Juno News - Liberals are not backing down from their gun grab

00:00:00.000 welcome to Canada's most irreverent talk show

00:00:04.100 this is the Andrew Lawton show brought to you by True North

00:00:08.580 hello everyone and welcome to you all it is Wednesday May 3rd 2023 the Andrew Lawton show

00:00:19.520 at True North here and it is my absolute pleasure to be speaking to you midway through the week

00:00:26.000 Hopefully you are getting through this and it's all downhill from here or all uphill.

00:00:30.520 I've never actually known which is the good one because as the old quandary goes, downhill is easier, but like down is bad.

00:00:37.640 Uphill is harder, but up is good.

00:00:39.740 So whether uphill or downhill is the better one, I hope that's the direction you are headed as the week continues and culminates in what I hope is a much deserved rest break on the weekend.

00:00:50.640 And we're going to be talking about a couple of the big picture issues of the political climate today.

00:00:55.560 Joining me later on is Christine Van Gein from the Canadian Constitution Foundation, the CCF,

00:01:01.920 to talk about the last legal guardrail against the government's use of the Emergencies Act.

00:01:07.740 That is the legal challenges underway against this and what happened a little over a year ago in Canada.

00:01:14.180 That's the CCF. We also have the CCFR, the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights,

00:01:20.040 well represented in today's show with Rod Giltaka standing by, as we'll discuss the

00:01:25.080 Liberals' backtrack that's not really a backtrack, amendments that aren't really

00:01:30.240 amending anything on Bill C-21, which is the Firearms Regulation Bill. But let me just first

00:01:36.700 start off by doing something I try to avoid doing for my and your mental health, and that is

00:01:43.360 liberally quoting Justin Trudeau who today decided to honor World Press Freedom Day. Now I must

00:01:50.620 confess I did not know it was World Press Freedom Day. The World Press Freedom Day parade didn't

00:01:56.120 pass by my house today so I didn't have World Press Freedom Day in my calendar I don't think.

00:02:03.200 Let me just look because sometimes I get like really weird holidays that I don't know exist

00:02:06.920 on my calendar like what's this Mother's Day or something. Anyway my mom listens that was a

00:02:12.220 terrible, terrible joke. But anyway, the point of this, though, is that we are to celebrate press

00:02:18.020 freedom around the world. It's great. I'm all for press freedom. I'm for freedom of speech. I don't

00:02:23.180 believe that journalists are in a particularly special category. I think journalists' free

00:02:28.460 speech is the same as ordinary citizens' free speech. But I realized that journalists play a

00:02:33.960 rather pivotal role in democracy and in free society. So when Justin Trudeau tweets,

00:02:39.420 journalists inform Canadians and hold governments accountable their work is independent and

00:02:44.940 indispensable as they continue to face harassment censorship and violence simply for doing their

00:02:51.520 jobs let me say this we will always support and promote the freedom of the press hashtag world

00:02:58.700 press freedom day and it links to a longer statement that basically says more of the same

00:03:03.920 So it's interesting to see Justin Trudeau coming out and denouncing harassment, censorship, and violence faced by journalists when his government is responsible for harassment, censorship, and violence against journalists.

00:03:20.500 Yes, even violence. I would point out a few different things here that have happened.

00:03:24.960 Harassment is commonplace.

00:03:26.640 If you are an independent journalist like yours truly, you try to go to a liberal press conference, you will be told you do not belong there.

00:03:33.720 You may even have police called and they may remove you.

00:03:37.120 This has happened to me.

00:03:38.280 It's happened to Kian Bextie of The Counter Signal.

00:03:41.120 It's happened to journalists at Rebel News.

00:03:43.420 It's happened to other folks as well.

00:03:45.980 Censorship.

00:03:46.740 Well, just a few weeks ago, we had Lauren Gunter of the Edmonton Sun on the program.

00:03:51.500 This is a veteran journalist and columnist in Canada.

00:03:55.060 But the federal government actively tried to have his column on immigration policy censored.

00:04:00.720 censored. They literally, as we saw in documents, went to social media companies and said, you have

00:04:05.800 to take down this Lorne Gunter guy's column. And thankfully, the social media companies declined to

00:04:11.800 do it. We also know that C11 is now law in Canada. This, when the regulations are cemented, will

00:04:18.500 have government pulling the levers on the algorithms, which will again censor and demote

00:04:25.440 some content will promote and elevate others and violence i try not to make you look at my face too

00:04:32.660 too much but since you're already seeing it let's put up this graphic from february of 2022 when i

00:04:39.020 was in ottawa covering the freedom convoy and the emergencies act was in effect police were trying

00:04:44.880 to clear things up and i had just gotten a hefty dose of pepper spray there for doing my job as a

00:04:51.040 journalist. Alexa Lavoie was hit with a canister of tear gas in her leg for doing hers. There was 1.00

00:04:57.220 a photojournalist from New York who, again, with a mainstream outlet, was thrown to the ground,

00:05:02.440 zip-tied, and had his camera smashed all while Justin Trudeau's enforcers were out to dismantle

00:05:09.140 not just the Freedom Convoy, but also to take aim at those who dared to tell the story of the

00:05:14.940 Freedom Convoy. So Justin Trudeau, if you want to take aim at harassment, censorship, and violence

00:05:21.420 against journalists, perhaps, sir, you should look in the mirror first, you hypocrite. But I don't 0.99

00:05:27.480 want to talk just about press freedom. It would be a little too indulgent. I want to talk about

00:05:31.940 firearms rights here, which I've always said, if you're not a gun owner or you don't particularly

00:05:36.700 like guns, you should still pay attention to this issue because it is a property rights issue. If

00:05:43.100 The government has the right to take away your property, to reclassify things, to say you're no longer allowed to own this.

00:05:49.220 If they can do it with guns, they could do it with cars.

00:05:52.140 They could do it with anything else you own conceivably.

00:05:54.660 Or like what we were seeing in the UK a couple of years ago, going after pointy knives because some celebrity chef decided that he should play by different rules than others.

00:06:04.340 Well, yesterday, Marco Mendicino came out and discussed what the Liberals are doing on their Firearms Control Bill C-21.

00:06:12.120 This is a bit of a primer that Marco Mendicino gave.

00:06:17.520 I'm proud to announce a package of reforms that will strengthen both Bill C-21 and Canada's ban on AR-15 assault-style firearms.

00:06:27.600 It includes amendments to the bill that will be brought forward by Liberal members,

00:06:32.900 and it will also include upcoming changes that will strengthen our gun control laws.

00:06:39.280 These reforms are about keeping AR-15 assault-style firearms off of our streets,

00:06:45.540 while at the same time respecting gun owners.

00:06:49.380 Significantly, the amendments will include a standard technical definition

00:06:54.040 which contain the physical characteristics of an assault-style firearm.

00:06:59.600 This definition, which would apply going forward, would be inserted into the Criminal Code.

00:07:05.220 It provides the clarity that gun owners and industry leaders need

00:07:10.580 and the protection that advocates have long called for.

00:07:15.880 I want to remind you of something.

00:07:18.540 In the last election, the Conservative Party pledged to get rid of our ban on assault-style firearms.

00:07:28.240 These amendments will ensure that any future government will have a very, very difficult time making assault-style firearms legal again.

00:07:39.760 And this is what we owe to Canadians.

00:07:42.780 Furthermore, the action we are going to take through regulation will take the burden away from gun owners

00:07:49.320 and make manufacturers responsible for classifying their firearms

00:07:54.360 because they too have a responsibility in keeping our community safe.

00:08:02.180 Now, Marco Mendicino, I should say, is a guy where, you know,

00:08:06.800 we in the firearms community refer to 22 as a caliber.

00:08:10.980 Marco Mendicino refers to 22 as IQ.

00:08:14.260 He is not the brightest guy.

00:08:16.140 He doesn't understand the file.

00:08:17.520 And he thinks that if he keeps saying assault-style firearms, assault-style weapons, that it'll make it more true.

00:08:24.280 But it's playing off of ignorance in Canadians who don't understand guns and in many cases just haven't been exposed to them. 0.66

00:08:32.080 And this little amendment is trying to deal with some of the bad press and pushback they got from their previous proclamations that they would be banning by their own admission hunting rifles and hunting shotguns.

00:08:44.260 But it's hardly a reprieve.

00:08:46.600 Joining me is Rod Giltaka from the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights.

00:08:51.560 Rod, explain to me, first off, what's different?

00:08:54.120 What's actually changed here from the previous iterations of C-21?

00:08:59.380 Thanks for having me on, Andrew.

00:09:00.940 The approach has changed, but the results are the same as the withdrawn amendments and could possibly be worse.

00:09:08.100 So the approach, well, the announcement that Marco made was a couple of new amendments to Bill C-21, and also he's talking about some regulations and some other things that feed into it.

00:09:21.780 So I guess the most efficient and quick way to explain this is if we're talking about the actual gun bans that they have in store for Canadians, instead of having a list and having a definition, as they did in the amendments G4 and G46 that were withdrawn,

00:09:36.800 They now have no list. They have a definition and they're telling Canadians, well, don't worry. Everything that you own today is fine. It's safe. It's only this definition of a prohibited firearm being semi-automatics with detachable magazines, basically, will only go forward when Bill C-21 receives royal assent.

00:09:55.040 So it's just for the future. But also we're reforming CFAC, which is the Canadian Firearms Advisory Committee, and they will determine what firearms that should be prohibited in the interim.

00:10:08.180 And then we will prohibit those firearms using orders in council. And there's no criteria mentioned by the minister.

00:10:15.260 So basically, it's a committee made up by the people that he wants on there.

00:10:19.980 They could just take the list that was G46 and just go down the list and say, this is what we recommend.

00:10:25.780 But they could continue past and say, well, rapid-fire firearms like lever actions or pump actions should be on the list, too.

00:10:31.640 There's no telling where this will go eventually.

00:10:34.580 And they're certainly not in this, I don't even want to call it a walkback because it really isn't, but they're not unbanning any firearms.

00:10:41.780 I mean, the things that they banned by order and counsel in May 2020, the 1500 variants, including AR-15 style firearms and so on, like those are going to remain banned.

00:10:52.580 So which I think proves the point here that they're just going to find a way to apply this new definition to whatever they don't want people to have. 0.97

00:10:59.480 Well, they're basically calling everyone stupid. 0.99

00:11:02.140 They're saying you're you're all so dumb that we'll say, oh, we're going to walk back all these things. 0.99

00:11:06.200 We're not first it was we're not banning hunting rifles until it's like, well, here's the hunting rifles are banning. 0.98

00:11:11.780 And then they're like, well, and then Justin Trudeau came out, if you remember, and said, well, yes, maybe some of these guns are on different, you know, and all while screaming about misinformation and disinformation and how terrible people like us are, the gun lobby.

00:11:25.700 Well, they got caught with all that.

00:11:27.160 They walked it all back because it was a public relations disaster for them, because it's really all about politics.

00:11:31.560 It's all about votes and splitting Canadians, right?

00:11:34.700 Well, now they're saying, oh, don't worry.

00:11:36.660 We're not taking anything.

00:11:38.100 But we can't control the committee that we set up.

00:11:41.020 you know it's it's their fault it's now they it's just basically a strategy so that they can

00:11:45.020 sidestep accountability for doing exactly the same thing that they were going to do in the first

00:11:49.080 place i i want to play a clip for you rod this is from the gun control activist group uh called

00:11:56.420 poly colloquially and their criticisms of this and i want to get your take on this afterwards

00:12:02.520 this this is it for you we cannot understand how we can have a real strong permanent ban

00:12:15.680 on assault style weapon how with which government mr mendicino today says that to complete the list

00:12:23.880 it will ask a committee i've been on that committee and we never decided anything and

00:12:31.180 And they, and they were a majority government, they never consulted us on anything strong.

00:12:38.040 And they table and get adopted, Bill C-71.

00:12:43.160 So they cannot tell me that's a strong measure, first.

00:12:47.060 Their definition is not strong.

00:12:49.180 But why would the Liberal government propose a new bill on gun control?

00:12:55.220 say that it's very great and the strongest thing in the new in this generation if that's it we're lost

00:13:07.460 now i i don't want to take away from you know the the horrific event that uh the members who

00:13:13.540 formed this group initially went through back in in 1989 canadians are are very well aware of it

00:13:18.820 and and i think it's often been used uh quite wrongfully to push an agenda that has nothing

00:13:23.460 to do with that horrific tragedy. And as we see now, this group is basically wanting gun control

00:13:30.900 to the point where guns are just completely prohibited in Canada. And anything short of that,

00:13:35.340 they don't like. But the problem, when you have an initiative like this that's derided by gun

00:13:40.180 control advocates and gun advocates, does it not give the government a bit of cover to say,

00:13:44.620 see, it's moderate? Well, as I said before, their plan now is to sidestep all accountability.

00:13:52.540 And yeah, I mean, it's, you know, I think they were successful in dividing Canadians

00:13:57.580 in the last couple of elections based on the silhouette of an AR-15.

00:14:02.080 And, you know, conservatives want to weaken gun control and liberals want to strengthen

00:14:06.840 it, all the rest of this rhetoric.

00:14:09.360 But, you know, gun control is a sword that cuts both ways, right?

00:14:14.820 So if you think that your votes are in urban centers and the voting profile, the people

00:14:20.640 that are going to support you are pro-gun control because they don't know any better, let's say,

00:14:24.320 just for sake of argument, then you're going to try to get those votes and consider the

00:14:31.160 law-abiding gun owners to be a smaller pool of votes for you. And somehow you'll win an election.

00:14:37.480 I think it's worked reasonably well for them. But I think, and this is my fantasy that you'll

00:14:45.160 just indulge me in for a minute, I think that Canadians are starting to wake up a little bit.

00:14:49.300 They're realizing that our violence problem is not licensed gun owners shooting at shooting clubs like we have for 150 years in Canada, by the way, since before Canada was a country.

00:14:59.900 Our issues are the opioid epidemic, which is just being made worse by liberal policies.

00:15:05.740 Disasterous, prolific offender issues as made worse by the Liberal Bill C-75 that law enforcement across the country have said, you need to repeal Bill C-75.

00:15:14.940 It's making our streets unsafe to even walk on.

00:15:17.920 So bail reform issues and a raging gang problem.

00:15:21.740 Like Canadians, I think, are starting to figure it out that they've been gaslit for seven and a half years and it's just not working for them.

00:15:27.940 So now they're putting a little bit more effort into kind of walking things back and repackaging the same product and whatnot.

00:15:34.120 I think they're they're dancing a little bit now.

00:15:35.980 They haven't made anybody happy.

00:15:38.180 No, and I'm looking at what Marco Mendicino has said here.

00:15:43.000 And again, as we've discussed, it's not really going to make a material difference if you are a gun owner.

00:15:48.660 They can tweak the process or say they're tweaking the process, but we know the outcome they want.

00:15:53.880 And basically, we're seeing a government, and correct me if I'm wrong, that will not stop until every semi-automatic firearm has been prohibited.

00:16:02.160 Well, but it won't stop there.

00:16:03.860 and this we've been telling the the hunting community for a long time you know how how

00:16:08.080 confident are you that the liberals are just going to stop just short of the firearms that you own

00:16:13.600 like they're going to be like okay well we got the we got the ar-15s and even wooden you know

00:16:19.120 stocked firearms that could be like the sks that we still think are assault weapons we've got those

00:16:24.240 well you know what we're on a roll why would they stop there so at the end of the day they want you

00:16:29.220 have a break action if at all uh or a bolt action and maybe that'll be what's left it's uh it's yeah

00:16:37.140 i mean i think i think they've demonstrated as a political party after running canada for seven

00:16:43.140 and a half years they can't be trusted they'll never say what they actually want it's uh it's

00:16:48.260 it's a real mess and i think it has backfired on them i'd like to think so the the one thing that

00:16:52.500 marco mendicino mentioned there that i i found very well i found a lot of it concerned i found

00:16:57.060 all of it concerning actually but but one in particular is when he talked about effectively

00:17:00.840 trying to bind future governments he he said the conservatives have already said they want to roll

00:17:05.820 this back and have more uh gun rights what is he referring to there and and is he correct that a

00:17:11.080 Pierre Polyev government theoretically who has been on the record as as opposing this gun control

00:17:16.220 that he would actually have difficult untangle a difficulty untangling this is that the case

00:17:20.600 well um when so the original way that they were going to do it with um amendments well both

00:17:26.640 amendments g4 and 46 where they were going to legislate these firearms as prohibited so right

00:17:32.720 now they're legislate they well they want to legislate a um a definition of what an assault

00:17:39.060 style uh firearm is but which will be different from any real definition as we've known i mean

00:17:45.540 the pr definition for that that the government uses is is not anything that exists in canada

00:17:50.720 well if you look at paulie says if you have a press release they called everything assault

00:17:55.460 weapons. They said assault weapon, I counted because I have the video, counted like eight

00:17:59.220 times they called them assault weapons. But nonetheless, it's a propaganda war, first and

00:18:04.240 foremost. But the firearms that they ban using an order in council can be repealed by a minority

00:18:11.840 government in the future. The firearms that they ban, either by definition or by name,

00:18:16.700 that are in legislation, they would need a majority government or a coalition government

00:18:20.660 to repeal that. So that's, that's the difference. So, I mean, if, if I'm really searching around

00:18:26.000 for something positive, it's like, it's, it would be the, you know, Marco saying, well, we're going

00:18:31.060 to, we're going to ban these things by OIC because that can be reversed, but it's one thing legally.

00:18:35.940 And it's another thing politically because no government, including the conservatives want to

00:18:39.920 be a one-term government. So it'll be just as much work for organizations like ours to get these

00:18:45.840 firearms and rights back as it will fighting the liberals for that last seven and a half years.

00:18:50.660 The one thing that strikes me here is that the Liberals don't even believe their own fear mongering. And one example, you were featured and the CCFR was a very generous supporter of the documentary we reproduced a couple of years ago called Assaulted.

00:19:04.940 And at the time, we did that around this time in April of 2021, and it had been about a year since this order and council came in, and we talked to a lot of gun owners and gun business owners who had said, yeah, my AR-15 inventory and all this other inventory was prohibited.

00:19:22.160 The government put a freeze on it immediately.

00:19:24.200 We're still saddled with it.

00:19:25.660 The government said it's dangerous to have these things out in the country.

00:19:28.740 Well, two years have passed since then, three years since the ban, and this buyback that they've promised still hasn't materialized.

00:19:36.940 And we still haven't seen this rash of so-called assault weapon crime in Canada to back up what the Liberals said was the necessary and inevitable outcome of these guns existing.

00:19:47.500 So, I mean, their own fear, like if it was that urgent, they would have figured this out and collected all these things by now.

00:19:53.340 Well, you would have thought they would have figured it out before they made the announcement that they were going to do this in short order. But another thing I would point out to your viewers is that all this talk about gun control. So right from the Liberals' first majority government, where they brought out Bill C-71, you had the May 2020 gun ban, that OIC, you had the handgun freeze, you've got C-21 coming down the pike at us.

00:20:18.260 And it's like, well, Canada is more dangerous than it's ever been right now. And yet back in

00:20:23.740 the Harper era in 2013, it was that year had the lowest level of firearm related violence

00:20:29.800 since StatsCan started collecting data on firearm related violence. And we had far less gun control.

00:20:35.640 We didn't have all this gun control. So it's funny, you know, you got these advocates that

00:20:39.540 are like, well, less guns in a society, more firearm regulation, you know, less violence.

00:20:44.160 And it's like, well, clearly, those two things don't correlate at all.

00:20:49.960 So it's just kind of an interesting phenomenon in real life.

00:20:53.340 Yeah, I think we need more bail control right now, not more gun control to deal with crime.

00:20:58.380 Rod Giltaka from the CCFR.

00:21:00.560 I will see you in a few weeks for CCFR members out there.

00:21:03.900 I'll be at the annual general meeting in June.

00:21:06.960 So I thank you for the invitation.

00:21:08.620 And thanks for coming on today, Rod.

00:21:10.440 Thank you.

00:21:10.840 And we'll see you then.

00:21:11.720 All right.

00:21:12.120 Thanks very much.

00:21:13.000 I want to talk about this bigger picture story here about the Emergencies Act, which if we talk about the fallout of the Freedom Convoy, I would say that this protest back in January, February of 2022 really morphed from being about vaccine mandates to more broadly being about civil liberties.

00:21:31.960 I shared with you that image of me, and not a particularly flattering one, but no image of me is, of me being pepper sprayed.

00:21:39.340 And the Emergencies Act, I'd say, was something that united a lot more people than were already united in the cause of the Freedom Convoy.

00:21:47.900 And I bring this up now because Christine Van Gein, who is the litigation director at the Canadian Constitution Foundation,

00:21:55.840 had a great piece in C2C Journal in which she talked about the legal challenges underway

00:22:01.820 to the federal government's use of the Emergencies Act.

00:22:05.060 She calls it the last guardrail of accountability.

00:22:08.320 And I want to quibble with that in one sense that we'll get to,

00:22:11.360 but I thought it was an important point here.

00:22:13.620 And I wanted to speak to Christine about this.

00:22:16.060 It's good to talk to you.

00:22:17.060 Christine, thanks for coming on today.

00:22:18.940 Thanks for having me on, Andrew.

00:22:20.200 So let's start first off with the wake of the Public Order Emergency Commission,

00:22:25.840 which I think was a bit of a nail-biter.

00:22:28.160 A lot of people on both sides seemed to think that it could have gone either way.

00:22:32.380 But as we know, the federal government ultimately was somewhat vindicated

00:22:36.500 by the Public Order Emergency Commission.

00:22:39.300 But that was not the end of the story here.

00:22:42.180 Yeah, exactly.

00:22:43.040 And we were participants in that inquiry.

00:22:45.280 We were advocating for, obviously, a different outcome than what we got with that report,

00:22:53.100 which was a disappointing act of deference but the other line of accountability is your judicial

00:23:00.260 review in the courts and the courts have different procedures the courts have different

00:23:05.220 tools the court can actually have a finding of liability that the inquiry could not so what we

00:23:14.260 did was we filed an application for judicial review of the decision to invoke the emergencies

00:23:19.440 Act, and that judicial review was heard this April. There were a number of other organizations

00:23:25.160 that brought judicial reviews as well, and they were all consolidated into one hearing. So we

00:23:30.380 were heard alongside the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and a group of individuals who were

00:23:37.340 directly, some directly impacted by the Emergencies Act measures. For example, some of them had their

00:23:43.120 bank accounts frozen, and another group called the Canadian Frontline Nurses. So that was heard

00:23:48.380 in early April of this year. Now, what's the substance, if you will? And I know that each

00:23:54.440 of the groups involved may have had its own approach here, but what's the substance of

00:23:57.660 the argument? Is it really constitutional in nature? Is it going for just the threshold set

00:24:02.260 out in the act, or is it a bit of all of the above? So it's both. So there were two major

00:24:06.800 themes. The first theme was that the threshold to invoke the act was not met. The Emergencies Act

00:24:13.500 has specific internal thresholds that says you can only declare a public order emergency if this

00:24:19.980 particular criteria is met. One of those criterias is that the act is an act of last resort, so no

00:24:27.760 other laws are available to deal with a situation that is national in scope and critical and urgent.

00:24:34.780 And we've argued that that threshold was not met, that there were other tools that were available.

00:24:41.020 the RCMP even said all legal tools were not exhausted. A number of police witnesses at the

00:24:47.260 inquiry said that the Emergencies Act was helpful, but not necessary. And of course, that does not

00:24:54.320 make it a last resort if it's just helpful. That's not the standard. The other internal threshold

00:24:59.540 is this requirement to invoke a public order emergency. There needs to be a threat to the

00:25:05.860 security of Canada. And that is a term defined by reference to another statute, the CSIS Act.

00:25:12.120 Now, I don't want to get too into too complex details, but basically CSIS said there was no

00:25:18.820 national emergency. Cabinet said, well, we think there was. We don't care what the intelligence

00:25:25.620 experts have to say. We're going to come to our own conclusion. And even though CSIS's definition

00:25:31.600 that they work with regularly wasn't met and that's the definition that we're going to have

00:25:36.700 to apply in this case we're going to find that the two definitions are different so that was

00:25:42.100 one theme that was the one major theme that the internal thresholds of the act were not met

00:25:46.940 the other theme was about the charter and we can talk about that as well yeah i want to get to that

00:25:52.280 but but first i just wanted to ask about the emergencies act and whether there is a level

00:25:58.220 of deference built into it to depart from that they need to explain why they're departing from

00:26:05.500 CSIS's assessment right CSIS is the one who works with intelligence CSIS is the one who understands

00:26:12.780 intelligence much better than politicians do they work with this on a regular basis if they want to

00:26:22.060 reach a different conclusion they need to explain why and they haven't done that there's an

00:26:26.940 explanation that the government provided it's called section 58 explanation it's required by

00:26:32.220 the legislation on this issue of last resort uh basically cabinet just the the um the section 58

00:26:41.420 explanation just said um yeah it was a last resort so these these issues are really important because

00:26:49.340 cabinet just doesn't automatically get a higher level of deference because they are cabinet right

00:26:57.400 and that was one of the really troubling things about the the hearing the government the attorney

00:27:04.060 general's lawyers was arguing that cabinet deserves a special and higher level of deference

00:27:11.800 that they're the apex decision maker and accordingly its authority is basically

00:27:17.540 unconstrained by the emergencies act and the mere assertion that cabinet believed it was acting

00:27:24.040 reasonably that's all that they need and that the problem with that is basically that would make any

00:27:31.760 decision to invoke the emergencies act reasonable so we completely disagree with and it also have

00:27:39.260 huge implications in other areas of law where cabinet is the decision maker if you're going to

00:27:44.600 say cabinet is always acting reasonably because it was cabinet, that's a no-go for me in terms

00:27:51.300 of government accountability and rule of law. One thing that I'm always interested in when I

00:27:56.700 cover trials or any sort of administrative proceeding like the Public Order Emergency

00:28:01.360 Commission is judges sometimes have these little sort of indulgences of sort, these things you can

00:28:06.980 tell they're kind of interested in that might not even be core to the case. I mean, in the case of

00:28:11.800 Paul Rouleau and the emergency commission I know one thing he was asking a lot of people about was

00:28:16.520 whether there were any alternative sites proposed whether protesters were told yeah they could

00:28:21.040 continue to protest somewhere else I'm just curious in your hearing if the judge was really

00:28:27.440 kind of focusing in on certain details if there was something that you sort of took as a point

00:28:32.920 of interest for the judge well one thing that stood out to me that is I mean it's not a point

00:28:38.760 interest to the judge but one thing the judge mentioned was that he actually used to work as

00:28:43.080 a commercial trucker uh in southern alberta when he was a young man uh that to me was a really

00:28:48.680 interesting little tidbit um i i think i i posted about this on our youtube channel when i was

00:28:55.560 covering and summarizing each day's proceedings and people really that got a really big reaction

00:29:00.200 in terms of what justice mostly was interested in one of the things he really zeroed in on

00:29:05.320 was the freezing of the bank accounts and the government had made the argument that

00:29:12.760 the freezing and of assets was not a search or a seizure under section nine of the charter so

00:29:20.920 the canadian charter of rights and freedoms guarantees the right to be free from an

00:29:24.760 unreasonable search and seizure and as we know the freezing of those bank accounts was done

00:29:30.840 without a warrant and you know sometimes warrantless searches can can be reasonable but in this case

00:29:38.360 we're arguing that they were not reasonable but the government was arguing it wasn't even a search 1.00

00:29:44.520 it wasn't even a seizure even though it it clear i mean it clearly was like this is a stupid 0.95

00:29:52.200 question but what was it did they have a name for what they think it is no they just it was 0.89

00:29:57.080 just it just happened it was just a thing information but and and and the government

00:30:02.680 said even if it was a search that the information in your bank account is not especially valuable

00:30:10.840 information but think about how how you would feel if your neighbor uh went through your credit card

00:30:17.720 statements i mean i think about how my my husband would feel if he went through my credit card

00:30:22.600 statements. I want privacy over that information. That's very personal information, right? It can say

00:30:29.880 where you have coffee, where you go to the gym, if you go to the gym, if you see a doctor,

00:30:37.060 what, like a psychologist or a therapist, who that therapist is, that's very deeply personal

00:30:44.740 information that the government dismissed as, oh, well, this is, it says how much money you have

00:30:51.360 to your name. This is very important information. It wasn't time limited. There was no limit on

00:30:58.940 those orders that said from where, from when until when that information is available for

00:31:06.020 disclosure. So, I mean, Justice Mosley was very interested in that argument. He said that he was

00:31:13.340 having a lot of difficulty accepting the argument that this was not a search, which is, I think,

00:31:20.100 gives me some hope for this decision that that he's gonna find it was an unreasonable search

00:31:26.880 should should we take from that that the federal government thought it was was going to be so hard

00:31:32.440 to sell to say that it was a reasonable search and seizure that they really just fell back to

00:31:37.180 claiming it wasn't a search and seizure at all is that because that would be how i'd look at it

00:31:40.920 they really don't think they can defend it on the reasonableness ground so let's just try to

00:31:45.080 reinvent the english language uh no i wouldn't say that i would just say this is just a legal

00:31:49.740 tactic where you throw everything you throw up every possible blockade that you can and we dealt

00:31:54.920 with a lot of blockades in this hearing at the very beginning we spent two hours of the government

00:31:59.900 arguing we shouldn't be here at all saying that the whole case was moot that the emergencies act

00:32:05.540 had been repealed that it's there's nothing to see here and there had already been this inquiry

00:32:11.240 so just just on that christine has the judge ruled on the mootness yet or is he dealing with

00:32:16.660 it all at the same time no he hasn't i don't know if he'll be dealing with it all at the same time

00:32:21.660 he could break it and deal with mootness separately it was a separate motion that he

00:32:26.400 just heard uh simultaneously with the merits uh i don't think that justice mosley was buying the

00:32:32.800 argument i'm not in his mind so i can't i don't know but it did not seem like it was going well

00:32:40.040 And we, the applicants in the judicial review, none of us actually even made oral arguments on mootness.

00:32:46.780 We just made written submissions because I think the government's case on mootness is so weak.

00:32:51.940 Basically, to say that this case is moot means that you can never challenge an invocation of the Emergencies Act.

00:32:58.720 The government's hypothetical scenario was like, if we have a very long and extended

00:33:03.960 invocation of the emergency, which it's just unreasonable hypothetical.

00:33:12.280 Well, yeah, and it flies in the face of what Justin Trudeau himself said when he was selling

00:33:17.200 the Emergencies Act to people, which is that, yes, it's subject to the charter. Yes, you can

00:33:21.480 always go through this challenge. So to then turn around after and say, well, you can't,

00:33:25.660 And their argument was that, well, the circumstances will always be different in the future.

00:33:29.460 So there's no point.

00:33:30.780 I didn't find that all that compelling.

00:33:33.080 But I did want to just bring up the last guardrail aspect, which I think in terms of legal tools is something I would agree with.

00:33:41.080 I would say that the last, if the legal avenue fails, is still the political accountability, though.

00:33:47.120 I do agree there is political accountability.

00:33:52.020 I think this is the last procedural guardrail.

00:33:55.660 That's what I would say, that once this judicial review is done, and this could, of course, go all the way to the Supreme Court if they're interested in hearing it, this is the last procedure that we have at our disposal to hold the government accountable.

00:34:11.920 Political accountability is, of course, very important, and people like you who continue to talk about this subject when it's a year past now that this happened, it's very important.

00:34:24.080 it's very important that we not forget that this happened because when we forget it makes it easier

00:34:28.400 for the government to do it to us again very well said the piece is a fantastic one at the c2c

00:34:35.440 journal you can read it at c2c journal.ca the last guardrail of accountability the legal challenge

00:34:41.600 to the trudeau government's use of the emergencies at christine van gein always an absolute delight

00:34:46.960 to talk to you thanks for your insights and analysis on this as always thanks andrew it's

00:34:50.960 It's always great to talk to you.

00:34:52.260 All right.

00:34:52.760 Thank you very much, Christine.

00:34:54.380 We always like to end on a bit of a cheery note when possible.

00:34:57.600 This story was great.

00:34:58.600 Do you remember when I believe it was like 2020 to 2021 to 2022 into 2023?

00:35:06.740 So basically for the last three years, there was this wave where anything and everything

00:35:10.580 was a COVID symptom.

00:35:12.000 I remember like you'd go to the store and you'd see the big sign that says if you've

00:35:16.020 had a cough or fever or a bit of a limp, or if your left earlobe is itchy or your right earlobe

00:35:24.020 is itchy, or you've got, you know, a pimple on your back or like anything and everything was a

00:35:29.440 COVID symptom. And I kind of thought that had gone away for a little while, but then I saw this story

00:35:34.420 in the Toronto Star, of course, those itchy, red, watery eyes could be allergies. They could also

00:35:42.040 be a sign of COVID. And I don't know if you, oh, we, we, uh, the graphic now you don't even get

00:35:47.220 to see the full, uh, watery eyes of their, uh, their stock, uh, of the stock model here, uh,

00:35:53.560 who was photographed by a stock photo agency. And I don't believe has COVID may or may not have

00:35:59.960 COVID. Uh, but now we're saying that allergies, if you are one of these people that deals with

00:36:04.920 the allergy, the allergy season, and it bothers you tremendously. This is now a sign of COVID.

00:36:13.300 So ignore the allergies you've had. Now I'm going to show you an image. This is also, I believe,

00:36:17.620 a sign of COVID. Yeah. Oh, hey, come on, Sean. Sean said he had an image of someone who had

00:36:25.400 like COVID watery eyes. And then it's, that actually wasn't from the pepper spray. I got

00:36:30.140 COVID from one of those dirty, unacceptable fringe convoy people there. So that was me 0.91

00:36:36.300 two days into the truck-a-cron variant of COVID-19. Well played, Sean. You are fired.

00:36:44.760 We've got to end things there. My thanks to all of you for tuning into today's show. Back on Friday

00:36:49.520 with more of Canada's most irreverent talk show here on True North. This is The Andrew

00:36:54.760 Lawton Show. Thank you. God bless and good day to you all. Thanks for listening to the Andrew

00:37:00.260 Lawton Show. Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - May 03, 2023

Liberals are not backing down from their gun grab

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