Juno News - Canadian pastor’s imprisonment a violation of religious liberty

00:00:00.000 If I were to tell you the story without the details of the where and when,

00:00:11.140 you would think I was talking about North Korea or China or Cuba.

00:00:16.960 But no, I'm actually talking about Canada, a country which right now has a pastor behind bars

00:00:22.560 because he was exercising his right or his supposed right to religious liberty.

00:00:28.220 I mentioned this briefly at the end of the show earlier in the week

00:00:31.540 and I promised to delve into this in more detail today

00:00:34.180 because this is of critical importance not just to religious people

00:00:38.020 but to anyone in Canada who wants to avail themselves of their so-called constitutional freedoms.

00:00:45.860 At stake is his refusal, the government says, to comply with bail conditions.

00:00:50.820 His lawyer, James Kitchen from the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedom,

00:00:54.400 stresses that he never agreed to any such conditions so he couldn't actually be charged with violating them.

00:01:01.100 But regardless, with the trial date set for May 3rd,

00:01:03.700 Pastor Coates could find himself behind bars for another two and a half months almost.

00:01:09.940 Joining me on the line now to talk about this, the implications of it,

00:01:13.500 and more importantly, what's being done to push back against this

00:01:16.720 is John Carpe, President of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms.

00:01:21.080 John, thanks for joining me today. Just a terrible story.

00:01:23.720 Pastor Coates is in jail now. It's been more than a week.

00:01:28.240 And this is in, it's like we're on par with these repressive regimes

00:01:35.360 that 11 months ago we used to look down on as morally inferior.

00:01:40.340 And now we're locking up pastors.

00:01:42.480 We're locking up Canadians coming back from abroad. 1.00

00:01:45.920 And surprising level of support for those measures.

00:01:50.960 It's quite amazing.

00:01:52.480 A lot of people don't seem to cherish freedom or the free society at all.

00:01:58.180 That's a scary part.

00:01:59.900 I mean, I had mentioned in my intro that if I were to tell the details of the story

00:02:04.440 without giving the location, people would assume I was talking about one of those regimes

00:02:09.160 you just mentioned.

00:02:09.980 You know, North Korea, China, Cuba.

00:02:12.220 But here we are in Canada.

00:02:13.380 I noted a trial date has been set for May 3rd.

00:02:16.560 So this could be another two plus months of being behind bars here,

00:02:20.880 notwithstanding the application for release that his lawyers put forward.

00:02:25.060 But how did we get to this point?

00:02:26.700 I mean, for people that haven't followed this,

00:02:28.140 how do we get to the point where a pastor is behind bars in this particular case?

00:02:32.600 I think it's fear of COVID.

00:02:34.940 I think the fear mongering back in March of 2020 has been very successful.

00:02:40.560 And once people are in a state of fear, they, to a large extent,

00:02:45.720 they stop listening to facts, reason, logic.

00:02:50.940 Fear diminishes our capacity to think.

00:02:54.700 And when people are in a state of fear,

00:02:57.620 they want a very simple solution that can be implemented immediately.

00:03:03.100 They don't, you know, when you're afraid,

00:03:05.280 that's not the time for nuanced, careful thinking about possible options

00:03:09.560 and pros and cons.

00:03:11.680 And so, unfortunately, the fear is being perpetuated

00:03:15.040 by the government's propaganda machine, which is the mainstream media.

00:03:19.660 They are talking about all these case numbers every day,

00:03:22.760 and that's keeping Canadians in a state of panic,

00:03:25.760 even though these PCR tests were never designed to diagnose COVID,

00:03:31.240 and they have false positive rates of 90%.

00:03:32.560 But still, you get the scary headlines.

00:03:35.480 Oh, you know, another 3,000 cases in Ontario,

00:03:38.660 and 5,000 cases in Quebec, and 2,000 cases in BC.

00:03:42.860 So people in a state of fear, I think that's a big problem,

00:03:46.180 and that is why we have people in jail. 0.96

00:03:50.580 I want to talk about the case specifically, though, here, John,

00:03:53.920 because what's happened is the Alberta government

00:03:56.560 has put in very significant restrictions.

00:03:58.900 They allowed churches to open with a reduced capacity.

00:04:03.080 I think it was 15%.

00:04:04.320 Why was that not enough?

00:04:06.020 Why was it not viable just for this church or any other church

00:04:09.400 to say, all right, it's not ideal, but we can still open.

00:04:12.260 We can still do this and follow these rules.

00:04:14.780 Well, it's arbitrary when you consider that restaurants

00:04:18.220 are not limited to 15% of the fire code.

00:04:23.040 The Walmarts and superstores are open.

00:04:25.180 The liquor stores are open.

00:04:27.140 These rules are so arbitrary, and they're unscientific.

00:04:31.880 I mean, I've asked the Alberta government repeatedly,

00:04:35.700 on what basis do you believe that asymptomatic people

00:04:39.460 are spreaders of the virus?

00:04:41.980 Show me the science.

00:04:43.620 And you just get stonewalled.

00:04:44.820 Every question you ask of the government about lockdowns,

00:04:48.180 about their science, you get stonewalled, you get no response.

00:04:52.160 So I think, you know, religious freedom is one very important aspect of it,

00:05:00.220 but there's another part of it that Pastor Coates, 0.99

00:05:03.540 like so many other Albertans, he sees that these measures are stupid, 0.99

00:05:08.120 they're not bringing about any good, they're arbitrary, 0.99

00:05:11.920 and they're futile because there's not a single example in history

00:05:18.740 of any society, country, province that succeeded in vanquishing a virus

00:05:25.760 by placing all kinds of restrictions on the entire population for 11 months.

00:05:32.180 With Pastor Coates' case, he is being accused of violating bail conditions.

00:05:40.400 Now, I know that your lawyer, or not your lawyer, rather,

00:05:44.380 but I know that at your organization, James Kitchen,

00:05:47.020 who's taking up this case, has argued that he never agreed to any conditions.

00:05:50.940 Explain this, because I think this is an area where the mainstream media

00:05:54.060 is distorting a little bit about what's happening.

00:05:57.140 Well, he was, you know, the police have been, the health authorities

00:06:03.540 and law enforcement, and I think including in some cases police as well,

00:06:07.640 police and health authorities have been harassing the church for many months,

00:06:13.760 and at one point the police said that the pastor had made an undertaking,

00:06:21.060 a solemn promise to refrain from having normal church services

00:06:26.040 as opposed to the, you know, government restrictions.

00:06:30.940 But he never made such a commitment.

00:06:33.380 That's more of a technical detail.

00:06:35.100 The reason he's in jail right now is because he will not violate his conscience

00:06:42.080 by making a solemn promise to refrain from having regular church services.

00:06:48.520 That's the bottom line.

00:06:49.840 And some people have said, well, he's in jail by choice.

00:06:51.920 And there's a kernel of truth in that insofar as if he agreed and said,

00:06:58.000 okay, we're just going to obey these unscientific and irrational health orders,

00:07:05.700 if he made that commitment, he could be out of jail.

00:07:08.820 But the bigger problem, though, is that Jason Kenney's laws and policies

00:07:13.180 have put the pastor into this situation where he has to choose

00:07:17.780 between following his conscience or getting out of jail.

00:07:23.360 Now, those two things in a society that values or says it values religious liberty 0.52

00:07:28.400 are not supposed to be in conflict, to follow the law and follow your conscience.

00:07:32.780 Yet here we are.

00:07:34.260 Well, and Alberta's premier, Jason Kenney, gave a speech back in 2014

00:07:39.420 to lawyers in Toronto and was all about St. Thomas More and conscience rights

00:07:46.820 and the spirit of the age and resisting the spirit of the age.

00:07:50.880 And right now, the spirit of the age is saying that everybody must participate actively

00:07:56.040 and enthusiastically in this futile quest to get rid of a virus.

00:08:01.360 And if you don't participate, well, shame on you.

00:08:03.660 You're a bad person and you could end up in jail.

00:08:08.460 And so it's kind of ironic that Alberta's premier was the big defender of conscience rights

00:08:13.120 and has a reputation that way.

00:08:15.820 And now in Jason Kenney's Alberta, we've got a pastor in jail whose conscience is telling him

00:08:21.300 that the pastor's conscience is telling him that he should obey God

00:08:26.340 and not the unjust law that's not grounded in science.

00:08:31.020 You and I have talked about this in the past.

00:08:35.280 One of the great challenges in constitutional cases in Canada

00:08:38.360 is that as clear as the constitutional right to religious practice

00:08:42.120 and right to assembly is there,

00:08:43.780 we also have the so-called reasonable limits section of the charter,

00:08:47.200 which often is used to circumvent a lot of these other liberties.

00:08:51.460 And I guess the question is, when arguing this,

00:08:53.920 how much is the court licensed to just say,

00:08:57.000 you know what, it's a pandemic, we've got to be careful?

00:08:59.360 Well, I think that goes to the heart of the evidence that the government's not putting forward.

00:09:05.100 It goes to the heart of the fear-mongering in March.

00:09:07.780 I mean, in March of 2020, not March next month.

00:09:13.460 The COVID is real.

00:09:16.480 People are dying with COVID.

00:09:19.820 But the fear of COVID is exaggerated and it's unwarranted and it's unnecessary.

00:09:25.040 And one good thing about the court actions,

00:09:28.020 and we have several on the globe, British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba.

00:09:33.560 We are going to force the government to have to explain itself and come up with the science.

00:09:41.500 And the government's going to be forced, rather than just asserting,

00:09:44.480 oh, you know, the virus is really deadly, it's really scary, the lockdowns are working,

00:09:49.520 the lockdowns are saving lives.

00:09:51.140 Rather than just making these assertions,

00:09:53.980 the government's going to have to back everything up with evidence.

00:09:57.740 And even if we lose these court cases,

00:10:00.120 it'll be interesting to see governments for the first time

00:10:03.060 having to actually produce evidence to back up their claims.

00:10:07.120 One of the things that the government used very early on in this is,

00:10:12.380 well, you know, we don't know, so we need to be excessively broad

00:10:15.160 and really cast a very wide net as we learn more about this.

00:10:19.840 In your legal assessment, does that fly?

00:10:22.900 Caution without evidence?

00:10:25.180 Yes, on a temporary basis.

00:10:28.120 But not a year in?

00:10:29.580 And not when we've got all the facts.

00:10:31.160 We know 11 months later, we know that the vulnerable population is,

00:10:37.640 you know, somebody, say, 82 years old, in a nursing home,

00:10:41.220 already dying of cancer, heart disease, emphysema, diabetes, etc.

00:10:45.140 So if you're in a nursing home and you're already dying,

00:10:48.620 COVID is going to shorten your life by four months or six months or eight months.

00:10:53.300 However, we also know that children, youth, teenagers, 90% of the population,

00:10:57.740 your chance of getting killed while driving a car is much higher

00:11:02.960 than your chance of getting killed by COVID.

00:11:06.120 So we know the facts.

00:11:07.760 And in a courtroom setting, the government is going to have to produce these facts

00:11:12.160 and then try to explain why we should all be afraid based on the facts.

00:11:18.800 As far as Pastor Coates goes, am I correct that he is behind bars until May 3rd

00:11:24.500 unless some court intervention happens that releases him prior to that?

00:11:29.240 Yes, he would be.

00:11:30.520 As things stand right now, he's going to be locked up for the next eight weeks or so or longer.

00:11:37.140 However, we're filing an appeal in the Alberta Court of Queen's Bench

00:11:41.300 to secure his release.

00:11:44.720 And that application will hopefully be heard fairly soon,

00:11:51.400 like in the first week of March, hopefully.

00:11:54.280 So we're hoping to get him out of jail before the May 3rd trial.

00:11:57.540 That's the goal.

00:11:59.100 Has there been any documented outbreak of COVID at this church?

00:12:03.180 I'm curious.

00:12:03.860 No.

00:12:05.620 So it's not even like the government is responding to something

00:12:08.820 that was a demonstrable public health risk.

00:12:11.060 No, and, you know, I've, Dina Hinshaw, the chief medical officer in Alberta,

00:12:17.840 was asked what scientific evidence is there for treating churches differently

00:12:23.420 from, say, restaurants.

00:12:25.300 And she had none.

00:12:26.860 All she had was just anecdotal evidence and said,

00:12:29.380 well, you know, last July there was a conference somewhere

00:12:32.840 and, you know, and there was an outbreak.

00:12:36.240 Like, it's like, okay, so she doesn't have scientific evidence

00:12:43.080 to back up why churches should be treated differently from restaurants.

00:12:47.120 And that's the same argument in British Columbia in our court case.

00:12:50.280 The government there is treating churches different from restaurants,

00:12:53.720 and the government has no evidence that there's outbreaks in churches.

00:12:57.460 One of the big challenges, and I'm sure you've probably had this problem as well,

00:13:03.360 John, is that I have not been able to just keep track of how many different,

00:13:07.960 what I would say are violations of liberty are taking place.

00:13:10.900 I know earlier on it was businesses that were being hit with lockdown fines

00:13:14.840 and then churches that were being given these orders and businesses.

00:13:18.420 I mean, how are you keeping on top of this?

00:13:20.020 Because I know that you've had to turn down cases

00:13:22.920 because there are just so many of them.

00:13:24.540 We have right now well over 100 ticket cases,

00:13:29.240 which are where somebody, you know, got $1,000, $1,200 or more ticket

00:13:35.240 just for peacefully exercising their charter freedoms of association

00:13:39.540 and assembly and so on.

00:13:41.880 So you have over 100 of those.

00:13:43.580 We've got very large court actions in Manitoba, Alberta, and British Columbia.

00:13:49.220 And then apart from the lockdown stuff,

00:13:55.180 we have all of our other court cases on, you know, religious freedom

00:14:00.000 and free expression and campus free speech.

00:14:03.460 So we need to hire another two, three, four lawyers as soon as possible to...

00:14:09.920 So it's just...

00:14:12.720 Well, if you're a lawyer with a Pension for Civil Liberties listening in,

00:14:15.760 you've got the all-call there, send John your resume.

00:14:18.520 You know, it's funny when you talk...

00:14:19.920 I mean, it's not funny, actually.

00:14:20.980 But when you talk about these lockdown things,

00:14:22.840 up until a couple of months ago,

00:14:25.140 when we were seeing people get these fines for $800, $900, $1,000,

00:14:29.140 there was, I think, a sense that, you know what,

00:14:31.640 a lot of these are not going to stand up in court.

00:14:33.620 That was the belief.

00:14:34.540 And you still need to fight them.

00:14:35.900 But the belief was that these things are absurd.

00:14:38.280 We're not talking about something that can just be ripped up here

00:14:41.080 when you've put a man behind bars.

00:14:42.820 And that, I think, is the great injustice here,

00:14:45.300 is that if you get a ticket for $1,500,

00:14:47.760 there's an appeal of that.

00:14:49.280 You don't have to pay it if you're fighting it.

00:14:51.220 You can never get two months of your life back

00:14:54.080 that you were put behind bars

00:14:55.720 for daring to exercise your religious liberty.

00:14:58.580 Well, this would be like, you know,

00:15:00.300 somebody that's getting a lot of speeding tickets,

00:15:02.120 and then the government says,

00:15:04.300 well, we're going to take away your right to drive

00:15:08.660 because you might speed again.

00:15:09.880 Like, when you get a speeding ticket, the officer doesn't ask you,

00:15:14.080 you know, do you solemnly swear that you will never speed again?

00:15:17.180 I mean, if he does ask you that, it's, you know,

00:15:19.640 redundant and you don't have to answer it.

00:15:22.120 But here, the government's essentially saying to Pastor Coates,

00:15:25.920 you have to promise to adhere to these health orders,

00:15:30.660 and if you don't make that promise, you're going to be locked up.

00:15:34.020 And that's very different from issuing more tickets

00:15:35.960 and more tickets and more tickets,

00:15:37.260 because, as you said, the Alberta government

00:15:39.560 could just issue more tickets to the church,

00:15:42.020 and, you know, we will take,

00:15:44.120 we will defend against those charges,

00:15:46.260 and the government's going to have a hard time

00:15:47.960 defending its health orders in court.

00:15:51.520 Yeah, and it says a lot about his character, by the way,

00:15:54.140 that he was given the magic words to say

00:15:56.380 that would not put him behind bars,

00:15:58.220 and he didn't say them because he didn't believe them.

00:15:59.960 Well, if Jason Kenney was here on this interview,

00:16:04.660 you know, saying the magic words was like St. Thomas More,

00:16:08.860 refused to say the magic words.

00:16:10.820 I recognize King Henry VIII as the head of the church in England.

00:16:15.120 Those were the magic words.

00:16:16.440 And he said, like, no, I cannot say that.

00:16:21.460 And he lost his head over it.

00:16:22.840 And so, yeah, it's,

00:16:25.600 there's always the danger of tyranny in human history,

00:16:31.800 and it's not limited to medieval England,

00:16:33.940 because we certainly have it right now in Alberta today.

00:16:38.720 Well, thankfully, we haven't gotten to the decapitation stage just yet.

00:16:42.340 But as you know, history shows that

00:16:44.160 heresy against the government has a very steep penalty.

00:16:47.540 John Carpe, president of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms,

00:16:51.020 thanks for taking up this case and for coming on today, John.

00:16:53.820 Glad to be with you, Andrew.

00:16:55.500 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:16:57.480 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - February 26, 2021

Canadian pastor’s imprisonment a violation of religious liberty

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