00:06:03.140This amnesty was to protect law-abiding gun owners that purchased their firearms legally, and by virtue of that, as a community that is in full compliance with the law at all times, and that continuing to hold these firearms, you'd expect that they would extend that to not make us criminals while they get their act together with their buyback.
00:06:21.680yeah and there was a story i was working on as recently as last week that this kind of sucked
00:06:27.580the wind out of here but i'll share it on the show because i learned that a lot of businesses
00:06:31.920that have been saddled with inventory that's now prohibited so a lot of the businesses that we
00:06:36.420talked about in assaulted which the ccfr was a very generous supporter of the production of
00:06:41.800that for two years now almost have had in some cases hundreds of thousands of dollars of firearms
00:07:00.320Now, this is, again, coming about 22 months after the amnesty was put in place, and they're
00:07:06.520only just now getting around to the idea of asking the people affected by this what it's
00:07:11.380going to mean for them and what a buyback should look like.
00:07:13.940So it says to me that this whole thing, which the government said was deliberate evidence-based policy, was drawn up on the back of a napkin when they had some political capital in the wake of the horrific Port-A-Peak shootings.
00:07:39.960So in the interim, if you if you have been paying attention out there is they've been trying to wag the dog with all of these television commercials, like, you know, fire related violence equal, you know, is a result of civilians owning firearms, right? Licensed individuals owning firearms. So definitely our gun ban is, you know, it's good policy. So make sure you vote for us next time. There's a there's an election. So, you know, it's it's it's a big mess. It's really just a political effort.
00:08:07.720And I think this is the trouble implementing a buyback, the trying to wag the dog with all of this tens of millions of dollars worth of advertising, the focus groups, right?
00:08:21.540It's a political exercise, and they're trying to save that effort, I think.
00:08:26.840Yeah, and they've spent millions and millions of dollars without buying back.
00:08:30.620I mean, I have issues with the word buying back because it was never the government's in the first place.
00:08:34.480But semantics aside, they've spent millions and millions of dollars on this without so far buying back a single one of these firearms.
00:08:41.440Yeah, well, they're still doing focus groups, right?
00:08:43.080We had a member that is on the board of a gun club in eastern Canada, and he sent us the questionnaire, right?
00:08:52.220The survey, you know, would you be interested in mailing through Canada Post, mailing your AR-15 in and us sending you a check?
00:09:00.520i'm like what mailing mailing so-called assault style you know uh firearms uh in the mail system
00:09:08.760i you know i've got i've got mail that's gotten lost i haven't gotten t4s before you know much
00:09:14.140less my ar-15 so yeah your ar-15 mail will become the new slogan you know yeah right you can see
00:09:21.320them running around in a panic trying to trying to get this done but the delay does not does not
00:09:27.320bother me at all the longer it's delayed the better our our property is still in our possession
00:09:32.260it gives time for the ccfr's lawsuit against the government that all of this is against the
00:09:37.740against the charter of rights and freedoms and also against the law administratively that gives
00:09:41.900us time to get that done you know i don't mind the delay at all yeah and also i mean we're talking
00:09:47.160about a minority parliament here october 2023 could bring us into election territory as well
00:09:52.840and that I think is an important part of this timing.
00:09:57.000I'm leery to you advance this argument
00:10:22.640to have one of these if that is what you think letting someone keep it for an extra 18 months
00:10:28.460longer would suggest that maybe there isn't this firearms emergency that involves guns owned by the
00:10:33.660law abiding well well of course right i mean we've canadians have had these guns for up to 60 years
00:10:39.920right we've had these guns for a long time they're legitimate you legitimately used for hunting and
00:10:44.840sports shooting contrary to what the government says and they have been for decades and decades
00:10:49.880yeah I mean this was completely unnecessary and you know like I said you know the big thing to
00:10:55.360look for from the government in their behavior right now is them running around trying to
00:11:00.160legitimize what they did because there's there's really not a lot there. So let's talk a little
00:11:05.840bit about the lawsuit here now you were not successful in getting the immediate injunction
00:11:10.200at that very early stage but as you noted then and I think we talked about it on the show the
00:11:14.500case is still ongoing so where is it now and what's the main argument because you said there's
00:11:19.740a charter argument there and also an administrative law argument so when when when we're talking about
00:11:26.080the charter argument itself it's it gets really gets really detailed so i'll just use plain
00:11:31.420language we're asking the court to consider the canadian charter of rights and freedoms
00:11:36.120um and an answer can the government take whatever it wants from anybody anytime for any reason
00:11:44.740um without explanation or justification and if and if just if justification is there like
00:11:50.060what does that really mean like it doesn't have to be based on facts or based on statistics or
00:11:55.240what that is so because right now the government in our opinion illegally banned those guns so the
00:12:01.860administrative side is that in the criminal code in section 117 it says you cannot ban a gun that
00:12:08.580is reasonably used for hunting or sporting sport shooting right and of course these guns not only
00:12:13.400are reasonable for that they've been used that way for 60 years right like it's not even that
00:12:17.980we're making that claim it's like it's it's like history right there so that's the administrative
00:12:22.480part and the charter challenge really is about property rights can you own anything and if you
00:12:27.900remember elizabeth may proudly stood up in the in the in the house of commons and crowed to everybody
00:12:34.560how mistaken we are with our name you know firearm rights having firearm rights in in uh in our name
00:12:40.980that you don't have firearm rights and can in fact you have no rights to own anything at all
00:12:46.620no rights to property she she she wears that like a badge of honor so we're trying to say
00:12:51.480at least you know federal court give us an answer do you have the right to own anything
00:12:58.240at all yes or no because if the answer is no we just want to know that once and for all if that
00:13:04.060if that answer is no and we at least we know what kind of country we live in and we know what needs
00:13:09.100to be fixed. Yeah, I think that's an important point. And I've always appreciated how you do
00:13:14.220approach it from the property rights point of view, because there are a lot of people that don't get
00:13:19.120guns and they may never get guns. They may never be interested in them, but they understand owning
00:13:23.340something. They understand having something. And then the government saying, this is no longer
00:13:27.980yours. This is no longer something you get to enjoy. And it bothers me immensely that more
00:13:35.440people don't see that, the more people don't understand the precedent here of what's happening
00:13:39.240if you do license government to do one thing. I mean, not to compare things that are not related,
00:13:44.040but the Emergencies Act is a great example of this. You can hate the convoy, you can hate what
00:13:48.340they stand for, but that doesn't mean you have to set aside your discomfort about the longer term
00:13:54.280implications of this. And the same is true of government confiscation of your property. I mean,
00:14:00.420compensation or not, if they are forcing you to sell it to them, it's confiscation.
00:14:05.440Well, it is. Right. And this should be, you know, it's very hard because it has to do with guns. And you're right. Not the majority of Canadians don't understand guns because they don't own them. Right. But this this has everything to do with just fundamental, like very fundamental level freedoms. Like, can you own anything? Yes or no.
00:14:24.120and and you know it's it's issues like this don't come to the forefront until the government does
00:14:30.540something you know so kind of egregious that at least a large group of people stand up and be
00:14:35.880like well that's not consistent with your promise that I can own things and that I can live my life
00:14:41.500as long as I'm not bothering anybody I have liberty right I can associate with people that
00:14:46.300I want to it's not up to you who I'm friends with like these are fundamental things and people don't
00:14:52.060really think about those things until those things are being infringed upon so in this case property
00:14:56.460rights have been infringed upon we have a very clear-cut case and i'm curious you know i don't
00:15:02.020i don't blow smoke in any direction um so i'm not telling people you know we're going to take the
00:15:06.160government to court we're going to kick their butt or whatever because it's in the charter
00:15:08.880i want to know how fair and how honest you know the canadian system is both the judicial system
00:15:16.080and whether the charter actually means anything like that's what this is really about because
00:15:20.780like I say, win or lose, I just want the answer because that's really important to know.
00:15:25.680Yeah. And the problem is you're not dealing with a government that is conveying this issue
00:15:30.120honestly at all. And it's not just about the odd person you encounter that has never handled a gun,
00:15:35.520so they don't know them. It's not a world they know. It's about people that are being willfully
00:15:39.280obtuse. I want to play a clip here and get your response to it of Marco Mendicino. So
00:15:43.800he's the public safety minister now. He's replaced Bill Blair, who I think was your
00:15:49.060prime nemesis in government for quite some time. But I want you and the folks listening in to hear
00:15:54.100how he describes this. We've also introduced stronger and responsible gun controls, including
00:16:02.840a ban on assault-style weapons like AR-15s, which guns have no other purpose than to kill.
00:16:10.520Now, this Order in Council, which was issued in May of 2020, has already seen more than 1,500 different firearms being prohibited from being sold in Canada.
00:16:27.260And in the near future, we will be launching a mandatory buyback program to now get these guns out of our communities and off our streets.
00:16:36.740today we're here to talk about how we're going to build safer communities
00:16:43.460again that link between guns that are lawfully owned and the gun crime that is plaguing the
00:16:51.980streets of toronto and surrey and other communities in canada how do you go up against
00:16:57.680that when this is just said so easily so readily despite how devoid of a fact basis it is
00:17:04.000Well, it's incredibly difficult, right? And especially when it comes from legacy mainstream media and it comes from the government, those two entities are very, well, the most powerful forces in the country. So it's very difficult. I mean, the key for us, as far as our organization is, we just, we have to, we have to communicate directly with everyday Canadians. And somehow, somehow we have to educate them that Marco Mendicino was talking about firearms that were prohibited back in 1977, right?
00:17:33.520There are no assault weapons in civilian hands other than a handful of people like movie armors and manufacturers that make guns for the military or whatever.
00:17:42.140Right. Normal people do not have assault weapons and they will use those terms interchangeably.
00:17:48.020But yeah, I mean, to answer your question, it's it's incredibly difficult.
00:17:52.040Right. Because we're just everyday gun owners saying like, well, we responsibly own these guns.
00:17:56.340We haven't done anything wrong. We've done nothing but comply to every ridiculous rule because a lot of the rules are ridiculous.
00:18:01.900and we've complied without, you know, without exception. Now, you know, and our effort really
00:18:08.960is just to be left alone. So it is a really difficult thing, but we do a lot of work in
00:18:13.780public relations. We do, you know, television shows and explainer videos and we take out ads
00:18:18.700and billboards and, and marches and, you know, tours and all kinds of different things, but
00:18:23.500it's, it's a real challenge. Yeah. And one of the things that I found very striking when
00:18:29.420assaulted came out because I was worried, is this just going to go into that echo chamber that a lot
00:18:33.660of pro firearms content does? And certainly the firearms community was a big booster of it. And
00:18:38.480I'm grateful for that. But I was very touched by the number of emails I got specifically on the
00:18:43.620episodes focusing on business owners, because people understood in the midst of the pandemic,
00:18:49.440the idea of businesses that were facing these just very unfair hurdles from the government,
00:18:55.000things that made no sense beyond bureaucracy, beyond fair dealing, but actually things that
00:19:00.640just came across as punitive. And I felt that people were receptive to that when they heard
00:19:05.720the stories. But again, you can only have so many of those conversations. You can only have so many
00:19:10.880one-on-one discussions with people to get those stories in front of them. And then all it takes
00:19:15.540is one shooting. The government gets up there and just starts spouting off blatant misinformation,
00:19:20.940and to which which they've still never accounted for i mean i go back to the government
00:19:25.300linking canada's gun laws to the guns used in in portepic even though we learned after they
00:19:30.740issued this prohibition that none of them were legally owned none of them were legally acquired
00:19:36.180well yeah they were all illegally acquired i'm i'm i'm a participant was standing in the public
00:19:43.140inquiry the the mass casualty uh commission right so i know exactly what went on there i have access
00:19:48.940to all of the evidence and none of the guns were legally acquired um all but one were obtained
00:19:54.860through smuggling through the you know from the united states this guy was a very well-known
00:19:59.580criminal and smuggler and abuser and known as a nut in the community and i should just say that
00:20:05.820that's where all gun owners are completely happy to devote resources and money which is to stop
00:20:11.500smuggling well well yeah it's just called basic problem solving right but this is it's not problem
00:20:17.740solving it's it's a it's a political operation and you know the police let this guy circulate
00:20:23.120i mean they may not they may they may have been helpless to stop him maybe there wasn't the right
00:20:27.060laws or whatever to charge him with offenses um and then on top of that he disguised himself as
00:20:32.300an rcmp officer so everyone had their guard down and the police left him alone as he went through
00:20:37.440his rampage because they thought he was one it's so point being is this to to to lay gun you know
00:20:44.600further gun regulation or gun bans on this particular situation is it's absurd it's lunacy
00:20:52.480and and unfortunately i can't blame everyday canadians for not understanding that because
00:20:57.520they're busy and they don't want to deal with and it's very negative too but it's just the
00:21:02.460injustice is is is terrible and we're doing everything that we can to stop it very well said
00:21:08.240just before i let you go rod i know it's early days but curious if you have any early thoughts
00:21:12.040from a firearms advocate's perspective on the conservative leadership race?
00:25:25.780Canada has played its role to support one of its best friends, which is Ukraine, because of our people-to-people ties, because of our common history, but because it was the right thing to do.
00:25:38.380and we'll continue to work with our G7 countries partners because we all know that Canada is not
00:25:47.720a nuclear power. It is not a military power. We're a middle-sized power and what we're good at is
00:25:54.000convening and making sure that diplomacy is happening and meanwhile convincing other countries
00:26:01.120to do more. Canada is good at convening. So Canada, Canada is the Hilton ballroom of world
00:26:11.260powers. Canada, I'm actually good. That would be a good title. That would be a good title for a
00:26:15.600blog post. The Hilton, the Hilton ballroom of, of world powers. Well, that's what we do. We have a
00:26:20.040table. That's all we can do. We've got a table that people can meet at. We can't say anything
00:26:23.700at the table. No one wants to come to our table, but by golly, we have a table at which the adults
00:26:29.720in the room can sit. Does anything from that strike you as Canada being an adult in the room?
00:26:36.740And it's not just Melanie Jolie. I mean, this is the entire Trudopian foreign policy here.
00:26:41.240This is a guy that was going around trying to court votes from tin pot dictators so Canada could get
00:26:45.840a seat on the UN Security Council and lost. He lost, plain and simple, I think, to Norway and
00:26:51.200Ireland, if memory serves. Stephen Harper tried to get a UN Security Council seat. Now, he didn't
00:26:56.600make it a significant a plank of his career to do it it was relatively early on but even then
00:27:03.060Canada did not get it Canada didn't get it no one around the world is looking at Canada and seeing
00:27:08.580a serious player on the world stage and one thing that Harper did quite well in his foreign policy
00:27:15.440approach I found was that he didn't generally try to punch above our weight he he tried to see
00:27:21.280places where canada could make an impact and he did it but he focused significantly on arctic
00:27:26.800sovereignty he focused significantly on relationships with the united states even across
00:27:31.120partisan lines by all accounts harper and obama had a very close relationship counterterrorism
00:27:36.880again a lot of the connections between canadian and american intelligence agencies went back to
00:27:41.920there so all of this is to say that being someone that has a realistic approach to canadian foreign
00:27:49.360policy doesn't mean you think that Canada should just do nothing, that it's a total joke.
00:27:54.320It's about not looking like you're trying to be more than you are and do more than you are.
00:28:00.440And one of my favorite stories about Justin Trudeau was the one from the G7 in Brussels. Oh,
00:28:05.660I don't know, whenever it was less than a year ago. And it was that Trudeau's advisors were like
00:28:09.880going around talking to all these people at the G7, trying to pump Justin Trudeau up as having
00:28:14.940his reputation as being the dean of the g7 and they thought that since angela merkel the chancellor
00:28:20.540of germany was retiring justin trudeau was the longest serving of the g7 leader so they thought
00:28:25.900that that would put him at the head of the table step aside emmanuel macross step aside boris
00:28:32.300johnson step aside oh jen stoltenberg of nato step aside ursula von der leyen of the european
00:28:38.220commission no justin trudeau was the dean of the g7 because he had been kicking around since 2015
00:28:43.660And there was a great line in the story, which was in Bloomberg, about how Justin Trudeau was
00:28:48.960trying to insert Canada as a negotiator in the UK's dispute with the EU over trade in Northern
00:28:56.060Ireland and Ireland. And it was like Canada kept offering to help and no one wanted to take Canada
00:29:02.280up on the offer. So Melanie Jolie says, oh, Canada's great at convening. Well, a load of good
00:29:07.160that is if no one trusts you and no one wants to sit at your table. I wrote in my column last week
00:29:13.000that Justin Trudeau's trip to Europe, where he decided he was going to go to Latvia and Germany
00:29:20.040and the UK, accomplished nothing. I said it was a win for Canadians in the sense that he didn't
00:29:26.080manage to dress up in lederhosen, a beef eater outfit or Latvian folk dress. So in that sense,
00:29:31.480it was costume free. So Canada emerged somewhat more victorious than most other trips he goes on.
00:29:37.340But the reason I point that trip out is because at a certain point, if you're going to go to Europe
00:29:43.440it should be not because you just want to be seen,
00:29:46.400but because you have something to contribute.
00:29:49.200And I have yet to see one single thing
00:29:51.520that Canada contributed to the war effort in any case.
00:29:55.320I mean, whether it's to Latvia or to NATO or to Ukraine.
00:29:59.300And I'm not saying that Canada should be doing X, Y, and Z.
00:30:01.760I'm saying that if Justin Trudeau was going to go there
00:30:03.920and have this multi-stop, multi-country photo op tour,
00:30:08.980it would be nice to know he was doing something there.
00:30:11.700and again he took a significant amount of his members of cabinet and staff there this was not
00:30:18.340just one simple jaunt over by Trudeau or the foreign minister he was there Chrystia Freeland
00:30:23.300was there who's the finance minister who's still I think cosplaying as the foreign minister
00:30:27.700Melanie Jolie who's the actual foreign minister ostensibly Harjit Sajjan I don't know if he was
00:30:32.760on this trip but he took a parallel trip of some kind so you have some pretty high-ranking Trudeau
00:30:37.820officials that are going over there. And at the end of it, it's, well, Canada is committed to
00:30:42.400helping take in refugees. Well, Canada was doing that anyway. So part of being a leader means1.00
00:30:49.080understanding your country's own limitations. And I don't think being, to use the term I used a few
00:30:54.820moments ago, being the Hilton ballroom of world powers is all that much to brag about if no one
00:31:00.460wants to sit at your table in the first place. But oh yeah, we're good at convening. Just before we
00:31:06.720wrap things up here let's talk a little bit about the two-year anniversary of two weeks to flatten
00:31:12.680the curve I was going to play a clip of it and then I was just so depressed I'm like no no I
00:31:16.560don't want to go back in time there because so much has not changed a lot has changed and a lot
00:31:22.440has not changed if I can speak out of both sides of my mouth here because at the time everyone was
00:31:27.020on the same team government didn't need to impose a sweeping lockdown for a lot of people because
00:31:32.500they were prepared to hashtag do the right thing, to hashtag stay home, save lives, to
00:31:37.400clang and bang the pots and pans for healthcare workers. You had Italian opera singers that were
00:31:42.480singing from their balconies as they were totally locked in their homes. And in Canada, you had
00:31:48.020people that were seeing the carnage coming out of China, horror stories coming out of Italy,0.53
00:31:53.620Iran, and saying, you know, we need to just do the right thing. Look out for our neighbors. We
00:31:57.400don't know what we're dealing with. And a lot of people did step up. A lot of people did rise up.
00:32:01.560I was never fear mongering about it, but I took it very seriously. I was very concerned because again, we were trusting the experts. And the one thing that I would say has come out of the last two years is that the veil has dropped on a lot of public health leadership roles and public health affiliated politicians like the health minister, things we thought were agencies that conferred a level of authority that we've seen go down the road of being very political.
00:32:32.140If someone had told you more than two years ago
00:32:34.500the government had assembled a science table
00:32:36.300that was going to give recommendations and advice on science,
00:32:39.320I presume you'd probably be pretty receptive to whatever they spit out.
00:32:43.640But as we've seen in the last two years,
00:32:46.040science tables have made projections that are wildly wrong.
00:32:49.080They've made recommendations to solve one problem