Juno News - October 26, 2022More testimony proves Emergencies Act was unnecessary
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Summary
On this episode of The Andrew Lawton Show: Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show, Andrew takes you behind-the-scenes of the Public Order Emergency Commission hearings, where the federal government is on trial for invoking the Emergency Act.
Transcript
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This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by TrueNorth.
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It is Wednesday, October 26th, just after 5.17pm Eastern Time.
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We're starting at a little bit of an odd hour here
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for reasons that will become clear in just a couple of moments
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If you've been watching the Public Order Emergency Commission, it was gripping edge of your seat stuff today.
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It really wasn't, actually. It's a bit of a joke, and I'll explain why in a moment's time.
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We are going to be later on this show, though, talking with Catherine Christensen, who is part of the big legal team.
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And by big legal team, I mean it's actually this woman and hundreds and hundreds of members of the Canadian Armed Forces
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that are looking to take the Canadian military to court over its vaccine mandate and we haven't
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talked as much about the Canadian Armed Forces vaccine mandate as we've talked more generally
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and broadly about federal mandates on this show but it's an important story and we're going to
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be speaking to Catherine in just a little bit of time on this show but let's talk about where we
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are with the Public Order Emergency Commission because we've now gone through what's today's
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Wednesday so we just finished or are finishing soon the 10th day of testimony now this is
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midway through week three of a seven week long set of hearings that are taking place and as we
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spoke about with Keith Wilson on Monday they could extend this and start going on weekends so
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we could have many more days of testimony and if you were looking for the smoking gun that the
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government is going to use to justify and defend its invocation of the emergencies act you are
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sorely disappointed sorely disappointed here and let me explain exactly why that is because right
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now we are in the midst of the federal government under investigation it is justin trudeau's
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government on trial and i don't mean that in a literal sense i don't mean it in a criminal sense
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But Justin Trudeau's government is on trial. He himself said when parliamentarians were voting on
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the Emergencies Act that it was a confidence motion because he said if you don't support the
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government doing something so drastic, it's proof that that government does not deserve to be in
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power. It's proof that government does not have the confidence of the legislature. So the point
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that I've made in the past is that by Justin Trudeau's own standards, this is actually a
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pretty serious thing if it's found that he was not justified in invoking the Emergencies Act.
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If at the end of this, Justice Paul Rouleau, the Commissioner of the Public Order Emergency
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Commission, says, yeah, the federal government was not justified in doing this, I think Justin
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Trudeau has lost the mandate to govern. And I'm not saying that legally he has lost it. I'm saying
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that morally politically he should be gone so that's what's at stake here and we have heard
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testimony from residents of ottawa we've heard testimony from the police officers at various
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levels the ottawa police service the ontario provincial police uh we haven't heard i don't
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believe from the rcmp just yet but we've heard ovp and ottawa police we've heard from intelligence
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we've heard from police liaisons we've heard from commissioners we've heard from all sorts of people
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and what we haven't heard anywhere in that testimony at all is that they requested it
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so we can completely shatter that narrative that marco mendicino and justin trudeau and all of
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those have put forward that they were the ones that were just uh the hapless victims of this
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they were the passengers it was the police that wanted the emergencies act well what they haven't
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been able to proffer up to us is one single police officer who asked for it. Not one. And Marco
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Mendicino has done this little two-step on this. He said, well, they were asking for the sorts of
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things that we needed the emergency Zach to do. Now, I should say, in fairness, Marco Mendicino
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has trouble finding two IQ digits to rub together to make a fire. Like, this is not a guy that is
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exactly like the crown prince of the Mensa society here. So I want to be a little bit kind when I
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talk to him, except he is also the guy tasked with Canada's public safety. So perhaps it would be
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important for the guy who is in charge of the public safety division of this country to have
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a bit more in the sense of, I don't know, intelligence or honesty. Like the reality is
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Marco Medicino will eventually become the government's fall guy, I think. Like he doesn't
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know it yet i sort of see this and i think a lot of other people see it that when someone in the
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government has to be accountable it's going to be you know it's not going to be justin trudeau
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it's going to be marco mendicino and he'll just be out there with his like i stand with ukraine
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sign just like furiously trying to scratch it out and put like you know i'm sorry i didn't mean to
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on it or whatever he needs to to justify saving face but all of this is to say there has not been
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a smoking gun from law enforcement, from police intelligence, or anything like that, that supports
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the invocation of the Emergencies Act. And I've been listening. We have a whole team at True North
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that's been following this day by day. And I'm just waiting because police are very dispassionate
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in their delivery. So I'm just waiting for one person to just slip into their testimony. Oh,
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yes. And there was, of course, that violent ring that we broke up. Oh, yeah, of course,
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there was that threat of violence in Ottawa, but it's not there. We've heard confirmation that
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there were in fact bouncy castles so if there was ever any doubt about the bouncy castles we know
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the bouncy castles for sure were there and so far no injuries from the bouncy castles have been
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reported but it is Justin Trudeau's government on trial and we cannot let them just turn this
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into whatever Trudeau does when he's caught breaking the rules if this goes the wrong way
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for him and that it will be a learning opportunity for all of us no Canadians already know everything
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there is to know about this. That's why I think a lot of the media hasn't been covering this. And
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to be fair, media has been reporting on it, but there hasn't been the wall-to-wall coverage like,
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oh, I don't know, the January 6th hearing in the United States or the Russia probes in the United
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States, which I think got far more airtime on Canadian television than the Public Order Emergency
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Commission hearings have so far. And I think that's because there's nothing in them that we're
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really learning about i mean even just to look at today's program the title of the show more
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testimony proves emergencies act was unnecessary not gonna lie this is not like a breaking news
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headline because this has been the theme that has come out of this hearing every single day so far
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where police will sometimes say unequivocally that they didn't need the emergencies act to do what it
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is that they ended up doing to move in and break up the convoy protest i'm going to play a clip
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from ops ottawa police service superintendent robert bernier uh saying this is the the second
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clip uh that he required no additional legal authorities to clear protesters from ottawa
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you took over as event commander on february 10th that's what i understand from your evidence today
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yes and your task was to prepare an operational plan yes and at that time between february 10th
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and february 13th when you were preparing the operational plan was it your assessment that the
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ops had the necessary legal tools and powers to execute that operational plan yes
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required any additional legal tools or any additional legal powers?
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MR. I would say they were beneficial, but to say necessary, I would say no.
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MS. And at no time prior to February 14th, did you communicate to any of your superiors
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that you required additional legal tools or legal powers?
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and if you think there was a gotcha there when he talks about it being beneficial you should know
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that that is not what the emergencies act is there to assess it's not about whether the government
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and police made good use of it the question is whether it was necessary and there were no other
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legal means available to achieve the desired outcome and every single police officer that's
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come forward that's been asked that question has said that it was not necessary and you look at
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some of the excuses and rationalizations that will come for that one of them is of course going to be
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the money we're going to hear from deputy prime minister christopher freeland later about the bank
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freezes and they certainly needed the emergencies act to freeze the bank accounts which was we know
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the hallmark of their response to the convoy because heaven forbid these truckers get access
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us to donations after vaccine mandates have put many of them out to out of work but they'll also
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say the tow trucks and the tow trucks are going to be so critical because we know that police had a
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hard time finding and the city of Ottawa had a very difficult time finding tow trucks to tow away
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the big rakes because a lot of the tow truck drivers were supporters of the convoy themselves
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so they're like yeah I don't want to do like I'm I'm I'm on team trucker I'm not going to do that
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and even contractors, existing contractors to the city that were supposed to make themselves
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available were saying, I'm not doing this. So the government will say, well, we needed to conscript
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the tow truck drivers. And that was something we needed and we needed the Emergencies Act for.
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Now it's in evidence, and I don't think it's all that contentious or contested,
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that there were difficulties in getting tow trucks there. But one of the key details I'd
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remind you of is that the city of Ottawa had available two heavy towing operations, two heavy
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towing vehicles that belong to the city of Ottawa. They belong to Ottawa Transit or OC Transpo and
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they have operators and they were under the city's direct control and they never used them.
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That actually came up last week. They never used the two that they owned, the two that they actually
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had access to. So maybe the towing shortage wasn't as acute as Ottawa has made it sound. But let's
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even talk about this because this came up in the discussion the cross-examination by
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superintendent robert bernier that even then even with the tow truck issues they didn't need
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the emergencies act take a look so would you agree that the federal emergency power to compel
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towing services may have been helpful to police and may be beneficial to police but it wasn't
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necessarily necessary to enable police to clear the protests was it um yes um however with a
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caveat that um we were having challenges we were having a hard time up until uh that that time on
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the 13th so prior to the 13th i would have said we could have used some help with that but uh as
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things materialized on the the 13th i was satisfied that we were good and you were by
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you were satisfied that we were good you're satisfied that the uh federal emergency power
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to compel tow trucks wasn't necessary correct thank you um interim chief bell testified pretty
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emphatically and i quote in the absence of the invocation of the emergencies act the op the ops
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the OPP, the RCMP, as part of a unified command, were going to clear the protests.
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In the absence of the invocation of the Emergencies Act,
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the OPS, the OPP, the RCMP, as part of a unified command, were going to clear the protests.
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Numerous other OPP and OPS witnesses have testified that federal emergency powers
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may have been helpful to police in various ways but they were not necessary would you agree with
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that yes thank you very much those are my questions so again even then on february 13th
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as the emergencies act is not yet in play police are saying yeah we had a plan we weren't worried
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at that time about the absence of tow trucks we seem to be moving forward in the right direction
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without any issues now remember one of the sidetrack things happening at this time was the
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negotiations between police and protesters between the city of ottawa and protesters which was easing
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the burden of this we're moving trucks from residential areas concentrating them on wellington
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street the city of ottawa was happy with this plan convoy organizers were happy with this plan
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police were generally happy with this plan and the federal government interestingly enough
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was it seemed like going through a bit of internal dispute about this and there was some testimony
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that took place yesterday between an OPP negotiator Marcel Bowden and this testimony
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revealed conversations he was having with Public Safety Canada now this is the office that has the
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misfortune of serving Marco Mendicino the bureaucratic office that exists from government
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to government and he was speaking to the deputy minister of public safety so the most senior
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bureaucrat in public safety canada who it sounds like was more open to the idea of this negotiation
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working and possibly even talking to the convoy leaders himself now this didn't happen now this
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tells us a lot i'm going to tell you exactly what that is once i play this clip of marcel
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Bowden's testimony. If we could go to the top of page three, Deputy Minister Stewart responds to
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you and raises a number of questions, essentially, in those bullet points at the bottom. And if we
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could just go through those briefly, and if you could tell me whether those those were ever sort
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of addressed in a conversation. With the signatory of the letter or the person who goes to the
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meeting be putting themselves at risk is that a big concern uh that wasn't a big concern for me
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okay why not well i like we never i think you know inspector more or superintendent morris
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spoke to it as far as the violence and stuff in the in in the uh group and so to me um there
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wasn't a pile of risk there um i personally wasn't concerned but i know that there would be
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obviously some sort of assessment uh from someone before that would happen right as far as who's
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identified from the protest group that would be in the in there and i'm sure there's people
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that the government probably wouldn't want to meet with as well right right which which that
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takes us down to the sort of third point um about poi sheets and there was a concern about who was
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going to be involved in that negotiation did it ever get to that point where you shared a list of
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names with the government and they they raise any issue about that no because i think the next day
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he called me in the morning is it saturday uh the 12th is the saturday yeah so he called me in the
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morning the next morning and said that he was not able to uh make this happen ultimately okay and
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and why what where did the because because i understand you were on board on behalf of the
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opp the ops was on board it seems like the rcmp was kind of provisionally on board so what was
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what was the issue i definitely was not involved in the conversations that stopped that from
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happening so i don't know okay yeah sorry about that no no so but as far as you know you got a
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you got a call from uh deputy minister stewart yes the next morning yeah and he just said that
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he was not successful ultimately to getting this going forward
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interesting so the deputy minister of public safety canada had been talking to the opp
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negotiation lead now just for context marcel bowden of the opp was in charge in some respects
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of the police liaison teams the negotiation teams that were out there to as their name suggests to
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liaise with convoy leaders and convoy organizers and he thought they were doing a very good job
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I mean, it was under these liaisons that they were able to come up with a deal to move the trucks onto Wellington Street.
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They were liaising left, right, and center, liaising all over downtown Ottawa.
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And in the course of that, this public safety deputy minister, not a liberal necessarily, not a partisan role, he's open to this.
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He's talking about meetings and negotiations and safety and all of that.
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And then all that this OPP officer, Officer Bowdoin, knows is that that got canceled.
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Now, we know from other testimony last week that Marco Mendicino was aware of the negotiations.
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So it doesn't take a genius to figure out that it was the federal government that wasn't interested in this.
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We're talking about Marco Mendocino, but I think even Marco Mendocino could figure out what I'm talking about here.
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The federal government was the one that decided to abandon negotiation.
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The federal government was the one that decided it wasn't worth talking.
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So they, right through to the Emergencies Act, had an opportunity.
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They could have said, we're going to try this other thing to de-escalate that we haven't done in the last three weeks,
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which is talk to these people, or we're going to double down.
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we're going to suspend civil liberties we're going to invoke the emergencies act we're going
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to freeze their bank accounts we're going to send in police and they chose that option
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they had another a hail mary option that they could have done and they avoided it even in the
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11th hour and i think that's so critical and i want to play just continuing along with that thread
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a little bit of brendan miller who is the the lawyer representing the convoy leaders
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his cross-examination where he talks about this and he offers a little bit of information there
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about what meeting that was that the public safety deputy minister referred to
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and so in this proposal of course it says that upon an agreement to the proposal
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you'd provide a police liaison in writing a commitment to government engagement at a later
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date and that could be shared in a meeting with the protest leaders right i believe so right so
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the plan was and the recommendation was is that essentially uh the government of canada the
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political branch of the government of canada would agree to a meeting with the protesters but
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there would be certain conditions to that and they would have to denounce anything unlawful
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and get out of downtown ottawa is that fair yep okay and um in your interactions with deputy
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minister with a deputy minister and commissioner lucky um after february 12th 2022 uh did they
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tell you anything about what happened with this proposal i think the proposal was kind of like
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dead in the water after the 13th um when the mayor provided his letter right and then it allowed
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the ability to see the outcome of that right could we bring up another um document that was
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referred to by the commission um it's opp zero zero zero zero zero one seven two
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now i understand this is the an email from the deputy minister of public safety rob stewart to
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you right yes okay and in the third sentence on the top paragraph it says we have a big meeting
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this afternoon well this will be discussed so i really need your input right yes all right did
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you know that that meeting was at 3 30 p.m and that it was with cabinet and it was the incident
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response group of the political executive meeting and that your proposal was provided to them
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uh no okay it was i can tell you that and then they invoked the emergencies act
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so i actually don't know how to drop this mic like i was thinking i could fiddle around
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and like pull the screw out and the mic might drop and i don't know what that means for the
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rest of the show brendan miller right there should have just taken the mic on the lectern
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and just like, just throwing the whole lectern over
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Cabinet decided to not put any stock in negotiation.
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well, we were just listening to law enforcement,
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it was law enforcement officers like Mr. Bowden here
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who were talking about the power of negotiation,
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screw what the cops say, we want the Emergencies Act.
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and this is going to be so key and when those federal ministers take the stand they can't just
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concoct this fake phony emergency any longer and as i said at the beginning this is not
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groundbreaking now the police are yet again saying they didn't ask for it they didn't need it
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this is becoming the epitome of that old saw about a dog bites man's story not really news
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but we're still going to give it to you because it is challenging the official narrative
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in every sense which is something that true north is doing and i'm so proud we're doing it
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going to be shifting gears and talking about the military vaccine mandate in Canada. Stay tuned.
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Welcome back to The Andrew Lawton Show. This is Canada's most irreverent talk show. We have
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talked a lot on this program about vaccine mandates, federal, provincial, international.
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one that we have not focused on as much is the Canadian Armed Forces vaccine mandate and part
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of this is because I think it was part of certainly when I was discussing it it was part of the broader
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vaccine mandates that the Liberal government put in last fall for the entire civil service but there
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have been different nuances to it that I think make it worth taking an extra look at this and
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one of them I think is the demographic profile of who it is that's in the Canadian Armed Forces
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These are the people at the least risk possible for having serious complications from COVID-19,
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but also the idea of authority and obedience and the chain of command.
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These things that have really, I think, complicated the ability for someone to say no to this
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Well, there's a proposed class action now against this vaccine mandate representing
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so far hundreds of people that were put on leave whose future careers in the Canadian
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armed forces are still in uncertain territory because of this mandate. This has been fought
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by Catherine Christensen, who's a lawyer based in Alberta, and the founder of the Valor Legal
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Action Centre, which is a not-for-profit that is fighting this case. Catherine Christensen joins me
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now. Thanks so much for coming on the show today. Good to talk to you. Good to talk to you, Andrew.
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We're happy to be here. So what is this case about, really? Obviously, the vaccine mandate,
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incredibly disruptive, I would argue just plain wrong, but we also know that it caused a number
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of issues as far as shortages, confusion, not to mention that the legal rights aspect of this,
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but what is really the core of this class action you're proposing to bring?
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Well, Andrew, I've been watching the Canadian Armed Forces for a few years. My practice has
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always been with military and veterans, and I have noticed a real trend in some of the things
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they were doing to their people and then last october i was approached by a group of hundreds of
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military serving military who were affected by the first directive the mandate and now
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subsequently mandate two two-way and three and i have to tell you that it was sort of the perfect
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package to bring what is essentially an abuse of power lawsuit against the canadian armed forces
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It's about how the Canadian Armed Forces have abused their people.
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And their chain of command is in absolute chaos.
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And for all of General Eyre's talking about everyone has to follow his orders, they aren't.
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And it's caused some very big consequences for some very dedicated, long-serving members of the Canadian Armed Forces.
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For people that haven't followed the intricacies of this, when you say Mandate 1, Mandate 2, 2A, 3, what are you referring to there?
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What are those different mandates that have come in or updates to the mandate?
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Right. So last October, the Chief of Defence staff issued a directive.
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And the first directive was to bring in that COVID-19 vaccines were now mandatory for service in the Canadian Armed Forces.
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he then subsequently did a couple of amendments with a second directive and then an amendment of
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that second directive which i call 2a and then just recently in the last month he's brought down
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directive three which was touted as a removal of the mandate it doesn't actually remove the mandate
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continues if you want to do anything in the canadian armed forces but what it did was say that
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well if we haven't already released you which was under the first directives that if you didn't get
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the vaccine you were to be discharged under a 5f which used to be dishonorable but has been made
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honorable in the last tough couple of years some of these people were not released in the 30 days
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like they were threatened with and so they've been told now to come back to work but they've been
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put into situations where they're sitting by themselves in empty buildings uh they've been
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told they don't basically get to do anything uh in fact i have one person who is unvaccinated was
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told to come back to work and he's been assigned to uh help take care of people who are quarantined
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for covid19 so uh ironically that's what this is uh he the chief of defense staff should have said
00:27:35.780
because under the national defense act uh section 126 he is uh has the power to say that you must
00:27:42.740
to be vaccinated to serve in the canadian armed forces if you refuse you are chart brought with
00:27:48.580
a charge and court-martialed and they didn't do that they went to what was called remedial measures
00:27:54.820
and i basically did an administrative process which is completely unanswerable uh until it
00:28:02.580
gets brought into court which can take years because it may go through a grievance process
00:28:07.700
so uh and just to confirm what happens to people in that interim period while they're
00:28:12.900
waiting for a court date uh they basically are suspended they still they can't put anyone in
00:28:21.060
the canadian armed forces under a leave without pay uh the canadian armed forces are different
00:28:25.620
than the federal employees they have to ask for a leave without pay they cannot be ordered to take
00:28:31.380
a leave without pay so that was part of the issue with the first directive because they talked about
00:28:35.460
putting people on leave without pay of course that was challenged and they had to backtrack
00:28:41.380
so the people that haven't had anything happen to them in the past year have basically been
00:28:46.020
sitting at home waiting to be released as they were threatened they would be released
00:28:50.900
and they haven't been now they've been told to come back to work why is it that the canadian
00:28:56.340
armed forces mandate seems to be distinct in terms of how it's unfolded and what the challenges are
00:29:02.900
compared to the broader public service mandate that applied just in a blanket way to everyone
00:29:08.020
in the federal public service why are these two different animals uh one of the big differences
00:29:13.540
is that uh how people were treated in the canadian armed forces compared to the federal service and
00:29:19.700
the federal service they basically were sent home on leave without pay when their mandate was
00:29:24.180
suspended they were told to come back to work and the canadian armed forces we have the chief of
00:29:28.260
defense staff going on the national news telling people that don't get vaccinated and want to serve
00:29:33.940
in a uniform aren't worthy that they're morally weak that their ethics aren't where they should be
00:29:40.580
basically name calling them and isolating them which is a form of discrimination and
00:29:46.020
i would even argue maybe some harassment then we get what actually happened to people in
00:29:51.860
on the ground as these directives were being unrolled from pregnant women who didn't know if
00:29:59.780
they wanted to take the vaccine being charged with a wall because their obstetrician put them in the
00:30:04.740
hospital due to the stress to young sailors being isolated in a room with four officers and told to
00:30:13.300
sign a piece of paper that they wouldn't follow a lawful order under complete coercion to a young
00:30:20.260
One man made to stand outside in January at attention where all his co-workers could go
00:30:26.440
past him and say because he wouldn't take the vaccine.
00:30:29.980
He lasted a month before he'd lost 15 pounds of muscle mass and mentally couldn't do it
00:30:38.300
And he voluntarily released because he just couldn't cope with the punishment that his
00:30:46.480
I mean, if she had done that to someone who was a prisoner of war, she'd be charged with a war crime and be brought up in The Hague for it.
00:30:54.460
This is how these people were being treated. It wasn't a case that they were just told, well, go home, and then they just sat at home and did nothing. They were actually being deliberately isolated. They were told they would go to jail.
00:31:06.080
uh they were told that they would their families would starve that they would receive no benefits
00:31:13.040
that their pensions were gone all of these things are not true um and so it was very different for
00:31:20.180
these people who were in uniform that absolutely dedicated their lives to serving canada and then
00:31:26.520
were being treated like garbage and thrown out like garbage in my opinion i want to go back to
00:31:32.040
what you said a moment ago about being asked to agree that they were not following a lawful order
0.64
00:31:36.620
because everyone knows that in military there's a chain of command and that you do need to have a
00:31:41.060
level of obedience but this has been clarified over time and it's that you have to obey lawful
00:31:46.040
orders and interestingly enough just this week there was the story in the Canadian press that
00:31:51.160
the chief of the defense staff was warned that this mandate might not actually be a lawful order
00:31:57.080
so there isn't actually something we could take for granted here that the Canadian Armed Forces
00:32:01.620
can rely on that this was in fact a lawful order exactly the canadian armed forces have a reputation
00:32:08.500
internationally for having smart people people that are willing to question and willing to say
00:32:15.140
to their chain of command i don't think that's a lawful order or no i will not do that based on
00:32:21.620
my ethics or my religion whatever the case may be and so that's what they came up against when
00:32:27.780
they issued these directives because how it usually works in the military is you don't get
00:32:33.860
the chief of defense staff doesn't issue a directive he issues an order and then the
00:32:38.580
directive is the instructions to his chain of command how that order is going to be carried out
00:32:44.260
that didn't happen here he instead brought these directives out and said well that's an order
00:32:49.060
but he it was they were so vague and so jumbled that the chain of command across the country
00:32:56.420
all implemented it differently it was absolute chaos someone on one base was doing another another
00:33:03.620
admiral on the west coast was doing something else so this caused people to say is this a lawful
00:33:10.020
order and the other part of it is Andrew is their rights just because they put on a uniform doesn't
00:33:17.220
mean they gave up their rights as a Canadian citizen they still maintain all those rights
00:33:22.580
and one of the rights you have is to bodily autonomy and whether you wish to consent to
00:33:26.420
a medical treatment and that was what the uh chief of defense staff tried to take away from these
00:33:32.340
people uh we have the admiral of the or the vice admiral who's uh commander of the navy now uh
00:33:38.980
telling people that they didn't have bodily autonomy if they went if they were in the
00:33:42.580
canadian armed forces well that raises a lot of questions because if they have no bodily autonomy
1.00
00:33:49.060
then uh does that mean the chief of defense staff can say well i don't have enough women in the
00:33:53.140
military so therefore i can order people to have sex changes because that's what he's saying he
00:33:59.140
says he has the power to do order any medical treatment for any member of the canadian armed
00:34:04.100
forces and they're not allowed to disagree so this is uh this is part of why i i chose to do this
00:34:11.140
because it is extremely uh upsetting to the people i represent and it was upsetting to me
00:34:20.240
There are some deployments where certain vaccines would make sense.
00:34:25.880
you should probably get your meningitis vaccine and so on.
00:34:29.520
The rationale for COVID vaccination has been, I think, increasingly precarious.
00:34:36.600
The logic on which it rests, especially as we've learned, it doesn't block transmission.
00:34:41.200
So whether you get vaccinated as a soldier does not have any bearing
00:34:45.000
on whether the person you're bunking with is going to get COVID increasingly so what is the rationale
00:34:52.040
on which the Canadian Armed Forces has relied or is it simply we're telling you to do it so you have
00:34:58.020
to do it well part of what they relied on was a draft from the Public Health Canada Public Health
00:35:05.200
Agency of Canada and it was a draft we have searched for a final version they can't produce
00:35:11.040
one so they had a draft document from public health canada which the peckford uh questioning
00:35:17.200
the peckford documents have revealed that public health canada never recommended vaccination
00:35:22.960
as a mitigation mitigation measure i guess i could call it so they relying on that certainly isn't
00:35:31.440
uh going to be standing up and we had the chief of defense staff uh on national media saying that his
00:35:39.120
reasoning was that it was to prevent transmission that we were going Pfizer doesn't say anymore
00:35:46.400
right exactly and the Canadian Armed Forces were supposed to set an example in fact in his first
00:35:51.120
directive and other subsequent directives the first priority was to set an example for the
00:35:56.560
Canadian population that's not a reason to mandate a medical treatment to your troops
00:36:03.120
that that's not taking care of your people because if it's an a vaccine that isn't even fully
00:36:08.720
tested yet i mean uh the dr lorenko from the government of canada admitted under questioning
00:36:15.520
and under oath that the human trials are not over that the human trials are the general population
00:36:22.000
and the other factor we have here andrew is the people that serve in the canadian armed
00:36:26.800
Forces are extremely low risk to die from COVID or have serious COVID. They're fit, they're young,
00:36:34.960
there was there has been more vaccine injuries than anything else from the from this whole thing
00:36:41.680
and they can't ever point to one death in the Canadian Armed Forces from COVID. They can't even
00:36:49.520
point to serious illness of anyone in the Canadian Armed Forces. So how are you rationalizing a
00:36:55.360
treatment to your people that is more dangerous to them than the actual disease itself yeah and i
00:37:02.880
think that's such a critical point here it's it's a critical point because the vaccine is something
00:37:09.920
that i think should for any reason be a personal choice if you feel it will put you in better
00:37:14.880
standing take it if you don't feel it that way don't take it but but if you look at the numbers
00:37:19.440
No one has ever argued, even the most alarmist, that COVID is a death sentence for a fit, healthy, 20-something, 30-something year old.
00:37:28.680
And to the contrary, I mean, for 20, 30, 40-year-old men, we know that the vaccine itself,
00:37:34.100
and numerous studies have shown this actually poses more risk when you're talking about things like myocarditis and other things.
00:37:39.380
And I don't even want to make this a scientific discussion because it should be based on individual choice.
00:37:44.940
But I think your point is a valid one, and I take you at your word there.
00:37:48.100
There has not been a single COVID fatality in the Canadian Armed Forces, you say.
00:37:54.300
But I can tell you there's been lots of vaccine injuries from myocarditis.
00:37:58.640
I have clients in this lawsuit who have had to have open heart surgery that were fit and healthy.
00:38:05.540
And I know of deaths of fit and healthy young men who died in their sleep, which should not be happening.
00:38:13.780
so uh you know i question uh the the rationale behind this because i don't think they have
00:38:23.060
if they want to say they relied on the science i don't think the science is backing them up
00:38:27.220
what's the the timeline of your legal challenge i i expect to be filing in the next few months
00:38:35.120
as you can imagine i have uh over 300 people confirmed as plaintiffs there's a couple hundred
00:38:41.260
more that have reached out but we've set a deadline cut off of October 31st on Monday
00:38:47.340
and then you can imagine writing several hundred affidavits and I would say I have
00:38:53.120
you know a truckload a hundred but a hundred thousand pages of evidence to make sure it's
00:38:59.040
all ready before we head into the court and the statement of claim is ready I'm just getting all
00:39:05.200
the rest of the I's dotted and T's crossed to bring it forward it is coming it is not going
00:39:10.560
to go away. And just to put kind of the technicalities forward here, this is a proposed
00:39:15.980
class action. So you're fighting this on behalf of all members of the Canadian Art Forces, even
00:39:20.440
those who aren't members of this legal challenge, correct? Yes, if I can get a certified as a class
00:39:25.800
action, absolutely. The other thing is that to counter the government's favorite strategy of
00:39:31.680
running people out of money, I created a non-profit, the Valor Legal Action Centre, which is helping
00:39:38.020
cover uh the cost of the litigation because litigation against the government is very
00:39:42.980
expensive but it also means that um because it the non-profit runs on donations people weren't
00:39:50.100
having to come out and hire a lawyer for a couple hundred thousand dollars each to bring their claim
00:39:56.340
forward that's why we put together the group we put together the non-profit because i firmly
00:40:01.460
believe this is a question that needs to be answered in a court of was that a lawful order
00:40:06.260
And was it handled in the way it should have been handled?
00:40:09.660
Or should he have used the National Defence Act as he had the power to do and chose not to?
00:40:15.620
And we'll put that up on the screen there right now, ValorLegalActionCentre.org.
00:40:20.740
And that's the Canadian Spelling Centre with an R-E, ValorLegalActionCentre.org.
00:40:27.140
Catherine, thank you so much for your work on this.
00:40:32.480
That was Catherine Christensen here of the Valor Legal Action Center.
00:40:36.620
My thanks to Catherine and my thank you to all of those people she's representing for their service,
00:40:41.960
past, present, and hopefully future to this country.
00:40:44.980
The armed forces are very near and dear to my heart, and I know those of a great many of our listeners.
00:40:49.860
So we thank you, and even if the government has been so tremendously ungrateful for your service,
00:40:54.340
know that most Canadians are not, and most Canadians stand with you.
00:41:00.100
We'll be back on Friday with Fake News Friday with yours truly, Aaron Harrison Faulkner.
00:41:10.460
I'll be there for the Public Order Emergency Commission hearings.
00:41:13.580
We've got some great stuff on the docket, it looks like.
00:41:16.920
So I'll be covering that and I'll still find a way to deliver my show to you from Ottawa.
00:41:21.780
And the one thing I will say just in our closing moments here,
00:41:25.240
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00:41:29.320
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00:41:42.900
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00:41:57.640
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00:42:03.920
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00:42:08.640
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