Juno News - The state of civil liberties is... not good

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

00:00:05.480 This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:00:13.960 Hello and welcome to you all.

00:00:16.780 Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show here, the Andrew Lawton Show on True North.

00:00:20.940 As we enter the holiday season, and whenever I say that, I want to be clear,

00:00:25.520 I'm not trying to be woke, politically correct, and bland.

00:00:27.940 I just mean holiday season to encapsulate the Christmas and the Hanukkah 0.89

00:00:33.560 and the Boxing Day and New Year's Day and day after Boxing Day.

00:00:39.060 I believe that's a stat in Saskatchewan, if memory serves.

00:00:42.220 But anyway, no, I just mean it to be broad.

00:00:44.340 I'm not trying to, I'm Christmas, Christmas, Christmas.

00:00:46.240 Don't worry, I'm not going totally woke here.

00:00:48.400 But we try in the holiday season, I do anyway, to be a bit introspective,

00:00:51.840 to take a look at some of the big picture questions and issues

00:00:55.320 that have arisen during the year and perhaps set 2024 off on the right foot.

00:01:00.140 And it is my pleasure to do this as we do.

00:01:02.440 It's kind of become a bit of an annual tradition.

00:01:04.560 You've got advent calendars and John Carpe.

00:01:06.540 You can decide which one is sweeter.

00:01:08.720 But we do a bit of a year-in-review check-in on civil liberties,

00:01:12.940 which you may know the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms

00:01:15.940 has always been on the front lines of.

00:01:18.500 Now, just by way of disclosure, I sit on the board of the JCCF,

00:01:22.300 but I have been doing this feature with John since before I was on the board

00:01:25.680 and will continue to do so after.

00:01:27.560 So there is no untoward transactional thing happening, I assure you.

00:01:32.260 John Carpe, president and founder of the JCCF, joins me.

00:01:35.680 John, always good to talk to you.

00:01:36.860 Merry Christmas to you.

00:01:37.640 Thanks for being here.

00:01:38.900 Merry Christmas, Andrew.

00:01:39.740 Glad to be with you.

00:01:41.020 So when we did this a year ago, it was the end of 2022,

00:01:44.800 which was obviously a very tumultuous year on the civil liberties front.

00:01:49.620 Well, I think maybe it ended a little bit better

00:01:51.400 with the eradication of a lot of COVID mandates.

00:01:54.360 It was a year in which we had seen the continuation of many mandates,

00:01:58.820 far past when, if there ever had been a scientific justification, there was one.

00:02:03.720 We saw the crackdown on the truckers, then the Freedom Convoy protests,

00:02:09.020 which again had unprecedented government power.

00:02:11.500 2023 has been a bit less eventful, but it's amazing how much we're still seeing

00:02:16.900 some of the aftershock of COVID, certainly as these things work their way

00:02:21.060 through the legal system.

00:02:22.020 I mean, this is actually, for the JCCF, become still a very long-running battle.

00:02:28.100 We've had negative things happen in 2022.

00:02:33.380 We've had some atrocious court rulings where the judges very clearly are not

00:02:38.240 looking at the evidence in front of them and they are parroting what they heard

00:02:42.300 on the CBC or whatever other news that they are looking at.

00:02:46.520 So that's a new reality that we are wrapping our heads around.

00:02:49.880 It does not mean that the litigation is a waste of time because as we saw,

00:02:54.260 for example, in Brian Peckford's action, even though that was very tragically

00:02:58.300 dismissed and-

00:03:00.240 Just to interject, this is the challenge on air travel vaccine mandates, correct?

00:03:04.280 Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So Brian Peckford's court action against the, you know,

00:03:11.080 the federal government rule that unless you've been injected with COVID vaccine,

00:03:14.840 you couldn't travel on an airplane, even though that action was unjustifiably

00:03:19.020 dismissed and that was a terrible ruling, we secured admissions from federal

00:03:26.460 government officials under oath that there was no medical or scientific basis

00:03:31.140 for imposing these restrictions. So even though the court action was dismissed,

00:03:35.280 we have this on, as a matter of public record, federal government officials

00:03:39.920 admitting there was no science behind the government's policy.

00:03:43.220 And this is still a kind of an informal precedent, but it has been truly

00:03:49.200 discouraging to see, for example, in earlier, earlier this month,

00:03:54.700 earlier in December, we got a ruling from an Ontario court against Randy Hillier,

00:04:03.400 completely deliberately ignoring all of the lockdown harms, which were placed

00:04:08.760 before the court in evidence to say, hey, these lockdowns caused a lot of harm to a lot

00:04:14.540 of people. Here is the academic research. Here is the study that reviews all of these

00:04:20.020 other reports. And it gets completely ignored in a court judgment.

00:04:23.160 Things like that are discouraging. But again, you've got to just press ahead and fight the

00:04:30.180 battles that need to be fought.

00:04:31.760 In an ideal world, judges are interpreting the law and operating within the confines of the law.

00:04:40.240 They're not moonlighting. They're not really making decisions based on their whims. Now,

00:04:44.820 I say in an ideal world, because we know that this is not how judges are. There was a famous quote

00:04:49.740 from Beverly McLachlan, the former Chief Justice of Canada in her memoir, where she characterized her

00:04:55.280 job as a Supreme Court justice. And I'm paraphrasing, but she said, I have to hear the cases,

00:05:00.480 then go back and decide what's best for society. And that is not actually the role of a judge to

00:05:05.840 decide what's best for society. That is the role of motivational speakers. That maybe is the role of

00:05:10.620 a politician, but it's not the role in theory of a judge. So I'll ask you in that vein, is the issue

00:05:17.660 here with the law? Or is the issue with how judges are operating? Or is it both?

00:05:23.720 Well, we've had another example, and I could give you a half dozen examples, but I'll focus in on

00:05:30.980 a decision in Alberta, Alberta Court of Kings Bench ruling in Ingram versus Alberta. And that was

00:05:39.140 Justice Barbara Romaine. And she quoted other judges in saying, quote, I am not an armchair

00:05:46.860 epidemiologist, and I am neither inclined, nor capable of sorting through the conflicting expert

00:05:55.240 reports. And I can't second, I'm just not qualified to look at the science. However, I'm just going to

00:06:02.280 rule in favor of the government, because the government appears to be presenting some science.

00:06:07.160 It's like, I can't believe I'm reading that.

00:06:09.960 That goes back to like the Milgram experiment. And if they're wearing a white lab coat, we just assume,

00:06:14.180 well, they must know what's going on. But the same judge rules, presumably, and I haven't looked at

00:06:20.740 her other rulings, but the judges, they have to rule on like a medical malpractice lawsuit. 1.00

00:06:26.900 They're not doctors, they're not scientists. And yet they have to rule that, you know, yes,

00:06:31.840 the doctor was liable in the way that he performed the surgery, or no, the doctor was not liable in the

00:06:37.780 way that he performed the surgery. Or there could be a complicated construction lawsuit. There's

00:06:42.840 a building collapses, and the owners are suing the construction people who are suing the engineers

00:06:50.780 who are suing the architects. And it comes before a judge who is not an engineer, might not have a

00:06:56.560 science degree. And yet the judge is called upon and does rule that, you know, so and so, you know,

00:07:02.840 the engineers are liable, not liable, the architects are liable, not liable, the construction company is

00:07:07.840 liable, not liable. You don't have this whiny, pathetic, oh, I'm not a scientist, I just can't, 0.94

00:07:13.540 I'm just not qualified to rule on this. So they are called upon every day to make complicated rulings 0.99

00:07:19.160 in fields where they don't have formal training. And yet here, when it's the government violating

00:07:25.980 our rights and freedoms, you have these, these, you have this pathetic whining and a total abdication 0.77

00:07:31.040 of responsibility from some judges who say, I'm just not qualified to decide on all this science 0.86

00:07:37.720 stuff. So therefore, I'll just rule in favor of the government, which, which is contradictory too,

00:07:43.600 because they are making a ruling that that somehow they do feel qualified to assess and determine that

00:07:50.240 the government is presenting enough science to qualify. So that's been horrific. And this is a brand

00:07:58.000 new problem that I have not seen. I've disagreed with many rulings over the past 40 years.

00:08:02.880 But never before have I seen judges that completely abdicate their responsibility to look at the

00:08:08.360 evidence in front of them, rather than not looking at the evidence and just running with what they

00:08:13.200 heard on the six o'clock news. Well, and you say evidence in front of them, there have been a number

00:08:17.500 of cases, and I think the JCCF has been involved in many of them where judges have not even allowed

00:08:22.740 evidence to be brought forward where they and I don't mean that the standard practice of,

00:08:27.020 you know, evidentiary review where they say this is in, this is out, but they've just said,

00:08:31.180 we're not here to debate the science. So I don't want scientific evidence. Well,

00:08:34.960 if science was the basis that the government was using for all of these things, you would

00:08:38.740 like to believe that science is going to be a part of them having to demonstrate the legitimacy

00:08:43.340 of these things. But some judges won't even look at that.

00:08:47.220 Well, in British Columbia, we have courts that are actually appear to be actively shielding the chief

00:08:52.460 medical officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry, from any kind of cross-examination.

00:08:55.620 They do not want this woman to be put on the stand, so to speak, and questioned under oath. 0.95

00:09:01.760 And so they say, well, you know, Bonnie Henry said that whatever, and they're not going to take

00:09:09.440 a hard look at the evidence. I have not seen this before in, again, the charter has been with us now

00:09:15.700 for 41 years. And I have not seen courts that have been so deliberately, you can read this for

00:09:23.240 yourself in the judgment. It's not a, it's not a theory. You can read it yourself in the judgment

00:09:27.820 where the judge says, they're not going to look at this evidence. And, and, and then they just rule

00:09:33.700 in favor of the government. And that's completely contrary to what the charter requires of those

00:09:37.660 judges. Now to go back to an age old discussion in charter literature and charter scholarship,

00:09:45.420 there's this idea of deference and, and whether the charter is in some ways undemocratic because

00:09:51.160 the charter allows courts to override what elected representatives do. And it's interesting how courts

00:09:56.700 have picked and chosen along the way, when to be deferential to the government and when to not be.

00:10:03.240 On COVID issues, whatever governments do are basically gospel. But when it comes to things

00:10:09.840 that are of a different nature, the courts will say, oh no, no, no, the court should decide this,

00:10:13.620 not governments. The court should decide assisted dying, not government. The court should decide

00:10:18.300 where you get to have a law school and what rules you get to have, not these other bodies. And that to

00:10:24.500 me has been the most glaring issue here that there's really been no accountability on is that

00:10:28.600 when they decide in judicial supremacy and when they decide in legislative, legislative supremacy.

00:10:33.820 Well, we saw an example of that in Saskatchewan, where the Saskatchewan government came up with a new

00:10:41.280 policy that said that when children under the age of 16 want to transition to the, to the opposite sex,

00:10:50.620 and that's called social transitioning, children under 16, if they want to start using, if a boy wants

00:10:58.180 to start using female pronouns, she, her, or a girl's name or dressing like a girl, or vice versa,

00:11:06.220 if a boy wants to dress like a girl, have a girl's name, if they're under 16, we need parental consent.

00:11:12.560 So it's a policy that requires parental involvement to protect children from activists that are going

00:11:19.620 to be influencing kids without the parents even knowing what's going on. Now, the, there's LGBTQ 1.00

00:11:27.280 group that took this to court and, and argued incorrectly in my view that, that children have

00:11:33.840 some sort of a charter right to keep their parents in the dark about what's going on with, with the

00:11:38.700 lives of children, which I don't think there's any basis for that. They secured an interim injunction

00:11:45.660 against the government's policy, after which the government, I think quite sensibly and justifiably

00:11:51.720 made use of the notwithstanding clause and said, notwithstanding court's interpretation of charter

00:11:56.740 rights and freedoms, we're going to keep this policy in place. But here, here's what's interesting

00:12:00.860 there. The court was not deferential to the government, right? The government, the court on an

00:12:06.780 interim basis struck down this parental consent policy. I would venture a guess, and it's purely

00:12:13.500 hypothetical. If, if some COVID rule had been placed in front of the same judge, if he was going to rule

00:12:19.340 like a lot of the other judges, he would have said, oh, I'm not qualified to assess the science. So

00:12:24.340 therefore I'm just going to rule in favor of the government. So it's a different standard depending

00:12:28.720 on what you're bringing forward. Yeah. And, and what was interesting too, is that, you know,

00:12:34.740 the charter of rights and freedoms, as you and I have discussed, and as I mentioned at other times,

00:12:38.480 has these little escape hatches, if you will. One of them is section one, which says all of these

00:12:43.580 subsequent freedoms are, yeah, they're not really all that absolute. And they have these things. And

00:12:47.320 the other is section 33, the notwithstanding clause. And the way that those two sections are

00:12:52.520 viewed so differently by people is, is fascinating. When, as a government defends an encroachment

00:12:59.180 on civil liberties under section one, like in COVID issues, they're upheld and everyone says,

00:13:05.240 well, no, no right is absolute. No right is, is completely unlimited. But when Saskatchewan uses

00:13:10.240 its constitutional authority under the notwithstanding clause to defend legislation,

00:13:14.780 it's, oh, well, this is egregious. It's a violation of everyone's rights. And again,

00:13:18.620 people are deciding their adherence to the process based on whether or not they like the outcome.

00:13:23.800 And I think, I think that's human nature. I mean, people, you know, when people are happy with a

00:13:30.060 particular court ruling, they're going to sing the praises of judges as being neutral and objective

00:13:36.220 and above the fray and thoughtful, et cetera, et cetera. When people get a court ruling, they don't

00:13:42.480 like, they're going to say things about judges that are less flattering. But what it boils down to is,

00:13:48.800 is the charter gives, gives judges the power under section one to trample on charter rights and

00:13:55.640 freedoms. And the charter gives under section 33 gives politicians the right to trample on

00:14:03.460 charter rights and freedoms as interpreted by a court. So, you know, I've often said, and I'll say

00:14:10.260 it again right now, the true guarantor of a free society is where Canadians understand with their

00:14:18.500 minds and cherish in their hearts, what our rights and freedoms are, where Canadians actually believe

00:14:24.140 that our free and democratic society is superior to a repressive regime, be it communist, fascist,

00:14:31.840 Nazi, theocratic, whatever kind of, there's different kinds of repressive regimes. But if we

00:14:37.260 actually believe that our free society is superior to a repressive regime, it's in the hearts and

00:14:44.260 minds of the people that that's where the safeguard is for our rights and freedoms. Because if you,

00:14:50.080 if you ask me, you know, well, well, John choose between judges or politicians, which group as a group

00:14:54.980 is more trustworthy? I don't, I don't trust judges or politicians to a great extent. But if we have,

00:15:01.100 if Canadians really understand and cherish our charter rights and freedoms, that is the guarantor,

00:15:09.040 not judges, not politicians. Yeah, I'm inclined to agree with you there. And again, I also realize

00:15:16.440 that if you take a maximalist view of civil liberties as probably more aligned with the American

00:15:23.280 approach, you're basically saying that courts should have the final say on things and that

00:15:28.220 government power should be very much checked by the judiciary. But it's not exactly the case where

00:15:33.480 I would want to give that power to the Canadian judiciary, which is where we go back to the

00:15:37.340 caliber of judges that we have. And, you know, in the United States, judicial appointments at the

00:15:43.120 Supreme Court are a very heavily politicized process. And I'd say probably overly so. But it means that

00:15:48.960 you kind of know when a judge is appointed, what outlook they're going to have. In Canada, if anyone

00:15:55.240 thinks that this can be saved by there being a conservative government, you've not been paying

00:15:59.660 attention because there have been some egregious Supreme Court decisions that I would say are

00:16:04.060 egregious because they're anti-freedom that were at one point decided by a court in which six of the

00:16:09.940 nine judges were appointed by Stephen Harper. So maybe it's just that Stephen Harper made bad

00:16:14.380 appointments. Or is it that there aren't any really liberty minded judges in our system?

00:16:19.220 I think there are liberty minded people. And I think Stephen Harper, as a very, very intelligent

00:16:26.000 guy, he should have known better than to appoint judges that are often not sympathetic to our

00:16:33.380 fundamental freedoms of religion, conscience, expression, association, peaceful assembly, and so on.

00:16:40.680 And Stephen Harper appointed a few good judges, but he appointed an awful lot of judges to courts that

00:16:47.960 are not sympathetic to charter rights and freedoms that are very statist or very, they have a very

00:16:55.200 pro-government bias. And so, you know, I don't think Stephen Harper's appointments on the whole were

00:17:04.620 much better or much worse than what we've seen since Prime Minister Trudeau took office in 2015.

00:17:13.420 So let's go back to some of the specific cases that you've had in the past year, because you have

00:17:21.260 had some wins. And I wanted to give you an opportunity to talk about some of those that you

00:17:25.560 might be particularly proud of from the last year. Well, we've had in the past two months, we've had

00:17:30.240 four trials in Ottawa of Canadians who did nothing other than peacefully exercise their charter freedoms

00:17:37.820 of Expression Association Peaceful Assembly during the truckers' convoy. And I think everybody

00:17:44.400 recognizes, even people that totally disagreed with the protest, I think there's a universal recognition

00:17:49.980 that there was no arson, there's no store windows smashed, there was no vandalism, there's no looting,

00:17:56.220 there's no violence, there was no murder, there was no shooting. It was a peaceful protest. And yet we

00:18:01.040 see an abuse of the Crown Prosecutor's authority by criminalizing peaceful protest. So the Justice

00:18:09.600 Centre has provided lawyers to four different, well, more than four to well over a dozen people,

00:18:15.600 we've gone to trial and we've secured acquittals. We are currently making it possible for Chris Barber

00:18:23.120 to, that was being tried along with with Tamara Leach. So we are fighting there and donors are providing the

00:18:30.560 money that we're providing the lawyers so that they can stand up to this prosecution. So I think

00:18:38.080 that's been very positive. We obviously we don't have a verdict in that yet. Let me just jump in there

00:18:44.640 for a moment, John, because when you envisioned the JCCF, the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms,

00:18:50.960 however many years ago it was, did you imagine that you would ever end up in criminal cases? Because in the

00:18:56.720 early interviews that you and I did, I never, I mean, I don't even think you would ever had a criminal

00:19:01.840 lawyer that you had to have, because that was just not where things were. So explain that for a moment.

00:19:09.040 Well, our focus has been and still is on the Charter Section 2 Fundamental Freedoms, Conscience,

00:19:16.080 Religion, Expression, Association, Peaceful Assembly. And no, we had, it's interesting,

00:19:21.680 we had some lawyers come on board in 2019, early 2020 that had a criminal law background. And my

00:19:29.040 thinking was, well, that's nice, but you know, not really relevant to what you're going to do here,

00:19:33.280 but you know, that's nice. And then it turned out that we actually needed these lawyers with criminal

00:19:39.200 law background because we, you know, generally speaking, we don't do criminal law. But here was

00:19:44.080 a situation with Tamara Leach, Chris Barber, and so many other Canadians getting, facing unjust,

00:19:50.880 criminal charges when all they did was participate in a peaceful protest. And you know, granted the,

00:19:56.880 the, the, some of these trucks may have been illegally parked, but that's not a crime. That's,

00:20:01.040 that's a parking infraction. That's a municipal offense. So yeah, it's been great that we do have

00:20:08.000 a good, roughly a third of our team are lawyers that do have criminal law background that have been

00:20:15.760 taking this on. Plus, of course, we've also retained outside counsel for, for some of these cases.

00:20:20.720 But I never thought I would see the day and it's tragic that we would see, again, in, in my opinion,

00:20:27.600 an abuse of prosecutorial authority, certainly a misallocation of resources. When you consider

00:20:33.280 that in Ontario alone, since 2016, there have been 86 sexual assault charges where the victim has not

00:20:42.800 seen her day in court, uh, because the crown has failed to, uh, uh, bring the prosecution forward

00:20:50.720 in a timely fashion. So you, you see the crown in Ontario, uh, you see people accused of rape,

00:20:58.240 uh, and they're accused, but I would venture to guess some of them are guilty and they're walking

00:21:04.320 away scot-free. And yet the crown is devoting resources to prosecuting Tamara Leach and Chris

00:21:09.680 Barber.

00:21:11.040 And, and, you know, I'm often sympathetic to the argument that the process is the punishment. And

00:21:16.800 that's especially true if you're involved in a criminal case. I mean, in the, in the case of

00:21:21.360 Tamara Leach, who I know that the justice center is not representing, she has been re-arrested and has

00:21:26.720 spent more time in jail than people who are on trial for incredibly serious offenses do. But to talk

00:21:33.600 about the situation in which she and Chris Barber find themselves, they went to trial on September

00:21:40.160 5th, I think it was September 4th or September 5th. It was supposed to be 16 days of hearings. We are now

00:21:46.800 in, uh, the end coming to the end of December and the trial has no end in sight. Uh, it is set to continue

00:21:52.640 in January. Uh, there is continual evidence after evidence, after evidence that's been added here.

00:21:58.480 I mean, it's possible they're still going to be in court when it, when they'll have reached the two

00:22:02.480 year mark from when they were first arrested. And this has hung over their heads for that entire two

00:22:08.160 years.

00:22:09.280 It's been over 30 days of trial. When I last spoke with, uh, uh, Chris Barber's lawyer, uh, she told me

00:22:15.920 that this is by, by the time various motions are filed and, and heard and ruled upon, uh, motions by the

00:22:22.560 crown, motions by the defense and possibly more evidence put forward. And the defense is going

00:22:27.520 to put its case forward. Uh, we're looking at April, May, June of 2024, uh, before this is fully

00:22:34.160 concluded. And then thereafter it could be two, four, six months before a judgment. So yeah.

00:22:40.320 And it's incredibly stressful to have this hanging over your head because if you are convicted,

00:22:44.640 even if it looks like, you know, you, you probably won't be right, but you don't know for sure.

00:22:48.880 And if you have a criminal conviction, it's a nasty thing to have. It'll, uh, you know,

00:22:53.840 possibly prevent you from traveling to the United States. Uh, you know, it's just not a,

00:22:58.960 it, it, it, it's been really hard on, uh, on Tamera Leach and Chris Barber and, and other people.

00:23:05.520 Yeah. And, and also it, it speaks to priorities. I mean, to go back to the Brian Peckford case and

00:23:11.520 uh, True North's case against the leaders debates commission, which, uh, JCCF was representing us on,

00:23:17.760 you know, courts have found that things are moot. They say, well, it's not a live issue anymore.

00:23:23.040 There's no point in doing this. And really the core of that mootness doctrine is that there are

00:23:28.320 such scarce judicial resources. The courts have to be pardon the pun. So judicious with what they

00:23:34.960 allow to have a hearing. And then you take that and you look in the context of Tamera Leach and Chris

00:23:39.440 Barber and find that, you know, even though it's 30 days of trial so far, it's actually in calendar

00:23:45.280 time months and months and months that this has been on a judge's docket, that this has been taking

00:23:51.040 up courtroom time. And to what end?

00:23:54.000 To what end? We, uh, we secured the, uh, the withdrawal of charges as well for quite a few

00:24:00.800 people. Uh, William Vogelsang, uh, became famous three years ago. He was only 17 at the time.

00:24:07.360 He got an $880 ticket for playing basketball outside alone. And this was under, uh, the Ontario lockdown

00:24:16.640 measures. And so, uh, justice center provided lawyers who have negotiated the removal of that

00:24:22.240 ticket. We've had a lot of cases where the, either we we've secured an acquittal after trial,

00:24:28.880 or we have negotiated, uh, just a complete withdrawal or stay of the charges, or in some

00:24:34.880 cases where the client's consent, uh, we've, we've, uh, struck a, struck a deal where they, they, they

00:24:41.200 make a $50 donation to a charity and you know, the, the ticket, which is for a much larger

00:24:46.480 amount is, uh, is withdrawn. So we, we've had that pushback and that, that success. And I think

00:24:54.160 a lot of what we do, you know, we hold the government's feet to the fire. The government

00:24:57.760 knows that, you know, when they get sued, they have to put their evidence, however pathetic and 0.87

00:25:04.240 paltry and unpersuasive it might be, they have to publicly put their evidence forward. And so there's 0.85

00:25:11.200 that deterrent effect. Uh, when, when we sued the government, we were the first organization

00:25:17.280 to, to, to sue over the, uh, mandatory use of arrive can, and within three weeks of us filing

00:25:23.040 that court action, the government withdrew the policy. So we have those, um, uh, deterrent effects,

00:25:30.560 uh, as well. Yeah. And I, I will say, I mean, obviously it's impossible to talk about civil

00:25:36.160 liberties in the last three years without looming and letting COVID loom large, but governments are

00:25:41.440 doing a whole bunch of non COVID things as well. I mean, local level is always interesting on this

00:25:46.960 because I think municipalities and school boards tend to think that they can fly under the radar. And

00:25:51.760 there was a case that the JCCF was involved in with a woman. And we've written about this case at

00:25:56.800 True North, Linda D'Armani. Uh, she was, it's quite chilling. If you watch the video, she was at a

00:26:02.400 school board meeting. She was speaking very critically, but very calmly and professionally

00:26:07.920 about, uh, some of these issues connected to, to gender. And the trustees are shutting her microphone 0.99

00:26:14.560 off that they're literally in that moment. It's hard to come up with a more literal manifestation

00:26:19.360 of you being censored and a school board shutting your mic off. And, and in this case, you have them

00:26:26.320 really taking their wokest ideology and believing that that trumps a citizen's right to speak freely

00:26:32.800 at a public meeting without being disruptive. Yeah. We've sued, uh, school boards. Uh, the most

00:26:39.120 recent court action filed is, is Linda D'Armani in Chilliwack, British Columbia. And the, uh, very,

00:26:45.120 very woke, uh, school board chairman, uh, Willow, uh, Reich held, uh, feels entitled to shut off

00:26:52.720 microphones. Uh, the moment somebody starts to say something that, uh, she disagrees with. And so we

00:26:58.800 have, uh, we, we followed a court action there to, um, to bring that school board into line. And, um,

00:27:06.080 the, the other thing that it's not a re a court action and I hope it won't be, but we're raising

00:27:12.400 public awareness about the potential danger, very real potential, but also a very serious threat to

00:27:19.840 our privacy and to our freedom through centralized digital ID and, and even a central bank digital

00:27:27.120 currency. Uh, these things are looming on the horizon. Uh, the government has the power to, uh,

00:27:33.680 turn us into a complete slave state where the government knows where you go, where you are, 0.79

00:27:40.640 who you hang out with, what you do, what you buy. And, you know, we got a small taste of that with

00:27:45.840 the vaccine passport system in 2021, where the became, you know, you had to show your, your, uh,

00:27:54.080 release private confidential medical information. Uh, everybody had to do that. And, and if you didn't

00:28:00.000 have the right medical information, you were a second class citizen. Now the government has the

00:28:04.240 power to do that on a large scale and start to punish people for their political views or their

00:28:10.480 spending decisions. Um, so we are, uh, we're releasing studies and reports and we have an

00:28:16.240 information brochure to be proactive on this and really get ahead of the curve and educate Canadians

00:28:22.960 about the dangers of, uh, central digital ID. Yeah. And I think that's where, uh, to go back

00:28:29.600 to things that I know it can be very dejecting to see legal losses. And I, I know you and I have

00:28:34.320 talked about a number of these things, but I think you're right to point out that wins can look very

00:28:38.960 different. Uh, public education is a huge victory point and also that idea of disclosure and discovery.

00:28:44.880 I mean, even the public order emergency commission, while I wasn't happy with, uh, the finding on it,

00:28:49.280 I am very pleased that it was a process that gave us more information and documents than we had and

00:28:55.520 have since seen about how the government engaged on the use of the emergencies act.

00:29:00.880 Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. The, the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. And I, I fear,

00:29:08.160 I fear that things could actually get worse in the next few years before they get better. But I just

00:29:13.280 think it's really important to keep on fighting, uh, fight the fights that, that need to, uh, get

00:29:20.240 fought, get in the trenches, get your hands dirty and, uh, you know, challenge the attacks against our

00:29:28.160 fundamental freedoms. And I think it does, it does pay off in the long run because ultimately,

00:29:33.440 uh, truth will vanquish the lie. And I think that, that freedom ultimately will triumph over tyranny

00:29:38.960 and justice over injustice, but it's, it's our responsibility in the interim to, uh, to keep

00:29:44.320 on speaking truth to power and just to keep on, uh, doing what's right.

00:29:49.840 And I think you've said in the past that you'd love nothing more than to be able to just like

00:29:53.200 close up shop and go home. Right. Yeah. I would like the justice center to be out of business, but,

00:29:58.880 uh, I don't see that happening in the next few years.

00:30:02.240 Well, I was going to say, yeah, the new year's resolution could be shutting you down,

00:30:05.040 but only when it's earned and when it's warranted. So if governments want to just go

00:30:08.960 around and stop violating civil liberties, uh, any day now, that would be great. Well,

00:30:12.880 I always, I mean, it's, it's tough because in some ways it's so pessimistic to have these

00:30:16.800 conversations, but, uh, knowing people like you are in the trenches and your, your great team

00:30:20.880 has been always a glimmer of optimism in the midst of this, John Carvey, president of the justice

00:30:26.320 center for constitutional freedoms, all the best to you and yours this holiday season. And thanks for coming

00:30:30.960 on. Thank you, Andrew. And, uh, all the best for 2024. All right. That was John Carpe on the Andrew

00:30:37.600 Lawton show. My thanks to all of you for tuning in. This is Canada's most irreverent talk show on

00:30:42.400 true north. Thank you. God bless. And good day to you all. Thanks for listening to the Andrew Lawton

00:30:47.520 show support the program by donating to true north at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - December 20, 2023

The state of civil liberties is... not good

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