Juno News - Fighting Trudeau’s travel mandate in court Part. 1

00:00:00.000 hello everyone welcome back to the show i hope you're all doing well and enjoying the summer

00:00:23.920 today we have a pretty big show coming up and i'm super excited about it we're going to talk

00:00:29.120 about the trudeau government's recently suspended federal vaccine mandate as it applied to travel

00:00:35.440 and to the civil service trudeau and company always claimed that they were following the

00:00:40.240 science and the evidence but we now know at least for the travel mandate that's simply not true

00:00:46.720 on august 2nd i broke a story for barry wise's common sense where i report on recently released

00:00:53.760 court documents relating to a case challenging the federal travel vaccine mandate these documents

00:01:00.400 make it abundantly clear that the mandate was not motivated by the science i encourage you to read

00:01:06.160 the story for all the details if you haven't already done so by going to commonsense.news

00:01:12.960 so today i have three very special guests with me i'd like to introduce you to the two plaintiffs in

00:01:18.320 the case sean rickard and carl harrison and their attorney sam presfalos i'm delighted to have them

00:01:25.760 on the show both sean and carl were born in the uk and came to canada as immigrants many years ago

00:01:33.040 they're both entrepreneurs and they were both pretty upset about the travel vaccine mandate

00:01:38.320 they felt it was unjust and wanted to challenge it in the courts rather than lying down and just

00:01:43.920 accepting it sam is a toronto-based attorney who is fast developing a reputation as one of the

00:01:51.360 smartest and sharpest litigators in the city he's only 30 if you can believe it and he's already

00:01:56.560 making waves in the legal community so on that note i'd like you to welcome sean carl and sam to the show

00:02:05.280 sean carl and sam um great to have you on my show um it truly is a privilege to have the three of you

00:02:11.760 with me i believe this is your first media appearance since the story broke uh so i'm you

00:02:17.920 know i'm just delighted to have the three of you to talk about the case uh i want to start with sean

00:02:23.440 and carl um i want to ask you what uh motivated each of you to take on the canadian government

00:02:30.080 and challenge the vaccine mandate um you know i've written about this and you also know this courts

00:02:36.240 in canada tend to be very deferential and there's always this uphill david versus goliath battle

00:02:41.600 going on so i'd love to know what motivated each of you and how did you both get together in the

00:02:47.360 first place um and uh and if you could go into how the mandates also affected you personally

00:02:53.440 uh that would be great so um sean if you want to start yeah i mean i i initially started um i or what

00:03:02.000 sparked my um anger and interest interest in this was um initially when the when they started talking

00:03:10.400 about the mandate uh i mean i like to travel as most people do i also have family in england

00:03:16.240 and uh the more they they started to sort of um that whole rhetoric about not being able to travel

00:03:24.000 get on a plane or a train um really concerned me and i mean i spent a lot of time in cuba fishing and

00:03:31.200 so on over the years and um to me what they were going to be attempting to do kind of resembled that

00:03:38.080 somewhat i i have friends in cuba and i see how they live and how they're not able to leave the

00:03:42.400 country and it really terrified me and it angered me so i initially um started reaching out to a few

00:03:49.200 politicians and uh one of them being roman baba and to keep the story short i i had a conversation

00:03:56.240 with roman um he was very helpful very nice man very supportive and uh we had a great chat and he

00:04:03.600 he then put me in touch or he gave me the contact information for sam who we knew so

00:04:11.920 right after my conversation with roman i contacted sam uh we kind of hit it off right off the bat and uh

00:04:19.600 sam was as passionate about this as i was and uh we kind of back and forth a little bit on a strategy and

00:04:26.000 how we might do this knowing that we would need to raise money um to go to court in canada as you know

00:04:31.120 and the federal courts is very expensive um even even with um even with sam's um reduced rates it's

00:04:39.040 it's a costly process so we immediately after i got off the phone with sam started a at that point a go

00:04:45.520 fund me fundraiser and i think within a few weeks we'd raised about fourteen thousand dollars um and we

00:04:54.320 would i was promoting it primarily through twitter at that point um as soon as i started making

00:05:00.880 traction on twitter for some reason twitter cancelled my account i'm still permanently um

00:05:07.440 banned from twitter i i have no account there and the same with linkedin but uh long story short i got

00:05:15.120 chatting with people online a lot of people were very supportive my my my followers grew very quickly

00:05:21.040 on twitter like ridiculously quickly i went from like four followers and then six weeks i had 7.8 000

00:05:27.680 followers and then my account crashed but during that time i um carl actually reached out to me

00:05:35.040 through twitter and a lot of people were doing so at the time because of what we were doing everyone

00:05:39.040 was worried what was going to happen you know if they're not vaccinated they're not going to be able

00:05:42.880 to leave the country travel across the country visit you know sick relatives or whatever and and carl and

00:05:48.800 i got talking and um we eventually i think it was like on our we back and forth i think about three

00:05:56.400 times carl on twitter right through messaging before they got rid of my account and then we set up a zoom

00:06:02.560 call with sam and we we all hit it off and um carl had uh very kindly agreed to to help us finance the case

00:06:10.800 as well so we at that moment again just it was just like a natural it was a meant to be moment where

00:06:19.760 we all came together and we went off on this journey and within two weeks we had filed the um application

00:06:25.920 with the federal court on december 24th 2021 and then i'll let carl tell you the rest of the story okay

00:06:32.240 um yeah i mean my my interest in this kind of probably started in the summer of 2021 we'd previously

00:06:44.560 in the spring we'd heard the prime minister using the language you'd expect right you know the

00:06:51.920 regarding the the the vaccines and that you know if you if you were a canadian and you wanted one

00:06:59.120 there'd be a vaccine for you and that sounded like normal language to me as soon as it got to

00:07:04.560 the declaration you know the dissolution of parliament and the starts of the election campaign

00:07:09.440 in the summer of 2021 then the language just pivoted it pivoted 180 degrees and suddenly became

00:07:18.720 very hostile towards canadians who had probably relied on the earlier words he'd said and had made

00:07:25.200 their choice and they maybe were not sure yet about having injections or or maybe didn't want to at

00:07:32.000 all for whatever reason and suddenly these people became people that no other canadian would want to

00:07:37.360 sit next to on an aircraft or and the language became very hostile there were a couple of speeches

00:07:42.080 i noticed he did on the stump when he was out campaigning and coming from europe you know we've kind

00:07:48.000 of heard this sort of language before um from leaders there this you know you don't expect to hear it

00:07:54.560 from a canadian prime minister i don't think i think that's that was the first shock that really you

00:07:59.840 know rattled me was hearing those words come out of the mouth of it and out of the mouth of the

00:08:04.800 canadian prime minister that sort of hostility um whether it was a campaign tactic or whatever i

00:08:13.120 don't know but anyway he decided to do that and did it and and i thought well this sounds like uh

00:08:19.520 a very bad idea that they're going to bring in so my attention was up and then when they brought it in

00:08:23.680 i think october november of 2021 then um clearly it was you know you you you have three choices and

00:08:32.800 you know you with these political uh policies that in you know the attacking and hostile political

00:08:42.080 policies you can either accept them you can fight against them or you can leave run away maybe there's a

00:08:47.840 blend of those but i thought well i brought my family to canada i fell in love with king canada and

00:08:53.600 the 1990s and i brought my family to canada 10 years later um didn't see any reason i should be

00:09:01.840 running away i'm not prepared to accept that kind of blatant discrimination um against canadians

00:09:10.160 including myself so the option you have is to do something and fight and we're not in the political

00:09:17.840 sphere um direct action and protesting is another one you join in with everybody else and do that but

00:09:24.320 legals some form of legal action is the third strand of that and so i thought well i've done that before i've

00:09:33.200 taken legal action before in not same circumstances but have some experience so i thought at least i can

00:09:40.000 bring that on twitter i saw sean's um words and that his words resonated very much with me um at that

00:09:49.520 point i didn't know he was a an expert i'm actually just to clarify i'm still a bread i'm a permanent

00:09:56.880 resident here i've been here 35 years and i'm actually i probably shouldn't say this because they might

00:10:05.520 kibosh this for me but um i my citizenship is actually in process right now so i'm a pretty

00:10:11.520 citizen um and a permanent resident because your dual citizenship uh yeah yeah i mean i became a

00:10:17.360 citizen of canada in 2015 yeah 2015 yeah so so i saw sean's and reached out to sean and i thought well

00:10:24.240 you know this guy seems to be doing something really positive and um i'm going to reach out and

00:10:28.720 see if i can add to that you know see what what i can bring that that's useful and helpful so that's

00:10:33.440 how i got involved with sean and that was how i started my interest came from through sean i mean

00:10:38.960 um i met uh sam and you know i i gotta say this i mean we hear the prime minister use words you know

00:10:45.200 he tells he's used the stepped up phrase god knows how many times you know all the time he's used that

00:10:51.040 about people stepping up and and sam was one of at that time one of the few lawyers i'd seen that had

00:10:56.240 stepped up and i was really impressed with that um and we all got on well very quickly yeah i can see

00:11:05.200 that in my interactions with the three so that's what that's how i got involved to finance it with

00:11:09.920 him yeah i i think another important point was that the fact that the that had me worried and again

00:11:17.840 scared even to an extent was nobody else was doing anything there were no politicians speaking up about

00:11:25.280 this i'd never i'd never in my life imagined tyranny was sure yeah roman was one of the only people

00:11:34.960 that's roman i had the conversation with yeah so i exclude him from that because he was very helpful

00:11:39.840 but in general in the media um any of the political parties were really doing nothing and i felt that

00:11:48.000 somebody had to do something um no matter how we did it we we would make it happen and and we you know

00:11:54.480 we kind of did but that that's that's concerning when when you've got both the opposition and the

00:12:00.880 governing party and nobody's nobody's speaking up about it like where were the conservatives and anyway

00:12:07.280 won't get into a political argument but that really worried me no that's uh it was pretty worrying and um

00:12:14.000 and you know i i was also really taken aback by the fact that unions in this country backed the

00:12:20.400 vaccine mandate it's extraordinary i think in the uk for example the unions vehemently opposed the the

00:12:27.040 you know whatever mandate was being proposed but here in canada everybody was just in lockstep with the

00:12:31.600 government but um you know i want to turn to sam here and uh sam i want to ask you how did you get

00:12:37.760 involved in this case what's you know what's the backstory and what drew you to this particular case

00:12:42.800 is something you wanted to champion actually uh for a while i've been wanting to take on a travel

00:12:48.880 related case and the first travel related case that i wanted to take on was the hotel quarantine

00:12:54.320 um and quite frankly actually the hotel quarantine case is the case that for the first time ever piqued my

00:12:59.760 interest in public law i'm not a public lawyer i'm not a constitutional lawyer uh quite frankly i think

00:13:05.200 constitutional law is my lowest grade in law school uh so i'm i'm you know i'm i'm a corporate

00:13:09.920 commercial litigation lawyer and i just deal with businesses and i deal with real estate and and so

00:13:13.680 on and so forth so i am not in uh you know i'm in terra nova here with respect to these types of

00:13:18.800 constitutional challenges very much but having said that there's a lot of principles i apply in what i do

00:13:23.520 with my you know corporate commercial files uh here and and hopefully that will bear some success but

00:13:28.240 i got involved because at a certain point i felt uh that there was a disconnect between the public

00:13:35.920 health measures that were being taken and the degree of risk as i understood it now i'm not a

00:13:41.760 doctor i'm not qualified to speak about uh you know the degree of risk of cope but as a lay person i'm

00:13:47.520 qualified to form my only opinion on it and that's exactly what i did and then when they started targeting

00:13:52.080 the transportation sector in what i felt was a fairly disproportionate way and then it escalated to

00:13:57.920 the point where as a canadian citizen the government is telling canadians that they need to go to a you

00:14:03.440 know a defined location for a defined period of time uh that's kind of you know i felt like we're

00:14:09.680 kind of sort of crossing the rubicon there so that's that's really what inspired me i guess to start

00:14:15.360 getting involved in these actions and in fact i for the first time ever for in a long time i should

00:14:19.680 say actually as i proactively reached to roman baber's office i said look i'm a lawyer i don't know how

00:14:24.720 many lawyers are contacting you but if you have people that have cases with respect to the hotel

00:14:29.040 quarantine or other interesting kind of public um interest cases i'm happy to help out uh and so

00:14:35.120 um you know roman was great and facilitated that connection and even though i did not get the chance

00:14:39.280 to do the hotel quarantine one uh i'm very lucky to get the chance to do this one yeah part of the

00:14:44.480 story sam that's that's funny it's like it was meant to be yeah yeah yeah and it was funny because i

00:14:49.920 was so disappointed when i realized that i you know i just didn't the stars didn't align for the

00:14:54.880 hotel quarantine one but you know as fate would have it uh here we are yeah i you know i've been

00:14:59.680 telling everybody that i've been speaking to and some a few the few interviews that i've done since

00:15:04.320 the story broke that you're only 30 years old and uh you know if you read through the transcripts it's

00:15:11.360 you know it it really you know it your cross-examination was just superb it was brilliant and if not for your

00:15:19.520 cross-examination i don't think we would even have this information we wouldn't have this um and uh

00:15:25.920 because some of these witnesses were very hard to break uh especially little you know she's she's an

00:15:31.120 extremely intelligent person you can you can tell that from her her responses um so you know i wanted

00:15:37.040 to ask you about that i wanted to ask you and you know sam uh this is for you but sean and carl you

00:15:44.880 can jump in as well if you if you like to answer this uh it became abundantly clear reading through

00:15:49.920 the documents that there really was no scientific rationale for the travel mandate did this surprise

00:15:56.880 any of you or is this pretty much what you were expecting from the get-go we we suspected it but

00:16:03.360 it was shocking to hear it coming out of their mouths um and and again and to go back to sam and i'll

00:16:09.760 let him talk more on this but the guy's been i don't want to blow him up too much here but he's

00:16:15.040 been a superstar like amazing like just absolutely phenomenal and and the like you said the way that

00:16:21.360 he that the work that he put in prior to the cross-examinations to be ready to be able to do what

00:16:28.720 you witnessed when you read them is just phenomenal and none of the other lawyers in this case bar none

00:16:34.960 uh bar him did it so kudos to him yeah i hope i'm getting an award i did this podcast

00:16:44.240 you know what i'll tell you something i i i i think the three of us are have a lot of commonalities

00:16:51.520 and one of the commonalities that we have is that we are we're resilient people and we i think all three

00:16:55.680 of us in a in a unique way have a resilient past and the three of us are successful in our own way uh

00:17:01.680 because of our resilience and uh i think my upbringing the fact that i started my own law

00:17:06.640 from at 24 or maybe i was 23 at the time i had to teach myself a lot largely um you know i think that

00:17:13.600 those build skills over time that allow me to do the things that i do today and i'm grateful for it but

00:17:18.240 in terms of answering your question about the public that you know the scientific basis

00:17:24.400 it really depends how microscopic you want to get and i find that in law a lot of things depend on

00:17:29.520 how microscopic you want to get you can look at if you can take a look at a 30 000 foot um level and

00:17:35.120 and and come up with the justification but as soon as you hone in and you try to get a little bit more

00:17:39.360 clarity uh and more specificity i find that's where you start to sort of scratch your head and and you're

00:17:44.560 you're on the you're on the pursuit of the search of the rationale if you if you take the position as i

00:17:49.680 think the canadian government has which is there's a in out there there is a public health crisis

00:17:57.200 it is generally desirable to minimize deaths it is generally desirable to keep everyone healthy

00:18:02.160 therefore we will do whatever we need to do to do that um that's kind of a thousand thirty thousand

00:18:07.120 foot level analysis and you know frankly i was expecting a more connected uh a more pointed uh and

00:18:15.680 a lot more clear um rationale between the specific measures they were doing i a mandatory vaccination as

00:18:22.640 a precondition for travel and a desired outcome uh and you know the evidence will speak to itself and

00:18:29.040 it's all in the public record i would imagine or most of it is and that's what we can talk about today

00:18:32.960 yeah well uh again you know and this is a question for all three of you uh were you surprised at how

00:18:39.040 cagey these officials were and that at least one of them the architect of the mandate uh jennifer

00:18:44.320 little herself uh key actor i would say uh would go so far as to invoke cabinet confidentiality to

00:18:50.880 to shut down questioning i think there were two what what what i noticed because we all sean and i

00:18:57.840 i mean sam had to do the the hard work of the cross-examination and led all the cross-examination

00:19:03.360 through that whole six-week period um sean and i sat through all of that and listened and all some of

00:19:09.760 those cross-examinations are two or three days long um and across a variety of witnesses and broadly

00:19:16.720 breaking down into two groups one's group of um people with you know public health agency canada

00:19:23.360 science type backgrounds and then the political people and there's definitely a difference when

00:19:28.880 you watch them being cross-examinated cross-examined and there's there's more of a frankness in the in

00:19:36.000 the science in in the scientists and then on under oath yes there were surprising some surprising

00:19:42.960 admissions some certainly from celia lorenko who approved all of the vaccines in canada yeah i mean

00:19:52.080 there are some moments in the cross-examination when you're listening to it that are real sort of wow

00:19:56.800 moments you um when you hear people concede i think i think you nailed it i mean just on this

00:20:05.200 but the politicians like jennifer little and the others evasive you know trying to use talking points

00:20:12.960 rather than answers and that we watch sam you know probably use 20 questions or 30 questions to

00:20:18.640 actually get to an answer and you probably read that when you know that every the same talking point

00:20:23.200 there and jennifer little was obviously very well schooled in that and you see that through all

00:20:27.920 levels of the liberal government you see that in parliament people reading from cards talking points

00:20:33.440 that are pre-written as answers to questions that they expect to get um so yeah i mean disappointment

00:20:40.320 but no surprises with the political witnesses some elements of frankness amongst the scientists

00:20:46.240 where you could sense maybe some of them were getting something off their chest under oath

00:20:49.600 yeah i don't blame them interesting that's a very interesting comment um i i'm hearing this for

00:20:55.920 the first time that's uh one way of looking at it uh because you know i was reading through the

00:20:59.920 transcripts as well and you know i was wondering well i expected them to be a little more sophisticated

00:21:06.000 than this at least at least a couple of these people uh and i won't name them here but um but it was

00:21:13.120 yeah it was a bit surprising uh that you know that they were uh finally just gave in and just said look

00:21:18.720 yeah you know what i wouldn't we wouldn't have done this under these conditions for example or

00:21:24.720 some sort of something or the other along those lines but um you know i realized that the case is

00:21:29.680 before the courts and the and you know at this point no matter how the case goes all three of you

00:21:36.240 in my opinion have already done great public service as i say in my story in a sense you've already won

00:21:41.840 um but um the fact that you know we have all this information out there in the public domain thanks

00:21:49.360 to your efforts do you feel that at this stage at this interim stage um that uh the public uh you do

00:21:56.240 you get some sense of satisfaction that the public uh at least knows more than we did a few few weeks ago

00:22:01.840 um wow yeah a lot they i think carl nailed it there sorry to interrupt you carl when you were talking

00:22:10.000 but he nailed it in the fact that they there were two very it was very distinctive between the expert

00:22:17.360 witnesses and the lay witnesses the lay witnesses being the sort of bureaucrats or government witnesses

00:22:23.600 um yeah it was very noticeable and and like carl said it it came across that if you went in and

00:22:31.520 and you sort of drilled them hard enough on those questions eventually it was like yeah you know what

00:22:36.320 you know it again maybe it was um uh what's the word uh maybe they just sort of just getting it like

00:22:46.080 carl said getting it off their chest perhaps and uh whereas the bureaucrats are very sneaky very

00:22:52.480 very elusive um to the questions and these are just my observations obviously we watched every

00:22:58.480 cross-examination we were the only two applicants that did watch the cross-examinations and it was

00:23:04.000 very interesting to watch the different characters and and just how again those two groups of people

00:23:10.080 that's very interesting so you are the only two applicants watching the cross-examination why did

00:23:14.720 the other applicants not want to participate in the case and the proceedings i don't know maybe

00:23:19.920 do you know we have to ask them yeah okay that's yeah that's interesting um yeah sam do you um do

00:23:28.800 you do you have a sense of satisfaction that uh these documents are now out there and the case is now

00:23:34.480 getting some attention undoubtedly but i have a bigger satisfaction that two people took it upon

00:23:41.680 themselves uh to make time in their professional life and in their personal life um to make the

00:23:47.120 commitment to do what they've done in order for the public to get access to the type of information

00:23:51.760 that quite frankly probably will only ever come from an adversarial context like this

00:23:56.400 the reality is there's a price to play there's a there's a price to play and uh for many people

00:24:02.880 it's an unattainable price but it's an important price to pay if we want to continue to have a

00:24:06.640 robust democracy and i think that what uh what sean has done and what carl has done is uh is a big

00:24:12.000 service um to the country quite frankly yeah well that leads me to my next question and uh really

00:24:17.280 any one of you can answer this uh more broadly what do you think that this mandate uh tells us about

00:24:23.440 the state of individual liberty in canada it's been suspended but they could bring it back um uh and

00:24:30.160 we've been told that they could potentially bring it back um where do you think we're going and are

00:24:35.280 you hopeful for the future i think that's such a good question i mean and and that's so prefacing it

00:24:44.480 with something from your previous question yes there's a sense of satisfaction that this is out

00:24:48.720 there but neither sean nor ryan or sam are in this for sort of fame and and glory i think that this the

00:24:56.880 the the question you're this question i mean you're it the case has much broader implications as you

00:25:04.480 realize and and i worry that the lack of real mainstream media coverage in canada has left a

00:25:14.640 lot of people in in the dark about what these mandates were really about and i think that was

00:25:21.120 a government tactic was to prevent people from getting all of the information and it leaves it leaves

00:25:30.160 all canadians on a slippery slope frankly you know that if if the government's able to create this

00:25:37.840 kind of discrimination in this instance on against six or seven million canadians um who just on the

00:25:48.320 basis of a completely routine health choice yeah um then if they're allowed to get away with that if they

00:25:55.360 do get away with that if canadians find that acceptable um in some way then in the future there's

00:26:01.600 a very serious risk that that same um kind of policy comes back in different ways and it's it's usually

00:26:10.800 foolish to watch some to watch another person be persecuted imagining that that might not be you

00:26:17.360 and and i think both all the three of us feel that the case is very important it's very important to

00:26:25.600 be heard and we hope that happens and it's fantastic very important if you can win it and it's very

00:26:34.480 important that the information gets into the public domain so that if the at least some more canadians

00:26:41.520 start to realize a little bit more about about the background to this case the policies the risks to

00:26:48.640 them the risk to their freedoms um going forward so yeah yeah yeah it's not it's it's it's not only um

00:26:58.080 it's not only about people who chose not to be injected right it's about everybody and and it is it's scary

00:27:03.600 it's a scary thought it's a scary thought that this mootness motion could potentially which i'm sure

00:27:10.480 we'll get into in a minute could potentially have all of these four cases dismissed um and

00:27:19.920 the thought of the thought of that happening is as i said it's it's a scary thought so

00:27:27.120 i think yeah you know mobility rights are so fundamental uh to human you know dignity and integrity

00:27:36.080 uh i you know sean and carl and i had a conversation a couple days ago we were trying to think of a

00:27:41.760 circumstance in which it might ever be acceptable to really restrict someone's mobility absent then

00:27:48.640 the obvious somebody might have a criminal records you know so on so forth extradition these types of

00:27:53.280 outlet not outlier cases but obviously not what work well not not what's being contemplated in this

00:27:57.840 discourse right and frankly i couldn't imagine one because the second you start limiting an individual's

00:28:03.360 ability to move whether it's for a pandemic or war or whatever the case might be it's effectively the

00:28:08.160 government telling you we know better than you what where you should be going and i don't think

00:28:12.480 that's an outcome from a political philosophy perspective that should ever be tolerated uh because

00:28:17.040 i don't think that can ever be true uh you know certain measures need to be taken for for people's

00:28:22.320 protection and safety and and you know there's many instances where the state does know and is acting on

00:28:27.360 great information and acting you know for the collective welfare of people and you have to make some

00:28:31.760 compromises day to day that are practical but asking asking people to make an irreversible decision

00:28:38.880 as a precondition to enjoying one of the most fundamental human rights uh i think we have on

00:28:44.800 this planet certainly in a western democracy you know that that gives me a lot of pause for concern

00:29:01.760 so

00:29:10.000 you

00:29:17.840 you

Juno News - August 05, 2022

Fighting Trudeau’s travel mandate in court Part. 1

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