Juno News - Most Canadians don't want unvaccinated friends or family in their homes

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

00:00:06.240 This is The Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:00:11.020 Coming up, most vaccinated Canadians want their unvaccinated relatives to steer clear of Christmas dinner, 1.00

00:00:16.920 CBC tries to police your language, and lawyers take a stand for civil liberties.

00:00:22.960 The Andrew Lawton Show starts right now.

00:00:30.000 Hello and welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.

00:00:34.000 It is Thursday, December 2nd, 2021.

00:00:37.680 Great to have you here on The Andrew Lawton Show on True North.

00:00:41.520 It is now 23 days until Christmas, and if you haven't been able to get a Christmas tree yet,

00:00:48.920 like a real Christmas tree, I don't mean like an artificial one, but an actual, I don't know,

00:00:53.240 Douglas fir or something like that Christmas tree, it may be because of climate change.

00:00:58.780 Well, it may be because you haven't tried, but if you've tried and you haven't found one,

00:01:02.700 it may be climate change responsible.

00:01:05.120 That's the story that CBC is sharing, that Christmas tree shortages could be annual

00:01:10.380 thanks to industry trends and climate change.

00:01:13.800 Now, this is kind of a fun one, because if you have an annual shortage of an annual product

00:01:19.100 that you only need once a year, you're kind of screwed and you just can't get a Christmas tree ever again.

00:01:24.540 But they're saying that climate change is responsible.

00:01:27.200 Now, this is, I think, kind of funny because, for starters, everything is something that we can

00:01:32.780 attribute to climate change now.

00:01:34.420 I actually did a segment a few months back where I just did like a list of things that

00:01:39.200 are caused by climate change, and it was like seasonal depression is caused by climate change,

00:01:44.120 the Christmas tree shortages caused by climate change, climate change is caused by climate change,

00:01:48.740 cold weather is climate change, warm weather is climate change, weather that's in between,

00:01:52.400 it's all climate change, it doesn't matter what it is.

00:01:54.880 And now the Christmas tree shortage, it's not a supply chain issue, it's not production issues,

00:02:00.660 it's not labor shortages, no, no, no, none of that matters, it's not inflated, no,

00:02:04.760 none of these things are real, it's all just climate change that is responsible for it.

00:02:09.280 Now, the irony here is that there's been a lot of a push, including, I mean, NASA has a website

00:02:15.240 for children talking about why you should always get a real Christmas tree because it's better

00:02:19.560 for the climate. There's lots of material out there saying that you can reduce climate change

00:02:24.020 by getting a real tree. So I have to wonder, well, if real Christmas trees are better for

00:02:30.680 the climate, how is the climate, and people want them so much, how is the demand not keeping the

00:02:36.140 Christmas tree business in full swing? Hey, I'm not a climatologist, I'm just saying that you think

00:02:40.940 that if these things that are in such demand, so much demand that people can't get as many of them

00:02:44.820 as they want, we're helping the climate change fight, then the climate change fight would not be

00:02:49.260 winning against Christmas trees. But now it's all just going to be terrible because now everyone's

00:02:53.900 got to get their artificial trees and it's going to make it worse. And then in, you know, seven years

00:02:58.840 or whenever Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Prince Charles say the world's ending, no Christmas tree

00:03:04.460 ever again. So whether you have a real or an artificial Christmas tree or you don't and you want to

00:03:10.780 blame climate change, whatever, I hope you are making your way through the Christmas season in a

00:03:15.440 safe, fun, and perhaps healthy way. And I hope this is a genuine point that your family is weathering

00:03:23.460 this because I saw this story and I want to mock it. My instinct is to mock it and I think I am going

00:03:28.860 to mock it a little bit. But there's a serious point here, which is that according to a new poll,

00:03:34.280 people are very much wanting their unvaccinated relatives to stay away from family dinner. So 0.82

00:03:41.760 the majority of Canadians, according to this poll, are unwilling to let an unvaccinated friend or

00:03:46.580 family member into their home. And this is a poll that comes from Leger ACS. 75% of the total

00:03:54.900 population vaccinated. Three quarters of Canadians say they know someone who's unvaccinated. Unsurprisingly,

00:04:01.320 if you look at the breakdown geographically, which province has the highest number? You don't even

00:04:07.100 need to tell you the story. Which one? British Columbia. Yeah, 70% of British Columbians say no

00:04:12.800 unvaccinated people allowed in their house. The lowest is Alberta, but even then it's relatively high,

00:04:18.000 58%. And it's interesting because the whole point of this is that if you are a vaccinated person,

00:04:23.740 you should feel confident that you are protected against unvaccinated people and whatever they may 1.00

00:04:29.500 bring into your home. And this is the big flaw in this. If you are so confident in the vaccine,

00:04:36.840 I'm not going to say you should be fearless going out into the world. Like I still wouldn't go around

00:04:40.880 and start licking doorknobs in Wuhan. Then again, I wouldn't do that pre-pandemic anyway. But if you

00:04:46.580 are confident in the vaccine, you think the vaccine is effective, why are you so afraid of people around

00:04:52.400 you? And why are you letting this and when vaccination status become the wedge that you

00:04:58.780 use to divide you from other people in the world? And when we talk about vaccine passports and the

00:05:05.360 segregation of society along the lines of vaccination status, there's a serious point there that legally

00:05:10.980 and constitutionally, we should not be separating society based on something like that. Your healthcare

00:05:16.560 choices should be choices, not coerced because the government took away your freedoms. But there's a

00:05:21.860 social aspect of this as well, which is why are we as individuals embracing this culture and

00:05:28.980 attitude that starts otherizing people based on their vaccination status? Now, again, there are

00:05:34.640 reasons if you have some compromised immune system, you've got people in the house that can't be

00:05:39.900 vaccinated, but are very nervous about COVID. These are very legitimate concerns where I would

00:05:44.240 understand you saying, you know what, I'm sorry, but I'm really not comfortable in the same way as you

00:05:49.120 wouldn't want the unvaccinated people going to a nursing home necessarily. But when we're talking 0.84

00:05:56.620 about a general healthy, fully vaccinated family and Uncle Bob's not vaccinated, who cares? Who cares?

00:06:04.440 Like, why are you not confident enough about your vaccination status? We know that even when

00:06:09.900 breakthrough cases do happen, the symptoms for vaccinated people are a lot more mild. We know that

00:06:16.480 there are some variants like Omicron that are supposedly, it seems like the early data are

00:06:21.860 saying, are not even giving many severe symptoms at all. It's just a very mild, albeit quickly

00:06:28.180 spreading variant. So if you buy that, and even the WHO is kind of hedging it here, there was a line

00:06:33.660 from one spokesperson saying, well, hope is not science. Well, right now, I don't even think science

00:06:39.740 is science, certainly not in the last two years. So hope may not be science, but hope seems about as

00:06:45.120 reliable as most of the other proclamations from public health officials. So you might as well

00:06:50.500 let hope guide you because science certainly hasn't been doing you any favors in some of the public

00:06:55.000 health proclamations. And again, I'm not saying I'm not denouncing science, I'm denouncing the

00:06:58.720 politicized interpretations of science that were to just accept at face value, even when they're proven

00:07:04.420 to be wrong, time and time again. But if you believe in vaccination, and you believe that your vaccine

00:07:11.100 protects you, perhaps you cannot use that as a divider with your family. Because when you start

00:07:16.320 to force people to the margins and fringes of society, it never ends well. It never ends well.

00:07:24.000 When you start to tell people that they're not welcome, that you're no longer going to be friends

00:07:27.780 with them, you're no longer... I've heard people that have legitimately lost friendships because

00:07:32.660 they're unvaccinated. They've had friends say, you know what, I don't want to talk to you anymore.

00:07:37.560 And that's sad. That is very sad. I mean, we saw glimpses of this in the Trump era,

00:07:43.000 where people were allowing whether someone voted for Trump to be the determining factor and

00:07:47.560 whether they would get to be friends and whether they would be invited to Thanksgiving dinner or

00:07:51.400 whatever. And I thought that was ridiculous. And there was common enough, but it was not as 0.93

00:07:56.340 widespread. On the vaccination thing, entirely different. This is an entirely normal event now

00:08:02.360 for people to say to a family member or a friend, uh, sorry, you're unvaccinated. Not in my life

00:08:08.860 anymore. Or you're in my life, but only remotely. We're relegated to a life of Zoom calls because I

00:08:15.160 never want to be in the same room with you. And again, when you have this pandemic, which is forcing

00:08:21.700 people to elevate their levels of fear. And there was a time for that. But the whole point is,

00:08:28.040 this is what I said the other day about Omicron. We can never allow anyone to plunge us back into

00:08:34.340 February, March, 2020, which is what a lot of these people are trying to do with Omicron. They're

00:08:39.440 trying to say, we don't know anything. It's like, it's a blank slate. We're starting from zero. We

00:08:43.420 don't know what we're dealing with. And as a result, they're justifying very strict and stringent

00:08:48.340 measures. And using as justification for that, the idea that, well, we don't know what we're

00:08:54.820 dealing with. So we need to go to the nth degree and then a couple of degrees beyond that. I don't

00:08:59.400 know what you find a couple of degrees beyond nth, but that's where they're going. Because what

00:09:04.740 they're saying is that we don't know. We don't know. And then once we get over the curve of the

00:09:11.440 Omicron variant, the next one will come along. I think it's pi that's right after. So the pi variant,

00:09:18.240 unless they skip over the pi variant, like they did the Xi variant. But I think the pi variant is

00:09:22.500 probably safe. So once the next, once we get over the, once we flatten the curve of Omicron and it's

00:09:27.260 time for the pi variant, all of a sudden it's, well, we don't know what we're dealing with. So

00:09:31.620 we've got to go back to lockdowns. We've got to go back to travel restrictions. And a lot of the

00:09:35.940 things, the very hard fought wins for reopening and getting back to normal start to be eroded.

00:09:43.080 Just one, one notable example of this is travel restrictions. So I've been one of the loudest voices

00:09:49.380 in Canada. And that's not to toot my own horn. It's just to say that very few people

00:09:53.620 were, especially in the earlier days, speaking up about this, calling for an erosion of a lot

00:09:59.240 of the travel measures that were not rooted in science, that were just rooted in theatrics,

00:10:03.720 but were nonetheless the backbone of the Canadian government's COVID response.

00:10:07.940 Things like hotel quarantine, which even the government's own expert panel said

00:10:11.740 is not doing anything good. Things like the pre-arrival PCR testing, which the government is still

00:10:18.160 buying as something that it needs to do. Now they've eased the measures a little bit and said,

00:10:23.320 well, if you're leaving the country for 72 hours, you don't need to get a test to come back in,

00:10:27.380 but, but that's it. So you're going to have people just like racing, just racing across the,

00:10:31.880 the border to Abbotsford, BC or Sarnia, just because they have to get back in time for the 72 hour window

00:10:38.300 and not have to do a PCR test, many of which costs like 250 us dollars. So there's a whole bunch of

00:10:45.480 crap, if I can say this, that is governing how we travel and how we enter our own country. 0.98

00:10:53.760 And we've just been getting past a lot of that. The U S borders now open to Canadians. 0.99

00:10:58.920 You don't need to quarantine. If you're vaccinated, there are people moving freely again. And then

00:11:03.820 of course, Omicron comes, the government throws up some travel restrictions, but none of it really

00:11:08.120 matters. Again, they put, they try to put a net over a few African countries and then we get it from

00:11:12.600 Nigeria, which wasn't one of them. And then we find out that the Netherlands actually had the

00:11:16.360 Omicron variant before South Africa and Botswana. Like, so none of it, as I said, you're always,

00:11:22.460 always, always going to be playing catch up with travel restrictions. And now we have the government

00:11:27.760 putting in yet another barrier to testing. So now when you enter the country, it used to be

00:11:32.360 Canadian or traveler doesn't matter. If you entered Canada by air and you were fully vaccinated,

00:11:37.960 you would have to do that PCR test before you arrived. And then you'd go. And a couple of people

00:11:44.080 at the airport would be randomly selected for an additional test, but otherwise you just leave.

00:11:49.280 Now, everyone who lands needs to do a PCR test and then you need to go to quarantine or isolate.

00:11:56.520 The wording is not quite clear yet. Well, you await the results. Now, I don't know what the backlog is.

00:12:03.320 I don't know if it's one, two, three days, but all of a sudden, if you're now a traveler and you say,

00:12:08.080 oh yeah, I want to go to Vancouver on vacation, you're going to be sitting in your hotel room,

00:12:11.520 technically not allowed to leave until that PCR test comes back. And again, I don't know what

00:12:17.380 their backlog is. I do know that Switch Health is a company that has managed to secure the monopoly

00:12:22.820 on this border testing, despite the fact that the company just didn't exist two years ago.

00:12:28.360 And all of a sudden, you will now have to go through this process again of getting a PCR test

00:12:34.020 and waiting for that result. So we've started to now add back a lot of the measures that we already

00:12:41.420 took away. Now, so far, there's no hotel quarantine. I'm holding my breath, but at the same time,

00:12:47.580 I'm not optimistic that some version of some measure like that couldn't come back if the government

00:12:54.280 is so panicked about this. Now, interestingly enough, I mentioned Switch Health. So I shared

00:13:00.180 my horror story with Switch Health a couple of months back, or no, it just feels like a couple

00:13:04.560 of months. Yeah, a few weeks in COVID times feels like a few months of normal time. It was the

00:13:09.680 beginning of November. I was in Austria and I did one of those do-it-yourself RT lamp tests,

00:13:16.020 which is like a PCR, except it's not in a lab, but the Canadian government accepts it at the border.

00:13:20.940 And I did this because I needed to get home from Europe. And I got a false positive as evidenced

00:13:27.260 by the fact that I did two rapid tests and a PCR and they were all negative after. And I wrote about

00:13:32.860 this and I had some very unkind words about Switch Health and about the test. And interestingly enough,

00:13:38.000 this week, I got proactively, I never reached out to them from Switch Health, an offer of a refund

00:13:43.600 on the test and compensation to reimburse me for the local test that I had to buy in Austria,

00:13:50.240 which I think was like $114 or whatever it was. And I was like, yeah, okay, they're off. So $150

00:13:56.780 for the test plus tax and then $114 some odd dollars for the test that I had to get in Austria. So

00:14:04.080 they've offered me and they didn't make it contingent on my silence. They didn't say like,

00:14:08.620 oh, you need to retract anything you've said. They just said, you know, we understand you had some

00:14:12.180 issues. We're offering you a refund. So at least something works. I've kind of become accustomed to

00:14:16.840 the idea that nothing is working in society now. So that's why I didn't even bother reaching out to

00:14:22.040 them because I just didn't have the energy or time to deal with navigating the bureaucracy of a company

00:14:27.440 that has a business model that I think needs to be looked at. That's all I'll say on that. But

00:14:33.440 the point is, is that all of the progress we feel like we've made is getting thrown back at us in the

00:14:40.420 form of roadblocks. And I'm going to be talking a little later on in the show with D. Jared Brown,

00:14:45.240 a lawyer who's very keenly aware of the attacks on civil liberties. And he's part of a movement of

00:14:50.180 lawyers specifically trying to return to the old normal. But it seems like for every one step

00:14:56.200 forward you take, you're also taking two steps back. We've got to take a quick break. When we

00:15:00.800 come back, more of The Andrew Lawton Show. Stay tuned. You're tuned in to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:15:07.280 We are back. This is The Andrew Lawton Show on True North. And today we're going to talk about

00:15:18.020 all the words that we think you are an ableist, sexist, racist, misogynist for saying. Oh, wait, 0.92

00:15:24.340 sorry. What's that? Oh, no, sorry. This is now this is True North, not CBC. Okay, nevermind. No,

00:15:31.020 I'm not going to tell you how to speak. I'm not going to police your language. I'm not going to tell

00:15:34.240 you're a dirty, stinking, racist, misogynistic, transphobic, ableist, homophobe, classist, 1.00

00:15:39.180 first worldist. No, that's just what CBC does. I know it's been around for a couple of days now, 1.00

00:15:45.480 but I had to get my, you know, few swings at the pinata here because this, it's almost like at first

00:15:52.280 when I saw it, I thought some CBC intern accidentally tweeted from the CBC account instead of their own 0.94

00:15:58.420 account because they tweeted like this little stupid like word cloud and all the words that you're not 0.98

00:16:03.400 supposed to use. That was from the, I first saw it on the CBC auto account that you can see on the 0.99

00:16:08.340 screen there. And then know that lo and behold, this is actually a CBC story telling you the words

00:16:14.860 and phrases you may want to think twice about using. So they're saying you may want to think

00:16:20.520 about it. It's like the vaccine passports. They're making you think you have a choice, but when you 0.96

00:16:25.520 read the rest of it, you realize that, you know, by the end of the article, you're not supposed to be

00:16:29.980 talking about it. Now you can see what the words are. Savage, ghetto, gypped, blackmail, powwow,

00:16:36.000 crippled, blind spot, first world problem, lame, spirit animal, grandfathered in, tone deaf, black 0.96

00:16:39.580 sheep, blindsided, tribe spooky, savage brainstorm to sell someone down the river. I may have repeated

00:16:44.440 a couple, but you get the gist there. Now I've said them all. So it's, I've done like the anti-George

00:16:49.880 Carlin thing of just the words you can't say on a podcast I've all said, but I want to talk about

00:16:55.280 these. Some of them are obvious. Like gypped is one that a lot of people know by now is offensive

00:17:00.980 to a particular ethnic group. To have a powwow, again, I've heard challenged before, but some of

00:17:08.580 these are absolutely insane. I think the craziest is brainstorm. Now, if you look at the rationale

00:17:13.820 given by a disability advocate here, a brainstorm could be insensitive to those who have brain

00:17:22.060 injuries or are neuro diverse, and it could effectuate stigma about disorders like epilepsy

00:17:30.700 for people. So I knew an epileptic person once, and when they had a seizure, I didn't think,

00:17:37.360 huh, she's having a brainstorm. So people do not associate the word brainstorm with seizure.

00:17:44.820 They don't associate brainstorm with anything but a storm of ideas going around in your brain,

00:17:50.160 which it sounds like the people of CBC have never actually had in their brain. So that way may be

00:17:54.840 why the word is foreign to them. But this is, I once heard about this in like the heyday of PC

00:18:01.140 language policing, which was the early nineties when this was becoming a big thing. I heard a story.

00:18:06.320 There was some office that had decided it would replace brainstorming in its corporate strategy

00:18:11.380 meetings with thought showers, which just sounds bizarre and thankfully never caught on.

00:18:16.480 And a blind spot as well. You know, heaven forbid you say that you can't see something because it's

00:18:22.100 in your blind spot. People may associate that with blindness, which is the inability to see.

00:18:28.280 So that, yeah, I could see how that one would be something you wouldn't want to do.

00:18:31.940 What else are you not allowed to use? Tone deaf because you can't hear tone. So people might

00:18:39.500 confuse that with the inability to hear. Okay, fair enough. And what else do we have on the list here?

00:18:45.260 It just goes on and on and on and you're not supposed to use tribe. Now, what they fail to

00:18:52.060 realize in policing the word tribe is that tribe was a word before it was a term used specifically

00:19:00.400 for indigenous people. So there can be a tribal mentality. We got to just cancel survivor. 0.98

00:19:05.960 That's the whole thing. Like this is all leading to Jeff Probst being canceled because he has,

00:19:09.720 he presides over tribal councils. So that's like a cultural appropriation thing going on there.

00:19:14.200 But if you were to say, ah, yes, my tribe or it's a tribal attitude, apparently that is 0.78

00:19:18.960 no longer allowed. And sold down the river. Yeah, that's a negative connotation. Harkens back,

00:19:25.560 they say, to a time when enslaved African people would literally be sold down the Mississippi River

00:19:30.680 for profit, seen as chattel objects that could be used or disposed of at the whims of their slave

00:19:37.420 owners. And this one I find hilarious. Spooky. So if something is spooky, well, that's not allowed because

00:19:43.160 it's actually an anti-black slur from when white soldiers began calling fellow black soldiers

00:19:49.200 spooks during World War II. What they're saying here, the serious aspect of this is that intent

00:19:56.300 does not matter. If someone can draw a line between something they don't like and something historically

00:20:01.480 wrong, it doesn't matter whether no sensible thinking person would see that line. It exists and

00:20:07.980 everyone has to shy away from it. The problem is that if you allow people to cede language,

00:20:12.580 it is never innocuous and it's never benign. And I've had to stress this point because a lot of

00:20:18.580 people would say, well, no big deal. If it makes one or two people feel better for you to not use

00:20:22.120 this word or that word, then what's the big deal? Well, the big deal is that language matters.

00:20:27.200 Language matters and the words we use matter. And more importantly, the ability to use language.

00:20:32.400 language. The ability to just freely choose our words and not have to censor everything and stack

00:20:36.920 it up against whatever someone else might claim is a microaggression. This is a phenomenon that

00:20:41.500 matters. One notable example of this, and a part of me doesn't even want to bring it up, but I will.

00:20:47.500 Not because I think this is the word you should use, but because it's an example of how intent has

00:20:54.240 been proven to be irrelevant. The word niggardly, which has no etymological connection at all

00:21:01.140 to anything racial means cheap and stingy. But most people do not know that word. So if you were

00:21:08.080 to use that word, you'd probably be sent to the office, the principal's office. You'd probably be

00:21:13.080 summoned to HR. You'd probably be canceled. You might even have your post taken down by big tech,

00:21:17.460 whatever. And there was a big thing. I think it was in the New York Times a while ago. They ran like

00:21:20.880 this massive multi-part series about whether they could or should still use this word. It was actually

00:21:26.920 like a big thing where they had points and counterpoints and they had black people on both

00:21:30.820 sides. They had linguists on both sides. And there was a certain concession that I think was made

00:21:35.800 there, which is, okay, could you defend the use of that word? Yes. But should you? Is it the hill to

00:21:42.760 die on? No. The difference between that word and these is that that word is problematic to a lot of

00:21:49.920 people because when they hear it, they think of something else. The list of words that CBC is trying

00:21:56.040 to cancel, no one would hear and think there's anything wrong with, with the exception of a

00:22:01.580 couple. They throw a couple in there that I think are fairly agreeable to cancel or to at least refrain

00:22:07.380 from using, like Gypt is the notable one. But to sell down the river, to say something spooky, even to

00:22:13.680 say something's grandfathered in. Now I've learned the history of that. I know it has to do with slavery,

00:22:17.700 but that is not what that term means. And I find it interesting for all the talk we hear about

00:22:24.900 reclaiming language. This was the thrust behind, you may remember, Slut Walk a few years ago. A bunch 1.00

00:22:30.500 of feminist activists were saying, you know what, we're not going to let the word slut be used in a 1.00

00:22:33.980 derisive way about women. We're going to reclaim it. We're going to proudly march as sluts. And I think 1.00

00:22:38.560 a lot of people mocked that, but the point that I took away from that was, okay, so we're saying that we

00:22:44.140 are not going to allow other people to change what language means. And we are going to reclaim a word

00:22:49.660 if we don't like it. So why are we not reclaiming these words to use the left's language? Why are we

00:22:54.540 allowing these words to be taken away? And again, most people, the good news is most people saw the

00:23:00.820 CBC story and just mocked it and just rolled the rise at it as I think they should have. But the problem

00:23:06.740 with doing that is that there are some schools that are putting up posters that are saying these are

00:23:12.940 the words you can't use. There are going to be some offices that are going to start putting out

00:23:17.480 guidelines saying these are words you can't use. And this was the whole thing of the PC craze in

00:23:22.260 the 90s. Most people just laughed at this and thought it was all insane and absurd, which it was.

00:23:28.500 The notable example that stands out from the era was, I forget the town, I think it might have been

00:23:33.540 San Francisco where they changed manholes to maintenance covers or maintenance holes or something

00:23:39.100 like that. And no one was ever offended. No one could point to a woman being offended because,

00:23:45.360 I mean, women don't want to be known as sewage covers. If you called it a womanhole, they wouldn't 1.00

00:23:50.800 like it. So a manhole, I don't think, is offensive to women. This is an area where I think women are 1.00

00:23:56.980 probably happy being excluded from the discourse. But no, someone said, someone might be offended by

00:24:02.020 this, so we've got to change it. You look at Atlantic Canada. There was a craze in the late 90s,

00:24:07.660 early 2000s about the term fisherman and whether fisherman was allowed because, oh, well, it's not

00:24:15.240 gender inclusive. And CBC ran, it was like a 2000 word letter from the editor, not a letter to the

00:24:23.300 editor, a letter from the editor about the debates and the challenges and why they were going to call

00:24:29.360 themselves fishers. The Globe and Mail, to its credit, said, you know, we actually talked to women

00:24:34.640 fishermen and they said they liked being called fishermen. It was the women fishermen. The ones 0.99

00:24:39.160 actually affected by this were saying, no, don't, we're fishermen. That's who we are.

00:24:44.140 So all of the time with these language battles, you get a couple of activists, like in the CBC

00:24:48.400 article, like this disability rights activist. But these are people from the grievance industry

00:24:53.020 whose job is to find fault in anything and everything. So do not cede your language. That's

00:24:58.840 the one takeaway here. When we come back, more of The Andrew Lawton Show talking about going back to

00:25:03.440 the old normal with lawyer D. Jared Brown. That's up next. Stay tuned.

00:25:10.720 You're tuned in to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:25:16.540 Welcome back to The Andrew Lawton Show. If you haven't detected it, there's been a bit of a civil

00:25:21.020 liberties theme on this show for the last, oh, I don't know, maybe 18, 19 months. Part of it's become,

00:25:26.640 part of it has been because that has been the biggest issue facing not just Canadians in provinces

00:25:32.620 all across this country, but even people around the world. We've covered a lot of the court cases

00:25:37.200 that have been taken up against some of these very significant and severe measures we've seen.

00:25:42.640 Obviously, there have been some wins, but a lot of losses on that. But I think we all agree it's

00:25:47.040 probably going to be a years-long process as a lot of these challenges work their way up through all

00:25:51.880 the various courts and perhaps may have a favorable outcome at the Supreme Court. Who knows?

00:25:56.640 Well, a number of lawyers from all across this country have signed a declaration

00:26:00.800 acknowledging that civil liberties are under what the declaration says is unprecedented attack.

00:26:06.940 This is the Free North Declaration, founded by our friend Bruce Party, who's been on the show

00:26:11.880 on a number of occasions. And one of the signatories is D. Jared Brown, a lawyer with Brown Law

00:26:17.640 in Toronto, also a bencher with the Law Society of Ontario. He joins me now. Jared, good to have

00:26:23.760 you back on. Thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for having me.

00:26:27.440 This has just taken off like wildfire. I mean, all sorts of lawyers and not just the usual suspects

00:26:32.560 that we hear in the media on civil liberties, but people with family law practices, real estate

00:26:37.860 practices. There does seem to be a significant contingent of the legal community that's not happy

00:26:43.520 with what's happening right now.

00:26:44.820 Yeah, I think absolutely. There's a growing opposition to the new normal, if you will.

00:26:52.680 I think that people are, everybody's feeling it. It's taken some people longer than others to

00:26:57.620 sense that change, what the new normal looks like, and to develop the opposition to it, if you will.

00:27:05.200 So yeah, there's a lot more people in this space now, especially in the legal world than there were

00:27:11.020 18 months ago. And certainly, putting some attention on it from some of its opponents

00:27:18.860 has certainly galvanized some of the lawyers to take a look at what the Free North Declaration is all

00:27:26.320 about, and to decide whether or not they want to affirm their belief in that proposition.

00:27:31.980 I know at the bottom of it, there's an option that allows people to sign it anonymously if they'd

00:27:37.960 like. And the petition says, or the declaration rather says, if they fear negative repercussions

00:27:42.560 from disclosing their name publicly. Now, I know you've never shied away from putting your name to

00:27:47.200 what you think. Neither has Bruce Party, Lisa Bildy, all of these folks that have been involved in

00:27:51.660 this. But for a lot of lawyers, the idea of standing up for civil liberties, there could be

00:27:56.180 negative repercussions, or at least they fear there could be. Why is that?

00:27:59.660 Oh, absolutely. And it's part of the new normal. In the before times, you were considered a champion

00:28:05.240 of the bar and a hero of the law, if you were to champion human rights and basic civil rights. Well,

00:28:13.220 in the new normal, that's not the case at all. It depends on which rights and freedoms that you are

00:28:17.700 supporting or defending. And one need look no further than the opposition to the Free North

00:28:24.300 Declaration, which is building, to see why people are legitimately afraid to stand up to put their

00:28:31.880 names to things like the Free North Declaration. I mean, by way of example, I just read a piece

00:28:37.220 calling for myself and some of my colleagues who are governors at the Law Society of Ontario to

00:28:43.260 somehow be reprimanded or to have our elected positions on that board somehow put in jeopardy

00:28:49.300 because we decided to affirm our belief in fundamental human rights, fundamental charter

00:28:53.940 rights and freedoms. There's also another individual who a lawyer who was calling for

00:28:58.660 the any articles that published the Free North Declaration uncritically, that those should be

00:29:04.180 censored, those articles should be pulled down. I mean, it's the typical mob reaction that typically

00:29:10.940 comes from the left on these things. And it's been mobilized and it's been mobilized quickly.

00:29:15.100 But when you talk to your legal colleagues that are seeing a lot of concerns here,

00:29:19.980 are they all politically conservative? Because it used to be a lot of the biggest civil libertarians

00:29:24.460 came from the left. No, absolutely. This is in the new normal, if you will. The coalitions and

00:29:31.840 alliances are not the ones of old. And so we've got, you've got traditional sort of socialist lefties

00:29:37.820 who recognize that there are some fundamental rights and freedoms, freedom of speech, things like

00:29:43.240 that, that they actually care about, that they, that matter to them. And then there's also liberals,

00:29:47.800 small L liberals, classical liberals, and then conservatives. And then of course,

00:29:50.920 there's the libertarians themselves. There is an alliance of people who recognize that society,

00:29:56.680 our society was organized on the basis of some pretty good ideas, you know, the rights and freedoms

00:30:02.520 of individuals, for instance. And they don't like seeing how this new normal under the COVID era

00:30:09.640 has pushed those aside. And so if you value individual rights and freedoms on any level,

00:30:16.360 then you will find a home amongst this new coalition, if you will, from across the political spectrum.

00:30:24.680 Now, I know it's obviously not something that judges would sign and could sign, nor do I want

00:30:29.720 judges that are signing what are political or political adjacent declarations. But I would certainly

00:30:35.480 like them to be taking heed of this current and a lot of the legal arguments that have been put

00:30:40.440 forward in favor of that. And I know, as I said in the preamble there, there are going to be a lot of

00:30:44.920 cases that I think are going to be litigated for years into the future. But when it's coming down to

00:30:49.960 it, the challenges that have been going towards courts fighting for civil liberties, courts seem to

00:30:55.800 be generally taking a very, very broad view and giving government a lot of latitude.

00:31:01.080 Let's be clear. I mean, judges and those that sit on administrative tribunals, they're just

00:31:06.440 members of society like you and I. They live within the same society that we live in. They get their

00:31:12.680 media and information from the same sources as us. And they're scared. They are scared. I've said to

00:31:20.680 people that there is a mania that has descended upon society and judges and tribunal members are not

00:31:28.680 immune from that mania. And so absolutely, there has been no bold decision making, if you will,

00:31:38.120 on the side of fundamental rights and freedoms on anything COVID related or the public health response

00:31:43.240 to it. And I'm not surprised and I'm not surprised only because, like I said, the mania does not stop at

00:31:50.920 the steps of the courthouse. It's at all levels of society. And so in the midst and the grips of

00:31:57.560 something that you think is this existential threat to the entirety of society, then maybe you're going

00:32:02.120 to look over some rights and freedoms getting stomped upon by the government. So yeah, I'm not surprised.

00:32:10.920 I've told anybody who wants to know that I think the only solution to these problems are going to be

00:32:15.640 political. I do not believe that you'll find any refuge in the court system or the tribunal system

00:32:20.440 on anything COVID public health related. I fear you're right about that. One point

00:32:26.360 that the declaration makes, which I think is interesting about the process aspect of courts,

00:32:31.080 is that one example, which I hadn't actually come across, come across that unvaccinated people are

00:32:36.440 being denied the participation in juries. Now, some people who don't like doing jury duty might say,

00:32:41.480 okay, that's great. You know, it gets me out of it. But that actually is in a way something that

00:32:46.200 would buy us a jury if you're excluding a segment of the population. So even just the way that courts

00:32:52.440 are operating as institutions, forgetting about the decisions that judges are being made, are not immune

00:32:58.120 from a lot of these things that are being challenged in courts. Well, that example that you just

00:33:02.360 mentioned about juries was what looked like a simple and minor decision by a single judge, I believe

00:33:07.720 was out west in BC, saying that they didn't want to convene a jury pool during COVID times. At that

00:33:15.000 point, I think it was in the spring when vaccinations were a relatively new thing. We didn't know much

00:33:20.040 about them in terms of their efficacy, long term or otherwise, or about transmissibility, things like

00:33:24.680 that. And so that judge made a decision, he was going to exclude the non vaccinating. Now my understanding

00:33:29.640 is that that decision is now being rolled out everywhere. And what you're effectively doing

00:33:34.120 is you're denying an accused in a jury trial or the defendant, if you will, in a civil trial,

00:33:41.400 the jury of their peers. And I think that's something we need to take seriously. We need to

00:33:46.760 understand what the implications may be. I mean, it is conceivable that at some point a jury may be

00:33:51.640 deciding issues related to vaccination status, possibly. And if you're going to exclude a what,

00:33:59.320 I don't know what the size of the population is, but a cohort, if you will, of the population from

00:34:04.120 sitting on a jury, you're really meddling amongst some fundamental tenets of western judicial systems.

00:34:12.040 Yeah. And when you look at a lot of these, and again, I'm not going to just go through and give

00:34:15.880 the entire list of civil liberties violations because, well, I think you have things to do this

00:34:20.520 afternoon, as do I. But there is a point at which if you don't focus on the big picture and realize

00:34:27.720 that they are under attack, the little stuff doesn't really matter anymore. Like I remember

00:34:31.960 at the very beginning of the pandemic, it was almost a novelty when you'd see these little

00:34:35.320 stories about, oh, you know, this kid was given a fine for playing basketball in a park and

00:34:40.440 these were very manageable. And, you know, at a certain point it became dozens and then it

00:34:44.600 became hundreds. And now you've got millions, tens of millions of dollars of fines that have been

00:34:49.400 leveled against churches, individuals, people that have just gone to work without being,

00:34:54.680 like, it's just, it's endless now. And at a certain point, how do you chip away at this?

00:34:59.800 Well, it's been incremental, but there are some who saw early on that this was incredible. I mean,

00:35:06.120 this is absolutely amazing that the government would think that it could put the entire society

00:35:11.960 under house arrest, that it could shut down the economy, that the economy is a switch that they can

00:35:16.520 play with and turn on and off. Some of us thought, no, no, no, that's not how society is organized.

00:35:21.560 You know, rights and freedoms are not privileges granted by government, but they are something we

00:35:27.880 are born with, something that comes from a higher source, if you will. And for the government to then

00:35:33.480 start treating our rights and freedoms as if they are privileges, which is what they've done,

00:35:38.200 to some of us, we knew right away where this was going. Of course, we were called the conspiracy

00:35:41.880 theorists early on, but the conspiracy theories 18 months later are looking pretty credible at this

00:35:47.000 point. And so what's happened though, is from that initial shock that some of us saw, there's been

00:35:52.360 this incremental push. And, you know, basically what's happened is you find yourself at a battle

00:35:59.320 line 18 months later, that is further back from where you started without realizing the amount of

00:36:05.080 ground that you've been pushed. And so, like I said, people are beginning to realize those who may not

00:36:11.000 have been as shocked as someone like I was back in March 2020 that the government thought it had this

00:36:16.360 right. They're there now. They now see that the forward position that they were in 18 months ago

00:36:23.560 is miles off in the distance. And we, as I call it, the new normal is a very different place.

00:36:29.000 I think that's a brilliant way of putting it because when this was all just about two weeks to flatten the

00:36:34.120 curve, people were willing to put up with a lot for two weeks. And if government had made

00:36:39.320 the appeal to civic duty and said, we're asking you to do X, Y, Z, it would have been a lot different.

00:36:45.640 But the problem is, and you're right, not that many people spoke out against this

00:36:49.560 at the point, even when we didn't know what COVID was, we didn't know how transmissible it was,

00:36:53.720 we didn't know what we were dealing with. I remember when people were wiping down doorknobs

00:36:57.560 before going into buildings and stuff like that, or even their own home. But that two-week

00:37:02.920 license that we gave the government got extended. It got extended two weeks longer, and then in

00:37:07.560 months. And now we are about to enter the third year of COVID. And you are right that the people

00:37:12.520 that kind of gave the benefit of the doubt to government are the ones now that, you know,

00:37:18.040 well, the joke's on them. Well, public health is traditionally, and if you talk to public health

00:37:22.440 experts, and I have because I had to cross-examine some at trials, and I've had to dive into peer-reviewed

00:37:27.880 literature on this stuff in the context of my court proceedings. But if you talk to them,

00:37:32.200 traditionally, public health is something where you avoid coercion. In other words,

00:37:35.720 you try and enlist the populace and you give them information and equip them so that they

00:37:41.400 voluntarily want to, in this case, fight COVID. And so, for instance, their initial two weeks

00:37:46.280 to flatten the curve, it came across to many as a voluntary suggestion, you know,

00:37:50.280 this is the thing to do. And so I think on that basis, you could justify, like give everyone the

00:37:55.080 information, let them make their decision, if they're going to stay home, shutter their business,

00:37:58.120 whatever it is. But that's not what happened. Laws were passed, kids were sent home from school,

00:38:02.840 they were, it was, it was backed up by the power of the state, and it was coerced. Now, we, you know,

00:38:07.800 we're all in this together was the mantra at that time. But the reality is, no, if you weren't in it,

00:38:12.520 you were going to find out very quickly from, from the, from the police, from our, from our health

00:38:16.920 authorities, and from the courts. And that, that's traditionally not what public health has been.

00:38:21.240 And we've completely annihilated that conception of public health. And I think much to the detriment

00:38:25.640 of the institution that it is. So let's, let's go back to the declaration here for a moment. This

00:38:30.920 is obviously a declaration by lawyers. Who's the target audience? Are you trying to convince other

00:38:36.120 lawyers? Or is it a message to society itself? It's the society itself. I mean, the, the, the,

00:38:42.840 a joint letter is something is not something new. I mean, traditionally, they come from the left.

00:38:47.560 Traditionally, you'll see academics, legal scholars on the left will sign these joint petitions.

00:38:53.320 Typically, they're criticizing conservative governments and the things that conservative

00:38:56.520 governments have tried to do. You know, I'm thinking right now of, of the Ford government,

00:39:00.520 when it tried to restrict the size of Toronto City Council, we saw a big joint letter signed by a

00:39:05.400 bunch of lawyers and law profs saying, this is a bad thing. This is essentially in that vein, it's,

00:39:11.880 it's a, it's a bunch of lawyers who are, who, and legal types, as well as among society at large,

00:39:17.080 to say, we don't like this. There, there's certain principles that we hold dear and, and they're set

00:39:22.840 out in the declaration. And, and you know, you're not alone if you share these, these ideas, these

00:39:29.400 notions, or just this discomfort with where we are now 18 months later. So no, it's for society at large

00:39:35.480 to, I guess, to provide some comfort because you're not seeing any of this stuff in mainstream media.

00:39:41.400 No, the corporate media basically has put the cone of silence on, on what I call the science around

00:39:46.600 COVID. The science around COVID is not what you're getting on your nightly news at 6pm, unfortunately.

00:39:51.400 And that's why we are where we are. So it's about getting a message out. It's about showing people

00:39:55.720 that there are numbers that, that, that share your opinions and your feelings. And then obviously having

00:40:00.760 lawyers involved tells you, guess what? You're not insane. This stuff is not normal in the law.

00:40:05.000 Yeah. And I think that's a very valid point because for a lot of people, I mean, going back

00:40:10.840 to Doug Ford, calling those protesting lockdowns, a bunch of yahoos some time ago and, and similar

00:40:15.880 rhetoric about, Oh, just these, you know, absolute lunatics that are out protesting against vaccine 0.60

00:40:20.600 mandates. It is good to see here's an educated, regulated profession full of thousands of people,

00:40:26.440 of which a large chunk are saying, ah, you know what? We're not comfortable with this. Including as I

00:40:30.760 pointed out a lot of fully vaccinated people who like myself can be very pro vaccination

00:40:35.800 and anti mandate. And that in and of itself is a position that's just completely absent from the

00:40:41.080 mainstream media discourse. I mean, people need to understand that as a lawyer, I go to court,

00:40:45.720 I go before the human rights tribunal, I go before all manner of sort of adjudicated bodies.

00:40:50.200 And I'm having to give advice to clients right now that says this in the before times,

00:40:54.920 this is the way it would have been, but we're now in the mania times, the new normal.

00:40:59.480 And I can't give you an assurance on the outcome on this case that I would have been able to give

00:41:03.240 you 19 months ago and said, no way in hell can they do what they're doing. Now I'm sitting there

00:41:07.880 in a situation where I'm saying, Hmm, who knows, who knows in the new normal. And, and that's what

00:41:12.840 people need to understand is that as lawyers and this on looking at the vaccine debate, for instance,

00:41:17.720 the mandatory backs to be, you know, I represent employers, I represent individuals as well. And on both

00:41:23.400 sides, my opinion that I have to give is, I'm not sure if this would be enforceable at the end of the

00:41:30.920 day, in the old times, it should not be, it would never have been to have to disclose your private

00:41:36.200 health status to your employer, to submit to a medical treatment in order to continue employment.

00:41:41.960 But in the new normal, you know, with the mania that I that I say is out there, and what I've seen

00:41:47.400 from the courts, you know, like I said, I think the only solution is going to be political to these

00:41:52.680 things. And, and so that's why the declaration is important that it's signed by lawyers and as

00:41:56.360 the backing of lawyers, because people need to understand, even we as lawyers are uncomfortable

00:41:59.960 with this. Well, trying to return to the old normal has been an uphill battle, but that doesn't

00:42:05.720 mean it is not an important one, the Free North declaration, one significant weapon in that fight,

00:42:11.640 Jared Brown, D. Jared Brown, lawyer with Brown Law in Toronto, one of the signatories,

00:42:15.480 also a bencher with the Law Society of Ontario. Thanks so much, Jared. Always a pleasure.

00:42:21.800 Us has been the running joke on the show. We tend to talk about these issues and they depress me

00:42:25.720 greatly, but I actually felt kind of hopeful there. I felt kind of hopeful because a lot of the time,

00:42:30.840 and I don't know if any of you feel this way, I feel somewhat alone in this fight. And I don't mean

00:42:36.120 that I don't hear all the time from those of you listening in the show who agree and in some cases

00:42:40.440 disagree, but do it in a civil and respectful way. But in society itself,

00:42:45.080 in society itself, there are lots of different groups where I could go. And if I were to mention

00:42:49.400 what I think is a completely uncontroversial point, like, hey, I don't think you should be fired for

00:42:54.120 not being vaccinated. It's as though you had said something radical, because that is radical in

00:43:00.200 today's society. And Jared kept going back to the new normal, the new normal. And I'm uncomfortable

00:43:05.240 with that because I don't want to recognize that it is in fact the new normal. I don't want to recognize

00:43:10.120 that all of these things that I deplore, coercion, force, compromising liberty, have become normalized

00:43:16.440 and accepted in society. But you know what? I'm never going to give up the fight to bring that back.

00:43:21.480 So glad Jared is as dedicated as I am, more so within his profession, of course, at getting rid of

00:43:27.400 the new normal and going back to the way things were. Free society via the free north and the free

00:43:32.680 north declaration. That is at freenorthdeclaration.ca. That does it for us for today. We've got to wrap

00:43:38.520 things up there. My thanks to all of you for tuning into the show. We'll be back soon with

00:43:42.440 more of Canada's most irreverent talk show here on True North. Thank you, God bless, and good day.

00:43:47.160 Thanks for listening to the Andrew Lawton Show. Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - December 03, 2021

Most Canadians don't want unvaccinated friends or family in their homes

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