

00:09:14.800 making recommendations to jason kenney but it wasn't really her decision it was it was the premier who

00:09:19.440 really made it was the decision and cabinet yeah yeah the premier and cabinet made the decision

00:09:25.600 and so the court looked at the act and said well according to this act that is flaw according to

00:09:32.560 alberta's public health act that is flawed we um the the decisions ought to have been made by the chief

00:09:39.840 medical officer and so on that basis uh none of these health orders were validly enacted and so from

00:09:48.640 there you know we had prosecutions stop because of people in alberta just like in other provinces or

00:09:54.640 were and in some cases still are getting prosecuted for violating these uh provincial health orders

00:10:01.360 and we so we went on that technicality how the government responded to that was some three six nine

00:10:09.280 months later the government amended alberta's public health act to say that the uh any health orders that

00:10:18.160 that violated charter rights and freedoms which these obviously did i mean every government admitted

00:10:22.880 that in court i mean that's that's not that's not in question these were violations of charter

00:10:26.880 freedoms the only debate is whether it was justified or not so the the government amended the act to say

00:10:33.120 that going forward uh it will be the premier uh that makes the final decision we're not going to have

00:10:39.760 uh unelected unaccountable health bureaucrat be given unlimited power to violate the the charter

00:10:49.040 rights and freedoms of of people no we'll do that yeah well that's a bad thing so we'll do

00:10:58.720 well at least if the premier is doing it there's a little if the premier and cabinet are doing it

00:11:03.120 there's some democratic accountability this is one of the many bad things during lockdowns is we we lost

00:11:09.440 to a large extent uh we lost our parliamentary democracy where the uh laws are enacted by elected

00:11:19.360 representatives who debate and who look at the legislation and who vote on it and who face an

00:11:27.440 election sooner or later and they can be held to account that was ditched and we had these unelected

00:11:33.280 like medieval monarchs just walk up to the microphone and say i the chief medical officer

00:11:38.400 decree as follows and so we had we had government by uh we had lawmaking by way of of news conferences

00:11:46.080 and that was really a repudiation of our parliamentary democracy in you know we put it on the front page

00:11:51.920 of the toronto sun as doctatorship we we put the pictures of uh dr tam uh then uh ontario uh medical

00:12:01.520 officer dr williams uh local officer uh dr eileen davila and we just called them a doctatorship in

00:12:07.840 the early days i remember there was a news conference in the morning where they outlined

00:12:12.880 uh what were then very uh mild restrictions uh but still restrictions that truly i don't think

00:12:19.920 would survive a charter challenge and then by the end of the day they had said oh no that's not good

00:12:24.640 enough we've got to go even further it was within 12 hours uh it was remarkable to see how disappointed

00:12:32.720 were you to see that so many canadians were willing to just give up on charter rights uh did did that

00:12:40.000 surprise you it can't remember if it surprised me i do remember it being very disappointed that i would

00:12:48.960 make an argument that well yes i understand the need for us to slow the spread of this virus but

00:12:55.200 this is going too far this is a violation of individual rights and liberties and people just

00:13:00.080 simply wouldn't care yeah i was very disappointed i was somewhat surprised i've seen what in my view

00:13:08.080 you've kind of had a slow decline in the respect for and appreciation for our the free society uh i think

00:13:17.040 it was strong you know at 1945 we had just lost a lot of soldiers and had you know hardship and

00:13:24.800 suffering in world war ii to win this war against these tyrannies we had imperial japan we had nazi 0.89

00:13:30.400 germany we had muslims italy and in 1945 i think people were very aware of the difference between us

00:13:37.600 with a parliamentary democracy and a free enterprise economy and the government respecting our basic

00:13:43.600 freedoms of speech religion conscience association etc etc and we felt that we were that our free

00:13:51.440 society was superior to the nazis and the fascists and so on and so forth and then throughout the cold

00:13:57.840 war we also had that dichotomy where you had this regime in power in the soviet union and china vietnam

00:14:04.720 cambodia uh so on and so forth where people had no private property rights no free speech no religious

00:14:10.960 freedom they lived in poverty etc and we saw the contrast and we believe that our system was

00:14:17.760 superior some of the strongest critics john that i met uh that i saw protest movements that i saw

00:14:26.080 uh challenge political leaders were people who had come from countries like poland before the fall of

00:14:32.160 the iron curtain and said no i've seen this before uh i'm not living like this but an awful lot of

00:14:39.040 canadians were willing to sacrifice you know i'll just give it up that's fine look after me daddy yeah

00:14:46.240 the other part of it is so the i i think the survival of the free society depends first and foremost it

00:14:54.480 depends on having a culture of freedom if you have the majority of people hopefully the vast majority of

00:15:01.440 people who really believe that a free society where government is our servant not our master where

00:15:07.520 government respects our our fundamental constitutional freedoms our human rights and so on if if the

00:15:13.520 vast majority of people believe that that is superior to a repressive regime be it fascist communist

00:15:20.480 national socialist theocratic whatever there's there's uh you know there's dozens of varieties of of

00:15:26.480 repression but we have to believe that our respect for human rights and and our freedoms and the free

00:15:34.400 society is is morally superior to other regimes if you're if you don't have the majority of people

00:15:41.040 believing that then it doesn't no constitution no judge you know nothing's going to save you so it's

00:15:47.200 about the culture and so we've seen this decline in canada where today there are an awful lot of people

00:15:55.120 who don't really appreciate our freedoms and we saw that during covet it's like yeah okay so it's it's

00:16:01.440 illegal for for me to go to a peaceful outdoor protest well i don't care and it's illegal for

00:16:07.120 me to have christmas dinner with my parents i don't care and you know businesses are getting

00:16:11.200 destroyed left right and center especially the restaurant industry was just severely punished

00:16:15.760 um and oh i don't care just this this uh it was it was really bad and that's another reason to keep

00:16:22.800 on talking about these issues is to i guess encourage people or even challenge people to think about

00:16:31.280 what happened five years ago and get people thinking and are you gonna uh be acquiescent again that the

00:16:38.640 next time the government comes to violate your rights maybe because i worked in the restaurant

00:16:44.560 industry as a teen but i wrote an awful lot about you know defending the restaurant industry here in

00:16:49.760 toronto and ontario from the ford government's lockdowns and crazy restrictions such as okay well

00:16:55.520 we can open up at this percent capacity but you've got to wear a mask when you walk to the table then

00:17:00.240 you can take it off while you're at the table but put it back on to go to the bathroom or to leave and

00:17:04.720 all these crazy things and and i just i would have people write to me who were embracing those uh

00:17:12.560 those measures and they would say why is your right to go have a beer more important than my right to

00:17:19.440 uh stay safe well one there is no right to stay safe i i don't see that in the charter i mean

00:17:27.360 there's various ways you could argue it i suppose but it was about the right of people to to gather

00:17:32.800 to socialize to be gainfully employed i mean then at one point i think it was a 40 unemployment rate

00:17:40.480 in the hospitality sector um just decimated yeah well i get into this in the book uh corrupted by fear

00:17:48.400 i talk about the the false media narrative uh present company accepted but uh the just the

00:17:55.440 whole notion that it's possible to stop the spread of a virus when in fact the best you could hope for

00:18:01.440 is to slow down the speed at which it spreads but you know people were claiming without with zero

00:18:06.800 evidence people say well lockdowns are saving lives well really when you consider the fact that 80

00:18:12.320 of covet deaths were in the long-term care facilities or the nursing homes so lockdowns

00:18:17.520 did not stop covet from getting into long-term care facilities which is where you had 80 of the deaths

00:18:22.320 nor did lockdowns prevent uh covet from reaching every city town village hamlet everywhere in canada

00:18:30.480 where there's people living covet got there yes so and we've seen this in the court so the justice

00:18:36.800 center had these you know court actions all across canada there's no court actions where uh governments

00:18:42.240 put evidence before the court that lockdowns are saving lives they just asserted it over and over

00:18:46.960 again lockdowns are saving lives lockdowns are saving lives lockdowns are saving lives and then the

00:18:50.800 judges bought that and said oh yeah well we need these lockdowns because they're saving lives there's

00:18:55.120 no evidence uh that i've seen that that would support the notion that lockdowns were saving lives

00:19:01.200 john this book is about the charter and you reference a lot of court cases but you spend an

00:19:08.480 awful lot of time beating up on the media and i don't blame you uh the media had a bizarre role

00:19:15.920 in this and you know we've got a 24-hour news channel here that's just serving toronto that was like a fear

00:19:21.680 factory um and few people were willing to look at the numbers you were just talking about long-term care

00:19:27.840 there this is from a piece that i published in october of 2020 and i looked at the coveted deaths in

00:19:33.600 long-term care uh in ontario and i compared it to the flu for the previous six years and the uh 2018

00:19:43.520 was a bad flu year but in the same time period of january to june in each year there was just an

00:19:51.680 increase of 3.7 percent in the number of deaths um due to covet it it was similar in many ways we

00:20:02.800 could have treated it in much the same way but we didn't we we overreacted and instead of you know

00:20:10.480 putting all of our resources into protecting vulnerable people they decided that well professional

00:20:16.960 young athletes who are very healthy have to go get vaccinated and they're not allowed to play in

00:20:21.920 front of people yeah so when i published that i was actually attacked by other media for being

00:20:29.040 anti-science despite laying out all the evidence um there was all this talk about um the you know

00:20:35.920 follow the science but people weren't willing to tell me why you you focus so much on on the media's

00:20:42.640 role in helping undermine charter rights well it's you know the journalistic code of ethics includes

00:20:51.440 things uh like you know get uh get give time and space and attention to different viewpoints you know

00:21:00.960 whether at least two maybe there's three four or five different viewpoints um don't you know have a

00:21:07.440 healthy skepticism so if uh if a premier or health minister if any politician walks to the podium and

00:21:15.760 makes a statement you don't go into this paranoia you know i'm sure they're lying they're lying all

00:21:20.960 the time but you also don't go to the opposite extreme of this credulous well the the politician

00:21:25.760 said it i believe it that settles it it must be true there's this healthy middle way of skepticism

00:21:30.560 where you you know somebody says it and you kind of go okay well let's check that out let's do some

00:21:35.120 research uh this was just gone and i guess yeah corrupted by fear i i say that the judges were

00:21:41.120 corrupted by fear the media were corrupted by fear the legal establishment was corrupted by fear

00:21:45.920 all of society was corrupted by fear and it's not the first time in history uh because politicians in

00:21:51.280 the past and i i look at you know the opening uh quarter of the book is is uh history in europe uh

00:21:58.640 fascism the growth of fascism in the 30s uh how the national socialists in germany used fear to take

00:22:07.840 away rights and freedoms and to keep those uh keep themselves in power they kept on promoting the fear

00:22:12.640 didn't they didn't just use fear to acquire power and then let up they continued with the fear the

00:22:17.840 germans were told in the 30s that they were in imminent danger of a communist takeover and so we had to be

00:22:25.280 always vigilant and and any opposition to the regime was communist and there there was this grave danger

00:22:32.000 uh that the communists were going to take over and so you know we got to support the government and so

00:22:37.280 we have to give up all of our rights and freedoms so the fear has been used by politicians in the past but

00:22:43.840 it's very sad that the media just went along with this en masse it's like uh well i'm sad that they

00:22:52.320 were so sheep-like and you had so few journalists that would just pause for a minute and say okay

00:22:57.520 well wait a minute you know is this actually true does this actually make sense which is the type of

00:23:03.360 questions media should be asking yeah there was very little of that i can assure you we have to take

00:23:08.000 a quick break when we come back more horror stories on the media front and how the media narrative

00:23:12.880 influenced court opinions bank more encores when you switch to a scotiabank banking package

00:23:22.320 learn more at scotiabank.com banking packages conditions apply scotiabank you're richer than you

00:23:29.120 think this is tristan hopper the host of canada did what where we unpack the biggest weirdest and

00:23:35.600 wildest political moments in canadian history you thought you knew and tell you what really happened

00:23:40.560 stick around at the end of the episode to hear a sample of one of our favorite episodes

00:23:45.760 if you don't want to stick around make sure you subscribe to canada did what everywhere you get

00:23:51.040 podcasts in chapter 11 you open up john by uh it's titled repeating the government and media narrative

00:23:57.760 and court rulings and here's some of the narratives that you say judges were operating under and that my

00:24:02.720 colleagues in the media pushed covet is unprecedented an unusually deadly killer the worst global pandemic in

00:24:08.560 a century covet threatens everyone including children and healthy adults everyone should live in fear

00:24:14.080 death numbers and death rates are much higher than previously uh thanks to covet you know there were a lot

00:24:19.840 of things that um you know we had to fight for such as getting the government to actually give out

00:24:27.760 reliable data um you know they were counting everyone in hospital with covet as a covet patient

00:24:35.040 well at one point i can tell you i ended up in the emergency room after um a bad fall and a concussion

00:24:41.760 and and some bleeding that's how i found out that i had covet i was counted as a covet patient because

00:24:46.960 they hadn't changed the rules yet uh i only found out that i had the the virus by going into hospital to get

00:24:54.320 checked out for something else there were people who were dying with covet but didn't die due to covet and

00:25:00.320 they were reported as covet deaths there was so much bad science and so much malpractice uh by the journalists

00:25:07.360 but what you drive at there is that judges who in many cases aren't equipped to be making public health

00:25:16.640 rulings we're just relying on the media narrative to support these lockdowns

00:25:22.320 well case in point would be the gateway decision coming out of manitoba this was a gateway bible

00:25:29.920 baptist church and a bunch of other churches and individuals they challenged the lockdowns

00:25:34.240 and so you have the judge um in that case declares that covet is unprecedented and it's the worst pandemic

00:25:41.360 in over a century zero evidence to support either of those assertions but he's he's just parroting what

00:25:48.320 the media say because in fact we had the spanish flu of 1918 was was many many multiples more deadly than

00:25:54.240 than covet and uh the asian flu 1957 the hong kong flu 1968 were both more deadly than covet and yet

00:26:05.040 this judge just says oh covet's the worst pandemic in a century and it's false he then ignored completely

00:26:11.120 an expert report from the former chief medical officer of the province of manitoba dr joel kettner

00:26:18.560 wrote this lengthy report and he went through how pcr testing does not diagnose covid how the

00:26:26.720 government's numbers of covet cases and covet deaths are inflated and not accurate on and on and on big

00:26:33.440 fat lengthy report eviscerates the case for lockdowns what does the judge do with it he ignores it completely

00:26:40.480 you're he could have and he ruled in favor of lockdowns and said oh yeah these were these were

00:26:46.400 necessary justified he doesn't explain why joel kettner's expert report is wrong so there's no

00:26:54.640 excuse for that uh like the the judges at least they're looking at something six months later or

00:27:01.040 12 months later two years later they've got all this evidence they're not on a deadline where they have

00:27:06.720 to you know push a story out the door in three hours they've actually got lots of time to look at the

00:27:11.920 data and so judges failed and they they uh adopted the media narrative

00:27:19.680 there just seemed to be a willingness um you know for demanding that the ford government for example

00:27:27.600 and i just keep picking on that because that was my main area of coverage um although covered the the

00:27:32.960 federal material as well but asking for evidence for shutting down restaurants for example or banning

00:27:40.320 outdoor greetings um was met with shock and horror from other members of the media i mean never mind

00:27:48.160 never mind folks who were scared and at home and i understand why many people were scared and um why

00:27:55.040 they felt this way absolutely can understand that but journalists normally say yeah but you know they've

00:28:03.440 got questions you you you say something and we question it and that went out the door other than

00:28:10.880 why aren't you locking us down harder seemed to be an acceptable uh question for a long time yeah well

00:28:17.040 matthias desmet uh professor from uh ghent university in in belgium came out with um this mass uh mass

00:28:29.120 mass formation mass hysteria mass delusion where uh i mean this gets into the field of psychology which

00:28:37.920 i don't touch i don't get into it too much in the in the book but this is where the conversation takes

00:28:44.720 us to right like why why do you get this mass delusion that that uh people fanatically buying into

00:28:54.080 notions which in 2019 they would have rejected i mean the the idea that it's possible to stop the

00:29:00.320 spread of a virus uh the the idea that uh we can um we should just give up all of our our rights and

00:29:08.000 freedoms the idea that we should fixate on live life as though the only purpose and of life is to avoid

00:29:17.200 covid and and the only important thing in life is to not catch covid and then so detached from

00:29:23.520 the reality that this was not a threat to more than 99 percent of the population was not threatened

00:29:29.120 by it at all and we could have quite sensibly taken uh steps to to protect the vulnerable and instead we

00:29:37.280 just impose all this harm on people so desmet talks about uh free floating anxiety and people not

00:29:44.640 personally connected and then uh politicians present covid as this this demon enemy and then all

00:29:52.400 the people the anxiety latches onto that and then we we all get into this mission to to uh to fight

00:30:00.320 covid and gives people a sense of meaning and purpose etc etc so you know that's the kind of stuff that we

00:30:07.280 have to look at as possible explanations is is the psychology side of it yeah the the only time i remember

00:30:14.080 pushback on on the lockdowns there had been all these calls for melbourne australia style lockdowns

00:30:19.360 because in i think it was april of 2021 or perhaps it was later it's a it's a bit of a blur uh everyone

00:30:27.440 wanted the very strict melbourne style lockdowns and then they were implemented and people lost their

00:30:33.120 minds and said how dare you uh well yes this is what you were asking for um you're still fighting some

00:30:40.800 cases through the justice center and it's still hard to fathom that we had people in various

00:30:49.680 fired by various governments uh or institutions who were working at home uh you know you you've

00:30:57.440 mentioned uh some uh health administrators in british columbia but i believe there were federal

00:31:02.480 civil servants in ottawa working from their home no interaction with anybody else but fired for refusing to

00:31:09.520 get vaccinated we suddenly went from my body my choice to your body my choice yeah yeah it was quite

00:31:17.200 quite the shift again it shows the the utter lack of science and appreciation for science when in british

00:31:25.520 columbia there were healthcare administrators who were fired for not getting injected with with the

00:31:30.400 covid vaccine and the same with university students there was a there's a very twisted irony that that

00:31:37.680 society went from in 2020 and into 2021 the universities switched largely to or in some cases entirely to

00:31:49.520 zoom right so now we've got all you know nobody's going to meet in class anymore and everybody's taking

00:31:54.000 their class from through a computer screen then in september 2021 they make the vaccine mandatory

00:32:01.920 and all of a sudden universities lost their ability to have zoom things because people could say well

00:32:08.640 you know uh i've got my reasons for not wanting to get injected but i want to join class by zoom and

00:32:15.840 universities are going nope nope you're going to get expelled from university over not getting injected

00:32:22.880 because we refuse to set up a zoom link it yeah there there have been mixed results in in this if i'm

00:32:30.400 correct in terms of challenging these in court uh i i can't see how a judge would reasonably come to

00:32:39.920 the conclusion looking at all the charter evidence that forcing someone to be vaccinated and i say this

00:32:45.520 is someone who you know was vaccinated by choice um it it makes me really worried about the state of our

00:32:55.520 court system that we would have judgment saying that this is acceptable we had a court judge michael

00:33:02.400 mcgaw a harper appointment by the way not a trudeau appointment uh judge michael mcgaw in saskatchewan

00:33:08.880 ordered a 12 year old girl to get injected with covet vaccine against her will and the will of her

00:33:15.920 mother but it was a father's application to uh to get his daughter injected and the scariest thing about

00:33:24.240 the ruling is that he declared he took judicial notice which as you know it's a it's a tool that

00:33:29.600 judges have if you've got some lunatic that you know walks into court and says that the world is

00:33:35.600 is flat and not round and he wants to use up the court time to prove that that the world is not round

00:33:41.280 and the judge has this discretion to take judicial notice of the fact that the earth is is round and so

00:33:48.480 that's all well and good judicial notice is a it's a tool but it's supposed to be used only in uh

00:33:54.560 situations where no reasonable person would dispute what is being advocated and where there is um

00:34:02.880 immediate access to a source of verification of indisputable accuracy so judicial notice is a

00:34:11.840 tool that judges should use sparingly in an extreme situation like you know somebody says

00:34:17.680 gravity is not real or the earth is flat this judge says he takes judicial notice that the

00:34:23.760 vaccine is safe and effective for adults and children because health canada and the saskatchewan

00:34:31.440 health authority have said so this is statolatry this is the worship of government for this judge

00:34:37.520 the government said it it's absolutely true i believe it that settles it we can move on

00:34:42.000 like like government government's like god government can't governments can neither deceive

00:34:47.760 nor be deceived and if government says that it's true and you you have to believe that so he takes

00:34:52.400 judicial notice of the vaccine being safe and effective because government says it is but

00:34:57.360 shouldn't it be about that person's individual choice this one's a bit muddier because it involves

00:35:02.160 you know parents fighting but you know someone getting fired and that being held up in court the

00:35:08.480 judge should be looking at my individual rights i chose individually to say yes i will take this

00:35:14.400 vaccine you know and i had my reasons such as my parents being in the prime area and looking at the

00:35:20.720 facts and saying okay i want to see my parents i want to make sure they're protected um but if i had come to

00:35:27.360 a different conclusion then it's my individual rights that should be the the judge's consideration not

00:35:35.120 hey i've looked at what the government said so to hell with you and your rights well this is where 0.77

00:35:40.960 the comparisons with fascism come in i think we we should learn from history so fascist movements in

00:35:46.720 europe were strong in uh germany and italy uh in particular because they took power there uh but there

00:35:54.640 were fascist movements in in uh portugal spain france hungary the netherlands denmark britain i mean

00:36:02.720 it was it was all over the place and it was this rejection of the classical liberal respect for the

00:36:09.920 individual where i say look you know i'm i'm a human being created in god's image i have certain

00:36:16.160 rights i have bodily autonomy uh i have the right to practice my religion i have the right to say what

00:36:22.240 i want to say etc etc etc that is a classical liberal perspective and the fascists in europe in the 1930s

00:36:30.000 basically said well to hell with your rights we all got to get behind the national project uh to

00:36:37.760 to to to advance the nation and to build up the glory of our of our nation now here with covid

00:36:44.800 obviously it's it's a different project the project was not you know restoring canadian greatness and you

00:36:51.200 know preparing for taking over the united states and world domination it wasn't like that but but but

00:36:57.520 it was like we all got to get you know to hell with your rights and freedoms you got to get on board 0.51

00:37:01.520 with the big project everybody has to support the big project that's fascism and it was extremely

00:37:08.800 disappointing to see um how many give us a quick update on cases that you've still got ongoing

00:37:15.120 challenging this uh through the justice center uh i know you're uh providing support to tamara leach and

00:37:22.000 and chris barber that was with the the convoy but also you're you're supporting people who are

00:37:27.360 challenging other mandates yeah so we've got about a half dozen uh criminal cases left uh for people like

00:37:35.440 chris barber tamara leach uh evan blackman where they were criminally charged for participating in a

00:37:44.400 peaceful protest uh and we've got another half dozen or so cases that are before the various courts of

00:37:50.000 appeal especially in british columbia where we had uh you know the the the the government closed down

00:37:58.480 churches it made church in-person worship in church was was illegal but restaurants and bars and strip

00:38:06.480 clubs and gyms like everybody's open except not the churches right so that's an example of of a case

00:38:13.120 where these pastors actually said look we will abide by the you know the uh the hand sanitizer the masks the

00:38:19.520 social distancing the capacity limits everything we'll comply with all the rules we just want to

00:38:24.480 meet in person at church and we'll even do you know limited capacity six feet apart masks the whole

00:38:29.520 kit and caboodle and bonnie henry said no uh you know so utterly bizarre because i didn't realize that

00:38:37.120 and all through the pandemic i kept saying why can't we be more open like british columbia because ontario had

00:38:44.480 ridiculous lockdown measures and by comparison bc looked good i didn't realize they shut down all

00:38:51.600 churches well it was very you know it was different in each province i mean generally speaking the

00:38:58.400 restrictions that in alberta were less they were not as severe however jason kenney is the only premier

00:39:07.760 in in canada who locked up pastors and jailed pastors and he pretends that that was just a

00:39:14.480 decision of the judge and the crown prosecutor and it's beyond his control that's not true alberta

00:39:19.280 health services went to court to get injunctions against these pastors such that if they disobeyed

00:39:26.160 the rules they would not merely get a ticket as they did in other provinces but they would actually be

00:39:31.920 jailed for being in contempt of court jason kenney did that to lock up pastors so it was very what i'm

00:39:37.440 trying to say is it's very mixed in each province so bc was you know less uh uh um locked down than

00:39:44.880 ontario for the most part however there was a period of time i think it was november of 2020 it was

00:39:51.680 november of 2021 i don't know but but for for several months the uh church services were prohibited

00:39:59.520 entirely and the mosques and the synagogues and yeah houses of worship i have a solution for you know

00:40:06.160 you mentioned that strip clubs were allowed to be open but not churches and here in toronto there's

00:40:10.240 a unique solution there's a building on bloor street that is divided in half and half of it is a

00:40:15.280 a bible church and the other half is a strip club so they could have just met at the strip club

00:40:21.280 i'm not sure it's what they would want to do but you know they're neighbors uh

00:40:26.320 so many of the challenges did come from churches uh why is that i know there were people challenging gym

00:40:33.680 lockdowns and there were some attempts by you know some restaurant tours and stuff but an awful lot

00:40:39.120 of this fight was led by uh evangelical churches in particular yeah the you know the catholic church

00:40:47.520 could have as the largest denomination in in canada that could have single-handedly shut down

00:40:52.880 lockdowns entirely by just saying hey it's part of our religion that you have to receive communion in

00:40:58.320 person and the priest has to consecrate the host in person he can't do it via zoom they had a stronger

00:41:05.360 rationale than the evangelicals did but uh catholic church just uh embraced the the false media narrative

00:41:13.440 entirely so we there were churches all over canada but even there i should point out the church was

00:41:19.520 was very divided them the anecdotally my impression um is that the church going people were

00:41:28.320 not much different from those not going to church so you had the overwhelming majority of church going

00:41:32.800 people lived in a state of fear believed everything that the media told them uh enthusiastically

00:41:38.800 complied with the measures uh got very angry with people that were skeptical about the narrative so

00:41:48.000 yeah the there wasn't a huge difference i i think in in as between church going and not church going

00:41:55.200 canadians yeah they just they're the ones that that uh we're pushing it uh you talk for a bit in the

00:42:02.560 book about a a court decision that i keep coming back to um it's more than 20 years old now or about that

00:42:10.160 and i just think it hasn't been you know brought to its fullness yet and that's the chelui decision

00:42:16.800 how does that relate to covet though that's a that's a case about a man in quebec saying you're delaying my

00:42:23.120 uh surgery by not allowing me to pay for it out of my own pocket and therefore you know infringing

00:42:30.000 upon my rights i think that should apply across the whole country by the way but the judges in that

00:42:35.040 case you know twisted themselves into pretzels to make sure it didn't apply but how does it relate to

00:42:40.640 covet and the charter violations from the lockdowns and mandates and everything else

00:42:44.640 well the media started telling us in march of 2020 and politicians and media said uh we've got a

00:42:54.960 covet is causing a crisis in the health care system and so we have to give up our rights and freedoms

00:43:00.720 you know you have to uh government should just you know destroy your restaurant business or other

00:43:06.560 small business and and you can't meet with people etc etc because we've got to save the health

00:43:12.160 care system from overcrowding and people like my mother who had worked as a registered nurse 1.00

00:43:18.080 in british columbia for 40 years uh she was scratching her head saying canadian hospitals are routinely

00:43:25.600 uh overcrowded uh there are thousands of people probably tens of thousands of canadians who have

00:43:32.480 died on waiting lists they've got a they need a heart transplant or they need this or that and

00:43:37.200 they're on a waiting list and they die in ontario there was a christine elliott was just didn't

00:43:42.960 care less there were 35 people on waiting lists for heart surgery who died because the all across

00:43:50.560 canada these chief medical officers they cancelled tens of thousands of surgeries okay and in alberta it

00:43:55.840 was like 23 000 surgeries cancelled well that's about a tenth of of of canada's population so it was

00:44:01.840 like 200 000 surgeries cancelled right a lot of those people died now where shawuli comes into this

00:44:08.320 is we've had a long-standing problem in canada uh not caused by covid but we've got a government

00:44:14.000 monopoly healthcare system where there's no incentives for efficiency there's very little accountability

00:44:19.920 we spend more than most countries per person and we get inferior outcomes and to to say that that

00:44:26.960 the overcrowding in hospitals is caused by covid and it's all oh and it's all these shameful people

00:44:32.320 who refuse to get injected that are you know flooding the hospitals i mean uh these are bald-faced lies

00:44:40.080 healthcare has been horrible in canada for a very long time and anybody who says that that this overcrowding 0.97

00:44:45.840 is caused by covid uh either they're they're ignorant and they don't know the facts or or they're being deceitful

00:44:51.440 i think the schloui decision was 2005 because i think it was the end of the yes yes the paul martin

00:44:58.240 government and uh um and it was a great great decision he well almost great decision it should have

00:45:06.560 applied across the whole country they said it just applies to quebec but the man uh was granted the

00:45:11.440 right because the government failed to provide adequate services in the hospital system to deal with

00:45:18.320 overcrowding 20 you know 15 years before covet hit that he was allowed to to go and pay for his own

00:45:25.120 that was an incredible decision but you know i i like how you point out that you know again false

00:45:31.040 narrative that uh we needed to shut everything down because the healthcare system's never seen overcrowding

00:45:37.120 before yeah no they flu season routinely overcrowded there they would announce i think it was a code purple

00:45:45.680 meaning all surgeries are cancelled because the hospital is just flooded with a whole bunch of

00:45:50.800 flu patients and we're just you know so surgeries would be uh cancelled and rescheduled but not on 0.59

00:45:58.960 the scale this is the other stupid irony of it on the one hand they say well we have to accept the 0.54

00:46:04.080 violation of our charter rates and freedoms in order to uh save the healthcare system uh so that the 0.93

00:46:11.680 hospital does not get overcrowded so that we don't have to cancel surgeries so on the one hand we're

00:46:17.440 being fed this rationale and then they turn around and they canceled surgeries anyways john thank you for

00:46:25.760 your time i hope you and the justice center continue you uh the good fight thanks so much thank you

00:46:31.840 full comment is a post media podcast my name is brian lily your host this episode was produced by andre

00:46:37.440 prue theme music by bryce hall kevin libin is the executive producer please remember to hit subscribe

00:46:43.040 wherever you get your podcasts on amazon on spotify apple wherever you're listening hit the subscribe

00:46:49.120 button so you don't miss an episode thanks for listening and until next time i'm brian lily

00:46:54.000 here's that clip from canada did what i promised you

00:47:06.800 in the late 1960s you have members of the montreal police who can spend their entire shift rushing from

00:47:13.440 one flq bombing to another here's how new year's eve 1968 played out for robert cote a member of the

00:47:21.440 montreal police bomb squad which put him at the forefront of fighting the flq during this period

00:47:27.760 he was supposed to be at home with his wife who had just miscarried twin daughters but instead at 11

00:47:33.760 pm he's called out to montreal city hall to investigate a bomb that had just gone off

00:47:38.960 he's en route with sirens blaring when he's told actually don't bother with the exploded bomb

00:47:44.400 there's an unexploded bomb on the other side of city hall you have to defuse

00:47:48.480 and then right after snipping the wires on the city hall bomb cote had to speed west where a third

00:47:56.320 bomb has just exploded outside a federal building the bombing started in april and may of 1963 that's

00:48:05.360 when the first bombings took place and the mailbox bombings were the most famous part of the whole thing 0.78

00:48:11.680 which was basically on the thursday night and friday night leading into the victoria day weekend in

00:48:17.760 1963 so and initially they they started attacking these symbols of federalism federal institutions

00:48:25.920 whether it was a montreal post office or a revenue canada but the bombings escalated as time went on

00:48:33.840 in terms of the size of the bombs and the powerfulness of these bombs

00:48:39.600 if you want to hear the rest of the story make sure you subscribe to canada did what

00:48:44.800 everywhere you get your podcasts

Full Comment - August 25, 2025

They crushed our rights for COVID. We still haven’t won them back

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