00:24:36.180It's completely unconstitutional. Establishment of Rouleau as the
00:24:41.580Commissioner and all the rest. By the way after we got over that shock and I
00:24:47.100came back home and the Commission of Inquiry got established, the lawyers did submit my name to be
00:24:53.900one of the witnesses during the inquiry and that was turned down, as it has been in other court
00:24:59.980cases around the country. So the courts don't want to hear from one of the people that was there and
00:25:07.100helped create the Constitution Act 1982, which included the Charter at all, that they completely
00:25:14.300made sure and dismissed anything that i had to say
00:25:21.820yeah they're really shocking you became a voice of sanity early on in in covet too which was very
00:25:28.380comforting for me to see somebody of your stature speaking out and speaking out so um kind of
00:25:36.300rationally about what what was wrong with what they were doing but i and maybe this is a fair
00:25:41.740question brian but i'll ask you anyway why do you think they invoked it we all know it wasn't
00:25:46.480necessary that there were other ways this thing was going to end and they were actually for minors
00:25:51.720standing well on the way to ending it with a deal perhaps with the city why do you think they went
00:25:57.820ahead and did it and did it the way they did it too with the violence and the all the terrible
00:26:03.060Remember, it wasn't necessary. It was unconstitutional for them to do it. From my point of view, I wouldn't use necessary being involved in the Constitution like I was. It was unconstitutional.
00:26:16.720So right from day one, by the way, when we got that news, that was when Tamara and I, with Keith Wilson and the others, set up the press conference, which we had to report halfway through or one third way through, in which we announced at that press conference that we had heard that in the next couple of hours they were going to invoke the Emergencies Act.
00:26:40.880So we got ahead of the game on them and actually publicly announced what they were going to do, and I'm sure that upset them.
00:26:49.840To get on to your question, I think they did it because, to be kind to them, they overreacted and had a very limited scope of sources from which to make decisions.
00:27:04.200I think this is one of the problems, is that they overreacted to the situation and allowed people who were in Ottawa, who were going to be inconvenienced by what was going on, to take the center stage rather than listen to others, no doubt, who thought that this was a little bit of overreaction.
00:27:25.300So to be kind to them, others would say that it was all arranged and part of the great grand scheme.
00:27:33.260And, you know, that's another theory as to why they did it.
00:27:38.380But like I say, to be kind to them, I would say they did it because they overreacted and did not seek out more sources to talk about whether, in fact, they could do this or not.
00:27:51.340And I doubt whether they asked anybody in the Department of Justice, you know, is this legitimate for us to do this?
00:27:58.400You know, because of Section 1 and demands to be justified, you know, can we really do this?
00:28:04.320So I doubt whether they really sought out and had, you know, I think it was more of emotion than overreaction to the situation rather than, you know, soberly and rationally consider it.
00:28:19.820I'm told that you said something like oh my god is do you recall yeah you always
00:28:33.680think the best of people even when you know that they've already done things
00:28:37.760which you don't like you know they weren't even going to consider my court
00:28:45.480case i'm the travel ban so you know i have every reason to be far more um what shall i say
00:28:53.240unsavory or or in my reaction than even just oh my god because of what had already transpired up
00:29:00.680to then but you know trying to be fair and rational you know but my best reason without
00:29:07.720getting into it being all planned from the beginning is that they totally overreacted
00:29:13.080And the other thing is, at that point, the prime minister and the committees and so on that were involved in agreeing to go ahead with this invocation of the emergency act could have called Keith Wilson or me or anybody else who was there or the people who organized that whole trucker protest and saw the meeting as Tamara and the group had saw the meeting with them earlier.
00:29:40.420So they didn't reach out to the other side before they went ahead and did this.
00:29:46.580No, and if you remember, too, I mean, I remember at the very beginning of the pandemic,
00:29:53.340they were talking, Justin Trudeau was talking about invoking the EA
00:29:56.340so that they would have unchecked powers to manage and mitigate the pandemic.
00:32:00.880When I contacted my friend, who was a friend of the mayor, and we were able to establish that linkage between you guys and the city, you would think that given that, rather than overreact and act in spite, would at least cover themselves, even if they were still spiteful.
00:32:25.120But in order to rashly cover themselves from a legal and constitutional point of view,
00:32:30.120they think they would have done that consultation.
00:32:34.120Which therefore brings into sharp focus this whole business of them having their minds made up almost from the start.
00:32:43.120And once the truckers arrived in Ottawa and a few people complained,
00:32:48.120If you live in a capital city, it's like living in the Arctic, it's quite likely it's going to go below zero, you shouldn't complain about the cold.
00:32:59.120If you live in a capital city, especially a national capital city, it's natural that there's going to be protests and there's going to be days when there's not going to be the same kind of atmosphere as it is in a normal city that's not a capital.
00:33:15.120I find very little patience with those people who talk about being disrupted because that's natural, that's going to happen in capital cities where civil disobedience is going to occur from time to time and that's all legitimate and unconstitutional.
00:33:32.020mm-hmm chris and i were talking a little bit earlier about um during the the judge kind of
00:33:43.300gearing up for her verdict i think it was 72 pages or it was long anyway and most of the things that
00:33:49.700she said about the about chris and tamara in the courtroom that they were positive i mean it
00:33:55.140actually as i said earlier it sounded like they were going to get an award instead of a verdict
00:34:00.260but but i'm wondering um now it's sort of been looking back at that and how peaceful the protest
00:34:10.420actually actually was right so it's not just the invocation of the ea but it's the invocation of the
00:34:17.940ea against people who weren't really doing anything bad they were making noise and kind of
00:34:23.940bothering people, right? Exactly. And you know, there's a bit of a pattern as you write to the judge and how she sort of spoke kindly of Chris and Tamara, sort of a pattern because just recently here in British Columbia, the court that was hearing the another case dealing with the
00:34:53.940public health officer in BC, through most of the hearings that the judge had at the Supreme Court of British Columbia,
00:35:02.940they seemed to be very kind to the people who were making the application for a hearing,
00:35:09.940and yet when the decision came down, it was quite, you know, quite viciously negative to the same appetite.
00:35:18.940So I don't know if it's something they're trying to appease their conscience as they go through these decisions or what.
00:35:26.680But, you know, it's really troubling when early on in the pandemic, the court in Manitoba, Supreme Court there,
00:35:38.180came right out and said, the judge came right out and said in his decision that on the business of it not being constitutional,
00:35:45.820on what was happening with the mandates and the lockdown.
00:35:49.080And the applicants had presented a whole bunch of independent science,
00:35:54.480medical science, which has stood the test of time.
00:35:57.740And the judge clearly said that he was just going to believe
00:45:49.840Well, you know, I have in the last six months or a year become very detached with the whole situation.
00:46:00.060And, you know, all the big things that have come before the various courts, both provincially and federally, you know, we have lost about all of them.
00:46:09.420And now with the latest onslaught by the federal government to the justice minister to try to change the standing clause, which obviously they have not the power that the courts and the federal government do not have the constitutional authority to do what they're trying to do.
00:46:31.420But they're repeating what Trudeau Sr. did back in 1981 when we were negotiating with him for the Charter and for all the other things that are in the Constitution Act of 1982, you know, from minority language rights to the amending formula itself to the rights of indigenous peoples and so on, all of which is in that document.
00:46:55.520And the prime minister left the table and decided that he believed and the federal government believed that they could do this on their own. And so he went to court on that. And then at the end of the day, he started to feel nervous because suddenly in some of the courts where we were applying, you know, he was nervous that he was going to lose.
00:47:19.140And so he was forced to make a reference to the Supreme Court of Canada himself.
00:47:24.120And so what the Supreme Court of Canada did, they folded all of the objections to including the federal government's own reference into one court case and decided that this was unconstitutional.
00:47:36.680And here's the thing. Here's the thing that anybody listening to me right now should understand.
00:47:41.080is that if you go into the internet and you go into the various sites that deal with the
00:47:48.900constitution and that paperation period, many of them don't even mention that the federal
00:47:54.920government lost in court, that it was unconstitutional. That's why Trudeau came back to the table
00:48:00.340and we finally did get the charter and the constitution activated too, because he knew
00:48:06.940he couldn't do unilaterally what he tried to do he lost in court and that's played down and I just
00:48:14.780found an internet site the other day called constitutional.net I think it is and in there
00:48:22.380they say that they ignore the fact that this part was unconstitutional and so what's happening now
00:48:30.300today is the federal government is doing the same thing as Trudeau tried to do in 1981 to
00:48:36.860unilaterally change something in the constitution that affects the powers of the provinces and the
00:48:42.940court has ruled you can't do that so what the supreme court of canada should do now as a result
00:48:49.180of that reference by the federal government to mess around with the constant notwithstanding
00:48:54.780clause whether you agree with it or not as another matter the issue is do they have the
00:48:59.420constitutional authority to change it now i'd like to though this court now it's a different
00:49:05.580court it's still the supreme court of canada but a different people on it but they should be
00:49:11.500looking to that 1981 decision and telling the federal government quite clearly we have no power
00:49:18.220over this this is a matter for the amending formula that was what all the patriation was
00:49:23.740about for the last 115 years we didn't have the right to change our own constitution for 115
00:49:30.140years primarily because we tried 10 times over 115 years because we couldn't agree on an amending
00:49:36.540formula well in 1981 we agreed on one and we have one now in the constitution so it was upon the
00:49:43.500federal government to use the amending formula to change any of the provisions that are in the
00:49:49.580existing charter or in the existing 1982 act and that's what they're not doing so it's unbelievably
00:49:57.260depressing to me that all these years later from 1982 that you have a federal government
00:50:03.580trying to do the very thing that they were defeated i'm trying to do in 1982.
00:50:11.420do you think canadians are different than americans in this regard that we don't
00:50:16.140you know americans get emotional thinking about their rights and freedoms and they
00:50:20.860you know they pledge allegiance and they they think about those things and canadians i i it's
00:50:26.700my sense anyway that we're different and one statistic from the research i was doing on the
00:50:32.860vaccine mandate thing that didn't happen today 80 of the canadian population as polled wanted those
00:50:41.820mandates they wanted them like we we seem like a nation that is very very easily convinced to
00:50:49.420relinquish things and it goes back to very basic things the americans had a revolution we did not
00:50:59.100right when blood is spilled and lives are lost as what happened in the american
00:51:05.900which led to 1776 and their constitution that's a different situation all together
00:51:11.820What we did is we, as British colonies, Upper Canada, Lower Canada, Upper Scotia and New Brunswick, agreed to create Canada through a negotiation situation.
00:51:27.680We went along and used a lot of the British systems and procedures that the Americans fought against and therefore, starting from day one, there was a foundation in the United States, which was a culture and a psychology which was different than Canada's and that is playing itself out there.
00:51:51.680what was it like for you watching the queen sign that document brian
00:52:01.440what was it like for you did you what did you watch the queen was it the queen that
00:52:05.360signed the document who signed the document on that day 1982
00:52:13.200yeah that was unbelievable because i never thought i would be here talking to you the
00:52:17.920the way I'm talking because, you know, it was clear to us, you know, from the opening
00:52:23.640words of the, of the, of the charter, right? This country is founded on the, on the principles
00:52:29.400of the supremacy of God and the rule of law. And I remember us talking about that and debating
00:52:36.300that. I remember these things very well. I've got, I've got a very good memory for the things
00:52:41.200that I was keenly involved in over the years that anybody who knows me knows to be true.
00:52:47.920And so, signing that document, and being a part of this, what we thought at the time was a major thing that we tried to get for 115 years and couldn't get it, and now finally had an amendment to inform them and could do things ourselves in our own country.
00:53:05.400You know, I mean, I was prepared. When we started this process of patriation, because of the Quebec referendum and all, and we needed to really do something big, you know, I had a list, as did all the other premiers, now that we're going to be doing this constitutional thing, of what changes we wanted.
00:53:29.420And one of the changes I sought was to have more say over the fishery of Newfoundland.
00:53:35.280And I gave up on that for the sake of the country and for the sake of the amending formula and for the sake of all the other things.
00:53:41.600And many other fingers had just as important issues, which they relinquished in the interest of the nation.
00:53:51.160And not in the interest of Newfoundland, but in the interest of the nation.
00:53:54.560and that we would revisit the things that we never got later for the sake of the country
00:54:01.680and getting an amending formula and getting a charter written down.
00:54:06.740So, you know, all of us, all of the premiers, all the first ministers at the time,
00:54:12.460and I think at the end of the day, even the two first ministers that stayed with the federal government,
00:54:17.120the province of Ontario, Mr. Premier William Davis and Mr. Premier Hatfield of New Brunswick,
00:54:24.560who stayed with the federal government, at the end of the day, when we signed this document,
00:54:28.680I think they were just as emotional and taken up with what we were doing as a major thing
00:54:36.320for the country as we were, who fought for it, and had to fight Trudeau in the courts
00:54:41.400to make sure he came back to the table.
00:54:43.120So it was a pretty fundamental time, and we all understood very well, we all understood
00:54:51.240very well what we were up to and how important this was to be you're getting
00:55:04.680a lot of really lovely compliments here in the chat Brian thank you for your
00:55:09.780service mr. Peckford and I feel I for one will never stop speaking out against
00:55:14.160tyranny I worked in justice nearly 32 years in different capacities I love my
00:57:08.560And some of us had a lot of egg on our face because we had defended the federal government. We had defended the Prime Minister that he would never do this after agreeing to sit down with all of us to do this.
00:57:20.560And so that's why, you know, it was very important that people forget. And I understand that, why they forget. And I understand that they're not part of it like I am.
00:57:30.560But that's why the notwithstanding clause, whether people agree with it or not, was so important to all the provinces because we didn't trust the federal government because of what had happened with them leaving the table and that they would do it again.
00:57:43.740So we needed some protection that there may be things going on in a province. Newfoundland is different than B.C., Ontario is different than Manitoba, and so on, where the province, as a legitimate government under the Federation, would like to do things which were going to be contrary to what was in the document for a period of time if you had the legislature on your side.
00:58:10.920And so this was an extremely important provision, but mainly driven by the skepticism of the provinces towards the federal government. And that was enhanced and heightened by the fact that the Prime Minister left the table.
00:58:28.220So he, they helped solidify all those provinces who were saying, well perhaps we should forget about that and still go ahead and get this done. They helped solidify all of these doubtful provinces of whether we should really push for the not standing clause or not because of the actions that the federal government took and now we're taking a game.
00:58:52.300and the thing is you know ladies and gentlemen the thing is i have no particular axe grind i
00:59:03.580don't work for anybody or i i have no particular notion uh you know nobody's pushing me to say this
00:59:11.900to say that i i always was my my own my own you know i was independent i'm independent i turned
00:59:21.580down i won't get into it but i turned down lots of uh offers that were made to me uh through the
00:59:27.580back door and the side door and this door and that door to do things differently uh and i turned it
00:59:33.980all down including you know millions of dollars because i remembered my father and my mother
00:59:40.060remember how I was raised and that came back to me so strongly in those days so that as I speak
00:59:47.900now at 83 years old I have no particular prejudice or any particular pressure put on me to say or do
00:59:59.300anything. I'm doing all this completely on my own as it relates to how I think and my own experience
01:01:33.440When I was in the midst of all of this, a lot of the provinces, independent MLAs and independent MPs asked me, and I did do a Zoom with those people, most of it was done online, of different collections of MLAs across the country.
01:01:53.980Sometimes in New Brunswick, sometimes in Ontario, sometimes it was MPs, sometimes it was, and Alberta was very strong on that. And so I did a lot of these connections and these Zooms and these interactions with MLA across the country. And they admitted to me, and they admitted to me, they were unaware of A, B, and C as related to the Constitution or to the patriarchy.
01:02:20.980they were completely unaware and some of them were lawyers and uh you know so our educational system
01:02:28.420is really uh doing us a disservice and that's why in my magna carta when i did my speech in
01:02:36.500in victoria in 1922 and then gosh in 20 000 2022 one of the first things i said we should reform
01:02:46.980is their educational system so that there's a course called civics that's mandatory in all the
01:02:53.540high school public high schools of canada whereby civics must be taught as a subject starting in
01:03:00.660grade eight on until the end of the high school program grade 12 or grade 13 or whatever it
01:03:08.180happened to be that's very very important because as we talked about earlier as trish mentioned
01:03:14.180many people, you know, we don't know our own country, we don't know our own, I introduced civics as a part of our curriculum when I taught school, went to the principal and said I want to put this in it and have this in the Friday afternoons and of course they thought at the time because it was Friday afternoon and I was just going to be developing it myself, you know, and I get the parents and the students to agree that Friday afternoon nobody would be interested
01:03:43.720because the bell is going to ring anytime and we're off for the weekend well so and behold
01:03:48.680i i got approval to go ahead and do that just as a local one school thing and the students were
01:03:55.880we're all delighted with it and and and they they they when the ring bell rang and was ready to go
01:04:02.440they still wanted me to finish what i was saying or still have the discussion about uh you know the
01:04:08.200different layers of government in Canada and we did some stuff on comparing it to the United States
01:04:16.760and what they were doing and so on. So students were turned on by it and it made no difference
01:04:22.840if it was Friday or Monday or whatever. They were keenly interested in knowing more about
01:04:27.560their country and I think if you did that today the same thing would be true.
01:04:31.400well you said earlier you were talking about the idea of people knowing where you stand and
01:04:42.640i think people know where you stood you went to ottawa during the convoy you gave a speech
01:04:47.740you were standing with canadians weren't you yes yes and the other thing you know we've got to be
01:04:54.740really understand is that in order to do the reform that's now necessary the first thing must be
01:05:03.700that we believe in the god that we believe in integrity and right now you see in in our country
01:05:11.380in our main and in the federal parliament an mp can break the law and still serve as an mp
01:05:18.020in their parliament we can't have that if we're going to have an honest uh government and and to
01:05:25.060make honest changes to our constitution people who break the law should not be able to serve
01:05:31.940and i've written all of the leaders in canada about this and none of them have ever answered me
01:05:39.380it's a simple matter we don't have to change the constitution all we have to do is change
01:05:44.260the Conflict of Interest Act can be done in a day or two days. Introduce an amendment to the Conflict
01:05:50.420of Interest Act which says if a member of this Parliament of Canada breaks the law as determined
01:05:57.860by an independent Conflict of Interest Commissioner and or a court of the country, of judges in the
01:06:05.620country, then that MP can no longer serve in the Parliament of Canada. And nobody will bring that
01:06:13.460in nobody will introduce that so number one that's what we're going to get back
01:06:19.580to we're going to get back to some honesty and integrity in our system
01:06:23.420because as long as you can do that and as long as political parties don't have
01:06:28.620to show their eyes out of the financial statements on their on their on the
01:06:35.000internet as part of their website and so hard to go into the Elections Canada
01:06:42.520and try to get all this access to information, some of which is out of date.
01:06:47.860So there's an obligation to me, just out of general common law,
01:06:53.900that if there's a political party in Canada,
01:06:56.280one of the first things they must do is produce their financial reports annually
01:07:01.800and to make it and expose it at their convention and on their internet sites
01:07:07.680so that everybody knows where the money came from and where the money went.
01:07:12.520And do it in detail so we know, and who's getting paid, for example, today, who's getting paid in the Liberal Party apparatus in their headquarters?
01:07:22.280Who's getting paid? Well, who's getting the contract for the Liberal Party to do their polling?
01:07:27.860Who's getting the contract? How much are they?
01:07:30.260Was it an open competition for who got it?
01:07:36.900Or was it some of their own people that are now getting money from those parties?
01:07:41.680So this is the kinds of stuff that we got to do in order to establish some credibility again,
01:07:48.460so people won't be skeptical of every politician that they hear of.
01:07:55.080Yeah, well, I think we also, for that to work, Brian, we need a neutral, objective news media
01:08:01.600so that we can judge the people who are running, and that we don't have that right now
01:08:06.800because they hide stuff on behalf of the politicians they like, right?
01:08:11.680I agree. I couldn't agree more. I couldn't agree more. You know, there is the, you know, there is another, the third estate or fourth, whatever you want to call it. The media are very critical components and major players in the development of a democracy.
01:08:31.680Right now, we don't have an independent media, we can carry out the public functions which are so important if we are to reform our system.
01:08:49.680I have a lovely comment here. Thank you, Mr. Peckford. That's exactly what Canada needs.
01:08:54.680We need to demand integrity of our governments and our media.
01:08:58.680Another comment here. So much respect for Mr. Peckford for fighting all of these years. Thank you, sir.
01:09:06.680And just to end off, I am by nature an optimist. That's why I got involved in politics in the beginning.
01:09:15.680That's why I went teaching in the beginning. I'm an optimist. My whole family are an optimist.
01:09:21.680But what has happened in my lifetime up until now, you know, that's why I'm sorry and I regret having to be so negative on this thing. But in order for us to get change, I think we're going to have to come to grips with who we are and what we are doing now and admit that there's a lot of things going wrong.
01:09:45.920And if we admit reality, we admit that, then we have an opportunity to change.
01:09:51.920But until we admit it, including the media, including the judiciary, including the legislature, the parliament,
01:09:58.920and including the executive, until all the components of this society start to recognize the reality of the situation,
01:10:13.920Well said. I mean, it's the first step in any 12-step program, right? You have to first admit that there's a problem. And I think that's, you know, we need some other Canadians to wake up and finally admit that, hey, man, there's a problem here.
01:10:27.480Yes. And I mean, it manifests itself in what happened to you, Tamara, and Chris, and the other people who were leaders in trying to bring some sense to the situation where people were losing their work and losing their jobs and having their rights.
01:10:45.480So, you know, you manifest and personalize the very thing that we're talking about here.
01:10:52.540And I want to thank you very much for having me, and I really appreciate participating in this.
01:10:58.340And I hope you continue it, because I think it's an extremely important force that you're now unleashing.
01:11:04.860Well, thank you. And, of course, thank you so much for coming on.
01:11:08.500I'm sorry we didn't have the Zoom set up and we went this way instead, but I think this works out okay.
01:11:14.500This is what we do here with the people. We just find a way to make it work. And that's what we did. So
01:11:21.000So if anybody wants to follow me, they can just go in on my website or my WordPress, www.peckford,
01:11:32.800P-E-C-K-F-O-R-D, the number four, the number two, the year I was born, peckford42.wordpress.com,
01:11:41.240and they can follow me on all the different things I say, including the stuff I say on