00:04:14.100And you have all of these multilateral meetings that take place that aren't on any public agendas, meeting lists, participant lists, nothing really disclosed about it.
00:04:24.060And you actually have no idea what world leaders are committing to behind closed doors when they sit down in meeting rooms with the CEOs of this bank, of this corporation, the leader of this government, of this NGO, in a way that they would never really be able to do back home in Canada without there being more scrutiny.
00:04:41.680So this brings us to an order paper question, which is a mechanism that you can file in the House of Commons to get an answer from the government, basically. It was a question filed by Conservative MP Leslie Lewis to try to get a sense of, let's put the question up there. She wanted to know who Chrystia Freeland was meeting with. She wanted to know what she was doing and how much it cost Canadians. And you think, okay, this is a reasonable question.
00:05:05.840Freeland was there with a delegation of Canadian government leaders. This is what she asked for
00:05:11.060specifically. Lesley Lewis wants to know the members of the delegation, their name, title,
00:05:16.420role, the details of all meetings, the dates of the meetings, the names and titles of attendees,
00:05:21.580the purpose, the agenda items, a summary of what occurred. She wants the full minutes
00:05:26.240of every meeting Chrystia Freeland took in Davos while she was supposedly representing Canadians.
00:05:32.320and then you look at the response that she got from the finance department all generalities oh
00:05:39.740she met with a number of people she met with members of the ukrainian delegation a variety
00:05:44.260of business leaders she met with foreign government leaders she met with a few specifics
00:05:49.900there that are named but that was only on the public panel so christia freeland as you saw
00:05:55.900on that document there is not interested in disclosing the meetings that she took place
00:06:01.380outside of the one that was live streamed.
00:10:44.700This was Christine Lagarde and that was this year.
00:10:47.680Good afternoon, ma'am. How can people have confidence in digital currencies and government not using it as a tool of control?
00:10:53.520I'm not giving an interview. I'm not speaking because I'm in a quiet period.
00:10:59.620I'm in a quiet period. I'm not speaking. And again, the theme of the conference there was rebuilding trust.
00:11:04.760But there is not really an interest in these people in rebuilding trust because they believe that distrust in them is everyone else's fault.
00:11:12.800and it's amazing the verbal semantics the gymnastics that you see from so many of these
00:11:19.140people just to bring it back to a domestic context for a moment uh you had today or yesterday it was
00:11:24.380on power and politics mark garretson who is uh the member i'm trying to think of how i would
00:11:29.520describe him like like he's from kingston area which is imagine how far we've fallen that
00:11:35.220kingston once gave once gave us john a mcdonald and now we get mark garretson but mark garretson
00:11:41.540anyway, the man who is searching for a second IQ point to rub against the first one, was there to
00:11:47.360do the Liberal government spin on CBC. And they were talking about a number of things, talking
00:11:52.420about the Toronto St. Paul's by-election, they were talking about the carbon tax, and he had a
00:11:56.560very strange way of describing why he thinks the carbon tax matters to Canadians. Do you need to
00:12:03.860change cabinet? Do you need to change staff? Or is it just policy change? What is it? I think it's
00:12:08.240more along the lines of our communication and policy. You know, you brought up the carbon tax
00:12:12.900earlier in Ken McDonald's point on that. The carbon tax has been around since 2018. We've had a carbon
00:12:18.160tax since 2018. The scheduled increases since 2018. It didn't really become an issue until Pierre
00:12:22.860Polyev made it an issue eight or nine months ago. And that has to do with a communication issue and
00:12:28.820less to do with a policy issue. So I think there's a lot of stuff built into that and a lot of stuff
00:12:33.600us to self-reflect on that yes we can do in a in a joint meeting together or we can do
00:12:38.920individually i know the prime minister has been doing a lot of outreach in the last few days
00:12:42.540reaching out to colleagues throughout the country to have discussions with them about that exactly
00:12:47.540hmm canadians are only caring about the carbon tax now because pierre polyev is making them
00:12:55.460care about it i believe that's what the kids these days call a self-own when he's really
00:13:00.540admitting that Pierre Polyev is the one that is responsible for the narrative of Canadian
00:13:05.900politics right now. The Canadians are more interested in what Pierre Polyev has to say
00:13:10.000about things than they are in what Mark Gerritsen and Justin Trudeau and Christian Freeland have to
00:13:14.560say in things. And I find that to be an incredibly fascinating admission on his part. Now, it's not
00:13:20.120perhaps that the carbon tax has been continuously increased by the Liberals and that the carbon tax
00:13:26.020is compounded in its effect because we're dealing with rampant inflation. It's not that we are in
00:13:30.940the midst of a cost of living crisis and this carbon tax that isn't doing anything is just
00:13:35.240punitive to Canadians. No, it couldn't have been any of that. The only reason Canadians care is
00:13:39.220because Justin Trudeau just started talking about it. Sorry, Pierre Polly, yeah, there's a Freudian
00:13:43.840slip, just started talking about it eight to nine months ago. Very, very strange way of coping with
00:13:50.740the flagging fortunes for the liberals and you of course see all sorts of attempts at really getting
00:13:56.500to the bottom of what's wrong with society right now and what's wrong with conservatives if you
00:14:00.660talk to the toronto star bruce arthur who is ostensibly a sports columnist but seems to
00:14:06.580not really care about writing about sports that much he had one column in the toronto star
00:14:11.620yesterday that i found hilarious people should be afraid are you fearful are you afraid pierre
00:14:17.940polyevs conservatives have been targeting experts is this just the beginning and he goes into the
00:14:24.260piece a number of examples of where conservatives have criticized so-called experts whether it's
00:14:28.660andrea sarita on so-called safe supply whether it is andrew leach the economist who i don't think
00:14:34.820has ever said a kind word about any conservative and i just in general this expertocracy that we're
00:14:39.700supposed to just be so deferential to and when i saw this i was thinking you know which experts are
00:14:45.620are we talking about here? Before I had read the piece, are we talking about the experts who said
00:14:49.820that masks don't work before mandating them? Are we talking about the experts who said closing
00:14:54.480borders is racist before they close them? Are we talking about the experts who said don't worry
00:14:58.840about inflation, it's just transitory? Are we talking about the experts that have told us that
00:15:03.460there's no way Donald Trump will win the 2016 election? Are we talking about the experts that
00:15:08.380have said all these sorts of things that have been proven incorrect? I think we are. And the
00:15:13.260Liberals, the left, they're sycophants in much of the media anyway, if Bruce Arthur is fitting that
00:15:19.520bill, believe wholeheartedly that you can put a PhD in front of someone's, or I guess behind
00:15:25.540someone's name, put a doctor in front of their name, and we're all supposed to just treat them
00:15:29.360with utter deference, that you are above criticism, that you are above scrutiny, even when these people
00:15:34.180have been responsible in many ways for the things that are wrong with this country. So the
00:15:40.560conservatives, whether you like them or not, are not treating the so-called expert class as being
00:15:45.260the sacred cow. And of course, that is terrifying. Put that headline back up from Bruce Arthur there
00:15:50.260if you can, Sean. This is the framing of this article. People should be afraid. No, the people
00:15:56.640who should be afraid are the ones that have been coasting on this so-called expert class, that have
00:16:02.420been coasting on this desired technocracy that they've been trying to implement in Canada. Those
00:16:07.660the people who should be afraid because the gravy train is coming to an end we will revisit this as
00:16:13.420the show progresses but i want to go into a bit more of a newsy topic here yesterday the injunction
00:16:19.180that the university of toronto sought to dismantle the anti-israel encampment on campus was granted
00:16:25.900and this means that as of today police are going to be moving in they've said they plan on enforcing
00:16:31.580this injunction i want to talk about this from a constitutional liberty perspective here and also
00:16:37.020the broader implications uh josh has returned to the show he's a lawyer with the canadian
00:16:41.660constitution foundation and one of the hosts of their tremendous podcast digging into many of
00:16:46.380these issues josh good to talk to you as always thanks for coming on great to be here thanks
00:16:51.020andrew let me just start with the first uh you know the glaring question here why an injunction
00:16:56.060was even necessary when you had what i mean at its core was a trespassing issue like you know
00:17:01.740presumably if someone were to set up a camp on my front lawn i could call the police without
00:17:05.740going to a judge and say please remove them why did it need to go to this stage yeah so it's a
00:17:11.820good question it's a question we've been getting a lot because you know police can't enforce
00:17:16.560trespass laws and this was very clearly a trespass from the beginning you know trespass just means
00:17:22.820going onto somebody's property without lawful justification and there's an old english case
00:17:28.320that says merely bruising the grass is going to count as trespass so what you had here was people
00:17:34.760you know, deciding who was allowed to go into this space on campus right in the center of the
00:17:41.940University of Toronto. And you had to, you know, pass a series of questions to sort of get into
00:17:47.080this encampment. So it was just quite obvious it was a trespass. And, you know, in York University
00:17:52.720in Toronto, as you well know, Andrew, police just went in and enforced the law against trespass the
00:17:58.800day the encampment was set up. So what I think happened here was basically U of T decided that
00:18:05.100they were going to negotiate and that they were going to let this encampment sort of fester for
00:18:12.040at least a short period of time before they decided to seek legal action. And the protesters
00:18:18.380had an argument, which was essentially that they have freedom of expression rights protected by the
00:18:24.440Constitution, freedom of assembly rights to use this otherwise private property at U of T. And
00:18:30.780they had just a little tiny bit of an argument, which was that this free speech directive that
00:18:36.820Doug Ford had put in place in 2018 somehow meant that after decades of law in Ontario saying the
00:18:45.240charter doesn't apply to these types of university actions, that all of a sudden the government had
00:18:50.700decided that they wanted to apply. So I think Toronto police looked at that and they said,
00:18:54.980okay, there's some legal uncertainty here. And you have law professors out there sort of siding
00:18:59.940with the protesters saying this directive means that now the charter does apply to campus.
00:19:04.960And just based on that legal uncertainty, I think they probably had advice to
00:19:08.440wait and see, wait and see what happens with the court case. And not all that surprisingly,
00:19:15.520the injunction has been granted. Just as an aside, I think it's a bit rich that these protesters,
00:19:21.640many of whom have called for, you know, any professor associated with Israel to,
00:19:25.700you know, be sent to the gulag, are all of a sudden these newfound defenders of academic freedom.
00:19:31.460Yeah, and a lot of these people are the same people who, you know, they would have cancelled
00:19:35.520just about anybody involved with the trucker protest if they tried to speak on campus a few
00:19:40.360years ago um you know they've i remember there were if there was any talk about race or gender
00:19:45.320that didn't align with uh sort of progressive uh shibboleths they would go on campus and pull the
00:19:51.800fire alarms and try and get people uh try and get their expression shut down so yeah but all
00:19:57.720of a sudden doug ford's free speech directive might not be such a bad idea for them yeah does
00:20:03.640it from a legal perspective does it have any bearing at all on whether they are students or
00:20:08.760faculty who generally have, I think, a right to use the campus?
00:20:14.920From a constitutional perspective, I don't think it has really any bearing on it at all.
00:20:20.120But a lot of this case was decided based on University of Toronto's own policies. And they
00:20:26.440have, you know, use of space policies and speech policies. And I think under those policies, they
00:20:31.880are uh going to uh you know they care a lot more about what professors and students are doing
00:20:39.000because that's part of their mission right so under those policies they it might matter that
00:20:44.280they're students or that they're professors but um from a general constitutional law perspective
00:20:49.240it doesn't really matter all that much and frankly the respondents in this case i think
00:20:54.600most of them if not all of them were students have we gotten to a point
00:20:59.880or i i maybe this is a stupid question because it sounds self-evident as i'm formulating in my head
00:21:04.440but i was gonna what i was gonna ask is are these policies just so far from being content neutral
00:21:10.120in that like the way these things are enforced in any academic freedom context in any public
00:21:15.560assembly context on campus depends entirely on the specific expression and rather the fundamentals
00:21:22.760i think that was certainly the case uh up until fairly recently but i think the whole debate about
00:21:28.680expression and academic freedom on campus that arose after october 7th really woke a lot of
00:21:35.320people up on the sort of the progressive left who tend to be the people enforcing these policies
00:21:41.160that they need to be a little bit more principled about these things so i think that's sort of the
00:21:46.600silver lining here is that you know if you go back three years five years there was a lot of
00:21:53.080shutting down of legitimate speech and legitimate academic research and lectures on campus and i
00:21:59.560think we're going to see less of that hopefully going forward because i think people might have
00:22:04.520learned their lesson this time around that um it's not just um you know right-wing voices that
00:22:11.320uh are being cancelled but also that sometimes there are you know pro-palestinian voices that
00:22:16.760are more closely associated with the left that get cancelled and that we want to have
00:22:21.080the same rule for everybody so that we can so that rule will be there when we meet what we
00:22:27.560obviously a police i mean like we saw with the freedom convoy police were really trying to get
00:22:32.120people to just leave on their own volition and it didn't really work too well uh they're trying
00:22:36.600to do the same thing here but the protesters have basically said they you know have no interest in
00:22:42.040in you know packing up and going home in a lot of cases and there's always the possibility that
00:22:46.520something like this is the Streisand effect, where now more people will descend on it. So
00:22:50.760this could be very messy as things go on. If someone doesn't leave, you know, what are they
00:22:56.980facing right now? Is it the, you know, $70 trespassing ticket? I think it's more serious
00:23:02.820than that, to be honest. So if people don't leave, and I noticed there was a union, QP Ontario,
00:23:09.040that's encouraging people to go down at 3.30 this afternoon and join the protest. And, you know,
00:23:14.960this was the the union whose head fred hahn famously said he was going to use his own body to
00:23:20.400you know stop um this protest from getting shut down and if the deadline passes which is 6 p.m
00:23:26.560for people to leave and people are still there uh we don't know what time it's going to happen but
00:23:31.040we do know toronto police are going to go in and force that and that means they're going to
00:23:35.280physically remove people um and people will be thrown in in jail potentially um and a lot of
00:23:43.120of them will face potentially even contempt of court charges, depending on how serious that is.
00:23:48.140And that's a really big deal. Like you will, you know, you can go to jail for a serious amount of
00:23:54.560time for contempt of court. So I think it's really kind of irresponsible to encourage people
00:23:58.440to stay at this point when the protesters had their day in court, they got to make all their
00:24:03.180arguments. And now it's time to respect the rule of law in case there was any lack of clarity before
00:24:09.920that you were trespassing, that you didn't have a right to be there.
00:24:12.720If someone is charged, does that constitutional question then, if they choose to go that road,
00:24:18.040really start again? And do they, you know, get to in their defense, you know, basically
00:24:22.000try again with the whole, no, no, no, I had a constitutional right to be there?
00:24:27.040I don't know how much bearing that would have on the Asheville contempt of court. But yeah,
00:24:30.960if there was a trespass charge, they'd probably be able to make, you know, charter arguments again.
00:24:35.120and uh who knows how that will go but i mean the fact that the judge just took a very detailed look
00:24:41.220at this you know this is an injunction decision an injunction is just you know what's going to
00:24:46.260happen until uh we can hear the full hearing uh in a way that avoids irreparable harm um that is
00:24:54.860normally a pretty short decision this is 98 pages like the judge took uh you know two days of hearing
00:25:01.240people out. There were all kinds of interveners that submitted arguments and the judge really
00:25:06.440meticulously went through the evidence. So there was a lot of evidence on the record already and
00:25:11.100the law and came to a conclusion. So I think that would be highly influential to any other judge
00:25:17.920that has to consider whether there's a charter issue here. I know there are obviously different
00:25:23.360courts in different provinces, but where did this judge diverge from, apart from on the decision
00:25:28.840from Quebec when the injunction request against McGill was rejected.
00:25:34.340Yeah. So the big difference here is when McGill was asking for an injunction to get rid of their
00:25:42.240encampment on campus, they did that. What they were seeking was called an interim injunction.
00:25:48.380And that is something that's basically like you're saying there is an emergency and we need to go to
00:25:53.940court today or tomorrow or the next day and the other side they don't really have a lot of time
00:25:59.460to build their argument and put together you know affidavits and evidence and so if you're going to
00:26:06.200court and saying this is an emergency you need to shut this down right away that's going to be a
00:26:10.420really high bar to get over to convince a judge that we have to end this thing right away and
00:26:17.820that's different than what happened here where you know we're more than a month into it before
00:26:23.440U of T initiated these proceedings and the judge gave them weeks of time to get their evidence
00:26:30.900together. So we have a much fuller, fuller record. And so the judge can feel confident saying, you
00:26:36.860know, yes, there's a strong prima facie case that U of T is right here about the trespass. And I
00:26:43.120think that's the main difference is just that what McGill is asking for was sort of an emergency
00:26:47.200injunction. And this is something that's a little further down the line with better evidence and
00:26:51.240arguments. Fair enough. Josh DeHaz, lawyer with the Canadian Constitution Foundation. What's
00:26:56.900coming up on the podcast? Oh, well, we'll be talking about this. We're going to be talking
00:27:01.420about sanctions against the Quesnel BC mayor. He's now suing city council because they sanctioned
00:27:09.340him for his choice in books. Not even. It was his wife's choice in books. Well, there's a little bit
00:27:15.580of dispute about that. So, you know, at the beginning, it was his wife who was handing out
00:27:20.580this books uh and the book's called a grave error i believe uh true north is involved in that book
00:27:26.520and it originally was his wife who was handing out this book and uh i think everybody was asking
00:27:32.880um you know what what does this have to do with the mayor's job that his wife is handing out this
00:27:39.680book but i think he does admit at some point that maybe there were uh he did try to recommend this
00:27:45.120book to a couple people oh no he recommended and he may have even said at some point that it should
00:27:51.780be in the public library that people should be able to access a controversial book in the library
00:27:57.500yeah you can't say that in this day and age that a book should be in the library heaven forbid
00:28:01.160all right well we look forward to that josh thanks for coming on as always all right thanks a lot
00:28:06.600all right thank you josh to has from the canadian constitution foundation uh just returning to how
00:28:11.920we started things off for a moment here. I mentioned, you know, Chrystia Freeland's
00:28:15.240unwillingness to share the details of her little, you know, political dalliance in Davos earlier
00:28:21.980this year. And again, I'm not even suggesting that anything untoward happened there. The point
00:28:26.320is whenever you are having these meetings that take place behind closed doors, Canadians are
00:28:30.920paying tens of thousands of dollars for them. And at the end, we come out with the question of,
00:28:35.640okay, was it a waste of time and you weren't doing anything and you were just having fun and
00:28:40.120dining high and flying high and all that, not like, you know, like smoking pot or whatever.
00:28:44.440Anyway, fly. I was mixing my metaphors. You'll have to forgive me. But or were you doing things
00:28:49.260substantive? And if you're doing things substantive, then the question is, well, tell us what? Tell us
00:28:52.880with whom you were meeting and what you agreed on and all of that. And it's interesting how little
00:28:57.940this government likes the idea of scrutiny, how little they like the idea of democratic
00:29:03.240accountability. Justin Trudeau was speaking this morning, the prime minister. He's still facing
00:29:08.040calls from inside the house for his resignation. But what was interesting today is that he had a
00:29:13.000very curious way of explaining why he should be reelected after having served already close to
00:29:19.12010 years. Take a look. It doesn't matter whether you're a liberal or conservative in Canada. Voters
00:29:24.660tend to give prime ministers or have always given prime ministers in the last hundred plus years
00:29:28.680the door after nine or 10 years. Why do you think you're different? Listen, there is a challenge
00:29:37.240faced by democracies all around the world right now.
00:29:40.680Whether we look at what's going on in France,
00:29:42.460whether we look at the election in the United States,
00:29:45.040whether we look at any democracy around the world
00:29:47.460where we are seeing increasing challenges to people's well-beings,
00:29:52.740greater anxieties, an erosion of democratic principles and rights,
00:29:57.500this is a really important time for governments to step up
00:30:03.140and deliver concretely for citizens to restore and encourage faith in the institutions that are
00:30:10.420there to deliver things like more child care spaces to deliver better access to dental care
00:30:16.100for people who don't have insurance to deliver more housing with the most ambitious housing
00:30:21.700plan this country has ever seen these are the things that we need to stay focused on and that's
00:30:26.980exactly what I'm working hard on right now. It takes a lot to make Mark Gerritsen look like an
00:30:35.280intellectual heavyweight, but I think Justin Trudeau did it there. Why should Canadians vote
00:30:40.320for you for more than three terms was basically the question from it sounded like Marika Walsh
00:30:44.720of the Globe and Mail. And he said, well, democracy is under threat around the world. We're seeing
00:30:48.700this with what happened in France and what's happening in the US. So his view of democracy
00:30:53.860being under attack and democratic institutions eroding is left-wingers losing elections.
00:30:59.380Like in the U.S. right now, Joe Biden doesn't even know he's running for president. That is
00:31:03.440not an erosion of democracy. That is the Democrats fielding a terrible candidate.
00:31:07.700In France, it was people being fed up with Emmanuel Macron that led to an overhaul of their
00:31:13.500political process. It's the same thing that happened in Netherlands with
00:31:16.620Geert Wilders being elected. It's the same thing that's happening in countries around the world.
00:31:20.680it's not an erosion of democracy when people vote against you but Justin Trudeau thinks it is and
00:31:26.940what's fascinating here is that Justin Trudeau is really trying to set the stage for explaining and
00:31:33.940justifying and rationalizing his loss that's what he's doing here he's trying to make it so that
00:31:39.040when he loses which I suspect will happen the polls are showing what they show what Justin
00:31:44.760Trudeau is saying here is that the polling, the eventual loss is not his fault. It's part of a
00:31:51.620global erosion of democracy. That's what he's going to say. Justin Trudeau is going to be
00:31:56.200Canada's election denier. When Pierre Polyev and the Conservatives likely win a massive majority,
00:32:01.760that's what the polls are suggesting. Trudeau is going to say, oh, well, this was part of a global
00:32:05.820shift. This was part of a global shift. It had nothing to do with me. I'm not the unpopular one.
00:32:10.460It's just like Mark Gerritsen saying, oh, no, I'm not the guy that you need to look at here.
00:32:15.220Don't worry, the carbon tax, no one dislikes the policy.
00:32:18.500People just don't like that Pierre Polyev and the Conservatives have been talking about it.
00:32:25.040This is another clip from Justin Trudeau, basically just doing the everything is fine routine when forced with, actually, no, we'll get to that clip later.
00:32:33.740In the meantime, I want to bring into this discussion here one of Trudeau's environmental policies that, again, is all virtue signaling.
00:32:40.460and very little in the way of substance behind it,