Juno News - Religious freedom in Canada is under attack

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

00:00:12.460 Coming up, we talk about civil liberties and religious freedom with lawyer Lisa Bildy, Pastor Aaron Rock, and Pastor Henry Hildebrandt.

00:00:21.820 The Andrew Lawton Show starts right now.

00:00:25.340 Hello and welcome to The Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.

00:00:31.980 As you've no doubt realized during the last two years, this show has had to devote a lot of attention to civil liberties,

00:00:38.640 and part of that has been because there's been no shortage of material in people trying to, and in many cases succeeding, in trampling on civil liberties.

00:00:47.160 I wanted to focus on one of those in particular, I guess a couple of related ones.

00:00:51.040 At the core, religious freedom, but within that we also have freedom of speech, freedom of association,

00:00:56.620 all of these things that are supposed to be hallmarks of a free society.

00:01:00.580 We've got a panel of people that have very direct experience with how this has been unfolding in Canada,

00:01:07.440 specifically in the province of Ontario.

00:01:09.860 I'm joined by Lisa Bildy, a lawyer and the founder of Libertist Law,

00:01:13.440 Henry Hildebrandt, who is the pastor with the Church of God in Elmer, Ontario,

00:01:17.660 and also Pastor Aaron Rock of Harvest in Windsor.

00:01:21.360 Thank you so much for being with me. It's great to talk to you all.

00:01:25.000 You're welcome, Andrew.

00:01:26.380 So let me start with you, Pastor Hildebrandt, because you and I spoke back in,

00:01:30.700 I think it was April of 2020, when the pandemic was relatively new,

00:01:34.980 and even something as simple as having a church service in the parking lot of your church,

00:01:40.560 a drive-in church service, was raising alarm bells with the local police.

00:01:45.680 And at a certain point, you won that battle.

00:01:47.460 The government said, no, no, no, drive-in's fine.

00:01:49.960 But did you ever imagine then that less than two years later,

00:01:54.140 you'd have been locked out of your church, had hundreds of thousands,

00:01:57.860 millions of dollars of fines heaped on you?

00:01:59.840 Did you ever imagine then that that was where this was headed?

00:02:02.320 Andrew, not at all. Not at all. I would have never imagined that.

00:02:07.280 I thought back then they would realize that the importance of it was

00:02:12.020 and how important the church services were to us.

00:02:14.520 So I never thought it would go like this. Never at all.

00:02:17.440 And same question to you, Pastor Rock.

00:02:19.620 I know you've been very outspoken about a lot of these measures

00:02:22.760 and the effect they've had on your church.

00:02:24.820 Windsor, in particular, has oftentimes been a bit more restrictive

00:02:27.900 than the province as a whole has.

00:02:29.500 Did you see things going where they've ended up going?

00:02:33.260 Well, not in the first couple of weeks.

00:02:35.560 I sort of hoped for the best, assumed the best of our officials.

00:02:40.420 But when we started to see them backpedaling, changing, adding to orders,

00:02:46.800 public officials flagrantly violating the ROA during the same periods of time

00:02:53.180 and they were charging men like myself, then I started to grow increasingly concerned

00:02:58.200 about where this was all leading.

00:03:00.400 And of course, now we're in a situation that's unimaginable.

00:03:03.000 I mean, many of the quote-unquote conspiracy theories have now very much become true.

00:03:08.440 Lisa, you and I have spoken about these issues and a number of others on the show

00:03:12.520 and off the outside of the show in the past.

00:03:14.880 And I know that you're kind of in a paradoxical position

00:03:18.240 because you would love to not have the workload you do.

00:03:21.020 You would love to not have as many of these things that need your intervention.

00:03:24.760 Yet here we are.

00:03:26.340 Well, it's been relentless.

00:03:27.840 I mean, I'm operating most nights on about five hours of sleep

00:03:31.240 because it's just been one problem after another.

00:03:34.220 I mean, you know, I sort of anticipated that this would not go well,

00:03:38.240 although I don't think that I anticipated how badly back in March of 2020.

00:03:42.580 It was immediately concerning that you could simply not flip a switch on a complex society

00:03:47.880 and not expect to have massive repercussions.

00:03:51.080 And I still remember kind of a feeling of shock that we would even attempt such a thing.

00:03:56.240 And sure enough, you know, and by the way, we threw out all the pandemic plans

00:03:59.820 that we would normally use to deal with situations like this,

00:04:03.660 which all require us to take into account all of the social determinants of health,

00:04:08.980 as they say, in public health, you know,

00:04:10.820 and that means keeping people's lives as normal as possible

00:04:13.600 and restricting people's comings and goings just to the minimum

00:04:17.740 and regionally focused and all those kinds of things.

00:04:20.340 We threw it all out the window.

00:04:21.960 And, you know, I think, honestly, the last two years have been a function of trying to dig back out

00:04:28.140 from all the fear that was perpetuated early on to get people to comply.

00:04:31.660 And it's not going very well.

00:04:33.060 Well, it's really not going well.

00:04:34.620 And I just sit in shock and amazement every day at how much worse it's gone.

00:04:39.640 I want to talk about some of the bigger picture aspects of this,

00:04:42.640 but I also want to get a bit of a status update

00:04:44.500 because I know we've been covering your case, Pastor Hildebrandt,

00:04:48.600 and your church as well, Pastor Rock.

00:04:50.360 So I'll start with you, Pastor Hildebrandt.

00:04:52.460 Where are things now?

00:04:53.600 I mean, have you been able to get into your building?

00:04:56.020 What legal battles are you facing?

00:04:58.100 This might take up the whole show.

00:04:59.520 So perhaps the top line summary of just where things are right now.

00:05:03.920 So right now we are in our building.

00:05:06.140 We're allowed to be in, of course, Ontario just now, again, was it last week, said again,

00:05:11.660 well, that was just for certain towns here in Southern Ontario where it's back to 50% of capacity.

00:05:19.460 That's what they are saying at this point.

00:05:21.680 What we are back in the building.

00:05:23.500 We did end up having to pay the $274,000 because they were, of course, the judge ruled that they were going to get,

00:05:31.720 go after us, whatever it would take.

00:05:35.460 Single moms get there, take their assets or young families, whatever it was. 1.00

00:05:40.580 And that's where we drew the line in the sand.

00:05:42.280 We said, no, we're not going to let those families go under, so to speak.

00:05:45.880 So, and it was crowdfunded.

00:05:48.100 So the money did come in.

00:05:49.440 The monies have been paid, but I'm hoping that, that, that we have not seen the end of that because it is extremely, extremely hard to see that that would be happening in Canada.

00:06:01.460 Extremely unfair and wrong, in my opinion.

00:06:03.840 And same question to you, Pastor Rock, where are things now, just in the landscape of what you've had to go through?

00:06:10.600 We're in our building, we're, we're operating, we're doing, we're doing ministry.

00:06:14.620 Many people's lives are being positively impacted.

00:06:17.720 In terms of all the court charges and whatnot, those are sort of all in limbo.

00:06:21.380 I haven't heard much about those for a little bit.

00:06:23.100 So we're just waiting on that.

00:06:24.900 But beyond the $400,000 and fines that I personally face, my bigger concern is that a lot of our people have lost their jobs.

00:06:32.320 People that are career engineers, hospital executives, nurses, even a local physician.

00:06:38.240 So we have several people in our church that won't show their papers, so to speak.

00:06:43.220 And so we have a little bit of a concern for some of them.

00:06:47.120 Some of them are finding work elsewhere, but the, the fines to, to my, myself personally are one thing.

00:06:52.780 But what really breaks my heart is so many good people that have been working, municipal government and whatnot for many, many years.

00:06:59.340 Seasoned police officers have been tossed out on their ear with no recourse.

00:07:04.580 Yeah, and, and that actually raises a question I wanted to put to you, Lisa, which just shows just the sheer inconsistency and callousness of a lot of these assaults on religious freedom.

00:07:14.660 Because what we've been going through in society for the last two years are things where people, I think, have been more drawn to spirituality, more drawn to faith, more drawn to religion.

00:07:23.760 Because they're finding that there are a lot of struggles that the world and, I mean, the government are heaping on them.

00:07:29.300 And in so many ways that was taken away from people.

00:07:31.820 Right, and the government, right at the outset of this, declared churches and other religious venues to be non-essential.

00:07:40.680 And that was, that was our big beef right from the beginning.

00:07:43.220 You know, Pastor Hildebrandt, I helped him get his, his drive-in services legalized.

00:07:48.480 We, we managed to have the government walk that back after we sued them way back in the beginning.

00:07:53.000 And in those early days, it seemed like maybe, you know, the government still had some respect for the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, because when you drew it to their attention that they were overstepping, they did pull back.

00:08:03.900 But it seems as we've gone on, they've become more and more emboldened.

00:08:06.740 They've dug deeper.

00:08:08.820 You know, they've, they've been more egregious in what they've, what they've pushed forward.

00:08:12.980 And they are denying people.

00:08:15.740 Well, everyone is impacted nowadays.

00:08:17.740 It's not just churchgoers, but, but certainly at this time, you would think that people would, would need those services, need that access to that community more and more.

00:08:27.420 And, you know, a lot of what I've been reading and thinking about lately is just, you know, how our society was so susceptible to all of this.

00:08:35.220 And some of the darker sides of things that we're seeing now with these vaccine mandates, our fellow citizens being really quite, well,

00:08:46.600 I don't even know what the word is, callous towards their fellow citizens.

00:08:50.720 How do we get to a point like that?

00:08:52.180 And I do think that the lack of community, the lack of, of connection, the lack of roots that we experience in our society and have over a number of decades is kind of coming to, to fruition here.

00:09:04.000 We, the people who are connected in communities seem to be doing better.

00:09:07.920 And the churches provide that for people.

00:09:10.740 Without it, a lot, a lot of folks are left kind of, you know, drifting in the breeze sort of thing.

00:09:17.380 Pastor Rock, I know a lot of Christians, and some may argue this is to their detriment, tend to shy away from politics or certainly individual churches as institutions try to avoid politics.

00:09:27.680 Now, I think that becomes very difficult when politics is directly impeding your ability to, to function and your ability to gather for worship.

00:09:35.600 But, but was being political, was this something that was uncomfortable for you initially?

00:09:40.020 Or was this something that you've always welcomed when it comes up?

00:09:43.460 I wasn't as political as I am now, because I've become more awakened to the fact that politics isn't primarily about building roads and bridges anymore.

00:09:51.520 It's about false ideologies.

00:09:54.420 It's about the government taking a status position, a totalitarian position, literally seeking to control every single aspect of people's lives, right down to their expressions of faith, how they spend their money, whether they can work or not, how far they need to be removed from a loved one, these sorts of things.

00:10:13.220 So I think historically, I just did a podcast on this that will come out today.

00:10:17.500 Historically, Christians sort of had the notion politics has no place in the pulpit.

00:10:20.940 I think that's a myth, actually, because if you're silent on some of the tyranny or the cultural wars that we're fighting, that's a political statement.

00:10:29.980 So you basically have a choice to follow the politically correct narrative or to push back like Elijah did to Ahab or Joseph did to, or Moses did to Pharaoh and to hold the state to account, to govern in a lawful, moral way.

00:10:43.820 So, yeah, we're engaging more of the issues.

00:10:46.680 And, you know, as per Lisa's comment, they just seem to be building and stacking up one upon the other day after day.

00:10:52.820 And Pastor Hildebrandt, I mean, a similar question to you.

00:10:56.120 You've been speaking in front of large groups of anti-lockdown rallies and so on.

00:11:02.740 And a lot of these people I know are not Christians, and they may not have ever heard someone preach before.

00:11:07.520 So this is you going into a world that I don't think you had previously to the pandemic.

00:11:12.920 But same question.

00:11:13.660 I mean, was this uncomfortable for you, this idea of taking on a political fight as much as your religious fight?

00:11:19.320 It's definitely something that we have not done before, as you imagine.

00:11:24.860 I think Lisa and Aaron said it so well.

00:11:27.880 I don't think we have a choice at this point but to take a stand because it's not that we as the church have gone into the lanes of the politic, but it's the other way around.

00:11:39.220 They have stepped into God's lane, so to speak.

00:11:41.740 And we either let them rule us and tell us and shut us down and do with the churches whatever they feel like doing, or we take a stand.

00:11:52.520 But it's not comfortable.

00:11:53.800 It's not comfortable to do.

00:11:55.040 But what has comforted me is, as Pastor Rock already mentioned, is just look in the Bible.

00:12:00.720 You don't have to search very far.

00:12:02.680 Look at Jesus himself, and he's our prime example of our preacher.

00:12:06.140 He dealt with the issues of the day, straightforward, head-on, and I don't think we have a choice but to do otherwise.

00:12:13.360 I mean, to me, I look at situations like, so we have over 1,000 recorded pages in Fox Book of Martyrs.

00:12:20.140 What was wrong with these people?

00:12:22.120 Why were they killed?

00:12:23.740 Why were they burned at the stake?

00:12:25.420 It was because of civil disobedience.

00:12:27.280 And I think, to a large degree, people today don't realize anymore that, as Christians, there comes a time when we have to do that.

00:12:35.680 We have to obey God rather than men.

00:12:39.060 That's, I think, a very interesting point you raise, Pastor.

00:12:42.080 And I'm going to revisit that in a moment.

00:12:43.680 But I want to turn to you first, Lisa, because I've heard a lot of people that have said,

00:12:47.660 Well, yeah, I support religious freedom, but, oh, I don't like what this church teaches, or, oh, I don't like how this pastor, not referring to present company, might speak out about X issue or something like that.

00:12:58.340 People do this when it comes to free speech as well.

00:13:00.560 They say, well, yeah, I support free speech, but maybe I don't like that particular expression.

00:13:04.580 And I do think that, in some ways, we've seen the last two years has made some strange bedfellows, so to speak, of people that are coming at this from all different angles that might not agree on some core ideals, but they do agree on some of the bigger picture items.

00:13:20.120 But I also see some people that have decided, well, maybe this isn't the hill to die on.

00:13:26.060 Well, that's true.

00:13:27.100 You know, I think Pastor Hildebrand has certainly seen this with his church, that he's actually, he's now ministering to a much broader group of people than he would have expected to, and I'm sure Pastor Rock as well.

00:13:39.160 But, you know, there are a lot of people who are finding them through all of this that's going on.

00:13:45.020 There are some very interesting realignments that are going on as more and more people start to become uncomfortable with where this society is going.

00:13:52.440 They wouldn't have necessarily been on the same page before, but are now prepared to take up the cause a bit more, and do recognize that religious freedom is kind of the canary in the coal mine for a liberal society.

00:14:05.280 You know, it might seem counterintuitive, but, you know, we have to, in a liberal society, we do, and that's small L liberal, we do protect the individual rights to worship the way we want,

00:14:17.500 and to believe what we want, and to speak how we, how we wish, and as we start to see more and more pressures on, on churches to conform with these sort of statist ideologies,

00:14:30.340 you know, that, that's an alarm bell that we ought not to miss, and so, you know, I think maybe some of these things were percolating in the background before, and, and more people, and people weren't as aware of them, unless they were actively in the Christian faith,

00:14:43.060 but a lot of what's gone on over the last 20 months has, has, has, well, I think it's, it's awakened a lot of people to, to other problems in our society that they may not have been aware of before,

00:14:55.680 so in some ways it's good. In other words, you know, we're sort of getting a mass red, red pilling going on, that, that would have taken a lot longer to achieve,

00:15:03.700 as to where the, where the weaknesses and fault points, fault lines are in our society.

00:15:08.920 Have you been seeing that just in your, your conversations with your congregation, Pastor Rock, that there are more people that are awakening,

00:15:16.460 not just to some of the spiritual truths you've been preaching, but, but even some of these societal level issues that Lisa has just alluded to?

00:15:23.820 Yeah, I mean, ultimately, we would attribute it to a worldview crisis,

00:15:28.080 so we have, for many years in our country, peddled humanism, secularism, the myth that secularism is spiritually neutral,

00:15:36.760 the myth of the secular state, and people have sort of gone along to get along,

00:15:41.380 assuming that if we just sort of have this broadly secular mindset that everyone sort of can fit in,

00:15:46.460 but what we're discovering is secularism is actually a religious worldview in and of itself,

00:15:51.140 and it assigns ultimate morality and law to the state, so if the state says this is right and this is wrong,

00:15:59.460 then it becomes right and wrong, and then out of that, that sets the, the perfect atmosphere,

00:16:04.960 milieu for totalitarianism, and so I think, I think people are awakening to the fact that, yeah,

00:16:11.080 there's all these little issues we're fighting, so lockdownism, medical tyranny, Bill C-4,

00:16:16.860 all these different issues that we're fighting in culture, but the ultimate problem is a broken worldview

00:16:23.560 that has denied the supremacy of God and has rooted human law and civil law and criminal law in

00:16:30.200 humanity, and the state, of course, represents that, so whoever happens to be in office at the time

00:16:36.960 decides what's right and wrong, and so we have really a breakdown of social order,

00:16:44.900 because every man is doing what's right in his own eyes, so to speak, or every state is doing what

00:16:49.420 is right in his own eyes. Yeah, and to you, Pastor Hildebrandt, I'll add to that. It's the idea of

00:16:54.900 secularism is supposed to be in its purest form about a society that is religiously neutral or a

00:17:01.560 government that's religiously neutral, not anti-religious, and I do feel that that's a very

00:17:06.120 important distinction here. It's one thing for the state to be a-religious, it's another for it to be 0.87

00:17:10.860 targeting religion. I think, as Lisa said earlier, I think, I felt that a big attack on churches was

00:17:19.220 when, at the very beginning, they made it so clear that church was non-essential, and I think that was,

00:17:26.420 that was a, well, I know it was a bad mistake to say that and to think that to, and to act like it,

00:17:31.920 and we are still standing on it as we would have right from the beginning, that church is essential,

00:17:38.900 and it's not hard to give the reasons. I mean, look at the time we're in right now,

00:17:44.180 there's more people seeking God, there's more people wanting help now than ever before. I mean,

00:17:49.800 our workload has doubled and multiplied. It's obvious, it's obvious that church is very essential,

00:17:57.680 but I think over the past decades, the big mistake we have made, and we're speaking generally, is that

00:18:03.920 we've let that slip. I don't think it came overnight. I think just in the last decades,

00:18:08.800 just grew callous to it, and just accepted it, that the state, of course, they have their,

00:18:15.200 our best in mind, and now we all of a sudden see that they don't, and church is not essential in

00:18:20.940 their eyes, and they sure, and made sure that everybody noticed that and saw that, but I think

00:18:27.400 it's definitely gone in the wrong direction. Just looking at, I mean, the panel we have today,

00:18:33.600 and also other cases that have been of note across the country, Lisa, whether it was the arrest of

00:18:38.820 Archer Pulaski, James Coates, Tim Stevens, Tobias Thyssen, I mean, one thing that they have in common is

00:18:44.780 they're all Protestant Christian ministers and Protestant Christian churches. Have we seen any of

00:18:50.440 these measures directed towards non-Christian houses of worship? And again, to be fair,

00:18:56.760 the absence of that doesn't mean that anything untoward has happened, if some of those other

00:19:01.180 houses of worship have not been as vocal in these things, but I've not come across any cases that

00:19:06.700 don't fit that narrow categorization. Yeah, neither have I, and I don't know if it's because they've

00:19:13.300 flown under the radar better, or whether they were just following the rules better, and I don't want

00:19:17.780 to make any assumptions either about that, but certainly I do think that there was a certain

00:19:22.680 amount of targeting that was going on over the last two years of particularly certain Christian

00:19:28.940 groups, those that were more outspoken particularly. I mean, I get contacted by the media,

00:19:34.140 and certainly did when I was with the Justice Center quite frequently, but the mainstream media

00:19:38.800 was really only interested when there was a pastor who was in trouble, and then they were all over that

00:19:43.460 story. Otherwise, they weren't interested, they weren't interested in the violation of civil

00:19:48.620 liberties, they were interested in getting the dirt on some pastor that had stepped out of line.

00:19:53.520 And then, you know, the other thing was, citizens were targeting churches. I was hearing stories

00:20:00.160 of small country churches, Mennonite churches, for example, with people driving up and down the roads

00:20:05.660 looking for them to have cars in the parking lot on a Sunday that shouldn't have been there,

00:20:10.140 and then reporting it to the police. You know, so, and meanwhile, the Costco was open, and there

00:20:16.320 was just a lot of inconsistencies along the way that made that extra offensive. But this sort of

00:20:22.440 follows on a pattern that pre-existed the COVID-19 as well, which is that increasingly, the state has

00:20:28.800 been encroaching on religions and demanding fealty to certain views that are supposed to be the

00:20:36.260 consensus views in this country, but which many Christians have a problem with. So the federal

00:20:42.520 attestation in order to get summer job grants, the Trinity Western case, I had a case still with the

00:20:49.900 Justice Center now, but involving a prospective foster parent not able to foster children, infants, because

00:20:57.200 of his Christian beliefs. You know, so there's been this kind of targeting of Christianity to some degree

00:21:04.440 already, and I just, I think that that just was given an opportunity. People who didn't like,

00:21:12.500 don't like Christians were given an opportunity to target them more during the last 20 months.

00:21:17.840 Pastor Hildebrand, I know this has happened with your church and your community, and again,

00:21:22.700 you're from a smaller town. The old traditional vision of that is a sense of community and being good

00:21:27.800 neighbors and good citizens. But I know you have had people in your town that have very much turned on

00:21:33.580 you and your church for taking the stands that you are. So, I mean, perhaps there's a general point

00:21:38.400 here about the state of community or lack thereof now, but did this surprise you that your church

00:21:44.200 was to a lot of people no longer a part of your community, but painted as the problem in the

00:21:49.080 community? Very much so. I am still in shock to see, I mean, I'm not new to Elmer. We're not new.

00:21:56.860 We've been here the last 30 years and we're very much seen as part of the community. And we're

00:22:03.940 obviously, we did our part to make that work and provided jobs and work in the local workplaces and

00:22:12.640 whatnot. For it to change overnight like this, I was shocked at the targeting. I was shocked at how

00:22:20.300 quickly that could change where a friendship that you thought was there or a reputation that was

00:22:26.720 built up over the years of people knowing us as a community friendly people that how fast, how fast,

00:22:35.160 how overnight that changed. And not just that they didn't accept it, but vandalism was a part of it.

00:22:42.000 And I mean, banging on our windows at three o'clock in the morning and just unreal, just unreal. Just

00:22:49.040 the way people were acting towards me, towards the church members and whatnot. Very, very troubling.

00:22:56.160 I would have never, never thought that that could come so quick.

00:23:00.040 I know Windsor is not a small town as much, Pastor Rock, but in general, when you talked earlier about

00:23:05.200 people in your congregation who have lost their jobs, who have faced some of that, there is still a

00:23:10.660 significant aspect in these times of citizens turning on each other, of people putting these

00:23:16.360 division lines in society, separating them from their, their fellow men and women.

00:23:21.660 Yeah. I mean, I mean, early on, I think we've all been targeted on social media. You get hate

00:23:26.500 messages and people telling you, I wish you were dead. Or, you know, I've, we've had members of our

00:23:31.600 own family chased out of grocery stores and said, you know, I hope your family dies, your mother dies,

00:23:36.980 your kid dies, your uncle dies and all this sort of stuff. So you get the verbal onslaught, 0.91

00:23:41.460 a little bit of vandalism. We had roofing nails scattered in our parking lot. It punctured about

00:23:45.680 four tires on four different cars. So we had that, um, lots of surveillance. We've had people come in

00:23:52.140 and take secret pictures even two weeks ago in our service and submit those to the authorities. So

00:23:57.480 we've had to heighten our security in that regard. So we've had those sorts of things take place.

00:24:02.180 Um, I will say just in reference to your previous question, the Orthodox Jewish community in Toronto

00:24:07.600 has been fairly vocal, uh, against the lockdowns and we worked with them early on. They perhaps

00:24:13.080 didn't take as much heat because, uh, you know, their laws require the 10 men for a quorum and they

00:24:18.240 were able to receive that early, early on, which led from the, uh, movement of minimum of five to a

00:24:24.660 minimum of 10 for worship services. So they've kind of been involved in this and taken some heat as

00:24:28.940 well. But I think the reason why Christian churches, especially Protestant churches tend

00:24:33.740 to be targeted is because like it or lump it, the Western world was originally known as Christendom.

00:24:39.420 And so the Judeo-Christian ethics were part and parcel of our law and our culture and our system.

00:24:46.220 And those have largely become out of vogue. So in many respects, there's a certain undercurrent in

00:24:51.260 culture that would say, yeah, you know what, the Judeo-Christian ethic is kind of old fashioned.

00:24:55.660 It kind of gets in the way. So let's, let's make way for new worldviews. And so I think that is

00:25:00.460 probably one of the underlying reasons why Christian or Christianized people tend to be

00:25:06.060 targeted maybe a little bit more than other groups. And I would point out as well that,

00:25:11.260 you know, a lot of people, and I've said this on the show in the past, a lot of people would

00:25:14.380 withstand a lot if it were just for two weeks, that proverbial two weeks to flatten the curve where

00:25:19.900 the government wasn't forcing it as much. You could have just as a good citizen said, okay,

00:25:23.660 I'm going to agree to do X or refrain from doing Y. But a lot of this, a lot of these conflicts

00:25:30.220 we've seen between government and civil liberties, government and the church are not temporary.

00:25:34.780 They're proving to be enduring. And just earlier this month, New Brunswick put out its own rules

00:25:39.820 in which they've said that churches will have to start checking vaccine passports unless they agree

00:25:45.580 to do a bunch of things like no singing, mandatory masking, social distancing, these things. So

00:25:50.940 the idea of putting a vaccine passport on church has now been tried, at least in some form. So Lisa,

00:25:57.260 I do think this underscores the point that it is paramount to address these concerns now rather

00:26:03.100 than just waiting them out, as some people have suggested. Right. But those challenges have already

00:26:09.260 been undertaken to some degree. I mean, there have been cases trying to challenge the restrictions on

00:26:14.460 religious liberty throughout the pandemic, and they've been unsuccessful so far. That's not to say that

00:26:19.260 they will continue to be unsuccessful. But there are still cases before the courts. And nothing has

00:26:24.540 gotten to the appellate level, I will emphasize as well, which may make all the difference. But

00:26:30.380 nonetheless, we're seeing this sort of snowball effect across the country. And as we learn more

00:26:37.580 about the limitations of the vaccines, it seems that the doubling down on insisting that every single

00:26:42.780 person get one, you know, man, woman, child, baby and zoo animal, you know, it doesn't make any sense

00:26:51.020 that it's continuing to be enforced. The evidence has been clear for many, many months. I remember

00:26:55.740 speaking about this in the spring, that there was no evidence that these vaccines were designed to

00:27:02.700 stop transmission. So there should be no case for a vaccine passport. It's purely a private benefit. If you

00:27:09.340 want it, great, have it, you know, maybe it'll see you from a hospital trip. That's super. We should

00:27:14.940 declare victory and move on. But instead, we've moved into this just unreal situation. I mean, I'll

00:27:21.740 just say the work that I've been doing since I started my own practice a couple months ago has been

00:27:25.980 almost exclusively around these vaccine mandates and university students being kicked out of school,

00:27:34.140 their mental health, nobody cares about their mental health. These kids have gone through so much.

00:27:39.340 people being terminated from their jobs, and the rest of society saying who cares if they don't

00:27:44.460 get any safety net, throw them to the throw them to the streets. And now we've got places like New

00:27:50.780 Brunswick talking about banning or banning people, or at least opening the door, I should say to banning

00:27:56.620 people from grocery stores, if the store wants to implement a passport like that. So, you know, we,

00:28:03.980 we should be stopping it. But it's just seems to be picking up speed and getting uglier and uglier by

00:28:09.820 the day. I don't know where this goes. But we need to be thinking about safety nets for this for these

00:28:14.540 people who are going to be in very dire situations come, you know, as we head into winter here. And as

00:28:21.500 for the churches, yes, I, you know, I, when you see stuff like that happening, you know, it's just a

00:28:26.140 matter of time before they start implementing these, these measures more widely, and it's not

00:28:31.420 optional anymore. So by all means, you know, everybody who's concerned about this should be

00:28:36.220 putting pressure on their politicians. These are not things, these are not things that are based in

00:28:40.220 science, they are based on politics and polling and the culture generally. And so that's where the

00:28:44.860 decisions have to be changed, the mindsets have to be changed. So everybody needs to get vocal about

00:28:49.820 this and fast. Yeah, and I'll go to you on this, Pastor Rock, I think you tweeted about the the

00:28:54.940 grocery store example a few days ago when this first came up. And one thing there that I find

00:29:00.700 fascinating is that the joke that a lot of Christian friends I know used to make is, we'd all say,

00:29:05.420 well, you know, we should just have our church in the Costco or have our church in the grocery store.

00:29:09.580 And even now that might be off the table for people who are unvaccinated. So this idea of

00:29:13.980 essential non essential is morphing very dramatically or has more very dramatically to

00:29:19.980 if you're unvaccinated, you're not even entitled to go get food necessarily.

00:29:24.860 Yeah, I mean, they're tightening the screws. I mean, apparently, people haven't read a lot

00:29:28.220 of history recently, because while the circumstances are different. These are the classic movements of

00:29:34.060 despots and tyrants. So you you you fire people, you actually put them on unpaid leave,

00:29:40.380 you don't allow them to apply for EI, you threaten to permanently fire them if they take a side job to

00:29:46.300 try to pay for groceries. But then you ban them potentially from the grocery stores to buy groceries.

00:29:51.740 I mean, it's just, I'm surprised there hasn't been riots in the streets yet. Nobody wants to see that.

00:29:57.900 But you're you're literally whittling people's freedoms down so that their most basic human needs,

00:30:03.820 employment, food becomes increasingly unavailable to them. And we don't know where this is headed.

00:30:12.700 But unless the brakes are put on pretty quickly, it's probably going to get even worse than this.

00:30:17.420 And I think what happens is these sort of little measures that they put out these little threats,

00:30:22.300 or these these laws are sort of tested at one jurisdiction. And if if society doesn't say anything,

00:30:27.580 the populace doesn't rise up, then it starts to spread across the country. So we don't have,

00:30:33.100 for example, mandatory vaccine passports in Ontario. But the health unit will come and say,

00:30:38.780 hey, you know, if you want to be a good little boy, if you put your vaccine passports on the people in 0.74

00:30:44.220 your church, then we'll let you open up a little bit more, we'll have a few more people in. So they're

00:30:48.380 sort of testing the waters. And unfortunately, a lot of churches are now requiring vaccine passports

00:30:53.420 when they're not even required by the state. And the state looks at that says, Well, if the rest of

00:30:58.060 churches don't seem to mind doing it, let's just make a blanket law. So it is quite tyrannical. And

00:31:05.420 as Lisa said, it's, you know, I've gotten to know a lot about politics in the last couple of years,

00:31:11.420 so much of this is driven by political liability, a desire to be reelected and public polling, it's not

00:31:18.780 driven by the science is not driven by the medicine really at all.

00:31:21.500 You just brought up a point I wanted to get to Pastor Rock. So thank you for providing the

00:31:26.620 natural segue there, which is the power that exists in these unelected local health authorities. I know

00:31:33.100 you Pastor Hildebrandt have been up against this in Elgin County, where Elmer is, you had the local

00:31:38.300 health department a while ago, ask you to voluntarily shut your doors. And I remember reporting because

00:31:44.140 I got documents through Freedom of Information that showed when they did that, they were considering

00:31:49.180 shutting you down involuntarily if you didn't comply. And now the health unit didn't do that,

00:31:53.660 but they would have had the power to under I believe what's called a Section 22 order. So

00:31:59.100 these local public health officials, which tend to fly under the radar in terms of scrutiny,

00:32:03.820 and they certainly don't have democratic accountability, do have a lot of power.

00:32:07.660 They do, they do. And they have way too much power, unelected officials. And they come across,

00:32:15.980 I know it might be a little strong to say it like this, but they act, they act as if they're God. And

00:32:21.740 I think Edmund Burke said that one time he said, when humans try to act like God, they behave like devils.

00:32:29.580 And it truly is that way. You know, what's shocking to me is, so just was it two weeks ago,

00:32:35.900 all of a sudden, our health official here in Elgin County, just all of a sudden, he's just one line

00:32:40.700 in the London Free Press, just saying he's no longer there. Mr. Summers is in. We still don't

00:32:46.300 know what happened. What happened? Is he, was he very sick? Or did he resign? Did he change his mind?

00:32:51.820 What happened just quietly? He's gone. The next one is in. Why is this? What's the secrecy? Like,

00:32:57.660 what is, what is going on here? I heard there's also similar things happening in Saskatchewan,

00:33:03.260 I think, as we speak, or has just happened. Why is that? Why is there? What's the, what's the,

00:33:08.380 like I said, what's the secrecy about it? But in my mind, they have far, far too much power.

00:33:14.620 Like Lisa said earlier, if people want that, have it, do it. But where is our freedom? Who has the right

00:33:23.100 to demand of me to, to expose my medical situation or tell people where I am, where I stand medically,

00:33:31.260 whether I'm vaccinated or not? Why am I forced to declare it? Yeah, and Lisa, I mean, prior to last

00:33:38.940 year, I had never read into the act that gave them these powers. And admittedly, when I did, I was

00:33:44.780 shocked at just how much was there. The only thing you're, you're limited by, or the only thing they're

00:33:49.180 limited by is perhaps their own self-determined restraint, which for public health officials

00:33:54.300 hasn't been as ubiquitous as perhaps we'd like to see. I mean, this is a huge, huge gap in the law.

00:34:01.340 Well, it's perfectly legal. You know, we have a system of legislative supremacy,

00:34:06.300 and the government can make whatever laws it wants. And it made laws that delegated significant powers to

00:34:11.420 public health officials, which, you know, most of us had never really seen them used before.

00:34:14.940 Who knew that they had public health officials that, you know, in such number in this province,

00:34:21.420 you know, they were really not part of our daily lives. But all of a sudden,

00:34:24.780 they had these powers of pre-existing COVID-19, and they, there are very few limits on them.

00:34:31.100 Basically, if there's a presence of a contagious disease, they have pretty much unlimited powers,

00:34:36.220 as far as I can tell. So, and yes, it's contagious, but there doesn't seem to be

00:34:40.860 much in the way of, you know, built-in restraint on, you know, how contagious and how, you know,

00:34:47.900 how virulent and who is it impacting and all that kind of stuff. You know, all these measures are

00:34:53.340 subject to the constitution, of course, to the charter rights, but they aren't going to be found

00:34:59.660 to be in violation of that. So, it really is up to the government to say, okay, you know,

00:35:05.500 we're going to pass legislation that limits this. And they haven't been. They're quite happy to,

00:35:10.940 I don't know, keep this going. I mean, I'm really quite surprised by it. There have been a number of

00:35:14.460 off-ramps that were available to the government along the way, and they haven't taken them.

00:35:19.420 I don't quite understand it. So. Now, what do you mean by off-ramps there?

00:35:25.820 Well, like I said earlier, you know, when the vaccines became readily available in this country

00:35:30.860 and accessible to the elderly and the vulnerable who, you know, anyone who looks at the statistics,

00:35:36.220 and I don't think most people do, frankly, because I think most people seem to think that this is

00:35:40.380 absolutely dire for all age groups and all, you know, measures of health, but it's not. I mean,

00:35:47.180 this has been an age stratified disease from day one, and we could recognize that back as early as

00:35:52.380 March of 2020. You know, the vast majority of people who have been, who have passed away have been

00:35:59.100 very elderly and with multiple comorbidities. It doesn't mean that it never hits younger people,

00:36:06.380 but other contagious diseases do as well sometimes, and it's just, it's an unfortunate part of life.

00:36:12.860 But nonetheless, once those vaccines became available and we were able to protect our vulnerable

00:36:18.140 much better, because they did eliminate, at least for a while, the severity of the outcomes,

00:36:25.180 that's when the governments probably could have said, all right, you know, great job,

00:36:28.700 we've done it. We've got shots in the arms of everybody who needs it. It's time to move on.

00:36:32.940 The rest, for most other people, it's going to be relatively harmless, and we'll manage, you know,

00:36:37.980 we'll build up some intensive care capacity so that if there are problems, we can, we can,

00:36:44.220 you know, accommodate, but they never really did that. And remember, the whole flatten the curve

00:36:48.940 notion from the beginning was not crushing COVID. It was flattening it so that we didn't have to deal

00:36:55.420 with everybody being sick at once. We were, there was never at the outset, this idea that we would

00:37:00.220 eradicate the virus from the face of the earth, but that has, that is now the policy, it would seem,

00:37:06.220 to eradicate it from the face of the earth and come hell or high water. And I think we're getting both,

00:37:12.220 frankly.

00:37:12.620 Just as we close here, Pastor Rock, let me ask you, because Lisa has indicated the

00:37:18.700 difficulty in getting some successful judicial orders on a lot of these things when they've gone

00:37:23.420 before the court. We certainly know politicians are not making the right choices because it's their

00:37:27.900 restrictions that have put us into the situation we've spent the last, you know, 30-some-odd minutes

00:37:33.100 describing. So where do you feel the best chance of victory is on this?

00:37:38.380 Well, first of all, I'm not optimistic, and I never have been optimistic. I've never been the

00:37:43.740 type to go around and say, you know, take the tickets, you're gonna, you're gonna beat them,

00:37:47.420 they're gonna get thrown out of court. I don't believe that at all. I would be more apt to think

00:37:52.700 that, that we will lose in court, actually. I'm not saying that because I'm a pessimist. I just see

00:37:58.220 the trajectory of our culture. I think a lot of the judicial decisions seem, as far as I can tell,

00:38:05.820 to be based upon whatever the medical expert of the moment happens to say, and whatever direction

00:38:11.980 the wind is blowing in culture. And when we have our federal judges coming out, sort of revealing

00:38:17.500 that they're all vaccinated, I think that's inappropriate in a culture where people are 0.79

00:38:22.220 going to court over vaccination issues. We have all sorts of virtues signaling on every level of

00:38:28.860 government. Anybody in a position of power is essentially going along with the government

00:38:33.340 narrative. So it doesn't give the person that chooses not to comply, or chooses to believe in

00:38:39.660 an alternative narrative, much hope. But at the same time, you know, we've seen cultures throughout

00:38:45.180 history, that have fallen into the abyss, and then something wonderful and miraculous happens,

00:38:51.660 there's revival and restoration, and they come out of it. So our decision to not comply and to move

00:38:58.460 forward was not based upon pragmatic considerations of winning in court. It was based upon principle.

00:39:05.020 And so no matter what they throw at us, I mean, obviously, we don't just cast all our pearls before

00:39:09.420 swine. But no matter what they throw at us, ultimately, we know we win because Christ wins.

00:39:15.500 And we're going to hold to our principles regardless of what the courts choose to say or not say, we want

00:39:21.100 to be respectful of the courts, we'd much rather honor, work with, have good relationships with government

00:39:27.340 officials. But at the same time, in our lifetime, we're not going to be complicit in tyranny, or

00:39:32.380 statism or totalitarianism, or things that we would consider to be unbiblical or immoral.

00:39:37.900 I'll put the same question to you, Pastor Hildebrandt.

00:39:40.220 I think Pastor Rock said it very, very well. Yes, we will do our best we can, we will,

00:39:49.180 and I'm presently doing whatever I can work with the local authorities, do whatever we can. But there

00:39:54.620 is no giving up in me or giving in whatsoever. We know what the Bible teaches, we know what we should

00:40:03.180 be doing. And like Lisa said earlier, I just think people rise up, stand up, not in a, what's it called,

00:40:14.700 not in a militant way or in an aggressive way, but stand up. Because that's the only way, that's the

00:40:22.940 only way that I can see. And that's the only thing that has helped us here locally is they realize that

00:40:29.180 there's nothing, there's nothing that they can throw at us, that will change our mind. As a

00:40:34.220 matter of fact, and that this is biblically the same way, the more you pressure the people of God,

00:40:40.140 the more obstacles, the more determined we get. And I'll close with the same question to you,

00:40:46.380 Lisa, where do you think the best avenue of success is here, if it's not going to be through the courts?

00:40:52.300 Coming back to what your question was, was there much hope for success? Was that where you were?

00:40:56.300 I mean, I'm going to put a different spin on it and say, where do you think the best

00:41:00.460 chance of success is, if not the courts? It's in changing hearts and minds. And I will

00:41:06.860 make a plug right now for the Free North Declaration, which some colleagues and I have put up,

00:41:12.620 which is designed to just let people know that there are other opinions out there, that they're not

00:41:19.180 alone. When we're in a situation like this, where people are getting caught up in what I would say is

00:41:24.540 sort of a mass panic. People need to know, because some people are not as susceptible to that,

00:41:29.820 but they go along to get along. And so for that middle ground, those folks need to know

00:41:35.100 that there are other opinions out there. They need to be encouraged to start digging a little deeper

00:41:40.540 and to speak up. And so we're trying to get that narrative out there a little bit more and let

00:41:47.180 people know. Because ultimately, the bottom line is, it's got to change in the culture. You've got to have

00:41:51.420 people want this to be over. That was always the way with pandemics. I remember posting about this

00:41:56.860 on Twitter back in the spring of 2020, like, when do pandemics end? There were articles from New York

00:42:02.940 Times and so on, predating COVID, that said, basically, it ends when people say it's over,

00:42:08.460 when people are no longer afraid. And unfortunately, we've not been given the opportunity to make that

00:42:15.340 decision ourselves. Because our authorities have put these rules in place that prevent us from

00:42:20.860 saying it's over, right? For a lot of people, it's over. It's been over for a long time. But they're

00:42:25.580 not allowed to go out without their masks or do all the things that would send that message to their

00:42:31.420 fellow citizens that, hey, we're okay. You know, it's going to be okay. And now we're talking again

00:42:35.820 about school closures and so on coming up in Ontario. And it's just like, anyway, we need

00:42:42.220 people to just, you know, start expressing themselves much more vocally about this. Tell

00:42:49.420 your friends and neighbours, say to folks at the cash register and people you meet in the streets,

00:42:54.620 boy, things don't add up, do they? And, well, I'm sure I'm tired of this. And I don't want to, you know,

00:42:59.500 we ought not to be damaging the kids' futures anymore. And start seeding the doubt, I guess,

00:43:06.140 so that people start to wake up a little bit to this. And that's where it's going to change.

00:43:10.140 Very well said. That is Lisa Bildy, lawyer and founder of Libertas Law, and also Pastor Henry

00:43:15.980 Hildebrandt of the Church of God in Elmer, and Pastor Aaron Rock of Harvest in Windsor. All three of

00:43:21.340 you, this was an oddly an optimistic discussion in the grand scheme of things, just because I know we

00:43:26.140 have such strong and principled folks like yourselves on the front lines of this. So

00:43:30.060 thank you very much for joining me and Merry Christmas to you all.

00:43:32.220 You're welcome. Same to you.

00:43:34.700 Well, again, I mean, not a really easy discussion to have, because you hear about all these just

00:43:39.340 horrible things that have happened to churches, to places of worship, and not just to churches,

00:43:43.980 but to the people who go to those churches. That's, I think, one of the key distinctions that's

00:43:48.380 been lost a lot in the last two years, is that when the government shuts down a church,

00:43:52.380 it doesn't just shut down a building. It shuts down a building that has tremendous spiritual

00:43:56.940 significance to hundreds and hundreds of people. So I do think it's important to view it through

00:44:02.380 that lens. In any case, we've got to end things there. My thanks to our three fantastic panelists

00:44:07.660 and all of you for tuning in. Let me know what you think. My email, andrew at andrewlaughton.ca.

00:44:12.460 We'll be back soon with more of Canada's most irreverent talk show. Thank you, God bless,

00:44:17.100 and good day to you all. Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show. Support the program by

00:44:21.660 donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - December 17, 2021

Religious freedom in Canada is under attack

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