Juno News - April 27, 2022


How has the Charter of Rights and Freedoms changed Canada？ (Ft. The Hon. Brian Peckford)


Episode Stats

Length

50 minutes

Words per Minute

171.3646

Word Count

8,572

Sentence Count

438

Misogynist Sentences

1

Hate Speech Sentences

2


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is 40 years old this year. How has this document
00:00:05.560 changed our country? How has it changed Canada? Well, joining me today is one of the original
00:00:10.280 signers of the Charter, the Honorable Brian Peckford. I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is
00:00:14.780 the Candice Malcolm Show. Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for tuning into the program.
00:00:30.740 So as we've been talking about all over the news, everybody celebrating the Charter, looking
00:00:34.540 back at the past 40 years, looking back at the history of the signing of the Charter,
00:00:38.340 we thought what better way to talk about that momentous occasion in Canadian history than
00:00:43.580 inviting the only living signer of that document to join the podcast to walk us through what
00:00:49.440 happened, tell us the story, and help us understand why this document was so needed. So joining
00:00:54.980 me today is the Honorable Brian Peckford. Mr. Peckford served as the Progressive Conservative
00:01:00.280 Premier of Newfoundland, Labrador from 1979 to 1989. He's the last living signatory of
00:01:06.340 the Charter. Also as Premier, his government established the Atlantic Accord, which brought
00:01:11.060 offshore oil and gas revenues to the province that ultimately shifted the province's fortunes,
00:01:15.700 economic fortunes, from being a perpetual have-not province, which takes money from the federal
00:01:20.720 government, to shifted that, transformed it into a strong performing province that is a
00:01:26.520 have-province, which means that they contribute more than they take out. Mr. Peckford is the author
00:01:31.280 of the book, Someday the Sun Will Shine and Have-Not Will Become No More, beautifully titled memoir
00:01:37.300 about his time as premier, and the triumph to have control over the province's natural resources.
00:01:43.860 Brian currently serves as the chair of both the board of directors and the advisory board of
00:01:48.020 Taking Back Your Freedoms, an organization formed last year to equip and mobilize citizens towards
00:01:53.160 taking back their constitutional and God-given freedoms. Over the past year, Mr. Peckford has become
00:01:58.960 a symbol of Canada's opposition to government overreach in response to COVID-19. Mr. Peckford is a very
00:02:05.680 popular speaker. He has spoken to thousands of people at freedom rallies in his home province,
00:02:09.920 his now home province, of British Columbia, and was a supporter of the Freedom Convoy protests in
00:02:15.780 Ottawa. Peckford is also suing the federal government, and hopefully we will talk to him a
00:02:20.260 little bit about this. This is over the federal government's vaccine mandate with regards to air
00:02:24.800 travel, and he's working with our friends over at the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms
00:02:29.420 on that. So all that is to just say, Brian, it's a tremendous honor to have you on the program,
00:02:34.380 and thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me too. I think it's
00:02:38.300 important for us all to speak up whenever we can as it relates to the freedoms that the Canadians are
00:02:45.820 supposed to enjoy. Well, that's the theme of the show. So many of the sort of stories that I've seen
00:02:52.720 talking about the Charter and looking back at its 40-year history and what happened 40 years ago,
00:02:57.880 unfortunately, they don't take a critical enough look at the ways that our freedoms have been,
00:03:03.300 in some ways, many ways eroded and neglected over the past few years. So hopefully we can get
00:03:08.300 into that conversation today. First off the bat, though, I just want to ask you, so take us back
00:03:13.360 40 years ago to the signing of the Constitution. What was the process? I know it was a long,
00:03:19.060 I think, 17-month ordeal negotiating many, many things, not just the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
00:03:23.900 So take us back 40 years. Why did Canada need a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and why did this
00:03:29.040 constitutional negotiation begin and get underway? Yes, well, thank you very much. Yeah,
00:03:34.780 Canada was formed as a country in 1867 with the BNA Act, the British North America Act,
00:03:41.600 which defined Canada and the nature of our government. In other words, that it would be a
00:03:46.360 federal government, not a unitary government. That means that powers would be shared between the
00:03:51.400 federal government and the provinces. There were only four provinces at the time that formed Canada,
00:03:56.440 upper and lower Canada, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. So Canada started with four provinces,
00:04:02.060 not 10 provinces that it has today. And we grew into 10 provinces over time. Missing from that
00:04:08.940 document which formed Canada was anything to do with individual rights and freedoms. They were not
00:04:13.880 described in the BNA Act, which created Canada. We relied upon, because we came out of the British
00:04:21.000 system, the British common law, the unwritten British common law. And so from the 1867 until really 1960,
00:04:30.700 that's how Canadians defended their individual rights and freedoms. There was nothing written
00:04:34.960 in the constitution. If you look to the south of us, in the United States of America,
00:04:40.620 their country was formed in 1776, and they had a written Charter of Rights and Freedoms,
00:04:45.500 but Bill of Rights in 1791, only 15 years after they became a country. In our case, we formed a country
00:04:55.500 in 1867 and didn't get a written Charter until 1982, actually formalized in 1982. So there was,
00:05:04.060 through the part, early part of the 20th century after we became a country, various moves underfoot to
00:05:11.200 indicate that why don't we have a written Charter of Rights and Freedoms like the Americans? Why do we
00:05:16.860 depend upon unwritten British common law and the precedents that have been set over the years in the
00:05:24.820 courts? And that debate, you know, rose and fall over time. But up into the 1960s, it became more
00:05:34.820 pronounced in saying that something should be written as related to our individual rights and freedoms.
00:05:39.700 And that's when John Diefenbaker, who was the prime minister in 1960, introduced what we know as the
00:05:46.200 Bill of Rights. And, but there was two failings with that Bill of Rights. One was that it was just
00:05:51.980 a federal act and therefore only applied to federal jurisdiction and not to provincial jurisdiction.
00:05:57.680 So therefore, it never covered all Canadians, it only covered some Canadians. And after that 1960
00:06:04.240 Bill of Rights, there was a movement underfoot stronger than ever to try to put something in
00:06:11.240 writing in a constitution, not just a federal act or provincial act. So it would cover everybody in the
00:06:17.240 country and put it in writing and have something firm, identifiable, and easily to reference. And so,
00:06:27.240 through the six from the 60s on, there were the various talks, but it always got stymied and delayed
00:06:36.520 and canceled by a debate over an amending formula. In other words, if we amended the constitution and
00:06:45.800 brought in the Charter Rights and Freedoms and became totally independent and not having to go back to
00:06:51.400 England for any more amendments, how would we amend our own constitution into the future? And there was
00:06:57.400 great debate over that and nothing could be decided. But by 1980, there was a strong, strong movement from
00:07:04.600 the 1960s to do that. And so, in 1980, the first ministers of Canada, all the premiers and the prime
00:07:14.680 minister agreed to get together to see whether we could do two things really, patriate the constitution,
00:07:21.640 and also add a Charter of Rights and Freedoms once we patriated it, as well as a number of other items.
00:07:29.640 And so, we began to negotiate in 1980 and that culminated in 1981 with an agreement called the
00:07:40.600 Patriation Agreement, which became the Constitution Act of 1982. That was a long, tortuous negotiation of
00:07:48.600 17 months because it was interrupted by the Prime Minister of Canada at the time, who was Justin Trudeau's
00:07:55.400 father, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, who found that he discovered or he thought that provinces were being
00:08:02.600 too difficult. And so, he left the table and tried to patriate the constitution and bring in a Charter of
00:08:08.920 Rights and Freedoms and other changes on his own. And so, he passed a law in the House of Commons to do just
00:08:16.600 that and passed by the Senate and became a law of Canada that the government of Canada would go
00:08:21.720 ahead unilaterally, bring the constitution home from England for good, and attach a Charter of
00:08:28.520 Rights and Freedoms to it, as well as other changes. Well, the provinces objected to this because we're a
00:08:35.640 federal state and not a unitary state. And so, eight provinces opposed what he was doing, two provinces
00:08:41.640 stayed with the federal government. And so, we took him to court over this action. And we won that action
00:08:48.840 in the Supreme Court of Canada in September 1981. And the Supreme Court said that the Prime Minister of Canada and
00:08:55.080 the government of Canada could not unilaterally patriate the constitution and attach a Charter of Rights to
00:09:01.560 it on their own. They couldn't do it unilaterally. They could only do it through the provinces and with the
00:09:07.720 provinces. And so, the Prime Minister lost and he was forced then to come back to the table that he had
00:09:14.760 left. If in fact, we were going to get a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, if we're going to get
00:09:19.400 patriation, if we're going to get other things. And we succeeded after three days of final negotiations
00:09:27.560 on November 3rd, 4th and 5th as a result of a proposal that I, on behalf of Newfoundland, put
00:09:33.640 forward to the rest of the provinces. It was this proposal that was accepted on November the 5th
00:09:39.320 by all the First Ministers except Quebec. And the Supreme Court of Canada decision did not say that
00:09:46.840 you had to have unanimity in order to get a change. It said you had to have a lot of the provinces on
00:09:52.040 side. Of course, we had 9 out of 10. And so, therefore, that met the constitutional tests of
00:09:58.040 the Supreme Court of Canada. And therefore, we got the Patriation Agreement of 1981, which contained,
00:10:05.720 among other things, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which became the Constitution Act of 1982,
00:10:11.640 which means that this year is the 40th anniversary of the Charter and the other changes becoming law.
00:10:18.440 What is not understood by most Canadians is because now, under the pandemic situation, which has
00:10:24.680 occurred, and the violations of the Charter, is that people forget that the Charter of Rights and
00:10:31.000 Freedoms came into being as a result of a package. Not just the Charter of Rights was negotiated. It was
00:10:37.880 the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, patriation, bringing the Constitution home, Indigenous rights,
00:10:44.120 Native First Nations rights in Section 35, and the mending formula, regional economic expansion and
00:10:52.520 equalization, and minority language rights. So when people say to me, why didn't you put this in the
00:10:59.240 Charter or put that in the Charter or take that out? They don't seem to understand. We just weren't
00:11:03.400 negotiating the Charter. The Charter was part of a bargaining chip with other things that I just outlined in
00:11:11.000 it. But we did get freedoms for individuals, and we did get rights for individuals in Sections 2,
00:11:18.840 6, 7, and 15 of the Charter, which now are being highlighted because the governments of this nation,
00:11:25.800 through the pandemic measures, have seen fit to violate those sacred rights that were in that
00:11:32.040 Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Okay, well thank you so much for that background and that history. It's
00:11:37.080 really helpful to sort of put it all together. I have an interesting anecdote because I went to study
00:11:41.160 in Australia, and one of the first things that we were told during this sort of orientation was,
00:11:45.800 you know, unlike in the U.S., unlike in Canada, we don't have a Bill of Rights. So you don't have
00:11:51.640 the same amendments to the Constitution that you have in the United States. You don't have the same
00:11:56.760 Charter of Rights and Freedoms as you do in Canada, and that might mean that you could get yourself
00:12:01.240 into trouble. That was sort of the context of the discussion we were having. But I remember talking to a
00:12:05.640 friend of mine who's in law school, and her perspective was that you don't need to have
00:12:10.200 your rights codified. That in fact, when you codify your rights and have them listed, not only does it
00:12:17.000 list what your rights are, but it limits what's not there. And so I'm wondering if you can sort of
00:12:21.800 comment on whether you think Canada is better off having a codified list of what our rights are,
00:12:28.520 like a piece of paper that you can uphold and you can take to court and you can use to justify,
00:12:33.160 or whether the ancient sort of, you know, common law tradition that Australia still uses, that the
00:12:37.960 British use, is a better approach. What do you think? I think Australia has, since your time,
00:12:44.920 now have some Bill of Rights in their Constitution. I just noted that the other day, a decision out of
00:12:54.600 Australia referred to it. And by the way, the wording is very much similar to the Charter of Rights and
00:12:59.480 freedoms. But to come to your main point of British common law and why a codified
00:13:05.880 charter is better than a uncodified list of rights, that's the problem you have with
00:13:13.320 unwritten rights and freedoms is that they are unwritten and therefore the interpretation can vary
00:13:20.840 over time with various precedents set by various judges. If you have something which is in writing and
00:13:27.960 it is a sentence, freedom of expression, freedom of speech, if you want, or freedom of religion or
00:13:34.520 freedom of conscience, that's it. And it's quite clear. If in fact you rely upon uncodified rights and
00:13:43.240 freedoms, then you're subject to the whims of a judiciary over centuries where one judge or one lawyer could
00:13:53.160 bring up, well, in this case it said yes. In this other case, I'm not so sure who said yes. And so
00:13:59.080 therefore, this can evolve over time and change over time. When many people believe that we need to have
00:14:09.480 fixed charter rights or Bill of Rights or fixed freedom rights in a constitution so that it's not up to the
00:14:19.560 whims of anybody whether it be parliament or judges to change according to their own biases at the time
00:14:27.960 in their own history at the time. That's one of the problems you have. It is a riskier proposition
00:14:34.040 to maintain a given right, given that it can change over time with various individuals, various judges. So I
00:14:41.080 think that's one of the most important factors which most of us at the time in 1980, 81 and 82
00:14:49.320 considered that it was necessary to have something that individual citizens could look to as saying,
00:14:57.960 we do have something that we can refer to immediately and understand. It's not just for the lawyers and for
00:15:04.040 the judges. It's for individual citizens to understand that they have certain constitutional rights
00:15:10.200 guaranteed in law, in the constitution, written down, and is not subject to the whims of history
00:15:18.360 or individuals over time. Interesting. That's a great point. I had Mr. John Carpe on the program
00:15:25.480 a couple of days ago talking about the charter. He runs the Justice Center, which I know you've done
00:15:29.640 some work with. And one of the sort of limits he said when he was talking about the charter, why it
00:15:34.840 doesn't always uphold our rights and freedoms the way that we want, is he talked about section one
00:15:40.280 of the charter, which says that the charter rights can be limited by law so long as those limits can
00:15:45.400 be shown to be reasonable in a free and democratic society. So that verbiage, that line at the beginning
00:15:51.800 sort of pretexts the constitution saying, if a government can prove it is reasonable in a free
00:15:58.040 and democratic society, that's justification and that can convince a court and a judge. Go ahead,
00:16:03.320 if you want to respond to that. Well, I think you left out the most important part of section one,
00:16:09.080 and that is, I'm an old English teacher, and if you read section one and they read it out,
00:16:16.440 the verb in that sentence is demonstrably justified within reasonable limits by law in a free and
00:16:23.080 democratic society. And a lot of lawyers since this came into being have tried to twist that meaning
00:16:30.920 and always just talk about reasonable limits. In that sentence, there is demonstrably justified.
00:16:39.000 Now, I make two arguments as it relates to section one. Unfortunately, I'm the old first
00:16:44.040 minister still alive who was there when this was written. The intent of section one was to apply
00:16:50.600 if the state was in peril, war, insurrection, or some other extreme event, which threatened the
00:16:58.680 existence of the state. That does not exist today, does not exist during the pandemic circumstance
00:17:05.400 of the last two years. And therefore, section one, in my view, does not even apply in this circumstance.
00:17:12.840 And intent is very important in jurisprudence. The courts very often look behind
00:17:19.480 the piece of legislation or the piece of law from the constitution and look behind it to say,
00:17:25.480 what was the intent of the founders? What was the intent of the creators of that section?
00:17:31.240 Well, I can tell the judge and I can tell the lawyers and I can tell Canada that as one of the
00:17:36.760 people who was there, that was the intent of section one. It was to be used only. That's why we
00:17:43.240 wanted it in the constitution. The constitution is more permanent than a piece of federal legislation
00:17:49.800 or a piece of provincial legislation. It was put there to be permanent and only to be changed in
00:17:55.720 the most extreme circumstances. We're not into that extreme circumstance. However, I go on to argue
00:18:03.160 in order to give, what shall I say, courtesy more than anything else. And to be fair,
00:18:10.440 I say to people, okay, for argument's sake, let's say that section one does apply in this pandemic
00:18:17.160 circumstance. And therefore the governments could go ahead and use section one. There are four tests
00:18:23.080 in section one, even if it does apply. And the most important test, contrary to what a lot of the
00:18:29.000 lawyers and others have been saying over the last two years is the test of demonstrably justify.
00:18:35.400 That's the verb in that sentence. That's the predominant operative phrase in that larger sentence.
00:18:41.320 Demonstrably justify within reasonable limits by law in a free and democratic society. Well, no government,
00:18:48.440 14 governments of Canada, 10 provinces, federal government, or the three territories have demonstrably
00:18:54.600 justified what they are doing under their mandates. They have not met the test of demonstrably justify.
00:19:02.520 Everybody in Canada who knows anything about public policy knows that when you use the words
00:19:07.880 demonstrably justify, and I remember when we put demonstrably in there to make it stronger,
00:19:13.320 not just justify. Most public policy makers know that means cost benefit analysis or some other
00:19:20.920 approach. How do you demonstrably justify what you're doing? You are government, that is. Well,
00:19:26.680 you try to find out whether what you're doing has more benefits than costs. And as we now know,
00:19:33.640 and have known for a long time, only about 90 or 100 days into this pandemic, that the cure was worse
00:19:41.240 than the disease, that all these pandemic measures that were brought in where people died because they
00:19:47.320 never got to see a doctor, delayed surgeries, suicide, you know, many families broken up and the like.
00:19:55.320 Dr. Douglas Allen of Simon Fraser University did a study in which he reviewed 80 other studies from
00:20:01.640 around the world as to whether there was the cost, whether the benefit was greater than the cost on these
00:20:09.320 measures. And he found out of 80 studies that no, it wasn't justified what they were doing. And this was
00:20:16.440 published in April, 2021, that study out of our own university in Canada by Douglas, Douglas Allen,
00:20:23.800 you're very seldom here telling the report. I wonder why. It's because his definitive, now nobody's ever
00:20:31.080 questioned the validity of the report. Nobody's ever questioned his methodology. The report is there
00:20:36.840 out public for anybody to read. And that's what it concluded. And he also said in that document
00:20:42.520 that 90 to 100 days after the pandemic was declared in like March 2020, it was clear to
00:20:52.280 policymakers and others that we have real problems here by implementing these mandates. It's very,
00:20:58.600 very negative. And so the test of section one has not been met, even if section one does apply.
00:21:06.360 And if you want to take it further, another test there was free and democratic society.
00:21:10.760 Well, a free and democratic society means that therefore parliamentary democracy.
00:21:15.720 That's what Canada means. When you say free and democratic society, we have parliaments all over
00:21:20.760 Canada. We have 14 of them. And therefore the parliaments should have been called and kept open,
00:21:27.320 not called just to give the government more power, but call and stayed open and a parliamentary committee
00:21:33.240 of that parliament established to review what the government was doing to see whether in fact
00:21:38.520 it was beneficial. And then they would have called in other people to the committee,
00:21:43.800 other than just a government scientist to get a broader view of this situation to see whether in
00:21:50.040 fact it was a valid thing to do at that time. They didn't do that. So my argument is that number one,
00:21:56.920 section one does not apply because it doesn't meet the intent. And I was there and I know what the intent
00:22:02.200 was, and that's why it was put in the constitution. And by the way, if you go down to section four
00:22:08.440 in the charter, which talks about extending the life of a parliament, if we're, if we have to,
00:22:15.400 under what conditions could you extend the parliament? War, insurrection if the state was in peril.
00:22:21.160 So that was what was on our minds. It was clear in section four, what was on our minds. It was a very
00:22:27.480 extreme event for section one to be triggered. And that extreme event does not exist today. But I go
00:22:33.880 on to say, as I said, in summary, that even if section one does apply, the governments of this
00:22:38.520 nation did not meet the two very important tests of the four, one demonstrably justify or within the
00:22:46.200 context of a free and democratic society. Well, thank you for making that important
00:22:50.920 clarification. I must've just been misreading the section one there, but I think, I think you really
00:22:57.320 robustly answered that question. But it does beg the next question, which is why the why, you know,
00:23:04.440 if the section one test wasn't met, how is it that the governments were able to steamroll so many of
00:23:10.760 the other rights that were written down in the charter? How did this play? How did it play out?
00:23:15.560 Why did it play out? How is it able to be the case in Canada? You know, as well as I do,
00:23:20.600 they just went ahead and did it. And nobody, well, what really happened, I guess, is that
00:23:26.680 early on the Imperial College of London in England issued a report which the White House in the
00:23:34.280 United States, with the parliament in Canada and all the world brought into this fear-mongering
00:23:41.800 that the Imperial College of London said, where millions were going to die. Some die in the streets.
00:23:47.480 They even talked about deaths in the streets of China at the time in Wuhan because of this virus and so
00:23:54.760 on. So a climate of fear was created very early on into this pandemic, which just about everybody
00:24:03.720 bought into, except myself and a few others. But a lot of people bought into this and this gave
00:24:11.560 the government's license, they thought, to go ahead and violate the freedoms and rights enshrined in the
00:24:19.240 Constitution of Canada. And unfortunately, so that's what happened really, is that a mass psychosis
00:24:26.520 overtook the society and people were very subservient once fear set in to going along with the
00:24:34.200 government narrative. So it goes to show, as we know from history, that very often leaders have
00:24:44.840 reached their own limits, the normal limits that apply to a government or to apply to a leader.
00:24:51.960 And this is what happened in this sense. And I've been fighting ever since to get this back,
00:24:56.600 to get it. Now, we must say that the fight is not over. And this is the other thing that people say,
00:25:03.800 well, the charter has been thrown out the window and that's the end of it. Well, if that was so,
00:25:08.840 then the courts of appeal of the provinces have not heard yet, nor has the Supreme Court of Canada.
00:25:15.160 It's the lower courts that have heard the cases so far and have ruled against us and ruled for the
00:25:20.440 governments. But the other point I must make is that the first words of the Constitution of the
00:25:26.280 charter are not section one, are not in section one. The first words of the charter, which therefore
00:25:33.640 comes before section one, and under which section one is to be considered, are this country was founded
00:25:40.920 on the principles of the supremacy of God and the rule of law. Now, if you put section one into that
00:25:48.760 context, what does the supremacy of God mean? Doesn't that mean inalienable rights, that the
00:25:54.360 rights that we possess as individuals don't even come from this faith in the first instance,
00:25:59.000 they come from the creator. And it's in that context that you must consider this charter.
00:26:05.720 Then what has happened in the lower courts, they've even ignored even mentioning the Supreme
00:26:11.080 supremacy of God and the rule of law in one case, in so far. And so, and I'm sure you have not heard
00:26:18.920 in a lot of the debates and a lot of the articles that you read very much attention to supremacy of
00:26:24.040 God and the rule of law. But it is the beginning of the charter and comes even before section one.
00:26:30.200 And once again, as a former English teacher, at the end of that sentence, it's not a period,
00:26:37.000 it's a colon. A colon has a meaning, a semicolon has a meaning, a period has a meaning, a comma has a meaning,
00:26:43.160 and they're all different. Well, colon means what follows, right? What comes after, right? That's
00:26:49.240 what a colon means. I am going to list the number of animals there is in the world, colon. I am going
00:26:55.800 to tell you who are the National Hockey League players in Canada, colon, right? What follows,
00:27:03.000 what comes after. Well, that's what this was delivered by us when we wrote that sentence,
00:27:09.880 is that all the other things that come after that sentence have to be considered in the light
00:27:15.720 of supremacy of God in the context of rule of law. This has been missing so far. And so it's my intention,
00:27:24.600 and many others with me, to point this out. So that by the time
00:27:29.720 the appeals get to the courts of appeal of the provinces, quite likely three or four provinces
00:27:34.920 for sure, and then on ultimately to the Supreme Court of Canada, that the justices will recognize
00:27:42.360 that what their fellow comrades did in the lower courts was not complete. They did not consider
00:27:49.800 seriously enough section one, nor did they consider seriously enough the preamble to the charter,
00:27:56.280 supremacy of God, and the rule of law. So the hockey game isn't over. We're in the latter part of the second period.
00:28:03.000 We've got the full third period to go, and that is the courts of appeal and the Supreme Court of Canada.
00:28:08.520 So I'm not giving up on the courts yet. I know a lot of people have, but I still insist that if Canadians
00:28:16.440 from coast to coast to coast, kept arguing with me that the higher courts now have a solemn
00:28:24.280 responsibility to correct what has happened in the lower courts. They've done it before.
00:28:28.840 It's been done in Supreme courts all over the world. That's why you have a Supreme Court of Canada,
00:28:33.720 because there may have been a mistake in the lower courts. Otherwise, why have it? If they're all
00:28:38.040 omnipotent at the lower level, well then why have an appeal court? Why have a Supreme Court of Canada?
00:28:42.920 The mere fact that we do means that there's a possibility that the lower courts got it wrong.
00:28:48.680 And in this case, they got it very much wrong, both in interpreting section one and interpreting
00:28:55.160 or ignoring the principles of the supremacy of God and the rule of law. So I'm still in there
00:29:01.400 fighting that the courts have an opportunity now to correct what has been done wrong so far.
00:29:07.800 Well, I really appreciate you adding in that mention of the preamble because it's so important,
00:29:12.200 and you're right. We don't hear very often the fact that our country, our constitution and our
00:29:16.520 charter is based on the principles of the supremacy of God and the rule of law. I wish our prime minister
00:29:21.800 would contemplate it. I mean, we have a prime minister, Brian, who routinely breaks the law.
00:29:27.560 I mean, he's had multiple ethics violations. He acts oftentimes like he's above the law.
00:29:32.200 He doesn't seem like a person who really does respect the rule of law.
00:29:35.400 And all the other parties, sadly, that are in the House of Commons are in the same boat.
00:29:43.000 And by the way, he never only broke ethics rules. He broke the law.
00:29:48.840 He broke the conflict of interest law, which was a law that was passed by the House of Commons,
00:29:56.440 by these very MPs. And he broke it five times, according to the independent conflict of interest
00:30:04.760 ethics commissioner. And nobody...
00:30:06.840 You're talking about the Aga Khan, the Aga Khan vacation. Is that what you're referring to?
00:30:11.800 That's one. I know that there's just been a...
00:30:13.640 Okay. That's one.
00:30:14.920 That's one, but there are five.
00:30:15.640 Right.
00:30:16.840 And you can go into the website of the ethics commissioner and find all five of these.
00:30:21.160 Another one was obstruction of justice. When the minister attorney general, Judy Wilson-Raybo,
00:30:29.080 was trying to be forced to change her mind and get her department to change their decision,
00:30:35.240 that SNC-Lavalin company had to go to court. They were trying to get a deal outside of court.
00:30:41.640 Then the prime minister was trying to force his minister of justice through his office and through
00:30:47.400 a couple of his ministers and his staff to get the minister who had already made up her mind that
00:30:53.160 this should go to a full court hearing. The evidence was quite overwhelming that they had
00:30:58.360 committed wrong and that it should go all the way. The prime minister tried to obstruct
00:31:04.840 the normal course of justice by interfering with attorney general and the minister of justice.
00:31:10.520 If anybody learns anything when they become a leader of a political party,
00:31:16.040 which has the majority of seats in the House of Commons or in the parliament, is this.
00:31:19.960 And my first day in office, I was advised by senior people in the government
00:31:28.440 One thing you must know from the start, Mr. Premier, and I'm sure you've heard of this
00:31:32.760 when you were a minister, that the course of justice, the course of justice that is being
00:31:39.480 preceded in your ministry of justice is not to be interfered with by your office or by you.
00:31:45.880 It's one of the principles of British parliamentary democracy. It is a very, very important part of
00:31:53.160 this. That's untouchable. You don't interfere with what the minister of justice department is
00:32:00.360 bringing forward as various allegations or prosecutions against a person, against a company or
00:32:07.400 whatever. I learned it very early on, 24 hours in, I was advised, you know, you'll be well served
00:32:13.880 to leave that alone. That's one, that's sacrosanct. And so the prime minister broke those laws. But my
00:32:19.720 bigger point is this, and there's where we have a problem in Canada today. We have no moral compass
00:32:25.960 anymore. And a really good example is that none of the MPs in any of the parties have tried to amend
00:32:32.840 the conflict of interest legislation so that if an MP breaks the law, they cannot serve in parliament.
00:32:39.800 Right now, the prime minister is still serving in parliament, even though he broke the law,
00:32:44.280 because there is no penalties, like a $100 fine, $500 fine for breaking the law. You can still serve
00:32:51.720 in the parliament of Canada. I wrote on my blog a few days ago on this, and I have been
00:32:58.200 talking about this for a while. So the problem we have in our nation is the prime minister, but it's
00:33:04.760 also all the other leaders of parties in the House of Commons who have not insisted that this conflict
00:33:11.160 of interest law, we don't need to change the constitution. All we need is to go to the House
00:33:16.120 of Commons like you do every day when it's open and make a proposal or make a resolution or propose
00:33:21.480 a change to the conflict of interest act. Any party, any MP can propose that, and none of the parties
00:33:27.640 have done it. And so therefore, they're all guilty by association, by not taking it upon themselves
00:33:34.760 to insist that our parliament and our parliamentarians must be honest. And right now, they're not.
00:33:42.920 Well, it's so true. Sometimes you just shake your head reading the news and hearing about senators
00:33:47.640 and MPs being charged with crimes and breaking the laws. And it's like, what kind of country
00:33:51.480 is this? What kind of culture do we have where we don't have the basic respect for the rule of law?
00:33:56.120 We allow politicians to get away with this. I would likewise echo that. I would love to see laws
00:34:01.640 put into place to be stricter against the people who are elected to represent us.
00:34:05.480 I wanted to pivot a little bit and ask you about the Emergencies Act, because when you were talking
00:34:10.120 about the charter having the demonstrably justifiable clause in section one, and the idea
00:34:16.520 was that it was during like a war time or an extreme event, it seemed very similar to the
00:34:22.360 Emergencies Act. You know, this thing used to be called martial law. It used to be reserved for,
00:34:26.360 you know, the War Measures Act at a time when our country was being invaded or there's an insurrection.
00:34:31.960 It seems to me that the Prime Minister just used it because he didn't like the truckers and he
00:34:35.000 didn't agree with them. I'm wondering if you can comment on what you saw transpire
00:34:40.120 during the trucker convoy and the government's heavy-handed use of force against those protesters.
00:34:47.480 Yes, I was there for a number of days during when the truckers convoy situation was at its peak.
00:34:53.880 And I walked the streets of Ottawa and I didn't see anything that the Prime Minister and some of his
00:34:59.640 associates saw. They were very civil. The streets were left passable and the trucks were on the side
00:35:08.360 and they were negotiating every day with the city of Ottawa to ensure that this convoy could continue
00:35:17.000 and meanwhile people could get around. So, and very few Canadians know that, that the convoy was in touch
00:35:24.840 and negotiating almost every day with the city of Ottawa and the mayor and the police of Ottawa.
00:35:32.280 So, what the Prime Minister and the government did with the support of the NDP and his own and the
00:35:39.160 Liberal MPs was bring in this extreme measure, which by the way, at the beginning of that piece of
00:35:46.040 legislation it said must be consistent and conform to the Charter Rights and Freedoms. Well, it did not,
00:35:51.640 because they never demonstrated at all. And since then, the hearings that have been held have shown
00:35:57.880 that there were no outside forces. There's been no prosecution brought about anybody about firearms
00:36:06.920 or about violence. The very things that the Prime Minister used to justify bringing in the Emergency
00:36:13.000 Act has not materialized when it's been looked at. So, he did this without the evidence to show,
00:36:21.480 to demonstrably justify that he could override the rights and freedoms of the truckers, okay. He did
00:36:26.840 this without the evidence, the firm evidence to justify what he did. So, that was unconstitutional as well,
00:36:33.640 very unconstitutional because it violated the Charter. Now, what's happened to show you how much
00:36:38.920 rot we have in our system? And very few people talking about it. It was revealed this morning
00:36:45.000 by Congress Signal, a news organization, that the Prime Minister appointed yesterday a judge
00:36:53.240 under the act who's supposed to review what happened in the emergency when introducing the Emergency
00:36:58.600 Measures Act, whether it was necessary and so on. But who did he appoint? A judge who was a donor to the
00:37:05.800 liberal party. So, where is the independence? Where is the transparency? Where is the accountability?
00:37:14.280 If the Prime Minister would appoint a judge, surely there's judges around at the higher levels in the
00:37:21.640 provinces who are not contributors to any political party that he could appoint to show how independent
00:37:29.400 this inquiry is going to be. So, this inquiry is tainted right from the start. So, we have a
00:37:35.320 government and MPs who are violating the Charter with their mandates. Then we have a government in Ottawa
00:37:42.920 which is violating the Charter by bringing in the Emergency Measures Act. And now we have a Prime Minister
00:37:48.360 who's appointed a judge to review the bringing in of the Emergency Act, who's a liberal donor to the
00:37:55.240 Liberal Party of which the Prime Minister is a leader. So, that's conflict of interest all over the place.
00:38:00.920 So, all the way, the Conservative Party of Canada, the NDP Party of Canada, the Green Party, all of the
00:38:06.680 parties that are now in the House of Commons should be crying blue murder over this. This is ridiculous
00:38:13.480 for a country that calls itself a democracy to have an inquiry about something that the government has done,
00:38:20.280 headed up by a judge that is a party sympathizer.
00:38:24.120 I know, I agree. And we saw that earlier when one of the trucker convoy organizers, Tamara Lynch,
00:38:29.960 was also denied bail from a judge who had also been a Liberal donor. I just want to point out,
00:38:33.880 because I saw that story, the judge. So, the Prime Minister called a national inquiry into the Emergency
00:38:39.240 Act. When I first saw that news, I thought that was a great story. Okay, great. We're going to get to
00:38:42.680 the bottom of this. We're going to figure out why it was called, what happened. And then I sort of read a
00:38:46.600 little bit more. Had to do it. He didn't do it because he was doing something, oh, I should call
00:38:52.040 inquiry to let people know whether, in fact, I did this right or not. He had to do it because it's in the
00:38:57.000 Act. Right. Okay. Okay. There you go. But then I read the subtext. First of all, the judge that was
00:39:02.680 named was Paul Relew. Now, I spoke to a journalist that refuted that point and said that it was a
00:39:07.640 different Paul Relew. So, I'm not sure that that has been verified, that he is a Liberal donor or not,
00:39:11.640 but he was certainly a Liberal appointee who was named the judge that's going to lead this
00:39:16.760 independent public order emergency commission. But I will just say that when you read the fine print
00:39:21.960 of what the commission is supposed to be examining, I mean, you can tell right off the bat this thing
00:39:26.200 is going to be incredibly biased. They're looking and examining the evolution and goals of the
00:39:31.320 protests, the organizers, the participants, the role of foreign and domestic funding, including
00:39:36.440 crowdsourcing, the use of social media, and the impact of misinformation and disinformation,
00:39:41.720 which are the popular buzzwords around justifying censorship online, the economic and international
00:39:48.920 impact of the blockades, and then the use of force. Well, we know that the international blockades
00:39:53.880 had already been removed by the time the Emergencies Act was brought in. So, the whole thing just seems
00:39:58.600 like it's a cooked up exercise in PR on behalf of the Trudeau government.
00:40:02.920 Yeah, listen, the counter-signal produced the documents. They just didn't allege
00:40:12.040 that this judge was a Liberal donor. They produced the documents that showed the amount of money
00:40:17.080 that this judge contributed every year from government documents, okay? Because they have to reveal
00:40:24.360 where their money comes from under law. And his name, that judge's name, appears all through
00:40:33.080 the late 1990s and into the year 2000, where he contributed so much each year to the Liberal
00:40:39.080 Party of Canada. These are not the counter-signals documents. These are the documents of the
00:40:44.680 government of Canada, right, of the law of Canada. And so, I think it's pretty clear that this judge was
00:40:51.560 a Liberal donor. Number two, it's already been revealed through House of Commons committee meetings
00:40:57.800 that there was no outside interference. FinTech, one of the big organizations around the world which
00:41:03.400 examines the flow of money, has already testified that there was no outside money involved here,
00:41:08.920 that it was all ordinary citizens contributing to a legitimate act of civil disobedience which is
00:41:15.800 allowed in this country. We're allowed to freely express, we're allowed to freely assemble,
00:41:21.160 and that's what these people were doing. And so, to even put that in the terms of reference
00:41:26.040 shows a complete insult of what has already been testified by FinTech and other independent
00:41:32.920 observers. And so, once again, like you say, this is a very tainted inquiry before it gets off.
00:41:39.160 But make no mistake about it, the Prime Minister didn't do anything to demonstrate that he wanted
00:41:43.720 to get to the bottom of this. He was forced to do it under law. That's why the inquiry is established,
00:41:49.960 because there's a provision in the act saying you must establish an inquiry. But the other part of
00:41:56.440 all of this is, who does it report to? Who does this inquiry report to? Where does the inquiry go?
00:42:02.360 Where does the results of the inquiry go? Back to the same MPs who supported the Emergency Act
00:42:07.560 in the beginning. So therefore, it goes nowhere. It goes nowhere. It's totally ineffectual,
00:42:12.920 because it's in a conflict of interest from day one.
00:42:17.000 Well, it's absolutely correct. I'll take a look at the countersignal report. I hadn't looked closely
00:42:22.360 at it. I will just say that I spoke to a journalist friend and a Conservative MP before recording,
00:42:26.600 and they told me that it wasn't the same Paul Relew. But I will do some due diligence personally,
00:42:32.040 and get back to you and get back to the audience about that. But certainly, either way, it doesn't
00:42:37.800 seem like a very healthy exercise in getting to the bottom of something that really truly does
00:42:42.600 deserve, Canadians deserve to know what really happened and the abuses of government need to be
00:42:47.480 highlighted. Well, Brian, I really appreciate your time. I had one final question for you, and I know
00:42:53.320 we've gone over a little bit, but I do appreciate your time. And I want to just say, you know, looking back
00:42:57.960 at 40 years of the Charter, do you think the Charter has lived up to your expectations back then from
00:43:04.040 1982? Are there any areas where you think the Charter has fallen short? Anything that you wish
00:43:08.520 you had done differently in drafting and putting together a Charter?
00:43:11.560 Yeah. Man is a fallen being, if you believe in Christianity or some form of spirituality,
00:43:17.400 and none of us are perfect. I think the person who was alleged to be perfect was crucified. So, you know,
00:43:24.200 we don't have too great a chance here of doing something that's always perfect. So, obviously,
00:43:28.840 it can always be improved upon anything. But I would just remind people that this Charter,
00:43:33.960 as I said earlier at the opening, was not negotiated in and of itself. It was a bargaining chip with other
00:43:40.200 things, Aboriginal rights, re-equalization, amending formula, and minority language rights, and so on.
00:43:48.680 They were all part of the mix, and we were negotiating back and forth. So, if you had to
00:43:54.360 do just a Charter over again, that's one thing. But any time you open the Constitution,
00:44:00.040 the parties to the Constitution are going to want other changes, and just not the Charter changes.
00:44:04.520 That's part of living in a democracy, right? And the participants are going to be
00:44:10.520 looking for various things, including Quebec will be looking for other things, because they're not even
00:44:14.680 part of the Constitution right now. So, one has to say, be careful what you wish for,
00:44:21.400 because you might lose the supremacy of God and pick up something else on the other end,
00:44:25.880 and whether that's a bargain or not. And so, yeah, you can always do better. But I would just say that
00:44:31.960 having those sections 2, 6, 7, and 15 clearly identified, I mean, how can there be any dispute over
00:44:40.120 life, liberty, and the security of the person? Remember, constitutions are principles. Legislation
00:44:46.760 gets into real detail. But these are principles that then have to be interpreted by the courts. To
00:44:52.280 make them any more definitive, you will lose something, or you'll gain something. But remember,
00:44:58.120 it's all compromised. You're not into this alone. There are other players, and there are other factors
00:45:05.400 at play. I would just do that. But of course, if you could go back and do anything over again,
00:45:10.600 you can usually make improvements. And we could, no doubt, in the Charter. But remember, you'll never
00:45:15.960 get a situation where you're going to be negotiating the Charter by itself. It will always be, when you
00:45:20.840 open the Charter, you're opening the Constitution. Remember, the Charter is in the Constitution Act 1982.
00:45:28.760 It's not the Charter of Rights Constitution Act. It's the Constitution Act of 1982, of which
00:45:39.560 the Charter is one of seven items. I think it's 30, 60, 60 parts to the Constitution Act, 34 are the Charter.
00:45:51.240 All the rest are of the other matters that I've mentioned. So yes, you can always do better. But
00:45:58.840 in the context of Constitution, not legislation, it is far, far more difficult to get exactly what you
00:46:07.000 want from all the players. We all compromise. This is a compromise document, as all of these things are.
00:46:14.680 Well, thank you for joining the show and providing so much more context and nuance to
00:46:22.200 the circumstances around the Charter, the purpose, some of the more forgotten lines from the Charter
00:46:27.160 that we wish were more emphasized. And thank you as well for your courage, your advocacy,
00:46:33.320 your voice throughout the last two years. I know you've been a tremendous beacon of hope for so many
00:46:37.800 Canadians who feel discouraged by the overreaches of our government and the state of things. So we really
00:46:43.480 appreciate you being out there, Brian, on the front lines fighting against government overreach
00:46:48.440 and continuing to do the important work of upholding and championing the rights and freedoms of all
00:46:53.320 Canadians. So thank you for that. Thank you very much for having me. I really appreciate it and have
00:46:58.680 a great day. All right. Thank you so much. That is Brian Peckford, the former Premier of Newfoundland and
00:47:04.680 Labrador, original signature to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. I'm Candace Malcolm, and this is The Candace Malcolm Show.
00:47:09.800 Hey everyone. Thank you so much for tuning into that interview. I thought it was great. Great
00:47:15.960 conversation with the former Premier of Newfoundland and original signatory to the Charter of Rights
00:47:20.520 and Freedoms. I appreciate his time. I wanted to revisit one thing that happened in the interview
00:47:24.360 though, because you, as you saw, we had a little bit of a dispute over the judge that is presiding
00:47:29.000 over the national inquiry into the Emergencies Act, the use of the Emergencies Act. Trudeau appointed them.
00:47:34.520 So Peckford, Mr. Peckford made the point that Kian Bextie had reported in the counter signal that this
00:47:40.280 individual was a liberal donor. And now, right before I recorded the interview, I had read a message
00:47:45.400 from someone who was refuting that fact. I talked to a journalist and I spoke to a conservative MP,
00:47:50.120 so I just didn't want to put out information that wasn't accurate. I said that I would do a little
00:47:54.520 bit of due diligence and get back to the audience about it. So I'm doing that right now. So what I am
00:47:59.720 referring to is a report that was put out by Brian Lilly. Brian Lilly is a journalist over at the
00:48:05.960 Toronto Sun and he put this on Twitter. He said, I had a nice chat with Paul Relew from Port Colborne,
00:48:11.320 Ontario. He is not a judge and has not been named head of the inquiry. So the claim by many that the
00:48:16.200 judge is a recent donor is false. Okay. Then he links to his Toronto Sun piece that he has profiling
00:48:21.960 Paul Relew, who is the individual who Trudeau named. And let me just read from that report. He says,
00:48:27.800 it fits with Trudeau's style that he waited until the last possible day to call the inquiry and then
00:48:31.720 appointed a former top liberal political staffer to head the inquiry. So Paul Relew was appointed to
00:48:37.720 the bench by Paul Martin's Liberal government in 2002. He isn't simply someone who made a few small
00:48:42.520 donations to the Liberal Party or someone who went to some cocktail fundraisers. He actually worked for
00:48:47.800 the Liberal Party in the past. So this is more from Brian Lilly's report. In 1983, he was part of John
00:48:53.800 Turner's leadership campaign to dig over when Pierre Trudeau announced his retirement. Relew then had
00:48:58.760 a hand in helping pick Turner's cabinet. Once he won leadership, various media reports described him
00:49:04.040 as an executive assistant or an appointment secretary. So we're not just talking about
00:49:09.240 an independent judge here. We're talking about someone who can fairly and accurately be described
00:49:13.480 as a Liberal insider, a partisan Liberal, a Liberal staffer, someone who is a big L Liberal,
00:49:19.080 just like Justin Trudeau. Think about it. Justin Trudeau just appointed a party loyalist to head
00:49:24.280 up an inquiry into his use of the Emergencies Act. Either way, it's unprecedented whether you
00:49:29.640 take Kean Bexley's word that this guy is a donor or whether you look to Brian Lilly saying, no,
00:49:34.120 he's not a donor. It's not the same guy. However, even worse, this guy was a political staffer for the
00:49:38.600 Liberals. Either way, not good for our country, not good for the state of the rule of law when the person who
00:49:44.440 could be holding Justin Trudeau to account is part of Trudeau's circle, part of the old boys club with
00:49:50.360 the Liberal Party, not a good sign for Canada. Anyway, I wanted to put that out there so that
00:49:54.520 it was clear. I appreciate Mr. Peckford's time. Thank you so much for tuning into the interview
00:49:59.320 and for following True North.