Juno News - Tamara Lich is out of jail, but she was still a political prisoner

00:00:00.000 welcome to canada's most irreverent talk show this is the andrew lawton show brought to you by true

00:00:10.480 north hello and welcome to another edition of canada's most irreverent talk show here on true

00:00:22.160 north the andrew lawton show tuesday march 8 2022 big day big week lots of stuff going on

00:00:29.900 especially the conservative leadership race, which I said last week or two weeks ago, whenever it was

00:00:35.460 that I'm not going to get into the horse race thing. I'm not going to start talking about,

00:00:39.340 oh, you know, this person's campaigning in Chatham Kent Leamington and oh, this person's

00:00:43.360 in Calgary Shepherd and oh, got to pay attention to what's happening in Burnaby South or anything

00:00:47.660 like that. No, I'm not going to horse race, but I am going to talk about the big ideas.

00:00:50.960 I am going to talk about the big trends. We're going to be having starting, I think on next

00:00:55.260 show some of the people that are in the leadership race coming on to talk about their campaigns.

00:01:00.140 We're also in the process of putting together some bigger projects connected to covering the

00:01:05.740 leadership campaign and the leadership race. So you don't want to miss that. But we do have

00:01:10.280 some movement on this front just in the last couple of days. We have Jean Charest all but

00:01:15.280 certainly going to be announcing a campaign on Thursday at an event in Calgary. We've got

00:01:20.640 Tasha Carradine, the columnist and commentator, saying she's not running.

00:01:24.600 She's throwing her support behind Jean Charest.

00:01:27.060 You've got a tweet that I just saw earlier today that Patrick Brown is apparently going to run.

00:01:31.160 He's the mayor of Brampton, and he was actually a guest on this show a few weeks back,

00:01:36.400 criticizing lockdowns.

00:01:38.760 So he's apparently getting into the race.

00:01:40.400 What else?

00:01:40.820 Lesley Lewis, she announced a campaign about four hours ago.

00:01:44.200 Pierre Paulyev still in the race.

00:01:45.620 So I think at this point, we've got confirmed or likely to be confirmed soon, Pierre Polyev,

00:01:53.120 Patrick Brown, Leslyn Lewis, and Jean Charest.

00:01:56.320 So it'll be a bit more interesting than I think the race in 2020 was, but you never

00:02:01.520 know.

00:02:01.800 And we could still have a curveball thrown our way and someone else getting into the

00:02:05.360 race, but we will be covering that.

00:02:07.720 So do stay tuned to True North.

00:02:09.900 Keep your eyes peeled as we have stuff along that line coming out in the days and weeks

00:02:14.040 ahead.

00:02:15.200 I want to talk to a few, we're going to talk about a few things today.

00:02:18.300 This is like one of those shows where we just decided we're just going to go around the

00:02:21.300 world rather than taking one big story.

00:02:23.440 But I do want to start out with a big story.

00:02:25.340 One we have been following for quite some time, and that is Tamara Leach, who I am happy

00:02:31.780 to say, if you haven't seen the visuals of this, is finally out of jail.

00:02:35.880 She's finally out of custody.

00:02:37.380 She has been released on bail two and a half weeks after she was first arrested in Ottawa

00:02:42.600 and put behind bars for what the police say

00:02:46.020 and charged her with counseling mischief.

00:02:49.760 So not committing mischief, counseling mischief.

00:02:51.900 I think they upgraded the charge to one 0.98

00:02:54.580 where she was also being charged with mischief the next day,

00:02:57.000 but they arrested her on the offense

00:02:59.020 of allegedly counseling mischief, 0.94

00:03:01.200 put her behind bars and denied her bail.

00:03:03.680 They sent Chris Barber,

00:03:05.120 one of the other Freedom Convoy organizers home, 0.53

00:03:07.500 but they kept Tamara Leach behind bars. 0.73

00:03:10.320 They denied her bail.

00:03:11.180 they had another bail hearing last week and she had another surety and apparently the judge this

00:03:18.840 time around who was a different judge was more convinced by this surety and is convinced that

00:03:23.040 the situation has changed the circumstances have changed and they believe that tamara leach will

00:03:28.040 make good on her promise to get in the car and go home so i think when she was released she had 24

00:03:33.500 hours to leave ottawa and 72 hours to leave ontario or something to that effect but basically she has

00:03:39.480 to get back home. She can't fly because she, as I understand it, is not vaccinated. So at this

00:03:45.360 point, at this exact moment, Tamara Leach is free. And the title of this show, Tamara Leach is out on 0.72

00:03:53.940 bail, but she's still a political prisoner. There are two components of that that I want to get

00:03:57.580 into here. The first, I was going to say Tamara Leach is free. And then I realized a moment before

00:04:01.840 we were to go to air that I can't actually make that claim. She's not free. She has still been

00:04:06.700 charge, she is still likely to face trial for this protest, for her role in overseeing and

00:04:14.100 fundraising for the Freedom Convoy protest. So she's not free. She's not out of the woods. She

00:04:19.740 still faces prosecution by the state for presiding over a peaceful protest, a protest that right up

00:04:26.760 until the end remained peaceful, at least on the part of the protesters, on the part of the

00:04:32.080 demonstrators. And that, I think, is a very important point here. We are talking about a

00:04:38.140 woman who has been arrested. And if you listen to the Crown talk about why she should remain behind

00:04:44.780 bars, the Crown's view on this is that they wanted to throw the book at her. The judge she had at

00:04:50.580 first, Judge Bourgeois, which when the Bourgeois justice or Justice Bourgeois is jailing the

00:04:58.100 working-class protester. I cannot think of a better metaphor for just the absurdity of this, 0.55

00:05:02.700 but Justice Bourgeois was saying, oh, she's facing a lot of jail time for this. Really?

00:05:07.360 She is? You're going to preemptively decide that she is going to be spending more than likely

00:05:12.820 a lot of time behind bars? That was one of the reasons that Justice Bourgeois 0.96

00:05:16.360 denied Tamera Leach bail in the first place. Now, this judge was more measured, still had some

00:05:24.940 criticisms about Tamara Leach and about the case and did have some kind things to say

00:05:30.600 about Justice Bourgeois findings in some particular area. So it wasn't a complete overturning

00:05:35.900 in the sense of like reversing it, but it was reversing the outcome. It was overturning the

00:05:41.200 outcome. But the judge who decided Tamara Leach should be released yesterday has just released

00:05:46.600 her on bail. She still has a number of conditions, a number of terms that she has to abide by.

00:05:51.400 And the point that I can't stress enough is that she is not yet out of the woods.

00:05:56.460 So if the Crown keeps up this rhetoric, if the Crown maintains the tone it's taken and the line it's taken to Merrill Leach in the bail hearings throughout the trial,

00:06:06.580 she is going to be subjected to a very vicious and very vigorous prosecution.

00:06:12.800 But the point that I wanted to spend a couple of moments on here is that there is no denying she is a political prisoner.

00:06:18.480 if you wanted to have a government response to immediately deal with the situation when there

00:06:25.600 were blockades i could understand i'm not saying i would agree with but i can understand government

00:06:31.480 throwing the books at people in that moment and this was the whole thrust behind the emergencies

00:06:37.060 act again which was wrong i'm convinced that it was an illegal invocation of the emergencies act

00:06:41.760 but nonetheless it's what justin trudeau decided to do when the blockade was done everyone should

00:06:47.960 have been released. When the blockade ended, people should have been released from jail.

00:06:51.380 Account should have been unfrozen. The Emergency Act should have never been there. But since it

00:06:55.640 was there, it should have been gone that very moment. Once police moved all the trucks off

00:06:59.900 of Wellington Street, that should have been the end of it. Why is the prosecution still going on?

00:07:04.540 Tamara Leach embarrassed the government. This was a grandmother, a 49-year-old Métis grandmother 0.79

00:07:12.000 from Alberta, whose supposed crime is getting in a truck, setting up a GoFundMe, and saying,

00:07:18.800 hold the line, when the government started to close in. That's her crime. That's what put her 1.00

00:07:25.340 behind bars. That's what put this woman in jail. She got in a truck, she drove to Ottawa, she said, 1.00

00:07:33.500 hold the line, and she, by setting up a GoFundMe, raised $10 million twice for truckers. Money,

00:07:40.480 which, by the way, the government is still in a way controlling. The government is still

00:07:45.780 maintaining its freeze on the funds. So GoFundMe, that money was refunded by GoFundMe. The GiveSend

00:07:53.800 Go money is still sitting, as I understand it, in American bank accounts because the government

00:07:58.260 will not let it come into Canada without seizing it. The million dollars that GoFundMe had released

00:08:04.880 already to Tamara Leach and Benjamin Dichter, that money has been frozen by the bank.

00:08:11.120 And now because there's this class action lawsuit against the convoy organizers by people in

00:08:16.220 downtown Ottawa, that money is still remaining frozen. So all of these measures that government

00:08:23.340 is still enforcing, even in the absence of a protest. And that's why it is completely fair

00:08:30.320 to say Tamera Leach is a political prisoner. Her crime is embarrassing the government because 0.96

00:08:36.160 that's the enduring legacy right now. Government humiliation, government embarrassment, a government 1.00

00:08:40.920 that has lost legitimacy, that has lost legitimacy in the minds of so many people,

00:08:47.400 especially on the COVID file. And again, I've talked about all the successes, some of which

00:08:53.100 can be attributed to the convoy. Others you can say may have been happening already, but vaccine

00:08:57.600 passports being lifted you have much more forceful opposition from the Conservative Party of Canada

00:09:03.040 which again is a big win for a lot of people that were saying the Conservative Party had been absent

00:09:07.600 on a lot of these issues and I realized the PPC had been the only party speaking up about these

00:09:12.780 things but again the PPC did not have anyone in the legislature so I'm talking about just the volume

00:09:18.320 of political response care which has improved since the onset of the convoy. Again vaccine

00:09:24.300 passports gone somewhere. We've got much firmer timelines for lifting remaining restrictions

00:09:29.060 elsewhere. And every time I bring this up, I always get emails from people in British Columbia.

00:09:33.180 I feel so sad, so sad for British Columbians here because BC used to be in a way the glimmer

00:09:40.140 of hope. It was never perfect, but BC didn't go full lockdown like places outside of BC did,

00:09:47.960 like Ontario notably did, like Quebec did. BC had always been the holdout in a way. And now we have

00:09:55.040 alternatively BC being the last holdout for vaccine passports and for restrictions. And BC

00:10:02.220 actually right now focusing on adding restrictions. They're still planning on proceeding with mandates

00:10:09.580 for public sector workers, for some public sector workers. And I think this is the fascinating

00:10:14.580 development here. So I'm going to read this because the latest has just come out in a statement,

00:10:19.320 but it still is, I think, an interesting one because Bonnie Henry, I think it was last week,

00:10:25.120 said even before BC had dropped restrictions that, well, you know, they're probably going

00:10:29.540 to be coming back. So this was the line that we got. Basically, don't get comfortable even if we

00:10:33.560 drop restrictions. But the latest development on this, and I just, the problem with doing a live

00:10:39.500 show is that sometimes I have so many tabs open and I want to make sure that I get the quote right

00:10:43.440 here. Here it is. It's an order that requires all healthcare practitioners to report their

00:10:48.100 vaccination status to their respective colleges. The colleges will then share it with the ministry,

00:10:53.800 which will verify the information against their vaccination registry. So if you have a regulatory

00:11:00.080 college, you're going to have to provide them your vaccination status. They're going to check

00:11:05.020 it with the government. And if the government says, oh, well, this is not a valid vaccination

00:11:10.380 status or this is not a person that we have on our registry, who knows? Maybe the colleges say,

00:11:15.680 all right, we're going to challenge your license. But the whole point is that while other places are

00:11:20.980 getting rid of restrictions, you have BC that's doubling and tripling down and proceeding with

00:11:26.040 even more of them. So no one is out of the woods yet. And this is why the convoy existed. This is

00:11:31.740 why people were protesting because they were seeing, even if it appeared we were moving beyond

00:11:36.800 a lot of this stuff, there were still remnants of this in existence in government policy at the

00:11:41.420 federal level, at the provincial level. Just this morning, Pierre Polyev, the conservative

00:11:46.140 leadership candidate, published a letter he sent to Justin Trudeau saying, drop all the federal

00:11:51.900 mandates. And also what you need to do is start telling the provinces, encouraging the provinces

00:11:58.440 to drop their mandates, because a lot of this is integrated. And yes, most of the restrictions are

00:12:03.740 the provincial level but it goes in both directions and that's the point of it here so we can't talk

00:12:08.460 about this as though it's just a one outlier at one particular government level no a lot of these

00:12:13.660 things are very much blended so uh my again my condolences to people in bc i love bc it's a

00:12:19.740 beautiful province i've spent a lot of time there uh not uh not in a little while i haven't been

00:12:24.060 there in maybe two years a year and a year and ten months or so but i hope i hope you get to

00:12:30.060 round the corner on this quite soon. I want to turn the page here because there was a private

00:12:35.080 member's bill I wanted to talk about here by Garnett Janis, the conservative MP from Sherwood

00:12:40.320 Park, Fort Saskatchewan, to address political discrimination under the Federal Human Rights

00:12:46.440 Act. So if you're not familiar with it, the Human Rights Act has a number of grounds of

00:12:51.580 discrimination, prohibited grounds of discrimination. Notably, this was changed, I think, last in,

00:12:57.420 what was it would have been 2017 when gender identity was added in but it's all of these

00:13:02.620 criteria against which the government or federally regulated industries cannot discriminate garnet

00:13:09.660 jenis wants to add political discrimination we'll talk about what that means right now

00:13:13.980 the conservative mp for sherwood park for saskatchewan joins me garnet good to talk to

00:13:18.700 you sir what are you talking about here thank you for the opportunity to share with you andrew always

00:13:23.500 a pleasure to be on your show so the as you mentioned the canadian human rights act has

00:13:28.620 various criteria in it uh in terms of basis on which you're not allowed to discriminate against

00:13:34.220 people and i would like to add political belief and activity as prohibited grounds of discrimination so

00:13:41.340 if your employer sees that you're volunteering for the ndp maybe that applies to some of your

00:13:45.980 some of your listeners uh then they um then they can't be fired for doing that uh if somebody is

00:13:52.380 posting commentary about political issues on their social media, and somebody wants to deny

00:13:58.140 them government services or deny them equal access to something they would otherwise be

00:14:03.100 entitled to on the basis of that, just as you can't be discriminated against on the basis of

00:14:07.700 your race, your religious views, I would like to say as well that people shouldn't be discriminated

00:14:13.760 on the basis of their political views. And on some level, it should be obvious why that is

00:14:19.720 valid, that people should not face arbitrary discrimination by private companies, by service

00:14:26.040 providers on the basis of their political views. It's not fair to them. But also let's talk about

00:14:30.540 what creates a constructive democratic conversation. It's one in which people as individuals are free

00:14:38.860 to bring their views into the conversation without worrying about intimidation that they might face

00:14:44.120 from service providers who they rely on or from their employers. Corporations shouldn't be able

00:14:49.640 to have an outsized role in our political debates by compelling their employees to be involved in

00:14:54.720 a certain way or to be silent about certain opinions that they have. So really, this would

00:14:59.980 be a good bill to put forward at any time. Obviously, I am putting it forward in a context

00:15:04.180 where we're seeing a real sharpening of the political conversation and I think some efforts

00:15:09.600 to punish people who have what are deemed the wrong views. So I think it's in that context that

00:15:15.040 looking at addressing political discrimination is particularly important.

00:15:18.320 I know that most of the human rights commissions that people hear about that are governing landlord-tenant issues or someone discriminated against on the job market, whatever the case is, are dealt with at the provincial level.

00:15:32.320 So, jurisdictionally speaking, who is it that falls under the Canadian Human Rights Act?

00:15:37.780 That's right. Great question. So in terms of comparing federal and provincial, I do want to say though, just kind of connected to that, is that most provinces have some degree of protection for people on the basis of their political views. There are a few provinces that don't, but most provinces and territories have that kind of protection. There is no such protection at the federal level.

00:15:59.440 So in federal jurisdiction, we're talking about federally regulated commerce, so banking, interprovincial transportation, and of course the direct action of the federal government would apply as well.

00:16:15.180 So it's a minority of the economy in terms of the private sector that's regulated by federal human rights legislation.

00:16:22.300 um my understanding is that social media companies would fall under federal jurisdiction so that's a

00:16:28.360 a significant potential area where people well i mean especially if the liberal government gets

00:16:32.460 their way and and brings all of these online publishing uh avenues under the ambit of the

00:16:37.960 crtc right that's right so uh this this bill would prevent the crtc from uh from from uh discriminating

00:16:47.240 And in any case where you have a human rights complaint, there may be arguments back and forth about whether it was about the criteria that you are claiming it is, right?

00:16:58.460 Someone might get fired and say they were discriminating against me because of my religion, and the employer might say, no, it had nothing to do with that.

00:17:06.280 It was because he wasn't doing a good job or whatever it was, and then there would be this back and forth.

00:17:12.800 And the same question could apply in the case of political discrimination.

00:17:16.420 But either way, it does open the door to say that, you know, if someone is being fired from their job, denied service, if they're being censored, if they're facing denial of service on the basis of or what seems to be the basis of their political views, that that is analogous to other areas where we prohibit discrimination.

00:17:35.160 the nation. Yeah, I mean, obviously, we were talking about the convoy earlier in the show,

00:17:39.320 and the banks were following a federal regulation, and not one that I defend, and I know not one that

00:17:45.260 you defend in the Emergencies Act, but theoretically, if a bank were to say, you know what, we don't

00:17:49.300 like this protest that your bank accounts are tied to, you could conceivably file a complaint under

00:17:54.560 your bill if this passed. Yeah, so it would be possible for someone who felt they'd been

00:18:00.980 discriminated against on their political views by their bank. Let's say you had a clear-cut case

00:18:06.740 where certain not-for-profits were being given accounts by a bank, and then they were being

00:18:13.200 denied to other not-for-profits that had a different kind of political persuasion.

00:18:19.940 And certainly if individuals were facing denial of service as a result of their political views

00:18:25.540 or political activism. And I will say outright that while I had begun working on this legislation

00:18:33.220 prior to the convoy movement and the use of the Emergencies Act, some of the things that

00:18:38.160 happened in the context of that debate really spurred me on and I know have led a lot of people

00:18:43.400 to connect the dots in terms of why this is so important. Because, look, people shouldn't break

00:18:49.040 the law for any reason, but people were being treated very differently who were connected with

00:18:53.580 one kind of protest versus other kinds of protests. That's very clear. There was a

00:19:01.100 differential application of approach by the government that reflected the different politics

00:19:07.820 of those who were involved in these things, and that's something that we shouldn't be seeing in

00:19:12.460 Canada. People who donate to a political cause, especially having donated before any blockading

00:19:19.340 had even started uh the fact that they had to fear for possible action against their bank accounts

00:19:24.940 uh was was not right and speaks to the need for greater protection against discrimination on the

00:19:29.820 basis of people's political views again i'm not a firm believer in cancel culture but let me just

00:19:35.340 play the devil's advocate here does a bill like this protect people who have beliefs that again

00:19:41.740 an employer or a service provider might have good reason to not want to associate with yeah so let

00:19:48.060 Let me address that in a few different ways.

00:19:50.480 Number one, it's important to put in the caveat that section 15 of the Human Rights Act has an exclusion for what are called bona fide occupational qualifications.

00:20:00.120 That is, if you need to make a distinction within employment on the basis of some of the criteria because of the nature of the job, then you're allowed to do it.

00:20:11.320 The most obvious example.

00:20:12.300 Some CBC reporter couldn't be like, yes, I want to be a raging political activist on my off time.

00:20:17.420 so that could be carved out right so so um yeah i mean i was going to say in in the existing

00:20:23.380 criteria you can't discriminate on the basis of religion but if you're hiring someone for your

00:20:28.720 local church you might say we're hiring people that share the worldview of of of the church right

00:20:35.020 and similar for political views uh for for mp's offices for uh for uh not-for-profit organizations

00:20:42.120 Like, you know, if if you or I, Andrew, put in an application to work at the David Suzuki Foundation, we would probably be disqualified on the basis of our political views.

00:20:51.320 And and I'm OK with that. Right. I think I think a not for profit organization that's involved in activism should be able to say you line up with what we're what we're doing or not.

00:21:00.340 And similarly, you mentioned there's some jobs that might require political neutrality, like if you're working for Elections Canada or if you're going to be a judge, political activity could be a barrier,

00:21:09.080 not because they're looking for people that are one way or the other but because you've got to be

00:21:12.360 you've got to be neutral so uh so there's lots of areas where that might apply it might apply

00:21:17.400 in government relations where a company's saying we're looking for to hire you know a mix of people

00:21:22.040 who have different political persuasions so so those things could be worked out i think what

00:21:26.040 we're really talking about is if um if somebody is uh is a working in a non-political workplace

00:21:32.760 or they're just trying to access government services uh they shouldn't be fired on the

00:21:36.440 basis of their political views. The other thing is this bill would not change hate speech laws.

00:21:41.560 It wouldn't change laws around ideologically motivated crime. So if somebody is

00:21:51.720 involved in prosecutable hate speech, they're not going to enjoy protection under this law.

00:21:59.960 And you can have the separate debate about where the lines should be in terms of hate speech.

00:22:04.040 Now, generally, I don't think that private sector employers are the ones to be enforcing those kinds of hate speech laws.

00:22:11.040 I mean, I think we would want those to be enforced neutrally by civil authorities.

00:22:14.540 We want to decide, you know, what is the speech that we agree democratically isn't allowed?

00:22:20.040 And it shouldn't be up to someone's employer to have to or be expected to make those determinations.

00:22:25.480 So there's the area of bona fide occupational qualifications.

00:22:28.420 There's the area of hate speech that's already established.

00:22:31.520 So I think those are just some important clarifications in terms of how this would work.

00:22:36.060 The libertarian in me comes out here, though, and has to ask, how is this not just expanding the power of this bureaucracy, the Canadian Human Rights Commission?

00:22:44.080 Well, I think in the context where we provide protection against all kinds of other forms of discrimination, it is logical to see political views as protected, as being sort of analogous to some of the other grounds that are there.

00:23:03.060 But Andrew, I'd say as well that, again, from a libertarian perspective, this is protecting liberty, right? It's protecting the liberty of people to not be punished on the job or in terms of their access to government services for being involved in expressing their political views.

00:23:19.960 I don't think anybody wants the kind of democracy where big corporations can shape the conversation.

00:23:28.320 And I think we need to be wise to the fact that there's this phenomenon, and there's an author in the U.S. who wrote a great book called Woke Inc.

00:23:36.360 His name is Vivek Ramaswamy. I'd recommend that book to your viewers.

00:23:41.320 And he talks about this phenomenon of woke capitalism where large corporations have a close relationship with government.

00:23:49.220 Sometimes they're directly pressured by government to take these sort of woke social justice positions that advance certain causes, and then they use their market power, their corporate position, to push those ideas onto their employees and onto the wider public.

00:24:05.720 And it's not democratic. It's not consistent with the principles of individual liberty at all. So we have to recognize the steps that are required to protect the space for democracy and liberty.

00:24:20.820 And that means protecting the right of employees, the right of those who rely on government and other services to go out and express their views, to speak truth to power, to challenge governments and corporations with ideas that may not be popular with them.

00:24:36.580 I think that's consistent with a substantive commitment to liberty, not just saying liberty means doing nothing.

00:24:44.160 No, liberty means having that substantive commitment to providing protection for liberty against the threats that exist to it.

00:24:49.780 Yeah, that's fair. And I will add on that, looking at the case law from the Supreme Court of Canada on speech issues, on freedom of expression, they've been pretty consistent that political speech is the most worthy of protection. It deserves a very high level of protection because of the importance of political speech.

00:25:06.720 So you are right to point out it's a curious gap if we do have this legislation that exists, a bureaucracy and an infrastructure that already exists to protect people against discrimination that is not included there.

00:25:18.340 That bill is C-257, a private member's bill from Garnet Jenis, the Conservative MP for Sherwood Park, Fort Saskatchewan.

00:25:26.360 Garnet, always a pleasure, Sher. Thank you.

00:25:28.300 Thank you so much for the opportunity. Take care.

00:25:30.460 All right. Thank you. Yeah, I actually I wrote a column the other day and I was, again, talking more about provincial human rights commissions.

00:25:36.320 I was talking about the idea of whether provincial business or not provincial businesses, but

00:25:41.680 businesses should be allowed under provincial law to decide for themselves they want to

00:25:47.080 allow vaccination proof of requirement or proof of vaccination as a requirement.

00:25:51.800 The words all get jumbled in every single provincial legislation.

00:25:54.980 So now I'm doing the fun jumbling on my own.

00:25:57.640 But and again, the position I took was the libertarian position on that, which is, yes,

00:26:02.200 we should allow businesses to make these decisions for themselves.

00:26:05.260 But I put the caveat there that the barrier to that in other cases is these provincial

00:26:11.100 human rights commissions.

00:26:12.060 Now, they're slightly different than the federal one because the federal one applies

00:26:16.340 to spaces that are specifically regulated by the federal government as it is.

00:26:21.940 But to Garnett's point, he was saying that if we're already going to have this thing

00:26:24.980 protecting people in all these different categories, why isn't political opinion one

00:26:29.780 of those categories?

00:26:30.640 So you can decide for yourselves there.

00:26:32.520 I want to shift gears to a topic that I'm going to just be fully, fully candid with you on.

00:26:37.880 I am still learning a fair bit about, and that is cryptocurrency. Now, I've had people in my life

00:26:42.820 that have been trying to sell me on crypto, not sell me crypto, but sell me on crypto for several

00:26:48.460 years. And I'm someone who knows a bit about technology. I'm not a Luddite, but I also,

00:26:53.420 I know what I know. And sometimes I'm okay keeping myself away from the latest trends. I don't have

00:26:58.960 a TikTok, if that's what you're, if that's what you're wondering. I don't know if any of you were

00:27:02.460 wondering that. But anyway, when the whole thing happened with the trucker convoy, I actually,

00:27:07.220 for the first time said, you know what, I'm going to start a Bitcoin wallet. And I'm not one of

00:27:11.080 these people that was worried that my account was going to get frozen. I knew it was a possibility

00:27:15.220 because, you know, theoretically anyone's could have been, but I said, I'm going to get a Bitcoin

00:27:19.060 wallet. I've got the equivalent of, I think like $110 in the Bitcoin wallet. So I, if you have

00:27:24.780 access to my Bitcoin wallet. There's not much in there, but I am fascinated by it. And we've seen

00:27:30.100 a greater discussion about it because of what the federal government did. And a lot of people that

00:27:36.160 have been emailing me saying, you know, you should do a story on cryptocurrency. You should do a

00:27:40.680 story on Bitcoin. And we've had some politicians that have started to take note of this as well.

00:27:45.280 Notably, one of them is Michelle Rempel-Garner, the conservative member of parliament.

00:27:50.280 And I find this quite interesting because the whole point of crypto to some people is to avoid

00:27:56.860 government regulation. And for governments, that's why they have such an aversion to it.

00:28:01.940 David Clement, who is the North American Affairs Manager for the Consumer Choice Center,

00:28:06.520 had an op-ed about this in the Hamilton Spectator. He joins me on the line now. So David, let's start

00:28:13.660 first off here. Is it true right now that cryptocurrency is just the Wild West in Canada?

00:28:18.300 There's no regulation, no oversight. That's the perception of it that I see circulating.

00:28:23.460 No, it is not the Wild West. It is not completely unregulated. There are plenty of exchanges who

00:28:33.040 have gone through the, an example would be the Ontario Securities Commission's process for them

00:28:39.680 to be approved and operate within the bounds of what is currently legal. As with any new

00:28:48.140 industry or technology, there is a lot that operates on the outside of what is considered

00:28:55.880 legal. And that is why I think Michelle Rempel-Garner's bill is a step in the right

00:29:04.120 direction, because it starts the conversation about how should Canada regulate the cryptocurrency

00:29:12.600 space. And the reason why I co-authored that piece with my colleague Yael is that in how many other

00:29:20.200 instances of the economy has our federal government immediately over-regulated something? I mean, look

00:29:28.600 at our legal cannabis market, just insanely over-regulated. They completely overdid it from

00:29:34.360 packaging to taxation. And now we have this new emerging industry that more and more people are

00:29:40.720 interested in. There are headlines always about nefarious funding sources and Bitcoin being the

00:29:49.160 means for how those things are funded. And so there's a lot of discussion to be had. And so

00:29:55.000 we figured we would weigh in on what some key policy goals should be for whatever happens next

00:30:02.800 after Michelle Rempel-Garner's bill. I don't know if you can speak to this

00:30:07.160 in the sense of if it requires kind of understanding people's hearts and minds here but

00:30:11.560 i'm curious about the landscape of cryptocurrency users because you do have some people who only

00:30:17.760 seem to like it because it seems to be outside of the reach of government and i don't know how

00:30:23.460 large or small a share that is of the broader population in canada that is in some way involved

00:30:29.620 in cryptocurrency yeah i think if we were to have that if we were having this conversation

00:30:34.380 eight years ago, the answer would largely be, your assumption would be correct. It's mostly

00:30:42.100 people who like the fact that it's outside of the system. I think in today's current climate,

00:30:47.720 it is far more mainstream. Yeah, you've got ETFs that have it on the stock exchanges.

00:30:55.180 Yep, exactly. You have major companies who are sponsoring sports stadiums, who are

00:31:00.220 are properly regulated under the law, whether or not that law is too strict or not is up for debate.

00:31:08.520 So it is very much mainstream. I mean, I joke, I hear from some of my friends who are like,

00:31:14.700 yeah, my mom started to ask me about buying Bitcoin. And that is like the other side of

00:31:19.940 the equation is some people look at it as an investment vehicle, right? A lot of the,

00:31:25.300 I think original, if you, again, rewinding eight years, you would talk to someone who was really

00:31:31.140 passionate about the philosophy of Bitcoin. They were mostly monetary policy arguments about a

00:31:38.980 decentralized currency out of the hands of government and envisioning a world where Bitcoin

00:31:45.200 could be used to pay for things. And in some senses, it was at the time. It's kind of in

00:31:52.320 between at the moment. It's one part kind of investment vehicle, one part a means to pay for

00:32:00.440 anything or donate. We saw that with the trucker convoy. Again, this would sound crazy to someone

00:32:08.240 who doesn't understand. I donated about $100 worth of Bitcoin to the treasury of the government

00:32:14.560 of Ukraine in their fight against Russian invasion. And I did so at a very low fee in

00:32:24.040 25 seconds. So rapidly quicker than the banking system as it currently stands.

00:32:32.600 I moved money in the loose sense halfway around the world that could be used or monetized or

00:32:41.060 held in a way that's going to help them in that fight. And so I only bring that up because there's

00:32:46.200 a lot of people who, especially on the media side who talk, they'll be like, oh, well, Bitcoin was

00:32:51.700 used for this nefarious act or this nefarious group. What they often miss is that those are

00:32:57.760 all arguments against cash. Criminal networks always use cash. And we don't seek to limit

00:33:07.100 an ordinary person's access to cash because the Hells Angels used cash to buy guns.

00:33:16.920 And so this conversation, there's a lot of ground to cover in regards to what should be next

00:33:23.960 or some core principles in terms of ensuring that Canada is a place where the space can grow

00:33:30.740 as opposed to all of the industry seeking refuge elsewhere and growing elsewhere

00:33:38.320 and generating that economic prosperity and commerce elsewhere.

00:33:42.080 I know a lot of government discussions and white papers about cryptocurrency

00:33:46.840 tend to focus on money laundering.

00:33:48.720 Like you mentioned, they latch on to these examples.

00:33:52.120 But even in your case of money moving for a humanitarian reason

00:33:56.680 from your Bitcoin wallet to that of the government of Ukraine,

00:33:59.660 that is still an area that government likes regulating which is money coming in money going

00:34:05.020 out even if it's not for nefarious purposes even just for i mean i would argue taxation is a

00:34:09.400 nefarious purpose but that's another discussion but but again united states i had someone so that

00:34:14.580 hundred dollars or so in bitcoin that i have uh some of that came from a supporter of mine that

00:34:19.880 said i want to donate to you they're from the u.s moving money between the canada and u.s banking

00:34:25.200 systems is not really impossible. Yeah. It's very different. You can't e-transfer. So in the U.S.

00:34:32.920 You have to pay an exorbitant fee or wait several days to get from a PayPal account to a bank

00:34:37.640 account. And this happened in, I mean, it was basically instant. I know there's a confirmation

00:34:41.100 process, but, but, but how does government respond to that while still keeping what it

00:34:46.700 believes is important, which is some level of financial sovereignty?

00:34:50.000 well i think it raises the question of about how ridiculous some of those rules are in regards to

00:34:58.720 cross-border transactions i mean if you're in the us venmo is widely available and for listeners who

00:35:07.840 maybe don't know what venmo is it's essentially like tapping your phone um or or pushing a button

00:35:15.360 to e-transfer to someone else's Venmo account in a matter of like 10 seconds,

00:35:20.880 where if you and I went for dinner, we went to grab a beer or a bite to eat,

00:35:24.960 I could pay the bill and you could click send on the Venmo and it would be in my Venmo account in

00:35:29.760 10 seconds. Most Canadians right now rely on e-transfer, which is pretty clunky. If you're

00:35:35.980 trying to go across borders, it requires other services like PayPal. It's incredibly difficult.

00:35:44.040 and a lot of americans are using wire transfers and checks still

00:35:47.800 well yeah that's true that is that is true like to get across i mean yeah yes yes yeah yeah it

00:35:54.040 is primarily wire transfer and check and anyone who's deposited a check from the united states

00:35:59.400 knows that it takes forever to clear here and it's just very outdated and that kind of highlights

00:36:05.800 why there is some attractiveness in the cryptocurrency space because there's that

00:36:11.880 level of convenience and speed and security that ensures things are happening at the snap of a

00:36:20.420 finger. You know where it's going. You know how much is going where. And you know quickly that

00:36:26.960 the transaction has been done. And obviously, some bad people are going to want to take advantage of

00:36:33.580 that. Again, just like bad people take advantage of cash. But I think for the most part now,

00:36:39.860 the crypto spaces, people who are just generally interested in this, either as a means of exchange

00:36:45.960 or as an investment vehicle or somewhere in that mushy middle where they don't really know.

00:36:51.860 Maybe they'll hold some and then pay for something with some. I think it was Colorado who announced

00:36:58.640 last week you could start to pay some of your state tax bill in Bitcoin. And so we are very

00:37:06.360 much mainstream and very quickly, Canadian regulators are going to have to ask themselves

00:37:12.580 some serious questions. So things, I mean, some of the things that are important here

00:37:17.420 is legal certainty. So ensuring that just because Bitcoin was used by a nefarious actor, that we

00:37:25.140 don't lump in the means of payment and then throw all of the other perfectly legitimate consumers

00:37:31.960 under the bus. The importance of technological neutrality, which is a really important one as

00:37:39.020 the space continues to develop. There's very much the philosophy of permissionless innovation

00:37:46.220 right now. And I use the example of how we listen to music. You talk to our parents' generation,

00:37:54.000 maybe they had vinyl records. Imagine a government who had created policy to mandate that vinyl

00:38:01.100 records was how people listened to music you'd never have the 8-track the cd the mp3 streaming

00:38:08.140 um and so in many senses it's best to allow for that permissionless innovation that's another big

00:38:13.820 one um and and just creating an environment where we have a light touch approach and that should

00:38:22.380 also in my opinion include taxation and not looking at this as another productive sector

00:38:30.220 of the economy that the government can just seek its teeth into because obviously we're talking i

00:38:36.540 mean my own example of sending bitcoin to ukraine is it's very it's international and the businesses

00:38:44.780 who operate in that in this space very similarly to the online gambling world which legislators

00:38:52.380 in canada have now come around to and sought to legalize because they knew everybody was doing

00:38:56.860 it anyway, just with companies who are housed maybe in the Caribbean or elsewhere. And so that's

00:39:03.500 really the choice we have to make. Do we go too far and overregulate and push people into other

00:39:08.920 jurisdictions? Or create another layer of it too, right? Where it's like, oh, yeah, they've

00:39:14.460 overregulated this space. So we need to find another one. And then it becomes very cyclical

00:39:18.880 in that way. We got to wrap things up there. David Clement is the North American Affairs

00:39:23.100 manager for the Consumer Choice Center. The op-ed he wrote with Yael Asowski is at the Hamilton

00:39:28.760 Spectators website, the spec.com. David, thank you very much, sir. Thank you very much. Appreciate

00:39:33.760 it. All right. With that, we have got to wrap things up here. Let me know what you think.

00:39:38.240 Andrew at truenorthcanada.com is my email address. We will talk to you in a couple days' time here

00:39:44.140 on The Andrew Lawton Show. Thank you. God bless and good day to you all.

00:39:47.160 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:39:51.500 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - March 08, 2022

Tamara Lich is out of jail, but she was still a political prisoner

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