Juno News - Trudeau's internet takeover is well under way

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

00:00:05.140 This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:00:12.140 Hello and welcome to you all.

00:00:14.660 This is Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show, the Andrew Lawton Show, here on True North.

00:00:19.660 On this Monday, June 26, 2023, a rare Monday edition of the program.

00:00:25.940 I am going to be off to cover something tomorrow.

00:00:29.340 so we rejigged the schedule and I thank my colleague Harrison Faulkner for being his

00:00:34.000 flexible self to make that happen you'll get ratioed on track tomorrow instead of the usual

00:00:40.300 spot today but I am going to talk a little bit later on about this big news story that has

00:00:45.600 emerged in the past week a proposed class action filed against the Canadian Armed Forces over the

00:00:51.860 vaccine mandate we spoke with Valor Law lawyer Catherine Christensen about this a couple of

00:00:57.540 months back it was when this was first floated and now we have a statement of claim that's been

00:01:01.920 filed so we will have Catherine back on the show and talk about that in a fair bit of detail I also

00:01:08.960 want to delve into the takeover of the internet which I do not say lightly I'm actually contrary

00:01:16.120 to what some of our critics on the left may think I'm not prone to exaggeration I try to be very

00:01:21.740 reasoned and nuanced and measured with my words, but there is no other argument for what is

00:01:27.800 happening right now than that Justin Trudeau is attempting a broad-scale takeover of the internet

00:01:34.680 and of the way we use the internet in this country. I said this when C11 passed a couple of months

00:01:39.900 back. This is the bill that allows the government to manipulate the algorithms of your YouTube and

00:01:45.240 your netflix and your spotify and i restate it with more support now that bill c18 has passed

00:01:52.100 now c18 is the government's attempt to subsidize the media without taxpayer money that's basically

00:02:01.300 the argument here so what the government has done is they've said uh okay uh facebook twitter

00:02:07.060 youtube you guys are stealing news content you're stealing it you're thieves how well you know when

00:02:14.600 people go on Facebook and Google and Twitter and they see links to news articles, that's apparently

00:02:22.640 theft. Hmm. Yeah, I'm not sure how that works. But that was Heritage Minister Stephen Gilbeau's

00:02:30.720 argument. This is what the government has committed to. This is what the News Media Council of Canada

00:02:36.000 has committed to. This idea that there is rampant theft of Canadian news content. Now, frankly, I

00:02:41.860 cover a lot of news outlets in Canada and there's not much worth stealing there but nevertheless

00:02:47.540 the arguments are a little bit hollow so what Facebook did is called the bluff they said okay

00:02:53.800 if you think we're stealing what we're going to do is if you pass Bill C-18 that says we have to pay

00:02:59.700 for this content that we aren't even asking for that other people are posting we'll just block

00:03:05.180 it all together no theft here none not in this fine establishment so Facebook said this and what

00:03:11.420 did Stephen Gilbeau say? Well, you're thieves. You're bullies. You're bullies now. You were 0.99

00:03:16.140 thieves. Now you're bullies. The news media industry was saying, oh, you're bullying us. 0.99

00:03:21.420 Hmm. So which is it? Are they stealing from you when they allow news content or are they

00:03:28.960 bullying you when they block news content? It stands to reason if you think that someone is

00:03:33.060 stealing something from you and you tell them to stop and they stop, like they are actually giving

00:03:37.620 you what you wanted or maybe all of this is a roundabout way a roundabout way of not actually

00:03:45.240 preventing any sort of theft but just extorting money extorting money from the government and

00:03:52.480 that is what exactly what's happening here but instead of the government giving another 600

00:03:56.440 billion dollar bailout or you know the 1.4 billion cbc gets the government said all right facebook

00:04:01.700 Google you guys have got a lot of money we'll let you just fund the bailout for the media so

00:04:07.960 as it stands Facebook has said it's going to make good on this promise there is going to come a time

00:04:12.900 when a switch is flipped and if you share a link to a news story on Facebook it will not go there

00:04:20.260 remember when the New York Post article about Hunter Biden's laptop was being blocked by

00:04:26.380 Twitter. Yeah, it may actually be like that for any news you want to share. Now, what this will

00:04:32.220 look like, I don't know. There is a big question about what Facebook decides to categorize as news.

00:04:38.380 One idea that I would love to see, and I don't know if this is an option, but I would certainly

00:04:42.540 for my own sub stack, I don't speak for True North, do this, is go to Facebook and say,

00:04:46.800 I would like to opt out of this whole thing. I will waive any claim I have to money from you

00:04:52.640 just to be allowed to post.

00:04:56.160 And imagine if all of the independent media outlets in Canada did that

00:04:59.560 and all of a sudden on Facebook the only media outlets allowed to post

00:05:02.740 are the ones who aren't trying to extort from them large sums of money

00:05:06.880 like the Toronto Sun and the Toronto Star and the National Post,

00:05:10.560 even Post Media is included in this, are trying to do.

00:05:14.140 That would be my little dream on this

00:05:16.600 and we'll see if that is something that might be brought into fruition in the coming months.

00:05:21.280 But Facebook is not backing down and it's not particularly surprising because I think that they need to send a shot across the bow before any other country, including the US, the European Union, starts to try the same stuff that Canada is doing when there are going to be far more zeros after whatever that sum ends up being in a Canadian context.

00:05:43.120 So I've said time and time again on this show, I do not love big tech.

00:05:47.380 I actually have grave concerns with big tech.

00:05:49.880 I have been shadow banned on Twitter.

00:05:52.380 I have had, even on this very show, strikes from YouTube on a number of things.

00:05:56.920 We had the MyPillow guy, Mike Lindell, on, and we were talking about faith and pillows.

00:06:03.340 And YouTube gave us a strike because, you know, Mike Lindell happened to have been a bad guy that week or something.

00:06:09.320 I had an interview with Danielle Smith when she was running for the leadership of the UCP, which months later, and by this point she was already the premier, was retroactively given a strike because in that interview she made an innocuous claim that I'm nervous about repeating right now, which was that there are some people who are pro-life activists that don't like the COVID vaccine because they have an objection to something that if I say this episode will be vaporized,

00:06:39.320 because that's the reality of YouTube.

00:06:42.120 So I understand the perils of big tech censorship

00:06:45.900 better than many other people

00:06:47.580 because we have to, as an outlet that wants to share our work

00:06:51.340 and uses as part of that strategy,

00:06:54.680 Facebook and Twitter and by extension also Rumble

00:06:57.420 and all of that and YouTube,

00:06:58.800 all of this is to say I get it.

00:07:01.340 But even so, in a battle between big government and big tech,

00:07:05.360 I am going to side against the government.

00:07:08.180 I want the government to lose because the very worst thing that can happen is when those two

00:07:13.160 forces coalesce. And what Facebook is doing right now for all of its faults as a company

00:07:18.160 is saying that it doesn't want to play ball with the Trudefication of the internet. And why that

00:07:25.080 is so crucial is because the Trudeopian takeover of the internet is nowhere near over. It started 1.00

00:07:31.340 with Bill C-11. Now we have Bill C-18. There are two other bills that will be coming down the

00:07:37.120 pipeline that the government has promised that don't yet have numbers, that don't have names,

00:07:41.460 but we know are coming and we know are going to be even more dangerous. One is a bill that

00:07:46.760 amends the Canadian Human Rights Act to institute the return of Section 13, which is a bill that

00:07:53.920 allows for the government to prosecute for online hate speech. But I put it in quotation marks

00:08:00.580 because the criminal code already has a definition of hate speech and it has, as it should, a very

00:08:07.100 very high threshold which the Canadian Human Rights Act definition lowers. It becomes a lower

00:08:13.840 threshold for hate speech and it allows specifically for the prosecution of so-called

00:08:19.180 hate speech disseminated online. Now this is a culture in which using the wrong pronouns

00:08:24.220 is positioned by some to be hate speech. This is a climate in which we have a whole of government

00:08:30.540 approach to reigning in quote-unquote Islamophobia. All of this stuff is not a question of whether

00:08:36.820 certain forms of expression are bad or uncivil or impolite or even offensive, but whether we want

00:08:43.120 the government to be regulating this expression. And no, I do not trust government to come up with

00:08:48.240 a definition of hate that does not censor mere disagreeable speech. So that's one. And the other

00:08:54.560 is tied to that very intricately, a so-called online safety bill that will put the purview of

00:09:01.820 safetying the internet, to use a verb that I'm making up here, in the government's hands.

00:09:08.880 And they talk about this in the most agreeable way possible. They'll say, well, we need to

00:09:13.980 protect the internet. There could be, for example, terrorist beheadings and child pornography. And

00:09:20.040 I'm like, yeah, those things are terrible. Don't like those, don't want those. And hate speech.

00:09:23.620 Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Why are we talking about all of these things as though they're the same

00:09:29.180 thing because generally speaking, you're going to find 100%, well, 99.99% of people in this country

00:09:36.600 that will support doing everything possible to rid the internet of child pornography. Those who

00:09:42.240 don't support that are the ones that need to be reined in most. You will have a fairly broad

00:09:48.420 consensus on getting rid of terror propaganda on the internet. Again, you have to be very careful

00:09:53.980 about how you define it and how you characterize it

00:09:56.760 and what free speech is and when it is no longer that.

00:09:59.860 But when you start to go on hate speech,

00:10:03.040 you get back to that very same problem I was just describing

00:10:06.180 where a murky definition that means different things to different people

00:10:09.920 and will necessarily involve government becoming the arbiter

00:10:14.100 of what you can say and do online.

00:10:18.180 So when government gets its way,

00:10:20.880 it will not just control the algorithms,

00:10:23.520 it will control the business models, and it will even control the boundaries of online discourse,

00:10:30.280 the bounds of debate. So you can have government-approved content, you can have government-approved

00:10:34.900 words, and government-approved opinions. And this is not conjecture on my part. This is even

00:10:41.700 becoming heavily criticized by advocacy groups on the left, like Open Media, which is not a fire-breathing

00:10:47.880 conservative group. In fact, I disagree with the folks at Open Media on a lot, but they understand

00:10:53.500 fundamentally what Justin Trudeau doesn't, which is that the internet is meant to be an open

00:10:58.200 environment, not something with a government gatekeeper controlling it. So Bill C-18 is not

00:11:04.660 just about propping up dying legacy media outlets whose business models have not adapted to the

00:11:10.760 modern era. It is one step of a multi-step process of Justin Trudeau taking over the internet and do

00:11:17.080 not let anyone tell you otherwise least of all those who are invested in this power grab and

00:11:22.700 i'm looking at you justin trudeau and stephen gilbeau want to move to the other issue i

00:11:27.920 mentioned a couple of moments ago which is a very big one and well we can look at the situation in

00:11:32.900 canada and say oh yes the lockdowns are done the covid mandates are done that's all the past

00:11:38.420 for people who were targeted by these things it is not at all over and there is one group

00:11:44.700 in particular who had a hugely offensive and insulting treatment by the government on this

00:11:52.840 and that was Canadian soldiers members of the Canadian Armed Forces who were subject like

00:11:58.340 everyone else in the public sector in Canada to vaccine mandates but it was particularly

00:12:03.060 stinging for this group who have given so much and continue to give so much in pursuit of Canada

00:12:09.780 to fight for Canada.

00:12:11.340 They wear a uniform and put their own lives on the line

00:12:14.120 to fight for their country and the ideas and ideals

00:12:17.220 that this country represents.

00:12:19.460 But Justin Trudeau looked at the military and said,

00:12:21.720 you guys are not fit for service if you don't get the COVID jab.

00:12:26.500 This was the decision that they had to make

00:12:28.360 to either get vaccinated or leave.

00:12:31.740 And this was not an easy decision.

00:12:33.360 And again, it's not just exclusive to the military.

00:12:36.540 It was also true of airline pilots, of federal public servants, and frankly, of anyone who wanted to get on an airplane or a train.

00:12:44.220 But for members of the Canadian Armed Forces, I'm reminded of that exchange when Justin Trudeau told, I can't remember if he was a soldier or a veteran.

00:12:52.820 I think he had left the military by then at a Q&A that veterans were asking for more than the government could give them.

00:13:00.420 And it's amazing when you remember that, remember that exchange,

00:13:05.000 remember that line that the government had, that Trudeau had,

00:13:08.840 how unsurprising it is to see the broader treatment of members of the military.

00:13:13.700 But as we talked about a couple of months ago on this show,

00:13:17.100 there are some that are not prepared to just ignore this and move on.

00:13:21.160 There is now a proposed class action lawsuit that has been filed,

00:13:25.260 and the lawyer representing the class is Catherine Christensen,

00:13:28.860 who's the founder of Valor Law and joins me now.

00:13:32.260 Catherine, it is good to talk to you again.

00:13:33.980 Thanks very much for coming back on the show today.

00:13:36.660 Hi, Andrew. It's great to be back.

00:13:38.500 So let's just start here.

00:13:40.160 You've got 330-some-odd current and former members that are in this right now,

00:13:46.880 but the number you're actually representing is much larger than that, is it not?

00:13:51.340 There is.

00:13:51.860 Now, one thing I want to clarify is this is not actually a class action.

00:13:55.140 It's a mass tort.

00:13:56.760 Okay, I apologize.

00:13:57.640 I was going based on a media report that got it wrong there, but I thank you for setting that

00:14:02.440 straight. What is that difference actually for people that don't know? Yeah. So a mass tort is

00:14:06.740 seeking relief. So what we're asking for from the government, just for those people that are named

00:14:13.720 in the lawsuit as plaintiffs, a class action on the other hand has a example plaintiffs that if

00:14:20.320 you match that person, then you're part of that class and you can get compensation through that

00:14:25.380 without ever actually taking legal action yourself um so this is a mass tort 329 i know

00:14:33.220 there was discussion previously of a class action there was uh the reason that we decided to go this

00:14:39.060 route was because these people were the ones that stood up in october of 2021 uh they have stayed

00:14:46.740 hard and fast that they wanted to hold the chief of defense staff and and the canadian

00:14:52.020 our forces to account uh for abusing their power and so the decision was made by the group that

00:14:57.860 they would do it as a mass tort versus a class action now we're talking about hundreds of

00:15:03.780 people that are known right now there is still a group out there that we don't yet know about

00:15:08.820 and what i'm hearing from them pardon me i'm hearing from them well you are and what bothers

00:15:14.500 me so much about this is that there are two well more than two but two in particular types that

00:15:20.740 stand out here there are those who were faced with this mandate that for whatever reason didn't want

00:15:25.540 to get vaccinated and did and kept their jobs and that was the only way they kept their jobs and

00:15:30.660 continued to serve and and those who still wouldn't and said okay i i have to leave and and the

00:15:36.180 government views by design that first group as being a success they view that as being great

00:15:42.580 we we told them they had to do this and they did it well here's the thing is that the people that

00:15:49.460 left the canadian armed forces they were some were forced to leave they chose to leave under a

00:15:54.260 voluntary release but there's a large group of them that were released under what's called a 5f

00:15:59.700 unsuitable for further service this is the release category that if you are a drunk or a drug addict

00:16:05.860 who won't get rehabilitated you're a domestic violence offender your sexual you've been found 0.87

00:16:13.060 to be guilty of sexual assault this is the category they released those people under

00:16:17.620 So it wasn't just a fact that they chose to lose their jobs. When they lost their jobs,

00:16:22.660 they lost them under what used to be called a dishonorable discharge. And in fact, several

00:16:27.060 members of the chain of command told them it was a dishonorable discharge and that there's

00:16:32.740 implications for it. Like for instance, they can't re-enroll in the Canadian Armed Forces without

00:16:36.900 the Chief of Defence Staff permission and they have to wait five years. They cannot apply for

00:16:41.940 any federal government job because they're not going to get it for being released under this.

00:16:45.620 they call it honorable now but like i said it's it's it's a real black mark on their record so

00:16:51.000 it was a big choice they had to make because it limited what they could do even out of the armed

00:16:56.580 forces well and also what i find so troubling about all of this is that it would be one thing

00:17:03.000 if the military had this rule that you have to be vaccinated against covid to join the armed forces

00:17:08.520 and i would still oppose that but they would at least have some transparency there about what the

00:17:13.360 rules are when you join in this particular case you have people that are being threatened their

00:17:19.220 careers are being threatened and jeopardized for non-compliance with a rule that never existed

00:17:23.940 when they joined and hadn't existed for the however many years they'd been in service but

00:17:28.620 one day with a stroke of a pen did and it's as though you're right they've committed some heinous

00:17:33.500 act in uniform if they don't go along with this rule that they never could have conceived of when

00:17:38.520 they first joined right so under the national defense act section 126 the chief of defense

00:17:43.620 staff has the power to uh force a vaccination on on members of the forces however they are allowed

00:17:52.040 to say no they then face face a court martial and if they are found to have a reasonable excuse for

00:17:59.300 not taking it then they're acquitted and they're they're then have to be accommodated he chose not

00:18:05.780 to use section 126 and he has been reprimanded for that by the review grievance review committee

00:18:12.840 because they first of all they couldn't have withstood three to five thousand courts martial

00:18:19.360 the jag office just isn't that big and the other is they couldn't risk one win because one win

00:18:25.400 would put it into law that he can't do what he just did so they chose an administrative route

00:18:30.680 which is how we end up with 5F releases, remedial measures that were accelerated far beyond anything

00:18:38.840 they had ever done before. But he had been told in a briefing note that I discussed last time I

00:18:44.600 was on your show that he couldn't do what he is about to do and the external grievance review

00:18:50.200 committee has actually come out and backed me up on that and said no he couldn't do what he did and

00:18:55.480 that he breached the charter section seven of the charter uh that freedom to say what happens to

00:19:01.240 your body and uh he under the national defense act he cannot issue an order that violates the

00:19:07.720 charter so this is an unlawful order that he issued and that has consequences in the courts

00:19:15.480 there was i remember it was in august 2021 so the mandate wasn't in effect yet but we

00:19:20.840 were certainly hearing a lot of discussion about it and i i happened upon this and i

00:19:24.840 I can't remember how, but on the Department of Defense website, there was a page.

00:19:29.660 And on this page, it said that the Canadian Armed Forces, quote, cannot require a public servant to get a vaccine, nor is mandatory vaccination supported under Canadian law.

00:19:41.000 And it added the same thing for members of the Canadian Armed Forces.

00:19:45.260 And I reported on this on August 18th, 2021.

00:19:48.800 Two days later, the page had been entirely scrubbed and had none of this.

00:19:53.800 So, you know, obviously a government website is whoever wrote its perspective of the law,

00:20:00.140 but it does suggest that the Canadian Armed Forces had been operating up until this mandate

00:20:04.300 came into effect with this idea that you've just shared, which is that mandatory vaccination

00:20:08.420 is not just not a policy of the Armed Forces in Canada, but not even legal if they wanted to.

00:20:14.940 Right.

00:20:15.240 So there were members who have never taken the flu vaccine, for example, with no repercussions.

00:20:21.620 I there's a member of the lawsuit who had never had a vaccination in her entire life

00:20:26.820 and she was serving in the Canadian Armed Forces without any issue until this came along.

00:20:31.380 So this is why the lawsuit isn't a COVID-19 lawsuit. What I've done is it's I've been

00:20:38.740 watching the forces for a while there's been a lot of corruption and abuse of power in the ranks

00:20:43.940 and when he issued this in October 2021 he handed me a perfect example

00:20:49.940 of how they abuse their power in the chain of command because I've got a nice concrete start

00:20:54.260 to it October of 2021 and here's what all these people did to their troops along the way until

00:21:00.580 to the present day and it continues to this present day because the mandate still exists

00:21:05.940 they still have are required to be vaccinated and the people that are still in who somehow managed

00:21:12.260 to escape being released through all of this they're now being punished all over again they're

00:21:17.540 being sent to postings that are going to bankrupt them or are places that they don't want to be

00:21:25.060 uh we've got pilots that are being sent to fly desks instructor pilots we need instructor pilots

00:21:32.340 to fulfill well trudeau says he's training uh uh ukrainian pilots but he's got a whole bunch

00:21:39.380 of instructor pilots that are sitting at desks instead of flying so i'm not sure how he's going

00:21:44.740 going to accomplish that. Well, for years, the military has had increasing difficulty in

00:21:50.240 recruiting. And we know that a lot of the standards that have long been established in the military,

00:21:56.100 I mean, on tattoos, on grooming, on facial hair, on dress, all of these things are being relaxed

00:22:01.680 because the argument is that, well, you know, we can't afford to discriminate against people with

00:22:06.020 face tattoos because, you know, there's slim pickings in the recruitment offices. And here

00:22:09.980 you have people that are not just willing to serve but have been serving and want to even in

00:22:14.880 spite of this want to continue serving that are being told no because you won't get this vaccine

00:22:20.800 which has whatever you think about it limited efficacy this long after uh if not negligible

00:22:28.920 efficacy this long after the mandate required them to have been vaccinated so it's of zero benefit

00:22:34.040 Right. And these were people at the peak of their careers. We've done kind of a rough calculation. Just of the 300 some people in the lawsuit, they've lost over $3 billion in training and experience from this group that are just in this lawsuit.

00:22:49.780 So I can't imagine an administrative costs for doing all these releases, people who aren't going to renew their contracts because they didn't like what happened. And now they're seeing that, you know, it was an unlawful order. What else are they going to ask me to do?

00:23:04.040 billions and billions of dollars have been lost through this whole thing for what is essentially

00:23:10.860 an unlawful order. And we've got a military right now that says that they're not accountable to the

00:23:15.880 law. I was in the court, federal court, in February, and the Crown stood up and said,

00:23:20.600 this court has no jurisdiction over the chief of defense staff in military matters. And I watched

00:23:26.180 the justices' eyebrow rise, and I thought, oh, really? Well, let's settle that question, because

00:23:32.140 in my world, the rule of law applies and no one's above the law. I don't care who you are.

00:23:38.200 So this is part of the questions that are going to have to be answered.

00:23:42.560 Let me ask you about the morale aspect of this, because, you know, again, I tried to address this

00:23:48.960 earlier on when I was talking about this before I brought you in, Catherine. The fact of the matter

00:23:53.680 is, well, I believe the mandates are wrong in general. I do have a particularly smaller

00:24:02.040 tolerance for jerking around members of the military. And I think in general, Canadians

00:24:06.840 left and right have, for the most part, supported members of the armed forces. We all really embrace

00:24:14.340 Remembrance Day. We all really embrace veterans' causes. I remember when the Afghanistan mission

00:24:19.660 was on, you'd see those yellow ribbons just everywhere on cars and corporations would get

00:24:24.940 involved. It's one of the safest causes to take up support for the military and support for

00:24:30.480 veterans, despite, you know, little, you know, squabbling you might get on the fringes on the

00:24:35.540 left. So when we're talking about something like this to people who have served and continue to

00:24:42.280 serve, it really stings a lot more than the mandates in some other contexts. And I was

00:24:47.840 wondering if you just had any reflections on that and how that's been for the people who wear these

00:24:52.400 uniforms and in some cases would love to still be doing that after all this. I have to tell you

00:24:58.300 the morale is low um in the canadian armed forces it's and the number of broken people that we have

00:25:05.420 with mental health issues is uncountable uh i know that in our group of of people uh we've had some

00:25:13.660 attempted suicides we've managed to save everybody because we've created this really strong group

00:25:19.260 that we're looking out for each other uh but there ha there has been a real price to this

00:25:26.140 whole thing uh because there's a lack of trust between the chain of command and people their

00:25:32.860 troops uh and they were already suffering with some of the changes cultural changes that

00:25:40.700 the people that were signing on the dotted line to volunteer to serve canada didn't agree with

00:25:46.460 and were being forced to adjust to it and yeah no uh i'm just seeing more and more broken people who

00:25:54.780 who even the ones that are still in that took the vaccine, they regret.

00:26:01.240 They have big, big regrets.

00:26:03.000 And now since the lawsuit is launched, they're coming forward and we're hearing from them.

00:26:10.280 And the vaccine injured, I've been getting more and more calls from them as well.

00:26:15.600 Now, is that a separate legal fight or can that actually be addressed under this same mass tort that you filed here?

00:26:22.300 I'm going to bring the vaccine injured one separately.

00:26:24.780 uh because we have to go through veterans affairs canada first they have to see if they can be

00:26:29.500 uh covered they are not being covered right now by veterans affairs canada they're being told it's

00:26:33.900 not service related i disagree even though they weren't even though this was a condition of their

00:26:39.340 service to exactly that otherwise they might not have you don't take it you're out of the military

00:26:43.740 i'd say that's a service related injury so that battle is ramping up uh we have some quite severe

00:26:49.020 injuries, there have been some deaths associated with the COVID vaccines. I can tell you officially

00:26:55.420 that the COVID-19 vaccine killed more troops than COVID did because COVID killed none, zero,

00:27:01.980 zero people died. Even the ones that were on the front lines in the nursing homes,

00:27:06.220 nobody died of COVID in uniform. So that's to me, that says a lot. We forced something on people.

00:27:16.300 i mean they have their own policy that they're not supposed to vaccinate pregnant women and they

00:27:20.620 they were still i had women that were one day away from maternity leave being pressured 1.00

00:27:25.900 to uh take to take the injections so uh you know they didn't stop well and i think when you

00:27:33.820 mention that and it's absolutely horrific and i i followed in particular a lot of the the the

00:27:38.620 vaccine injury cases in the united kingdom where i think they had a larger problem because of the

00:27:43.340 the particular vaccines they were pushing there and how widely they were. And in a Canadian context,

00:27:48.420 we certainly don't hear these stories. And I think it all goes around to the idea of why

00:27:53.200 choice is so central and why choice is so pivotal here. And if, you know, someone wants to look at

00:27:59.440 the situation and say, you know, I'm balancing this, I'm weighing this, and here's what I decide,

00:28:04.040 we should be encouraging that. And I wanted to ask just because we sort of glossed over it

00:28:08.640 earlier, but accommodations, because anytime these mandates were in place, the argument that was put

00:28:13.840 as well, yes, of course, you know, if you absolutely need for medical reasons or religious

00:28:18.380 reasons to get an exemption, you'll be able to, but it's never been as easy as they make it seem.

00:28:23.860 And I know in universities and the public service, they fought tooth and nail against this.

00:28:28.040 I'm assuming from your nodding that that was the same in the Canadian Armed Forces, that exemptions

00:28:32.340 were basically not easy to get, if at all. That's very true. There were very, very few that were

00:28:38.620 are actually granted. And lots of times it was because maybe they were a couple months

00:28:44.600 out from a Tarabi medical release. So they were being released for injuries. And so they

00:28:50.960 all will accommodate you for a couple months while you're in the transition center type

00:28:54.700 of thing. We had here in Edmonton, CFB Edmonton, Rutland, he was a colonel at the time. He's

00:29:01.920 a brigadier general now. He's one of the named defendants. He set up a board to review every

00:29:07.720 single accommodation request because he wasn't happy that some of his CEOs were granting

00:29:12.280 accommodations so they all had to go through this board and one of in one of his decisions he has

00:29:18.280 written that on a balance of probabilities your religion won't be harmed by taking it

00:29:23.720 and I'm looking at this and I'm thinking what so he's thrown a legal term in there balance

00:29:29.560 of probabilities but how how is he in a position to decide if someone's faith has been injured

00:29:36.840 or harmed by taking this.

00:29:41.400 I mean, it's gibberish,

00:29:42.580 but it's also showing you the arrogance of it.

00:29:45.140 Well, this won't harm your faith.

00:29:47.460 Well, that's not his call to make.

00:29:49.700 That's the individual's call to make.

00:29:51.360 And our Supreme Court begs to differ with him

00:29:53.740 about what you're supposed to do

00:29:55.940 with someone's religious beliefs.

00:29:58.120 You know, and this is the military

00:29:59.400 that has long embraced

00:30:01.200 a specific dress issue turban.

00:30:04.640 If you're a Sikh, you can wear your hijab in your uniform if you are a Muslim.

00:30:09.480 So this idea of religious accommodations is not new.

00:30:13.300 But it's amazing that all of a sudden it's, well, maybe we get to decide how your religious practice really needs to manifest here.

00:30:20.280 I mean, I don't trust these people to be theologians any more than I trust them to be charter interpreters at this point.

00:30:26.660 Right. Well, and I mean, the chaplain general basically came out and said that there are 25 recognized religions in the CAF.

00:30:34.640 Oh, really? I didn't know we were putting limits on what religion was what in Canada. That's not

00:30:41.260 what the Supreme Court said. So I found that a very interesting piece of information as well.

00:30:46.800 And these are things that they put in writing. This is the problem, Andrew, is the arrogance

00:30:51.640 and the feeling like they're absolutely untouchable. If this lawsuit does nothing

00:30:57.120 else, I hope it shows them that they're not as untouchable as they think they are.

00:31:00.840 Now, you mentioned earlier the loss here of billions of dollars in lost wages and training.

00:31:07.140 What is the ask? What is it you want to get out of this?

00:31:09.780 So in total, we are asking for approximately $500 million for 329 people.

00:31:17.800 There is a $1 million ask for each person and then some other asks as well for special damages.

00:31:25.720 But we have also got several other claims.

00:31:28.560 there's 30 claims here, and some of them are declarations. The ask for funds is maybe three

00:31:35.200 of the 30. The rest is all asking for, for instance, for the order to be declared unlawful

00:31:41.600 by a court so that the release category can be changed, so that people remove that black mark

00:31:48.080 of a 5F, asking for them to take another look at their grievance system, because how can you have 1.00

00:31:55.200 the guy who wrote the order and and demanded the order being the same guy that decides if you've

00:32:00.720 been grieved or not because that's what happened cds issued it he's the one you have to grieve

00:32:07.120 to say it's wrong but he's the one that makes the decision on whether it was wrong

00:32:11.840 so there's things like that in there where uh my my people are saying that the money is one

00:32:18.560 thing but that's not the main focus of this it's culture change they want to change what's happening

00:32:23.680 in the Canadian Armed Forces

00:32:24.820 and they're willing to stand up

00:32:25.920 and put their names on paper

00:32:27.080 and say, this has got to change

00:32:29.680 that the abuse of power

00:32:31.580 at the top is over.

00:32:34.000 Catherine Christensen from Valor Law.

00:32:36.060 Thank you so much for coming on today.

00:32:37.640 Great to talk to you again.

00:32:38.840 Great to talk to you too, Andrew.

00:32:39.860 Thank you for having me on.

00:32:41.280 All right, thank you.

00:32:42.040 That was Catherine Christensen.

00:32:43.320 Do follow this.

00:32:44.000 We will keep you up on it

00:32:45.180 in the course of our work at True North

00:32:47.620 and let you know how that navigates

00:32:49.160 its way through the justice system,

00:32:51.040 which as we talked about

00:32:52.100 a couple of weeks ago

00:32:53.000 with Bruce Party is not perfect.

00:32:54.740 It has a lot of flaws and a lot of faults,

00:32:56.720 but I do think we need to be fighting these battles

00:32:58.600 on multiple fronts.

00:32:59.540 One is in the media

00:33:00.220 and one is certainly in the courts

00:33:02.340 and you have to win hearts and minds,

00:33:04.120 but you also have to win in the legal front as well.

00:33:08.240 So let's just, before we wrap up here,

00:33:10.560 I got to talk about this

00:33:11.680 and I try not to put too much stock

00:33:14.200 into what the Toronto Star is putting out

00:33:16.420 on a given, on a daily basis,

00:33:18.100 except insofar as it makes for good comedy.

00:33:21.640 This column is a bit of a fun one.

00:33:23.780 Chantelle Berry yesterday writes,

00:33:25.800 Pierre Polyev is becoming a liability to conservatives.

00:33:31.260 Pierre Polyev is a liability to conservatives.

00:33:33.800 Now, this is a little odd for a guy who won the most decisive mandate from conservative members

00:33:40.580 and has continued to enjoy increased popularity since becoming leader

00:33:43.880 while Justin Trudeau's popularity is in the toilet.

00:33:46.880 Now, I know some people watching the show are Polyev fans.

00:33:49.620 other people are not, but surely we can agree that people who have never voted conservative in

00:33:55.240 their lives, and likely never will, are not the ones that we should be listening to when it comes

00:34:01.420 to defining what a conservative is supposed to be. She is doing this whole sort of like weird

00:34:08.120 palace intrigue horse race thing about how the conservatives are not exactly able to return to

00:34:15.860 the government benches, and Pierre Polyev is the reason why, because these people's ideal

00:34:20.220 conservative is Aaron O'Toole. And we know that if Aaron O'Toole were the leader of the conservatives,

00:34:25.380 they would actually win a majority government against Justin Trudeau. Wait, what's that?

00:34:31.880 Oh, he lost. We did that. Okay, but he must not have been running as like a left-wing guy, right?

00:34:37.160 No, he was. Oh, weird. So they want Pierre Polyev to be more of a red Tory so that he could do as

00:34:44.080 astonishingly well as the Red Tory, the Conservatives ran in 2021 on the carbon tax

00:34:50.080 plan did. Well, that is sure to win us over. So let me just tell you, anyone who takes their

00:34:56.400 cues from the Toronto Star on how to be a Conservative is not actually a Conservative

00:35:01.080 at all. And you can take that to the bank. It's worth a little more than an issue of the Toronto

00:35:06.020 Star you take to the bank. So that does it for us for today. I want to give a big thank you to all

00:35:10.560 of you who tuned in we will be back on

00:35:12.540 Wednesday from an undisclosed

00:35:14.960 location I'll disclose it on Wednesday

00:35:16.540 and I'll tell you all about it

00:35:18.380 I'm overselling it it's not that great but

00:35:20.440 we are going to get a little bit of coverage out of it

00:35:22.380 so that's all coming up in the week

00:35:24.540 ahead and we are going to on Friday

00:35:26.680 have a special pre-Canada Day

00:35:28.580 edition of the show we are going to

00:35:30.680 talk to a couple of great folks about the

00:35:32.640 uncancellation of Canadian history

00:35:34.760 following up on the chat we had with

00:35:36.660 Mark Milkey last week so lots of good stuff

00:35:38.720 planned. We will talk to you soon, folks. Thank you, God bless, and good day to you all.

Juno News - June 26, 2023

Trudeau's internet takeover is well under way

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