Juno News - February 25, 2021Changing Hearts and Minds
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Summary
Pastor Aaron Coates has been in jail for over a week, and could be behind bars for another two and a half months. His lawyer, James Kitchen from the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedom, stresses that he never agreed to bail conditions, so he couldn t actually be charged with violating them. But regardless, with the trial date set for May 3rd, Pastor Coates could find himself behind bars another two-and-a-half months.
Transcript
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This is The Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.
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Coming up, how practicing religious freedom landed a pastor behind bars,
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winning hearts and minds over in the gunfight, and woke television.
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Welcome, everyone, to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.
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This is The Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.
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Good to have you tuned into the program as we delve into an issue
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that 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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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 promise 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
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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 Center for Constitutional Freedom,
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stresses that he never agreed to any such conditions,
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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 Center for Constitutional Freedoms.
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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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and now we're locking up pastors, we're locking up Canadians coming back from abroad.
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And surprising level of support for those measures, it's quite amazing.
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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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people would assume I was talking about one of those regimes you just mentioned,
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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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they, to a large extent, they stop listening to facts, reason, logic.
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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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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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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, who's taking up this case,
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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
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whose conscience is telling him that the pastor's conscience is telling him
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that he should obey God 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
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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 go, British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba,
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we are going to force the government to have to explain itself
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rather than just asserting, oh, you know, the virus is really deadly,
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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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In your legal assessment, does that fly, caution without evidence?
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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,
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your chance of getting killed while driving a car
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is much higher than your chance of getting killed by COVID.
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So we know the facts and in a courtroom setting,
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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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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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he's got 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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Dina Hinshaw, the chief medical officer in Alberta,
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for treating churches differently from, say, restaurants.
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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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She doesn't have scientific evidence to back up
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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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and I'm sure you've probably had this problem as well, John,
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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
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we've got very large court actions in Manitoba, Alberta,
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and British Columbia and then apart from the lockdown stuff,
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we have all of our other court cases on, you know,
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religious freedom and free expression and campus free speech.
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So we need to hire another two, three, four lawyers as soon as possible.
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Well, if you're a lawyer with a Pension for Civil Liberties listening in,
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You know, it's funny when you talk, I mean, it's not funny, actually,
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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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That was the belief and you still need to fight them.
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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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is that if you get a ticket for $1,500, there's an appeal of that.
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You don't have to pay it if you're fighting it.
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that you were put behind bars for daring to exercise your religious liberty.
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somebody that's getting a lot of speeding tickets
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and then the government says, 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, redundant
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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 and more tickets and more tickets.
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Because as you said, the Alberta government could just issue more tickets to the church.
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And, you know, we will take, we will defend against those charges.
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And the government's going to have a hard time defending its health orders in court.
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Yeah, and it says a lot about his character, by the way,
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that he was given the magic words to say that would not put him behind bars.
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And he didn't say them because he didn't believe them.
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Well, Jason Kenney was here on this interview, you know,
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saying the magic words was like St. Thomas More refused to say the magic words.
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I recognize King Henry VIII as the head of the church in England.
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So, yeah, it's, 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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But as you know, history shows that heresy against the government has a very steep penalty.
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John Carpe, president of the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms.
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Thanks for taking up this case and for coming on today, John.
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Pastor James Coates of the Grace Life Church in Edmonton,
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still behind bars because he wouldn't tell the government that he,
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When we come back, more of The Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.
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I actually spoke a fair bit a couple of weeks back about the liberal gun bill, C-21,
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which is going after law-abiding gun owners.
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And I took aim at conservative leader Aaron O'Toole for giving what I thought was a very
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meandering and non-committal answer to what he would do for law-abiding gun owners.
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Now, that question and answer exchange was in a press conference Aaron O'Toole held that
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And it actually triggered a huge amount of conversation and, in some case, criticism towards
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But there were a lot of gun owners that were saying, hey, listen, Aaron, you said you were
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And other gun owners who said, well, listen, this is just how politics works.
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He can't be the guy that's jumping up and down saying, I'm going to give the rednecks
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That's how it would be characterized by the media.
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But I was very pleased a few days ago to see Aaron O'Toole give a very firm and committed
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And I wanted to play that for you because this is exactly what I had said on the show
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This is what I said I wanted him to talk about.
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And I'm not saying he did it because I told him that.
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But I do think he realized, seeing a lot of the conversation online, that he needed to
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The extent the Trudeau Liberals are willing to go to divide Canadians is disappointing
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The way the Liberals seek to demonize law-abiding firearms owners while at the same time introducing
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new measures to actually reduce sentences for criminals charged with illegal gun offenses
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Canadians deserve certainty and competence from their government.
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An O'Toole government will repeal C-71, C-21 and the May 2020 Ordering Council.
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I will review existing firearms legislation to ensure it focuses on dealing with criminals
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rather than making life more difficult for law-abiding firearms owners.
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I will restore mandatory prison times for criminals that use a firearm in the commission of a crime.
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And I will significantly increase funding for border security to crack down on illegal firearm
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Now that is a perfectly sensible and actually a laudable commitment to firearms.
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He's saying we're going to roll back all the dangerous anti-fact and anti-gun owner policies
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that the Trudeau government has put in place, including the Order and Council last year,
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which summarily banned 1,500 models of so-called assault rifles,
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but also focus on where the crime is taking place.
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Focus on guns that are being used in crimes rather than on law-abiding gun owners whose
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firearms have never been within five kilometers of a crime that's taking place.
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But if that's the position and it's on the record, well, he is the leader, then I'm very
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But I do think there is an important discussion to be had along the lines of what I was bringing
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up earlier about the divide within the gun-owning community about this.
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Tracy Wilson, who I've had on the show before, she's a fantastic woman and a fantastic advocate
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for gun owners, did a live stream in which she talked about the press conference, which
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at the time was very much exploding in this world.
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And she had said that she doesn't want him to talk about guns at all during the election
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just for the purposes of making gun owners feel better.
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And I want you to take a listen to a snippet of her live stream.
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The title of this video is, I don't want Aaron O'Toole to talk about guns and neither
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Elections are not going to be won on giving guns back.
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Yes, we're going to vote for that because our guns are at stake here.
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But, moose, but the average Canadian is not going to vote for us to get our guns back.
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In fact, they might actually vote the opposite.
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This week, Andrew Lawton asked, he's an independent journalist, he asked a question of Aaron O'Toole
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And he basically asked him to reaffirm the fact that he would overturn the OIC.
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And at the same time, he asked about overturning C-21, which are two separate topics.
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So it should have been separated because they're two different issues.
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But in any event, Andrew is a great friend to the firearms community.
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We all want to have our fears and our insecurities subsided.
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And this is going to be hard for some people to hear.
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I stay up at night worrying about you, worrying about me, worrying about our guns, worrying
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about the future of the country, worrying about an election.
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And the thing is, is that the majority of Canadians, they don't care.
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Whether or not they believe that gun bans against us would reduce crime, that's an entirely
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different topic from do they actually want us to keep our guns.
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Like I said, I mean, people can disagree or agree on specific tactics, but no one can
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deny Tracy is a phenomenal advocate and a tireless advocate.
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She literally, if you're friends with her on Facebook, as I am, you'll see she's working
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So when she says something like this, people need to listen.
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But the reason I bring that up is because there's a lot of truth to that idea that if a
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politician is going to walk into what is basically a big old trap, and we know the media loves
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to set those, you want to try to get them out of it.
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Some try to avoid giving a particular position on the issues.
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When you do that, you oftentimes create problems on the other side in what happened with the
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press conference, where someone gives an answer that angers the people that are, some people
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theorize, supposed to be on the receiving end of a wink wink in this.
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So I'm of the mind that we need to have honesty, and we need to have truth, and we need to have
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And I want politicians who are unafraid to take the bull by the horns and say, this is what
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There is a lot of media backlash towards any conservative politician for any number of issues.
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Guns are going to be one, social issues are going to be another.
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It's never been more important to lay the cultural groundwork for a lot of these issues
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so that they do not become so toxic politically.
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This is what a lot of social conservative groups are doing.
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It's not just about getting people to vote a certain way.
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It's actually about changing hearts and minds, changing the culture, so that if a politician
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does speak up and says, I'm pro-life, they aren't vilified and pilloried.
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You've got 2 million licensed gun owners in Canada, in a country of 36, 37 million people.
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Most people in the country have never shot a gun.
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A lot of people, especially in cities, which is where a lot of the politicians are coming
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from, and which is where a lot of the journalists writing about guns are coming from, have never
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seen a gun, nor do they even know that firearms are a way of life for so many people.
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It's about family-owned gun businesses in cities and in small towns.
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It's about individual hobbyists and collectors.
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The people who own guns, the people who are affected by gun bans and restrictions that
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only go after the law-abiding are your friends, your neighbors, your family members, and they
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are just ordinary people who right now are being completely assaulted by the government's
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I think the political discussion is important, but the cultural discussion is also important.
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And for the last while, I've been grappling about the question of what can I do about
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You may remember back in the summer, I was in Ottawa for the Integrity March, which was
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put on by the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights, Tracy Wilson's group, and Rod Giltakas,
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And they had thousands and thousands and thousands of gun owners from all over the country, as far
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away as the Yukon, you may remember, to stand up to politicians and say,
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hey, you can't just walk all over us like this.
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Fast forward a couple of months, and we have Bill C-21, which we talked about last week.
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People in Canada who aren't part of this community need to understand that there is, in fact,
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a community and that gun owners are just people.
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They're not, you know, scary gangbangers like Trudeau and Bill Blair would have you believe,
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So the answer to that question, what can I do about it, came about in one way by producing
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a series that actually puts a human face and a human voice to all of these people who are
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We're proud to announce on this show a new series that's going to be coming out later this year,
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in spring of 2021, called Assaulted, Justin Trudeau's War on Gun Owners.
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And production is actually starting on this next week.
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So I'm going to be down to just one show next week as I'm traveling, because we're going to be
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traveling the country, talking to real people, real Canadians, and trying to explain the stories
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of the untold victims of Justin Trudeau's assault on firearms.
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I'm thrilled today to announce a brand new project from True North, a documentary series called
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It's easy to talk about guns in abstract terms.
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This is, in fact, what the Liberal government has been doing as it's enacted its crusade against
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They talk about the guns, these big, scary things that are not particularly understood
00:28:21.100
by mainstream Canadian society, and least of all, the media and the politicians who are
00:28:27.320
This documentary series will tell the stories of the people who are affected by these bans
00:28:33.580
The family-owned gun business, sport shooters, individual people for whom firepower,
00:28:39.960
I'm going to be traveling the country, giving a voice and putting a face to these people,
00:28:44.180
the stories of the untold victims of Justin Trudeau's gun ban.
00:28:47.880
This is a project that has never before been done in Canada, which is why it is so necessary.
00:28:53.160
If you agree and want to make this happen, head on over to www.assaulted.ca.
00:28:59.400
That's www.assaulted.ca, where we'll have all the information you need.
00:29:04.840
And remember, anyone who contributes at least $100 will have their name in the credits of
00:29:12.480
Assaulted, Justin Trudeau's War on Gun Owners, coming to True North, Spring 2021.
00:29:20.920
When I tell these stories, it's partially because I am a member of this community,
00:29:25.680
and I want people to understand who aren't part of it, why it's not something that the
00:29:30.600
government can continue to scapegoat, and why this won't even succeed at enacting the
00:29:35.340
government's objectives, which are supposedly taking guns off the streets, making cities
00:29:41.000
And as you saw in that trailer there, this is something that you can actually be a part
00:29:44.800
of, if you head on over to the documentary's website, www.assaulted.ca, there's information
00:29:54.720
And remember, we're going to have credits at the end of every episode, and anyone who
00:29:58.180
donates at least $100 will be in the credits in all four episodes.
00:30:01.780
So I hope to see your name in those credits if you're able to give us a hand on this.
00:30:07.260
So glad to be doing it, and I know True North's whole team is looking forward to it.
00:30:14.140
When we come back, more of The Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.
00:30:30.440
We've talked about some heavy stuff so far, so let's take a delving into the area of woke
00:30:35.000
television, which, believe it or not, is increasingly becoming the only form of television available
00:30:43.840
Now, the one I have to mention before I get into the Canadian ones is that The Muppet Show
00:30:48.460
is now one of the trigger-warning programs of the world.
00:30:53.040
Yeah, The Muppet Show is now getting an offensive content alert on Disney+.
00:30:57.220
So, like many things else, if you want to learn about The Rainbow Connection or you want to
00:31:02.320
learn about The Muppet Show tonight or The Monomena or Kermit or Statler and Waldorf, any of these
00:31:07.240
things, well, now you have to subject yourself through an impending hate crime because now
00:31:12.400
only the adult accounts can view The Muppet Show.
00:31:17.200
The Muppet Show is now getting an offensive content warning.
00:31:20.980
At a certain point, even, like, Tide commercials are going to be getting trigger warnings before
00:31:28.900
This is the show that was making quarantine cool before quarantine existed, locking a whole
00:31:33.620
bunch of people in a house and not letting them leave unless, of course, they're voted out.
00:31:40.100
Last year, it actually had to be suspended midway through the broadcast because of the
00:31:47.000
This year, it's back, and the show has decided to make pronouns, preferred pronouns, a part
00:31:55.240
So, the Big Brother Twitter account had announced the contestants who are going to be on this year's
00:32:04.720
She's going to be the first on the show's history.
00:32:17.300
And you may think, oh, well, Big Brother's being so progressive.
00:32:21.040
They're letting people choose or forcing them even to choose their preferred pronouns.
00:32:32.760
He is a he, him, as I see from his Twitter account.
00:32:35.320
He wants Big Brother to know that preferred pronouns is an inaccurate statement.
00:32:40.500
Someone's pronouns is not a preference, but a reality.
00:32:44.760
Beth says, I'm so excited you have a diverse and inclusive cast.
00:32:47.880
But remember, preferred pronouns makes it sound like pronouns are a preference and that
00:32:57.260
Nick writes, it's not preferred pronouns, just pronouns.
00:33:05.180
So it goes to show that no matter how far you bend back, you can bend so far back that
00:33:11.100
your back snaps and you will still be deemed not going far enough or actually making things
00:33:18.440
So anyone who is like a social media intern for a television network needs to understand,
00:33:27.900
And the problem, of course, with not even trying is that you go into the world of blatant
00:33:33.140
and brazen anti-Semitism as one Canadian show is being accused of.
00:33:40.140
It has joined the legions of medical dramas like ER and Grey's Anatomy, which may or may
00:33:48.120
But they had this scene that went viral for all the wrong reasons.
00:34:10.980
Look, you can't be lugging this metal cage around.
00:34:15.640
Ezra, without this next step, you will never walk properly again.
00:34:27.680
So that baffling scene has been accused of being an anti-Semitic trope and not even particularly
00:34:37.540
accurate as there is no aversion in the Jewish faith, even among ultra-Orthodox Jews, to accepting
00:34:44.240
bones from Muslims or Muslim women or Arab women or anything of the sort like that.
00:34:50.460
This was picked up by American viewers because this show had been picked up on NBC and now
00:34:56.260
NBC has said, oh, we're not playing this anymore.
00:34:59.660
And now Chorus, which runs global in Canada, on which the show originally appeared, has
00:35:06.060
They sent a statement to Honest Reporting Canada in which they say they deeply regret all inaccuracies
00:35:12.020
related to religious beliefs as well as the negative portrayal of any religious community
00:35:19.520
They do specifically call out the Jewish audience, but I wonder if they've done a broad sentence
00:35:24.880
there just in case there was like another episode coming down the pipe that was offensive to
00:35:29.640
So they're just trying to get it all done in one sort of catch-all now.
00:35:33.720
And just before we wrap this segment up, in the world of wokeness, Ryerson University's
00:35:38.740
student newspaper is abandoning the word Ryerson.
00:35:45.180
And if you're a student at Ryerson whose student fees are going towards funding this school,
00:35:52.340
It used to be the Ryerson Review of Journalism.
00:36:07.660
Yeah, that just sounds like I'm swearing about it, which you know what?
00:36:12.060
So the Review of Journalism is now the blank space review of journalism.
00:36:16.220
The reason is because we have to retroactively cancel Egerton Ryerson, the namesake of the school.
00:36:22.960
This decision is currently until the end of the term, the end of the school year.
00:36:27.420
And they're saying that they aren't officially changing the name, they're not including content
00:36:32.040
that was previously published, but they want this year's publication to reflect that the
00:36:37.060
name is under review because they say that the residential school system, which Egerton
00:36:42.480
Ryerson was a part of establishing, was part of a cultural genocide.
00:36:47.260
And the Truth and Reconciliation Commission calls on journalism programs and media schools
00:36:51.440
to require education on the history of Aboriginal people.
00:36:54.920
So they say that because the university has no mandatory education, all of the members
00:36:59.540
of the review's masthead have decided they're going to just purge their title while they
00:37:05.220
understand the direction they're going to go in the future.
00:37:08.080
As we've said time and time again, eventually there will be no names left because no one can
00:37:13.720
withstand the critical lens of 2021, regardless of the point in time in which they existed.
00:37:19.540
It won't be long before Ryerson University itself is done.
00:37:22.320
And maybe it'll just be a blank university, which is pretty much the value of a degree
00:37:29.340
We've got to wrap things up for the program today.
00:37:31.900
We'll be back next week with more of Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.
00:37:37.920
Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:37:39.800
Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.