John Bolton - Your RIGHTS GONE by the end of NEXT YEAR

00:00:00.000 Hi, it's John and welcome to the channel. Great to have you along today, the day before Christmas.

00:00:08.380 Merry Christmas to you. Happy holidays as well. Of course, with the big blue mug of coffee today.

00:00:14.240 And this is going to be interesting. I've been wanting to talk to John Carpe from the

00:00:19.360 Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms. He's the president for some time because

00:00:23.940 I think we're slowly seeing our rights stripped away, specifically when it comes to speech.

00:00:30.000 And definitely when it comes to the Internet. And for somebody who's on the Internet pretty much

00:00:34.040 every day on YouTube, I get rather concerned about this. John, I'd like to thank you so much for being

00:00:39.180 here. Merry Christmas and happy holidays to you. Merry Christmas to you as well. So here's the thing.

00:00:45.500 I watched a video you did last week and I've watched a lot of your videos and we hope people will go to

00:00:50.000 your YouTube channel to get educated about this and many other topics. And there's a link in the

00:00:56.480 description below for people. I watched a quiet takeover of Canada's Internet last week that you

00:01:02.680 did. A video of really less than seven minutes. And I was horrified by what I heard. Now I keep up on

00:01:09.340 this, John. I do. But I've been rather confused about what's going on when it comes to the government

00:01:14.880 and all of these bills that we hear about. They've got different names for these different

00:01:19.840 bills. And what I got from watching your video and I was thinking watching your video was like

00:01:25.120 the government is almost flooding the zone with these things all at once. And it's very confusing

00:01:30.000 for somebody like myself who's trying to follow this. But for the average person, I don't really

00:01:34.660 think they get what's going on here and how the government looks like it's going to slowly strip

00:01:40.540 away our freedoms when it comes to the Internet and our speech. Can you explain a little bit about

00:01:44.300 that for me? We're approaching the grand finale of the government's takeover of the Internet

00:01:53.860 and surveillance, state surveillance, censorship. We are moving towards becoming a police state,

00:02:00.660 but it's in very tiny increments that you never really notice. So very briefly, it started two years

00:02:08.700 ago with the passing of Bill C-11, which was the Online Streaming Act, which gave the Canadian

00:02:14.960 Radio Telecommunications Commission, the CRTC, or Radio... Television and Telecommunications

00:02:23.260 Commission. Yeah. Yeah. It's quite the mouthful. It is. So this body previously had authority

00:02:30.220 only over radio and television, which was broadcasting. But Bill C-11, the Online Streaming Act,

00:02:38.240 has redefined broadcasting as including the Internet. And so now the CRTC legally has authority

00:02:45.700 over the Internet to push certain algorithms, to push certain stories forward, to impose

00:02:55.500 Canadian content. They're going to decide what's Canadian or not and make sure that... But it

00:03:02.380 applies to every YouTuber podcast. It applies to everybody in Canada. It's not narrowly limited

00:03:08.820 to, say, Netflix or Paramount or Disney. It's not limited to that. It's anybody that does a podcast

00:03:18.340 or a videocast. So thus far, they haven't really abused or even exercised their power, but it's on the

00:03:24.640 books that the CRTC controls the Internet. That was the first one. The second bill that passed was the

00:03:31.360 Online News Act, which they were trying to extort money out of big companies who were, like Facebook

00:03:39.320 and Instagram, spreading links, right? A lot of the Canadian media were getting their viewership from

00:03:46.020 what people shared on Facebook, you know? But now that's been banned thanks to the Online News Act.

00:03:52.800 Currently, before Parliament, we've got the Strong Borders Act, Bill C-2, which would create

00:03:58.040 an Authorized Access to Information Act that would empower government officials to demand subscriber

00:04:04.020 data. We got the... There's a whole bunch more to Bill C-2. It's 140 pages. But we got Bill C-8,

00:04:12.520 the Cyber Security Act, which would empower the federal cabinet to kick individual Canadians

00:04:19.680 off the Internet. Then we got Bill C-9, the Combating Hate Act, which is going to unleash

00:04:26.020 a large volume of Canadians getting prosecuted over their social media commentary, will become

00:04:34.660 more like the United Kingdom, where over 30 people are arrested every day over their social

00:04:40.720 media posts. So that's it in a nutshell. You've got all those bills, but each one by itself

00:04:45.920 doesn't seem too scary. But like I said, it's like they're flooding the field with this stuff

00:04:54.260 all at once, and it's hard to keep track of. And bit by bit, they pull away our freedoms. You know,

00:04:59.560 a few weeks back, I was looking at what might be coming with the Liberal government, and who knows

00:05:05.160 what'll happen if they do ever end up getting a majority. We don't know whether anybody else is going

00:05:10.800 to walk across the floor. But I put more censorship, and I put down Bill C-2, C-8, C-8, C-8, C-9, C-10.

00:05:18.660 I think there have been other bills. And again, it just seems very, very confusing for somebody like

00:05:23.640 myself. For the average person out there, though, should they be concerned about their rights

00:05:29.440 immediately? Or when can we see these things pass? Because obviously, the Bloc Québécois will

00:05:35.920 probably support a number of these bills, and probably the NDP as well.

00:05:41.500 Well, the hot button, the big one right now is Bill C-9. And, you know, now is the time. It's

00:05:50.280 going to go to a vote in January. So Canadians need to email their MP and say, if you vote in favor of

00:05:56.240 C-9, I'm voting against you in the next election. Simple message. Because Bill C-9 would get rid of a

00:06:05.000 current requirement that before any Canadian gets criminally prosecuted over what they've said,

00:06:13.300 it's not just the local police and local Crown prosecutors who decide, but there's a review

00:06:18.260 process. The Attorney General has to approve of it. So we've seen one or two or three hate speech

00:06:27.240 prosecutions per decade. It's not used very often. But if Bill C-9 passes, it gets rid of that review

00:06:36.540 process and will be at the hand of the local police, local Crown can just decide to prosecute people

00:06:43.740 over their social media commentary. The definition of hate, it's an emotion. It remains vague. It's not

00:06:50.500 clear when you're crossing the line or not. Bill C-9 also gets rid of an exemption, a defense against

00:07:01.280 a prosecution is if you are in good faith, making an argument or expressing an opinion based on a

00:07:08.820 religious text. This was there to protect orthodox rabbis, evangelical pastors, Catholic priests

00:07:17.840 from prosecutions if they taught what their sacred scriptures say about homosexuality. Okay,

00:07:26.420 that's going to be gone with Bill C-9. So it's a threat to religious freedom as well, that it could

00:07:32.680 become illegal or borderline illegal for a Muslim imam, Catholic priest, orthodox rabbi to preach

00:07:40.740 their religion. That could be a hate crime. Let me ask you this. I'm sorry, go ahead. Go ahead.

00:07:47.700 Well, Mark Miller, the current Canadian identity minister, has stated publicly that he thinks that

00:07:55.060 certain passages from the Old Testament and the New Testament are hate speech. He has said that

00:08:00.960 publicly. Yes. I saw him. He was in a committee when he said it as well. Did you see the article

00:08:05.020 today in the National Post written by Anthony Housefather? Did not, unfortunately. Wow. Let

00:08:11.520 me just read a little bit of it for you here. Anthony Housefather, special to the National Post,

00:08:16.460 the Combating Hate Act actually protects communities of faith. Now, of course, Mr. Housefather is a liberal.

00:08:22.180 It enhances the rights of religious communities. It does not take them away. And of course, he hammers the

00:08:27.640 conservatives on this because they've been bringing this up quite a bit in committees over the last

00:08:31.960 week. I'll just read a short paragraph and people, I'll put a link in the description, but the only

00:08:36.160 people impacted by the amendment are those charged with willful promotion of hatred. In order for this

00:08:42.680 to occur, the Supreme Court of Canada has created a very high bar. Hatred is not simple dislike of or

00:08:48.620 hurting the feelings of or humiliating a group of people. It means an extreme emotion of vilification

00:08:54.800 and detestation. He goes on to talk about people who might be arrested by the police. And the

00:08:59.400 defendant could have argued that their promotion of hate was in good faith and expression or attempt

00:09:04.880 to establish by argument an opinion on a religious subject based on a belief in a religious text. Now,

00:09:11.260 they would not be able to do so. He goes on to say that people have never used this as an argument

00:09:15.180 before because, you know, generally religions don't preach hate. But like you said, are they redefining

00:09:21.460 what hate means here? Because that's the concern for me. I may say there are two genders and I have

00:09:27.100 somebody knocking on my door in the future and on what they call it in England is a non-crime hate

00:09:33.000 incident and off to jail you go, correct? You know, hate like extremism, like beauty is in the eye

00:09:42.800 of the beholder. Yeah. You and I could watch the same YouTube video and one of us could say,

00:09:47.820 oh, that's hateful. And the other person says, no, it's just an expression of opinion.

00:09:52.800 So it's extremely dangerous. Anthony Housefather is disregarding the fact that this current

00:10:00.720 religious text defense, it's not a blank check. If you, so let me give you a concrete example. So the

00:10:09.920 the Old Testament, the Torah and the New Testament very clearly denounces gay sex as sinful and says

00:10:17.920 two people of the same gender should not be having sex with each other. If you, if a rabbi, priest,

00:10:25.440 pastor, Muslim, imam was standing on a street corner saying that gay people should be killed,

00:10:32.680 they wouldn't be able to avail themselves of that religious defense. So it doesn't even work that

00:10:41.500 way. Where they could avail themselves of that defense is if it was a sermon on a Friday morning

00:10:49.420 in a mosque or Saturday morning in a synagogue or Sunday morning in a church. And if the religious

00:10:54.780 leader said, our scriptures teach that, you know, two people of the same sex shouldn't have sexual

00:11:00.720 intimacy, that they are then in that context, they're not going to be facing charges for hate

00:11:09.700 speech, for preaching what their sacred scriptures say. That's the only purpose of the defense. So

00:11:16.480 Housefather seems to be suggesting that, you know, because we got this defense, you can go and call

00:11:21.600 for the death of people. Well, no, you can't, you would be charged and convicted. And this religious

00:11:27.440 defense wouldn't help you out. We already have laws on the books against things like this. You know,

00:11:31.840 I say here, John, that I'm a free speech absolutist. I believe you should be able to say anything you

00:11:37.720 want as long as you're not calling for violence against somebody or a group of people, right?

00:11:42.680 That's how I feel about it. Now, my question to you is how do we draw the line here? And I'm going to

00:11:47.280 bring up something that's been rather prevalent over the last couple of years. We go back to October 7th,

00:11:51.220 you get the group of people standing on the streets yelling, you know, globalizing to Fada, from the

00:11:57.120 river to the sea, standing across the street from a Jewish community or in a Jewish community. Do those

00:12:02.820 people have protected speech? Well, actually, after October 7th, there was somebody in Calgary was

00:12:09.420 charged for, I don't know if it's for hate speech or incitement of violence or whatever, but somebody got

00:12:19.880 charged and arrested by police overseeing from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.

00:12:24.680 Those charges were withdrawn shortly thereafter. You know, it's a fine line here, John, right? It's a tough

00:12:35.340 one. Yeah. I believe that I don't have a right to control somebody else's vocal cords. And I personally,

00:12:45.420 I dislike that slogan and I think it is genocidal, but it's not clearly enough.

00:12:54.560 Like there's kind of a way, a way you can wiggle your way out by saying it's, it's a political slogan

00:12:59.720 calling for the establishment of a country. It's not, it's not saying quote, you know, death to the Jews

00:13:06.060 directly. Yeah. So, but under hate speech laws, you know, the police in Calgary could have chosen not

00:13:15.160 to withdraw. They could have done a prosecution that would have required the consent of Alberta's

00:13:19.800 justice minister or attorney general. That person could have been prosecuted, but then you get into,

00:13:26.900 okay, so whether he gets convicted or acquitted is going to depend largely on which judge he comes

00:13:32.760 before. Does the judge hearing the case think that that slogan's hateful or is the judge hearing that

00:13:37.960 case think that it's just an expression of opinion? Right. You know, I, I think about this and I always

00:13:44.860 think about the old saying, you know, I may not agree with what you say, but I'll fight to the

00:13:48.520 death for your right to say it, you know? And, and, and very often I'll tell people, I don't mind

00:13:55.260 people speaking, saying terrible things because it puts them out in the open as well. Otherwise they

00:14:00.960 hide in the shadows like a cockroach and they're still there. It's just that we're seeing these people

00:14:05.440 in the street right now. What do you expect to happen? Do you think all of these things are going

00:14:09.620 to be passed? Like you, I was watching your video again this morning and I mean, it's just an

00:14:13.600 unbelievable list of things. The online streaming act, the online news act, the online harms act,

00:14:18.380 the strong borders act, the critical cyber systems protection act, the combatting hate act. Again,

00:14:24.520 it's like they're flooding the zone with so many things at once. It's hard to keep track of these

00:14:29.260 things. And the average person doesn't even know this is happening.

00:14:31.520 That's what's, that's what's so darn scary about it, right? It's a death, it's death by a thousand

00:14:40.580 clicks. I mean, when, when the online streaming act, you know, there was lots of people, Professor

00:14:45.780 Michael Geist at the University of Ottawa, who's quite the expert on, on internet, the intersection

00:14:51.500 between the laws that govern the internet and our right to privacy, our right to free expression,

00:14:57.680 uh, very thoughtful guy. I've never met him, but you know, he and others said like the CRTC is getting

00:15:04.840 legal authority over Canadian internet as broadcasting. And yeah, there's some people

00:15:12.280 that objected, but you know, it's, uh, it's tough, right? Most people are busy that the cost of living

00:15:19.240 is, is high. Poverty is increasing. People are legitimately understandably focused on,

00:15:25.940 uh, earning a living, earning enough money to put food on the table. And yet at the same time,

00:15:33.400 uh, you know, there are a lot of people who are comfortable, who do have some spare time,

00:15:40.280 who choose maybe to not spend enough time following what's going on and maybe spending a little bit too

00:15:46.740 much time on Netflix. There are people who are financially comfortable, who do have spare time

00:15:52.140 to be, uh, watching what, what, what the politicians are doing, but we're, we're going to be a police

00:15:59.160 state by, by the end of 2026, you know, 12 months from now, we'll be a full-on police state like the

00:16:05.500 United Kingdom if all of this passes. Plus just, uh, just in the past few days, the Hill Times reported

00:16:12.220 that the government is planning to bring back the Online Harms Act, Bill C-63, which died with the

00:16:21.360 election in April, 2025. And this is legislation that would actually, uh, expressly empower the

00:16:29.300 federal cabinet to pass regulations, regulating content on the internet, enforced by a new digital

00:16:37.220 safety commission. And with, uh, the power to slap on multimillion dollar fines on internet service

00:16:45.960 providers that don't comply with the regulations passed by the federal cabinet, which are not

00:16:51.480 reviewed by parliament. There's no debate. There's no discussion. The regulations are issued. Uh,

00:16:57.400 it's outside of parliamentary scrutiny. That's Bill C-63. Uh, the government's been dropping hints

00:17:03.720 and they continue to, uh, you know, it's going to be brought back. So if you get C-11, C-18 already passed,

00:17:10.920 if you get bills two, eight, nine, uh, passed, and then C-63, we will be a full-on police state.

00:17:17.480 And, you know, maybe then people will wake up, I hope. But then it could be too late. They won't

00:17:22.440 be able to speak out at that time, will they? Becomes harder. I think in the United Kingdom,

00:17:27.480 I think you're still free to speak out against the current laws without getting arrested. So,

00:17:34.120 you know, there, there, there's always hope, right? The only thing,

00:17:37.960 the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing and for good people to

00:17:42.440 give up. And when we give up and quit, well, that's, you know, but as long as there's still

00:17:47.400 people that are fighting, then the tyrant cannot rest. There, there's, I have a saying that every

00:17:54.680 once in a while, you have to step across the line to find out where it is. But I feel this line when it

00:17:58.280 comes to speech has already moved beyond me and I've done nothing. I haven't moved a step here.

00:18:02.760 And what concerns me here as well, John, is when we're talking about England, because I've talked

00:18:07.000 about it here on my channel, I've shown videos of people getting arrested. It's a chilling effect

00:18:11.240 on people. You know, you had a woman who got arrested, a man rather, got arrested on the street

00:18:15.400 for saying nothing. He was praying silently. And because somebody was concerned about what they

00:18:22.040 were doing, the person got arrested because that person had been there before. They just put this

00:18:27.080 person in jail because they said absolutely nothing. They prayed silently and it scares people

00:18:32.360 into saying nothing. And that's really my concern here. And I'm really worried about this. Now,

00:18:37.800 I know that in your video last week, you talked about death by a thousand clicks, the rise of internet

00:18:43.080 censorship and control in Canada. You've got that available at your website. Is that correct?

00:18:47.400 Yeah. www.jccf.ca. So justice center, constitutional freedoms, jccf.ca.

00:18:54.760 Yeah. And we'll put a link in the description to that as well. I'm scared about this because of

00:18:58.280 what I do. I'm on, I'm on YouTube every day. Benjamin Franklin said, whoever would overthrow the

00:19:03.880 liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech. And I'm a person who can learn,

00:19:11.240 you can learn a lot by quotes. You just had one yourself there a little while ago, but this one

00:19:17.800 really concerns me. And I think people need to look into it. And your suggestion is get in touch with

00:19:21.720 your MP. Absolutely. Yeah. Contact your MP today and say, if you vote in favor of Bill C9,

00:19:28.760 I'm going to vote against you in the next election. And that will, that'll drive home the point.

00:19:33.880 I hope we have an election before all this is passed. I really do. I know you can't comment

00:19:40.600 on it. It's political, but I mean, look, we need to, we need to transform the culture. That's the

00:19:47.400 long-term project, right? Because if you've got a culture in which most Canadians understand with

00:19:52.200 their minds and cherish with their hearts, what our rights and freedoms are, then you're in good

00:19:56.200 shape because that's going to trickle up to the politicians, the lawyers, the judges, the universities,

00:20:02.120 and so on. If you've got a rotten culture, the elections don't matter that much, right? Because

00:20:09.240 you're going to have a whole crop of candidates of, of most or all parties that are not champions

00:20:15.240 for freedom. So it's that cultural change that you're doing with your podcast videocast that so

00:20:21.240 many good Canadians are doing. That's, what's going to win it at the end of the day. Can I ask you

00:20:26.200 something just before we leave? This is maybe a little bit off topic here. I've talked about this before

00:20:30.440 on the channel talking about the charter of rights and freedoms. We hear a lot about it these days.

00:20:35.480 And the section two is probably, you know, you should know really what your individual rights

00:20:40.760 are probably one to 15. And those rights, you should know what they are. And it's things like

00:20:45.720 freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the media, life, liberty, and security of person

00:20:51.240 is in there as well. Number two is probably the most important of all of them. But I've said this

00:20:56.920 before, I don't think the charter of rights and freedoms is worth the paper it's written on as

00:21:00.760 long as we have section one, which allows the government to take away your rights and freedoms.

00:21:06.040 We saw that happen a couple of years ago. And tell me if I'm wrong, am I correct in saying that?

00:21:12.200 Well, absolutely. Section one says that the Canadian charter of rights and freedoms guarantees the

00:21:19.000 freedom set out in it, subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as may be

00:21:26.200 demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society, which basically means that governments can

00:21:34.440 legally under the charter, they can pass laws that restrict our freedoms of expression, association,

00:21:42.680 peaceful assembly, conscience, religion, travel, mobility, the right to life, liberty, and security, the person,

00:21:50.360 right to bodily autonomy, and so on and so forth. And what happened during the lockdowns is a lot of

00:21:58.600 judges just rubber stamped the government violations of our charter freedoms. They wrote the media narrative

00:22:05.800 into their court rulings, even though the evidence was not there to support that media narrative.

00:22:11.160 The evidence was not in court, but the judges just parroted what they'd heard on the CBC,

00:22:17.480 wrote that into their rulings. So yeah, the charter, this is why I go back to the culture thing,

00:22:22.920 right? Because the charter is not worth the paper it's written on if you don't have a freedom-loving,

00:22:31.080 freedom-appreciating, freedom-understanding culture. And so this is where we've gone downhill over the past

00:22:37.160 50 years. And it's going to take a while to get us back, get ourselves back into good shape.

00:22:42.440 I remember the rainy day when that was signed on Parliament Hill. And I think it was one of the

00:22:48.360 last things that was added to the charter was section one. So they could do take away your

00:22:53.160 rights and they're called rights for a reason. There's things you shouldn't be able to take away.

00:22:57.160 You can't imagine this ever happening in the United States of America, where rights are given to you by

00:23:01.240 God, not by the government. John, it's a pleasure to talk to you. I hope you have a very merry

00:23:06.520 Christmas, a happy holidays as well. I hope to speak to you again in the future. And I hope this

00:23:11.160 issue, it doesn't grow, you know? And unfortunately, you said that maybe by the end of next year,

00:23:19.480 we may not have any of these rights at all. And that is rather frightening. But I appreciate you

00:23:24.600 letting us know about it and contact your MP, for goodness sakes. That's why they're there. Thanks

00:23:30.600 so much for this. Thanks, John. Merry Christmas to you and all of your viewers and listeners.

00:23:36.040 Thanks so much, John Carpe, President of the Justice Center. If you liked this video,

00:23:40.760 please give it a thumbs up, subscribe to the channel, ring the bell for notifications,

00:23:44.680 have a merry Christmas. I'll see you in the next one. There is a mug here.

John Bolton - December 24, 2025

Your RIGHTS GONE by the end of NEXT YEAR - John Carpay (Justice Centre)

Episode Stats

Length

Words per Minute

Word Count

Sentence Count

Hate Speech Sentences

Summary

Transcript