00:05:16.600and we'll see if that is something that might be brought into fruition in the coming months.
00:05:21.280But 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.
00:05:43.120So I've said time and time again on this show, I do not love big tech.
00:05:47.380I actually have grave concerns with big tech.
00:05:52.380I have had, even on this very show, strikes from YouTube on a number of things.
00:05:56.920We had the MyPillow guy, Mike Lindell, on, and we were talking about faith and pillows.
00:06:03.340And YouTube gave us a strike because, you know, Mike Lindell happened to have been a bad guy that week or something.
00:06:09.320I 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,
00:06:39.320because that's the reality of YouTube.
00:06:42.120So I understand the perils of big tech censorship
00:12:33.360And again, it's not just exclusive to the military.
00:12:36.540It was also true of airline pilots, of federal public servants, and frankly, of anyone who wanted to get on an airplane or a train.
00:12:44.220But 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.
00:12:52.820I think he had left the military by then at a Q&A that veterans were asking for more than the government could give them.
00:13:00.420And it's amazing when you remember that, remember that exchange,
00:13:05.000remember that line that the government had, that Trudeau had,
00:13:08.840how unsurprising it is to see the broader treatment of members of the military.
00:13:13.700But as we talked about a couple of months ago on this show,
00:13:17.100there are some that are not prepared to just ignore this and move on.
00:13:21.160There is now a proposed class action lawsuit that has been filed,
00:13:25.260and the lawyer representing the class is Catherine Christensen,
00:13:28.860who's the founder of Valor Law and joins me now.
00:13:32.260Catherine, it is good to talk to you again.
00:13:33.980Thanks very much for coming back on the show today.
00:13:57.640I was going based on a media report that got it wrong there, but I thank you for setting that
00:14:02.440straight. What is that difference actually for people that don't know? Yeah. So a mass tort is
00:14:06.740seeking relief. So what we're asking for from the government, just for those people that are named
00:14:13.720in the lawsuit as plaintiffs, a class action on the other hand has a example plaintiffs that if
00:14:20.320you match that person, then you're part of that class and you can get compensation through that
00:14:25.380without ever actually taking legal action yourself um so this is a mass tort 329 i know
00:14:33.220there was discussion previously of a class action there was uh the reason that we decided to go this
00:14:39.060route was because these people were the ones that stood up in october of 2021 uh they have stayed
00:14:46.740hard and fast that they wanted to hold the chief of defense staff and and the canadian
00:14:52.020our forces to account uh for abusing their power and so the decision was made by the group that
00:14:57.860they would do it as a mass tort versus a class action now we're talking about hundreds of
00:15:03.780people that are known right now there is still a group out there that we don't yet know about
00:15:08.820and what i'm hearing from them pardon me i'm hearing from them well you are and what bothers
00:15:14.500me so much about this is that there are two well more than two but two in particular types that
00:15:20.740stand out here there are those who were faced with this mandate that for whatever reason didn't want
00:15:25.540to get vaccinated and did and kept their jobs and that was the only way they kept their jobs and
00:15:30.660continued to serve and and those who still wouldn't and said okay i i have to leave and and the
00:15:36.180government views by design that first group as being a success they view that as being great
00:15:42.580we we told them they had to do this and they did it well here's the thing is that the people that
00:15:49.460left the canadian armed forces they were some were forced to leave they chose to leave under a
00:15:54.260voluntary release but there's a large group of them that were released under what's called a 5f
00:15:59.700unsuitable for further service this is the release category that if you are a drunk or a drug addict
00:16:05.860who won't get rehabilitated you're a domestic violence offender your sexual you've been found
00:16:13.060to be guilty of sexual assault this is the category they released those people under
00:16:17.620So it wasn't just a fact that they chose to lose their jobs. When they lost their jobs,
00:16:22.660they lost them under what used to be called a dishonorable discharge. And in fact, several
00:16:27.060members of the chain of command told them it was a dishonorable discharge and that there's
00:16:32.740implications for it. Like for instance, they can't re-enroll in the Canadian Armed Forces without
00:16:36.900the Chief of Defence Staff permission and they have to wait five years. They cannot apply for
00:16:41.940any federal government job because they're not going to get it for being released under this.
00:16:45.620they call it honorable now but like i said it's it's it's a real black mark on their record so
00:16:51.000it was a big choice they had to make because it limited what they could do even out of the armed
00:16:56.580forces well and also what i find so troubling about all of this is that it would be one thing
00:17:03.000if the military had this rule that you have to be vaccinated against covid to join the armed forces
00:17:08.520and i would still oppose that but they would at least have some transparency there about what the
00:17:13.360rules are when you join in this particular case you have people that are being threatened their
00:17:19.220careers are being threatened and jeopardized for non-compliance with a rule that never existed
00:17:23.940when they joined and hadn't existed for the however many years they'd been in service but
00:17:28.620one day with a stroke of a pen did and it's as though you're right they've committed some heinous
00:17:33.500act in uniform if they don't go along with this rule that they never could have conceived of when
00:17:38.520they first joined right so under the national defense act section 126 the chief of defense
00:17:43.620staff has the power to uh force a vaccination on on members of the forces however they are allowed
00:17:52.040to say no they then face face a court martial and if they are found to have a reasonable excuse for
00:17:59.300not taking it then they're acquitted and they're they're then have to be accommodated he chose not
00:18:05.780to use section 126 and he has been reprimanded for that by the review grievance review committee
00:18:12.840because they first of all they couldn't have withstood three to five thousand courts martial
00:18:19.360the jag office just isn't that big and the other is they couldn't risk one win because one win
00:18:25.400would put it into law that he can't do what he just did so they chose an administrative route
00:18:30.680which is how we end up with 5F releases, remedial measures that were accelerated far beyond anything
00:18:38.840they had ever done before. But he had been told in a briefing note that I discussed last time I
00:18:44.600was on your show that he couldn't do what he is about to do and the external grievance review
00:18:50.200committee has actually come out and backed me up on that and said no he couldn't do what he did and
00:18:55.480that he breached the charter section seven of the charter uh that freedom to say what happens to
00:19:01.240your body and uh he under the national defense act he cannot issue an order that violates the
00:19:07.720charter so this is an unlawful order that he issued and that has consequences in the courts
00:19:15.480there was i remember it was in august 2021 so the mandate wasn't in effect yet but we
00:19:20.840were certainly hearing a lot of discussion about it and i i happened upon this and i
00:19:24.840I can't remember how, but on the Department of Defense website, there was a page.
00:19:29.660And 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.
00:19:41.000And it added the same thing for members of the Canadian Armed Forces.
00:19:45.260And I reported on this on August 18th, 2021.
00:19:48.800Two days later, the page had been entirely scrubbed and had none of this.
00:19:53.800So, you know, obviously a government website is whoever wrote its perspective of the law,
00:20:00.140but it does suggest that the Canadian Armed Forces had been operating up until this mandate
00:20:04.300came into effect with this idea that you've just shared, which is that mandatory vaccination
00:20:08.420is not just not a policy of the Armed Forces in Canada, but not even legal if they wanted to.
00:20:15.240So there were members who have never taken the flu vaccine, for example, with no repercussions.
00:20:21.620I there's a member of the lawsuit who had never had a vaccination in her entire life
00:20:26.820and she was serving in the Canadian Armed Forces without any issue until this came along.
00:20:31.380So this is why the lawsuit isn't a COVID-19 lawsuit. What I've done is it's I've been
00:20:38.740watching the forces for a while there's been a lot of corruption and abuse of power in the ranks
00:20:43.940and when he issued this in October 2021 he handed me a perfect example
00:20:49.940of how they abuse their power in the chain of command because I've got a nice concrete start
00:20:54.260to it October of 2021 and here's what all these people did to their troops along the way until
00:21:00.580to the present day and it continues to this present day because the mandate still exists
00:21:05.940they still have are required to be vaccinated and the people that are still in who somehow managed
00:21:12.260to escape being released through all of this they're now being punished all over again they're
00:21:17.540being sent to postings that are going to bankrupt them or are places that they don't want to be
00:21:25.060uh we've got pilots that are being sent to fly desks instructor pilots we need instructor pilots
00:21:32.340to fulfill well trudeau says he's training uh uh ukrainian pilots but he's got a whole bunch
00:21:39.380of instructor pilots that are sitting at desks instead of flying so i'm not sure how he's going
00:21:44.740going to accomplish that. Well, for years, the military has had increasing difficulty in
00:21:50.240recruiting. And we know that a lot of the standards that have long been established in the military,
00:21:56.100I mean, on tattoos, on grooming, on facial hair, on dress, all of these things are being relaxed
00:22:01.680because the argument is that, well, you know, we can't afford to discriminate against people with
00:22:06.020face tattoos because, you know, there's slim pickings in the recruitment offices. And here
00:22:09.980you have people that are not just willing to serve but have been serving and want to even in
00:22:14.880spite of this want to continue serving that are being told no because you won't get this vaccine
00:22:20.800which has whatever you think about it limited efficacy this long after uh if not negligible
00:22:28.920efficacy this long after the mandate required them to have been vaccinated so it's of zero benefit
00:22:34.040Right. 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.
00:22:49.780So 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?
00:23:04.040billions and billions of dollars have been lost through this whole thing for what is essentially
00:23:10.860an unlawful order. And we've got a military right now that says that they're not accountable to the
00:23:15.880law. I was in the court, federal court, in February, and the Crown stood up and said,
00:23:20.600this court has no jurisdiction over the chief of defense staff in military matters. And I watched
00:23:26.180the justices' eyebrow rise, and I thought, oh, really? Well, let's settle that question, because
00:23:32.140in my world, the rule of law applies and no one's above the law. I don't care who you are.
00:23:38.200So this is part of the questions that are going to have to be answered.
00:23:42.560Let me ask you about the morale aspect of this, because, you know, again, I tried to address this
00:23:48.960earlier on when I was talking about this before I brought you in, Catherine. The fact of the matter
00:23:53.680is, well, I believe the mandates are wrong in general. I do have a particularly smaller
00:24:02.040tolerance for jerking around members of the military. And I think in general, Canadians
00:24:06.840left and right have, for the most part, supported members of the armed forces. We all really embrace
00:24:14.340Remembrance Day. We all really embrace veterans' causes. I remember when the Afghanistan mission
00:24:19.660was on, you'd see those yellow ribbons just everywhere on cars and corporations would get
00:24:24.940involved. It's one of the safest causes to take up support for the military and support for
00:24:30.480veterans, despite, you know, little, you know, squabbling you might get on the fringes on the
00:24:35.540left. So when we're talking about something like this to people who have served and continue to
00:24:42.280serve, it really stings a lot more than the mandates in some other contexts. And I was
00:24:47.840wondering if you just had any reflections on that and how that's been for the people who wear these
00:24:52.400uniforms and in some cases would love to still be doing that after all this. I have to tell you
00:24:58.300the morale is low um in the canadian armed forces it's and the number of broken people that we have
00:25:05.420with mental health issues is uncountable uh i know that in our group of of people uh we've had some
00:25:13.660attempted suicides we've managed to save everybody because we've created this really strong group
00:25:19.260that we're looking out for each other uh but there ha there has been a real price to this
00:25:26.140whole thing uh because there's a lack of trust between the chain of command and people their
00:25:32.860troops uh and they were already suffering with some of the changes cultural changes that
00:25:40.700the people that were signing on the dotted line to volunteer to serve canada didn't agree with
00:25:46.460and were being forced to adjust to it and yeah no uh i'm just seeing more and more broken people who
00:25:54.780who even the ones that are still in that took the vaccine, they regret.