Juno News - Parallel Societies

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Canada's most irreverent talk show. This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:00:12.940 Coming up, big tech censorship and its attack on civil society, the unconstitutionality of curfews, and saying goodbye to a dear friend.

00:00:23.100 The Andrew Lawton Show starts right now.

00:00:26.000 Welcome to Canada's most irreverent talk show. This is the Andrew Lawton Show on True North.

00:00:34.800 Glad to have you aboard. Well, it's still possible to do a show, which in the era of big tech censorship is not exactly something we can take for granted.

00:00:43.160 So I'm going to be talking about what's been happening in the last few days at considerable length right now.

00:00:49.120 Because big tech censorship, well, it's an issue I've talked about in the past. It's not one that I'm just learning about now.

00:00:54.960 It's one that has reached a boiling point that makes it impossible, in my view, for anyone who hasn't been paying attention to it to not start doing so right now.

00:01:05.600 The TLDR version of it, the too-long-didn't-read version of it, of course, if you haven't been following this, is that Parler, as of this point, as of when I'm recording, is offline.

00:01:16.740 Parler is the conservative alternative to Twitter and Facebook that was started a little while ago, but really started to surge in popularity in the summer.

00:01:25.560 Parler is offline.

00:01:27.560 Parler is offline. Donald Trump is unable to post to social media.

00:01:30.560 Conservative Twitter accounts are hemorrhaging followers by the day.

00:01:35.000 True North has lost a number of followers.

00:01:37.560 I've lost somewhere in the range of 2,000, but it seems to keep going.

00:01:41.560 And a lot of that is because I think a lot of conservatives are self-deselecting.

00:01:45.560 They're saying, you know, I don't want to be on Twitter, but a lot of it, the bulk of it, seems to be Twitter going through and just purging.

00:01:52.560 Doing a conservative purge of accounts that it feels are too conservative.

00:01:57.560 And if you are like me, someone who's made a bit of a name working in conservative media, that's going to very much drop your follower count.

00:02:06.560 So people on the right are losing thousands and thousands.

00:02:09.560 Dana Lash, who I've known for years, she's a tremendous conservative radio host and author in the U.S.

00:02:15.560 She's lost something, I think it was like 50,000 followers, so I suppose I shouldn't complain too, too much.

00:02:20.560 But the whole point of it is that Twitter is quite openly waging war on its right.

00:02:25.560 On the right side of its user base to such an extent that it's not quite clear what the end game is beyond the next couple of weeks.

00:02:34.560 And by that I mean what it's going to look like, not what their goal is.

00:02:38.560 Because Twitter always says it's an open platform, it's a platform built on free speech.

00:02:43.560 But the problem with it is that the actual day-to-day operations never look like that.

00:02:48.560 In fact, whenever Twitter is in the news, it's because they've decided to censor someone in such a way that makes it not look like the open platform that Twitter always pretends to be.

00:02:58.560 Look at, for example, during the most recent U.S. election, the ban of that New York Post story about Hunter Biden.

00:03:05.560 A story that ultimately ended up being proven correct, but you'd never know it with the blackout that Facebook and Twitter both imposed on that story.

00:03:15.560 So right now we had in just rapid succession, a Twitter ban Donald Trump, Facebook ban Donald Trump, Apple take Parler out of the App Store, Google take Parler out of the Google Play Store, and then eventually Amazon Web Services taking Parler offline altogether.

00:03:34.560 And you have five companies, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Apple, and Amazon, that when they work together, can effectively remove someone from the internet.

00:03:48.560 Now this is not a monopoly in the sense of a state-enforced monopoly, it's not a monopoly in the sense that it's more than one, but it's an oligopoly of sorts because of the sheer size of these, not because the state has given them this power.

00:04:03.560 And this is where free market libertarians and a lot of traditionalist conservatives tend to diverge on this issue.

00:04:10.960 Because the libertarian perspective, which is the one I've said at great length on the show in the past, is that, well, you know what, there's nothing stopping someone from building their own alternative.

00:04:20.560 And the build your own mentality has always been the biggest saving grace I've felt to conservatives.

00:04:28.500 You don't like liberal Hollywood? Great. Build your own movies.

00:04:31.880 You don't like this singer? Great. Build your own songs. 0.60

00:04:35.080 You don't like, well, building songs. You can tell why I've not built any songs or sung any songs.

00:04:40.280 You don't like Twitter, Facebook, and their liberal bias? Great. Build your own Twitter. Build your own Facebook.

00:04:45.280 And what we've seen in the last few days is the peril of build your own because it doesn't actually work unless you are prepared and able to build your own everything.

00:04:58.720 And this is why it's so easy and I would say actually justifiable for people on the right to feel very dejected now.

00:05:06.520 Because Parler was an example. And by the way, Parler had its issues. I was on Parler. I still am technically a Parler user.

00:05:13.540 So if Parler ever comes back online, do follow me. If you're ever able to again, which is not quite clear, you will be.

00:05:20.660 Parler had its bugs and its user errors, but it was an example of conservatives putting their money where their mouths were and saying,

00:05:29.060 all right, we don't like what Twitter and Facebook are doing. We're building our own.

00:05:31.780 And they had a lot of support. A lot of the conservative heavyweights and conservative media were on Parler.

00:05:37.420 People like Dan Bongino and Dana Lash, who I mentioned, and then little old me.

00:05:42.420 And I actually was using it more for just posting stuff that I was posting to Facebook and Twitter.

00:05:47.120 I wasn't boycotting or giving up one because I'm a firm believer in the fact that you have to wait and see what happens with these things

00:05:54.340 before you decide to go whole hog into it. And a lot of the people who did do that,

00:05:58.960 A lot of the people who did throw away their Twitter accounts to go to Parler now are effectively silenced because of that.

00:06:05.680 So that's a bit of an aside, but I think a relevant one.

00:06:09.960 So conservatives did what they were always told to do, which was build their own alternative.

00:06:16.560 And now what's happened is Apple has said, all right, we're not going to allow Parler to be on there.

00:06:22.860 So what do conservatives have to do? Build their own smartphone so that they can build their own app store?

00:06:27.160 And then Parler is taken offline by Amazon Web Services, which most people view Amazon only in the context of that place that you go

00:06:37.440 when you want to get a book shipped to you or get a potato ricer at two in the morning or something delivered the next day.

00:06:42.880 But Amazon's web service is actually the biggest, I think one of the biggest, if not the biggest hosting services for cloud computing in the world.

00:06:51.100 Amazon Web Services is the backbone of, I think, NASA and Netflix and governments and huge companies, huge websites.

00:07:00.040 Parler, no exception to that.

00:07:01.860 So Parler is taken offline by Jeff Bezos, who's usually the most loathed man in the world to the left.

00:07:07.680 But this week is now a big hero to the left because he's decided to take those evil conservatives away from their one online safe space.

00:07:15.200 The one place where the left couldn't really cancel conservatives was on Parler.

00:07:18.880 So Parler now taken offline.

00:07:21.540 So what do conservatives have to do? Build their own web hosting company?

00:07:24.420 Well, great. It's not as easy as that.

00:07:27.780 Amazon Web Services has warehouses and warehouses and warehouses full of servers.

00:07:33.260 These data centers all over the world, including numerous in North America.

00:07:37.420 So for conservatives to just say, all right, well, build your own is not an overnight process.

00:07:42.660 And more importantly, I think it's lamentable that that's what society has become.

00:07:47.640 The whole point of build your own was actually built on a very dangerous idea, a correct idea, but a dangerized idea.

00:07:57.820 And the idea that fuels the build your own narrative is that the left and the right cannot coexist.

00:08:04.480 Now, you may laugh at the idea that that could not be true.

00:08:08.120 I wish it were.

00:08:10.400 And it used to be true.

00:08:11.600 When I mentioned that line of, I think, Margaret Thatcher about how your 80% friend is not your 20% enemy,

00:08:16.800 there's something to that that we all need to learn from, which is the disagreement never needed to be and never should be a trump card.

00:08:24.080 There are lots of people that I could break bread with that I don't agree on many things at all with or people that I agree on some things with.

00:08:33.240 But the idea of conservatives needing to or anyone needing to build their own alternative to Facebook and Twitter

00:08:40.020 was because Facebook and Twitter had demonstrated they were not interested in giving the same rights to people on the right

00:08:45.840 as they were to people on the left insofar as their ability to use these platforms and services.

00:08:52.780 Now, yes, Facebook is a free service.

00:08:54.920 Twitter is a free service.

00:08:56.220 Google is a free service.

00:08:57.480 So if you're using all of these things, you don't have a right to them.

00:09:00.880 And that's true.

00:09:01.580 I don't say that you have a right to them.

00:09:03.680 When I talk about what these companies are doing and I talk about censorship, I'm not talking about state censorship.

00:09:10.080 I'm not talking about people being thrown into gulags by the Stasi or something like that.

00:09:15.540 I'm talking about people who are, in a lot of ways, being censored by a cultural force that is so ubiquitous now

00:09:23.340 it is as strong as a state censorship could be in this day and age.

00:09:29.400 And that's what's happening right now is that a lot of people aren't even able to have these conversations

00:09:35.320 because if you say, oh, well, you know, this is an attack on free speech,

00:09:38.520 someone will be like, well, actually, it's not an attack on your free speech

00:09:41.740 because you know what?

00:09:42.500 You aren't being thrown behind bars. 0.93

00:09:44.360 Bite me. 1.00

00:09:45.360 Just bite me.

00:09:46.360 You actually have no idea what you're talking about

00:09:48.560 because legal free speech, which we have,

00:09:51.780 we have in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in Canada,

00:09:54.440 the right to freedom of expression.

00:09:56.040 In the United States, there is a First Amendment.

00:09:57.940 These freedoms are irrelevant if, in practice, there is no culture that supports them.

00:10:06.140 Those ideas are enumerated in constitutions

00:10:09.680 because it is paramount for governments to be restrained from limiting these rights.

00:10:15.660 The problem is that the threat to these freedoms is not really coming from governments

00:10:19.320 as much as it's coming from civil society,

00:10:21.920 the group that is supposed to be welcoming these freedoms and using them every day.

00:10:27.940 And the idea is it used to be that you could say to someone,

00:10:32.080 ah, well, that's an attack on free speech, ergo, it's wrong.

00:10:35.000 Now people think free speech is this antiquated, archaic, patriarchal, racist, 0.86

00:10:39.680 white supremacist concept.

00:10:40.940 Free speech is only for people that are going to use their right to free speech

00:10:44.660 to say the right thing.

00:10:46.580 So the parallel society problem is very real because people are not interested in open platforms,

00:10:55.640 in genuine open fora where people on the left and people on the right can all talk about

00:11:00.380 whatever they want and because they only want the uniparty.

00:11:04.060 They want one side to have a monopoly on discourse and that is their own.

00:11:08.780 Now, if it hasn't become apparent, I don't have an answer to this.

00:11:14.780 I really don't.

00:11:15.920 And even when I am seeing the libertarianism that I've always welcomed and embraced on this

00:11:22.200 severely challenged, I still know that regulation is not going to make any of this better.

00:11:30.420 Forcing social media companies to act in a different way is only going to make matters worse.

00:11:36.920 It may make them look different, but in the long run, it's going to make them look worse.

00:11:41.800 When people talk about the platform publisher divide, that is not really something that matters

00:11:47.640 all that much.

00:11:48.940 But even in the absence of a solution, at the very least, people need to understand that

00:11:53.380 if five companies, if someone at five different places decides that you don't deserve to exist,

00:11:59.100 they have the power to wipe you off the face of the earth.

00:12:02.600 And it isn't just about your social media.

00:12:06.160 This is, I think, one of the big misnomers of it.

00:12:08.360 It's not about Trump's right to tweet, which I don't even think this is about Trump anymore.

00:12:12.580 And it hasn't been about Donald Trump for a long time.

00:12:15.200 But because we're talking about Donald Trump's account, most of the people engaged in this

00:12:20.340 discussion are only able to view this through the lens of their emotional hatred of Donald

00:12:27.520 Trump.

00:12:28.040 I don't care about Donald Trump's Twitter account right now because I care about Donald Trump

00:12:33.140 tweeting.

00:12:33.560 I care about it because I care about the precedent that this is setting for your Twitter account,

00:12:38.540 for mine, for your Facebook, for mine, for your website, your email, your banking, your

00:12:43.580 online store, whatever the case may be.

00:12:46.660 And if you can't get over your hatred of Trump, of Parler, of the right, or your frustration

00:12:52.660 with what happened on Capitol Hill, you're missing the big picture here, which is that

00:13:00.060 five companies is what it takes to digitally deperson you.

00:13:03.880 Now, in the most part, it's fewer than that.

00:13:06.660 If you don't have an app, you don't need Apple and Google to necessarily deperson you.

00:13:11.560 Twitter, Facebook, and Amazon can do it all by yourself.

00:13:14.600 But let's look at this critically because Donald Trump was not just gone after by those, but

00:13:19.440 also Shopify.

00:13:20.960 Shopify, a Canadian company, went after Donald Trump by taking the Trump Tower store offline,

00:13:27.160 the Trump Organization store.

00:13:28.880 Now, this wasn't the Trump campaign store.

00:13:31.300 This was the Trump store that you would buy things that have the word Trump on them from.

00:13:36.580 Like when I was at Trump Tower in New York a year and a half or two years ago, I bought

00:13:40.940 a Tumblr mug.

00:13:42.260 I bought a t-shirt.

00:13:43.360 I bought something else there.

00:13:45.260 And I think I bought a Trump fidget spinner, which I have, I should have brought it out for

00:13:48.600 the show.

00:13:48.980 But, but this is not anything controversial.

00:13:51.500 This is not anything to do with President Donald Trump, nothing to do with Capitol Hill.

00:13:55.220 But when Shopify stepped in and they said, you know what?

00:13:58.040 Overnight, you no longer have the ability to buy anything from the Trump online retail outlet.

00:14:04.020 Now that's significant.

00:14:06.920 What if they went after someone that didn't have the money or the institutional backing

00:14:11.260 of the Trump Organization, which has the ability to rebound from this, I'm sure, despite a little

00:14:16.080 bit of lost revenue.

00:14:17.320 What if they went after someone else, someone that didn't have the ability to fight through

00:14:21.380 this?

00:14:22.260 This happens all the time.

00:14:23.940 People are told they can't use their PayPal accounts, which cuts them off from revenue

00:14:28.520 streams.

00:14:29.600 Imagine if one day Google said to you, you know what?

00:14:33.420 We don't like what you've been doing.

00:14:35.240 Your Gmail account is no more.

00:14:39.720 Ah, it's one thing to not be able to tweet or Facebook, but what if you were denied access

00:14:44.440 to your email account?

00:14:46.760 And this is the problem with the build your own.

00:14:49.880 The vast majority of people do not have the capacity to build their own email account on

00:14:54.760 their own server that they control.

00:14:56.900 I mean, I'm relatively tech savvy and I still use an email account provided by one of those

00:15:03.080 free email account services as well as my work emails.

00:15:06.820 But this is the problem is that you cannot feasibly build your own everything.

00:15:11.640 And it's looking decreasingly possible or I guess increasingly impossible, be the better

00:15:19.180 way to word it, that we can ever get over the hurdle to get to that cultural reality where

00:15:24.300 everyone realizes, hey, let's lay down our arms and realize that this is not the world

00:15:28.780 we want to be creating.

00:15:29.780 And it's easy when the left is the cultural dominating force for the left to jump up and

00:15:35.360 down and say, yeah, you know what?

00:15:37.040 Ban them, ban them. 1.00

00:15:38.120 They're all Nazis. 1.00

00:15:38.960 They're all white supremacists. 1.00

00:15:40.140 They're all this. 0.54

00:15:40.900 But if and when that shifts and the left no longer has the cultural hegemony, if you will,

00:15:47.720 then all of a sudden this precedent that they've set that tech companies should actually be

00:15:54.320 engaging in these issues the way they are by censoring, by deleting, by deplatforming,

00:16:00.100 by taking offline, then all of a sudden that will look very bad, which is why people, again,

00:16:04.820 need to look beyond ideology on these things.

00:16:09.060 So Parler is a company.

00:16:10.680 It has investors.

00:16:11.620 It has money.

00:16:12.240 And Parler's business model is an app and a website that people use, which no longer is

00:16:17.420 possible.

00:16:19.380 So Parler's entire business model has been taken offline because of all of this.

00:16:24.400 Now, the rationale for this I should express a little bit on because the rationale is that

00:16:30.040 companies are saying Parler's website was used for violence, to plan a violent Capitol

00:16:36.000 Hill riot and could be used for violence in the future.

00:16:39.520 Now, I was very clear in my thought on what happened on Capitol Hill, and that hasn't changed.

00:16:44.900 I still believe that.

00:16:45.880 And if you don't like it, well, I'm sorry.

00:16:48.000 As I said, I hope you like other things that I say, but I'm not changing on that one.

00:16:52.000 But here's the thing.

00:16:54.220 Parler exists as a platform for free speech.

00:16:58.100 That is its MO.

00:17:00.160 So all of a sudden, these companies that are saying they're platforms and not publishers

00:17:05.540 are actually blaming a company and targeting a company for actually being an open platform.

00:17:14.060 And there's something very twisted and ironic in that, that the companies that claim they

00:17:19.080 are platforms are actually mad at a company that genuinely is an open platform.

00:17:24.880 And by the way, an open platform that still does not allow violent rhetoric.

00:17:28.800 Parler does not allow users to use the platform for criminal activity.

00:17:34.460 That's one of the few rules that exists in the terms of service.

00:17:38.440 Okay.

00:17:41.080 Just because people have been able to screenshot violent things on Parler does not mean those

00:17:47.300 things do not get yanked eventually under the terms of service in the same way that some

00:17:52.320 stuff on Facebook and Twitter will get yanked as well.

00:17:54.700 So there is something in this that I find to be quite concerning for everyone.

00:18:01.480 It's not that I'm at all endorsing violent rhetoric, nor is Parler for that matter.

00:18:06.620 It's that Parler is not distinct from all of these other platforms.

00:18:09.880 And by the way, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook, these platforms have

00:18:14.940 been used for terrorist activity.

00:18:19.900 Terrorist attacks have been planned using chat messaging apps.

00:18:23.980 Yet those things are all fine.

00:18:26.240 WhatsApp is still in the app store.

00:18:28.820 Facebook Messenger is still in the app store.

00:18:30.820 Facebook, Twitter, these things as well have entertained it just because they have policies

00:18:34.800 to take stuff down doesn't mean they aren't still used for these things.

00:18:38.300 So in that sense, the challenge put to Parler is that it's not good enough at censoring.

00:18:43.880 When Parler itself was saying that it actually was trying to get better on dealing with the

00:18:49.420 stuff that was genuinely illegal, genuinely illegal, not just violating these internal terms

00:18:56.540 of services like Twitter's ban on dead naming or whatever the case may be.

00:19:00.440 So I don't accept that a free speech platform is something that should be vilified because

00:19:10.000 a free speech platform might attract some people that not everyone wants to have a dinner party

00:19:14.740 with.

00:19:15.420 I think it's actually something that should be encouraged, though.

00:19:18.900 But we don't have to like what people are saying to respect that they have a right to say it.

00:19:24.680 That used to be the cornerstone of free speech.

00:19:26.800 And again, I'm not talking about violent rhetoric.

00:19:28.880 I'm not talking about speech that does cross that threshold of being criminal.

00:19:32.540 I'm talking about undesirable, unpopular speech, speech that might be biased against you,

00:19:37.460 speech that might be critical of you or of something you stand for.

00:19:40.540 But that is part of freedom.

00:19:44.060 And we can talk about this regulation, that regulation, this bill, that bill.

00:19:48.520 But we're never going to get past what's happening right now if we don't understand that this problem

00:19:53.780 is coming from a tremendously dangerous cultural reality, which is now being ratified and codified 0.82

00:19:59.720 by this small cabal of big tech companies.

00:20:03.420 We'll be back in a moment with more of The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:20:06.340 Stay tuned.

00:20:06.780 You're tuned in to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:20:12.280 Welcome back to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:20:14.540 This is going to be a big week in the lockdown fight, another form of a battle.

00:20:19.960 We've been covering a great length on this show.

00:20:22.240 And one of the big questions is whether Ontario is going to get a curfew,

00:20:27.360 a la the one that was put in place in Quebec just a few days ago,

00:20:31.180 in which we're already seeing arrests of people for, you know, just walking down the street,

00:20:35.980 basically doing something that used to be an activity you'd take for granted in a free society.

00:20:41.020 So what the Ontario plan is going to look like, we don't yet know.

00:20:44.260 But we do know that curfews are not respectful of the Charter. 1.00

00:20:49.740 They're not constitutional.

00:20:51.280 And there was a great op-ed in the Toronto Sun about that written by Dr.

00:20:55.060 Matt Strauss and civil litigator Ryan O'Connor, who joins me on the line now.

00:21:00.260 Ryan, good to talk to you.

00:21:01.160 Thanks for coming on.

00:21:02.660 Well, thanks for having me, Andrew.

00:21:03.520 So let's talk first off about why curfews are, in your view, not constitutional.

00:21:09.780 So there are several sections of the Charter that apply to curfews. 0.57

00:21:14.440 First, every Canadian has the right to free assembly and free association.

00:21:18.180 So that's the right to gather and the right to attend a demonstration.

00:21:21.780 Every Canadian has the right to liberty to go about their business as they see fit

00:21:24.860 with certain constitutional constraints.

00:21:27.560 So those are the main provisions of the Charter that are breached

00:21:29.880 when you can't leave your house between, in Quebec's case, 8 p.m. and 5 a.m.

00:21:34.320 This is something that I've found to be really concerning for two reasons.

00:21:39.420 Number one is that it forces people just to live in a state of fear.

00:21:43.380 You know, you're out and about.

00:21:44.480 You might be out there a bit too long.

00:21:46.020 It's like, oh my goodness, I got to get home before 8 p.m.

00:21:48.460 lest I find myself a foul of the curfew.

00:21:51.100 But it also forces a lot of other things to shut down.

00:21:54.300 And this is what we've seen in Quebec, whereas it's not just about you can't leave your house.

00:21:58.100 It's all of a sudden the government then has a mechanism to stop all of the things that you

00:22:02.260 might do outside your house from happening, like making businesses close early and making

00:22:06.880 other people really force themselves to prove that they have a right to be out if they are

00:22:12.480 one of those essential businesses.

00:22:15.040 Well, that's the issue too.

00:22:16.300 I mean, what was interesting about the Quebec example is that when the curfew started on

00:22:21.300 Saturday, they delivered an emergency alert message to everyone's phone saying,

00:22:24.920 you can't leave your house at all, which is actually incorrect, interestingly enough.

00:22:29.660 You're allowed, there are exceptions in Quebec, you're allowed to go walk your dog.

00:22:32.420 You're allowed to, if you're an essential worker, go to work.

00:22:34.980 You're allowed to, in the Quebec circumstance, you're allowed to travel the airport to go

00:22:39.280 to Florida, but you can't walk around the block without a dog.

00:22:43.120 So it is, I think there is an attempt by government to sort of, to demonstrate how serious the pandemic

00:22:48.760 is.

00:22:49.140 But at the same time, you can't unfairly, inappropriately or arbitrarily restrict persons'

00:22:54.060 charter rights in so doing.

00:22:55.280 And I think that's, that's the biggest issue.

00:22:57.160 And another issue too, is the fact that there's very little, little evidence to suggest that,

00:23:00.860 that curfews are even effective in that, you know, in preventing viral spread.

00:23:05.980 What is the government's defense of this?

00:23:08.180 Because throughout the entirety of the lockdown measures, we've been told that, you know,

00:23:13.020 well, everything's falling under that, you know, catch all reasonable limits category.

00:23:16.580 Is this another one of these cases where the government would say, you know,

00:23:19.560 the pandemic is really our trump card over these civil liberties concerns?

00:23:24.000 Well, a government can't just say, well, there's a pandemic, therefore the charter is suspended.

00:23:28.480 The reason why we have a charter of rights to protect our, our ancient and constitutional

00:23:32.740 liberties is, is because governments will trample on them in times of crisis.

00:23:36.860 So I think that the, all, this is all the more reason to talk about why the charter is breached.

00:23:41.840 And the government can't just simply say, well, this is a reasonable limit.

00:23:44.340 Yes, all, all charter rights are subject to reasonable limits as can be demonstrably justified

00:23:48.880 in a free and democratic society.

00:23:50.440 That's the first step part of the charter.

00:23:52.060 But, but those limits have to be rationally connected.

00:23:55.480 So from the, there has to be a rational connection between the charter breach and,

00:24:00.480 you know, and the policy, there has to be minimal impairments.

00:24:04.020 There has to also be proportionality between the charter breach,

00:24:07.400 the negative effects of the charter breach, pardon me, and the positive benefits.

00:24:11.060 In a case like a curfew, a curfew to me is not minimally impairing.

00:24:15.020 You know, you can't go out for, you know, very few reasons after 8 p.m.

00:24:19.580 Why does the curfew not start at midnight?

00:24:21.200 Does the virus spread at 8 p.m. but, you know, but not at 7 p.m.?

00:24:25.760 It's really hard to understand Quebec's rationale behind its, behind its restrictions.

00:24:30.060 And, and the significance of the restriction is important for any, you know, if this is challenged

00:24:34.160 in court, you basically cannot leave your house.

00:24:36.780 That's the most extreme imposition on Canadians' rights since the October crisis.

00:24:41.820 So the government may say, well, yes, everything's subject to section one of the charter,

00:24:46.400 the reasonable limits clause.

00:24:47.500 But, you know, in a time of crisis, if you can't rely on the charter to protect your rights,

00:24:51.280 you know, it's really not worth the paper that's written on.

00:24:53.960 If there were evidence backing up a curfew, and I know that's a big if,

00:24:57.820 because even Quebec's top doctor, as you've noted, said there was very scant evidence on this.

00:25:03.020 But would that be enough to overcome this?

00:25:05.840 Or is your view that the charter breach, the freedom breach is too significant,

00:25:10.200 that even if it did have a marginal success at getting cases in check, it wouldn't matter?

00:25:15.440 Well, the problem is, is the court is also going to, like, you know, the context of a challenge,

00:25:19.360 whether or not the, the charter breach is, is arbitrary, or it's overbroad.

00:25:24.300 You know, large manufacturers, for example, in Quebec are, are exempted from the rules.

00:25:29.040 So you can go to work at your large manufacturer.

00:25:30.780 We've heard evidence, at least in Ontario, I don't know the cases in Quebec,

00:25:34.280 where there have been outbreaks at large industrial workplaces.

00:25:37.020 So if the premise of, if the premise of the curfew is to prevent viral spread,

00:25:41.840 it's not attacking the very places where viral spread is happening.

00:25:45.060 So it's arbitrary.

00:25:46.160 And then a law that is arbitrary doesn't survive the reasonable limits clause of the charter.

00:25:51.180 It's also overbroad.

00:25:52.620 A homeless person can't go for a walk around their mission or their shelter,

00:25:56.440 lest they face a $6,000 fine.

00:25:59.040 A court is not going to look too, look too kindly on a circumstance where a homeless person is being fined $6,000

00:26:04.300 for walking around the block.

00:26:06.400 Or, you know, maybe they don't even have a place to go.

00:26:09.040 They could be fined.

00:26:09.940 And that's, that's really problematic from a constitutional perspective.

00:26:13.440 One of the big challenges that we've seen in some of the church challenges and other challenges of fines here

00:26:19.120 is that there really isn't an ability to get a remedy in time to really do anything about it.

00:26:25.280 We've had people that are putting these challenges.

00:26:27.080 I know a lot of them may not be heard or decided until the restrictions, we hope, end on their own.

00:26:33.000 Is this going to be another case like that?

00:26:34.980 Or do you think there is a possibility, if something in Ontario is put forward,

00:26:38.420 that there's an injunction application or some other measure that could be heard quick enough to make a difference?

00:26:45.740 Well, courts will hear injunctions, you know, fairly quickly in the circumstance, particularly at least in Ontario.

00:26:50.860 You know, sometimes within a hearing injunction motion, pardon me, within two weeks of an application being started.

00:26:55.860 We've seen with some of the religious services restrictions that from the time you start your proceeding

00:26:59.360 until the time of the injunction, it can sometimes be as little as nine days.

00:27:02.400 But the problem is, is that it's very hard to get an injunction in the circumstance

00:27:05.840 to be essentially asking for the court to exempt you from the application of a law.

00:27:11.200 But the thing is, is that it seems as if lockdowns are going to continue beyond,

00:27:15.380 at least in Ontario, they're supposed to end later on this month.

00:27:18.300 Looks like with the case counts, that's probably not going to happen.

00:27:20.960 So I think there is an opportunity for a person to bring a challenge to,

00:27:24.100 whether it be a curfew, if a curfew is imposed in Ontario,

00:27:26.360 it might be that the curfew is ongoing for a month or maybe more,

00:27:30.980 maybe lockdowns will go on all winter.

00:27:32.840 And in that case, there will be an opportunity for persons to challenge

00:27:35.460 on an urgent basis these issues before the court.

00:27:39.320 With curfews in particular, there almost is outside of the legal argument against them.

00:27:44.760 There's something very chilling about them, because this is actually that wartime mentality.

00:27:50.240 And a lot of the other restrictions, some could argue, might have been a bit more incremental.

00:27:54.040 But for me, this has been the one that I found the most unsettling,

00:27:57.100 even though ostensibly it wouldn't affect my day-to-day life all that much.

00:28:01.000 I very rarely leave home after 8 p.m. in general, let alone during the pandemic.

00:28:05.460 But there is something very symbolic about it, too.

00:28:09.660 Well, it's symbolic that we, you know, the same government that has been lauding

00:28:13.580 our health care heroes and our essential workers and our truckers, etc.

00:28:18.140 Those are the people that have to go to work past 8 o'clock.

00:28:20.020 A lot of people can stay at home and, you know, work from their home office,

00:28:24.000 and this won't affect them.

00:28:25.460 But for those individuals that have been told that, you know, we rely on you,

00:28:28.840 thank you for your service, those are the very people that are going to be

00:28:31.780 being pulled over in their cars by the police on their way to the long-term care home.

00:28:35.960 They're going to be individuals who are pulled over by the police on the way to go

00:28:38.460 to the yard to pick up their truck to do an overnight delivery.

00:28:41.260 So those very heroes that we've been taught, that government's been talking about,

00:28:44.200 are the very individuals that are going to be targeted by,

00:28:47.080 frankly, the most appalling and chilling aspect of it.

00:28:50.880 Yeah, you are right about that.

00:28:52.660 And the other aspect of this, too, that I found is that there are going to be people

00:28:57.660 that I think genuinely are already dealing with lockdown issues.

00:29:02.740 They are stuck in the home.

00:29:04.240 Maybe they have just a really tiny apartment in Toronto,

00:29:06.860 and they don't have many opportunities to get away.

00:29:09.320 Maybe someone works 12-hour days, and they now don't have the ability to do anything.

00:29:13.760 I could see a lot of people really falling through the cracks of this,

00:29:17.820 or not even cracks, the craters of this,

00:29:20.300 because there's a system in place that doesn't allow them to actually live their lives.

00:29:24.880 Exactly.

00:29:25.980 We talk about COVID just in terms of case counts every day,

00:29:30.400 but think of all the other issues that COVID and lockdowns are causing.

00:29:33.380 Impacts on physical and mental health.

00:29:35.040 It's illegal in Ontario, for example, to go to the gym.

00:29:37.720 NHL athletes can go to the gym.

00:29:39.460 Olympians can go to the gym.

00:29:40.780 But regular Ontarians can't go to the gym.

00:29:42.280 That has a real significant impact on mental health and physical health.

00:29:45.540 And if you're worried about on your way to work because you're allowed to go to work,

00:29:49.020 so you're an essential worker, or if you're walking your dog,

00:29:51.440 which in the Quebec example is legal,

00:29:54.140 you're looking behind you constantly to see if there's a police officer in the vicinity.

00:29:57.800 You're looking around you constantly to see if a bylaw officer is going to give you a ticket.

00:30:01.620 That has a significant problem.

00:30:05.400 You may have a significant problem on you psychologically if you have mental health issues.

00:30:08.540 It's always looking behind your back like it's a police state, and that's really problematic.

00:30:13.800 Yeah, and I actually just read this morning a case of a Montreal family given $3,000 worth of tickets

00:30:21.360 because they were on their way back from New Brunswick.

00:30:24.680 And by the time they got into Quebec, I guess it was after 8 p.m.,

00:30:27.560 so they violated the curfew, and they're saying that they should have not been given that

00:30:32.020 because they were in transit.

00:30:33.380 But these sorts of stories are going to become more and more common.

00:30:36.620 Sure, and when you give police discretion to apply a new law,

00:30:39.800 you can never be certain that they're going to apply it in a way that is compliant with the law

00:30:43.240 or compliant with the charter.

00:30:45.300 You know, and I don't begrudge police necessarily.

00:30:47.620 They have to do their job,

00:30:48.960 and they literally just received orders to enforce a law that was enacted last week.

00:30:53.080 They may not be aware, individual officers may not be aware of the exceptions to the rules,

00:30:57.160 such as walking your dog, et cetera.

00:30:59.020 And there was video online from Saturday night that showed a gentleman who was walking his dog

00:31:02.640 was pulled over by the police, maybe because they don't know there's an exception.

00:31:06.840 But the problem is when you give police discretion under a new law to apply it,

00:31:10.240 you don't know that they're going to apply it in a way that's consistent with the charter

00:31:13.380 or that is consistent with the exceptions.

00:31:16.340 Yeah, very well said.

00:31:17.680 The op-ed in the Toronto Sun,

00:31:19.000 Here's How Curfews Violate Charter Rights. 1.00

00:31:21.420 One of the co-authors, lawyer Ryan O'Connor, joins me now.

00:31:24.560 Ryan, thanks very much for coming on today and great work with this piece.

00:31:28.100 Thanks for having me, Andrew.

00:31:29.260 Just insane.

00:31:30.120 And again, I mean, I said to Ryan there, like I actually am not affected by this directly,

00:31:35.100 but this is still one that I'm finding to be a lot more difficult than some of the other restrictions

00:31:40.260 just because of the implications of it.

00:31:42.940 You know, even something as simple as going for a walk, now you can't do.

00:31:46.460 If you want to take a nice little brisk chilly walk after 8 p.m., well, you're not allowed to.

00:31:51.360 I did an interview with Ezra Levant on Rebel News last week,

00:31:55.160 and Ezra had mused openly, thinking out loud in a way that I'm sure his lawyers love,

00:31:59.440 about whether he should make like anyone in the country who wants to be a freelancer,

00:32:03.200 a Rebel freelancer, so he can just issue them one of those permits that your employer can give you

00:32:08.360 to say you're serving an essential function.

00:32:10.280 So certainly I'll have to hope that Candace Malcolm and the leadership team at True North let me out.

00:32:15.500 I don't know about the rest of you, but it sounds like Ezra has something cooking up there.

00:32:19.640 We've got to take a quick break.

00:32:21.300 When we come back, I'd like to pay tribute to a very dear friend of mine that we lost this week.

00:32:26.140 Stay tuned.

00:32:29.620 You're tuned in to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:32:35.820 Welcome back.

00:32:36.680 Before we end things for today, I want to take a few moments to say goodbye to a dear friend

00:32:42.780 who passed away over the weekend after her battle with ovarian cancer.

00:32:47.400 Kathy Shadle.

00:32:48.560 She was a blogging pioneer.

00:32:51.340 She started blogging more than 20 years ago,

00:32:53.360 and most people weren't even using the internet, let alone reading blogs or writing blogs.

00:32:58.300 She had her instrumental role in creating what became the Canadian conservative blogosphere

00:33:05.060 long before all of the big tech censors started to run the show.

00:33:09.540 And in doing so, she influenced a lot of people, and I include myself in that category.

00:33:14.540 When I was reading her blog as a younger conservative, I thought,

00:33:17.880 you know what, I could do that myself.

00:33:19.600 Well, I couldn't.

00:33:20.480 Not nearly as well as she could.

00:33:22.320 But you know what, I tried anyway.

00:33:23.700 And she was never anything less than encouraging.

00:33:27.500 She became a supporter, a mentor, and eventually a friend.

00:33:31.700 I had the great privilege of traveling with her on a couple of different Markstein cruises

00:33:36.140 where we were both speakers and appeared on a panel together both years.

00:33:40.360 There's a picture of Kathy and I, as well as our friend Tal Bachman and Markstein himself.

00:33:46.980 Kathy was an agoraphobe in the most literal sense,

00:33:52.180 except she didn't have a phobia in a clinical sense.

00:33:54.460 She just didn't like going outside.

00:33:56.500 She resisted for years getting a cell phone.

00:33:58.480 She just never left home, she said, so she didn't need it.

00:34:01.340 She loved her husband, her cats, and she loved what she did.

00:34:06.580 And it wasn't just about politics, but it was about poetry.

00:34:09.460 It was about music.

00:34:10.620 It was about film.

00:34:11.720 If you ever said anything bad about the Who, she would, I'm sure, gut you like a fish right there.

00:34:15.740 But she didn't need to use violence because her tongue was sharper than any weapon known to man.

00:34:22.300 She was and is one of my favorite writers and one of my favorite people.

00:34:27.840 And I know that she leaves a huge wake and the internet will not be the same,

00:34:32.220 just as the lives of those who knew her will not be the same.

00:34:35.880 I want to thank Kathy for helping me get my start in blogging,

00:34:39.980 which led to podcasting and then doing talk radio and eventually back to podcasting and blogging.

00:34:45.080 It's funny how the world works like that.

00:34:47.300 I want to thank her for always being a supporter, not just of me, but of others I knew that reached

00:34:53.160 out to her for advice and received it, whether they liked it or not, what they got.

00:34:58.460 And I want to thank Kathy for always showing me the importance of the culture.

00:35:04.680 She was uninterested in which politician was saying this or which politician was up in the

00:35:09.560 polls or down in the polls because she understood that life was more than elected politics and

00:35:13.780 partisan politics. And she didn't have time for the politicians. At a time when most people were

00:35:19.840 looking at elections, she was not. She was looking at the culture long before Andrew Breitbart even was

00:35:25.400 doing so. Kathy was a trailblazer. She's known for her work, her writing, but she to me is known for

00:35:34.120 herself. And I thank Kathy for everything. I miss her. I send my thoughts and prayers to her husband,

00:35:40.460 Arnie, who survives her.

00:35:47.920 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show. Support the program by donating to True North at

00:35:52.700 www.tnc.news.

Juno News - January 11, 2021

Parallel Societies

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