Juno News - February 26, 2021Canadian pastor’s imprisonment a violation of religious liberty
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Summary
Pastor John Coates is serving a sentence that could keep him behind bars for another two and a half months. His lawyer, James Kitchen from the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedom, argues that Pastor Coates was exercising his constitutional right to free speech and exercise of his First Amendment rights.
Transcript
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If I were to tell you the story without the details of the where and when,
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you would think I was talking about North Korea or China or Cuba.
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But no, I'm actually talking about Canada, a country which right now has a pastor behind bars
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because he was exercising his right or his supposed right to religious liberty.
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I mentioned this briefly at the end of the show earlier in the week
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and I promised to delve into this in more detail today
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because this is of critical importance not just to religious people
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but to anyone in Canada who wants to avail themselves of their so-called constitutional freedoms.
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At stake is his refusal, the government says, to comply with bail conditions.
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His lawyer, James Kitchen from the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedom,
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stresses that he never agreed to any such conditions so he couldn't actually be charged with violating them.
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But regardless, with the trial date set for May 3rd,
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Pastor Coates could find himself behind bars for another two and a half months almost.
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Joining me on the line now to talk about this, the implications of it,
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and more importantly, what's being done to push back against this
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is John Carpe, President of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms.
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John, thanks for joining me today. Just a terrible story.
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Pastor Coates is in jail now. It's been more than a week.
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And this is in, it's like we're on par with these repressive regimes
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that 11 months ago we used to look down on as morally inferior.
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We're locking up Canadians coming back from abroad.
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And surprising level of support for those measures.
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A lot of people don't seem to cherish freedom or the free society at all.
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I mean, I had mentioned in my intro that if I were to tell the details of the story
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without giving the location, people would assume I was talking about one of those regimes
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So this could be another two plus months of being behind bars here,
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notwithstanding the application for release that his lawyers put forward.
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how do we get to the point where a pastor is behind bars in this particular case?
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I think the fear mongering back in March of 2020 has been very successful.
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And once people are in a state of fear, they, to a large extent,
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they want a very simple solution that can be implemented immediately.
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that's not the time for nuanced, careful thinking about possible options
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And so, unfortunately, the fear is being perpetuated
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by the government's propaganda machine, which is the mainstream media.
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They are talking about all these case numbers every day,
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and that's keeping Canadians in a state of panic,
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even though these PCR tests were never designed to diagnose COVID,
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and 5,000 cases in Quebec, and 2,000 cases in BC.
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So people in a state of fear, I think that's a big problem,
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I want to talk about the case specifically, though, here, John,
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because what's happened is the Alberta government
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They allowed churches to open with a reduced capacity.
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Why was it not viable just for this church or any other church
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to say, all right, it's not ideal, but we can still open.
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Well, it's arbitrary when you consider that restaurants
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These rules are so arbitrary, and they're unscientific.
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I mean, I've asked the Alberta government repeatedly,
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on what basis do you believe that asymptomatic people
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Every question you ask of the government about lockdowns,
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about their science, you get stonewalled, you get no response.
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So I think, you know, religious freedom is one very important aspect of it,
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but there's another part of it that Pastor Coates,
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like so many other Albertans, he sees that these measures are stupid,
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they're not bringing about any good, they're arbitrary,
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and they're futile because there's not a single example in history
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of any society, country, province that succeeded in vanquishing a virus
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by placing all kinds of restrictions on the entire population for 11 months.
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With Pastor Coates' case, he is being accused of violating bail conditions.
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Now, I know that your lawyer, or not your lawyer, rather,
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but I know that at your organization, James Kitchen,
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who's taking up this case, has argued that he never agreed to any conditions.
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Explain this, because I think this is an area where the mainstream media
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is distorting a little bit about what's happening.
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Well, he was, you know, the police have been, the health authorities
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and law enforcement, and I think including in some cases police as well,
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police and health authorities have been harassing the church for many months,
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and at one point the police said that the pastor had made an undertaking,
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a solemn promise to refrain from having normal church services
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as opposed to the, you know, government restrictions.
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The reason he's in jail right now is because he will not violate his conscience
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by making a solemn promise to refrain from having regular church services.
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And some people have said, well, he's in jail by choice.
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And there's a kernel of truth in that insofar as if he agreed and said,
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okay, we're just going to obey these unscientific and irrational health orders,
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if he made that commitment, he could be out of jail.
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But the bigger problem, though, is that Jason Kenney's laws and policies
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have put the pastor into this situation where he has to choose
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between following his conscience or getting out of jail.
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Now, those two things in a society that values or says it values religious liberty
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are not supposed to be in conflict, to follow the law and follow your conscience.
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Well, and Alberta's premier, Jason Kenney, gave a speech back in 2014
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to lawyers in Toronto and was all about St. Thomas More and conscience rights
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and the spirit of the age and resisting the spirit of the age.
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And right now, the spirit of the age is saying that everybody must participate actively
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and enthusiastically in this futile quest to get rid of a virus.
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And if you don't participate, well, shame on you.
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You're a bad person and you could end up in jail.
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And so it's kind of ironic that Alberta's premier was the big defender of conscience rights
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And now in Jason Kenney's Alberta, we've got a pastor in jail whose conscience is telling him
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that the pastor's conscience is telling him that he should obey God
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and not the unjust law that's not grounded in science.
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One of the great challenges in constitutional cases in Canada
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is that as clear as the constitutional right to religious practice
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we also have the so-called reasonable limits section of the charter,
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which often is used to circumvent a lot of these other liberties.
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And I guess the question is, when arguing this,
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you know what, it's a pandemic, we've got to be careful?
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Well, I think that goes to the heart of the evidence that the government's not putting forward.
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It goes to the heart of the fear-mongering in March.
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I mean, in March of 2020, not March next month.
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But the fear of COVID is exaggerated and it's unwarranted and it's unnecessary.
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and we have several on the globe, British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba.
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We are going to force the government to have to explain itself and come up with the science.
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And the government's going to be forced, rather than just asserting,
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oh, you know, the virus is really deadly, it's really scary, the lockdowns are working,
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the government's going to have to back everything up with evidence.
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it'll be interesting to see governments for the first time
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having to actually produce evidence to back up their claims.
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One of the things that the government used very early on in this is,
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well, you know, we don't know, so we need to be excessively broad
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and really cast a very wide net as we learn more about this.
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We know 11 months later, we know that the vulnerable population is,
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you know, somebody, say, 82 years old, in a nursing home,
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already dying of cancer, heart disease, emphysema, diabetes, etc.
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So if you're in a nursing home and you're already dying,
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COVID is going to shorten your life by four months or six months or eight months.
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However, we also know that children, youth, teenagers, 90% of the population,
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your chance of getting killed while driving a car is much higher
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And in a courtroom setting, the government is going to have to produce these facts
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and then try to explain why we should all be afraid based on the facts.
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As far as Pastor Coates goes, am I correct that he is behind bars until May 3rd
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unless some court intervention happens that releases him prior to that?
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As things stand right now, he's going to be locked up for the next eight weeks or so or longer.
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However, we're filing an appeal in the Alberta Court of Queen's Bench
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And that application will hopefully be heard fairly soon,
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So we're hoping to get him out of jail before the May 3rd trial.
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Has there been any documented outbreak of COVID at this church?
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So it's not even like the government is responding to something
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No, and, you know, I've, Dina Hinshaw, the chief medical officer in Alberta,
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was asked what scientific evidence is there for treating churches differently
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All she had was just anecdotal evidence and said,
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well, you know, last July there was a conference somewhere
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Like, it's like, okay, so she doesn't have scientific evidence
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to back up why churches should be treated differently from restaurants.
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And that's the same argument in British Columbia in our court case.
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The government there is treating churches different from restaurants,
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and the government has no evidence that there's outbreaks in churches.
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One of the big challenges, and I'm sure you've probably had this problem as well,
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John, is that I have not been able to just keep track of how many different,
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what I would say are violations of liberty are taking place.
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I know earlier on it was businesses that were being hit with lockdown fines
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and then churches that were being given these orders and businesses.
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Because I know that you've had to turn down cases
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which are where somebody, you know, got $1,000, $1,200 or more ticket
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just for peacefully exercising their charter freedoms of association
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We've got very large court actions in Manitoba, Alberta, and British Columbia.
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we have all of our other court cases on, you know, religious freedom
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So we need to hire another two, three, four lawyers as soon as possible to...
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Well, if you're a lawyer with a Pension for Civil Liberties listening in,
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you've got the all-call there, send John your resume.
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when we were seeing people get these fines for $800, $900, $1,000,
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there was, I think, a sense that, you know what,
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a lot of these are not going to stand up in court.
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But the belief was that these things are absurd.
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We're not talking about something that can just be ripped up here
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And that, I think, is the great injustice here,
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You don't have to pay it if you're fighting it.
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somebody that's getting a lot of speeding tickets,
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well, we're going to take away your right to drive
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Like, when you get a speeding ticket, the officer doesn't ask you,
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you know, do you solemnly swear that you will never speed again?
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I mean, if he does ask you that, it's, you know,
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But here, the government's essentially saying to Pastor Coates,
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you have to promise to adhere to these health orders,
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and if you don't make that promise, you're going to be locked up.
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And that's very different from issuing more tickets
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Yeah, and it says a lot about his character, by the way,
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and he didn't say them because he didn't believe them.
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Well, if Jason Kenney was here on this interview,
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you know, saying the magic words was like St. Thomas More,
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I recognize King Henry VIII as the head of the church in England.
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there's always the danger of tyranny in human history,
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because we certainly have it right now in Alberta today.
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Well, thankfully, we haven't gotten to the decapitation stage just yet.
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heresy against the government has a very steep penalty.
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John Carpe, president of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms,
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thanks for taking up this case and for coming on today, John.
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Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.
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Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.