Juno News - December 21, 2020


Hundreds attend the Christmas Freedom Rally in Saskatoon

Topics
Freedom Rally and Mask Mandates
Mentioned
Saskatchewan Scott Moe Charlie Clark Mark Friesen
Here's what to do if someone refuses to wear a mask Putting Patients Before Politics

Episode Stats


Length

4 minutes

Words per minute

159.06

Word count

776

Sentence count

41

Harmful content

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Saskatoon Mayor Charlie Clark claims the Freedom Rally was an anti-mask rally, and wants individuals involved in it investigated. Is this really an Anti-Masks rally, or is there something much deeper that needs to be explained?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Hey everyone, I'm just off to the Freedom Rally here in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan just to see what
00:00:10.800 is really going on. Now the mayor of Saskatoon, Charlie Clark, stated that this was an anti-mask
00:00:16.680 rally and that he wants individuals here investigated but we're here from True North
00:00:21.960 to find out the truth of why people are really here. Is this really an anti-mask rally or is
00:00:27.660 there something much deeper that needs to be explained? Let's go find out. The Christmas
00:00:32.460 Freedom Rally began in Davidson, Saskatchewan which started as a convoy continuing on into Saskatoon
00:00:38.340 where the group grew to roughly 250 people. Now in the discussions that were held by the speakers as
00:00:45.580 well as those people on the ground, this was not an anti-mask rally, not in the least. One of the
00:00:51.040 speakers even stated if you want to wear a mask do so, if you want to socially distance please do.
00:00:56.220 We are not going to comply but it is your right and your freedom to do those very things.
00:01:02.220 Now in a series of tweets released by the Saskatoon mayor earlier this week, he stated and I quote,
00:01:08.540 to anyone thinking about attending another anti-mask rally in Saskatoon this weekend,
00:01:13.300 give your head a shake. Do not join a rally that tells people to go out and endanger the lives of
00:01:19.400 others. He continued, it is very frustrating to see people going out and undermining all of the efforts
00:01:25.980 that the rest of us have taken. I expect there to be enforcement of public health orders that are in
00:01:31.440 place and that the organizers of these events are investigated and held to account. End of quote.
00:01:38.460 Yet during the Black Lives Matter protests in Saskatoon which gathered roughly a thousand people,
00:01:44.500 the same Saskatoon mayor stated, we are facing the collision of two pandemics and we need to take
00:01:51.420 each of them very seriously. People's right to be heard is a fundamental right in the Canadian
00:01:56.040 constitution. End of quote. Yet now he wants investigations into individuals exercising the
00:02:02.780 very rights and freedoms that those exercising their rights and freedoms during the Black Lives Matter 0.63
00:02:07.240 protests. He wants these organizers of the Freedom Rally investigated. Earlier this month in Regina,
00:02:13.820 there was yet another Freedom Rally held where two of the organizers were issued $2,800 fines for
00:02:20.660 defying public health orders. Premier of Saskatchewan Scott Moe stated, I understand a large anti-mask
00:02:27.200 rally is being planned today in Regina. I hope those attending would consider how insignificant the
00:02:32.680 inconveniences they are being asked to follow really are compared to the pain of losing a loved one.
00:02:38.960 End of quote. Now one of those organizers at the Freedom Rally in Regina was also the organizer of
00:02:44.840 the Saskatoon rally held on Saturday. His name is Mark Friesen and I caught up with him at the rally and he stated this.
00:02:51.880 We demand that our government officials respect the Constitution, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
00:02:58.720 Of course, the freedom to assemble, freedom of speech. All of the freedoms contained under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms
00:03:05.800 need to be respected and upheld. They're not doing that. They are putting forward measures that go directly against that charter.
00:03:14.880 Government is meant for specific purposes and was granted its authority by God. God authorized human
00:03:22.020 beings to hold each other accountable for criminal violence and government is our institutional mechanism
00:03:28.240 for doing so. Government at its core exists to uphold public order. But when the government refuses to
00:03:36.760 follow its own rules, such as presenting critical proof or justification for why they are shutting down
00:03:42.560 businesses while granting others additional flexibility or why they are mandating masks or removing our civil liberties,
00:03:51.040 they violate their own word. So therefore it is up to us, the people, to hold leaders accountable.
00:03:58.880 This is what a healthy democracy looks like. It's about a push and pull mechanism that says when the government
00:04:05.840 is overreaching, it is therefore the authority of the people to rise up and remind their leaders of what their role
00:04:13.520 really is. Freedom of speech cannot become a partisan issue, which we are seeing it evolve into. It is of
00:04:23.280 benefit for all Canadians when speech is freely exercised, whether it's in a forum that you like or not.
00:04:30.160 In the case of those attending freedom rallies in Saskatchewan, it's not just about advocating for their
00:04:37.680 protected rights and freedoms that are being trampled upon. They believe that they are standing up for
00:04:44.400 all Canadians' freedoms and that is something the media refuses to cover. For True North, I'm Matea Myrda.