Juno News - November 29, 2020


Adam Skelly has the support of Canadians

Topics
Adam Skelly arrest and support police arrest Skelly
Mentioned
Adam Skelly Adamson Barbecue John Tory Pierre Trudeau John Diefenbaker
The Ford government interferes in the free market Criminalizing Everything

Episode Stats


Length

4 minutes

Words per minute

132.35

Word count

658

Sentence count

41


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In the wake of the arrest of a man who defied a lockdown order from Mayor John Tory, a new segment of the True North Radio Hour looks at civil disobedience. This week's episode features the story of Adam Skelly, the man who was arrested at the site of his barbecue in Etobicoke, Ontario.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Adam Skelly was arrested yesterday at the site of his restaurant, Adamson Barbecue, in Etobicoke.
00:00:11.840 His crime was to defy the COVID-19 lockdown orders of Mayor John Tory.
00:00:17.240 This morning, the restaurant site was surrounded by dozens of Toronto police officers,
00:00:22.740 and they had barricaded the site entirely with stanchions and fencing.
00:00:27.760 There were dozens of supporters of Skelly outside the police barricades,
00:00:33.400 sharing pizza and generally sharing to be what appeared to be a tailgate party in a parking lot.
00:00:40.440 Three days ago, no one really knew who Adam Skelly was.
00:00:44.980 Today, he is one of the most famous names in Canada.
00:00:49.020 Amazing what a little civil disobedience will do for you.
00:00:52.480 A GoFundMe account supporting Skelly has raised over $130,000 in its first 24 hours.
00:01:02.000 Clearly, Canadians support his position and not that of the draconian mayor of Toronto.
00:01:08.840 Skelly looks like the everyman Canadian.
00:01:11.760 He's a bit of a hoser, but I think that makes him a bit more endearing.
00:01:15.800 Wearing a grey pullover hoodie and a red and black Mackinac, people identify with him, standing up to big to government.
00:01:24.700 They cannot identify with the mayor of Toronto, John Tory, who issues edicts from on high and drags the police into it to support him.
00:01:34.820 Just as an aside, I have heard from a number of Toronto police officers who have said they wholeheartedly disagree with their department's position in all this
00:01:46.240 and say they are only doing their job and following orders in blockading Adamson's barbecue and arresting Skelly.
00:01:55.800 As of Friday morning, Skelly was facing 13 charges, including criminal charges of obstructing police.
00:02:02.440 It is the equivalent of trying to kill a gnat with a sledgehammer.
00:02:08.380 In a statement Thursday evening, Toronto Police Superintendent Dom Sinopoli described a situation around the restaurant as, quote, dynamic.
00:02:19.920 He finished his statement saying, rather lamely, I might add, quote,
00:02:24.620 But at the end of the day, if Mr. Skelly and others intent on contravening the law, we will take action, unquote.
00:02:33.900 The problem with all this is it just seems patently unfair.
00:02:38.680 There is no evidence of a single case of COVID-19 emanating from Adamson's barbecue.
00:02:44.120 In fact, from all accounts, Skelly has been following all the regulations and suggestions emanating from the health authorities
00:02:52.720 since staged reopening was allowed in the GTA in the spring.
00:02:58.240 He's just had enough.
00:03:00.640 When the latest lockdown measures were announced by the premier and the mayor, Skelly refused.
00:03:06.060 He was just getting back on his feet.
00:03:11.280 He'd followed all the rules and recommendations.
00:03:15.620 And yet, here he is.
00:03:17.960 Walmart and its restaurants were still open.
00:03:20.380 So was Costco and its snack bar.
00:03:22.600 But he couldn't serve up a barbecue beef on a bum for his customers?
00:03:28.400 It is this patent unfairness enforced by the jackboot of the state
00:03:32.900 that has captured the attention of the country.
00:03:36.760 The Canadian Bill of Rights was first brought in by Prime Minister John Diefenbaker in 1960.
00:03:44.180 That was followed up by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms by Pierre Elliott Trudeau in 1982.
00:03:51.980 The rights of Canadians are carved in stone in those documents.
00:03:56.860 They are not to be taken away by any government on a whim, which is exactly what this is.
00:04:02.880 Masks and lockdowns are just guesswork by public health bureaucrats in the absence of actual evidence of what's going on with the pandemic.
00:04:13.720 Equally, it would seem that orders for the first doses of vaccines will be going out within the next fortnight.
00:04:22.920 On the surface of things, it is hard to see the potential damage Adam Skelly is doing by selling a few barbecue sandwiches.
00:04:31.720 Yet, nearly a hundred Toronto police officers barricaded his restaurant and arrested him on Thursday.
00:04:43.100 If he's looking for a silver lining after being handcuffed and perked to a waiting police car,
00:04:49.460 it is that with that, he is now qualified to be Heritage Minister.
00:04:56.100 For True North, I'm Leo Knight.