Juno News - December 05, 2025


Trump signals MAJOR SHIFT in Canada–U.S. trade deal


Episode Stats

Length

18 minutes

Words per Minute

149.64487

Word Count

2,760

Sentence Count

159


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 The trade is on the agenda as Prime Minister Carney meets with U.S. President Trump in
00:00:09.720 Washington, D.C. Trump says he will meet with both the leaders of Canada and Mexico today
00:00:14.960 to talk about the stalled trade negotiations. Here they are standing side by side at the
00:00:20.780 FIFA 2026 World Cup event. Carney's itinerary includes making a speech at the World Cup
00:00:28.760 celebration in tree lighting ceremony. He will also meet with Mexican President
00:00:33.220 Claudia Scheinbaum. Now Trump said this week he may allow the trilateral free trade
00:00:39.000 agreement between the three countries to lapse in favor of separate deals with
00:00:43.560 Canada and Mexico. Could reading certain Bible passages in public soon be
00:00:50.040 considered a criminal act? Well advocates for religious freedom are sounding the
00:00:54.420 alarm over changes to federal law supposedly aimed at combating hate. Now
00:01:01.180 this post by conservative party leader Pierre Polyev on X. Liberal and block
00:01:07.380 amendments to Bill C-9 will criminalize sections of the Bible, Quran, Torah and
00:01:14.300 other sacred texts. Conservatives will oppose this latest liberal assault on
00:01:19.800 freedom of expression and religion. Here is Mark Miller, Minister of Canadian
00:01:25.500 Identity and Culture, talking about sections of the Bible he considers hateful.
00:01:29.560 Mark Miller, Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture
00:01:30.560 If someone were literally invoking a passage from, in this case, the Bible, but there are
00:01:34.980 other religious texts that say the same thing, and somehow constantly say that this is
00:01:40.020 good faith, I mean, clearly there are situations in these texts where these statements are hateful,
00:01:44.600 they should not be used to invoke or be a defense, and there should perhaps be
00:01:51.140 discretion for prosecutors to press charges. Now in her op-ed in the National
00:01:55.940 Post, Christine Van Gein says changes to Bill C-9 aren't combating hate, they're
00:02:02.060 criminalizing faith. She writes, we do not want the government parsing religious
00:02:08.600 texts or religious speech, especially given that most of our political leaders are
00:02:13.300 absolutely ignorant of religion, including, in some cases, their own religion.
00:02:18.680 John Carpe, President of the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms, will be joining
00:02:23.140 us a few minutes from now to talk about that story.
00:02:26.620 Well, Industry Minister Melanie Jolie has formally served notice to Stellantis that it broke a
00:02:32.120 legally binding agreement. Let's listen.
00:02:34.760 I'm formally announcing that we're serving Stellantis with a notice of default under the contracts.
00:02:41.460 When it comes to protecting auto jobs, we will not let these industries down.
00:02:45.840 Well, the company announced last October its shifting production from Brampton to Illinois
00:02:51.780 and cutting 3,000 jobs. This after the government committed billions of dollars in tax money to
00:02:57.580 the company's manufacturing operation in Canada. Critics say the government has absolutely failed
00:03:03.020 to secure any commitment to protect those jobs, allowing Stellantis to move its operations south.
00:03:09.720 Speaking of jobs, Stats Canada is reporting that Canada created 54,000 jobs last month.
00:03:16.100 Now, the unemployment rate has fallen to 6.5%, all good news, but a closer look at the numbers
00:03:22.460 reveals most of the new jobs created were part-time. In fact, the country actually lost 9,400 full-time
00:03:29.600 positions. I'm now joined by John Carpe, President of the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms.
00:03:37.720 John, welcome to the show.
00:03:39.680 Glad to be with you, Mark, and with your viewers and listeners.
00:03:42.420 Let's talk a little bit about Bill C-9. Why is it so dangerous according to those who want
00:03:49.300 to protect, basically, freedom of religion?
00:03:55.100 Well, it's a step towards becoming like the United Kingdom, where currently over 30 citizens
00:04:01.180 are criminally charged every day for what they're posting on social media. Thousands
00:04:06.840 of people in jail for expressing their opinions about immigration, transgender ideology, controversial
00:04:13.800 topics. And so it's horrible. What used to be a free country is descending into all these
00:04:20.480 speech prosecutions. So what Bill C-9 does, the worst aspect of it is it removes a current
00:04:27.180 requirement that a hate speech prosecution has to be approved first by the attorney general
00:04:33.800 or the justice minister of the province. And it's kind of a check so that it's not just
00:04:41.060 the local police, local crown prosecutors who get to decide subjectively what they feel
00:04:46.420 is hateful. And that's another huge problem is hate is an emotion and it's next to impossible
00:04:52.840 to define. Bill C-9 tries to say that hate is worse than dislike and disdain. So dislike
00:05:00.780 and disdain are okay. That's not hate. But detestation and vilification are hate. It's
00:05:06.220 very, very challenging. So it leaves a lot of power with local police and local prosecutors
00:05:11.000 if Bill C-9 goes through and they can prosecute. We're going to see all kinds of new hate speech
00:05:16.520 prosecutions because there's no more review process in place by the justice minister.
00:05:21.600 Yeah. It's alarming to hear people like Mark Miller, minister for Canadian identity and
00:05:27.040 culture, talking about sections of the Bible he considers hateful. What did you make of
00:05:33.500 his statement on that?
00:05:36.120 So this is another, a new twist in Bill C-9 is that as of the past two or three days,
00:05:42.440 the liberals who are, of course, in a minority situation, they have made a deal with the Bloc
00:05:48.280 Quebecois to make Bill C-9 even worse by getting rid of one of the defenses that has been available
00:05:54.420 for decades, that if in good faith you are making an argument based on belief in a religious
00:06:01.420 text, there can be an exemption. Now, that's not a blank check to spew hatred at whoever you
00:06:08.800 want and then say, oh, well, you know, that's just my religious text. If you're advocating for
00:06:13.520 hatred, you can't camouflage that with religion. However, this particular defense, the belief in
00:06:21.920 a religious text defense would and does protect pastors and priests and Orthodox rabbis, Muslim
00:06:29.400 imams from hate speech prosecutions that are sure to come over what the Torah and the Quran and the
00:06:37.640 Bible have to say about homosexuality and about sexual intimacy between two people of the same
00:06:43.740 sex. This provision protects the religious leaders from getting prosecuted for hate speech
00:06:49.940 for having taught what their religions teach about human sexuality.
00:06:54.780 I mean, could the government use this as a pretext to censor parts of the Bible or even ban parts of
00:07:00.680 the Bible? Is that where they want to go?
00:07:02.600 The chilling effect is pretty obvious because even if you had a bunch of constitutional lawyers
00:07:09.060 looking at the legislation carefully and saying, well, you know, technically you still could in
00:07:15.040 your mosque, your church, your synagogue, your temple, you're still allowed to teach what your
00:07:20.440 faith teaches about human sexuality without that being hate speech. Even if that's technically true,
00:07:26.400 it is a chilling effect where people are going to do more of what so many people are already doing,
00:07:34.780 which is self-censoring, which is very harmful.
00:07:39.620 I mean, I can see where some of this might be used, say, to target certain imams who've suggested that
00:07:46.780 murdering people, heathens, or people who do not follow their particular religion might be justifiable.
00:07:54.460 But, I mean, considering the history of this government in terms of its views on Christianity,
00:08:00.700 I mean, all you have to do is look at how little they've commented about the church burnings that we've seen.
00:08:06.340 You know, a hundred last time I checked, they've said very little of it.
00:08:10.020 Even people like Justin Trudeau, Gerald Butts have suggested that certain activities are justifiable or
00:08:16.500 understandable, rather. I don't want to put words in his mouth, but he said it was understandable.
00:08:20.280 You know, you can't help but get the sense that Christianity will ultimately be the target here.
00:08:25.300 What do you think?
00:08:26.720 I don't see too many Muslim imams getting prosecuted under any legislation.
00:08:32.480 We already have a situation in Toronto where some Muslims were blocking, I think it was Young and Bloor,
00:08:40.180 but major intersection to take over a street with prayer meeting.
00:08:44.860 And to be clear, I strongly support the freedom of every person to pray in public.
00:08:50.040 If you're standing on a public sidewalk and you want to pray with your eyes open or closed
00:08:55.440 or whatever your faith might be, you know, that's fine.
00:08:58.280 But that's not an entitlement to obstruct traffic.
00:09:00.820 So Chris and Tamara, Chris Barber, Tamara Leach, and so many other peaceful protesters in Ottawa
00:09:07.220 were charged criminally because it is a crime to obstruct streets.
00:09:11.720 But here you see the law is not being applied equally when it comes to Muslims in Toronto
00:09:18.880 blocking the street for a prayer meeting and nobody gets charged.
00:09:23.280 And it is interesting, when Bill C-9 was introduced, the Justice Minister Sean Fraser said
00:09:28.680 that this is a response to rising anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, transphobia, homophobia, full stop.
00:09:36.240 Nothing said about the dozens of Christian churches that have been burned to the ground,
00:09:40.680 completely destroyed by arson, and then dozens more that have been desecrated and violated.
00:09:45.720 Nothing said about this obviously very serious problem.
00:09:51.520 No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
00:09:52.600 It's anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, transphobia, homophobia.
00:09:56.600 Nothing said about Christian churches at all.
00:09:59.400 And that's the mindset of the government.
00:10:01.000 That's also on the government's website.
00:10:02.380 These weren't just off-the-cuff remarks from a minister made once.
00:10:07.140 But the Government of Canada website on Bill C-9 references those four things
00:10:12.420 and says nothing about churches being burned to the ground.
00:10:16.180 Amazing.
00:10:16.720 We've seen attacks on Christians, certainly outside Canada.
00:10:22.140 All you have to do is look at certain African nations where a form of genocide
00:10:26.920 may very well be underway in certain countries, the Christian minority.
00:10:32.720 And then in Canada, you have a guy like Mark Miller, who the minister has come out and said,
00:10:37.520 well, I am a Christian.
00:10:38.420 I'm a devout Christian.
00:10:39.500 As if that's somehow supposed to give him a pass.
00:10:42.620 What did you think of the fact that he alluded to his own personal faith?
00:10:48.020 It's somehow a way to cleanse himself of any alligators that he is targeting Christians.
00:10:57.580 Oh, that's like this thing that's been around for decades.
00:11:02.400 But some of my best friends are black or some of my best friends are lesbian
00:11:05.920 or some of my best friends are whatever.
00:11:07.940 It's kind of a cheesy ploy.
00:11:10.540 I mean, look, I don't know what's inside the guy's mind or heart.
00:11:14.340 And he's certainly part of free speech.
00:11:16.560 If he wants to declare himself to be a devout Christian, he can go ahead and do that.
00:11:20.980 But back to this problem with Bill C-9, you've got a federal cabinet minister saying
00:11:28.720 that he thinks certain Bible passages are hate speech.
00:11:32.980 Interestingly, it doesn't say anything about the Koran, but okay, whatever.
00:11:36.220 So he says that, and then you've got Bill C-9 that says that a defense to a hate speech prosecution
00:11:43.920 can be if in good faith you are making an argument or expressing an opinion based on belief in a religious text.
00:11:52.900 So that's a defense to the hate prosecution.
00:11:55.660 The defense has been there for decades.
00:11:57.120 That defense, by the way, is one of the reasons why the Supreme Court of Canada narrowly upheld the prohibition on hate speech
00:12:06.360 as being a justified violation of free expression.
00:12:10.480 So in other words, Jim Keegstra, Alberta public school teacher, challenged the hate speech laws,
00:12:18.560 came to the Supreme Court of Canada.
00:12:19.740 He almost won, but in a 4-3 decision, the Supreme Court said, no, this restriction on hate speech
00:12:26.940 is a justified restriction on speech.
00:12:32.480 And part of that reasoning is that you've got these defenses.
00:12:36.180 Truth is another defense.
00:12:37.280 If you say that there's higher rates of pedophilia amongst a particular group,
00:12:43.620 you know, based on the group's religion or skin color or whatever, you know, grounds,
00:12:51.060 if you can defend yourself against a hate speech prosecution by saying what I said was true,
00:12:57.020 here's the evidence, right?
00:12:58.440 So truth is a defense.
00:13:00.300 So because of these defenses, the Supreme Court upheld it.
00:13:03.760 But now we see this Bill C-9 is going to get rid of one of these defenses.
00:13:09.520 Where does the government really want to go?
00:13:11.220 I mean, why are they even going there?
00:13:12.680 I mean, there's a criminal code provision in there that deals with hate.
00:13:19.680 Why are they even bothering with this?
00:13:21.900 Do you have any idea what's going on?
00:13:24.640 They naively and foolishly think that they will be in power forever
00:13:28.340 and that it will never be used against them.
00:13:30.600 So based on the current cultural climate and the current legal climate,
00:13:34.680 the hate speech laws, and the same thing with the Online Harms Act,
00:13:39.020 if they bring that back and give new powers to the Canadian Human Rights Commission
00:13:44.320 to prosecute Canadians over discriminatory speech,
00:13:49.240 look, the main targets are going to be conservatives, libertarians, Christians,
00:13:55.440 social conservatives, and people with unorthodox views
00:13:59.800 that are contrary to the mainstream narrative on climate,
00:14:04.900 on transgenderism, on Aboriginal rights.
00:14:07.620 That's who it's going to be used against.
00:14:11.300 But what these people don't realize is that if you empower the state
00:14:15.840 to go after your political enemies by silencing them,
00:14:19.180 that very same power the state can use against you in five years or 15 years
00:14:24.040 when there's a different government in power,
00:14:25.920 that same state power is going to be used to silence them.
00:14:28.720 So really, they're not seeing the writing on the wall,
00:14:32.320 but they are ultimately undermining their own freedom of expression as well.
00:14:36.940 If you attack somebody else's,
00:14:38.820 if you take away somebody else's freedom of expression,
00:14:41.700 you're ultimately, you're shooting yourself in the foot.
00:14:44.520 Well, maybe they think that by taking away freedom of expression
00:14:47.620 from conservatives and all these people that you mentioned,
00:14:49.820 Christians, gun owners, that they will be in power forever.
00:14:53.500 You know, maybe this is ultimately a power grab,
00:14:56.920 a way to silence permanently your enemies
00:14:59.520 so that you can hold on to the reins of power forever.
00:15:03.240 Maybe that's part of it.
00:15:04.220 I think it might be.
00:15:05.880 It might be, but thankfully, we've got independent media pushing back.
00:15:09.900 We've got podcasts and videocasts like yours.
00:15:13.820 We have, you know, Juno News, The Rebel, Epoch Times, Western Standard.
00:15:17.740 These are growing.
00:15:19.000 I had lunch a few weeks ago with a donor to the Justice Center
00:15:23.280 who told me that his 20-year-old grandson
00:15:25.680 never listens to or watches the CBC or Global or CTV.
00:15:30.980 He doesn't even know what they are.
00:15:32.560 He gets 100% of his information about what's going on in the world.
00:15:37.300 He gets it from Instagram and X and social media and friends.
00:15:44.820 And so these government-funded media are slowly dying a well-deserved death
00:15:48.600 and they're becoming less relevant every day.
00:15:50.920 Yeah, and that's why younger people in many cases
00:15:56.240 are gravitating towards more conservative views.
00:15:58.900 It's because they're not the ones getting brainwashed
00:16:01.940 and have been brainwashed for years.
00:16:03.420 It's the boomer generation that they're the ones voting for elbows up.
00:16:08.380 You know, they're the ones who supported Mark Carney,
00:16:10.620 you know, in a massive way.
00:16:11.880 And if you look at the basic people who, you know,
00:16:15.000 listen to CBC programming and the legacy media, that's where they are.
00:16:19.200 So it's the monolithic media pumping out that, you know,
00:16:23.040 left-wing propaganda on behalf of the liberals.
00:16:26.520 You know, that's really what has worked for the liberals up to this point.
00:16:30.880 But, you know, there's generational change, to your point.
00:16:34.420 And it was the cord-cutting generation that kind of began it all.
00:16:38.940 You know, when people started to say, I can't afford cable, I don't even need it.
00:16:42.400 I've got the internet.
00:16:43.660 That's when things changed.
00:16:45.220 And that's why you see the government pushing for internet censorship.
00:16:49.800 How do people support their organization?
00:16:52.940 Well, the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms
00:16:55.160 is a national organization, registered charity.
00:16:58.760 We've got a team of 10 lawyers across Canada
00:17:00.900 taking on dozens of cases in defense of our freedoms
00:17:04.020 of expression, association, conscience, religion, bodily autonomy, travel, and so on.
00:17:09.120 The website is www.jccf.ca.
00:17:13.120 So it's Justice Center Constitutional Freedoms, jccf.ca.
00:17:16.920 People are welcome to donate.
00:17:18.600 We also have a free email newsletter,
00:17:21.060 but we only send out one or two per month.
00:17:24.300 So if you sign up for our email newsletter,
00:17:26.640 you're not going to be drowning in daily emails.
00:17:33.420 John Carpe, thank you so much for coming on the show.
00:17:35.600 We really do appreciate it.
00:17:37.320 Thank you, Mark.
00:17:38.120 Have a great rest of the day.
00:17:40.140 You too.
00:17:40.640 John is president of the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms.
00:17:43.800 Thank you so much for tuning in, my friends.
00:17:45.560 Appreciate it.
00:17:46.860 We'll do it again real soon.
00:17:48.340 Bye-bye for now.
00:17:56.640 Bye-bye.