Juno News - The Nanny State Strikes Again？

00:00:00.000 Hi, Juno News. Welcome back to another episode of Not Sorry with Alexander Brown. I am Alexander

00:00:10.620 Brown. I'm a writer. I am a campaign director. I'm the director of the National Citizens

00:00:15.580 Coalition. I got a podcast, a substack, and I'm thrilled to be here with you, part of

00:00:21.960 this audience. And we have lots to talk about. And we have not been in short supply, even

00:00:28.660 in the dog days of summer on concerns, common sense concerns, conservative concerns. The

00:00:34.680 big one to many is the park bans, the woods bans, the stay out of the woods, the stay home

00:00:41.420 and stay safe, which we are seeing in Atlantic Canada. If you're Doug Ford right now, who

00:00:47.080 is Canada's reigning champion of lockdowns, you're probably feeling like a little bit

00:00:50.740 left out. The joke is that he's looking at the weather report now, too, and just wondering,

00:00:57.220 you know, out of an abundance of caution, maybe he should go back to closing golf courses

00:01:01.380 and playgrounds against any evidence that that was ever going to do anything. In the National

00:01:08.720 Citizens Coalition from the NCC, NCC President Peter Coleman is in the Western Standard this

00:01:16.540 week, sort of highlighting what part of the concern here is, is that Tim Houston in Nova

00:01:23.340 Scotia is ostensibly conservative. Guys like Doug Ford ostensibly are conservative.

00:01:31.320 But our principles don't shouldn't come and go depending on who is making these decisions

00:01:37.580 that can appear quite arbitrary in a piece called or in a piece that points to how Ford and Houston

00:01:44.960 are lacking in real conservatism. Coleman, the president, is quoted as saying, remember his

00:01:52.460 COVID era decree, referring to Doug Ford, that golfing was dangerous because players might

00:01:56.960 have some pops with their buddies. That same paternalistic streak persists, undermining the

00:02:03.180 freedoms and common sense values conservatives hold dear. Then there's Nova Scotia's Premier,

00:02:08.320 Tim Houston, whose recent decision to ban access to provincial parks under the threat of

00:02:12.940 $25,000 fines defies all logic. And they have handed a few of those out so far. While the public

00:02:19.440 should be concerned and careful under fire bans. And on that, I'm sure we all agree that's tried,

00:02:24.580 tested and true. This isn't about public safety. It is nanny state control. Parks and nature are vital

00:02:32.840 for Canadians' mental and physical well-being. Offering a reprieve from the daily grind and some of the

00:02:39.000 failures brought on by leaders like Houston or Ford has worked to double Nova Scotia's population amid

00:02:45.560 rising unemployment. Closing the great outdoors off without justification, it's not conservative.

00:02:52.560 It is authoritarian. It's a move that smacks of the same heavy handedness we saw during the pandemic

00:02:59.460 when governments decided what was essential for citizens. And we know that those decisions have

00:03:09.360 not aged well. We monkeyed with the social determinants of health. We kept sick people

00:03:15.400 home to get sicker. We punished kids to protect grandma. None of that worked. We ignored transmission

00:03:23.340 data, you know, and put in border legislations and banned truckers. And we just inflamed the populace

00:03:30.660 with rules that increasingly made no sense. We can, of course, all get behind fire bans. We've always

00:03:37.540 done that. We all, many of us, you know, I grew up camping in the woods. You grew up camping in the

00:03:41.820 woods. You'd know when to not do anything. That was a greater good chipping in that made a whole lot

00:03:48.060 of sense. The greater good and chipping in that doesn't make sense right now is yelling at freedom

00:03:54.960 minded Canadians at these rulings put in place like last until like the end of October. What if there's

00:04:04.080 a nice patch of rain next week? What about running, going on a nice jog for your mental and physical

00:04:12.240 health on a beautiful summer day to get away from it all? Maybe taking the wrong turn down the wrong

00:04:19.180 path is worthy of a prohibitively expensive fine from your government. That is not conservative. That is

00:04:27.240 not in keeping with our constitutional values and our rights. We see those in the political sphere, former

00:04:38.600 campaign managers, prominent campaign managers, putting out that this is for the greater good.

00:04:43.660 They're calling it overreach. They're saying these kind of bans are hard-earned wisdom. And

00:04:48.520 going back to that seatbelt analogy, the parachute analogies that we saw during COVID that we know

00:04:54.240 didn't hold any weight and were never ended up being supported by any data. There is a prominent

00:05:02.360 liberal campaign manager and consultant who has served as a Saudi oil lobbyist who has loudly and

00:05:10.000 flippantly called the CEO of Shopify, Toby Lutke, Canada's most successful modern company, called him

00:05:18.380 the real danger for making light of the fact that, you know, freedom and liberty minded folks can't walk

00:05:24.640 in the woods when that commentary was probably missing while taking a Ramco checks, those ethics. And

00:05:30.880 this is Team Canada. These are the folks who are suddenly rallying around the flag again. They're back

00:05:39.420 to, as they did during COVID, as they did during our sort of decolonial summers, they're back to

00:05:46.060 crapping on the little guy. And we're all going, you know, where does this end? This justification

00:05:53.500 doesn't hold water. Why do we love the arbitrary? Why do, why does a certain set of Canadians love

00:05:59.080 these rules that don't seem to serve anyone? There is a, there's a senator who like, I'm not even

00:06:06.300 kidding that this is his rationale that has been like supported by the side. When he put out a tweet

00:06:10.320 that said, I was at a friend's place last night. My wife put a cigarette out in the, his wife put a

00:06:16.020 cigarette out in the fire pit before we went inside for dinner. 10 minutes later, we noticed the pit

00:06:20.420 was in full blaze. A fire pit was in blaze folks. Innocent enough, but incredibly dangerous. I support

00:06:26.540 Premier Houston's call on this 100%. That has absolutely nothing to do with keeping law-abiding,

00:06:35.040 self-respecting taxpayers out of the woods. You lit a fire in a fire pit and now you want to keep people

00:06:42.220 out of the woods. There's been a ruthlessness and an unthinking aspect of this messaging and we're

00:06:48.380 seeing mainstream articles not representing opposition from people just going like, Hey,

00:06:54.660 wait a second, down with the fire ban. This is nonsensical. And in doing that, in, in, in this

00:07:02.560 reaction, in, in talking down to people as these, these folks like to do as, as the government will,

00:07:08.860 will now sort of thoughtlessly decree that they're, they're, they're creating their own

00:07:12.660 opposition without a care. This, this hectoring, this tone policing, then crying foul when they get

00:07:18.200 a little contact back, it doesn't serve anyone well. And it was, it was foundational to the COVID

00:07:24.000 experience. And so you can see why people are starting to go, Oh, we're joking about climate

00:07:31.240 lockdowns because it sure feels like those years, those cursed summers when we were just making

00:07:38.100 everything worse without a care. And just to abide by the sensibilities of this sort of professional

00:07:45.680 class and a select few amount of people who, you know, they could ride these things out in their

00:07:51.940 cottage or, or they were insulated from the damage being done to the real economy or what was really

00:07:57.720 happening at street level. And yet this is a country where judges contest constitutional rights 0.96

00:08:04.160 to bike lanes where they say, no, you know, Ontario can't clean up these bike lanes that half people 1.00

00:08:09.640 don't even use that, that block emergency services and make traffic worse and make it harder for

00:08:14.500 regular families to get to work. We need to protect these bike lanes. This is a country where BC land 0.74

00:08:21.120 rights are now being Friday news dumped. They're being ripped away from people and, and, and given to

00:08:27.460 indigenous bands without consultation, without, without any public facing anything, but

00:08:33.820 we're drawing the line at walks in the woods, really? And so on this response, it sure seems like

00:08:42.400 where there's smoke, there's fire. And I wanted to talk to the guy who's, everyone's been calling. I mean,

00:08:49.120 the bat phone has been ringing off the hook with the Canadian constitution foundation. Josh Dehaas is a 0.97

00:08:55.560 counsel there. He's a great writer commentator. And so we were lucky to have Josh on the show.

00:09:00.680 The CCF is doing really important work right now that, that, that might become, you know, a court battle

00:09:08.480 because they give a darn about your constitutional rights. I know you do too. And, and the folks who

00:09:15.200 are being so flippant about this, they deserve to unintended feel the heat. So join Josh and I for

00:09:23.320 this chat. All right. We're thrilled to welcome on Josh Dehaas counsel with the Canadian constitution

00:09:28.140 foundation. Josh is a writer, former online editor in the legacy press. He has been an incredibly busy

00:09:34.700 guy this week. Something tells me Josh that the, the bat phone has been ringing off the hook, uh, 1.00

00:09:41.080 here at the Canadian constitution foundation. Uh, thanks for coming on the show and what the heck

00:09:47.320 is going on with, with bands on, on walks in the woods out in Atlantic Canada. Yeah. So, uh, Atlantic

00:09:54.780 Canada is facing some risk of, uh, forest fires. It's, uh, it hasn't seen a lot of rain. Things are

00:10:00.400 really dry there. Um, and the risk has been assessed at high or in some parts of the province as extreme,

00:10:07.140 uh, not unlike parts of Ontario where I'm sitting right now. And the province's solution to this

00:10:13.600 rather than just burning things or banning things that cause, uh, forest fires, like, you know, uh,

00:10:20.360 campfires or ATVs, uh, things like that. They've decided that they're going to have a total ban on

00:10:27.000 anyone going into the woods at all, unless they have a permit or unless they happen to live on that

00:10:33.780 particular woods. But if they live there, they can't have guests. So what's going on is a really

00:10:39.340 serious government overreach here that, uh, violates people's rights. And, you know, a lot

00:10:45.160 of people are sort of, uh, people have been reaching out to us left, right, and center who

00:10:49.640 want to challenge this. And there's, you know, some conspiracy theories going on about why this

00:10:54.260 is happening because it's just so crazy to people. People can't understand how, you know, hiking,

00:11:00.700 fishing, um, having somebody on your property to go birdwatching could possibly pose any sort of

00:11:07.180 fire risks. So they're, they're trying to figure out what's really going on. And I think what's

00:11:10.980 really going on is the government is just obsessed with safety and doesn't trust people to, you know,

00:11:16.480 walk through a forest. Yeah. I think to many, the understandable concern and, and, gee, it's almost

00:11:24.960 like they're trying to create conspiracy theories here because it's, it's, my head immediately went to

00:11:30.060 COVID, which was that this feels like an arbitrary choice the same way that, uh, all of a sudden,

00:11:37.200 you know, unvaccinated truckers couldn't cross the border when we knew that that did had nothing to do

00:11:42.100 with transmission or the way that, you know, particularly Ontario where I was at the time,

00:11:47.900 you know, you, you close golf courses, parks, you keep closing schools, uh, ostensibly to protect

00:11:54.660 grandma and grandpa, but they're not, you know, the, the connective tissue there was, was very

00:12:01.180 short. And so the arbitrary nature is sort of giving way to, to folks going like, hang on a sec.

00:12:07.440 This, you know, reminds me of the last few years, their, their head's going to go there. They're

00:12:10.940 going to get worried. I think none of us want to, you know, burn down the woods, but, but constitutionally

00:12:18.520 as a, as a legal counsel expert, um, wasn't a burn ban enough. Well, I think that that's all that would

00:12:26.780 be justified under the constitution because you do have a right to freedom of movement in Canada.

00:12:32.220 It's protected by section seven of the charter, which is the protection for life, liberty, and

00:12:37.780 security of the person, and not to be deprived of that except in accordance with the principles of

00:12:42.960 fundamental justice. That's a lot of words, but basically you have your freedom of movement.

00:12:47.380 And if the government wants to limit that they can, but it has to be in accordance with certain

00:12:52.380 well-established principles, like it can't be arbitrary. So if the government wants to stop you

00:12:58.720 from moving around the province, maybe they can do that where there's a justification, but

00:13:02.920 there isn't a justification here. There's a justification for, you know, banning wildfires or

00:13:08.560 for punishing arsonists or, uh, things that actually cause fires. But instead what they've done is,

00:13:14.120 is essentially create this, uh, sort of mini lockdown, uh, not unlike COVID where, uh, some

00:13:20.320 of the rules made sense, but a lot of them just didn't and just went too far and were, you know,

00:13:24.900 put in place either because they just make enforcement really easy for the government or

00:13:29.360 because the government was benefiting politically from looking like they're, you know, having this

00:13:35.100 strong response without actually considering people's rights.

00:13:39.240 Yeah. And isn't, wouldn't the concern then be as well. And, and I've seen from interpreted,

00:13:45.620 you know, by, by folks like yourself and your colleague, Christine Van Gein, which is that if,

00:13:50.700 if a government goes looking for safety as an excuse, they will always be able to find it.

00:13:56.920 Like that interpretation is then, um, just open to rampant abuse and where does it end? And, and

00:14:04.980 could this not be applied to, to other issues?

00:14:08.520 Yeah. So what, when, when there's a, um, when you have to balance liberty and safety of people,

00:14:14.940 it has to be like anything else in the constitution. It has to be proportional. So, you know, people have

00:14:21.940 come to me and they've said, well, actually walking through the forest does cause risks. Here are the

00:14:26.520 risks. You know, somebody could drop a water bottle. It could refract the light and then cause

00:14:32.140 a fire. That's very, you know, I, I said this on a podcast the other day and the host sort of laughed

00:14:37.400 and then the pro restriction, the pro travel bank guy said, but that does cause, that does cause fires.

00:14:43.980 And it's like, well, theoretically it might've happened once on earth, but that doesn't mean

00:14:48.180 it's worth, you know, restricting a million people from using their forests. Right. So it's all

00:14:53.500 about proportionality at the end of the day. I've seen like the return of the seatbelt analogy

00:14:58.040 to, to my dismay, because that was like the big COVID one, which is like, yes, like churches and

00:15:03.500 gyms and schools should be closed, you know, for an infinite period of time because well, seatbelts

00:15:11.720 kept people alive and they complain. Those are well, parachutes X, Y, Z, like all that's been missing

00:15:16.700 in my mind is, you know, that Swiss cheese model or, or a graph that shows, you know,

00:15:23.100 hikes and walks, and then it just goes up to the heavens. Some, some unhelpful model. We've, we've,

00:15:28.220 we've seen folks in the political sphere, like defend this just almost viciously and flippantly

00:15:36.200 and like, like lashing out at people who've had these, who've had these concerns. It's,

00:15:41.960 I am not a, a, a constitutional expert, but my concern comes from the calm side, which is that

00:15:49.900 if, if we're, we're sort of treating the public's concerns with callousness, if we are dismissing,

00:15:59.580 you know, our, our legal experts and those who just want to go for a run in the woods, because

00:16:03.860 there's this almost impossible chance that a responsible Canadian could light the forest on

00:16:08.940 fire by accident. Are we not then, you know, furthering a divide? Are we not then like making

00:16:16.660 this a bigger issue than it, than it, than it is or needs to be? Yeah, I think it's, it's become really,

00:16:22.900 really vicious, really fast, right? People are, you know, tweeting about how anybody who opposes this

00:16:30.420 is just selfish, or they want to burn the forest down. It's not unlike during COVID where, you know,

00:16:37.080 if you opposed any of these measures, you're a grandma killer, right? So that's one of the things 0.98

00:16:42.800 that politicians should be taking into account when they're making these types of measures is,

00:16:47.680 you know, what is this going to do to the fabric of society? You want people to be able to trust

00:16:52.840 government, to be able to trust each other. And here we have, we actually had a snitch line. So day

00:16:58.360 one of this, the ministry tweeted out that people should call a number if they see people breaking these

00:17:04.440 rules. And, you know, remember these rules apply to, if you go to a rural property and somebody

00:17:11.280 happens to live there and you visit them, that could be a breach of this order that leads to a

00:17:17.000 $25,000 fine. And, you know, I don't doubt there are people calling in the snitch line on their

00:17:22.300 neighbors, right? Like we don't want to go there. And that's why these things need to be proportional

00:17:27.140 and need to think really hard before you put them in place.

00:17:29.840 Yeah. And the CCF is obviously one of the groups taking lead on this. Your organization has warned

00:17:39.580 Premier Houston. We've obviously, since we're seeing these rules spreading to the rest of

00:17:45.860 Atlanta, Canada, saying that the hiking ban threatens freedoms and there's a petition that

00:17:51.240 demands its repeal. Do you want to tell us more about that petition and where it might lead if you

00:17:57.920 get enough signatures or there is an impetus for you to take a further role here?

00:18:03.900 Yeah. So the petition, which is on our website, theccf.ca, it's just asking Premier Houston to

00:18:10.620 rescind this travel ban and to put in place an order that actually just targets the causes of

00:18:16.760 wildfires. And if he doesn't do that, he doesn't listen to the thousands of people who have signed

00:18:23.260 that petition, then I think it's fairly likely that we'll take legal action. So we might seek an

00:18:30.100 injunction. We might do a judicial review and ask the court to find that this is an unreasonable

00:18:37.480 decision, that this is a decision that does engage people's charter freedoms and that it needs to be

00:18:43.600 proportional and needs to change.

00:18:45.300 Good. Because as far as I'm seeing right now, still the rationale is these pie in the sky

00:18:51.140 examples. My favorite that I just read before hopping on with you was a Canadian senator who

00:18:57.120 said, I don't know if you've seen this one, you know, well, my wife was near a fire pit a night or

00:19:02.640 two ago and she was smoking a cigarette and she put her cigarette out in the fire pit. And 10 minutes

00:19:07.500 later, we looked outside and that fire pit was ablaze. So, you know, you can't walk your kid and the dog

00:19:14.880 on a beautiful summer's day. And yes, it's a little bit dry for an indefinite period of time until we've

00:19:21.300 gotten our, you know what together and or made better forestry management decisions or, or handed out

00:19:30.200 enough of these that we've realized that we've gone too far. When, like, can, when should we be, do you

00:19:37.580 have more in the works here? Is there, is there, when can we hear from you again? What, what the next

00:19:43.480 steps are, you know, this could become a legal matter pretty quickly. How do folks stay in touch

00:19:49.300 with you and, and, and how can they, how can they help as well?

00:19:53.000 Yeah. That example you gave is great. I keep hearing, you know, similar examples. There was

00:19:57.900 somebody who tweeted that this, this ban on hiking, camping, fishing, just being in the forest

00:20:04.680 is necessary because people burn garbage in their backyards. Well, you could just ban burning garbage

00:20:10.760 in your, your backyards. This particular travel ban, it's in place till October 15th. And I don't

00:20:18.040 think they would have said that if they didn't think that they were probably going to leave it in place

00:20:23.060 all fall, unless we happen to have a really rainy fall so that they don't have to deal with the

00:20:28.580 problem, which is, you know, finding more resources, finding more, you know, firemen and figuring out

00:20:35.140 how to get water to places. If there is a wildfire, they think this is just the sort of easy, easy

00:20:41.320 approach. And they, they don't necessarily intend to, to do anything more to, to fix this from what I

00:20:47.660 understand. So I think that, um, that unless the ban is rescinded very soon, then there will be a

00:20:55.120 legal challenge and people should, you know, go to the ccf.ca, sign the petition, and then we'll be

00:21:00.880 able to keep you updated on where that legal challenge is going and what's happening next.

00:21:06.360 Good. Because I saw another one, which is just, this blows my mind. This is, there's a,

00:21:13.320 a liberal, uh, strategist, comms professional who has lashed out at the CEO of Shopify, which is

00:21:20.300 Canada's most successful modern company. And on a very short list of successful modern companies,

00:21:25.180 thanks to the government, who has said that like the real danger right now is, is these, these kind 0.99

00:21:31.080 of civil libertarian minded, you know, let's be honest, like this, their sort of interpretation of

00:21:36.740 a basket of deplorables in some way who, who think that, you know, their liberties infringe on XYZ.

00:21:42.260 It's that same flawed logic. And then you, you look and, and some of these folks in this sphere

00:21:49.640 who are saying these things, you know, they've been like Saudi oil lobbyists and you're going

00:21:54.280 like, gee, like, where have you been on that? Like where, where this selective ethics to just

00:21:59.160 cover for what seems like a lot of government mismanagement, failing status quo, managed

00:22:04.980 decline. And where are they right now? When I know another thing that the CCF has put out

00:22:10.120 recently is concerned surrounding the bike lane, the bike lane legislation where there were the

00:22:17.420 premier of Ontario was doing like a rare conservative thing and saying, you know, I think

00:22:21.240 I want to, to rip these up because I'm an elected official. And that's literally, you know, sort of

00:22:26.380 part and parcel of the whole system. And a judge steps in and goes, no, you're not. There's a charter

00:22:31.520 right to these, even when they don't totally make sense. And then I'm in BC. And right now we have

00:22:37.020 these, these Friday news dump deals between the provincial government and, and indigenous bands

00:22:42.320 where it's like, wait, what is, wait, what? Like you're giving the land underneath people's feet,

00:22:46.860 like to these groups. And it kind of seems like a selective, like we got some big constitutional

00:22:53.120 issues right now and they draw the line at a walk in the woods when we're failing on all these other

00:22:59.860 fronts. Yeah, absolutely. So just, just to point out some of the people that are commenting on this

00:23:06.920 publicly that are getting a lot of views on their ex posts that are supporting the premier that is

00:23:12.260 supporting people that call for these, these restrictions. You have to remember that a lot

00:23:16.800 of these people are positioning themselves to work for particular politicians. And so whether they work

00:23:22.760 for them now or not, I'm not sure, but you always have to take those things with a grain of salt.

00:23:27.160 There might be some communications going on in the background that we don't know about.

00:23:31.660 Can't say, can't say for sure. In terms of the, the, the section seven, right to a bike lane you know,

00:23:39.680 this decision came out in Ontario that says that basically, you know, Doug Ford decided, okay,

00:23:47.080 these three bike lanes on three of the country's busiest streets here in Toronto. So Bloor University

00:23:52.660 or Yonge Street for those familiar with the city, these bike lanes, if you, if you take them out,

00:23:59.460 they will not, that will not actually reduce congestion, even though there will be two lanes

00:24:04.140 for cars instead of one and cyclists will be at physical danger. Therefore you can't take these

00:24:10.040 bike lanes out. He says, I'm not creating a right to a bike lane, but of course he's created a right to

00:24:15.100 those bike lanes. Unless he, unless Doug Ford can satisfy a judge that somehow this will reduce

00:24:21.520 congestion, which I think common sense suggests it would. And I don't know how you, how you prove

00:24:26.700 that otherwise, but when you try and fight for, you know, right to privately contract with a doctor

00:24:33.100 to fix your hip or have a surgery that might be life-saving for you, the courts have said, no,

00:24:39.380 you don't have a section seven right to that. So there's a big problem here with inconsistency

00:24:44.900 on this particular file. You know, you have a right to a safe injection site in British Columbia,

00:24:50.080 according to the Supreme court of Canada, but you don't have again, a right to, you know, privately

00:24:55.700 go and have an MRI for example. So, um, and now a run in the woods on a, and now a run in the woods.

00:25:03.200 Yeah. Or canoeing or bird washing. It's just, uh, yeah, we need to, we need to push back because

00:25:09.360 things are getting crazy. Good. And that's important. And, and it's, it's no wonder why,

00:25:13.880 why folks are frustrated and concerned. Josh, thank you for joining us today. Uh, what's the CCF website?

00:25:19.960 Where can people, uh, sign this petition or follow you on Twitter or, or, or keep up with all this?

00:25:24.040 Yeah. So it's, uh, the CCF.ca and you need the da there. So the CCF.ca or CDN const found on X. Uh,

00:25:34.100 we're also on YouTube. Great. Thank you for your hard work. You know, good luck, good luck putting

00:25:38.820 out this fire, which, you know, you might get banned in Nova Scotia for, and, uh, we'll keep up with your

00:25:44.580 hard work and, and thanks for joining us. Thanks so much. Juno news. I got the promo code for you.

00:25:49.860 Go to junonews.com slash not sorry for 20% off. That should be like right here. A great way to

00:25:57.960 support independent media, common sense, minded journalism, help grow this whole movement back

00:26:04.440 towards something more familiar and more normal. Thank you.

Juno News - August 12, 2025

The Nanny State Strikes Again？

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