Juno News - Trudeau’s “emergency” is an assault on civil liberties

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

00:00:12.800 This is The Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:00:21.720 Hello and welcome.

00:00:23.760 This is another live edition of Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show,

00:00:28.140 the Andrew Lawton Show here on True North on Tuesday, February 15th, 2022. I hope you're

00:00:35.960 all terrified right now. You're supposed to be because you're living in the midst of a national

00:00:40.780 emergency. The scale of what you are today going through has been rivaled only by three points in

00:00:47.280 Canadian history, World War I, World War II, the FLQ crisis, and now the bouncy castle revolution

00:00:57.160 has joined the legions of war terror attacks on Canadian soil

00:01:01.560 as being worthy of a national, well, what is it?

00:01:05.860 Is it a crisis? Is it an emergency?

00:01:07.740 But don't worry, fear not.

00:01:09.200 I don't want to be too dramatic about this

00:01:10.500 because after all, as we're going to learn from Justin Trudeau

00:01:13.240 and from Rosie Barton of CBC,

00:01:15.260 it's not at all a question of civil liberties.

00:01:17.640 No, no, no, nothing of the sorts.

00:01:19.300 It's just a little tool that helps the government.

00:01:22.940 Let's take a look at what Justin Trudeau said about this

00:01:25.700 as far as why he's invoking these emergency measures.

00:01:29.140 Now, this is just for, I'm throwing things up here.

00:01:31.700 I've decided to rip up the format.

00:01:33.100 This is Trudeau clip number two.

00:01:35.460 Don't worry, we're going to get to number one later.

00:01:37.200 But Trudeau clip number two to those behind the scenes here

00:01:40.540 as to why we need to be as Canadians in a state of emergency right now.

00:01:47.140 Invoking the Emergencies Act is never the first thing a government should do,

00:01:51.900 nor even the second.

00:01:52.920 The act is to be used sparingly and as a last resort.

00:02:01.820 Right now, the situation requires additional tools not held by any other federal, provincial

00:02:10.040 or territorial law.

00:02:12.480 Today in these circumstances, it is now clear that responsible leadership requires us to

00:02:20.960 do this.

00:02:22.920 These measures must be and will be compliant with our Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

00:02:29.620 Indeed, the Emergencies Act was created in the late 80s to flow from and uphold the Charter.

00:02:38.620 We'll always defend the rights of Canadians to peaceful assembly and to freedom of expression,

00:02:45.420 But these blockades are illegal.

00:02:49.040 And if you're still participating, the time to go home is now.

00:02:56.340 That's quite something.

00:02:57.540 At the very beginning, I was kind of thinking it's not the first thing a country should do.

00:03:01.660 It's not the second.

00:03:02.900 I thought he was going to go with, but it's definitely the third.

00:03:05.560 But no, Dustin Trudeau says it's the last resort.

00:03:08.180 It's the final measure, the last straw, the very last tool a government has in its toolkit.

00:03:13.960 I did a live stream with my colleagues Candace Malcolm and Harley Sims yesterday, and I pointed

00:03:19.360 out what seems like an obvious point to me, but clearly isn't for Monsieur Trudeau, which is that

00:03:25.200 nowhere on the list of things the government of Canada was doing did apparently speaking to the

00:03:31.240 truckers come up. Trudeau still hasn't done it. Conservative members of Parliament have been

00:03:37.840 walking up and down Wellington Street, Elgin Street, Rideau Street. They've been having

00:03:41.760 conversations. Justin Trudeau hasn't thought of having a single conversation. He hasn't even sent

00:03:47.280 like a deputy undersecretary, assistant deputy minister of the treasury for the fisheries

00:03:53.320 department to go out and meet it. No, he's done nothing. No engagement, no discussion whatsoever.

00:03:58.280 But he says it's the last resort. The last thing. Well, what else have you done up until this point?

00:04:05.640 So when you look at Justin Trudeau's flowchart, he's got, number one, skiing.

00:04:12.320 Number two, when skiing doesn't work, insulting.

00:04:16.260 Number three, when insulting doesn't work, put on blackface. 0.72

00:04:20.060 No, no, no, sorry. 0.90

00:04:20.640 That was number one.

00:04:21.540 Ignore that.

00:04:22.180 I was looking at the old version.

00:04:23.520 So he's got skiing.

00:04:24.700 He's got insulting.

00:04:25.900 He's got insult some more.

00:04:28.300 And then after that, he's got emergencies act. 0.97

00:04:30.760 so i don't know how you get from these are a bunch of racist white supremacists a fringe

00:04:36.340 minority to this is a national emergency for which we need to suspend civil liberties

00:04:41.020 but that's the trajectory justin trudeau has decided to take on this he's decided to go as

00:04:47.860 far as a government can this is we talk about the word draconian we talk about the word orwellian

00:04:53.200 these are quite significant words that oftentimes have been fitting on measures

00:04:57.760 far less severe and far less significant than what the Emergencies Act is, which again is the

00:05:03.940 legislative sequel to the War Measures Act. Just because they've changed the name and tried to fit

00:05:11.180 it within the framework of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms does not take away from the

00:05:15.360 fact that this is meant to be a wartime bill. This is meant to be a wartime piece of legislation.

00:05:21.400 And that is quite significant because I want you to understand precisely what the government is

00:05:28.200 doing here. It's not accurate to call it martial law. We are not putting Canada under military

00:05:33.760 rule. In fact, I think military rule would be a lot better than Justin Trudeau rule.

00:05:38.620 Martial law would probably be an improvement on Trudeau rule, Trudeau law, which is what we have

00:05:44.160 now. But this is not what's happening here. He's not calling in the military. But what he is doing

00:05:49.760 is turning banks into agents of the state.

00:05:53.160 I want to play a clip from Chrystia Freeland,

00:05:56.120 who is the Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister,

00:05:58.900 as she explains in perfect detail

00:06:00.960 precisely what the government is using the Emergencies Act to do.

00:06:08.860 Government is issuing an order with immediate effect

00:06:12.100 under the Emergencies Act

00:06:14.020 authorizing Canadian financial institutions

00:06:17.220 to temporarily cease providing financial services where the institution suspects that an account

00:06:25.180 is being used to further the illegal blockades and occupations. This order covers both personal

00:06:33.420 and corporate accounts. Third, we are directing Canadian financial institutions to review their

00:06:41.500 relationships with anyone involved in the illegal blockades and report to the

00:06:47.400 RCMP or CSIS. As of today, a bank or other financial service provider will be

00:06:56.080 able to immediately freeze or suspend an account without a court order. In doing

00:07:04.360 so they will be protected against civil liability for actions taken in good

00:07:11.200 faith. Federal government institutions will have a new broad authority to

00:07:17.560 share relevant information with banks and other financial service providers to

00:07:23.800 ensure that we can all work together to put a stop to the funding of these

00:07:28.840 illegal blockades. This is about following the money. This is about

00:07:36.640 stopping the financing of these illegal blockades. We are today serving notice.

00:07:44.020 If your truck is being used in these illegal blockades, your corporate

00:07:50.780 accounts will be frozen. The insurance on your vehicle will be suspended. Send your

00:07:59.840 semi-trailers home. The Canadian economy needs them to be doing legitimate work,

00:08:05.960 not to be illegally making us all poorer.

00:08:20.780 sorry about uh freezing that at a very dramatic moment on christopher freeland there maybe our

00:08:34.480 accounts are being frozen who knows it was a long clip but i wanted you to hear the whole thing

00:08:39.060 because the government went on in painstaking detail painstaking detail about all the things

00:08:45.380 they're doing here. And those measures are allowing banks to freeze accounts without a

00:08:51.220 court order, suspending your right to appeal that, to take a bank to court and have that bank have

00:08:58.420 any liability rather, getting banks to rat you out to the RCMP if they suspect that you're involved

00:09:05.340 in the blockade. And again, we don't know how much involved really involves here. Are we talking

00:09:10.860 about anyone who donated or are we talking about the people that are processing donations? We just

00:09:15.280 don't know. I want to talk about this with Christine Van Gein, who's the litigation director

00:09:19.580 for the Canadian Constitution Foundation, and joins us here live on the program. Christine,

00:09:26.640 let's start with the obvious here. I mean, is this a constitutional use of the Emergencies Act?

00:09:34.020 Well, I think- Oh, we don't have Christine yet. Just bear with us here for just a moment as we

00:09:38.620 get her on. This is the fun we have when we do live programming, everyone. So thanks very much

00:09:45.060 for your patience. We'll just get that sorted out and Christine can chime in when we have her up

00:09:49.800 and running. But I want to talk about the fundamental question here. And we have her

00:09:55.080 now. Thanks for your patience there. So Christine, explain to me, is this constitutional the way this

00:10:00.020 is being used? So I think that there are a few problems that I immediately have with this

00:10:05.960 invocation of the Emergencies Act. And I'm not the only one. This is sort of raised concern with

00:10:13.160 constitutional experts across the political spectrum as it should. The first major concern

00:10:18.920 is that the threshold for actually invoking the emergency act may not have been met in this case.

00:10:26.340 And while perhaps there is some evidence that the government is relying on that we don't have

00:10:32.180 access to, there are really specific things that the act requires in order for it to be invoked.

00:10:38.780 The government says that this is a public order emergency, but in order to meet that threshold, there are really specific criteria.

00:10:49.320 It includes things like threats to the territorial integrity of our country, things like espionage or sabotage, foreign-influenced activities that are detrimental to Canada's interests.

00:11:04.500 And I think that, you know, that's a high bar. I don't think that the government at this point has presented us with the evidence that they have met that threshold. I've read the ordering council. It doesn't provide any more information than really what was said at the press conference yesterday.

00:11:24.320 way, and this has a lot of people really concerned.

00:11:27.260 We can't normalize the invocation of emergency legislation, which has been something that's

00:11:33.500 happened throughout this pandemic, and really it looks like the federal government is invoking

00:11:38.820 this legislation as a matter of political convenience.

00:11:43.260 One of the other things that the legislation requires is that the existing laws not be

00:11:48.380 sufficient in order to deal with whatever the crisis is.

00:11:54.280 in my view, the major crisis was the border blockage at Windsor, which was very disruptive

00:12:02.040 to trade. It costs Canada's economy billions of dollars to disrupt that major trade route.

00:12:12.740 There was, at one of the other border blockades, there were some pretty serious security

00:12:19.820 concerns that were raised with what the RCMP uncovered at that blockade. But those blockades

00:12:27.280 were all resolved using regular police powers. There was no need to invoke emergency legislation

00:12:35.340 to deal with that. And unless there's something the government knows that we all don't know,

00:12:40.760 a bunch of noisy trucks on Wellington Street in front of Parliament, while an inconvenience,

00:12:46.580 and potentially unlawful, but potentially not, doesn't justify the invocation of the Emergency

00:12:54.800 Act, in my opinion, and in the opinion of the Canadian Constitution Foundation.

00:12:59.480 Well, you raise an important point there about, you know, the information as we have it. Does the

00:13:05.840 government have an obligation to be public about if there is a threat that would put it into that

00:13:12.080 category? I know certainly if they were defending it in court, they would have to be transparent

00:13:16.720 about that. But do they have to give all of the reasons they think publicly in the legislation,

00:13:22.240 in the Order and Council, when they're invoking it? Not necessarily, right? It depends on what

00:13:28.040 the nature of the emergency is. So if it's, for example, a really serious terrorist threat,

00:13:36.280 there's intelligence that the government may not have an obligation to release because it's

00:13:43.480 it's very confidential it could jeopardize sources and methods things like that but

00:13:48.880 even if it would even if that were to be challenged if there were to be a challenge

00:13:53.620 brought and I think you could challenge this invocation of the emergency act it would be done

00:13:59.180 by way of of judicial review so that is a government order it's judicially reviewable

00:14:05.220 So if there is very, very confidential and sensitive information upon which the government is basing this decision to invoke the act, there are ways that the courts can deal with that.

00:14:18.740 So the person challenging the law would have an amicus appointed who reviews the evidence and participates in the hearing with the judge and with the government in order to review that evidence and make arguments without having that evidence publicly disclosed or without having it disclosed to whoever the applicant is.

00:14:40.300 um so this is something obviously we're in talks with lawyers about what our next steps are we

00:14:46.580 haven't made any decisions right now but we are we have been in talks with lawyers all day about

00:14:51.960 this exact issue and what are what we're what we're going to do and we are seriously contemplating

00:14:56.500 uh bringing a judicial review of this the as we heard from justin trudeau yesterday and in the

00:15:03.360 clip i i shared just before you joined he's saying that this is charter compliant the charter of

00:15:08.840 rights and freedom still applies. And I know in the Emergencies Act itself, which is distinct

00:15:13.620 from the War Measures Act, which predates the Charter, it says, yes, all of these measures have

00:15:17.780 to be subject to the Charter, but the Charter also has Section 1, where the government can

00:15:22.400 override the rights, as we all know, if it provides there is a reasonable limitation,

00:15:27.640 demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society, and so on. Does the government saying

00:15:33.520 there's an emergency? Is that enough to widen the latitude that Section 1 affords it?

00:15:39.960 So one thing that I find funny is I've seen this all over social media is, you know, it's,

00:15:46.340 it's, this can't be a violation of the charter because it's subject to the charter. I mean,

00:15:51.680 of course, it's subject to the charter, all legislation is subject to the charter. But

00:15:55.240 that doesn't mean that the legislation is always being applied in a charter compliant manner.

00:16:00.260 And this is something we need to talk about, right? I think that the invocation in particular of the emergency order to potentially freeze and seize assets without court order could, I mean, there's a very strong possibility that that particular part of the ordering council is not compliant with the charter's guarantee to be free from unreasonable search and seizure.

00:16:27.120 a seizure without court order is is not necessarily unreasonable but I mean it's the burden will be on

00:16:36.580 the government to prove that it's not so I mean there's there's that that just because the

00:16:43.040 legislation says it's subject to the charter doesn't mean that the government isn't violating

00:16:47.220 the charter in the way the manner in which they're invoking it that's really important and I think

00:16:51.920 that that has been lost on a lot of people. On your other point, will the government get

00:16:58.340 deference from the courts because they are declaring an emergency? I don't know the answer

00:17:03.840 to that. But what I will say is one thing that we have noticed throughout our charter litigation

00:17:09.040 during this pandemic is that there has been a lot of deference that the courts have given

00:17:15.700 to the government on pandemic measures. But this is not a pandemic measure, right? This is sort of

00:17:23.960 pandemic adjacent. And I think that the courts have shown deference on matters of, for example,

00:17:31.320 epidemiology, that the judges will say, you know, they will defer to medical experts. But courts are

00:17:40.540 quite experienced in dealing with matters of policing. And this is more of a policing measure

00:17:46.820 than a science measure. And I think that the government, I think that the courts may

00:17:53.380 not show the type of deference in this case that they have shown in other pandemic-related pieces

00:18:01.960 of litigation. But we never know when it comes to the courts. That is true. And I think an

00:18:07.760 important caution. The financial aspects of this are what I find the most chilling here, just given

00:18:13.680 how broadly defined or completely ill-defined they are. Obviously, they're extending and expanding a

00:18:19.880 lot of existing measures to include cryptocurrency. We know the convoy organizers have pivoted to

00:18:25.480 Bitcoin when all of their other avenues of funding have been cut off or frozen in some form. But this

00:18:31.680 idea of giving the banks not just an obligation to start reporting if they suspect someone might

00:18:38.240 be involved in this, but also to freeze accounts without a court order. Now, if you give a bank

00:18:43.920 that power, I don't know if they're going to use it very broadly because they don't want to

00:18:49.500 themselves find that they're not complying with the law. I don't know if banks are known to be

00:18:54.740 discreet or judicious about these sorts of things. But to then take away the bank's ability to be

00:19:00.480 sued for that, to take away the judicial recourse and legal recourse you could have as a citizen

00:19:05.760 here. Do we know how they're going to interpret, the government or the banks, what involved means?

00:19:12.380 Does it just extend to someone who maybe donates $50 to the trucker convoy? Or is it only going

00:19:17.780 after the big fish that are receiving donations in large six-figure, seven-figure sums?

00:19:23.840 Yeah, I actually don't know the answer to that. And I think there is no answer to that,

00:19:30.480 right now, I've seen advice from criminal lawyers on this exact issue. I have been emailed by a

00:19:37.800 number of people asking if I made a donation, what should I do? And what I would say is,

00:19:44.040 don't talk to media if you made a donation and continue to live your life. And the advice I've

00:19:54.340 seen from criminal lawyers is consider not making another donation because right now there's a lot

00:20:00.960 of attention on that particular issue. But that's the advice that I have seen. I don't know the

00:20:07.520 answer to how banks would exercise this because it's pretty novel. Banks are risk averse though,

00:20:18.940 right? Yeah, and I mean, we've talked about, you and I have, and I've talked about it in the show

00:20:24.460 with other people as well, the government's unrelated attempts to go after internet speech.

00:20:29.600 And the theory that I've had with government regulation of social media companies is that for

00:20:33.780 social media companies, it's not worth the hassle. So they'll just say, yeah, we'll delete this,

00:20:38.040 we'll delete this, we'll delete this, because it's easier than getting involved with the bureaucracy

00:20:42.500 and trying to go back and forth on this particular post or that particular post.

00:20:47.980 I think the same thing applies here to the banks. If there is anything convoy related, it may just be easier for the banks to say, OK, this is gone. This is gone. This is gone. I mean, when GoFundMe went after the fundraising campaign for the convoy, they zapped a whole bunch of others that were not even really supporting the convoy.

00:21:06.520 One of them was an independent journalist whose work I don't happen to agree with ideologically, but they went after her fundraising account to fund her coverage of it just because it was in that space.

00:21:18.580 So I do fear that there would be a lot of a very overbroad approach that they take to this.

00:21:24.720 And the fact that you as a lawyer who's read through this, who's seen the press conference, doesn't have the answer to that, I think is very concerning.

00:21:31.260 Because how is, you know, Gladys, who wants to donate $10, how is she going to have the answer?

00:21:35.440 Well, none of us have the answer right now. And I think on its face, what was said in the press conference yesterday sounds like an invitation for banks to arbitrarily seize private property for people who are suspected of involvement with the protests without any built in right to apply for reconsideration, whether intentional or inadvertent.

00:21:57.620 So I think there are a lot of things that can go really badly wrong there and that is potentially unconstitutional. We have a right under a charter under Section 8 to be free from unreasonable search and seizure. And this is potentially a violation of that.

00:22:12.480 So there are really two big problems here. The first is that I don't think that the Emergency

00:22:18.480 Act has been properly invoked. I think that this is a matter of political convenience for the

00:22:23.020 Prime Minister to, I mean, frankly, I think that this is an attempt at political cover, right?

00:22:34.760 Like this is an attempt for the Prime Minister to appear like he's doing something about the

00:22:39.800 trucks, which are upsetting a lot of people in Ottawa. And I think that the government wanted to

00:22:46.080 ease some pandemic restrictions. For example, they eased some restrictions today related to

00:22:51.300 re-entry to the country. And they want to look tough on the trucks before they make an announcement

00:22:59.500 like that so that they are not looking as if they're capitulating. That's not a national

00:23:03.800 emergency. Like the prime minister's political crisis is not a national crisis for the

00:23:09.800 yeah i i think that's that's incredibly well said and never been invoked no i i appreciate that i'm

00:23:19.740 sorry you uh froze for just a moment there but i i will ask you just finally here and i know you

00:23:23.980 mentioned christine you're still consulting with lawyers on this and uh the the actions you at the

00:23:28.380 ccf might take and others might take still stand to be seen but as far as the oversight is there

00:23:34.280 an ability to have this challenged in a very immediate basis through an injunction? Or is

00:23:40.080 this the kind of thing that is going into a very longer battle that could outlast the invocation

00:23:45.960 of the act itself? Yeah. So the invocation only lasts for 30 days. So if there's a judicial review,

00:23:52.900 which is how this would be heard and how it would be challenged, it would have to be heard on an

00:23:57.920 emergency basis. The federal courts would have jurisdiction here and the federal courts are

00:24:02.640 usually quite good at dealing with things quickly. So I actually think the fact that it's federal

00:24:08.540 helps here. It could be heard before that timeline is up. I wouldn't attempt an injunction.

00:24:19.060 I've been involved in injunctions in the past two years. They have not gone particularly well

00:24:26.340 because the threshold for an injunction against government action is incredibly high. The

00:24:30.660 threshold for an injunction in general is incredibly high, but for government action

00:24:34.720 in particular, and in the context of the pandemic, there's just been too much deference to the

00:24:40.220 government. I wouldn't attempt an injunction. I would go straight to the judicial review.

00:24:46.120 I will say though, True North did manage to get an injunction against the federal government for

00:24:50.840 the Leaders Debates Commission exclusion a couple of years ago. That's not a COVID thing. It's on

00:24:56.240 the covid stuff that they yeah yeah we wouldn't have done as well i suspect and i think the lawyer

00:25:03.360 that you used on that um it's a lawyer that we've worked with as well dressing jessica region 0.65

00:25:09.680 yeah as well she did it she did a tremendous job and actually had like one of the most uh viral

00:25:13.840 tweets of the uh pandemic in the last couple days as well talking about how we we all just need to

00:25:18.880 get on with our lives so uh it's tremendous to have you and your colleagues on this file here

00:25:24.560 Christine Van Gein of the Canadian Constitution Foundation will certainly cover what the CCF does

00:25:29.980 with this in the days and weeks ahead. Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you very much for

00:25:33.960 having me, Andrew. All right. It's our pleasure. And again, I always I love talking to Christine

00:25:38.860 and we'll have her on any time. I hate when I have to talk to her always because it's always coming

00:25:43.800 when civil liberties are under threat. Civil liberties are under assault. And the danger 1.00

00:25:50.100 in this, as you just heard, is that there's so much that hasn't been defined. And it is

00:25:55.340 political posturing. You get Justin Trudeau that comes out there and says, you know, we're telling

00:25:59.360 you that you're breaking the law and we're watching you. You've got Chrystia Freeland coming out and

00:26:03.380 saying, we're putting you on notice. That's what she's saying. We're putting you on notice.

00:26:08.700 And you may remember a couple of days ago, I spoke about Nadine Ellis Maffei, who's a woman who was

00:26:15.220 visited by the OPP who wanted to knock on her door and remind her that we're watching you. We know

00:26:20.280 you're on that Facebook group. We're just telling you about your right to peaceful protest. Well,

00:26:24.480 this is, I mean, worse than that because they can go after your money. They can freeze your assets.

00:26:28.360 They can take away your insurance, meaning that it is illegal for you to operate your truck even

00:26:34.200 more than it is already. But that's what Chrystia Freeland is doing here, saying we are putting you 0.96

00:26:41.160 on notice. You do not have the right to protest your government. This is the thing. They talk

00:26:47.220 about the importance of peaceful protest, but this is a lawless protest. Well, civil disobedience

00:26:53.280 inherently violates the law. So for the government to be very selective about it,

00:27:00.440 as the government's doing here, they're saying you don't have the right to protest us. And if you do,

00:27:05.260 were going to go after your money. I want to play one more clip of Trudeau. This one's a bit

00:27:11.660 shorter, but still very telling. This is Trudeau clip one.

00:27:17.100 Not using the Emergencies Act to call in the military. We're not suspending fundamental rights

00:27:24.280 or overriding the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. We are not limiting people's freedom of speech.

00:27:31.500 We are not limiting freedom of peaceful assembly.

00:27:35.540 We are not preventing people from exercising their right to protest legally.

00:27:41.680 We are reinforcing the principles, values, and institutions that keep all Canadians free.

00:27:54.220 We are not taking away your right to peacefully protest.

00:27:58.340 we're taking away your rights

00:28:00.680 so that we can protect the rights that keep you free

00:28:03.480 to do the things that we're not letting you do

00:28:05.840 okay I think I've got it

00:28:08.080 yeah I think that's what he's doing

00:28:09.120 so what does peaceful protest mean?

00:28:11.720 you're allowed to stand you know

00:28:13.080 in this little tiny section of your neighborhood park

00:28:15.760 and you can protest there

00:28:17.280 but you can't protest too loudly

00:28:18.980 you can't do it with a car horn

00:28:20.320 you can't do it in the streets

00:28:21.340 you can't do it for the love of all this holy

00:28:23.000 you can't do it with a bouncy castle

00:28:24.400 the bouncy castle was the last straw for the government

00:28:27.680 but what he's saying is that you don't actually have those rights one of the measures i haven't

00:28:33.980 mentioned beyond the financial aspects beyond the added police powers is the idea that you can be

00:28:40.340 conscripted if you're a tow truck driver you can now be conscripted to start moving trucks and if

00:28:46.080 you don't go along with that you could be charged you could be jailed so if you're a tow truck

00:28:51.440 driver you no longer have the right to make your own decisions you can now be forced to work for

00:28:56.560 the government keeping in mind a lot of tow truck drivers are not interested in doing this they

00:29:02.260 support the trucker convoy they haven't wanted to show up and tow them away but now the government

00:29:06.980 has had to conscript them under its emergency wartime powers to do this so as much as this is

00:29:16.180 something that we're told oh we didn't want to do it this was a choice and I'm glad Christine Van

00:29:20.940 Guyne was as honest about this as she was, that this is a political expediency question,

00:29:26.340 not a question of whether we're in an emergency. And if you look around, there is not a lot of

00:29:31.560 support for this. Academics on the left, on the right, civil liberties organizations, not just

00:29:38.500 the Canadian Constitution Foundation, but also the Canadian Civil Liberties Association are coming out

00:29:43.580 and condemning this. There are some people that are a little bit more deferential, but even then

00:29:48.540 there saying, okay, if you're going to do this, you have to tell us where the emergency is.

00:29:53.540 Where is the injury? Where is the risk to Canadians? Oh, well, I should actually walk

00:29:58.680 that back. I was in Ottawa. You wouldn't believe the carnage in Ottawa. There was a four-year-old

00:30:03.460 that I think tripped in the bouncy castle. There was one guy that burned his tongue on hot chocolate,

00:30:09.500 believe it or not. There was a Manitoban who accidentally bumped into a Quebecer on the

00:30:14.200 dance floor. It's literally a war zone. It is an absolute war zone. You've got kids with broken 0.51

00:30:19.260 ankles, not even broken angles, just a little scratch here and there. And this is what Justin

00:30:23.700 Trudeau is saying, oh, it's an emergency. They gave Omar, I mean, I don't want to make the

00:30:29.560 comparison to Omar Khadr here, but I will because they gave him $10.5 million. But they've now made

00:30:35.160 it illegal to give $10 to a trucker, basically. Where is the justice in that? Part of peacefully

00:30:43.920 protesting, part of freedom of expression is the idea of being able to express your political

00:30:51.220 opposition to the government. And that's exactly what's happening here. People are doing that.

00:30:58.180 This has started a movement around the country where people are showing the government they've

00:31:04.760 had enough. And it's working. It is absolutely working. The vaccine passports are being lifted

00:31:11.040 in Ontario, in PEI, in Manitoba, Alberta, Saskatchewan, even Quebec. Quebec, which had

00:31:17.680 a curfew. Quebec, which was threatening to tax the unvaccinated. And now Quebec is lifting the

00:31:25.300 vaccine passport. Today, we had the government announce that you're no longer going to need a

00:31:30.240 PCR test to fly into Canada or drive into Canada. They're getting rid of the PCR test requirement.

00:31:36.120 Now, let me talk about this just for a moment, because I said when this came out on Twitter, you know, does anyone else hear the faint sound of honking?

00:31:43.360 Because I do think all of this is related to the convoy.

00:31:47.560 And I had a number of people push back and say, well, it's not enough and it still is being applied differently depending on whether someone's vaccinated and they're still replacing it with a rapid test.

00:31:56.320 And all of that's true.

00:31:57.060 You can look at the provincial governments that are lifting their vaccine passports and keeping other restrictions in place or the governments that are doing it more slowly than they could.

00:32:06.240 All of that is completely fair.

00:32:08.520 But I don't think the government was ever going to flip one switch and say every restriction is gone.

00:32:13.980 Every measure is gone now.

00:32:15.140 It was always going to happen incrementally because that's the only way the government can pretend it's not related to the convoy.

00:32:22.380 and I it's completely valid to say it's not enough or it's not fast enough but I am also

00:32:28.940 not going to stand for people saying it's nothing and people standing and up and saying it's

00:32:33.680 insignificant because it's not insignificant we're talking about governments here that have

00:32:37.880 put in place these regimes in spite of the science in spite of the unconstitutionality

00:32:42.680 in spite of their divisiveness and they've stood by them and it's only now as we look at what almost

00:32:48.760 three weeks since the convoy pulled into Ottawa that we've seen all of these things that I've

00:32:53.320 just lifted in the last few moments start to go away piece by piece. And even if it's being done

00:32:58.020 incrementally, it's very much being done because the public appetite is shifting. Governments have

00:33:03.480 to save face. You can criticize the speed, of course, do it. But don't say that nothing's

00:33:08.560 happening because changes are being made. Changes are taking place here. And I do want to share

00:33:15.500 something because Pierre Polyev who's a conservative leadership candidate did speak out about this on

00:33:20.560 his way into the House of Commons I think it was yesterday and this was before the emergency act

00:33:26.160 was officially declared before that press conference but we had seen reports of it and

00:33:30.380 this is what Pierre Polyev had to say. Well it's clear that Justin Trudeau has caused a political

00:33:43.020 emergency. While the rest of the world and provinces across Canada are beginning to

00:33:50.960 remove restrictions and mandates, Justin Trudeau decided to pile new ones on, targeting truckers'

00:33:58.340 livelihoods. And now he's got protests right around the country. And now he's dropping in

00:34:06.120 the polls desperately trying to save his political career and save face for himself. The solution

00:34:15.700 is staring him in the face. All he has to do is listen to the experts, do what other countries

00:34:22.400 are doing, and that is to eliminate these mandates and restrictions to let the protesters,

00:34:29.400 including the truckers, go back to their jobs and their lives.

00:34:34.780 Speaking about the protests, I'll repeat to you what I told the very first time the media asked me about them.

00:34:44.480 I stand with those peaceful and law-abiding protesters, including truckers,

00:34:52.220 who are championing their freedoms and their jobs

00:34:56.560 while holding personally accountable any individuals who behave badly, break laws,

00:35:04.880 or participate in blockades of critical economic infrastructure.

00:35:10.280 I've always been against blockades, and I still am now,

00:35:13.680 because I don't believe you can gain your freedom by blocking someone else's.

00:35:18.960 So yes to peaceful protests, no to blockades.

00:35:24.440 and you know how we can put an end to both of them though real simple listen to the science

00:35:30.320 do what the other provinces and the other countries are doing that is to end the mandates

00:35:36.040 and the restrictions so the protesters can get back to their lives and their jobs

00:35:41.040 that's a very clear message you want a way out of this end the mandates and the vaccine passports

00:35:50.720 And as Pierre Pauly have indicated there,

00:35:52.720 what they're asking for is not anything that the science

00:35:56.140 the government so worships and idolizes

00:35:58.500 is not asking for and calling for.

00:36:01.640 Just look at the PCR test requirement for a moment.

00:36:04.640 This was something the government's own expert panel said

00:36:07.780 is not doing anything.

00:36:09.960 When Omicron came and anyone and everyone

00:36:12.600 was just testing positive for Omicron,

00:36:14.380 regardless of anything,

00:36:15.660 they were all, you didn't even need to be sick.

00:36:17.380 You didn't even need to have the sniffles

00:36:18.420 people were testing positive for it. People were getting stranded overseas who were not sick,

00:36:23.660 who were not symptomatic. They were getting stranded because of this government's stupid 1.00

00:36:28.000 asinine testing requirement. You had people in the US that were like driving back with, 1.00

00:36:33.860 there was one I saw that had to like put a sign up on their window being like, I have COVID.

00:36:38.600 And I think the border officer just said, yeah, okay, come on, just wave them right through.

00:36:43.320 But the protesters are not asking for anything unreasonable. They're just saying,

00:36:46.980 and the mandates and the passports.

00:36:48.660 Everyone concedes that these things are all dividing society.

00:36:52.840 The question is, are they prepared to admit

00:36:54.780 that they have a role in that division?

00:36:57.140 I was shaking my head watching this comment

00:36:59.800 from Ontario Premier Doug Ford

00:37:01.680 as he talks about lifting the vaccine passport in Ontario.

00:37:05.960 And for the guy that put in the vaccine passport,

00:37:08.720 he was awfully tone deaf about the effect that was having

00:37:12.920 on the very problems he's describing here.

00:37:16.980 You can go to Costco, you can go to Walmart, you can go shopping.

00:37:21.860 You know, you don't know if the person has a shot beside you or not.

00:37:24.720 But we also know that it doesn't matter if you have one shot or ten shots, you can catch COVID.

00:37:30.900 See, the Prime Minister has triple shots, and I know hundreds of people with three shots that caught COVID.

00:37:36.200 We just have to be careful.

00:37:37.760 We've got to always make sure we wash our hands and move forward.

00:37:41.720 But, Colin, we can't stay in this position forever.

00:37:45.140 We've got to learn to live with this and get on with our lives.

00:37:47.820 I bet if I asked every single person in this room, 0.99

00:37:50.880 do you want these damn masks or do you want them off? 0.99

00:37:52.660 They want them off. 1.00

00:37:53.880 They want to get back to normal.

00:37:55.500 They want to be able to go for dinner with their families.

00:37:57.480 And there's every single person, including myself,

00:37:59.820 knows people that are unvaccinated.

00:38:02.140 You know, sure, there's the rebel rousers,

00:38:04.600 and then there's just hardworking people that just don't believe in it.

00:38:08.360 And that's their choice.

00:38:10.840 This is about, again, that democracy and freedoms and liberties

00:38:14.420 I hate as a government telling anyone what to do.

00:38:17.920 We just got to get moving forward and get out of this

00:38:20.820 and protect the jobs.

00:38:22.800 You know, I think a lot of people call them

00:38:25.660 probably yourself too.

00:38:27.000 Everyone's done with us.

00:38:28.500 Like we are done with it.

00:38:30.460 Let's start moving on and cautiously.

00:38:32.700 You know, we've followed the rules.

00:38:35.580 All of us, like 90% of us, for over two years.

00:38:39.580 The world's done with it.

00:38:41.240 So let's just move forward.

00:38:44.420 The very beginning of that, oh, you could be in a Costco and you don't know who's vaccinated or

00:38:48.160 who's not. It's like, well, okay, well, great. So you're saying that the vaccine passport wasn't

00:38:53.220 needed. The vaccine passport didn't work. He's looking around saying, all of you, we don't want

00:38:57.740 to wear a mask. I don't want to wear the mask. No one wants to wear the mask. Great. Then just

00:39:01.820 take them off. This is not difficult to do. So Doug Ford is acknowledging there. And he said in

00:39:08.880 that comment he made the other day about how it's even affected his family, all of these things.

00:39:13.420 you're acknowledging the harm that your measures are responsible for and it's not just him every

00:39:21.820 premier in the country went the same direction with it although with different levels of zeal

00:39:26.140 and some of them were prepared to accept that a lot earlier than others and for that Alberta and

00:39:31.360 Saskatchewan I know a lot of people are angry at Scott Moe and Jason Kenney fine but they at least

00:39:36.880 realized sooner what was wrong and maybe they don't get a gold star but relatively speaking

00:39:42.940 it was better to be an Albertan or a Saskatchewanian, Saskatchewan, or I don't know where

00:39:46.720 they're from. A person from Saskatchewan, it was better to be one of them than someone from 0.63

00:39:50.840 Ontario or Quebec. I want to take a couple of your questions before we wrap things out here.

00:39:57.640 Some are very much, some are very practical, practical questions that I will try to answer

00:40:04.360 here. Ken asks, what can people do to fight this? This is the invocation of the Emergencies Act.

00:40:10.600 And I think Christine gave a lot on this earlier.

00:40:13.920 I think it's going to be subject to a legal challenge.

00:40:16.220 The question is what kind of challenge and when and how quickly can it be put into effect?

00:40:22.300 Heather writes, how can one person invoke this act on his own?

00:40:25.880 Is this even legal?

00:40:27.660 Well, whether it's legal or not, I have no idea.

00:40:30.420 We'll soon see.

00:40:31.800 But certainly, certainly one of the problems that's going to come up is that there is a

00:40:36.880 cultural attitude within the Liberal government that supports this.

00:40:40.460 that is all for this. And there's a population of Canadians, I don't know how big or small,

00:40:46.140 that welcomes this in, that says, yes, bring on the regulations, bring on the restrictions,

00:40:50.640 shut down the civil liberties, shut down people's freedoms, go further. NDP leader Jagmeet Singh was

00:40:55.820 calling for the military. He was calling for them to bring in the army. This is the NDP.

00:41:01.660 The NDP, the party that has candidates that every election you find out were saying that,

00:41:06.200 oh, the poppy glorifies war. And they were saying, bring in the truckers to deal with

00:41:10.860 these working class protesters. Garnett writes, has the Supreme Court weighed in? No, not yet.

00:41:17.040 It's going to be challenged. And like Christine Van Gein said, it could be challenged and should

00:41:20.820 be challenged on an expedited basis, but it still will take time. And who knows how many people's

00:41:25.800 bank accounts will be frozen in the interim. Tara has contributed through Super Chat. Thank

00:41:32.580 you very much for that. She says, my dad passed away February 3rd and edicts kept me from seeing

00:41:37.580 my family for two years. And then my concern for his health kept me from him after his cancer

00:41:42.240 diagnosis and I'll never get him back. That is heartbreaking to hear. And I'm so sorry for your

00:41:49.140 loss, Tara, not just your loss of your father, but your loss of your rights. And I think Tara's

00:41:54.820 story there is a reminder that these things are not at all abstract. I mean, I can talk about

00:42:02.120 civil liberties until the cows come home and the importance of freedom of speech. And I can lay

00:42:06.460 out an academic argument for it. And I can talk about it in the grand sense and quote John Stuart

00:42:11.340 Mill and George Orwell. But for people, these are real world consequences. Real world consequences

00:42:17.700 being kept away from your family, being, if you're unvaccinated, prevented from traveling.

00:42:22.840 Prevented from traveling. Brian Peckford, the former premier of Newfoundland, who now lives

00:42:27.500 in British Columbia. I had him on the show a couple of weeks ago. He made it to the conference.

00:42:31.560 he had to drive across the country he can't get on a plane and fly to ottawa he had to drive across

00:42:36.760 the country to get to ottawa so that he could stand up for civil liberties and the rights and

00:42:42.280 freedoms enshrined in the charter of rights and freedoms the document that he helped pass

00:42:46.200 and which is now being ignored as the government bans him and countless other canadians from going

00:42:52.140 across the country so again tara i'm sorry for your loss i don't have the answer except to say

00:42:56.280 that the number of people that are starting to see just how evil these measures are is very much

00:43:01.400 growing. Fraser writes, I'm 73 years old living on a small pension. I'm taking all my money out

00:43:06.820 of the bank except for a hundred dollars. Then I'll keep it in my safe. Look, I've heard from

00:43:10.980 a lot of people like that. I'm not a, I know technology. I'm not a particularly expert person

00:43:17.760 at technology. I couldn't, I couldn't tell you how to buy a Bitcoin if my life depended on it.

00:43:23.320 I can figure it out if I really want it, but I'm not a crypto person. So if I were to try to move

00:43:29.040 my money into crypto, I would have no idea what to do. And this is not an invitation for you to

00:43:33.180 email me and tell me how to buy crypto. I'm just pointing out here that there are a lot of people

00:43:37.400 who are even less tech savvy than me that I would have no idea, but the government's going after

00:43:41.540 that too. I don't know how they're going to do it, but the government is now trying to crack

00:43:45.440 down on crypto because they don't want the trucker convoy to be able to get that.

00:43:50.180 At a certain point, if you were to walk up and hand a trucker a roll up the rim tab that says

00:43:55.240 Gagné win free coffee, 1.00

00:43:57.540 Chrystia Freeland is going to come 1.00

00:43:59.060 and throw the cuffs on you herself. 1.00

00:44:01.260 That's where the government's going. 0.99

00:44:02.760 Any material support that you dare to give

00:44:05.080 to someone protesting against the Liberals

00:44:07.260 is going to be outlawed before long.

00:44:09.720 You heard it here first.

00:44:11.120 Michael writes,

00:44:12.340 so now my 90% score in high school is a failure.

00:44:15.860 We're 90% vaccinated

00:44:17.400 and they are considering it a failure

00:44:19.240 so they restrict more.

00:44:20.740 This is, Michael, a brilliant point.

00:44:22.780 First off, good on you

00:44:23.540 for getting the 90% in high school.

00:44:25.240 You're right. 90% now is not enough. 90% means, well, we've got a mandate. Why didn't you get

00:44:30.720 100? You didn't get 100? What's wrong with you? Special education for you. That's exactly what

00:44:36.960 the government's saying here. They've moved the goalposts. At first it was, well, if we get to 70%,

00:44:41.020 we'll have herd immunity and we could reopen. That was just one of many iterations of what

00:44:46.080 started as two weeks to flatten the curve and is now we're freezing your bank accounts if you

00:44:50.020 support a trucker that's unhappy he's been vaccine mandated out of a job we're gonna have another one

00:44:56.180 of these live editions of the show in a couple days time i'm sorry for the tech glitches we are

00:45:00.540 still figuring out the new format it's probably my fault let's be real i want to blame christia

00:45:05.320 freeland but i can't always get away with that on everything or scott bryson he's the one you're

00:45:09.460 supposed to blame for for everything as justin trudeau says uh but we will have another one of

00:45:14.540 these and i love your comments keep them coming if you want to support the work that true north

00:45:18.200 is doing, you can head on over to donate.tnc.news. Also, I should say I'm headed back to Ottawa this

00:45:25.220 week as well, especially with a looming crackdown. So we'll have some on the ground coverage. I don't

00:45:30.060 know when that's going to be, but it is going to be this week in the next couple of days. I just

00:45:33.720 don't know if my next show is going to be from here or from there, but we'll, we'll get you

00:45:36.620 covered one way or another with that. We will talk to you soon. Thank you. God bless and good day to

00:45:41.100 you all. Thanks for listening to the Andrew Lawton show. Support the program by donating

00:45:47.500 to True North at www.tnc.noons.

Juno News - February 15, 2022

Trudeau’s “emergency” is an assault on civil liberties

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