Juno News - The state of civil liberties in Canada

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.

00:00:05.580 This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:00:10.820 Coming up, we check in with John Carpe of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms

00:00:15.460 on the state of civil liberties in Canada.

00:00:17.880 What happened in 2022 and what do we have to look forward to in the next year?

00:00:22.960 The Andrew Lawton Show starts right now.

00:00:26.540 Hello and welcome to you all.

00:00:28.500 This is Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show here on True North, the Andrew Lawton Show,

00:00:33.280 as we continue talking about the big picture issues, a way to cap off 2022 and head into 2023.

00:00:41.280 And I think civil liberties has always been an issue in sharp focus, certainly on my show.

00:00:47.380 But I'd say this past year, there's been a fair bit more to unpack in that regard.

00:00:52.260 We had the Freedom Convoy.

00:00:54.080 We had, of course, the Responding Emergencies Act and the freezing of various bank accounts,

00:01:00.080 the limitation of protest rights.

00:01:02.220 And in general, I think beyond that, we've seen some people that have continued to face charges

00:01:07.100 and penalties of some kind for COVID infractions or supposed COVID infractions.

00:01:13.220 So even if a lot of the mandates and restrictions are by and large gone,

00:01:17.140 that doesn't mean we're out of the woods as far as the consequences of violating some of those restrictions are concerned.

00:01:24.380 So I wanted to do what we did last year and have a check-in with John Carpe,

00:01:28.400 who's the president of the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms,

00:01:32.160 which has taken up a lot of these cases and has just grown exponentially in the last couple of years.

00:01:38.180 Now, I should say, just in the interest of disclosure, I sit on the board of the JCCF.

00:01:44.000 Now, that's not why I'm doing this interview.

00:01:45.980 I would have done this interview regardless and was planning to regardless.

00:01:49.820 I actually just joined the board.

00:01:51.360 But I think it's important for you to have that context and understand that I am a supporter

00:01:55.680 of the organization's mandate and work.

00:01:58.820 But with that out of the way, John Carpe, it's great to talk to you, sir.

00:02:02.040 Thanks for coming on today.

00:02:03.860 Glad to be with you, Andrew.

00:02:04.760 Now, you and I spoke around this time last year in a very similar format.

00:02:09.960 And the review we had on the state of civil liberties in Canada for 2021 wasn't exactly great.

00:02:16.640 And I think the prevailing narrative that you and I talked about,

00:02:20.420 and that certainly we've both discussed in our respective jobs throughout the year,

00:02:23.700 has been that the COVID era has brought just absolutely unprecedented and continuous challenges

00:02:30.080 against civil liberties in Canada.

00:02:32.360 And of course, this year we have the Freedom Convoy, which is certainly a symbol of hope

00:02:36.360 for a lot of people, but also far more in the way of these government crackdowns.

00:02:40.440 We had the Emergencies Act.

00:02:42.460 We have ongoing criminal charges against Tamara Leach and Chris Barber.

00:02:46.740 We've got all of these offenses that pastors are still fighting.

00:02:50.680 But this year, especially in the last few months, it seems like a lot of these things are getting

00:02:55.060 dropped.

00:02:55.560 Not all, but it seems like a lot of these are getting dropped.

00:02:58.500 Do you think we're turning a corner finally?

00:03:00.260 Well, in a way, yes.

00:03:03.080 I mean, obviously, after the trucker convoy, Saskatchewan was the first province to drop

00:03:08.880 its get rid of lockdowns, followed thereafter by Alberta and then other provinces.

00:03:15.480 Quebec took a long time, but eventually even Quebec got rid of the curfews and mandatory 1.00

00:03:21.520 mask wearing and all of these things.

00:03:23.660 So that's a very real difference that we don't have our privacy rights violated every day

00:03:31.080 by being forced to provide private, confidential medical information to total strangers in

00:03:37.100 order to go into a restaurant and gym.

00:03:39.380 We've also had the travel mandates lifted, the mandatory use of the arrive cam.

00:03:48.380 That's gone.

00:03:49.640 People that have not taken the COVID shot can fly on airplanes.

00:03:53.080 So a lot of positive things, but still pretty scary when you have a federal government that

00:04:00.060 is entirely unrepentant about wrongful invocation of the Emergencies Act, using excessive force

00:04:09.320 to crush a peaceful protest, freezing Canadians' bank accounts, and moving forward with threats

00:04:16.960 to free speech.

00:04:17.680 So, you know, it's a mix of positive and negative that way.

00:04:23.040 I mean, you and I both suffer from the same general pessimism about some of these issues.

00:04:28.160 And I know it's difficult because both of us have to try to keep hope alive because, you

00:04:32.820 know, obviously there's no point in doing what we do if there isn't hope.

00:04:35.620 But did you even, with your pessimistic approach about some of these things, and I don't mean

00:04:41.120 that as a character judgment, but just in general, you're aware of the problems.

00:04:44.920 Did you imagine at the beginning of this year that we ever would have been in a situation

00:04:50.640 where protesters' bank accounts were being frozen by the government?

00:04:54.060 Like, is that something that you would have even put in your top 100 fears of potential

00:04:59.040 things?

00:05:00.880 Not this soon.

00:05:02.480 It is the type of thing that happens in a repressive regime, and Canada is going in the

00:05:08.200 wrong direction in terms of our fundamental rights and freedoms.

00:05:12.940 So, it's the type of thing that you, it's like, wow, this is, we have slid so far so

00:05:19.580 fast.

00:05:20.920 If you had asked me about it 12 months ago, right, in December 2021, you know, would the

00:05:26.340 government freeze the bank accounts of the Prime Minister's political opponents?

00:05:30.720 If the Prime Minister doesn't like your opinion, he's going to invoke the Emergencies Act and

00:05:36.080 freeze your bank account because you've donated to some group that he doesn't like.

00:05:39.640 Like, I would have said, well, you know, if we continue in the wrong direction for another

00:05:45.500 two or three years, it would get to that.

00:05:47.940 Well, it got to that in February.

00:05:51.740 Bank accounts frozen.

00:05:52.800 I mean, this is like a, it's a banana republic with polar bears.

00:05:56.520 One of the big dangers I see in the public opinion sphere on this is that there are a lot

00:06:03.340 of people in this country that can't separate their dislike of a particular group or particular

00:06:09.260 person from what they believe the law should be.

00:06:12.660 And I think the vaccine passports are a great example of this. 0.96

00:06:15.520 People that say, well, I'm vaccinated.

00:06:16.860 I don't really respect people who aren't vaccinated. 0.96

00:06:18.900 So, I don't care if they're denied the right to board a plane.

00:06:21.880 Or with free speech, people that say, you know, I don't like what that person says.

00:06:25.700 So, I don't really care if their free speech rights are trampled upon or curbed in some

00:06:31.100 way.

00:06:31.620 And with the convoy, there was a fair bit of that, I think, as well.

00:06:35.200 You know, well, you know, I didn't like the protest.

00:06:37.320 The Emergencies Act came in.

00:06:38.480 The protest was disbanded.

00:06:40.000 So, I don't really get too bothered by it.

00:06:42.060 But there did seem to be from that a group that emerged in between that was a bit more

00:06:47.860 on that principled side of, I may not like the protest, but I think this was an overreach.

00:06:53.000 And I was wondering if you had a sense of how large that group was and, you know, whether

00:06:56.980 you believe that, generally speaking, Canadians did respond to the Emergencies Act the way

00:07:01.740 you would have wanted them to.

00:07:03.440 Well, one manifestation of what you just described was that the Canadian Civil Liberties

00:07:08.940 Association, which has been supporting the violation of charter rights and freedoms by

00:07:15.040 way of lockdowns for the past, you know, two and a half going on three years, or at least

00:07:19.760 maybe not supporting, certainly not opposing in any meaningful way, these massive violations

00:07:25.520 of our freedom of association.

00:07:27.180 Yeah, I don't think I would say they supported it, but they certainly weren't sounding the

00:07:30.600 alarm about it and definitely not in the way you were.

00:07:33.800 Right.

00:07:34.120 So, they, yeah, exactly.

00:07:35.400 So, they, and what was interesting is with the Public Order Emergencies Commission, so

00:07:40.980 that, which I prefer to call it the public inquiry, it's a little bit of a shorthand

00:07:45.920 term, the public inquiry into the use of the Emergencies Act, the Canadian Civil Liberties

00:07:51.120 Association was present and was concerned about the federal government overreach.

00:07:56.660 So, that to me shows that there's a difference there, that there, I think that is representative

00:08:02.780 of some Canadians who may have not opposed lockdowns, but when the government so trivially

00:08:09.860 in such cavalier and completely unnecessary fashion invoked the Emergencies Act, that for

00:08:16.240 a lot of Canadians, that was a bridge too far. 0.56

00:08:19.280 And a lot of people did, even if their own bank account was not frozen, there was a bit

00:08:23.320 of a run on the banks, which is apparently why the Prime Minister changed course, because

00:08:27.760 there were so many banks were getting cleaned out, because there's a lineup of people wanting

00:08:32.760 to take their cash out.

00:08:35.840 Yeah, and that was interesting as well, and I don't know how closely you followed, because

00:08:41.020 I know you've got other cases you're working on right now, but the day-to-day of the Public

00:08:45.060 Order Emergency Commission, but some of the details about the conversations that Chrystia

00:08:48.840 Freeland, the Finance Minister, had with bankers were quite interesting.

00:08:52.780 And it was actually quite unfortunate, because you had a couple of the banking CEOs that we

00:08:57.460 saw in meeting minutes were saying, you know, designate these people terrorists.

00:09:01.800 Let us, you know, completely throw the book at them.

00:09:03.880 And there was only one banking CEO on that call that said, hang on, why are we weaponizing

00:09:08.460 banks against people?

00:09:09.480 Maybe what you should actually do is announce a transition out of mandates.

00:09:13.280 And it was not made public who that banker was, but I'm like, man, I want to transfer my

00:09:18.340 accounts to that guy's bank.

00:09:19.680 I think tyranny requires either the support or at least the acquiescence of a lot of people.

00:09:28.780 The greatest evils in history take place when there's cooperation, right?

00:09:34.160 If you're one person or a small group and you're trying to do something evil, you're not

00:09:41.320 going to get very far unless you get a lot of cooperation.

00:09:43.520 And so it's tragic and very sinister to see banks that have apparently zero respect for

00:09:52.980 their customers and that are just this totalitarian mindset that let's just crush anybody who gets

00:10:00.960 in the way of what the government has deemed to be some important objective.

00:10:06.480 And that's just the biggest task for those of us who love freedom.

00:10:13.300 The biggest task is the ongoing project of educating and re-educating Canadians about our

00:10:21.880 rights and freedoms and why the free society is superior to a repressive regime, be it, you

00:10:29.760 know, communist, fascist, Nazi, theocratic, what have you.

00:10:34.880 There's many different varieties of repressive regimes.

00:10:38.700 But their common characteristic is a lack of respect for our fundamental freedoms and human

00:10:44.720 rights.

00:10:45.120 One of the real dangers I saw coming out of the COVID era is that the government was the

00:10:52.360 one that put these mandates and restrictions in place.

00:10:55.620 But in almost all cases, it wasn't the government that was responsible for enforcing, well, enforcing

00:11:02.020 in the broadest sense, but the day-to-day enforcement of it fell on other people.

00:11:06.540 I mean, for example, vaccine passports were by and large enforced by 16-year-old restaurant

00:11:13.060 hosts and hostesses.

00:11:14.540 And, you know, the vaccine mandate for air travel was being enforced by airlines.

00:11:18.500 And you had all of these different restrictions and mandates were in place that fell on other

00:11:23.680 people, mask mandates. 0.85

00:11:25.080 It was the businesses that had to go along with these.

00:11:27.800 And I've always taken the view that I don't personally fault businesses that did what they

00:11:32.800 had to to survive.

00:11:34.640 They were in a very difficult situation.

00:11:36.420 They came out of this.

00:11:37.540 And now the government's saying, we're going to fine you $20,000 or take away your business

00:11:41.540 license if you let unvaccinated people do it.

00:11:44.260 But I commend those that took a stand and said, I'm not going to go along with that.

00:11:48.360 But it was, I think, the real insidious part for me, where government was putting these things

00:11:53.280 in place, but it fell on other people to turn on each other.

00:11:58.120 Well, we saw a very unhealthy snitch culture that emerged early on in 2020 when the kind of

00:12:08.780 the first wave of lockdown measures, we had people, you know, getting a ticket for sitting

00:12:13.600 on a park bench.

00:12:14.740 We had this frightening yellow crime scene tape put around playgrounds.

00:12:22.880 I mean, and the snitch lines were alive and well, because there's a dark side to human

00:12:28.340 nature.

00:12:28.660 There are people who agree with oppression.

00:12:36.180 They think it's good for the government to treat us like sheep, treat us like farm animals

00:12:40.420 and tell us exactly how to live and what to think.

00:12:45.360 There's a book called Escape from Freedom, might be called Flight from Freedom, one of the

00:12:49.540 two.

00:12:49.960 And it's by Eric Fromm, F-R-O-M-M.

00:12:52.640 And he wrote in around 1943, and he wrote about the Nazi regime in Germany, and he said

00:13:00.940 there are many Germans that enthusiastically gave up their rights and freedoms because life

00:13:08.840 can become a little bit easier if somebody else tells you how to live and what to think,

00:13:13.760 what's important and how you should live your life, what goals and objectives you should

00:13:19.820 have.

00:13:20.240 So there were a lot of Canadians, they liked the COVID, they liked the lockdowns because

00:13:25.380 it gave them a sense of meaning and purpose.

00:13:28.020 And it was Big Brother, you know, alleviating you of your responsibility to have to think

00:13:33.760 about what is actually important in life.

00:13:37.120 The government's going to tell you, the important thing is that we put all of our time, effort

00:13:43.240 and energy into, you know, this quest to stop the spread of a virus, and no matter how much

00:13:51.020 it costs, no matter how much harm is inflicted.

00:13:54.080 So some people like that.

00:13:55.520 They want somebody else to do their thinking for them.

00:14:01.100 Yeah, and that was the real danger.

00:14:05.680 And that's the part that I think will, I fear, outlive COVID.

00:14:09.460 It's a situation in which we've basically just abdicated some of the most fundamental

00:14:14.400 decisions in our lives.

00:14:15.880 I mean, something as fundamental as what we put into our body to the government.

00:14:20.280 And when you do that, you're licensing the government to make a heck of a lot of other

00:14:24.640 decisions for you.

00:14:25.560 And I mean, for the longest time, my hill to die on has always been free speech.

00:14:29.560 And, you know, that was the issue.

00:14:30.800 And I think that a lot of these things are connected.

00:14:32.880 Because again, when you're talking about free speech, the question is, do I think I

00:14:37.160 should be responsible for determining the limits of my speech?

00:14:39.680 Or do I think government should?

00:14:40.900 And there are a lot of people completely willing to give that up.

00:14:45.980 It goes back to Mr. Frum's book, that not everybody loves and cherishes freedom.

00:14:54.100 And I think our rights and freedoms are safe only to the extent that they are understood

00:14:59.940 by Canadians in our minds and cherished in our hearts.

00:15:03.760 And apart from that, no court, no judge, no charter, no constitution is going to save you.

00:15:13.840 I'm sure you've heard the old saying, I don't know who came up with it, but the price of

00:15:19.580 liberty is eternal vigilance.

00:15:23.440 So we always have to be vigilant.

00:15:26.760 And I think that the last two and a half years have exposed how far we've declined in our

00:15:35.100 appreciation of the free society.

00:15:38.640 Yeah, and I also think that a big dimension here is, what does your car do when you take

00:15:45.760 the hands off the steering wheel, metaphorically?

00:15:48.300 Does it drift a little left?

00:15:49.600 Does it drift a little right?

00:15:50.660 Do you keep going?

00:15:51.460 And the neutral direction that society seems to be headed is one that is towards less freedom.

00:15:57.560 I think if people that stand up for freedom stop doing so, they're going to continue to

00:16:03.080 lose.

00:16:03.320 So the left has that advantage that just the natural order of things seem to shift in its

00:16:08.020 direction.

00:16:08.620 And the corollary to that is that conservatives are always swimming upstream.

00:16:12.720 And when we stop swimming, we just get right back to where we started.

00:16:16.440 And it's exhausting.

00:16:18.020 And I know you are on the front lines of this in the legal sense, and your team is just growing

00:16:23.420 and growing and growing.

00:16:24.500 And you put out one fire, and in the time that it's taken you to do that, three more have

00:16:29.320 popped up somewhere else.

00:16:30.580 I don't, I think there's been a big realignment that the traditional left, right thing has

00:16:39.800 broken down to some extent.

00:16:42.540 I, a few months ago, I had lunch with a lawyer who's based in Vancouver, who has done lots

00:16:50.800 of labor law, lots of human rights law, and very progressive, probably voted NDP all of

00:16:57.900 her life, I didn't ask, but just kind of reading between the lines.

00:17:00.880 You got that sense.

00:17:02.020 Yeah.

00:17:02.420 Yeah.

00:17:03.340 And she was so disappointed in her colleagues not standing up for fundamental human rights,

00:17:11.120 like this basic idea that, you know, we're, we're not going to get terrorized by by false

00:17:17.460 information that the government's putting out.

00:17:20.320 And when I say false information, just this whole notion that COVID is as dangerous as

00:17:26.720 the Spanish flu of 1918, which is not true, that there are no treatments for COVID other

00:17:32.600 than lockdowns and vaccines, which is not true, that the vaccine is effective, which I

00:17:38.680 think, you know, when people left, right and center are getting sick with COVID.

00:17:42.780 There's limits to how effective these, these vaccines are, that the vaccines are safe, when

00:17:49.160 there is no long term safety data, that that lockdowns are wonderful, and not causing much

00:17:55.520 harm.

00:17:56.020 All of these government lies were the pretext for taking away fundamental rights and freedoms.

00:18:01.480 So this, this left wing lawyer that maybe three years ago, she and I, our paths would not

00:18:07.580 have crossed because I'm, you know, big on the charter freedom, smaller government, you know,

00:18:12.780 and she's moved for big government, but she's passionate about how we need to win back these rights

00:18:20.240 and freedoms that we've lost.

00:18:21.700 And she's very disappointed in her human rights lawyers, labor lawyers, all of these people that

00:18:31.280 she's associated with for decades, she's very disappointed in them.

00:18:35.200 And she's, she and I are sitting down for coffee together, and we're on the same side.

00:18:40.480 We want our rights and freedoms back.

00:18:42.480 So there's been, there's been a realignment.

00:18:44.560 And certainly you've seen governments that with a so-called conservative name, especially in Quebec,

00:18:51.900 right, the Coalition Avenir Québec is, is supposedly a conservative party, right, not a left wing party.

00:19:00.240 And Quebec had the worst lockdown restrictions in Canada.

00:19:04.660 So yeah, just a bit of a twist or a spin on that, that the left wing versus conservative

00:19:12.780 is kind of, it's still there, but it's in the background a bit, I think, because there's

00:19:18.820 lots of people who would call themselves left wing that are against, totally against the tyranny

00:19:23.600 that we've experienced in the last two and a half years.

00:19:26.100 And there's lots of right wing people that have been enthusiastic cheerleaders for all

00:19:31.640 of these human rights violations.

00:19:34.280 Yeah.

00:19:34.820 And I mean, there's that old sort of observation that the political spectrum is not a straight

00:19:39.200 line.

00:19:39.580 And I think you also have to work in some things like authoritarianism.

00:19:44.020 And I don't even mean that in a style of government, but as a personality trait.

00:19:48.000 And, and there are people on the left and the right that have that authoritarian impulse.

00:19:51.780 And, and, uh, as you know, the flip side of that people on the left and right who don't.

00:19:56.540 And I think that that was a big part of why there's been this coalescing between libertarians

00:20:02.480 and social conservatives in the last couple of years, because, you know, you had a lot

00:20:06.160 of these libertarians who may or may not be particularly religious that are saying, yeah,

00:20:10.900 you know what?

00:20:11.320 I, I support your right to keep your church open.

00:20:13.860 And then you had a lot of, you know, supposedly religious, you know, traditionalist law and order

00:20:18.280 conservatives that said, we're going to shut down your church. 0.97

00:20:21.280 And I think Danielle Smith is a great example of this.

00:20:23.600 She's not a social conservative, but I think a lot of social conservatives have found a

00:20:27.380 lot more in common with her on the question of liberty than they have with Jason Kenney,

00:20:32.700 who is, uh, demonstrably a social conservative in, in, uh, many of his statements, but that

00:20:37.640 wasn't how people felt his government was behaving.

00:20:41.820 Yeah.

00:20:42.300 Well, Daniel Smith has, uh, spoken out against human rights abuses, uh, a lot more than, uh,

00:20:49.460 say the Catholic bishops in Alberta.

00:20:51.500 They were pretty much silent when we were being degraded and dehumanized by having to

00:20:57.540 reveal personal, private, confidential medical information to total strangers, uh, becoming

00:21:03.300 second-class citizens, uh, for, uh, for anybody not getting this, this vaccine for which there's

00:21:09.740 no long-term safety data.

00:21:10.900 And, uh, and, uh, you know, with few exceptions, most churches cooperated with this.

00:21:16.040 And then we have somebody who's, as you say, quite accurately, not a social conservative

00:21:21.180 is saying, Hey, this is, uh, this is not right.

00:21:23.360 She said, these are the worst human rights abuses that she has seen in her lifetime.

00:21:29.140 And I think that that's, uh, that's entirely true.

00:21:32.360 I mean, you'd have to go back, uh, quite a few decades, uh, to, uh, to, to, to, to, to

00:21:39.180 see this kind of abuse, even, even the battles that were fought in the fifties and sixties

00:21:44.720 and seventies, uh, where, you know, for, for women, for visible minorities, for LGBTQ, uh, 0.75

00:21:52.960 this whole notion of, of equality and we have human rights, uh, legislation to protect these

00:21:58.760 groups from, from discrimination.

00:22:00.320 Uh, when was there a time in Canadian history when you had to, uh, uh, because of your skin

00:22:08.440 color or your gender or your sexual orientation, you were barred from restaurants and,

00:22:14.720 and, and gyms and participating fully in society.

00:22:17.660 You'd have to go back a long ways in time to come up with actual real examples of that.

00:22:23.800 And here, uh, just within, within the past 12 months, uh, people were subjected to, to

00:22:30.680 that kind of, uh, degradation.

00:22:33.220 And that was everybody, by the way, it wasn't just people that didn't get this COVID vaccine.

00:22:36.940 If you did get the COVID vaccine, you also had to be subjected to telling some, you know,

00:22:41.960 16 year old hostess at a restaurant, uh, personal, private medical information.

00:22:46.820 It's absolutely outrageous.

00:22:48.500 And one of the things that justice center is going to keep on doing is we're not going

00:22:51.700 to forget about this because it's incredibly dangerous.

00:22:54.520 There's some people that say, well, I don't want to talk about it.

00:22:56.620 You know, it's, it's over and done with, well, maybe you don't want to talk about it,

00:22:59.960 but if we don't talk about it and think our way through as to, uh, how we went wrong and

00:23:07.960 why and where we're going to repeat exactly the same errors.

00:23:12.180 And we're going to have a situation in 2023 where the government comes up with something

00:23:15.940 else that's scary, maybe, uh, maybe another virus, maybe something other than a virus.

00:23:21.260 And the government's going to go, oh, look, here's this really scary thing.

00:23:23.920 So give up, give up all your rights and freedoms so that we can protect you from this scary

00:23:28.680 thing.

00:23:29.580 And that is the narrative that we have to, uh, watch out for and get rid of.

00:23:33.740 We know that, you know, takes time to navigate through the justice system.

00:23:39.240 So as I understand it, there has not been, uh, any Supreme court of Canada ruling on a

00:23:45.220 lot of these COVID mandates.

00:23:46.360 Do I understand that correctly?

00:23:48.920 Yes.

00:23:49.480 Although the chief justice, unfortunately has made it very clear publicly, uh, where he

00:23:54.140 stands on vaccines, having announced proudly that, that he and his colleagues and all the

00:23:58.840 Supreme court staff are vaccinated.

00:24:01.140 Um, and he also spoke inappropriately, uh, against the, uh, peaceful protests in Ottawa

00:24:07.720 in February, but I remember that, yeah, by saying they caused chaos.

00:24:12.360 Well, he is entitled to his opinion, but as a judge, you should not be making those kinds

00:24:16.720 of pronouncements, uh, ahead of time when it's very, it's quite possible that the Supreme

00:24:21.920 court will have before it, the justice centers court action that we filed in February, uh, seeking

00:24:28.340 a declaration that the prime minister had no legal basis for declaring a national emergency.

00:24:34.780 That's a court action.

00:24:35.780 That's now in federal court trial division.

00:24:38.120 It's very likely to go to the court of appeal because whoever loses, whether that's us or

00:24:42.580 the government, uh, is going to, you know, appeal it to the court of appeal.

00:24:46.060 After that, it could go to the Supreme court of Canada.

00:24:49.460 So, um, but, but you're, you are correct.

00:24:51.900 There have not been any Supreme court of Canada rulings, uh, directly on, uh, lockdowns or

00:24:57.860 mandatory vaccination policies.

00:25:00.200 Are, are we expecting that this year or is it still perhaps a couple of years out to get

00:25:05.460 some of these bigger cases up to that point?

00:25:08.320 I know this past year, of course, there was the vaccine mandate trial, which the federal

00:25:12.540 court had unfortunately determined was moot, despite the government's own language saying

00:25:16.760 it was, uh, just a temporary suspension.

00:25:19.100 But are you expecting that this year on, on some of your bigger cases?

00:25:22.900 I think it'll be another year or two before anything goes into the Supreme court of Canada,

00:25:27.800 just the, just the trial division or the first, the first court that you go into the litigation,

00:25:34.820 typically you're lucky to get a judgment in less than two years.

00:25:38.080 Um, you know, and, and, and three or four years is not uncommon when you've got all the

00:25:44.460 procedural steps.

00:25:45.780 This, by the way, this is a serious problem in Canada that, that governments need to correct.

00:25:49.940 We need more judges and more courtrooms.

00:25:51.840 The reason we have this sort of permanent backlog, the reason it takes years instead of months

00:25:56.320 to have your court case heard and get a ruling is because we don't have enough judges.

00:26:02.740 Uh, and secondarily, I don't know if we have enough courtrooms or not, uh, but we don't

00:26:09.340 have enough judges in Canada and, and it's, it's a disgrace and it's a shame because it

00:26:16.020 should take months, not years, uh, whatever your, whether it's a criminal law thing or

00:26:22.000 family law or constitutional law or civil litigation, you know, somebody cheated you out of a thousand

00:26:27.800 dollars in a contract, whatever the court action is, we should be able to get a decision,

00:26:34.300 even a decision you might not like, but at least there's resolution, right?

00:26:37.660 We should be able to get a decision in months, not years.

00:26:40.500 And so that's, that's a big problem that, that, that, that the, uh, the federal government

00:26:46.100 primarily, but the provinces as well need to fix.

00:26:49.200 What are either on specific cases or even just in general policy discussions that are coming

00:26:54.540 up, uh, what is it you're looking out for in the year ahead?

00:26:57.420 I know in February, we're going to have the report from the public order emergency commission.

00:27:01.040 And as I've said to listeners, I, I think you need to lower expectations, not that the

00:27:05.820 decision that he releases, the commissioner will, will be a good one.

00:27:09.340 It may or it may not, but even if it is just this scathing indictment of the government, it

00:27:13.720 doesn't actually on its own come along with any action or consequence.

00:27:17.640 So, uh, that will fall on politicians and by extension Canadians to determine, but is there

00:27:23.040 anything else that you have that's on your radar for the coming year?

00:27:25.500 Well, we're hopeful that, um, the dismissal of Brian Peckford's court action is going to

00:27:31.440 be reversed.

00:27:32.820 Uh, we think it's absurd that government should be able to turn our rights and freedoms on

00:27:38.560 and off like a light switch, you know, on, off, on, off, and turn off our freedoms.

00:27:43.060 Uh, and then when a government gets sued and litigation is not going very good for the

00:27:48.280 government, uh, which is what happened in Brian Peckford's case, we had government officials

00:27:52.300 admitting under oath that there was no medical or scientific basis for banning unvaccinated

00:27:58.200 Canadians from airplanes.

00:27:59.520 That was thanks to the justice centers court action.

00:28:02.200 This becomes public.

00:28:04.460 And, um, so we're, we're hoping that the federal court of appeal will reverse that decision because

00:28:10.460 certainly these, uh, violations of their millions of Canadians had their mobility rights taken

00:28:16.800 away.

00:28:17.140 Uh, they're in, in charter section six, the right to enter and leave Canada freely, the

00:28:22.440 right to travel within Canada, uh, those rights are violated on a massive scale.

00:28:26.900 So we're, we're hoping for reversal and, um, uh, that, that Mr. Mr. Peckford is going to

00:28:32.780 get a ruling, hopefully a favorable one, but at least get a ruling that he deserves.

00:28:37.680 Yeah.

00:28:39.900 And I mean, that was the particularly, I I've said on the show time and time again, and

00:28:44.140 if I've said it to you, please, uh, I beg your pardon on it, but you know, the mootness

00:28:47.980 thing has always bothered me because government will use this, get a court action off the table

00:28:52.560 and then repeat the identical behavior later on.

00:28:55.560 I mean, a personal example in my case is in 2019, when we had, uh, the JCCF representing,

00:29:01.100 uh, true North, uh, and, uh, there was also rebel in that case on the leaders debates commission

00:29:06.660 and our exclusion from the debate.

00:29:08.640 It, we're trying to get a ruling on the record after the election was over because we won

00:29:13.160 the injunction and then the government says, no, no, no, it's moot.

00:29:17.040 The federal court agrees.

00:29:18.360 And then the same thing happens in the 2021 election with a bunch of rebel reporters.

00:29:24.140 They're denied.

00:29:24.740 And the vaccine passport for air travel, same thing.

00:29:27.980 This is a case where the government by its own language could be bringing this back, but

00:29:32.240 still they say, oh, no, no, no.

00:29:33.520 It's moot.

00:29:34.020 It's academic.

00:29:34.840 No point going through it.

00:29:36.060 And a court buys into it.

00:29:38.220 It's tragic on, by the way, in the, in the 2021 election, uh, did the rebel apply for,

00:29:44.340 uh, go to court to get themselves back into status or standing and, and were they successful?

00:29:50.400 Yeah, they got an injunction and they were able to go in.

00:29:52.380 And I, I don't, I don't recall what happened after that.

00:29:54.820 I think they've tried to proceed with the case, but I, I'm not aware of a trial or anything.

00:29:58.720 Okay.

00:29:59.000 Well, you know, I wish them well, and I hope that they can refer to, uh, the, the other

00:30:05.320 cases to show like that, that, yeah, for, for elections.

00:30:08.540 I mean, just because the election's over does not mean that the government should not be held

00:30:12.640 to account for excluding media that it dislikes, you know, media that are not government funded.

00:30:18.280 It's just, it's, uh, it's outrageous.

00:30:23.240 It is.

00:30:23.940 And I mean, we have obviously organizations like the JCCF that are on the front lines of

00:30:28.940 this, as I said.

00:30:29.760 And I, I mean, the, the, the, the laughable part of this is that I am speaking for you

00:30:34.640 here and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm sure you would love to have no work.

00:30:38.420 I'm sure you would love to be able to say mission accomplished, no need for the justice

00:30:41.600 center.

00:30:43.540 I get asked sometimes, you know, John, you must be really happy with the growth of the

00:30:47.780 justice center the last two and a half years.

00:30:49.640 And my response is always, well, I mean, sure, I guess, however, why has the justice center

00:30:55.720 grown because governments have been so disrespectful of our fundamental charter rights and freedoms

00:31:02.300 that we've had adequate funding to expand the number of lawyers and, um, uh, so on and so

00:31:09.920 forth.

00:31:10.620 But I, I think, I think it's important to be engaged in, in the battle.

00:31:15.280 It's, it's, um, you can't win them all.

00:31:19.040 Uh, we've had a lot of success with our ticket cases.

00:31:21.960 Uh, there have been, uh, in British Columbia, uh, in every province in Canada, we've seen

00:31:27.260 the crown back away from, uh, tickets that people, you know, got a $5,000 ticket for not

00:31:33.640 using a Rivecan app or, uh, the, you know, $2,000 ticket for peacefully protesting outdoors.

00:31:40.960 Uh, all, all these tickets being withdrawn because we're in court every day.

00:31:45.960 We're challenging the crown and we're saying to the crown, if you want to proceed to trial,

00:31:49.780 we're going to subpoena the chief medical officer to come into court and justify the health

00:31:54.840 orders.

00:31:57.380 This is so difficult because, you know, a lot of the people that I've met in this country

00:32:02.500 get, they, they get so sucked into this idea of, you know, they are concerned about COVID,

00:32:07.540 they support the vaccine, all of that's absolutely fine, but you should be able to at the same

00:32:12.320 time, hold those beliefs and stand up for civil liberties.

00:32:14.620 And are you finding that when you talk to people, when you go out that, that you're able

00:32:18.300 to, to make that case?

00:32:20.980 I mean, yes and no, you know, this gets back to an earlier point about, and it's, it's so

00:32:26.040 true that, that people have a tendency to, to be short-sighted, look only at their own,

00:32:31.940 um, look only at, at, at their own personal rights and freedoms and not think through the

00:32:38.680 implication.

00:32:39.500 Give you an example.

00:32:40.600 There's this, uh, social conservative activist that you've probably heard of named Bill Watcott.

00:32:46.620 But, and I remember vividly about 10 years ago, he was on a university campus and he was 0.97

00:32:52.300 handing, he hands out these, these tracts and flyers and he says that, you know, gay sex 0.98

00:32:58.020 causes these different diseases. 0.95

00:32:59.480 And he's got photos of various human body parts and what the diseases do to the body parts,

00:33:04.700 very offensive flyers.

00:33:05.840 So he was handcuffed, uh, and, and put into a car because he refused to leave campus.

00:33:12.900 And as he's being led away in handcuffs and being put into a police car to be escorted

00:33:17.340 off campus, there's a group of students watching and they cheered and they applauded.

00:33:22.480 And I thought, don't you get it?

00:33:25.720 If, if the authorities have the power to, uh, handcuff somebody and, and force them and

00:33:30.980 move them off of a university campus because his speech has disliked and unpopular, if the

00:33:37.600 authorities have that power, do you not realize that, you know, 30 years from now, 10 years

00:33:43.820 from now, or tomorrow morning, if you have an opinion that is not popular, the authorities

00:33:48.860 have, then evidently can handcuff you and escort you off campus, uh, because you're expressing

00:33:56.760 an unpopular view.

00:33:58.380 Uh, it's the same thing with firearms ownership.

00:34:00.640 Uh, I'm not a firearms owner, but I think it's absolutely frightening that the government

00:34:06.380 would attack a legitimate hobby that many Canadians pursue.

00:34:13.720 They pursue it safely.

00:34:15.240 Uh, law abiding, uh, firearms owners that millions of Canadians are, pose no threat, no danger.

00:34:22.140 And you got this government crackdown to confiscate their, their property in some cases, even without

00:34:27.460 compensation.

00:34:28.880 And now a lot of people will, I'm not a firearms owner.

00:34:33.000 I don't care.

00:34:34.020 Well, if the government can confiscate somebody else's private property that they have purchased

00:34:39.560 a legal product in good faith with their money, uh, they are enjoying that, that product,

00:34:46.500 that item, they're enjoying their hobby.

00:34:48.460 It is safe.

00:34:49.480 It doesn't endanger anybody.

00:34:51.520 And, and the government's going to, uh, you know, take away their hobby that, that their

00:34:58.020 interests, their pastime, their activity.

00:34:59.660 And, and by the way, for some, for some firearms owners, like for farmers, it's a necessity.

00:35:03.860 If you've got a, a cow that's crippled because if she fell into the ditch or something, you

00:35:09.000 want to have a gun available to put the cow out of her misery, uh, immediately. 1.00

00:35:14.720 Okay.

00:35:15.200 So there's, there's real life examples.

00:35:16.460 And, and, and, and in, in parts of Canada, you need a gun to defend yourself against a

00:35:20.860 bear or, or some other animal that might attack you, uh, or rural Canadians where it

00:35:26.800 takes 45 minutes for the police to show up because you're in some far off acreage, et

00:35:32.140 cetera, et cetera.

00:35:32.720 So it's, it's also a serious need, uh, but for most people, it's a hobby, but if, if

00:35:38.000 the government can, uh, take away somebody else's private property and prevent them from

00:35:44.320 engaging in a safe, peaceful hobby, well, the government can also do that to you.

00:35:50.640 So this is part of the, the ongoing educational thing that you have to stand up for the speech

00:35:56.040 that you don't like for the hobbies that you don't like, uh, for the associations that

00:36:00.580 you don't like for the, uh, religious beliefs that you don't like.

00:36:07.860 That's the key to, to, uh, to defending the free society.

00:36:10.980 Yeah. And as, as Mark Stein has said, you don't need protections for speech that everyone enjoys

00:36:16.180 because there's no threat of censoring it. You need free speech for the speech that you deplore.

00:36:20.340 And I think that dovetails nicely on what you said, which is a great point to end on and hopefully

00:36:25.300 something that can give people a little bit of hope and encouragement as we head into the new year.

00:36:29.940 John Carpe, president of the JCCF. Thanks so much for your time. As always, John, keep up the great work.

00:36:35.780 Thanks, Andrew. Have a great day.

00:36:37.540 That does it for me. And as I said at the beginning, just so no one is, uh, thinking there's any funny

00:36:43.780 business, I want to disclose. Yes, I am on the board of the JCCF. Although I should say I invited

00:36:49.700 John to do this interview before I was on the board. I don't think that's why they put me on the board.

00:36:54.580 I'm just saying that it's an organization that I have covered a lot and will continue to, although always

00:36:59.860 with that a little disclosure there. Uh, we have to wrap up there. My thanks to all of you for tuning

00:37:05.220 in to this program back tomorrow with another edition. And then that's it for the year. I know it has just

00:37:11.300 flown by. Hope you all have a great day though. Thank you. God bless. We'll talk to you soon.

00:37:15.700 Thanks for listening to the Andrew Lawton Show. Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

00:37:24.580 www.tnc.news.com

Juno News - December 27, 2022

The state of civil liberties in Canada

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