00:13:51.080Yeah, so that the cause of the cause of the fire was related to human activity. It was an open fire.
00:13:57.340Can you share the specific location of where that open fire was found?
00:14:03.020I don't have that to share today. No, just we can share that it was human activity, but it's an ongoing
00:14:09.080investigation. So some of those details I don't have to provide.
00:14:11.980Was there a homeless encampment in this area where the fire, where your crews responded to?
00:14:16.400I think, again, sorry, but I think like the investigation in time will look at, you know,
00:14:24.660the what, the why, the how, all those types of things. But for right now, the focus is just on
00:14:30.020containing the fire, fighting the fires, and just kind of reiterating to Nova Scotia is that it's a,
00:14:36.540it's a risky situation and just obey the, obey the laws that are in place right now.
00:14:41.140So the scuttlebutt slash rumor going around the area is that there was a homeless encampment in the
00:14:48.500area and that that is where the fire got started. Speaking from personal experience, I grew up in
00:14:54.360the Fraser Canyon, Fraser Valley, and especially the last few years before I left British Columbia,
00:14:59.480homelessness was a major problem because housing was absolutely outrageous and it was really starting
00:15:04.820to hurt the working poor. And then you'd wind up with these kinds of encampments up logging roads
00:15:09.400and there's people who are trying to cook or stay warm, et cetera. And that's where some fires were
00:15:14.320starting. We're hearing Christine that apparently the government is reluctant to move folks out of
00:15:20.700the woods, even if they're living there, even if they think it's going to cause a risk of a fire
00:15:25.820starting. Is this where we're going, where we wind up, is this called uneven application of the law,
00:15:31.040or am I using lawyer talk incorrectly there? Look, so I think that the idea of giving a $25,000
00:15:38.460fine to a homeless person is obviously silly. They do not have a home. They do not have resources to
00:15:46.920pay a fine like that. Although I would say few people do, few people can afford to pay a fine like
00:15:52.500this. There has been reporting on CBC that people who work with the homeless community have been going
00:16:01.660in. They have a permit to enter the woods and trying to explain to people at the encampments why they
00:16:07.640should leave, why they shouldn't be in the woods. But my understanding is that the proclamation is not
00:16:14.480being enforced against them. And I don't think it should be because I don't think it should be
00:16:20.100enforced against anyone. But I do think that it should, there should, they should not be, you know,
00:16:25.780lighting fires. I think that part of it should be enforced and there should be penalties associated
00:16:30.600with that. But I do not think that merely being in the woods should be enforced against either against
00:16:37.800the people who are living without a home in the woods or people who are walking their dogs or
00:16:43.780foraging for wildflowers or birdwatching or picnicking. Or any of the other activities that
00:16:52.340aren't typically known to cause fires. Punish people who start fires. Completely reasonable.
00:16:57.820Now that's a lot of crazy talk. Actually punish people who are committing arson and deliberately
00:17:03.020starting fire. And look, there's like, there's all kinds of bizarre hysteria around the idea that
00:17:09.200people walking in the woods pose some risk, even if they are not doing anything that starts a fire.
00:17:15.140And so many people I have seen make these claims that, oh, if you're walking in the woods, you might
00:17:20.420do something else that causes a fire, like dropping a cigarette or going on an ATV or burning something.
00:17:29.260Or I've even heard the claim multiple times that someone might drop a plastic wrapper or water bottle
00:17:35.560and the light magnifies through this and sparks a fire. I mean, this is really paranoid, hysterical
00:17:43.580thinking. And it's also this mindset where every person out of their home is a potential criminal and
00:17:49.480needs to be treated as such by the government. And that is not an appropriate way to govern.
00:17:55.060That's governing through fear of your own citizens. And it's really wrong and contrary to our most
00:18:00.800fundamental values. And it will start quickly down that slippery slope of really restricting
00:18:06.420people's free expression. I'm not even kidding. Like, you know, at the Taxpayers Federation,
00:18:10.220you were with the Taxpayers Federation. You know that we will do some stunts. And so I remember
00:18:16.140distinctly, I've got like a 30 foot tall balloon man. OK, he's still in my garage. And like I set him
00:18:23.140up at different places in order to get attention and the insurance that you had to get and the
00:18:27.940permissions that you had to get. Because it was all around this, OK, what if somebody is really
00:18:32.980distracted by what you're doing? Or what if somebody is really frightened by what you're
00:18:36.800doing? Like there was all sorts of like safetyism, to use your language, that was rolling into this.
00:18:43.240Before we move on to your excellent report on safetyism and how it could be eroding our freedoms
00:18:48.440in Canada, exactly to what I just said, where do we stand on the Nova Scotia slash Atlantic Canada issue?
00:18:55.140Like, is your group fighting it directly? Are you challenging it in court? Do you guys have dates?
00:18:59.860How can people help? Yeah, thanks for asking. So we have filed for a judicial review of the
00:19:06.040proclamation under the Forest Act that bans people from entering the woods. If you want to support our
00:19:13.520legal fund, you can visit the ccf.ca slash donate. And we will be bringing this as a public interest
00:19:19.780litigant, which means as an organization, because this is the kind of work that we do at the CCF.
00:19:25.460We have standing generally to sue on behalf of all people in Nova Scotia. Excellent. All right. And
00:19:31.400one other thing I wanted to touch on here, it's much closer to home here in Alberta. There was the
00:19:35.860Christian singer person from the United States. I listened to an interview with him on a podcast
00:19:40.780the other day. I was surprised to hear he said he's been coming up to Canada for like 20 years
00:19:46.420and doing concerts and doing outreach with his with his congregation, I would describe it.
00:19:52.080And so they're going to be having a concert. They're actually holding it on the lawn of the
00:19:56.140legislature in Alberta, which I found really interesting. Are you following this from kind
00:20:00.900of a free expression angle and like a safetyism angle as well?
00:20:04.420Yeah, actually both as well as freedom of religion. So Sean Foyt, who's this Christian
00:20:10.060American worship singer, who has sometimes uses language that I would not use. And he says things
00:20:17.980that I don't agree with. But he also performs worship music, which is a constitutionally protected
00:20:24.540form of expression and expression of religion. And those are his rights, even in Canada as an American.
00:20:32.100And it's also the right of people to attend his worship services and listen to his music.
00:20:38.940And the fact that a lot of municipalities across Canada, mostly in Eastern Canada,
00:20:45.920either denied or pulled his park permits to perform in parks is really, really unreasonable.
00:20:53.280I think it was an unjustified use of their discretion, sort of similar to this famous old case
00:20:59.300called Ron Corellian Du Plessis. I've written about this for the hub. But essentially, that was a case
00:21:05.540where the premier of Nova Scotia didn't like the Jehovah's Witnesses at the time. So he pulled the
00:21:10.900liquor license of a famous restaurant owner in Montreal, who was a Jehovah's Witness, essentially to punish
00:21:19.660him for having a religion that the premier disagreed with. And that's sort of the same scenario playing
00:21:27.340out here. There are not really legitimate reasons to pull his permits. A lot of cities have justified
00:21:36.620it sort of saying, Oh, well, it's a safety issue that we, we shouldn't have many too many people in
00:21:43.980parks. It's just ridiculous. There are concerts in parks all the time. Quebec City said he was too
00:21:50.140controversial and artists, which is content based restrictions on speech and religion, which is
00:21:55.340inappropriate. Montreal claims that he needed a permit to perform a worship service inside a church,
00:22:01.580which of course you don't, it's ordinary use of the church. So it really is targeting on the basis of
00:22:07.980his content, which you don't need to agree with to think that he has the right to express it, you just
00:22:14.060we have a right to freedom of religion. However, it expresses itself in this country.
00:22:20.300Isn't that the whole point of freedom of expression? I mean, really, if I agree with everything you're
00:22:25.020saying, I don't need it written down in some big building.
00:22:28.140Absolutely. Well, your right to freedom of expression only has meaning if you're allowed
00:22:33.100to express things that other people disagree with. If you're only allowed to express things everyone
00:22:39.340says or unobjectionable and agree with, the right just is just to be a boring, ordinary person who
00:22:50.300never causes any controversy whatsoever. The civil rights movement in the United States was possible
00:22:58.380because of freedom of expression. This is a right for all people, the right to freedom of expression.
00:23:03.900And it's actually how we define the contours of every other right that we have, whether it's
00:23:08.460freedom of religion or equality rights or freedom of the press.
00:23:12.220I must say it kind of reminds me of I forget when it was, but it was recent when the commentator,
00:23:18.860American commentator Tucker Carlson was coming up to Canada and he was holding a couple of like big
00:23:24.060speaking events and there were actual like, I don't remember if it was an MP or an MLA or both.
00:23:30.380There were actual like lawmakers who were saying we should arrest him at the border and not let him
00:23:36.060in. Like it was embarrassing as if, you know, Rachel Maddow were coming up here from MSNBC and that any
00:23:43.100reasonable person would say we should arrest her and not let her talk about her radical left wing
00:23:48.060ideas. Like who cares? Isn't that the point of free expression? And if your arguments are awesome,
00:23:53.980it should be able to withstand some free expression and criticism. It reminded me of that.
00:23:58.780Yeah. I mean, the idea that Rachel Maddow would anyone would say she should be arrested if she came
00:24:04.540into Canada is that would, that would never happen. And, and look, there's plenty I disagree
00:24:09.260with about with Tucker. There's plenty I disagree with about Rachel Maddow. And I think that it's,
00:24:15.100it's, it's useful to have their speech scrutinized, analyzed and taken apart when it's wrong.
00:24:22.940That's actually how we counter bad ideas by allowing them to be considered and rejected.
00:24:28.460Otherwise you drive things underground and make murders out of, uh, out of people. So that's
00:24:33.820actually what ha what the CBC did with Sean Foy. I think the fact that he's been coming here for 20
00:24:38.940years and most people had never heard about it. Uh, they sure have heard of it now because of
00:24:44.860CBC trying to have it shut down. That's a perfect example and test of exactly what we're talking
00:24:50.380about here. Briefly, I will point out that this even affects the Canadian taxpayers federation from
00:24:54.940time to time, because I remember distinctly a few years ago when Stefan Guibo was still the environment
00:25:00.460minister, we found a government report, a federal government report, which was recommending a special
00:25:06.940tax on pickup trucks and SUVs. It was right there in their language. It was right there in the
00:25:12.060the appendices of their report. We had it in black and white. We talked about it. We reported on it,
00:25:17.340as we would say with the taxpayers federation, and he called it disinformation and misinformation
00:25:22.940as a sitting minister of the crown. So that's when you're just like, Whoa, how, how long are we going
00:25:28.140to have to wait until he starts saying that you shouldn't be allowed to say disinformation and
00:25:33.100misinformation. We get into that kind of online harms language realm. And that's why we have to be able to
00:25:38.540protect our right for free expression. I wanted to dovetail this, your excellent coverage of this
00:25:44.140with you guys have a special report that has been put out on what you refer to as safetyism and how
00:25:51.180the state slash government is now using safetyism and it could start trampling our rights. Can you
00:25:57.660expand on that a little bit? Yeah. So safetyism refers to a cultural or even institution or government
00:26:05.020tendency to prioritize physical and even emotional safety above all other values, you know, at the
00:26:13.260expense of those other values, including freedom, personal development, open debate and discourse.
00:26:19.580And look, safety is of course important, but Canadian governments have exploited emergencies or the sense of
00:26:27.980danger historically in the most grotesque ways. They've used it, the rationale of safety to shut
00:26:36.620down Sean Foyt, to lock down the forests in Nova Scotia. They've used it to justify censorship,
00:26:43.100surveillance, or restrictions on basic freedoms, all in the name of protecting people from discomfort
00:26:49.740or offense or some type of perceived risk or harm. And it's this culture where no risk is tolerable
00:26:56.940whatsoever. That cellophane wrapper in the woods is apparently so dangerous that you're not allowed
00:27:01.980to walk your dog in the forest. So in this report, safety above all, which you can download
00:27:08.540for free at the ccf.ca slash safetyism, we go through the historic instances where governments have
00:27:18.140overreached and eroded and violated civil liberties in the name of safety. And they're really
00:27:25.660disturbing examples from the invocation of the War Measures Act in response to the October crisis
00:27:32.300in 1970, where habeas corpus was suspended, where homes were searched without warrants, where people
00:27:39.500were arrested and detained incommunicado for weeks. There was the detainment of an internment of Japanese
00:27:51.020Canadians in 1942 following Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. And Japanese Canadians were rounded up across
00:27:59.180the country and put into shacks in interior BC without adequate heating. Their property was seized by the
00:28:06.940government and sold. And then that money was used to finance their own internment because the government
00:28:13.260internment told people that Japanese Canadians were too dangerous because of this, you know, inaccurate risk view that they
00:28:23.260would be spying on Canadians. So they all had to be proactively put into these internment camps. There was the G20 mass
00:28:33.260arrests. There is the practice of random vehicle stops where police in the name of public safety have the power to pull over any
00:28:41.260or any driver on the road there, which is often administered in a way that is racially biased. There was the long gun registry, which was justified in the name
00:28:53.260of safety and essentially created the risk of paper based criminalization of lawful gun owners. It is used to, it was used to justify to go full circle in this conversation, the Justin Trudeau invocation of the
00:29:03.260emergencies act. So when government says, this is for your own good, you need to be very, very wary of those types of claims, because their goal is often to going to operate in a way that really erodes our basic freedoms.
00:29:25.260Just to wrap up here, Christine, excellent points. If I can go out on a limb here, as somebody was born and raised here and who has two kids who have gone through the school systems, we've also alternatively homeschooled from time to time.
00:29:39.260I find that quite often, this idea of big daddy government, taking care of everything, everything the government says is fine, and it's in order to be safe. Okay. That kind of thinking really gets baked in here. And it's different, like here in Alberta, it's a bit different, but it's really baked in, I found from experience of living in places like Ontario and living in places like Nova Scotia, not to generalize and know everybody is different, but just generally speaking as a culture.
00:30:07.260But just generally speaking as a culture. And I think that that does start in the schools. And it starts in kids books, which is why I'm bringing this up. You wrote a kids book, I think it's called Maple's Garden. And it's all about the fundamental need for free expression. Up in the United States, they'd call it free speech. But free expression, free speech. Why did you think it was important to help little kids start a
00:30:37.260appreciating a fundamental freedom like this?
00:31:07.240And what we're trying to do is educate our children and create a culture where civil liberties is valued. And so that's why I wrote this book, Maple's Garden, beautifully illustrated by a Canadian artist who I actually grew up with, who has had her own issues with freedom of expression.
00:31:28.220As an artist, as an artist, she drew pictures of the convoy, and she had other artists attack her. And if you can't have free expression as an artist, if you can't explore controversial as an artist, I mean, what is even the point of art if you can't do that? So I was so proud to collaborate with Lisa on this project, Maple's Garden, it's going to be available as of September 2, and it's available for pre order right now.
00:32:00.240Did you pick Atlas Shrugged Day on purpose? Or was that just a coincidence?
00:32:04.240Of course, you would know that, Chris. No, that's a coincidence. But yeah, I should say it's on purpose, but it was a coincidence.
00:32:14.320So I love that. For folks who aren't Ayn Rand nuts, Atlas Shrugged Day is typically referred to as September 2, because that's one of the opening sentences of her book, Atlas Shrugged, which is all about human spirit, individuality and freedom.
00:32:27.320Christine, this has just been wonderful. I will tell a tale out of school, when I'm in a long form interview, and somebody starts asking me a really complicated legal question about something like free expression.
00:32:38.320I'll be like, you know, who's really smart about that Christine Van Gein go watch her show. So where can people watch your show?
00:32:46.320So I have a few shows. I am a very busy lady. So I have a YouTube channel, which you can find on YouTube by searching the Canadian Constitution Foundation.
00:32:56.320I have a podcast called not reserving judgment, which you can find wherever you get your podcasts, Apple, Spotify, as well as on YouTube.
00:33:05.320And then I host a national broadcast television program called Canadian Justice, which is available on the news forum, which is a basic cable channel that if you have cable, you will have in your house.
00:33:17.320Wonderful. Christine Van Gein, litigation director for the Canadian Constitution Foundation. Thank you so much for joining us on the Candace Malcolm show.
00:33:28.320Folks, you heard it directly from her. If we don't all band together. So all these alternative news outlets, all of these independent outlets, these advocacy groups like the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, like the Canadian Constitution Foundation, government is just going to get bigger.
00:33:44.320And government is just going to make you pay for them getting bigger and bigger and telling you to shut up more and more and more.
00:33:51.320So we got to build this side of the movement. So if you have somebody in your circle who is open to the idea of maybe even just a kid's book, encouraging kids to be able to stand up for themselves, to speak their minds, to talk back to their teachers, perhaps, and to stand up for themselves.
00:34:10.320Make sure you share this episode. Make sure you go to the Canadian Constitution Foundation, sign up for free for their emails.
00:34:17.320I happen to know for a fact you can even watch like a mini course on the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and how it affects us and our Constitution for free on their website.
00:34:28.320These are from like trained lawyers who wear gowns and robes and stuff. They're really smart. So this is how we grow the movement. Okay. And the best way right now to grow the movement is to head on over to Juno News. Make sure you subscribe and make sure you share this episode.