00:00:25.120This is Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show here on True North.
00:00:29.080And I apologize ahead of time if I'm not my usual bouncy, dynamic self today.
00:00:34.180I don't know if I have COVID or something else, but I have something.
00:00:38.000And my voice is just a little bit more strained than I like it to be.
00:00:41.660But you know what? We've got two fantastic guests that will help me with the heavy lifting.
00:00:46.140Maybe they'll do all of it and you won't even need me.
00:00:47.860And I can just, you know, bow out and take an early weekend midway through this.
00:00:51.640Not an April Fool's joke, what we're talking about now.
00:00:54.140The memories of the convoy and the federal government's response to it are very strong.
00:00:59.940Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act.
00:01:02.220We instantly saw a crackdown on the streets of Ottawa and also in bank accounts of people across the country.
00:01:08.940And despite the promise of oversight and scrutiny, we really haven't seen that just yet.
00:01:14.160And there was a fantastic piece I read in the Epoch Times about this that said after two days to flatten the bouncy castle, Canada needs a new constitution.
00:01:23.820The upshot of it is that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms really didn't protect Canadians from these very heavy handed measures by the government.
00:01:32.300And I want to talk to the co-authors of this piece.
00:01:34.360One of them is Bruce Pardee, who should be no stranger to a lot of you tuning in as he's been on the show before.
00:01:39.520He is a Queen's University law professor and also the executive director of Rights Probe.
00:01:45.180And also Patricia Adams, who's an economist and president of the Energy Probe Research Foundation and Probe International.
00:01:52.800Bruce, Patricia, thank you both so much for coming on today.
00:01:58.500Let me start with you on this because, Bruce, you've had an opportunity to talk to my audience before.
00:02:02.740Patricia hasn't. So I'll start with you, Patricia.
00:02:05.360What was it that brought you to the position that you put out in this piece here?
00:02:10.080That, you know what, there's something that Canadians need to know about how they're not being protected by this document that they're told,
00:02:16.580even as the Emergencies Act was being invoked, was safeguarding their rights.
00:02:21.500What intrigues me most about it, about the situation that we face, is that it's very similar to what our colleagues in China also face.
00:02:30.120And they issued in 2008 a charter, which was modeled on the Helsinki Charter.
00:02:39.740I'm sorry, not the Helsinki, but the one that came out of the Czechoslovakia, Charter 77.
00:02:44.500And it called for many of the protections that we thought we had that we don't have.
00:02:55.120And our colleagues, who we've worked with for 30 years, and that includes lawyers and journalists and accountants and economists and so on,
00:03:05.520have tried to model reforms in their own country based on those that we have.
00:05:11.100They generally would believe that to be the case, even though you and I can go through a laundry list of ways in which government can and does limit free speech.
00:05:19.140But you look at the convoy, for example, and the day after police did the big breakdown of it, it was a Sunday, I was walking out of my hotel in downtown Ottawa, and police were questioning me, asking me to justify why I was walking down a street.
00:05:54.700So this is a very difficult thing for people to get their head around.
00:05:59.300Because we have a charter that's written in black and white, and it says we have freedom of expression along with a number of other freedoms.
00:06:07.160And so they think, well, it therefore must exist.
00:06:09.780And yet in its execution, like the situation that you're describing, it often just isn't so.
00:06:19.880And the answer in part is that governments are now in the practice of doing things indirectly so that they do not directly infringe the charter and get into trouble.
00:06:33.040So a lot of the things that have been done during COVID, for example, the providing of authority to employers, for example, to require vaccination.
00:06:47.800Now, that's not holding you down and making you get a jab or fining you if you don't.
00:06:54.080It is simply providing the authority to other parties to do that.
00:06:57.880So when people come up and say, well, I'm being forced to vaccinate against my will without consent, the problem is that that's not exactly true.
00:07:09.540And the protection you have, you have liberty, you have security of the person.
00:07:14.060It's not clear that those rights have been directly infringed, just like in the situation that you're talking about.
00:07:19.600It's not like they said, well, you can't print or you can't speak as a journalist.
00:07:23.520You just shouldn't be here right now because there's an emergency, right?
00:07:28.720So it's done strategically and done carefully so that the constitutional protections that we appear to have just don't seem to work.
00:07:39.340What Bruce is saying there, Patricia, strikes me as from my limited understanding.
00:07:45.320I'm not an expert in China, but something I do understand about China, which is the blurring of the line between the public sphere and the private sphere, between the state and private enterprise.
00:07:55.540Now, I'd say that, you know, the line is more blur than line at this point because we know that even ostensibly private corporations all have the tentacles of the state in them in some way.
00:08:04.800But it does sound like that is part of the same dynamic there of, you know, even when government's not doing something, that doesn't mean government isn't behind a layer or two from what's happening.
00:08:15.680Yeah. And really, government is behind everything that happens in China.
00:08:20.900And it's true there are private enterprises.
00:08:24.560That's actually one of the things that the Charter 08 signatories asked for was the right to start a business.
00:08:31.160You know, it's interesting that they would put that in there, but all of the big private corporations like Alibaba and and so on are essentially run by the government.
00:10:50.060It affects the so-called private sector.
00:10:52.800Of course, it affects the state owned enterprises.
00:10:55.520It really the Chinese Communist Party controls everything, all aspects of society.
00:11:00.160This is one respect in which the situation in Canada is becoming closer to that in China, right?
00:11:06.420So you have we we have an aggressive, expanding administrative state that is involved in more and more things over time with respect to the press.
00:11:18.960For example, it's not that the government is telling the press, here's what you can say and here's what you cannot say.
00:11:24.800Instead, the government is subsidizing legacy media.
00:11:30.320And and it's they don't have to they don't have to.
00:11:32.740And in some cases, regulating, expanding the the ambit of its regulatory powers to go after online publishers.
00:11:40.260So it is becoming bigger and bringing more people in its regulatory orbit.
00:11:47.800But but the more the more influence and control the government has, in fact, the less explicit the instruction has to be.
00:11:56.980You don't have to pass a statute saying here are the things you can't say.
00:12:00.380You don't have to, because if you are a certain kind of media outlet, you know where your interests lie and you know what kind of story that you know, you should you should be telling.
00:12:10.400And of course, there's a very much shared ideology in all of these kinds of institutions.
00:12:15.320So there's not much, very much pushing that has to happen when when your government and your business interests and your media are all on the same page about what is true and what is good.
00:12:29.360Then you're likely to fall into a situation where dissent from that belief will get you into hot water.
00:12:37.620Patricia, what Bruce is talking about there, I find fascinating because in a lot of contexts, the worst thing than being told what you can't say is to just inherently know that you aren't supposed to say it.
00:12:52.100It's that self-censorship, which Orwell talked about, which a lot of people have talked about in the era of political correctness, that is more insidious than censorship because you can't really blame someone.
00:13:02.560You can't challenge it. It's just about I know what's going to happen if I step out of line.
00:13:06.800And I would assume that when you talk about people disappearing, that's very much the fear in China as well, is that even if that list weren't there when they went into work, they just know that if I cross this line, something bad is going to happen.
00:13:21.080For sure. And the professor that I just spoke about, the constitutional law professor, when he was put under house arrest, he was defended by a very prominent publisher in the country.
00:13:31.160Well, then she was arrested, and then her husband was arrested. So they're all in jail now.
00:13:36.060So in China, they say, you know, you kill the chicken to scare the monkey. And that's exactly what they do.
00:13:42.500And of course, when somebody is picked up and disappears, it affects the entire family and not just the immediate family, but the extended family.
00:13:51.820It affects your friends. Anybody who's associated with that person then becomes suspect. It breaks families up.
00:13:58.180You can imagine what it does. The stress that it puts on on spouses and on children, on parents, grandparents and so on.
00:14:06.220And it's especially cruel. You know, we're not that at this point yet in Canada, but in there, what they will do is when they pick
00:14:15.820somebody up and somebody disappears, no one knows where they are. And there have been many situations where
00:14:21.620the spouses will walk from prison to prison looking for their husbands in these cases. And they will
00:14:30.220literally go and say, have you got my husband here? And of course, the officials are under no obligation
00:14:34.760to admit that they have. So they just say no. And so this can go on for months and months and months.
00:14:39.240And in some cases, they're very brave lawyers in the country who are called the 709 lawyers.
00:14:46.900They were there were 300 of them rounded up in 2015, July the 9th. And they are essentially asking for
00:14:55.800the enforcement of the law because the law from the Communist Party's point of view is there for them
00:15:02.240to use. And so these lawyers will try to defend people. And if they step out of line from the
00:15:08.860government policy, they will be arrested. And then and then the lawyers that their families are hired to
00:15:15.680defend them, they get arrested. So it's just it there's an extreme amount of fear. And I think it's starting to
00:15:22.220happen here. I think people in Canada, doctors are afraid of their regulatory boards. Lawyers may may have to
00:15:31.580worry also about being disciplined. I think all kinds of people, especially after the funds of the donors
00:15:38.800to the Freedom Convoy were had their their accounts frozen, then people had to worry that maybe they
00:15:45.620were going to be associated with the convoy. So this the fear spreads quietly and it's very insidious.
00:15:53.760And and I'm sure that it's going on in the country right now. But we have to resist becoming the monkeys.
00:15:58.620Now, I'm going to say one thing we should point out is that there are court challenges to the invocation
00:16:04.440of the Advergencies Act, which haven't been heard yet. So we don't know for sure if the courts will
00:16:10.400will uphold the way the act has been used. But part of the concern is the record through the rest of the
00:16:17.940COVID era. And there have been lots of challenges to COVID rules of various sorts. And the success in the
00:16:25.760courts on those grounds has been very, very limited. And so in that respect, it seems like
00:16:32.060on the on the whole, the the courts have have embraced the government narrative over the so-called
00:16:41.040pandemic. So as we as you know, we will await to see what happens to the challenges to the
00:16:47.500emergency to act. But the disturbing thing at the moment is that the government appears to have believed
00:16:55.160that what they did is perfectly fine, charter compliant. And if no charter, if charter rights
00:17:01.580happened to have been infringed, then surely they will be considered a reasonable limit under section one.
00:17:08.600Since you bring up reasonable limits, let me ask about that, because I know a lot of people have brought up this
00:17:13.520idea that that that's the real problem of the charter is that you have this one section that
00:17:18.200basically is being used by governments, and in many cases, courts as a trump card for violating other
00:17:24.300sections. And I spoke a few weeks back with Brian Peckford, a former premier of Newfoundland, who was
00:17:30.040the premier when the charter was inked. And he believes that the section has an important role, but that
00:17:35.040governments and courts are distorting the meaning of that role. But but if you were to take that out,
00:17:41.140does that solve the problem? Or is that too simplistic a proposed solution to the structural
00:17:46.760concerns that you're raising about Canada's charter?
00:17:50.220It would not solve the problem. It would probably be better off without it,
00:17:54.900given its history, but it would not solve the problem. The problem in some of these cases is
00:18:01.060even getting over the threshold of establishing that a charter right has been infringed in the first
00:18:05.600place. You don't get the section one until you establish that the the right has been infringed.
00:18:11.960Yeah, that to be has been infringed, or seven demonstrate that exactly. So and as I was saying,
00:18:18.480in some situations, getting over that threshold will be difficult. So going back to my vaccine mandates,
00:18:24.640example, if, if you are required to get a vaccine in order to keep your job, and let's just for the sake of
00:18:30.400arguments say the job is with a government so that the charter applies to it. It's not clear that
00:18:36.080that's a violation of your liberty or or security of the person because you're not actually being
00:18:42.160made to that's the way it's being characterized that the story being told is no, this is a choice.
00:18:47.120You can get the vaccine or you can get another job. But of course, the broader the practice,
00:18:52.720the less likely it is you can get another job because all of them require you to get a vaccine.
00:18:57.200So the question is, at what point does the broad requirement across the board constitute
00:19:06.000essentially the equivalent of a mandatory vaccine? And that question hasn't been asked. But that's
00:19:12.560that's an example of one of the weaknesses in the way these charter rights have been expressed.
00:19:17.600And I'll put that to you, Patricia, because obviously, this charter eight that your Chinese
00:19:22.960colleagues have put forward has things that would be great in a liberal democracy to have
00:19:27.520an enshrined in a written constitution and then enshrined in law. But but even if that were to
00:19:32.400happen, it wouldn't force governments to comply unless there's a, I mean, an infrastructure there
00:19:38.640that can enforce government compliance. And also if there's a cultural desire and a cultural impetus in
00:19:43.920a society to do it, there are lots of dictatorships that have written constitutions that on paper
00:19:48.800would suggest the country respects all sorts of rights that it doesn't actually. So I mean,
00:19:53.600even if something like this were in place in China, it wouldn't deal with any of these underlying