Contempt for Liberty
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Summary
Coming up, the Liberals' shocking transparency about how they want to limit your rights and freedoms, government signing death warrants to businesses, and the fight for religious freedom well underway. The Andrew Lawton Show starts right now.
Transcript
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This is The Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.
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Coming up, the Liberals' shocking transparency about how they want to limit your rights and freedoms,
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government signing death warrants to businesses, and the fight for religious freedom well underway.
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Hello and welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show, Thursday, May 20th, 2021.
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Great to have you aboard The Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.
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Lots to get to today, but I want to begin with the latest in Bill C-10.
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This is the Liberal government's sweeping internet regulation bill,
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still making its way through committee as MPs debate and discuss
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whether it's going to regulate this content, that content, how much it's going to do, and all that jazz.
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And, you know, it sounded like for a little while there was enough pushback, enough criticism,
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that this might not make it through before the summer.
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And remember, if we do have an election this summer, at the end of the legislative session,
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anything that hasn't been passed basically goes away.
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So there was a hope that this might not make it through to the finish line before the summer recess.
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Bloc Québécois leader Yves-Francois Blanchet has said not only will the Bloc support this bill,
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but they will actually work to expedite it, which means to shorten the debate on it.
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So they're going to make it so MPs can't even be raising their concerns about this
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in as fulsome a way as the bill requires, I think.
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The Bloc Québécois, despite putting up a big, strong fight occasionally in the public,
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has proven that it is once again, when push comes to shove,
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going to shill for the Liberals and just pass through whatever it is that the Liberals want to do.
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We don't really have any real opposition to the Liberals from the left.
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The NDP still cannot afford an election and doesn't want one.
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The Bloc Québécois realizes it's in a pretty good situation right now
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and probably stands to lose a bit of that if there is another election.
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So all of them just go along with anything Justin Trudeau wants to do.
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And that includes bringing the content on the internet under government regulation,
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which cannot happen without government having more oversight in which content can be posted online
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because government will have control over who can post content online.
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But I want to talk about this because Bill C-10,
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which is entirely accurately characterized when people talk about its threat to free speech,
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is something that the Liberals are pretending is just no big deal.
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They use modernization to really take away from the fact that they are actually doing something
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But it's also a word that's been said by people that know the intricacies of this particular
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Former CRTC officials say that this is a bill that has an authoritarian streak to it.
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The former commissioner of the CRTC, Timothy Denton,
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former director general of telecom policy at the Department of Industry,
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They were part of the regulatory regime of Canada's telecom and radio communications world.
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These folks signed a petition that had this line.
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It appears Canada is not immune to the growing trend of government intervention to curtail freedom
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and seek to control parts of the internet's infrastructure in ways reminiscent of actions
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We are Canadian internet policy and technical professionals writing as concerned experts
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and on behalf of all those who care about the future of a free and open internet.
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And I don't want to conflate two issues, but a few years back, there was this huge battle
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in the U.S. over something called net neutrality.
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And I don't want to, I mean, you can look it up if you're interested in it.
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But the point is, all of these people on the left were standing up and thumping their chest
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and saying, oh, no, no, no, we can never do anything that even comes close
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to compromising what has always been the free and open internet.
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And now you have the left leading the charge towards a bill that will put internet content
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under government regulation, even despite Minister Stephen Guilbault's claims to the contrary.
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And you know, as part of the Bloc Québécois' attempt to just move things along,
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this week, the Bloc introduced a motion, the Bloc MPs on the Heritage Committee,
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that would basically amend it to say that this power of the CRTC over social media content
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must be exercised consistent with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
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And the committee unanimously voted in favor of it.
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The problem is not whether the CRTC regulates social media content in a manner consistent
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The problem is whether the CRTC enforces its control over social media content in the first
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And I find it interesting that the government, the liberals, have been saying this whole time,
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no, no, no, this isn't going to go after social media content.
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But now they're admitting, by accepting this motion, admitting that they are actually doing
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But they're like, okay, well, we'll do it in a way that's constitutional.
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Do not regulate social media content in the least.
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And this is why Global News had a story, the federal government experts say, is asking
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people to take a leap of faith that Bill C-10 won't hurt free speech.
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Because the whole point is people are passing with this bill a regulatory framework that
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basically is akin to the government saying, just trust us.
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How well has that worked out for people in the past?
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Not words you ever want to hear from the government.
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David Lamedi, the justice minister, was appearing as a witness before the Heritage Committee.
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And he was contorting himself into all sorts of dimensions and directions and shapes, trying
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to establish why the constitutionality is not really a given.
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I would like to take a moment to explain the few, a few moments to explain the content of
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In keeping with their purpose, charter statements are drafted at a high level.
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They set out, in an accessible way, potential effects that a bill may have on rights and
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Charter statements also explain considerations that support the constitutionality of the bill.
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In our discussion of the charter, it is also important to stress that when Parliament legislates,
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This may include limiting their enjoyment or exercise when it is in the broader public interest
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The rights and freedoms guaranteed in the charter are not absolute, but rather subject
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to reasonable limits, so long as those limits can be demonstrably justified in a free and
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Now, what I should point out here about what Justice Minister Lamedi said is that he is
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We all know that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the document containing the so-called
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inalienable, unquestionable, unflinching rights, is subject to that number one section, that section
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one that says all of these rights that we're about to tell you about, well, you know what,
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they can be curbed if it's in a reasonable way, reasonable limits, which is what the charter
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kind of qualifies all of these other rights with.
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So what he's saying is constitutionally sound, although that's a negative reflection of Canada
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But, and here's the big but in this, is that he is more interested in the limits than on
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When he talks about the fact that, oh yeah, freedoms can be suspended if it's in the public
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interest, and sure, it's not a license to go after freedoms, but we can and we will
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and this is all the stuff that we need to do if we're going to do that.
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The issue is that I want politicians that are going to stand up and say, you know what,
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we are going to protect and preserve and uphold freedoms because we believe in them.
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Whereas what Bill C-10 is doing is by design trying to exploit these so-called reasonable
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limits, which may not be reasonable at all, but they're certainly limits.
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And we should all be very concerned because again, if he is more focused on the limits
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to the freedoms than on the freedoms themselves, we cannot expect an outcome of this that is
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going to respect free speech, that is going to do what that Bloc Québécois motion says
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it's supposed to do, which is ensure that social media regulation is done in a manner consistent
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Remember, one of the big dangers of this bill is that it doesn't actually pass into law the
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structure of what the government is going to do in its regulation.
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It gives the CRTC the power to create regulations.
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So all of a sudden what happens is the government gives this new wave of power and authority to
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The CRTC, which is made up of unelected bureaucrats who are appointed, they're political appointments
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by the liberals, but you don't know their names.
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They are accountable in the sense that they're appointed by ministers, but they're not public
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So what happens is they now have this power to craft regulations that we just have to sit
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back and hope are going to respect the free and open internet that the left used to be
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And now is completely uninterested in, so long as the infringements of freedom happen on their
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And like I said, no opposition to this from the left, whether it's because the left genuinely
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buys into this, or perhaps the left is just too afraid of going after Justin Trudeau.
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The only criticism of this from within parliament has been from Aaron O'Toole, who last week
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shifted his narrative away from, we are going to fight against C-10 to, if it passes, we're
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Canada's conservatives are working hard to stop it and will oppose this bill vigorously.
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If this bill passes, a conservative government will repeal it.
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Now, I take a bit of a, I take a very cynical view on these things, because if he's shifting
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his focus from, we're going to vote against this every step of the way to, if it passes,
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This is really the conservatives admitting that, yeah, this is going to pass and there's
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You know, a lot of the time, and I am going into the political discussion right now, we
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hear from the conservatives about how great it was that they reduced the liberals to a
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minority, that they won the popular vote, that was the big coup de grace from Andrew
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But the reality is that if you are in a four-party system where three of those four parties are
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leftist, you are not really doing all that much as the official opposition in a minority
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And it's really four of five, because you've got not just the liberals, but the Greens,
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Sure, varying degrees of leftism, Quebec has that, Quebec National is bent to it, but when
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push comes to shove, you've got four parties that will all vote in lockstep with one another
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and one conservative party, which in and of itself is not always the most conservative
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That's something we've covered on this show a number of times.
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But the reality is that a liberal minority means nothing if the majority of all of the
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left-wingers in Parliament are prepared to go along with it.
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And the NDP will talk a big game in committee on some issues, but everything the liberals
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Whether it was C7, which allows the mentally ill state permission and assistance in killing
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Whether it's C10, which again is now going to be passed into law because of an unholy alliance
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Nothing Justin Trudeau has wanted to do since he was re-elected in 2019 has been stopped.
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And it also means that if the Conservatives hope to defeat Justin Trudeau, unless they
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win a majority, they're not going to be able to do anything.
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So Mark Gerritsen, who is one of the most insufferable MPs on Twitter.
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And by the way, that is a highly competitive category, insufferable MPs on Twitter.
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Mark Gerritsen didn't like Aaron O'Toole's pledge to repeal Bill C-10.
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So he tweeted a screenshot of Aaron O'Toole's tweet.
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Option one, four political party leaders have conspired to take away your freedom of
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Option two, Conservatives are trying to hijack an issue for political gain.
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And as I said on Twitter, I said, option one, and I didn't even need to think about it.
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Yeah, that seems entirely plausible that four parties are conspiring to take away your freedom
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Like at first, I'm like, well, he, I mean, that's an obvious, of course it's option one.
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I didn't realize he was joking it because I saw it at first before I saw who had posted
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So I was like, yeah, that's, no, that's an easy one.
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But one in particular here that I want to focus on is that it extends the power of the
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I shudder to use the word deep state because it has conspiratorial implications to some
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But it's very much the case that there is an aspect of the Canadian government that's
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It is an institution that is bigger than the liberals, bigger than the conservatives, bigger
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Bill C-10 entrusts the CRTC with the power to regulate the internet in perpetuity.
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You notice how these institutions' power never goes away.
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I think Stephen Harper has a legacy people should be proud of, both what he did in the
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conservative movement and what he did in the country.
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However, he had a majority government from 2011 to 2015.
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Yet all of these institutions that he got to stack the deck on, the Senate, CBC, CRTC,
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Canadian Human Rights Commission, these institutions have actually done nothing conservative when
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Stephen Harper was there, when he got to stack the boards, and since, when for a little bit
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of time, the people on these boards were there because of Stephen Harper's appointments.
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The reason I bring that up is the same reason that everyone in the United States focuses so
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much on the Supreme Court and Supreme Court appointments, because that is your legacy.
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But in the U.S., when Republican presidents appoint Supreme Court justices, they tend to
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In Canada, we have conservative prime ministers who appoint board members for CBC, board members
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for CRTC, Supreme Court justices, lower court justices, and yet all of these institutions
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become consumed by the big government mentality that's always fueled them.
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Now, I will say, I spoke at one point to someone who handled appointments for Stephen Harper,
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He said, you know what, I've got to, when I get in here, appoint 4,000 people to various
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And he was basically saying, show me 4,000 conservatives in Canada that want to take these
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I think there's a real risk of that, of people on the right not wanting anything to do
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I don't see people like John Carpe of the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedom saying
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he wants to be chief commissioner of the Canadian Human Rights Commission.
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Maybe we should draft John Carpe for chief human rights commissioner.
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To be honest, I think it would actually be a step in the right direction.
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But the whole point is, people on the right are not standing up and seeking these things
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And one of my great friends, Mark Stein, has a quote on this.
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He says, in an American context, when Republicans win, they're in office, and when Democrats win,
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And I think you can very much extend that analogy to Canadians as well.
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When the conservatives are in, they're in office, and when the liberals are in, they
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Because the liberals understand the institutional advantage they have, which is why they are stacking
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the deck on the institutions, like the so-called independent senators group in the Senate, like
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the CRTC with C-10, and pretty much like everything else Justin Trudeau has laid his hands on in
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When we come back, more of The Andrew Lawton Show.
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We still have millions of Canadians who are out of work, people whose jobs have been put
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in jeopardy because the government shut them down.
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Various levels of government have put in many measures that have harmed ordinary people over
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the last, coming up on what, 15, 16 months now.
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But fear not, all is not lost because a grant has been given in Ottawa for $2.9 million to
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Yes, the city of Ottawa has given $2.9 million to build a world-class Porsche dealership.
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And it was approved by the Finance and Economic Development Committee.
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Now, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation is saying that Ottawa should not be spending taxpayer
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He says Ottawa could use this money to fix potholes or give families a bit of tax relief,
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but no subsidy to a dealership selling cars that cost more than most people make in a
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And I do think that Jay Goldberg from the CTF makes a good point when he talks about how
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there shouldn't really be any corporate welfare of this kind, but certainly not corporate welfare
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Because if Porsche, the company, doesn't need to pay for its dealership, that means that either
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it can make more profit by selling Porsches or it can offer people cheaper Porsches.
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Either way, not something that I would say is passing the government infrastructure test,
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I go back to March when the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, which did a survey of its businesses
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and stakeholders, found that 51%, so half of Canadian businesses were uncertain if they
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If you do not have small business and medium-sized businesses driving economic growth, you cease
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So when half of the businesses in the country are saying they don't think they can stay open,
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this is before, by the way, Ontario's latest stay-at-home order, before Alberta put in more
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shutdowns, before British Columbia put in more shutdowns, you cease to have an economy.
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And just this week, for example, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business released
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a projection that they shared with the Senate Finance Committee that says 58,000 businesses
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have already closed permanently since the beginning of the pandemic, with now around 180,000 near
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He says one in six businesses, I mean 51%, that was to do with confidence.
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One in six businesses at risk of permanent closure, 180,000 businesses across Canada will
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shut their doors forever before the end of the pandemic, bringing with them 2.4 million
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Now, if you're the Liberals and you think everything should be a public sector job, this may not bother
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The more people dependent on government, the more control Justin Trudeau has over the country's
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And I'm going to keep saying that number, one in six, because this is not just about a
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lack of jobs for the people owning the businesses and running them, but all of the people they
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Fewer local goods for people to buy, which means they're forced to buy imported goods that
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And I'm a big believer in a free market, which means you should make that choice.
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But when government is the one telling businesses they cannot open, it's government that's signing
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And that's why, despite being a fiscal conservative, I've always been in support of the pandemic response
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measures like CERB, like SEBA, like all of these measures that have been targeted to individuals
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and businesses, because government does not have the right to tell you you can't work and
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Although my preferred outcome is that government doesn't tell people they can't work.
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So 238,000 businesses could wind up permanently closed.
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That's the restaurant you love that you're never going to get to go to again.
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That's the sporting goods store around the corner that you like that's going to be gone
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That is all of this stuff that completely fuels the economy that the federal government and
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the provincial governments simply do not care about.
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We've got to take a break when we come back talking about death to religious liberty in
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Canada with one of the women who is fighting back against it.
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A few names for you that you should certainly know by now.
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Arthur Pawlowski, James Coates, Tim Stevens, three Alberta pastors who, due to a myriad of
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COVID regulations, have found themselves behind bars in Canada, a country that we think values
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And even in Ontario, we are not immune from these issues.
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Two churches in particular, Trinity Bible Chapel and Church of God, have had their doors locked
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by order of the court at the request of the Ontario government to prevent the assembly of
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worshippers, prevent congregations from gathering and worshipping as Christians again in Canada
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I want to talk about the state of these specific cases, the church lockouts in particular, but
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We've seen more of these circumstances than we can count.
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I know it's been a big challenge for the lawyers who are taking up these cases.
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The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, if I understand correctly, had to actually hire
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several lawyers because there was such a volume of cases that were needing to be fought in
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Lisa Bildy is a staff lawyer with the Justice Centre of Constitutional Freedoms, and a tremendous
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She represented True North and I, as we fought against the federal government.
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I mean, any one of these cases in a different parallel universe without COVID would have been,
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And now we have numerous, numerous of these, and they continue.
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And once something that crosses a threshold happens in one case, then the threshold is
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And now, all of a sudden, we're not as shocked by the next thing that happens.
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And then, you know, suddenly now, instead of issuing warnings and tickets, they're going
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straight to the enforcement measures because they know they can get away with it.
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So it has been a little bit shocking that how comfortable people have been with that moving
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I was covering a couple of weeks ago the case where the provincial government was trying
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to extend its lockout of Trinity Bible Chapel, which is in the Waterloo region.
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And you laid out, I thought, a tremendous case.
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Unfortunately, the judge didn't see it that way as these things go.
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But you were talking about really a very symbolic—I mean, it's real in the sense that the church
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But for the country itself, a symbolic turning point when government is chaining up church
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And to be fair, I really was making a plea for what this means in the broader context,
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but knowing full well that in these circumstances, there was very little that the judge could do
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other than—I mean, I suppose they could have ordered a conditional sentence and not opted
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But remember, the government gave itself the power in the Reopening Ontario Act to impose
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these—almost on a unilateral basis—I mean, they can do it without notice—to impose
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And then when someone breaches it, it's not just getting a ticket anymore.
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And the courts are, of course, very concerned about making sure that the integrity of the
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judicial system is upheld by not letting people flout their court orders.
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And that's unfortunately—you know, I was making those pleas to hopefully encourage the
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courts to be—to remember their—the broader constitutional context, the fact that we live
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in a liberal democracy and that people have fundamental rights and freedoms that we ought
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Let's talk about the length of time we're dealing with here.
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Because the nature of any charter right violation, as I understand it, being a layman, is that
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it has to be as narrowly limited as possible in scope and also in longevity.
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Yet we seem to be heading towards indefinite lockouts, indefinite suspension of religious
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And we've been saying this now for a year, that the response should be targeted.
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But, you know, we've—when people are afraid, it's remarkable how much you can get away with.
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They are—you know, it's not just the churches that are being impacted.
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Although I will say that we've certainly seen there's a lot more lenience in terms of enforcement
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when the political cause is more favorable to those who are in charge.
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You know, it's—we may very well, at the end of all this, say, well, that was all a
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bad experience and go back to treating religious freedom the way that we have in the past.
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But we have, in our minds, probably moved on and crossed that threshold, as I was saying.
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To paraphrase Justice Leonard at hand from the United States, when liberty dies in the
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heart of men and women, no Constitution can save it.
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And we have seen how readily people are willing to give up their freedoms when they're worried
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And I—so I think it doesn't bode well for the broader principles of fundamental freedoms.
00:27:46.440
Yeah, and I don't know—I don't want this to be taken the wrong way by people listening.
00:27:50.340
I've had less of an issue with fines, because a fine is something that you have an immediate
00:27:59.040
And as you go through that process of fighting it, you don't actually have to pay it.
00:28:02.540
So there's a little bit more of a due process there.
00:28:05.820
Whereas if your doors are locked, even if you are eventually successful, you can never get
00:28:11.240
that time back that you were locked out of your church.
00:28:16.120
There's no opportunity in any of that process to be able to raise those constitutional arguments.
00:28:21.820
I mean, I was trying to raise them just so that they would be on the mind of the court
00:28:27.120
But really, the process of getting that order, the enforcement order, and through the contempt
00:28:32.320
proceedings, that is not where the constitutional arguments are raised.
00:28:35.660
Now, the government is supposed to be weighing all of that before they act, before they implement
00:28:42.020
And when they have been pushed in the past, sometimes they've walked back their overreach
00:28:50.920
And so, of course, it's much harder to get your case before the court to argue the constitutional
00:28:56.560
And in the meantime, yes, all these restrictions continue, and people are locked up to their
00:29:01.460
And they won't be—they may be vindicated down the line, but they will not be able,
00:29:07.560
as you say, to recover the fines and just the lost time in their facility.
00:29:12.680
I know we have churches that, in some cases, are saying, listen, we believe we have a constitutional
00:29:20.360
Would it be different in the court's eyes, in your view, if you had a church that said,
00:29:25.480
listen, we are going to put up—you know, we're going to put six to eight feet between
00:29:30.120
seats, we're going to rigorously enforce masking, we're going to do all of these things.
00:29:34.640
And if they laid out a really comprehensive plan, or is none of that really factoring
00:29:39.400
into these decisions to lock people out of their buildings?
00:29:43.940
I mean, if you remember, there was a church just before Christmas that brought an application.
00:29:47.820
It was an injunction, so they had a heavier onus on their side as to why it should be
00:29:52.100
That was the Toronto International Celebration Church.
00:29:54.580
And they, to my knowledge, were, in fact, trying to incorporate measures to celebrate
00:30:00.120
socially distance and all that sort of thing, and many other churches have as well.
00:30:06.680
And remember, too, that public health policy, historically, was more about education than
00:30:13.000
It was more about—at least, you know, that was the normal approach, that you sort of
00:30:21.040
You recognize that going to church is, in fact, important and a matter of health for a
00:30:26.560
lot of people, you know, for their mental health, for their spiritual health.
00:30:30.240
And so you don't come in with the stick right off the bat.
00:30:33.380
You try to educate and you try to encourage people.
00:30:37.060
But it seems like, in a lot of cases, they came out with the stick first.
00:30:40.280
And the Church of God in Elmer was one of those examples.
00:30:42.840
If you recall, all the way back to last spring, they had decided to try and meet with drive-in
00:30:48.840
They saw that a congregation in Saskatchewan had done it, and they'd have mentioned the rules
00:30:57.400
But then when somebody complained, which is another big factor in all of this, is how
00:31:00.620
much the population has taken it upon themselves to be like Stasi-like informants against churches.
00:31:07.100
But somebody complained, and the police immediately went to enforcement and showed up and started
00:31:14.780
And, you know, that set the tone for that particular conflict.
00:31:18.840
And it's really unfortunate that they went that route.
00:31:21.860
So when we talk about the long-term implications of this, I think there are two issues.
00:31:26.400
Number one, these court cases and challenges are mounting to such a point where there is
00:31:32.580
And I think the Church of God and Trinity Bible Chapel cases are set for October, if I'm
00:31:39.120
And we have other lockdowns, lockdown tickets for businesses, fines for individuals.
00:31:44.260
The church battle is by no means the only battle in this area.
00:31:48.080
How much of this down the road do you think will really just end up being torn apart, these
00:31:54.860
tickets and citations and fines, based on what you know about precedent and constitutional
00:32:00.980
And also judicial economy, with how many of these the courts will have to deal with in
00:32:06.100
Well, I think when it comes to those tickets and charges, a lot of them probably will be
00:32:10.520
disposed of by the by the prosecutor if they don't think they can get a conviction, if they
00:32:15.260
think probably, you know, it's too much effort to have to defend each of these on constitutional
00:32:19.560
You know, I wouldn't start with the assumption if you're going out to, you know, to protest
00:32:25.920
or to to go to church against the rules, to assume that your ticket is going to get torn
00:32:30.420
But I think that that is well, that will be a likely outcome for a lot of them, particularly
00:32:34.200
if there are some precedents that are set in the Superior Court to suggest that the government
00:32:38.400
was, you know, was was acting out of line on any of these restrictions.
00:32:44.880
So far, I would say that most of the courts have given a fairly wide berth to the government
00:32:53.680
We haven't had a lot of cases on the merits yet.
00:32:57.260
We had one out in B.C., which was a judicial review.
00:33:01.900
But, you know, there was one argued last week about outdoor gatherings, Roman Babers application.
00:33:09.020
There will undoubtedly be others along the way before ours is heard in October.
00:33:13.680
I don't know how they'll turn out, but I'm certainly hopeful that the courts will remember
00:33:18.960
their role is is also to be that sober second look at what the government is doing.
00:33:24.900
And, you know, they they aren't there to rubber stamp government decisions.
00:33:29.740
It's easy for us to look at the world we're in right now and think this is just a, you know,
00:33:35.580
We're in a once in a lifetime at the very least situation.
00:33:39.020
And how concerned are you about future implications of these suspensions of freedom?
00:33:44.060
And what you, I think, very adequately characterized earlier is this internalization by people
00:33:51.520
Well, I view this as a continuation of what has already been going on in our society, which
00:33:56.900
is particularly in Canada, which is a collectivization in our in our views of things that people now
00:34:04.240
have to have consensus of opinion on so many things and lockdowns just fed right into that
00:34:09.380
existing political climate where, you know, anybody who thinks differently from the the
00:34:15.120
the the, you know, for want of a better term, what the what the elites say we should be believing
00:34:22.820
And, you know, we actually see them saying that that people who are protesting against lockdowns
00:34:27.800
And so when you start with a climate that's as politically charged as ours was and throw
00:34:34.120
this into the mix, I don't the new normal that we're going to end up at at the at the end
00:34:39.940
of all of this is very it's very concerning to me.
00:34:43.480
I think that we will be in a new constitutional era where people who want to exercise their
00:34:50.980
fundamental freedoms under the Charter will face a lot of resistance from others in the
00:34:56.960
public and from, you know, the legal establishment and so on.
00:35:00.760
I hope I'm wrong, but I have to say I've been pretty disheartened over this last year.
00:35:06.120
I realize you're in Ontario, but just looking at Alberta for a moment, this is very unique
00:35:10.920
in the sense that on one on one hand, we view this as being the the most free province and
00:35:15.220
confederation historically in the political discourse.
00:35:17.860
But we all we also have had three pastors that have been arrested and put behind bars
00:35:23.960
Is there a reason that Alberta has been the province to go in that direction, either in
00:35:31.360
Or is it simply a direction that they're taking that we're not seeing in other provinces?
00:35:37.240
I think probably people are more shocked by what they're seeing in conservative
00:35:43.580
There's certainly been a heavy handed approach, not just in Alberta, but in Ontario with the
00:35:49.740
And you sort of wonder why that sort of traditional support of individual rights and freedoms and
00:35:57.160
self-sufficiency and people being able to make decisions for themselves, those sort of
00:36:01.580
usual conservative tenants, small government have just been disregarded and tossed out the window.
00:36:07.000
I can't explain it other than to think that perhaps the conservatives worry that if they
00:36:13.420
misstep, that they will be judged far more harshly than any liberal government would be.
00:36:19.680
I appreciate that you are on the front lines of this battle.
00:36:22.340
You and your colleagues, Lisa Bildy with the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms.
00:36:28.540
That was Lisa Bildy of the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms.
00:36:32.960
As I said, a great lawyer and a great advocate on these issues.
00:36:38.460
I mean, we talked earlier in the show about David Lamedi and his view that it's more important
00:36:49.600
And if you're ready to throw in the towel, I get it.
00:36:52.180
But doing so has much bigger implications than trying to fight it and see it through to the
00:36:59.440
My thanks to all of you for tuning in to The Andrew Lawton Show today.
00:37:03.220
We'll be back with more of Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show next week.
00:37:08.720
Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:37:10.800
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