Juno News - Regulating, Censoring and Namecalling

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show. This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:00:12.960 Coming up, Stephen Gilbeau's C10 backtrack is not enough, the long gun registry never truly went away, and a pastor speaks out after the government locked his church's doors.

00:00:25.500 The Andrew Lawton Show starts right now.

00:00:30.000 Welcome, everyone, to the Andrew Lawton Show, Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show here on True North.

00:00:37.160 It is May 4th, 2021. I believe I'm supposed to do a Star Wars pun on May 4th, but it would be inauthentic, so instead I will just play this little mini-ad that the Conservative Party of Canada put out, playing it for journalistic intrigue, not because I necessarily endorse this level of hokeyness.

00:01:00.000 Yes, the Conservatives taking aim at the attack on free speech coming from the Liberals, which at this point is fairly undeniable.

00:01:16.140 Bill C10, a bill that we've been talking about at True North and I've been talking about on this show for months, but people have only started to come around to understanding its significance in the last couple of weeks.

00:01:27.500 This is the bill that revamps dramatically broadcast regulations in Canada to, in the government's words, bring them into the digital age, but in actuality it means to vastly expand the authority and scope of power for the CRTC.

00:01:42.660 The Canadian Radio Television Communications Commission right now is limited to radio, television, and telecommunications.

00:01:51.140 Under this, it will become the regulator of the internet.

00:01:55.560 And as much as Minister Stephen Gilbeau, the Heritage Minister, wants to say this is just about going after Facebook and Twitter and YouTube and all of these big players,

00:02:05.040 it is impossible to go after platforms without going after the content their users post.

00:02:12.400 And I want to walk through what's happened in the last couple of weeks on this, because a lot of this has tended to get mired in the obfuscation from the Liberals,

00:02:21.740 where what originally happened is the Liberals said, no, no, no, we're not going after user-generated content.

00:02:27.180 And they put in a stipulation in the bill that specifically said, we're exempting this.

00:02:32.260 The Liberals on the Heritage Committee removed that.

00:02:35.660 What the Liberals did was they took it out, so all of a sudden there is no protection against the regulation of user-generated content.

00:02:42.500 A video that I might post to YouTube, something you might post to Twitter, or TikTok, or SoundCloud, or whatever the case may be.

00:02:48.840 And I want you to see this interview with Stephen Gilbeau, in which he is completely incoherent in his attempts to justify what the bill is actually about.

00:03:01.240 Take a look.

00:03:02.280 I know C10 was brought about to try to get some accountability from the Netflixes of the world,

00:03:09.160 to get them to contribute to Canadian content in the way that traditional broadcasters do.

00:03:13.860 But this amendment was put in, and you stood up when it was introduced and talked about this exclusion that was part of the bill

00:03:23.400 to basically protect user-generated content, to make it so that somebody putting something up on social media

00:03:30.400 would not somehow, even inadvertently, be affected by this.

00:03:35.020 You touted that.

00:03:37.140 And now it is gone from the bill.

00:03:41.860 What changed?

00:03:43.860 Nothing.

00:03:45.560 Bill C10, as you said in your introduction, is about ensuring that web giants pay their fair share

00:03:52.060 when it comes to Canadian culture, like traditional Canadian broadcasters do.

00:03:56.780 It's not a bill about content moderation.

00:03:59.420 The CRTC, in its more than 40 years of operation, has never moderated content that we hear on the radio,

00:04:06.800 that we see on TV.

00:04:07.680 The CRTC doesn't say, oh, well, this is good, this is bad.

00:04:10.520 And this bill is about ensuring that companies like Netflix, Spotify, but also YouTube,

00:04:17.420 which is the largest distributor of music in Canada, pay their fair share when it comes to Canadian culture.

00:04:22.940 That's all it is about.

00:04:24.400 It has nothing to do with content moderation.

00:04:27.900 So I'm going to flip the question for a moment here, Minister, because it was important enough to put that exclusion there in the first place.

00:04:36.100 Now it's gone.

00:04:37.320 Why was it important in the first place to put it there?

00:04:45.220 We're not interested.

00:04:47.020 I mean, it's not what the bill is about.

00:04:48.740 I mean, I hear you saying you're not interested, but there literally was an exclusion that was put in the original iteration of that bill,

00:04:54.420 the thing that was reviewed, and then it got to committee, and bingo, bango, bongo, the exclusion is gone.

00:05:00.340 So why was it important to put it there in the first place, such that now the committee has removed it?

00:05:07.480 Well, the committee decides what they want.

00:05:12.740 First of all, the committee hasn't even finished doing its work in terms of the amendments.

00:05:19.240 So we don't have a full picture of what the bill will look like when it comes back to the House of Commons for third reading.

00:05:28.380 Would you like to see the exclusion back in there?

00:05:31.820 It's not necessary.

00:05:33.780 If it's not necessary, why was it there in the first place?

00:05:37.480 Well, you know, we've worked on this for many months.

00:05:41.240 We came up with what we thought would be the best possible bill, but bill can always be perfected.

00:05:48.960 They will be amended.

00:05:50.640 Good on CBC for doing that, by the way.

00:05:52.960 Gilboa just kept going back to the same talking points, could not even understand or explain what the issue was.

00:05:59.900 He was talking about, well, you know, we change things all the time.

00:06:03.100 And originally what happened was the Liberals said they weren't going to reverse course, that they were going to keep it.

00:06:09.180 Finally, after days and days and days of backlash from civil liberties groups, from internet law experts, from the opposition, the Liberals have relented.

00:06:17.880 Minister Stephen Gilboa said they are going to put a new amendment forward that protects user-generated content from regulation.

00:06:27.040 This is what the minister said.

00:06:28.520 We want to make sure that the content that people upload on social media won't be considered as programming under the Act, and that it won't be regulated by the CRTC.

00:06:38.640 And that's why we will be bringing forward another amendment that will make this crystal clear.

00:06:44.380 No apology, no admission they got it wrong, the Liberals' position has been that everyone else is wrong, but they're doing this just for us.

00:06:52.720 They're doing this just to be nice.

00:06:54.340 Well, gee, golly, thanks.

00:06:56.840 But it would be a lot easier to take that if Minister Gilboa himself, and the Liberals generally, were not viciously insulting people for criticizing this bill of theirs.

00:07:06.860 Last week, Rachel Harder, a Conservative member of Parliament from Lethbridge, put forward a number of very legitimate criticisms, and Minister Gilboa, as True North reported, accused her and the Conservatives of catering to, quote, an extremist element, unquote, of the Conservative Party of Canada.

00:07:25.140 Then take a look at an exchange-in-question period this week.

00:07:28.380 Rachel Harder once again had a question, and Stephen Gilboa took it to an even weirder place.

00:07:33.920 It's sad that the minister still doesn't have an answer to this question.

00:07:37.000 It's been asked for days now, and still he continues to point to big organizations like Google and Facebook, rather than talking about the protection of individual rights and freedoms, which is the question at hand.

00:07:49.560 For bills like C-10, they're put through a sniff test, which means that the Justice Department goes through them and decides whether or not they adhere to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

00:07:57.880 I put forward a motion last week at committee, asking that there be another review done to this bill, because it has substantially undergone change.

00:08:06.400 Experts have stated that we need a new evaluation from the Justice Minister to determine if C-10 respects the Charter.

00:08:12.520 Does the minister agree?

00:08:14.500 The Honourable Minister.

00:08:16.000 Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

00:08:19.040 I find it incredibly hypocritical that the member of Lethbridge, who, given the opportunity, would not hesitate one minute to remove woman's right to choose, a right protected under the Charter of Rights and Freedom,

00:08:32.200 but would like us and Canadians to believe that all of a sudden she cares deeply about said Charter.

00:08:38.380 I have rarely seen such hypocrisy before in my life, Mr. Speaker.

00:08:42.500 Unbelievable. 0.51

00:08:44.300 Seriously.

00:08:47.780 Order.

00:08:50.180 Order.

00:08:52.980 Or how about this?

00:08:54.860 Listening to the minister, well, it makes me want to laugh, Mr. Speaker.

00:09:00.180 He is rejecting the opinions of all the experts in the country who have spoken up all week.

00:09:05.300 He's trying to defend the indefensible.

00:09:07.800 Let's be very clear.

00:09:08.640 C-10 does not regulate copyright.

00:09:10.340 It does not make web giants pay.

00:09:11.760 It does not review the role of CBC, Radio-Canada.

00:09:14.540 With the surprise amendments made to C-10 last week, without warning, he is giving even more power to the CRTC.

00:09:21.360 He's letting it censor users of social networks.

00:09:25.140 That's the truth.

00:09:27.120 Why does this minister stubbornly insist on going in this direction?

00:09:31.020 Why doesn't he listen to experts once and for all?

00:09:34.160 The Honourable Minister.

00:09:35.160 I would like to quote the head of an organization for cultural diversity and expression, who's addressed my colleague, saying that the CRTC has never regulated content on Canadian TV and radio, that it has never limited freedom of expression on the airwaves, and that this legislation will not enable the CRTC to do so.

00:10:00.220 And yet, the Conservative Party of Canada is the only party that continues to spread this fake news.

00:10:06.880 It's extremely, extremely unfortunate, Mr. Speaker.

00:10:09.340 So, on one hand, we have that the Conservatives are peddling fake news, on the other, that they're just going towards extremist realms, and then, of course, when all else fails, pivot to abortion and call a member of Parliament a hypocrite for daring to be pro-life while also supporting free speech.

00:10:26.620 Now, incidentally, Gilboa claims that abortion is protected in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

00:10:32.100 I didn't remember seeing it there.

00:10:34.160 I did take another look.

00:10:35.240 I even did one of those little Control-F or Command-F things where you try to look for a word, and I didn't see it anywhere.

00:10:41.000 Maybe he's got a different version than me.

00:10:43.280 In fact, he must, because there's no way the Liberals are working from the same version of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms that everyone else is.

00:10:49.540 If they're passing off Bill C-10 and believing that it is constitutional, when it dramatically regulates the very place where the bulk of discourse now takes place.

00:11:00.620 So, you've got Stephen Gilboa, who's accusing Conservatives of extremism and fake news, which I made a point in a video last week that bears repeating, is exactly why the Liberals cannot be trusted to regulate the Internet.

00:11:14.240 This is exactly why they should not be the arbiters of who gets a quote-unquote license.

00:11:19.880 Remember, Gilboa previously said that you might need to have a license to be an online publisher.

00:11:24.620 This is why they should not be the arbiters of who that is.

00:11:28.540 And even with this so-called protection for individual users, it is not going to do all that much.

00:11:36.480 The issue with the bill was not that one particular amendment.

00:11:39.140 That was certainly an issue, but it wasn't the issue.

00:11:42.060 The issue is that the Liberals are trying to inject government regulation into a space that is by design supposed to be more of an open forum.

00:11:50.760 It's not like regulating a radio or TV station where the bulk of the content on those stations comes from people who are in the employ of the stations themselves.

00:12:00.800 The bulk of content on Facebook and Google and YouTube comes from individual users who upload that content.

00:12:07.640 And in that sense, you cannot regulate platforms without regulating the content on them.

00:12:14.760 And they say, well, it's just about Canadian content and making these places pay.

00:12:19.160 Sure, come up with a tax structure that helps them.

00:12:22.160 They are, in fact, going after content.

00:12:24.780 And that's the issue.

00:12:26.400 And remember, the minister has confirmed that this week his so-called online harms legislation is coming.

00:12:32.760 And I describe this as a one-two punch.

00:12:36.200 First, you lay the groundwork to regulate the internet.

00:12:38.820 And second, you introduce this other bill that will put parameters that are very narrow on what sort of speech can be expressed in regulated fora.

00:12:49.320 And all of a sudden, what the government has done with two bills that seem to be separate

00:12:53.500 is made it so that they can actually regulate the content that is on the internet that you or I could post

00:12:59.600 based on this very narrow and, I would say, very censor-driven definition of hate speech and definition of online harm.

00:13:08.580 And this is all happening because, for the most part, people have not been paying attention.

00:13:13.340 And anytime someone speaks up about this, they're accused of being a conspiracy theorist.

00:13:17.920 It's a popular go-to for the liberals.

00:13:20.480 And this has been, suffice it to say, a very bad week for Stephen Gilbeau.

00:13:25.180 And for good reason.

00:13:26.060 This is not a defensible bill.

00:13:28.260 This is an inexplicable and indefensible bill.

00:13:30.520 So the fact that he's been trying to go out and basically hawk it as fervently as he has

00:13:35.960 is proof that the liberals are not actually listening to the pushback at all.

00:13:40.360 And when he has said previously that,

00:13:42.880 oh, well, we're not going after news websites, we're not going after news publishers,

00:13:46.260 one big concern is that Gilbeau and the liberal government have a very narrow definition for what

00:13:52.680 a news website is, what a journalist is.

00:13:55.400 I learned this the hard way, as you may recall, back in the 2019 election when I was banned from,

00:14:01.500 I'm trying to go through the list now.

00:14:02.800 I was banned from covering the liberal campaign, banned from covering liberal campaign events.

00:14:07.400 I was detained at roadside by police for trying to go to liberal campaign events.

00:14:14.180 I was then removed from a public event in which I was attending as a member of the public by yet again police.

00:14:21.340 And they apologized for that one, but wouldn't apologize for banning me from events.

00:14:25.160 And my personal favorite in earlier 2019 was when I was banned from attending

00:14:31.320 Chrystia Freeland's Media Freedom press conference.

00:14:34.920 Although I eventually got into that one after a little coup was staged by my fellow journalists,

00:14:40.140 and I'm still very appreciative to this day of their efforts.

00:14:43.480 But this is a government, and Trudeau put out a statement on May 3rd yesterday extolling the virtues of World Press Freedom Day.

00:14:50.580 So I, of course, tweeted a gentle reminder of his lackluster commitment to free speech and press freedom thus far.

00:14:59.040 But these are very important because how the government defines these things,

00:15:03.140 how the government constructs these frameworks and these parameters and these regulations,

00:15:08.240 matters a great deal.

00:15:09.980 And a lot of the criticism that they would have been getting from the media

00:15:13.060 went away when they said, well, we're not going after media outlets.

00:15:17.080 We're not going after online news.

00:15:18.600 And then a lot of the people that should have been criticized were like,

00:15:20.920 all right, we're fine.

00:15:21.780 They're not going after us.

00:15:22.860 We can back off from this.

00:15:24.520 But the devil is in the details.

00:15:26.300 And if the government does not have a definition of journalism that is consistent with what the constitutional definition is,

00:15:33.780 which is that, hey, there's a freedom to be a journalist.

00:15:36.580 Anyone can do it for themselves and decide, and the audience can decide if what they're doing is worth reading or watching or listening to.

00:15:43.320 So all of this is kind of coming from the same place here,

00:15:48.420 which is a government that is not actually respecting free speech,

00:15:51.760 a government that is not respecting press freedom,

00:15:54.100 and a government that is more focused on how we can put up limitations and regulations and stipulations on these freedoms

00:16:00.100 rather than upholding and preserving and protecting these freedoms.

00:16:04.420 So mark my words when I say that this so-called reversal from Gilboa and from the Liberals

00:16:10.900 is not going to fundamentally change what it was that was and is so dangerous about this bill.

00:16:18.040 When we come back, more of The Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.

00:16:23.940 You're tuned in to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:16:30.080 Welcome back to The Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.

00:16:33.640 Many of you may know, I certainly hope you do because I've been telling you enough,

00:16:38.040 I am producing right now a documentary on firearms owners in Canada called

00:16:42.440 Assaulted Justin Trudeau's War on Gun Owners.

00:16:45.480 And if you stay tuned, I think we'll have some little sneak peek footage to show you in just a couple of weeks from that.

00:16:51.440 It's coming along really well, but we got so much footage going across the country

00:16:55.300 that we are dealing with a lot of stuff to sift through right now.

00:16:59.040 But the real narrative behind this is that ordinary people in Canada who happen to be gun owners

00:17:04.820 are continually persecuted by the government.

00:17:07.780 Their rights, their lives, their livelihoods just don't matter to the government

00:17:11.540 as much as those of non-gun owners do.

00:17:14.820 And that's why this story piqued my interest from Brian Lilly at the Toronto Sun,

00:17:18.780 who will actually be in the documentary.

00:17:21.200 Brian Lilly has uncovered evidence that the RCMP kept a copy of the gun registry,

00:17:26.360 the long gun registry, which was repealed and whose data were supposed to be destroyed

00:17:31.620 by police agencies, which he has gotten from a criminal defense lawyer by the name of Ed Berlew,

00:17:37.620 who was sifting through documents sent over, disclosure documents by the Crown regarding his client.

00:17:43.620 And he found evidence, he says, that the RCMP kept a copy of the national gun registry

00:17:49.280 despite Parliament ordering it destroyed in 2012.

00:17:52.900 The registry had been on the books for about 22 years.

00:17:57.320 It was repealed by the Conservatives and not just stopped,

00:18:01.000 but stopped with a directive that all of the records from it had to be destroyed

00:18:05.320 because the rationale was that government did not deserve to have records

00:18:09.080 of every long gun and every shotgun, non-restricted firearms

00:18:12.840 that were owned by law-abiding gun owners.

00:18:16.280 But this lawyer saw documents from 2019 that had information that only could have come

00:18:23.520 from the registry, which he says is proof that someone within the RCMP

00:18:27.620 deliberately lied to Parliament and the courts.

00:18:31.300 And moreover, he found evidence that this document had passed through numerous departments

00:18:35.580 from the RCMP to the OPP and all of these other places.

00:18:39.840 So the document wasn't just stored, but was being disseminated.

00:18:43.780 And the big problem with this is that this means that information

00:18:47.480 that should not exist in a government database was not just being stored by the government,

00:18:53.000 but passed around as though it was not something that was supposed to be destroyed,

00:18:56.420 as though the government believed it was its right to keep this information.

00:19:00.580 Now, one of the things is that the information would be for a lot of people outdated.

00:19:05.160 If the government has in 2019 a registry that was last updated in 2012,

00:19:10.680 firearms could have changed hands a number of times.

00:19:13.180 But that almost makes it worse in a way, because someone who was on the registry

00:19:17.720 is owning a firearm in 2012, and then in the last nine years may have sold that gun

00:19:23.560 or given it away.

00:19:24.700 Suppose that gun turns up in a crime scene.

00:19:27.640 Now, we know that law-abiding gun owners are not the problem,

00:19:31.300 but I'm speaking hypothetically at this point.

00:19:33.740 Well, now police have this secret registry that they will use to tie this to someone else.

00:19:39.460 And what they do with that information, I have no idea, but I assume they're holding on to it

00:19:44.500 for a reason, because otherwise, why would they after it was ordered destroyed?

00:19:50.480 And Brian Lilly, and you should read his piece.

00:19:52.220 It's fantastically done.

00:19:53.700 Brian Lilly notes that the RCMP did not respond to requests for comment.

00:19:58.420 A lot of people have suspected this going back to 2013 in High River when RCMP officers were going

00:20:04.880 into people's houses and removing their guns.

00:20:06.660 The question was, well, wait, how do they know which houses?

00:20:09.040 How do they know which guns?

00:20:10.400 And this starts to tell us a little bit more of the picture of the why and how.

00:20:15.380 Now, this is proof that gun owners are under a continued assault,

00:20:18.720 which is exactly why I'm doing the project that I'm doing in Assaulted,

00:20:22.520 Justin Trudeau's War on Gun Owners.

00:20:24.480 And it's also why the point I've raised bears repeating that if you are not a gun owner,

00:20:29.300 you still need to understand that what's happening is a violation of rights

00:20:33.500 and is government overreach.

00:20:34.900 And if they're going to do it with gun owners, there's no guarantee they will not do it with 0.65

00:20:39.100 you as well.

00:20:40.760 And that's precisely the point here and why no one should just say, well, I'm not a gun

00:20:44.880 owner.

00:20:45.160 It doesn't affect me.

00:20:45.940 No, if governments are behaving like this, it affects everyone.

00:20:50.220 Before we take a break, I actually want to play just a very brief video clip for you

00:20:54.580 that I came across.

00:20:55.560 It's not connected with anything else we're doing on the show, but I think it encapsulates

00:20:59.840 something that people need to see.

00:21:02.560 And it's difficult to watch, but I think it's important nonetheless.

00:21:06.240 Now, this comes from an independent media organization I hadn't come across before called

00:21:10.660 the People's Media.

00:21:11.580 I don't know much about them.

00:21:12.600 I'm not endorsing them, but you know, I'm a big believer in the value of independent

00:21:16.200 media.

00:21:16.600 And they filmed a video of a woman who was protesting against lockdowns in York region

00:21:23.660 outside, safely, no real issues there.

00:21:27.900 And a police officer is telling her that if she doesn't go home, she's going to get charged.

00:21:34.440 And you see her breaking down.

00:21:36.420 And at first you're like, okay, is this woman just trying to get out of the ticket?

00:21:39.340 But then you listen carefully and you hear why she's so defeated.

00:21:43.820 Go home, otherwise you will be charged.

00:21:47.240 Do you understand that?

00:21:48.180 I just want to go to work.

00:21:49.800 Okay.

00:21:50.500 Do you want to go to work?

00:21:51.900 I just want to go back to my mom.

00:21:53.840 I want my business back.

00:21:55.660 I want people to be happy.

00:21:56.520 Do you understand that?

00:21:57.480 Do you understand you will be charged?

00:21:59.040 I can't help you to die.

00:21:59.820 No, you just can't.

00:22:00.780 You lost your job?

00:22:02.460 My business.

00:22:03.220 No warning.

00:22:03.920 You already issued a warning?

00:22:05.100 I'm sorry to hear that.

00:22:05.800 No, what do you do to me?

00:22:07.440 I watch that four or five times now and every time it's difficult.

00:22:11.440 Here's a woman. 1.00

00:22:12.140 I don't know her.

00:22:12.900 I don't know her business.

00:22:14.120 I don't know anything about her except what I saw there.

00:22:16.480 But you can't fake that.

00:22:19.480 This is a woman who has been pushed to the breaking point.

00:22:22.660 She has nothing left.

00:22:24.000 The only thing she can do is stand up and say, I'm fighting back against this.

00:22:28.540 And then what happens?

00:22:29.540 She feels just one more boot on the back of her neck.

00:22:34.080 And I want anyone, because I get emails from people whenever I criticize lockdowns,

00:22:38.420 thinking that, you know, I'm trying to sign the death warrants of people.

00:22:41.220 Well, this is a woman whose business's death warrant was signed by lockdown apologists. 0.99

00:22:46.520 And do not for a second believe there is not a human toll to these restrictions and lockdowns.

00:22:54.380 When we come back, more of The Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.

00:22:58.940 You're tuned in to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:23:01.680 Welcome back to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:23:06.560 We've had over the last more than a year now, what are we talking about here, 13, 14 months,

00:23:11.900 a number of churches that have been forced along with other places of worship into this yo-yoing of restrictions.

00:23:18.900 They can operate, then they have to shut down, and it goes back and forth.

00:23:22.840 And all of this has been, many people argue, a complete violation of religious freedom.

00:23:29.380 Governments, including in Ontario, have been laying a number of charges against churches.

00:23:33.980 They have the ability to fight these in court.

00:23:36.380 But you can't fight in court necessarily as easily when your building is locked.

00:23:42.140 This is what happened to Trinity Bible Chapel.

00:23:44.740 The Attorney General of Ontario went to court and asked for an injunction to literally lock the pastors and congregation out of the church.

00:23:52.820 A court granted that.

00:23:54.180 They are locked out right now until Saturday, and this could potentially be renewed.

00:23:59.120 The pastor for the church in southwestern Ontario, Pastor Jacob Rayom, joins me on the line now.

00:24:05.040 Pastor, good to talk to you. Thanks for being with me today.

00:24:07.700 It's an honour to be with you. Thank you, Andrew.

00:24:09.520 Now, you would normally be doing this interview from inside your church,

00:24:13.040 but you can't even get there as a pastor right now to do administrative work.

00:24:17.760 Am I correct?

00:24:18.940 Right. The locks have been changed, and there's signs on the door saying that we've been ordered out of the building.

00:24:25.800 So, yeah.

00:24:26.660 And this isn't just a ban on having a service.

00:24:29.460 This is a ban on you going in.

00:24:31.860 Were you given notice to go in and get things that you had in there, at least?

00:24:36.600 Yeah. So the court order came on Friday, late Friday afternoon,

00:24:40.020 and we were given until, I believe, 2 o'clock on Saturday to do what we had to do.

00:24:45.920 This is the second time we've been before the courts about having our building locked,

00:24:49.480 so we were prepared to do this.

00:24:53.600 Yeah, we were prepared to pack things up.

00:24:55.640 And the timing of this is, of course, not coincidental.

00:25:00.700 On Sunday, you would have been in there having church.

00:25:04.720 Right. So the Ministry of the Attorney General had an emergency hearing on the Friday

00:25:09.500 because they wanted to make sure that we didn't worship our Lord and Saviour on Sunday.

00:25:15.180 What's the basis for this?

00:25:16.700 Is it that they're convinced that the tickets they've been giving are just not good enough?

00:25:20.840 I believe so. So we've received so many tickets.

00:25:24.780 I think our church now, as an entity, has upwards of over $40 million, perhaps, in maximum fines.

00:25:33.560 Personally, I think I'm up to $700,000, $800,000 in maximum fines.

00:25:37.600 Every elder has been fined.

00:25:39.040 We had people, we had police cars waiting outside of our church the last time we held a service,

00:25:43.840 and they would tick people off as they left the facility and ticket them on the side of the road.

00:25:48.420 And even last Saturday, there were people praying in the church parking lot as the doors were about ready to get locked.

00:25:54.340 And we must have had 20 authorities watching us.

00:25:58.260 And then as they left, they got ticketed.

00:26:00.240 And then people received visits from the police last night for being at a small little prayer meeting in a parking lot.

00:26:05.060 You wrote something about this on the church's website.

00:26:08.480 And I want to read the title because I think this is very important.

00:26:11.680 And certainly for people that are not within the church family, they might not understand this.

00:26:16.260 You say, we lost the building and kept the church.

00:26:19.520 We often refer to churches as buildings.

00:26:22.520 But in this particular case, you've been forced to confront the reality that the building is not, in fact, the church.

00:26:29.560 That's absolutely correct.

00:26:31.040 So my goal as a shepherd of our church is to defend.

00:26:35.240 One of my objectives, I have to feed my sheep and I have to defend my sheep.

00:26:38.620 And right now, since March of last year, our sheep have been under assault from the province of Ontario.

00:26:44.580 And the province of Ontario has sought to dictate to us how we should worship our Savior.

00:26:50.200 And my assertion is that Doug Ford, while he has not claimed this explicitly,

00:26:56.880 he has asserted himself as the de facto head of the church in Ontario.

00:27:01.340 And we are resisting his headship over the church because we believe that Jesus Christ is head of the church.

00:27:05.880 If you say that the church is not the building, I have to ask, why does it matter that you worship inside the building?

00:27:12.840 Why have the concessions such as drive-in services, virtual services, why have they not been, in your view, good enough?

00:27:20.440 Well, first of all, we own the land.

00:27:22.780 The Lord Jesus Christ has allowed us to steward that land.

00:27:27.000 And so we want to use that land for his glory.

00:27:29.180 And we have used that land for his glory by inviting our community to come worship with us and to gather in the church physically

00:27:36.540 and to sing his praises and exchange greetings of warm Christian fellowship.

00:27:42.480 And so we wanted to assert Christ's crown rights over the church. 0.89

00:27:47.020 We want to assert Christ's headship over his own worship.

00:27:50.580 And Christ has commanded us to gather.

00:27:53.540 The very word church, people don't understand this.

00:27:56.200 The New Testament was originally written in Greek, and the Greek word for church is ekklesia, and it means gathering.

00:28:04.240 Where you don't have a gathering, you don't have a church.

00:28:06.880 And an online gathering is not—gathering in pixelated images is not a gathering.

00:28:12.200 You can't have a marriage on the Internet, and you can't have a church on the Internet.

00:28:15.900 You can't raise your children on the Internet.

00:28:17.920 And in fact, the Apostle John referred to his congregation as his little children.

00:28:22.020 And so there was a season there where I was doing sermons on the Internet, and my heart would break after every time I did it

00:28:27.560 because I thought—I felt like I was interacting with what John affectionately referred to as his little children.

00:28:33.580 I'm having to raise my little children through the Internet.

00:28:37.320 And any parent would understand that that would be absolutely gut-wrenching

00:28:40.660 if they can't understand what the role of a minister is towards his congregation.

00:28:44.040 And one point that I think you raised that's very important there,

00:28:47.800 because a lot of the time critics of churches that have been doing what you're doing have said,

00:28:52.380 well, you know what, all these other churches are going online, why can't they?

00:28:55.960 But the reality is even the government has conceded that weddings and funerals need to be done in person.

00:29:02.280 Now, with reduced capacity, but the government even concedes that certain things have to be in person to be real.

00:29:09.560 And I think you're very right to point out that if that's the case, you can't be married on the Internet,

00:29:14.260 you can't have a funeral on the Internet, then why should you be expected to have a service on the Internet?

00:29:20.300 Well, that's absolutely right.

00:29:22.160 But what it's coming down to is I've been told by people in government and people in the media,

00:29:26.260 well, why can't you just go online and do what the government says?

00:29:29.380 At the end of the day, it boils down to one issue.

00:29:32.400 Who has supremacy over the church?

00:29:35.000 So a pastor friend of mine recently noted that something to the effect of we live in a day and age

00:29:41.940 where the government seems to think they have the right to dictate our terms of worship.

00:29:46.860 But if the church or ministers speak into government policy and government actions,

00:29:51.580 we're yelled at and shouted down for violating separation of church and state.

00:29:56.040 Well, that's a complete misunderstanding of separation of church and state.

00:29:59.120 Because the separation of church and state means that the government has no control over our terms of worship,

00:30:04.660 over our polity, and over our governance as a church.

00:30:08.060 And there have been wars that have been fought over this.

00:30:10.020 People have shed their blood over this.

00:30:12.460 And I'm not about to hand the bride of Christ over to the province of Ontario

00:30:16.460 because it's my job as a shepherd to stand up and defend what God has entrusted to me.

00:30:20.860 And when I stand before Christ on Judgment Day,

00:30:22.800 I want to be able to say I did whatever I could to protect his bride.

00:30:25.940 One thing that I think the government has not acknowledged,

00:30:31.620 and perhaps they're not aware or perhaps they're just being willfully ignorant with a lot of these restrictions,

00:30:36.820 is that the 2,000 years of Christianity that has developed has included gathering.

00:30:44.420 And this is very biblical.

00:30:45.920 It's very clearly defined.

00:30:47.440 And the idea that man could change that overnight

00:30:50.680 is a fundamental inversion of what the Christian faith or what any religion is actually about.

00:30:56.760 Right.

00:30:57.240 And the true Christians will gather.

00:30:59.200 I mean, there has been governments in the past who have attempted to do similar things.

00:31:02.300 I don't know if it's ever been done in the name of public health,

00:31:04.360 but it's certainly been in the name of submitting to some sort of state dogma,

00:31:09.680 whether it's a state religion or something else.

00:31:12.540 But churches managed to gather.

00:31:15.460 The early Christians didn't have buildings.

00:31:17.160 They gathered under the city of Rome in the catacombs during the Reformation.

00:31:21.940 The covenanters in Scotland had to gather in fields.

00:31:25.540 And the punishment, if they were found out, the covenanters were found out,

00:31:29.080 they could be killed.

00:31:30.000 And some of them were.

00:31:31.220 John Bunyan was a Baptist minister in the 17th century.

00:31:34.240 He spent many years in jail because he believed that God had called him to preach the gospel,

00:31:38.660 and he would gather his congregation in forests.

00:31:40.540 So the reality is that true faithful ministers have always gathered their congregations.

00:31:47.260 You are locked out until Saturday.

00:31:49.720 What's happening between now and then?

00:31:52.360 So we're in court Thursday morning at 10 o'clock to talk about this again.

00:31:56.000 And the government is seeking to extend this?

00:31:59.040 Is that their goal, to keep you locked out indefinitely?

00:32:01.940 My understanding is the Ministry of the Attorney General would like to see us locked out of our church

00:32:05.680 until COVID's over, whenever that is.

00:32:08.660 Wow.

00:32:09.040 Interesting thing is it happened in court last week, and the judge commented on something that was going on,

00:32:14.880 because you know that all the courts, I think, in Ontario are doing it on Zoom, right?

00:32:18.260 And so the judge made a comment about some interaction in the Zoom call,

00:32:23.120 and he said something to the effect of, I'm sorry, this is very unnatural to do this on Zoom.

00:32:27.280 You should enter that as evidence on Thursday, that if court proceedings aren't natural,

00:32:34.540 then how can church services be?

00:32:36.140 Well, exactly, exactly.

00:32:37.700 And again, the churches have been meeting for, I mean, if you want to go into the Old Testament,

00:32:42.520 we've been meeting since creation, at least once a week in gathering together.

00:32:45.760 But look, if I thought that this was as big of a threat as the media was drumming it up to be,

00:32:52.980 and as the government was drumming it up to be, I might be more sympathetic in limiting the capacity

00:32:58.520 of our church.

00:32:59.280 Okay, but my observation on the ground, and as I have looked at the numbers, the government's own numbers,

00:33:07.480 I'm not seeing an overwhelming amount of deaths if you compare 2020 with 2019,

00:33:14.800 or if you compare deaths year for year.

00:33:16.700 I mean, if we really had a massive outbreak of some serious contagion,

00:33:23.280 we would all know multiple people who would be dead.

00:33:27.840 And not only that, the whole stay home, stay safe thing would be a misnomer

00:33:31.720 because they'd be begging us to go help them bury the bodies

00:33:34.540 and minister to the dead people or the dying people on their deathbeds.

00:33:39.680 But that's just, that's not going on.

00:33:42.600 It's not going on.

00:33:44.140 And I've, I mean, I've lived in this country all but five years.

00:33:46.960 I lived in the States where I did my training, but all but five years,

00:33:49.580 I lived in this country my whole life.

00:33:51.380 And my whole life, I've heard about hospitals at capacity

00:33:55.320 and hospitals having massive wait times and ICUs being flooded.

00:34:01.620 And all of a sudden this year, it's different.

00:34:05.200 We need to shut down all of society because the ICUs are being flooded.

00:34:09.080 That's not my primary area of interest.

00:34:11.300 My primary area of interest is the supremacy of Christ over his church.

00:34:15.240 I'm a minister.

00:34:16.100 John 10 tells us that if there is a threat to the church of God

00:34:19.600 and if the ministers run, they're not true shepherds, they're hirelings.

00:34:22.420 And so I don't want to be found as a hireling on the day of judgment.

00:34:26.160 Amen to that.

00:34:27.460 Trinity Bible Chapel, Pastor Jacob Rayom joining me now

00:34:31.380 from not the church where he belongs.

00:34:34.400 Pastor, thank you so much for coming.

00:34:36.740 Yeah, thanks, Andrew, for having me.

00:34:38.740 That was Pastor Jacob Rayom of the Trinity Bible Chapel

00:34:42.360 in southwestern Ontario.

00:34:44.160 And interestingly enough, we didn't get into it during the interview,

00:34:47.080 but it is a new church building.

00:34:49.760 For the longest time, they didn't have a permanent space.

00:34:52.040 They finally, in I think 2019, built this permanent space to be their church.

00:34:56.580 And now the government is, what, not even two years later, locking them out of it

00:35:00.980 because putting millions and millions of dollars in tickets on them isn't enough.

00:35:05.640 Tickets that they have a legal right to fight.

00:35:08.560 And that's true of this church.

00:35:10.500 It's true of the Church of God in Elmer,

00:35:12.660 which as well has had, I believe, $50 million in tickets,

00:35:15.600 which at a certain point, I mean, it's just theatrical.

00:35:17.900 You're just adding more abstract things on when these are going to be fought in court

00:35:22.500 and not on the ground with chains on a lock in a parking lot.

00:35:26.920 One thing I would point out here is that I do not believe that any pastor, minister, priest

00:35:32.120 has to behave in a certain way.

00:35:34.580 If there are ministers that are convinced that they can keep a biblical form of worship

00:35:39.720 by closing their doors and doing it online, that's up to them.

00:35:43.100 Again, my issue is that I do not believe for a second government can or should make those

00:35:48.940 determinations.

00:35:49.580 It's not for government to say, well, we think that your faith is fine with having Zoom services.

00:35:55.580 We think your faith is fine.

00:35:56.660 We don't think, you know, you need to do communion here in the case of Catholics.

00:36:00.060 We don't think you need to do this.

00:36:01.180 And Pastor Rayom mentioned very clearly that when you are talking about weddings,

00:36:07.300 you can't do it online.

00:36:08.500 Government recognizes that, which means that government concedes some religious rights,

00:36:12.940 cannot be done remotely.

00:36:15.660 And in that case, it's up to religious denominations to determine what way they operate in and not

00:36:22.260 up to government.

00:36:23.160 And the idea that government gets to be the arbiter of this, the arbiter of faith practices

00:36:27.800 is absolutely insane.

00:36:29.620 A complete inversion of what was supposed to be the removal of government from religion.

00:36:35.180 A lot of people talk about the removal of religion from government.

00:36:37.860 Well, that has to be a two-way street.

00:36:39.260 And just as a matter of fact, this week we have Pastor James Coates of the Grace Life

00:36:44.320 Church near Edmonton on trial, as well a church that at one point had its parking lot barricaded

00:36:50.600 by police so no one could go there, had its pastor literally behind bars.

00:36:56.100 And it's a very small number, relatively speaking, of ministers that are standing up, whether you're

00:37:01.340 talking about the Church of God, Grace Life, Trinity Bible Chapel, some other isolated examples.

00:37:06.460 And a lot of people, even within the Christian community, are trying to hold these ministers

00:37:10.820 out as being pariahs.

00:37:12.860 But it's not for the government to decide.

00:37:15.560 That's the whole point.

00:37:16.380 If churches want to have these, and denominations want to have these discussions internally about

00:37:20.800 what can we do, how do we respond to COVID, what's the best practice, that's fine.

00:37:25.600 But the idea that the state would lock pastors and congregations out of their churches

00:37:31.440 is egregious.

00:37:33.180 We've got to end things here.

00:37:34.940 We will be back in just a couple of days' time with more of Canada's most irreverent

00:37:38.880 talk show.

00:37:39.600 You're tuned in to The Andrew Lawton Show on True North.

00:37:42.020 Thank you, God bless, and good day.

00:37:43.680 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:37:45.540 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - May 04, 2021

Regulating, Censoring and Namecalling

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