Juno News - The Charter didn’t stop Canada’s Covid slide towards tyranny

00:00:00.000 As liberals celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms,

00:00:04.620 many Canadians are wondering, if the Charter couldn't protect our freedoms during COVID,

00:00:08.620 then what is it good for? I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.

00:00:23.920 Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for tuning into the podcast. So as you probably saw,

00:00:27.680 there was a lot in the media last week about the Charter of Rights and Freedoms,

00:00:31.960 celebrating the Charter, acting as if that was the creation of Canada, as if Canada didn't have

00:00:37.360 a constitution prior to it, as if Canada wasn't really a country prior to it. Liberals love to

00:00:42.380 hold up the Charter as the sort of golden point of Canadian government and why we have our very

00:00:49.240 freedoms. It was signed into law about 40 years ago, 40 years ago in mid-April. So liberals over

00:00:55.220 at the Globe and Mail celebrated this. They had a piece saying Canada's Charter turned 40 on Sunday

00:00:59.840 and it's still as radical and enigmatic as it was back in 1982. Well, the Charter is supposed to

00:01:05.960 protect Canadians' individual rights and freedoms against excessive government force and laws that

00:01:12.100 do not respect our individual dignity and our individual liberty. But as we all experienced

00:01:17.220 during COVID, heavy-handed government edicts routinely appended our most basic human rights.

00:01:23.460 Our religious freedoms were not upheld, as Section 2 is supposed to guarantee.

00:01:27.920 Pastors and church ministers were arrested and jailed for the crime of holding a church service.

00:01:33.820 Well, meanwhile, up the street, Costco and Walmart and big box stores were allowed to stay open with

00:01:39.500 no harassment from the government whatsoever. Also in Section 2 of the Beloved Charter,

00:01:44.420 it lists fundamental freedoms like our right to free speech, to freedom of assembly, to press freedoms,

00:01:49.960 which of course were all violated by Justin Trudeau and his Emergencies Act, which disproportionately

00:01:55.220 used force against peaceful protesters. The Charter is supposed to protect our mobility rights. Let me

00:02:00.520 just read from Section 6. Every citizen of Canada has the right to enter, remain in, and leave Canada.

00:02:07.420 Rights to move and gain livelihood. So every Canadian has the right to move to or take up residence in

00:02:14.280 any province and to pursue the gaining of a livelihood in any province. Now, of course,

00:02:18.840 it has not been the case in Canada for over two years now. So many Canadians are still today 1.00

00:02:24.360 barred from travel. They can't even flee the country if they wanted to. So today I want to talk more about

00:02:30.760 the Charter and its many failings. And to do so, to help me do so, is our friend John Carpe. John Carpe is the

00:02:38.520 founder and president of the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms, which was formed as a voice for

00:02:43.640 freedom in Canada's courtroom. John has received the Pyramid Award for Ideas in Public Policy and

00:02:48.760 recognition for his work in constitutional advocacy. The Justice Center's mission is to defend

00:02:53.800 constitutional freedoms for Canadians through litigation and education. John has devoted his

00:02:58.520 entire legal career to defending constitutional freedoms through litigation and education by

00:03:03.480 resisting the unjust demands of intolerant government authorities. So John, thank you so much for

00:03:08.920 joining the program. Glad to be with you, Candice. Okay, so let's just ask the basic question. Why

00:03:14.680 didn't the Charter protect our freedoms during COVID? Two reasons come to mind immediately. One is that

00:03:22.200 Canada has too few courts, too few judges. And so it always takes years for important issues to get a

00:03:31.160 court ruling compared to the United States where they seem to get court rulings on very significant

00:03:37.560 you know, lockdown measures, masks, quarantines, all kinds of issues. And they get their rulings in

00:03:45.080 in weeks or sometimes months. And in Canada, it's never in weeks or months, it always takes years. And

00:03:54.440 that's a problem when you've got governments violating our rights and freedoms. We're into the 25th month,

00:04:01.800 26th month. The hardest part about the two weeks to flatten the curve has been the first two years.

00:04:08.840 And we don't have too many court rulings yet. We have one in Manitoba and the other ones are are

00:04:15.160 moving through at the pace of molasses in February. So that's one big problem. The second problem is that

00:04:21.960 the Charter Section 1 gives governments the possibility of going to court and concocting

00:04:31.000 justification for violating rights and freedoms. And if that aligns well with the judge, and if the

00:04:37.800 judge is persuaded, then the judge will say, well, yes, okay, this law did violate religious freedom or

00:04:44.760 freedom of association, freedom of peaceful assembly, or this law does violate your right to bodily

00:04:51.320 to decide for yourself what gets injected into your body or not. But that's okay, because the judge

00:04:57.400 thinks that it's reasonable. And so we've got this, we've got this Section 1 of the Charter that allows

00:05:05.400 governments to violate our freedoms if they can persuade a judge. And then it's really the luck of

00:05:12.440 the draw. I mean, do you land before a judge who really understands and appreciates fundamental freedoms,

00:05:20.520 who actually demands that the government come forward with persuasive evidence, not just

00:05:27.320 speculation and modeling and fear mongering? Or do you get a judge who's more pro-government,

00:05:34.440 and those judges exist as well?

00:05:35.880 Well, it seems like there's a lot more of the pro-government judges. From my perspective,

00:05:41.400 it seems like a lot of the judges make their ruling based on their own views, rather than

00:05:46.920 being tied to the sort of basic principles of protecting individual rights and freedoms. So,

00:05:52.760 John, why was the Section 1 put into the Charter? If the whole purpose of the Charter was as an

00:05:58.040 addition to our Constitution to make sure that federal government couldn't overreach and that

00:06:02.360 individual rights were protected, if judges were just going to interpret the law based on,

00:06:06.600 well, the government was just trying to do its best, or I agree with these rules,

00:06:10.440 and so I'm not going to overturn it. I mean, why was that placed in and what good is the Charter with

00:06:15.480 that in there?

00:06:17.080 Well, people were warned in 1982. People that looked at the Charter closely said,

00:06:23.480 hey, wait a minute, this is going to give unelected, unaccountable judges a lot of power 0.96

00:06:30.280 to make rules about our laws, and it's going to give this new legislative power to judges that they've

00:06:38.360 not had before, and this kind of fell on deaf ears. You know, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, at the time there

00:06:44.360 was television advertisements with, you know, geese flying across the sky, and this is Canada's chance

00:06:51.320 to bring the Constitution home from Britain, and there was not a lot of debate on this question of,

00:06:58.840 you know, do we want a charter that gives judges the power to strike down laws? Now, more specifically,

00:07:06.520 you asked about Section 1, and I would venture a guess that it was put in there to have some kind

00:07:12.440 of a mechanism to recognize that rights are not absolute, and so the wording of Section 1 is that

00:07:23.080 the Charter guarantees rights and freedoms subject to reasonable limits prescribed by law

00:07:30.840 law that can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society. Now, it sounds good,

00:07:38.520 so any violation of your freedom of speech, freedom of religion has to be reasonable,

00:07:45.880 and the onus is on the government to justify it demonstrably. It sounds good, but it does give

00:07:52.520 a lot of latitude to judges. Well, that's unfortunate. I want to ask you because you

00:07:58.440 mentioned that there was one case that made its way through in Manitoba. Can you, off the top of your

00:08:03.400 head, I don't know if you can, can you tell us a little bit about what that case is and which rights

00:08:06.920 it seeks to protect? So we had the Justice Centre acted for some individuals and churches in the

00:08:15.000 province of Manitoba. We took the lockdown measures to court. We brought forward medical doctors, other

00:08:23.080 scientists. We had Dr. Jay Bhattacharya from Stanford, Stanford University in California, world-renowned

00:08:33.080 scientist and one of the co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration. We had other medical witnesses,

00:08:40.280 and we put forward very persuasive evidence as to the harm of lockdowns and questioning whether lockdowns

00:08:50.680 were saving lives. We put forward the medical and scientific evidence and the judge ruled against us

00:08:58.120 and upheld all of these government measures, but didn't really do a deep probing analysis of that

00:09:05.880 evidence. But said, well, in times of crisis, we really should just kind of defer to government.

00:09:11.800 And it wasn't the deep and engaging type of analysis that we would have wanted. And so we have

00:09:17.960 appealed this to the Manitoba Court of Appeal. And we'll see if we do better at that level.

00:09:23.400 Well, good for you. And I'm curious as to why Manitoba was the place that you chose because I saw

00:09:29.320 that the JCCF put out a ranking of the worst charter violators among the provinces. It seems like,

00:09:35.480 well, I can ask you for more details on this, but goes Quebec number one, British Columbia number two,

00:09:41.240 Manitoba was number three. So maybe you could tell us a little bit about this list and then why

00:09:45.240 specifically you chose to do the legislation in or do the court case in Manitoba.

00:09:50.040 So when you're able to launch a constitutional challenge, it's often a constellation of different

00:09:55.720 factors, like having willing clients, having a good fact scenario that's going to put your clients

00:10:03.320 into the best light. So it was just kind of the convergence of various circumstances. It wasn't

00:10:11.480 that we really looked at Manitoba and said, well, we want to do Manitoba before we do other provinces.

00:10:17.960 It's more like it just came together there first, but we also have litigation against lockdowns or

00:10:24.200 against vaccine passports or both in BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario. And it's only recently that

00:10:32.440 we've got a full-time lawyer in Quebec. And so we are hoping to do more litigation there as well,

00:10:40.280 but have not been in the past, not as much.

00:10:43.720 So, well, that's great. Congratulations on getting someone in Quebec.

00:10:48.120 John, why don't you tell us about the ranking though? What was it that made Quebec the worst

00:10:53.000 offender during COVID? Because I think you could talk to people in just about any province and they

00:10:56.840 would think that their province was the worst. I know I spent a bunch of time in Ontario during

00:11:00.520 lockdowns and it was horrible there. Alberta has been bad, people complaining. Most of my family's out

00:11:06.600 in British Columbia, including some unvaccinated family members who basically been housebound because

00:11:11.720 they can't go places. And everyone probably feels like they are in the worst place. So,

00:11:17.320 how did you come about this ranking and why was it that you deemed Quebec to be the worst?

00:11:23.720 So these assessments are somewhat subjective. So somebody else could come along with a different

00:11:30.680 ranking and it's not a mathematical equation. It's not a science. But we thought Quebec was the worst

00:11:37.080 when you looked at the curfews, which I think Quebec was the only province that had those.

00:11:43.240 Utterly unscientific. The politicians themselves when asked, you know, are curfews going to save lives?

00:11:49.320 And they said, well, we don't know. But just this fanatical obsession that, you know, if it might help

00:11:55.560 just a little bit, let's just violate people's rights and freedoms. Even if we have no idea if it's

00:12:01.560 going to help save lives, we'll do it anyway, just in case it might help. That seems to be the attitude

00:12:06.840 there. So they had curfews, they closed the border with Ontario, which is violation of the charter

00:12:13.320 mobility rights. They had restrictions on travel within Quebec, depending on whether it was an orange 0.98

00:12:20.760 or red or green zone. They were the only province that took it upon where the government actually

00:12:32.600 thought so highly of itself that it could dictate who does and who does not come into a house of worship.

00:12:39.880 Blatant violation of religious freedom where instead of the mosque, the synagogue, the church making its own 0.92

00:12:46.120 decision about its own house of worship as to who is able to come in or not, the Quebec government said

00:12:51.960 if somebody's not had the COVID shots, they are not to come into the house of worship. So they basically

00:12:58.040 usurped the legitimate civil authority of like private authority of houses of worship to practice their

00:13:09.160 religious freedom by deciding, you know, who comes into the mosque, who does not, and based on what

00:13:13.960 criteria, the government stepped in and told the houses of worship, everybody has to be vaccinated.

00:13:22.520 No other province did that on a province by basis, although British Columbia did that for one of its

00:13:27.720 health regions. There's one health region in the north that tried the same thing. Other provinces

00:13:35.960 violated religious freedom less severely. British Columbia did close houses of worship entirely for a

00:13:41.880 year and two months, which was puts it up right behind Quebec. But to finish off on Quebec, it's just the

00:13:50.440 combination of curfews and telling houses of worship who is or is not allowed to attend all the travel

00:14:00.360 restrictions and then all the other lockdowns and raising the possibility as a serious item for that Premier Legault said,

00:14:09.880 we're going to impose a tax on people that have not had two COVID shots. And we're going to bar these

00:14:16.120 people from grocery stores. Now, the government backed down may have been related to a warning letter

00:14:22.920 received from the Justice Centre from our Quebec lawyer, I don't know, they backed down. But the very

00:14:28.360 fact that the Quebec government would actually seriously consider and announced that they were definitely

00:14:34.040 going to impose a tax on people based on vaccination status. Just and last, very last point on Quebec,

00:14:42.280 they still have mask mandates, the only place in Canada, probably the only place in North America,

00:14:47.560 where you have to wear a mask when you're in public spaces.

00:14:52.920 It's, it's really remarkable that we are still living in this sort of dystopian nightmare. John,

00:14:59.080 there's been a lot of discussion recently about the sort of robustness of our institutions,

00:15:03.880 the strength of our ability to sort of move on from COVID. You wrote in a recent op-ed with the JCCF,

00:15:09.640 you compared communism to Canada's pandemic response. You said the utopian goal of communism and the utopian

00:15:15.240 goal of a world with no COVID, both ideologies have used the same, have been used the same way to trample

00:15:20.440 human rights and constitutional freedoms. I'm wondering, like, when you hear, for instance,

00:15:25.240 conservative politicians say that Trudeau is acting like a dictator. And then the response from the

00:15:31.560 Laurentian elites in the media is just to absolutely clutch their pearls and say,

00:15:35.320 how dare you say something like that about Trudeau? But yeah, at the same time, we've lived through two

00:15:39.640 years of just heavy handed, you know, really, really intensive government overreach. Yeah, I wonder if

00:15:46.520 you could kind of elaborate on your comparison of communism to our COVID reaction, and then speak

00:15:52.040 more broadly about the robustness of Canada to withstand these kind of emergencies that take

00:15:58.360 two years to trample on our rights. And, you know, we're still we're still not completely out of the

00:16:02.840 woods. So governments never take your rights and freedoms away without proffering a good pretext,

00:16:10.760 or a nice sounding excuse. So dictators need an enemy, who could be the enemy? Well, it could be,

00:16:18.520 let's look at communist Russia, 1917, right on through to 1991. The enemy is capitalism, capitalists,

00:16:30.600 wealthy landowners, people that oppress the workers, they are the enemy. So in order to fight the enemy,

00:16:36.520 and build our socialist utopia, we have to take away your freedom of speech, your freedom of religion, 0.62

00:16:41.960 your parental rights to raise your own children as you deem best, your freedom of association,

00:16:46.920 your freedom of peaceful assembly, we're taking away all your rights and freedoms, but it's for

00:16:50.840 your own good, because we got these evil capitalists, and aristocrats, and landowners,

00:16:56.280 and factory owners that are oppressing the proletariat. So we have to fight the bad guys,

00:17:01.000 therefore, we need to take away your rights and freedoms. Now, that's the dictator's playbook,

00:17:05.240 it's over and over again, Adolf Hitler in Germany said, you have to be very afraid of the communists,

00:17:11.080 and the Jews. And so we got to protect Germany from Jews and communists. So we're going to take all 1.00

00:17:17.080 your rights and freedoms away. And that's exactly what the Nazis did. As soon as they came to power, 0.89

00:17:22.680 freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of peaceful assembly, the full freedom of religion,

00:17:31.000 mobility rights, everything was taken away. And a lot of people supported it. Sadly, that's another

00:17:37.320 thing about the dictators. Another example would be some, you know, right-wing military dictatorships

00:17:46.040 in Latin America. Who do they say the enemy is? The enemy is the communists. So we got to protect you

00:17:52.120 from communists. Therefore, we're going to take away your rights and freedoms, and we're going to lock

00:17:56.600 you up in prison and torture you. And we're going to have death squads, all in the name of fighting 0.98

00:18:00.920 communism, right? Governments have committed horrible atrocities in the name of fighting communism.

00:18:08.040 You've got Idi Amin in Uganda, in East Africa, over 300,000 citizens murdered. And he went after the

00:18:17.560 Asian minority, the 1% of Ugandans were East Indians, and he forced them all out of the country. 1.00

00:18:24.760 Many of them came to Canada. So now it's the same playbook. The enemy is not, you know, communism or

00:18:34.520 capitalism or terrorism. The enemy is COVID. And that extends to people that don't want to take the

00:18:43.560 vaccine, whom our Prime Minister has described as anti-science, misogynist, extremist, racist.

00:18:53.480 Should we tolerate these people? You have that kind of demonization of a minority. And so people who

00:18:59.640 don't see the playbook, I think, are probably just ignorant of history, because it's the same thing.

00:19:05.640 When governments take away your rights and freedoms, they will create an enemy, and they will proffer

00:19:15.080 a nice sounding excuse for taking away your rights and freedoms.

00:19:18.360 Well, it's so interesting to see, because I think you're completely right in your assessment of

00:19:23.160 what is going on. And yet, John, so many of the people who are doing just what you say, or excusing

00:19:29.560 someone like Justin Trudeau and doing that, were the same people who were out last week,

00:19:33.080 you know, banging the drum of Canadiana saying how wonderful and enigmatic our charter is. Almost

00:19:40.760 like ignorant of what's in the charter and what the charter was designed to do and what the charter

00:19:45.160 was designed to respect. So why is it that we have people who call themselves liberal,

00:19:49.640 call themselves liberals, used to wrap themselves in the charter, who are the ones out there doing that?

00:19:54.760 And we saw it clear as day during the trucker convoy, when Justin Trudeau came out on day one,

00:19:59.720 after being in hiding and having COVID and whatever else was going on with him, saying,

00:20:04.600 these people are Nazis. You know, these truckers are Nazis. So if you're standing with them, 0.96

00:20:09.560 you're standing with people waving swastikas. Why don't they have the self-awareness?

00:20:16.440 Why don't they understand what the purpose of the charter is and what the meaning of the term

00:20:21.880 liberty is? How do they square that circle? And why the hypocrisy? Why the lack of self-awareness?

00:20:30.520 Well, anything I say will be speculation, but I think there's a lot of inertia

00:20:36.280 on the part of the so-called mainstream media, not just the CDC, but other media are getting

00:20:43.480 government funding now, you know, everything from television stations to newspapers. And he who pays

00:20:51.080 the piper calls the tune. And so you've got government funded media who are preaching and

00:20:59.240 proclaiming and promoting the government's narrative on COVID, on treatments for COVID,

00:21:06.680 on lockdowns, on vaccines, everything in the past two years. We've had the mainstream media kind of

00:21:12.600 beating the government's drum, promoting fear, suggesting falsely that COVID is as dangerous

00:21:20.360 as the Spanish flu of 1918. Following the government's line on claiming that there are

00:21:27.160 absolutely no cures or treatments for COVID whatsoever, proclaiming this message that lockdowns are

00:21:34.440 saving lives, that lockdowns are doing more good than harm, preaching the gospel on the vaccines,

00:21:40.680 that they are safe and effective. The media have been cheerleaders. Now, fortunately, they are losing

00:21:47.000 credibility every day, as more and more people are just tuning out. And more and more people are getting

00:21:52.600 their news from, you know, their friends, their colleagues, their whatever streams, but they're not

00:22:02.520 getting the media from the six o'clock news the way that Canadians were 40 or 50 years ago. So I think

00:22:11.560 that there's a bit of a bubble there and there's a disconnect. And for Canadians that were not on the

00:22:16.600 ground in Ottawa, the mainstream media did push this message that these truckers were dangerous,

00:22:27.160 violent criminals. And sadly, I think that message has probably sunk in to the minds of at least some

00:22:34.840 Canadians, hopefully not too many. I agree with you that more and more people are tuning out,

00:22:39.880 getting their news directly from the source. That was one of the great things that we saw during the

00:22:43.720 convoy was that a lot of Canadians were just streaming videos themselves. You know,

00:22:48.040 there were these viral videos going everywhere on TikTok and Instagram with millions of views,

00:22:53.720 particularly young Canadians on those platforms. But I think even older Canadians, you know,

00:22:58.280 rather than going to the CBC, they might get their news directly from, you know, the JCCF or True

00:23:03.560 North or some alternative. So there is some hope. I want to ask you again, though, about Canada's

00:23:09.880 institutions. Do you think we're in a good shape as a country? What do you think of the charter at 40?

00:23:15.960 What do you think of the broader constitutional structure? How can we make these institutions more

00:23:20.280 robust? What needs to be done? Boy, that's that's a very big question. We're in bad shape. We have a

00:23:27.560 we have a breakdown in the rule of law. It was just striking and disgusting to see how the difference

00:23:37.000 in 24 months between the Aboriginal and environmentalist protesters in February and

00:23:44.520 March of 2020. So right around the time that COVID was starting to become an issue. We had people

00:23:51.560 blockading railway lines, making it impossible for ships in Halifax and Vancouver to unload.

00:23:57.880 And the cause they were fighting for was it was anti pipeline in the name of traditional Aboriginal

00:24:04.680 territory, even though the elected chiefs in those areas were pro pipeline and we're looking forward

00:24:11.160 to the job creation and getting their 80 percent unemployment rates, which you see on some reserves,

00:24:17.320 getting that down and getting people working. But in the name of Aboriginal rights, in the name of the 1.00

00:24:21.560 environment, in the name of anti pipelines, we had these protesters that blockaded railway lines in

00:24:28.200 Canada. And the Prime Minister's response was to negotiate and to say we have to be patient, even

00:24:34.520 though that was definitely criminal conduct to to blockade a railway line, to blockade a highway and

00:24:41.560 and prevent any traffic, not just slowing down traffic, but an outright prohibition on on train travel.

00:24:49.080 So then fast forward to 2021. We've got vandals in Manitoba at the legislature, tearing down and

00:24:57.960 vandalizing a statue of Queen Victoria, which is criminal conduct and police to stand by and watch.

00:25:05.720 And then we get the truckers in Ottawa, not a single trucker charged with any crime in the first three

00:25:14.840 weeks that they're there, which tells you just how not illegal their behaviour was when there wasn't a

00:25:20.920 single criminal charge, no charges laid, no arrests made. And then you get this crackdown where the

00:25:28.280 Prime Minister imposes martial law on the country, the Emergencies Act, and declares a national emergency.

00:25:36.840 And next thing you know, we've got police horses trampling women, you've got unarmed protesters getting 1.00

00:25:43.320 beaten by police clubs, and you get this aggressive physical repression of a peaceful protest.

00:25:50.520 So the double standard is glaring that where we're at in Canada is that if you're demonstrating for

00:25:57.320 a cause that the Prime Minister is sympathetic to, even if you're blatantly breaking the law,

00:26:03.880 you're not going to get in trouble. Conversely, if you're protesting for a cause that the Prime

00:26:09.000 Minister disagrees with, like our charter rights and freedoms that have been taken away from us the

00:26:13.960 past two years, well, then we're going to have a ruthless, physical suppression of peaceful protest.

00:26:22.520 That double standard is a violation of the rule of law. And it's very, very scary.

00:26:30.200 Well, and you forgot in there that during the very, very beginning of the pandemic,

00:26:34.840 right when no one really knew what it was, and everyone was told to just stay inside to avoid

00:26:41.080 catching this thing. All of a sudden, we had a American-inspired Black Lives Rally movement that

00:26:47.400 swept across Canada, even though it had nothing to do with our history or our justice system or policing.

00:26:52.680 And the Prime Minister himself went out to that protest right in the spring of 2020, when COVID was

00:26:58.360 brand new. And then you had a bunch of epidemiologists and doctors saying that

00:27:02.920 fighting against racism was so righteous and just that you couldn't catch COVID from getting it.

00:27:10.680 So, you know, we've had those contradictions for a long, long time. John, it's not a healthy society

00:27:16.440 when you have a Prime Minister who routinely breaks ethics rules and gets a slap on the wrist and gets

00:27:22.600 to continue on. It's not a healthy society, what you just described. So I just had a final question

00:27:28.440 for you here. You know, we talked a little bit about how most of the restrictions are lifted,

00:27:33.560 but they're not all lifted. Particularly, there's still many restraints on people who are unvaccinated.

00:27:39.800 Further lockdowns are looming. We never know when they're just going to get brought back in. It

00:27:43.800 seems like the provincial power, the provincial government doesn't want to let go of those powers

00:27:47.800 just yet. So what is a JCCF doing to protect us going forward? And how can Canadians ensure that

00:27:55.960 our rights are protected and that this doesn't just keep happening again and again and again?

00:28:00.280 Well, we've got court actions across the country, but I've often said that the winning in the battle,

00:28:08.680 winning in the court of public opinion is even more important than winning in the court of law.

00:28:14.360 Because if public opinion changes and people recognize how harmful and destructive and how

00:28:20.680 utterly unscientific these measures are and have been, when that public opinion changes,

00:28:27.800 you're going to see change in the law. So the best thing that people can do is to try as much as

00:28:33.880 possible to be in dialogue with others. You know, some people, you got people on both extremes that

00:28:41.080 you can't talk to. I mean, some people, they're just 100% pro-lockdown. They don't want to hear

00:28:45.720 anything. They completely buy into the government and media narrative. And there's other people,

00:28:53.000 you know, equally passionate on the other side that are not going to be persuaded that lockdowns

00:28:58.520 were good. But there are people in the middle that are not firmly decided either way. Those are the

00:29:05.000 people that need to be reached. So people can, you know, hand out brochures. The Justice Center has

00:29:13.000 mailed out hundreds of thousands of brochures to people that will get a pack of 50 or 100,

00:29:18.200 put them in the mailboxes of their neighbors. If anybody wants to do that, contact info at jccf.ca.

00:29:25.240 Ask for brochures about our charter rights and freedoms and the problems with the vaccine passport,

00:29:31.160 those kinds of things. Give out brochures to people. But do the heavy lifting, do the hard work

00:29:37.240 of persuading people that are in the middle, that are open to being persuaded. Because the way out of this,

00:29:43.320 unfortunately, it's just going to be a lot of hard work to change public opinion. And apart from that,

00:29:49.560 I think the repression is going to continue if we don't change public opinion.

00:29:54.120 Well, I think that certainly with the trucker convoy, there was a little bit of optimism and

00:29:59.560 good news there. Because the fact that the truckers went out there, they were greeted on the side of

00:30:03.960 highways in minus 30 degree weather by families and people waving Canadian flags. And many, many people

00:30:10.200 did rally around those truckers. Many more appreciated them silently at home or quietly.

00:30:14.440 And you're hearing more and more of that. So, you know, definitely the truckers changed the tone.

00:30:19.880 And I think that the work that the JCCF does is incredibly important in pushing back against just

00:30:26.920 out of control government overreach and activism. So, John, we really appreciate what you do. Thanks for

00:30:32.040 your time and coming on the show. And we hope to have you back again soon.

00:30:34.840 Thanks so much for the invitation.

00:30:36.600 All right. That's John Carpe of the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms. You can

00:30:40.920 check out their website at jccf.ca. I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.

Juno News - April 25, 2022

The Charter didn’t stop Canada’s Covid slide towards tyranny

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