Juno News - More testimony proves Emergencies Act was unnecessary

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.

00:00:05.220 This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by TrueNorth.

00:00:13.160 Hello and welcome to you all.

00:00:15.920 It is Wednesday, October 26th, just after 5.17pm Eastern Time.

00:00:21.160 We're starting at a little bit of an odd hour here

00:00:23.040 for reasons that will become clear in just a couple of moments

00:00:26.400 or reasons that may already be clear to you

00:00:28.400 If you've been watching the Public Order Emergency Commission, it was gripping edge of your seat stuff today.

00:00:34.540 It really wasn't, actually. It's a bit of a joke, and I'll explain why in a moment's time.

00:00:38.480 We are going to be later on this show, though, talking with Catherine Christensen, who is part of the big legal team.

00:00:46.560 And by big legal team, I mean it's actually this woman and hundreds and hundreds of members of the Canadian Armed Forces

00:00:53.180 that are looking to take the Canadian military to court over its vaccine mandate and we haven't

00:00:59.960 talked as much about the Canadian Armed Forces vaccine mandate as we've talked more generally

00:01:05.200 and broadly about federal mandates on this show but it's an important story and we're going to

00:01:09.440 be speaking to Catherine in just a little bit of time on this show but let's talk about where we

00:01:14.620 are with the Public Order Emergency Commission because we've now gone through what's today's

00:01:18.600 Wednesday so we just finished or are finishing soon the 10th day of testimony now this is

00:01:25.520 midway through week three of a seven week long set of hearings that are taking place and as we

00:01:32.660 spoke about with Keith Wilson on Monday they could extend this and start going on weekends so

00:01:36.760 we could have many more days of testimony and if you were looking for the smoking gun that the

00:01:42.920 government is going to use to justify and defend its invocation of the emergencies act you are

00:01:50.080 sorely disappointed sorely disappointed here and let me explain exactly why that is because right

00:01:57.560 now we are in the midst of the federal government under investigation it is justin trudeau's

00:02:05.580 government on trial and i don't mean that in a literal sense i don't mean it in a criminal sense

00:02:09.660 But Justin Trudeau's government is on trial. He himself said when parliamentarians were voting on

00:02:16.700 the Emergencies Act that it was a confidence motion because he said if you don't support the

00:02:21.260 government doing something so drastic, it's proof that that government does not deserve to be in

00:02:27.080 power. It's proof that government does not have the confidence of the legislature. So the point

00:02:32.100 that I've made in the past is that by Justin Trudeau's own standards, this is actually a

00:02:38.320 pretty serious thing if it's found that he was not justified in invoking the Emergencies Act.

00:02:45.240 If at the end of this, Justice Paul Rouleau, the Commissioner of the Public Order Emergency

00:02:49.700 Commission, says, yeah, the federal government was not justified in doing this, I think Justin

00:02:54.960 Trudeau has lost the mandate to govern. And I'm not saying that legally he has lost it. I'm saying

00:03:00.360 that morally politically he should be gone so that's what's at stake here and we have heard

00:03:08.380 testimony from residents of ottawa we've heard testimony from the police officers at various

00:03:14.980 levels the ottawa police service the ontario provincial police uh we haven't heard i don't

00:03:19.980 believe from the rcmp just yet but we've heard ovp and ottawa police we've heard from intelligence

00:03:25.460 we've heard from police liaisons we've heard from commissioners we've heard from all sorts of people

00:03:31.080 and what we haven't heard anywhere in that testimony at all is that they requested it

00:03:37.540 so we can completely shatter that narrative that marco mendicino and justin trudeau and all of

00:03:43.600 those have put forward that they were the ones that were just uh the hapless victims of this

00:03:48.200 they were the passengers it was the police that wanted the emergencies act well what they haven't

00:03:52.540 been able to proffer up to us is one single police officer who asked for it. Not one. And Marco

00:03:59.680 Mendicino has done this little two-step on this. He said, well, they were asking for the sorts of

00:04:04.440 things that we needed the emergency Zach to do. Now, I should say, in fairness, Marco Mendicino

00:04:10.920 has trouble finding two IQ digits to rub together to make a fire. Like, this is not a guy that is

00:04:17.200 exactly like the crown prince of the Mensa society here. So I want to be a little bit kind when I

00:04:22.920 talk to him, except he is also the guy tasked with Canada's public safety. So perhaps it would be

00:04:28.060 important for the guy who is in charge of the public safety division of this country to have

00:04:33.700 a bit more in the sense of, I don't know, intelligence or honesty. Like the reality is

00:04:40.920 Marco Medicino will eventually become the government's fall guy, I think. Like he doesn't

00:04:45.140 know it yet i sort of see this and i think a lot of other people see it that when someone in the

00:04:50.220 government has to be accountable it's going to be you know it's not going to be justin trudeau

00:04:54.320 it's going to be marco mendicino and he'll just be out there with his like i stand with ukraine

00:04:58.320 sign just like furiously trying to scratch it out and put like you know i'm sorry i didn't mean to

00:05:02.680 on it or whatever he needs to to justify saving face but all of this is to say there has not been

00:05:09.040 a smoking gun from law enforcement, from police intelligence, or anything like that, that supports

00:05:15.640 the invocation of the Emergencies Act. And I've been listening. We have a whole team at True North

00:05:20.580 that's been following this day by day. And I'm just waiting because police are very dispassionate

00:05:25.220 in their delivery. So I'm just waiting for one person to just slip into their testimony. Oh,

00:05:30.240 yes. And there was, of course, that violent ring that we broke up. Oh, yeah, of course,

00:05:34.380 there was that threat of violence in Ottawa, but it's not there. We've heard confirmation that

00:05:39.020 there were in fact bouncy castles so if there was ever any doubt about the bouncy castles we know

00:05:43.800 the bouncy castles for sure were there and so far no injuries from the bouncy castles have been

00:05:49.460 reported but it is Justin Trudeau's government on trial and we cannot let them just turn this

00:05:57.180 into whatever Trudeau does when he's caught breaking the rules if this goes the wrong way

00:06:01.860 for him and that it will be a learning opportunity for all of us no Canadians already know everything

00:06:08.020 there is to know about this. That's why I think a lot of the media hasn't been covering this. And

00:06:13.140 to be fair, media has been reporting on it, but there hasn't been the wall-to-wall coverage like,

00:06:19.100 oh, I don't know, the January 6th hearing in the United States or the Russia probes in the United

00:06:24.460 States, which I think got far more airtime on Canadian television than the Public Order Emergency

00:06:29.640 Commission hearings have so far. And I think that's because there's nothing in them that we're

00:06:35.780 really learning about i mean even just to look at today's program the title of the show more

00:06:41.400 testimony proves emergencies act was unnecessary not gonna lie this is not like a breaking news

00:06:47.500 headline because this has been the theme that has come out of this hearing every single day so far

00:06:53.200 where police will sometimes say unequivocally that they didn't need the emergencies act to do what it

00:06:59.880 is that they ended up doing to move in and break up the convoy protest i'm going to play a clip

00:07:05.720 from ops ottawa police service superintendent robert bernier uh saying this is the the second

00:07:12.040 clip uh that he required no additional legal authorities to clear protesters from ottawa

00:07:19.880 you took over as event commander on february 10th that's what i understand from your evidence today

00:07:25.320 yes and your task was to prepare an operational plan yes and at that time between february 10th

00:07:34.840 and february 13th when you were preparing the operational plan was it your assessment that the

00:07:43.000 ops had the necessary legal tools and powers to execute that operational plan yes

00:07:48.920 MS. And it was not your assessment that you

00:07:53.080 required any additional legal tools or any additional legal powers?

00:07:56.840 MR. I would say they were beneficial, but to say necessary, I would say no.

00:08:05.480 MS. And at no time prior to February 14th, did you communicate to any of your superiors

00:08:12.440 that you required additional legal tools or legal powers?

00:08:16.280 MR. That is correct.

00:08:18.920 and if you think there was a gotcha there when he talks about it being beneficial you should know

00:08:26.980 that that is not what the emergencies act is there to assess it's not about whether the government

00:08:32.300 and police made good use of it the question is whether it was necessary and there were no other

00:08:38.840 legal means available to achieve the desired outcome and every single police officer that's

00:08:44.400 come forward that's been asked that question has said that it was not necessary and you look at

00:08:50.760 some of the excuses and rationalizations that will come for that one of them is of course going to be

00:08:56.160 the money we're going to hear from deputy prime minister christopher freeland later about the bank

00:09:00.920 freezes and they certainly needed the emergencies act to freeze the bank accounts which was we know

00:09:05.880 the hallmark of their response to the convoy because heaven forbid these truckers get access

00:09:11.260 us to donations after vaccine mandates have put many of them out to out of work but they'll also

00:09:17.260 say the tow trucks and the tow trucks are going to be so critical because we know that police had a

00:09:23.620 hard time finding and the city of Ottawa had a very difficult time finding tow trucks to tow away

00:09:29.340 the big rakes because a lot of the tow truck drivers were supporters of the convoy themselves

00:09:34.260 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

00:09:38.740 and even contractors, existing contractors to the city that were supposed to make themselves

00:09:44.520 available were saying, I'm not doing this. So the government will say, well, we needed to conscript

00:09:50.320 the tow truck drivers. And that was something we needed and we needed the Emergencies Act for.

00:09:55.900 Now it's in evidence, and I don't think it's all that contentious or contested,

00:10:00.260 that there were difficulties in getting tow trucks there. But one of the key details I'd

00:10:06.840 remind you of is that the city of Ottawa had available two heavy towing operations, two heavy

00:10:12.780 towing vehicles that belong to the city of Ottawa. They belong to Ottawa Transit or OC Transpo and

00:10:19.260 they have operators and they were under the city's direct control and they never used them.

00:10:24.180 That actually came up last week. They never used the two that they owned, the two that they actually

00:10:29.120 had access to. So maybe the towing shortage wasn't as acute as Ottawa has made it sound. But let's

00:10:35.780 even talk about this because this came up in the discussion the cross-examination by

00:10:40.280 superintendent robert bernier that even then even with the tow truck issues they didn't need

00:10:46.900 the emergencies act take a look so would you agree that the federal emergency power to compel

00:10:53.020 towing services may have been helpful to police and may be beneficial to police but it wasn't

00:10:58.320 necessarily necessary to enable police to clear the protests was it um yes um however with a

00:11:06.780 caveat that um we were having challenges we were having a hard time up until uh that that time on

00:11:14.560 the 13th so prior to the 13th i would have said we could have used some help with that but uh as

00:11:21.300 things materialized on the the 13th i was satisfied that we were good and you were by

00:11:28.420 you were satisfied that we were good you're satisfied that the uh federal emergency power

00:11:33.760 to compel tow trucks wasn't necessary correct thank you um interim chief bell testified pretty

00:11:41.100 emphatically and i quote in the absence of the invocation of the emergencies act the op the ops

00:11:47.840 the OPP, the RCMP, as part of a unified command, were going to clear the protests.

00:11:53.700 Would you agree with that statement?

00:11:55.080 Could you repeat that question again, please?

00:11:57.380 In the absence of the invocation of the Emergencies Act,

00:12:02.300 the OPS, the OPP, the RCMP, as part of a unified command, were going to clear the protests.

00:12:09.520 Do you agree with that statement?

00:12:10.620 Yes.

00:12:11.820 Numerous other OPP and OPS witnesses have testified that federal emergency powers

00:12:16.720 may have been helpful to police in various ways but they were not necessary would you agree with

00:12:21.120 that yes thank you very much those are my questions so again even then on february 13th

00:12:31.760 as the emergencies act is not yet in play police are saying yeah we had a plan we weren't worried

00:12:38.880 at that time about the absence of tow trucks we seem to be moving forward in the right direction

00:12:44.800 without any issues now remember one of the sidetrack things happening at this time was the

00:12:51.920 negotiations between police and protesters between the city of ottawa and protesters which was easing

00:12:58.320 the burden of this we're moving trucks from residential areas concentrating them on wellington

00:13:02.820 street the city of ottawa was happy with this plan convoy organizers were happy with this plan

00:13:07.820 police were generally happy with this plan and the federal government interestingly enough

00:13:14.600 was it seemed like going through a bit of internal dispute about this and there was some testimony

00:13:20.020 that took place yesterday between an OPP negotiator Marcel Bowden and this testimony

00:13:28.360 revealed conversations he was having with Public Safety Canada now this is the office that has the

00:13:35.300 misfortune of serving Marco Mendicino the bureaucratic office that exists from government

00:13:40.620 to government and he was speaking to the deputy minister of public safety so the most senior

00:13:44.740 bureaucrat in public safety canada who it sounds like was more open to the idea of this negotiation

00:13:52.020 working and possibly even talking to the convoy leaders himself now this didn't happen now this

00:13:59.920 tells us a lot i'm going to tell you exactly what that is once i play this clip of marcel

00:14:05.640 Bowden's testimony. If we could go to the top of page three, Deputy Minister Stewart responds to

00:14:15.440 you and raises a number of questions, essentially, in those bullet points at the bottom. And if we

00:14:22.900 could just go through those briefly, and if you could tell me whether those those were ever sort

00:14:27.260 of addressed in a conversation. With the signatory of the letter or the person who goes to the

00:14:34.220 meeting be putting themselves at risk is that a big concern uh that wasn't a big concern for me

00:14:39.700 okay why not well i like we never i think you know inspector more or superintendent morris

00:14:46.880 spoke to it as far as the violence and stuff in the in in the uh group and so to me um there

00:14:54.620 wasn't a pile of risk there um i personally wasn't concerned but i know that there would be

00:14:59.880 obviously some sort of assessment uh from someone before that would happen right as far as who's

00:15:05.980 identified from the protest group that would be in the in there and i'm sure there's people

00:15:09.760 that the government probably wouldn't want to meet with as well right right which which that

00:15:15.280 takes us down to the sort of third point um about poi sheets and there was a concern about who was

00:15:21.480 going to be involved in that negotiation did it ever get to that point where you shared a list of

00:15:26.540 names with the government and they they raise any issue about that no because i think the next day

00:15:31.340 he called me in the morning is it saturday uh the 12th is the saturday yeah so he called me in the

00:15:36.960 morning the next morning and said that he was not able to uh make this happen ultimately okay and

00:15:42.560 and why what where did the because because i understand you were on board on behalf of the

00:15:47.940 opp the ops was on board it seems like the rcmp was kind of provisionally on board so what was

00:15:53.820 what was the issue i definitely was not involved in the conversations that stopped that from

00:16:00.640 happening so i don't know okay yeah sorry about that no no so but as far as you know you got a

00:16:06.180 you got a call from uh deputy minister stewart yes the next morning yeah and he just said that

00:16:12.380 he was not successful ultimately to getting this going forward

00:16:16.420 interesting so the deputy minister of public safety canada had been talking to the opp

00:16:24.580 negotiation lead now just for context marcel bowden of the opp was in charge in some respects

00:16:32.540 of the police liaison teams the negotiation teams that were out there to as their name suggests to

00:16:38.680 liaise with convoy leaders and convoy organizers and he thought they were doing a very good job

00:16:44.120 I mean, it was under these liaisons that they were able to come up with a deal to move the trucks onto Wellington Street.

00:16:49.900 They were liaising left, right, and center, liaising all over downtown Ottawa.

00:16:53.440 And in the course of that, this public safety deputy minister, not a liberal necessarily, not a partisan role, he's open to this.

00:17:02.180 He's talking about meetings and negotiations and safety and all of that.

00:17:06.240 And then he says, leave this with me.

00:17:09.280 I'm going to take it back to my people.

00:17:11.660 And then all that this OPP officer, Officer Bowdoin, knows is that that got canceled.

00:17:18.940 Now, we know from other testimony last week that Marco Mendicino was aware of the negotiations.

00:17:25.360 Marco Mendicino personally was aware.

00:17:27.720 His chief of staff was discussing this.

00:17:30.340 So it doesn't take a genius to figure out that it was the federal government that wasn't interested in this.

00:17:38.900 Now, again, we're not talking about geniuses.

00:17:40.800 We're talking about Marco Mendocino, but I think even Marco Mendocino could figure out what I'm talking about here.

00:17:46.400 The federal government was the one that decided to abandon negotiation.

00:17:52.440 The federal government was the one that decided it wasn't worth talking.

00:17:56.360 So they, right through to the Emergencies Act, had an opportunity.

00:17:59.720 They had a fork in the road.

00:18:02.000 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,

00:18:07.420 which is talk to these people, or we're going to double down.

00:18:10.360 we're going to suspend civil liberties we're going to invoke the emergencies act we're going

00:18:14.040 to freeze their bank accounts we're going to send in police and they chose that option

00:18:18.300 they had another a hail mary option that they could have done and they avoided it even in the

00:18:25.820 11th hour and i think that's so critical and i want to play just continuing along with that thread

00:18:31.200 a little bit of brendan miller who is the the lawyer representing the convoy leaders

00:18:35.840 his cross-examination where he talks about this and he offers a little bit of information there

00:18:41.620 about what meeting that was that the public safety deputy minister referred to

00:18:46.460 and so in this proposal of course it says that upon an agreement to the proposal

00:18:52.980 you'd provide a police liaison in writing a commitment to government engagement at a later

00:18:58.240 date and that could be shared in a meeting with the protest leaders right i believe so right so

00:19:04.300 the plan was and the recommendation was is that essentially uh the government of canada the

00:19:10.580 political branch of the government of canada would agree to a meeting with the protesters but

00:19:16.320 there would be certain conditions to that and they would have to denounce anything unlawful

00:19:20.920 and get out of downtown ottawa is that fair yep okay and um in your interactions with deputy

00:19:27.700 minister with a deputy minister and commissioner lucky um after february 12th 2022 uh did they

00:19:34.820 tell you anything about what happened with this proposal i think the proposal was kind of like

00:19:40.140 dead in the water after the 13th um when the mayor provided his letter right and then it allowed

00:19:47.280 the ability to see the outcome of that right could we bring up another um document that was

00:19:54.220 referred to by the commission um it's opp zero zero zero zero zero one seven two

00:20:01.660 now i understand this is the an email from the deputy minister of public safety rob stewart to

00:20:14.180 you right yes okay and in the third sentence on the top paragraph it says we have a big meeting

00:20:21.820 this afternoon well this will be discussed so i really need your input right yes all right did

00:20:28.340 you know that that meeting was at 3 30 p.m and that it was with cabinet and it was the incident

00:20:34.940 response group of the political executive meeting and that your proposal was provided to them

00:20:41.340 uh no okay it was i can tell you that and then they invoked the emergencies act

00:20:48.300 thank you

00:20:51.720 okay thank you uh next

00:20:56.780 so i actually don't know how to drop this mic like i was thinking i could fiddle around

00:21:05.180 and like pull the screw out and the mic might drop and i don't know what that means for the

00:21:09.780 rest of the show brendan miller right there should have just taken the mic on the lectern

00:21:14.020 and just like, just throwing the whole lectern over

00:21:17.560 and be like, I'm headed home.

00:21:20.700 Cabinet decided to not put any stock in negotiation.

00:21:26.800 So instead of saying,

00:21:28.420 well, we were just listening to law enforcement,

00:21:30.300 it was law enforcement officers like Mr. Bowden here

00:21:33.400 who were talking about the power of negotiation,

00:21:35.540 who were talking about the power of liaising.

00:21:37.980 And the federal government actually said,

00:21:39.460 screw what the cops say, we want the Emergencies Act.

00:21:44.020 and this is going to be so key and when those federal ministers take the stand they can't just

00:21:48.800 concoct this fake phony emergency any longer and as i said at the beginning this is not

00:21:53.500 groundbreaking now the police are yet again saying they didn't ask for it they didn't need it

00:21:58.460 this is becoming the epitome of that old saw about a dog bites man's story not really news

00:22:05.400 but we're still going to give it to you because it is challenging the official narrative

00:22:09.120 in every sense which is something that true north is doing and i'm so proud we're doing it

00:22:13.100 and just to give you a little bit of a teaser

00:22:15.020 I'm going to be in Ottawa next week

00:22:16.460 at the Public Order Emergency Commission

00:22:18.480 continuing our coverage of this

00:22:20.580 from the belly of the beast

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00:22:23.540 before we head to a quick break here

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00:22:39.900 so I'm going to take a quick break

00:22:41.460 when we come back

00:22:42.100 going to be shifting gears and talking about the military vaccine mandate in Canada. Stay tuned.

00:22:52.060 You're tuned in to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:22:57.320 Welcome back to The Andrew Lawton Show. This is Canada's most irreverent talk show. We have

00:23:03.480 talked a lot on this program about vaccine mandates, federal, provincial, international.

00:23:08.120 one that we have not focused on as much is the Canadian Armed Forces vaccine mandate and part

00:23:15.320 of this is because I think it was part of certainly when I was discussing it it was part of the broader

00:23:20.080 vaccine mandates that the Liberal government put in last fall for the entire civil service but there

00:23:25.760 have been different nuances to it that I think make it worth taking an extra look at this and

00:23:32.200 one of them I think is the demographic profile of who it is that's in the Canadian Armed Forces

00:23:36.540 These are the people at the least risk possible for having serious complications from COVID-19,

00:23:43.100 but also the idea of authority and obedience and the chain of command.

00:23:46.860 These things that have really, I think, complicated the ability for someone to say no to this

00:23:52.760 vaccine or to say no to following the mandate.

00:23:56.280 Well, there's a proposed class action now against this vaccine mandate representing

00:24:00.580 so far hundreds of people that were put on leave whose future careers in the Canadian

00:24:05.760 armed forces are still in uncertain territory because of this mandate. This has been fought

00:24:11.260 by Catherine Christensen, who's a lawyer based in Alberta, and the founder of the Valor Legal

00:24:16.800 Action Centre, which is a not-for-profit that is fighting this case. Catherine Christensen joins me

00:24:22.840 now. Thanks so much for coming on the show today. Good to talk to you. Good to talk to you, Andrew.

00:24:27.720 We're happy to be here. So what is this case about, really? Obviously, the vaccine mandate,

00:24:33.040 incredibly disruptive, I would argue just plain wrong, but we also know that it caused a number

00:24:39.060 of issues as far as shortages, confusion, not to mention that the legal rights aspect of this,

00:24:45.080 but what is really the core of this class action you're proposing to bring?

00:24:49.840 Well, Andrew, I've been watching the Canadian Armed Forces for a few years. My practice has

00:24:54.700 always been with military and veterans, and I have noticed a real trend in some of the things

00:25:02.180 they were doing to their people and then last october i was approached by a group of hundreds of

00:25:08.900 military serving military who were affected by the first directive the mandate and now

00:25:14.980 subsequently mandate two two-way and three and i have to tell you that it was sort of the perfect

00:25:21.780 package to bring what is essentially an abuse of power lawsuit against the canadian armed forces

00:25:28.100 It's not about the mandate itself.

00:25:30.200 It's about how the Canadian Armed Forces have abused their people.

00:25:35.400 And their chain of command is in absolute chaos.

00:25:38.680 And for all of General Eyre's talking about everyone has to follow his orders, they aren't.

00:25:44.840 And it's caused some very big consequences for some very dedicated, long-serving members of the Canadian Armed Forces.

00:25:53.420 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?

00:26:01.000 What are those different mandates that have come in or updates to the mandate?

00:26:05.140 Right. So last October, the Chief of Defence staff issued a directive.

00:26:10.600 And the first directive was to bring in that COVID-19 vaccines were now mandatory for service in the Canadian Armed Forces.

00:26:20.080 he then subsequently did a couple of amendments with a second directive and then an amendment of

00:26:27.600 that second directive which i call 2a and then just recently in the last month he's brought down

00:26:33.360 directive three which was touted as a removal of the mandate it doesn't actually remove the mandate

00:26:40.520 continues if you want to do anything in the canadian armed forces but what it did was say that

00:26:46.820 well if we haven't already released you which was under the first directives that if you didn't get

00:26:52.900 the vaccine you were to be discharged under a 5f which used to be dishonorable but has been made

00:26:59.140 honorable in the last tough couple of years some of these people were not released in the 30 days

00:27:04.020 like they were threatened with and so they've been told now to come back to work but they've been

00:27:09.940 put into situations where they're sitting by themselves in empty buildings uh they've been

00:27:15.300 told they don't basically get to do anything uh in fact i have one person who is unvaccinated was

00:27:21.300 told to come back to work and he's been assigned to uh help take care of people who are quarantined

00:27:27.460 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

00:30:37.300 anymore.

00:30:38.300 And he voluntarily released because he just couldn't cope with the punishment that his

00:30:44.620 commanding officer was giving him.

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

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

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

00:34:17.860 as I started to hear the stories.

00:34:20.240 There are some deployments where certain vaccines would make sense.

00:34:23.960 If you're going to Mali, for example,

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.

00:37:53.160 Right. Not a one.

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.

00:40:25.500 Catherine Christensen joins me now.

00:40:27.140 Catherine, thank you so much for your work on this.

00:40:28.920 Good to talk to you.

00:40:30.240 Good to talk to you too, Andrew.

00:40:31.500 Thank you for having me on.

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.

00:40:58.320 That'll do it for me for today.

00:41:00.100 We'll be back on Friday with Fake News Friday with yours truly, Aaron Harrison Faulkner.

00:41:05.660 And I also am going to next week be in Ottawa.

00:41:08.840 I'm going into the belly of the beast.

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 we are still doing this month our drive to get to 100,000 YouTube subscribers.

00:41:29.320 if you want to join this you can go to youtube hit the subscribe button if you're on youtube right

00:41:34.840 now all you need to do is just go like an inch below this video like you could just like point

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00:42:03.920 is canada's most irreverent talk show thank you god bless and good day to you all thanks for

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Juno News - October 26, 2022

More testimony proves Emergencies Act was unnecessary

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