Juno News - How Ottawa quietly shapes what Canadians think

00:00:00.000 Hi, Juneau News. Alexander Brown here back for another episode. I'm the director of the

00:00:07.360 National Citizens Coalition. I'm a writer, a campaigner, communicator. Thrilled to be with

00:00:12.320 you. I read all your comments. I appreciate your feedback and you spending time with us here

00:00:16.840 each and every week. And while you are here, junonews.com slash not sorry for 20% off. There's

00:00:23.440 so much great talent at Juneau, so many talented communicators, hosts, journalists. I'd be

00:00:30.320 thrilled for you to enjoy all their programmings, not just mine. We are talking to John Carpe

00:00:36.320 today and we are talking about this damning report and it is no conspiracy theory. The

00:00:41.480 Canadian government is trying to manipulate your beliefs, steer your emotions and influence

00:00:46.760 your behaviors. Some might call that grooming. And in major news coming out Tuesday, Alberta

00:00:52.560 Premier Daniel Smith is taking swift action to protect three key pieces of transgender

00:00:57.880 related legislation, invoking the notwithstanding clause to immediately shut down anticipated

00:01:04.160 court battles. The laws protected by, by charter, uh, section 33 and bill nine include restrictions

00:01:10.600 on giving testosterone to girls and estrogen to boys requirements that parents be notified

00:01:15.780 when their children embark on a transgender journey and ensuring that women's sports cannot 1.00

00:01:20.500 be accessed by bigger and stronger men, all entirely fair, all entirely common sense.

00:01:28.100 But on the manipulation front, I'm first referring to, we're talking about an astonishing new

00:01:32.960 report from the justice center for constitutional freedoms that warns that the federal government

00:01:38.620 has embedded behavioral science tactics. These are wartime tactics in its operations in order

00:01:44.400 to shape Canadians beliefs, their emotions, their behaviors without transparency, debate or consent.

00:01:50.960 These Machiavellian efforts weren't just deployed during COVID. They're happening now. Let's talk to

00:01:56.960 John Carpe, founder and president of the justice center for constitutional freedoms. He's a prodigious

00:02:02.240 advocate for freedom, the rule of law, your charter rights. And first a word from our sponsor.

00:02:07.680 I want to give a quick word from our sponsor, Albertans against no fault insurance. So did you

00:02:13.120 know that the Alberta government is overhauling its auto insurance system under a new model called

00:02:17.520 care first coming into effect in 2027? Most Albertans injured in car accidents will no longer

00:02:21.920 be able to sue the at fault driver. Instead decisions about your care and compensation will be made by

00:02:26.640 the insurance company, not your doctor, not the courts. Critics say this system puts insurance

00:02:31.280 companies first and removes key rights from victims and their families. John Carpe joins the show.

00:02:36.960 John's an advocate for freedom in the rule of law and constitutional cases across Canada. He's the

00:02:41.920 founder and president of the justice center for constitutional freedoms. John, thank you for

00:02:46.240 joining us. Glad to be with you and your viewers and listeners. Yeah, it's great to have you here,

00:02:51.040 John. The, the JCCF has a new report out damming in its contents. This is, this is no conspiracy

00:02:57.200 theory. It's a, it's a shocking study into manufacturing consent and the government's behavioral

00:03:02.720 engineering of Canada. It's, it's authored by veteran journalist and researcher,

00:03:06.160 Nigel Hannaford. Many would know him from, of late from his work at the Western Standard. Tell

00:03:11.200 our audience how this, this impact and innovation unit in Ottawa is increasingly using sophisticated

00:03:17.440 behavioral psychology, such as nudge theory and other messaging testing tools to influence the

00:03:23.040 behavior of Canadians. So this unit, uh, the impact and innovation unit, the IIU has grown a lot since,

00:03:33.520 um, since, um, since 2017. The website speaks about being involved in projects worth over 700 million

00:03:43.520 dollars. Now it's not clear if that's the budget for the unit itself, or if that's just the total value

00:03:50.640 of the projects that are involved with, but they were very busy during COVID, uh, before the research was

00:03:57.520 even completed, uh, on, on the vaccine, uh, the COVID vaccine, they already were busy, uh, crafting the

00:04:06.800 message. It's safe and effective. Therefore get vaccinated. They were working on that before, before

00:04:13.920 the product was even out. And then when it, when the vaccine came out and, and initially it was voluntary,

00:04:20.480 but there were immediately, there were reports all over the world of people dying after getting the

00:04:26.080 vaccine, people, uh, children, teenagers, adults, and the government did not change course and kept

00:04:36.320 on with that same message. And so they did focus group testing and testing different messages. What is

00:04:42.800 the best way to alleviate fears about adverse impacts from the vaccines? And this is our tax dollars on a

00:04:51.840 public policy issue that, you know, is, or at least ought to be subject to debate. And, and so that,

00:05:00.080 that's very problematic. If you've got, um, behavioral psychologists paid by our tax dollars,

00:05:06.720 working to influence our behavior, uh, without us knowing about it by and large, I mean, there's,

00:05:14.080 you know, there's some information on the internet, but on, on a daily basis, we don't know. So

00:05:20.000 sunlight is the best disinfectant and we need a lot better parliamentary oversight.

00:05:24.160 Yeah. I was, uh, I don't mind sharing this with the audience. I've put it in columns before I was one

00:05:30.960 of those adverse events. I, uh, waited a long time mandates. I didn't believe in mandates. They

00:05:36.560 bothered me greatly. Uh, I do not believe in discriminating against my fellow Canadians. I,

00:05:41.360 I did not believe in the arbitrary nature of our COVID rulings. Uh, I did all kinds of advocacy,

00:05:47.600 wrote about, spoke about on the radio about, you know, returning to common sense on lockdowns, but

00:05:52.880 they got me at the last minute. The moment I could no longer hop on a flight, uh, to go to BC,

00:05:57.600 no longer go to the gym. I just, I felt sort of the bottom drop out beneath me. I went in, I,

00:06:03.280 I got Pfizer one and two and I, you know, I got inflammation. I needed a cardiologist all of a sudden,

00:06:09.760 uh, as a, uh, before that healthy 30 year old who was running a half marathon every week. And then I

00:06:16.880 had to sit on the shelf for a few months and I now get a yearly echo and I, I take a drug that I never

00:06:23.520 had to take anymore. And it was really frustrating, borderline radicalizing all of a sudden. Uh,

00:06:31.520 again, no conspiracy theory. I'm in this, this pop-up cardiology clinic in downtown Toronto,

00:06:36.320 where I lived at the time where there was a line outside the door of young people,

00:06:41.440 young men and women, and they were running out of halter monitors and the, the lovely technicians.

00:06:47.840 They were, they didn't even know what to do with themselves. Like they didn't feel great themselves.

00:06:52.080 And they were, we, we were all kind of trying to laugh about it to, to make the most of it.

00:06:56.000 I put a video on my Twitter at the time where it's me getting this halter monitor and this lovely gal

00:07:01.280 and I are, are joking about what the heck did our government do to us, but it was,

00:07:05.360 it was so disappointing. And, and you, your COVID advocacy meant a lot to so many people. I,

00:07:10.240 I remember reading you every week, you, you would be in the papers, you'd be everywhere. And, and

00:07:16.080 those years were so frustrating and, and, and you were so terrific. So thank you for that.

00:07:20.400 Well, I'm grateful for independent media. The justice center prior to lockdowns in March of 2020,

00:07:28.240 we regularly had media coverage on our court cases. And of course we, we were founded in,

00:07:34.880 in 2010. So we'd been around for, for about a decade when the lockdowns were brought down, we'd done

00:07:41.360 campus free speech and, and parental rights and, you know, various court cases. But we got, you know,

00:07:51.280 decent, reasonable amount of media coverage and then lockdowns were brought down and we've, you know,

00:07:57.040 for the next three years, five years, um, we never got a single phone call from any

00:08:05.120 government funded media. And that's, that's not just the CBC, but even, you know, the, the national

00:08:08.800 post, the Vancouver sun, the Calgary Herald, the, whatever there, there was no media that contacted us

00:08:13.600 because we were questioning lockdown saying, well, why aren't you measuring lockdown harms? You know,

00:08:20.000 that governments have a constitutional obligation to, um, when they pass a law like a health order

00:08:27.280 that violates our freedom of association, which if it's illegal to have Christmas dinner with your

00:08:31.920 mother or with your kids, your freedom of association is violated. When governments violate,

00:08:38.240 charter freedom, they have to do a cost benefit analysis and they have to, um, have persuasive

00:08:45.760 evidence that the measure is actually doing more good than harm. And none of the governments in Canada

00:08:52.000 were doing this analysis. They were all blithely fanatically oil, you know, lockdowns are, we're

00:08:58.000 saving thousands of lives. So we're just, you know, full speed ahead. They weren't doing any kind of a

00:09:02.560 cost benefit assessment. Anyway, we, we were raising red flags and then, uh, you know, we got zero media

00:09:10.960 coverage. However, thanks to Juno news and the rebel and, uh, uh, the news forum and through all these

00:09:19.280 independent media, the Epoch times, the Western standard, we got the word out and you know,

00:09:25.360 I just, I'm so grateful for independent media that, um, I think saved our sanity and created.

00:09:33.520 Where would we have been without it? Yeah. If it was just Doug Ford telling you,

00:09:37.200 you can't go to the park or the playground for, for two and a half years. Like it, it was great to have

00:09:41.840 dissenting thought to have, uh, the individuals who weren't just going along to get along to John

00:09:48.960 based on the reports findings about this, this impact and innovation unit and this use of

00:09:53.440 psychological framing techniques, which we saw during the COVID vaccine rollout. This is also the

00:09:58.720 thing that we do in, in, in wartime, you know, with, with enemy countries or, or working, uh, with a

00:10:04.800 civilian populace, this sort of just framing, uh, that they use to downplay adverse events.

00:10:10.560 How do you believe these methods crossed the line from public education into unethical manipulation?

00:10:17.680 Well, part of conducting any experiment, including a psychological experiment, right? So it need not

00:10:24.960 necessarily be an experiment pertaining to a physical medical treatment, like a pill that you swallow or

00:10:31.360 some, uh, you know, electroshock therapy that you can send to, but even for psychological,

00:10:36.400 uh, operations, there needs to be informed consent. And now here,

00:10:44.080 I, I don't know if I'd go so far as to, I'm not confident necessarily that it was unethical,

00:10:51.040 but there is something quite sinister about using our tax dollars where you've got these full-time

00:10:57.360 paid people that are paid for by us to test different messages. And I think the worst part

00:11:06.240 of it was to promote, um, it, it wasn't just to inform people that you can have government

00:11:13.920 ads that inform about government services. And I mean, some of them are stupid because they,

00:11:19.840 they kind of advertise government services, but for a lot of them, you don't even have the choice.

00:11:24.000 They're the only services you have because it's, it's a monopoly. So I don't know why we need the

00:11:28.080 advertising for it. Uh, but, but here we have a situation where this, this new vaccine has not

00:11:34.480 been subject to any long-term safety data and the, our tax dollars are being used to nudge us to let go

00:11:44.400 of whatever fears or doubts that, that, that we might have and go get injected. It's, it's to influence

00:11:50.640 our behavior. Um, and it's very one-sided, uh, when the adverse impacts reports came out, which is

00:11:59.600 almost, they were anecdotal. It wasn't, you know, formal scientific study, but, but immediately,

00:12:05.120 you know, the poster child for vaccines in Israel, this, this beautiful five-year-old boy that was the

00:12:11.360 centerpiece for doing videos to encourage everybody to get, you know, he, he died of heart failure at the

00:12:16.160 age of eight, uh, a few years later, you know, kids don't normally die. Young children do not

00:12:21.680 die of heart failure. That just doesn't happen. So you have all of this coming out and the government

00:12:27.200 is like, well, you know, damn the torpedoes full speed ahead. The vaccine is safe and effective,

00:12:33.120 double down, keep on using our tax dollars to persuade Canadians to get injected. Uh, that's not

00:12:39.920 right when you've got a live public policy issue like that, where there isn't this unanimous

00:12:46.080 consensus. Like for example, that, that pregnant women shouldn't drink alcohol to, in order to 1.00

00:12:52.320 protect their babies. You know, this is a totally different scenario. Yeah. Now, one of the things

00:12:57.680 that I find damning about this report, and I encourage everyone to read it, I'm putting it in

00:13:01.360 the show notes is that it, it highlights a lack of transparency. It's not just the, the, the apparent

00:13:07.520 skullduggery at these key documents were only revealed through freedom of information requests.

00:13:13.440 Like this was not something that was willingly shared with the public. What steps does the JCCF

00:13:18.800 recommend the government take immediately to ensure public oversight of these, these behavioral

00:13:24.080 insight programs? Well, we need direct parliamentary oversight, which doesn't exist currently.

00:13:30.080 So the, uh, impact and innovation unit is part of the privy council office, the PCO, which is the

00:13:36.240 pinnacle of the federal bureaucracy. So it's the bureaucracy counterpart to the prime minister's office.

00:13:42.000 So the prime minister is, is political, democratically elected. The privy council office is the

00:13:49.040 bureaucratic counterpart to the prime minister's office. And currently, um, you know, we're, we're limited to

00:13:57.760 what the impact and innovation unit has said on its own website and some FOI requests, but there is no direct

00:14:05.440 parliamentary oversight. And so we need, uh, through legislation or through regulations or through

00:14:11.760 the PCO voluntarily doing it, we need, um, up to date and transparent reports on what this unit is

00:14:20.880 doing at any given time. It shouldn't be like, we're, you know, like, what are they doing right now to

00:14:27.440 nudge Canadians into accepting that? Uh, you know, we should have 15 minute prison districts or 15

00:14:34.240 minute cities to avoid the climate Holocaust. Are they busy on that right now? I mean, if they are, 0.67

00:14:39.680 we should know about it. Yeah, we should know. Yeah. What's the, what's the degrowth nudge?

00:14:45.200 What's the, the social nudge of the day? Uh, is it, does it have anything to do with your,

00:14:50.800 your land rights, your public land use, your, your, the taxes you pay, the, the priming you to

00:14:56.640 accept less and less than the generations before you at a time when our young people are, are

00:15:01.440 increasingly unhappy with, with housing, with their, everyone's unhappy with healthcare. Is that,

00:15:06.880 is there a go along to get along there? And so, yeah, I think one thing I, I flagged while reading

00:15:12.880 this as well is that there are partnerships with these real world sort of behavioral testing units,

00:15:18.400 like a corporate partnerships, this blending of government influence with private sector actions,

00:15:25.200 what broader risks do you foresee if such collaborations continue unchecked?

00:15:30.800 Well, this is modern fascism. Uh, one of the characteristics of fascism in Europe in the 1920s,

00:15:37.200 1930s was that the governments and corporations worked very closely together. It was also known as

00:15:43.840 corporatism. So that made it quite different from, you know, the socialist communist who were anti

00:15:49.840 business. The fascists, uh, were big believers in government and business cooperating together

00:15:57.040 for big national projects. But at the end of the day, both the fascists and the communists are hostile to

00:16:04.240 the human rights and individual human dignity, the inherent worth of every person and the fundamental

00:16:11.440 freedoms that flow from that. So because we are human, uh, we have a right to speak and, and to,

00:16:20.000 to, to speak our minds and not have our vocal cords controlled by, by other people or by government,

00:16:25.840 so on and so forth. So, uh, I, I don't know to what extent the impact and innovation unit from partnering

00:16:34.000 with businesses. Uh, but certainly we see a trend, uh, in, uh, in recent years where, for example,

00:16:42.880 the woke ideology of equity, diversity, inclusion has fully, uh, infiltrated every corporation as much

00:16:51.120 as it's infiltrated government. You don't see big business taking a stance and saying, well, no, you know,

00:16:56.320 we're not going to put tampons and pads in a, in a men's washroom. No, no, no. They're very,

00:17:00.880 very woke and, and they're very much aligned with government in promoting woke ideology.

00:17:06.320 Yeah. That kind of corporate social responsibility has, has, has run amok. Americans seem to be in

00:17:12.080 certain cases voting with their wallets and, and you see little changes, but it's so embedded. You

00:17:17.280 have entire departments now where it's just, you know, grievances and, and indulgences and, and making

00:17:25.120 these kinds of sin payments for, for generational traumas. And you're, you're just booby trapping

00:17:31.040 the workplace. You're making everyone unhappy. And then the public can be beleaguered by the,

00:17:35.440 the lowering of the quality of the product or the obnoxiousness of some of the messaging.

00:17:40.000 I think we all want to be, you know, open-minded, reasonable people, but there are times where you're

00:17:43.840 just going like, can I just watch this thing without you shoving it down my throat? Or like,

00:17:48.480 why is my bank flying like a social cause flag? Like they just, I'm just trying to do my banking.

00:17:53.920 It's a, it's so omnipresent, right? So John, the, the, the report's recommendation includes

00:18:02.320 a call for independent ethical reviews. You know, what role might your organization play

00:18:08.480 in advocating for them? Well, we're going to, you know, we've, we have, we've got a communication

00:18:15.040 staff that is, is working very hard, that is in a position to stay on top of this and sort of,

00:18:21.040 you know, light a fire or keep the fire lit, so to speak. So this report is kind of the first step,

00:18:29.120 but we look, we are looking into doing more FOI requests and specifically doing advocacy for

00:18:38.160 either legislative change or just a change in practices whereby this becomes more transparent.

00:18:43.440 Terrific. And it's important. And again,

00:18:45.360 I encourage people to read it. John on, on Tuesday, last question for you. And, and I

00:18:49.680 know you were just writing about this. The, the Alberta government announced it will use

00:18:53.520 charter section 33, the not withstanding clause to ensure that laws to protect minors from the

00:18:58.480 harms of transgender ideology will not be stopped by woke or activist judges bill nine, the protecting

00:19:04.720 Alberta's children, uh, statues, statutes amendment act will amend the health statutes amendment act of

00:19:10.800 2024. We're talking education amendments, fairness and safety in sport. The JCCF has commented on

00:19:19.200 this. What are your thoughts? So last six or nine months earlier in 2025, the Alberta government

00:19:28.100 passed legislation that only women are allowed to participate in women's sports. So you can't be 1.00

00:19:35.400 a man who identifies as a woman and go and take the gold medal. Secondly, that there would be no 0.97

00:19:42.200 puberty blockers and opposite sex hormones given to children under the age of 16. And thirdly,

00:19:49.180 that there be parental parents be involved with what's going on with their own kids at school.

00:19:55.360 So if the child, if the boy says that he's a girl trapped in a boy's body and wants to start using

00:20:01.780 a girl's name, et cetera, that the parents be notified. So this is very much in line with

00:20:08.720 what's going on around the world where the United Kingdom and Sweden and so many other countries are

00:20:13.620 backing away from this very bad trend to get young kids. As soon as there is gender dysphoria, it's 0.98

00:20:21.600 like, okay, well, we're going to give you puberty blockers and give testosterone to the girls, give 1.00

00:20:25.920 estrogen to the boys. Most of the world is backing away from this and saying, well, no, it's probably

00:20:33.460 better to go through natural puberty. By the time kids are 18, the vast majority accept their biological

00:20:41.740 sex. Anyway, all of that's background information. So the government passed the legislation. It was

00:20:46.640 taken to court by a gal Canada, which is an LGBTQ advocacy group. They succeeded in securing an

00:20:53.900 interim injunction, which made the law of no force in effect, pending a ruling from after trial,

00:21:03.700 but you're not going to get that until two or three years down the road. So the whole law has been put

00:21:08.680 on hold for two to three years because a gal was successful in getting this injunction. Now the 1.00

00:21:15.400 government has responded and said, okay, well, we're going to use the section 33 of the charter,

00:21:20.360 the notwithstanding clause, which allows democratically elected representatives to opt

00:21:24.500 out of a bad court ruling. If there's some woke or activist or insane judge that's coming out with a

00:21:31.300 crazy ruling that's just obviously destructive and ill-advised, then the elected representatives

00:21:40.960 have that authority, thanks to the charter, it's part of the charter, that they can opt out of the

00:21:45.820 court ruling. So what the government's now doing in Alberta is they're saying, we're going to use

00:21:50.240 section 33 so that we can keep these laws on the books to protect children and teenagers from the

00:21:58.580 harms of transgender ideology. That's important work. And I think all Canadians or a growing majority

00:22:05.820 of Canadians, this is even showing up in the polling and I'm glad it is, have their concerns with

00:22:11.460 these seemingly sort of woke judiciary, with these judges who are sending folks back out on the street for

00:22:17.620 whatever reason of harm reduction or intergenerational trauma or, gee, you know, you're marginalizing this

00:22:26.360 violent schizophrenic drug addict. It's like, well, are they not marginalizing the public safety of the

00:22:31.780 community? And so that this is an encouraging sign. This is what the notwithstanding clause is there for. It is in the

00:22:38.220 charter for a reason. And it is part of the, the charter being struck, you know, as some grand bargain

00:22:43.980 from, from west to east for a reason. It is, you know, it is essential. And those who want to remove

00:22:49.640 its powers to, to take it away, it, it tells you a little something. And so, John Carpe, thank you so

00:22:55.300 much for your leadership on all these files. I'm encourage everyone to go read this great report.

00:22:59.500 Thanks for joining us.

00:23:01.580 Thanks for having me on your show.

Juno News - November 20, 2025

How Ottawa quietly shapes what Canadians think

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript