EZRA LEVANT ｜ Feature interview with Prof. Bruce Pardy, Queen's University Faculty of Law
Summary
Ezra Levant sits down with law professor Bruce Pardee to talk about the state of civil liberties in Canada and around the world, and why they're at their worst point in recent memory. Ezra Levant is the host of the Ezra Levant Show on the Rebel Network.
Transcript
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Hello, my Rebels. Today, a feature interview with a civil liberties-oriented law professor
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in Canada. I know you think I've just described a unicorn. Do they even exist? Is it one in a
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million? It's like those albino rhinoceroses that are just so rare. Well, I'm talking about
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Bruce Pardee, Queen's University lawyer. He's going to talk to us for about half an hour about
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the state of play, civil liberties in the world. That's ahead. Before I get to that, let me invite
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you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus. I think I told you, we're giving away for free.
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Go to rebelnewsplus.com, rebelnewsplus.com, and enter the promo code ELECTION, and you can get a free
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subscription. Now, when the free subscription's over, I think it's for a month, we'll invite you
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to pay eight bucks a month, and we hope that you'll like it enough that you'll be happy to do so.
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So that's just at rebelnewsplus.com, code word, ELECTION. All right, here's today's podcast.
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Tonight, a feature interview with law professor Bruce Pardee. It's September 2nd, and this is
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The Ezra Levant Show. Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
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There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer. The only thing I have to say to the
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government about why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
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I believe we're in the worst civil liberties crisis in Canadian history. I've made my case to
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you on that before. This is worse than the October crisis, the FLQ crisis in Quebec. Of course,
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that province was put under martial law, but it was just for a matter of weeks, and it was just
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one place, and it was just because there were bombs going off in mailboxes and people being kidnapped
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and murdered by an actual terrorist group. That was bad, but it was limited in time and scope.
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Of course, the Japanese internment was bad, too, but it was limited, again, to one group of people.
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You can disagree with it. I do disagree with judging people based on race, but there was a
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rationale that was particularly linked to the war, and it was just that group, and just for that period
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of time. What I'm talking about in Canada now is a lockdown, a house arrest, a discrimination against
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people of all backgrounds for any reason or no reason using public health as the excuse. So it covers
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everyone in Quebec. It covers everyone who is Japanese-Canadian and everyone else, too.
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There's no end in sight, and it takes more and more of our powers away. Even in Japanese internment,
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as unfair and illegal as it was, people could still leave their houses. It was just basically an ethnic
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ghetto. They were watched in a kind of prison, but it's not as much of a prison as being in place during
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the lockdowns that we've had. I fear that things are going to get much worse. We talk about grievances
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and misconduct of the past of Aboriginal residential schools. I agree there are things wrong with people
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being ripped away from their parents. I absolutely agree that family units are important, and I put it
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to you that we can see cases already of kids being removed from parents in custody disputes because
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one parent is not for the vaccine and the other is. People are losing their jobs. They're losing their
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place to live. I put it to you that we are in the worst civil liberties crisis in Canadian history.
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The former U.S. Attorney General said this COVID lockdown crisis was the worst civil liberties event in
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American history since slavery. And I would agree that that is the only thing in the North American
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continent that trumps what we're going through now. Can you deny it? Well, I think that most lawyers,
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civil libertarians, law professors, and judges have been absent in the last 18 months, and it's terrible.
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But today we have a feature interview with one law professor willing to talk about it and who believes
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that civil liberties are important. His name is Bruce Pardy. He's a professor at Queen's University,
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and I had the pleasure of sitting down with him for half an hour. Here's that feature interview today.
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Folks, please, the facts are clear. The vaccine is the best tool we have to keep people safe.
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Keep our hospitals from being overwhelmed and avoid further lockdowns. And that's why we're adopting an
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enhanced vaccine certificate. We'll hear from Minister Elliott and Dr. Moore shortly. But after
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in-depth discussions with our medical experts, we've landed on a vaccine certificate policy that is
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based on evidence and best advice. It's a policy with the following key principles. Vaccinations will be
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mandatory for certain indoor settings where the risk of transmission is highest because of masks
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aren't always worn, including restaurants, bars, and casinos, among others. Enforcement will be led by
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by law officers, will be reasonable, and will rely on individuals and businesses to do the right thing.
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That was yesterday. Ontario Premier Doug Ford announcing what he swore on a stack of Bibles he
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will never do. He's bringing in mandatory vaccines and the concomitant vaccine passports,
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essentially a biomedical security device that you must carry with you on your phone. For the first month,
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you have to carry a picture of a PDF on your phone. But after that, it'll be an app, spyware, really.
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I see news out of Australia that their proposed app will require you, within 15 minutes of notification by police,
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to take a photo of yourself. And you use facial recognition. That's a tracking app being used in
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Australia in the name of the quarantine. They will require you, on 15 minutes notice, to photograph
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yourself. It is tagged to your location. It is a quarantine enforcement mechanism. And do you think
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that Ontario's COVID app will stop at just measuring COVID? Or will it have new functionalities,
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like Australia's done? Well, that's the context of our meeting with one of Canada's very few
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law professors who thinks about civil liberties in an active way, not a historical way. I'm talking
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about Professor Bruce Party of Queen's University Law School. Pleasure to have you here in the studio.
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Thank you for being here. I remember in the 20th century, when I was a kid,
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thinking that civil liberties were an interesting thing, an idealistic thing. They're also a thing of
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the left. Berkeley and freedom of speech. In this country, Alan Borovoi, a civil libertarian. These
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are folks who would take atrocious cases to prove a point that freedom is for everyone. And that's how
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they showed their liberalism. They would take cases that they disagreed with, like the ACLU sending
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Jewish and black lawyers to defend Klansmen to make the point. Here we are in an actual real civil
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liberties crisis. And where are all the civil liberties lawyers? Good question. They are hard
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cases, I'm afraid. The problems with these passports seem obvious, but the legal remedies are not so
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much. And as you say, the left has a history of defending civil rights, but you can see how they're
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scurrying into the dark corners. Now, I mean, Andrea Horvath is an example. Recently, she made the
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statement, I think, on social media that we had to proceed carefully and look out for civil liberties
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and human rights and was quickly persuaded to withdraw that remark and correct herself and say
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that this is not a time for human rights. You know, there's no pandemic exemption or suspension in our
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charter of rights. I checked. It doesn't say this doesn't apply in an emergency. In fact, the opposite.
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All of Canada's emergency legislation has to be charter compliant and has some tools in there to
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make sure it's so. I even saw liberal cabinet ministers saying, oh, the charter, poo-pooing the
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charter itself, which used to be the lifeblood of the Liberal Party. Yes. Well, the thing about
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constitutional documents like the charter is that you really need them the most when these kinds of
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crises arrive. And so if the presumption is we can set them aside when we have a problem, then there
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doesn't seem to be very much reason for having them. Section one is the famous Achilles heel of the
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charter. This is the reasonable limits provision. And in a crisis like this, an emergency, it looks so far
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like courts are inclined to say, well, yes, maybe your charter rights have been infringed, but given the
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circumstances, that's okay. One judge, for example, recently compared this COVID period to a time of
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war and said, well, and during times of war, governments can expect citizens to give up some
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of their freedoms to get on the team. And if that's going to be the rule for the charter, then the
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charter diminishes in importance. You know, you're exactly right. Free speech, for example,
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you don't need it when you're talking about, you know, gardening or sports. You need it on the tough
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cases. Otherwise, it doesn't really count for anything. And I think civil liberties in a time
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of war, that's pretty much when you do need it. Just before we came in here, you and I were talking
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briefly about the Japanese internment during the Second World War. And we know that that was wrong
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because I was judging people based on race. They weren't a proven threat of anything. It was just
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because they happened to be genetically Japanese descendants. But what you just described,
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and I don't know which judge you're quoting, maybe you would tell us, if that judge were around
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in 1941, that judge would be saying, hey, sorry, Japanese folks, we know this is really wrong.
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But sorry, you know, into the internment camps you go. I mean, if you're saying an emergency permits
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anything, then first of all, everything will be an emergency. Correct. Including a disease that has
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a 99% plus recovery rate. That's absolutely true. Yes, correct. Yes. So who was the judge and what
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were they saying? I believe it was from the federal court. I forget the name of the judge, but it was
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a COVID case. Was it on the quarantine case? It was a quarantine case. I think that we crowdfunded
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some litigation there. We were very disappointed. Yes. That was the case where this government policy
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said you have to stay for three days at an airport hotel. Right. Correct. Yes. Instead of going
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straight home, one of our reporters went through that. He counted, he had 14 personal interactions
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in his stay there, as opposed to just going straight home. And the federal court says, sorry,
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that's legally kosher. Right. Well, you see, this is part of what this is all about, right? This is
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symbolic. It's not real. If you look at a lot of the data and the evidence, now I, of course,
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I'm not a doctor. I'm not a scientist, but I can read. And I've read a lot of the stuff. And
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this seems to me to be more symbolic of something than real. If I can make this comparison,
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it seems a little bit like Canada's climate change solutions, which actually will make
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no difference to anything. But they're still very important because it's important to be doing the
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right thing in the public good. That is a very perceptive comment. And we see that Justin Trudeau
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is now saying, hey, this has been such a great 18 months. Let's apply it to global warming here.
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Let's take a look at him saying that just the other day. He's loved the last 18 months. He wants
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a climate emergency. Take a look. What we learned from this climate, this COVID crisis, we will be
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applying to the climate crisis, to the housing crisis, to reconciliation, to making sure that
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everyone has good jobs and careers that carry them through and create opportunities for their kids.
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Yeah, I think politicians love a crisis. They love a war. It makes them very important. It makes
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journalists very important. It excuses a lot of things. And it distracts from solving more humdrum
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Yes, but one of the differences between this and, well, there are lots of differences, but one
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difference between this and war is that this seems to me to be far more insidious. So you talked about
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the Japanese internment. I mean, that was a terrible thing, but it was an obvious thing. They weren't
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doing that for the good of those individuals. They didn't pretend to do that. They said, well, sorry,
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we have to go here, but it's for the greater good. In this case, these vax mandates are being
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presented as, well, it's for your own good. That's a very perceptive point. I mean, no one was
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pretending that this was good for the Japanese. We were saying that is awful, but we're in a war.
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We have to do it. I think just the same way so much of airport security is security theater.
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Right. I don't know if they've ever caught a terrorist in 20 years in any airport in North
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America. I think a lot of this is public health theater. And we saw that with the mask and then
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the double masks. And we even saw people telling the New York Times, I want to wear a mask even
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though I'm vaxxed because I don't want people to think I'm a Republican. Like it's a status thing.
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It's an in crowd, out crowd, ruling class versus the ruled. It is so political.
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And the vaccine itself has become political. Yes. And I mean, I remember when Donald Trump
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talked about other remedies like hydroxychloroquine and instantly everyone who was against Trump
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said, well, then we're not for that remedy. It really doesn't have anything to do with
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a pandemic anymore at all, even if it ever did. No, no. It's a turning of the culture in a way,
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or one of the symptoms of the turning of a culture. It's like a, it's like, it's like a purge of
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independent thinkers or a purge of people who want to be able to make their own calls on their own
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medications. You know, I look at what we rely on to keep us a liberal society, a happy place that we
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like to live. And there's a lot of, I compare it to a net with lots of little nodes and you can have
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one or two knots on a net that are broken and the net still holds. But if they are all broken,
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the net breaks. And I'm talking about the government and the opposition whose job is to oppose.
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I'm talking about law professors and judges and lawyers. I'm talking about colleges of physicians
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and surgeons with maybe a second opinion. I'm talking about popular culture. There's so many
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institutions and every single one of them, I believe has failed. And so all of a sudden we
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went from a happy society to what I regard as next to a tyranny. We're not there yet, but my God,
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we're moving there fast. I think it's because every single one of these institutions failed at the same
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time. Yeah. I think that's a, I think that's an interesting comment. To me, there's very interesting
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connection between this crisis and freedom of speech, which we're all, which is also in crisis.
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Yes. Because I mean, the two things seem to be different subjects. One is, is, is public health
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and, and personal medical decisions. And the other one is speech. But, but there's the very close
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connection between them because a lot of the information about the vaccines and about the virus
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and about the lockdowns has been censored. So for example, the Ontario College of Physicians and
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Surgeons, and when I say college, I don't mean school. I mean the regulator, the regulator that
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licenses physicians a little while ago came out and basically said to the doctors, you will not talk
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about this unless you're talking in an approved way or we, or your license will be in danger. Now
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that's all about the, the, the virus, but it's also about speech. I mean, the whole idea of a second
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opinion that, you know, I want to get a doctor, a second opinion doctor. Can I get another opinion?
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Sometimes doctors recommend you get another opinion because so much of medicine is an art,
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not just a science. And it used to be that when you got a second opinion, that second opinion was
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not perceived as a threat to the legitimacy of the first opinion. You know, Richard Feynman, the,
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the great physicist and scholar said, science is the belief that the experts can be wrong.
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Right, right, right. And the minute you think, no, that the expert is a high priest like Anthony
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Fauci, then you're not doing science anymore. You're doing religion or superstition. That's
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right. That's right. It's science in a hierarchy and science doesn't really have hierarchies. That's
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the way it's supposed to be. We've published probably 20,000 videos on YouTube since we started
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our company. And I think we got one strike. That's what YouTube calls it when you're outside of the
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policy and actually had it reversed. But suddenly YouTube has new rules. If we say that a certain
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medicine called ivermectin, which by the way, won the Nobel prize for medicine, has been used millions
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of times, saved millions of lives. If we say that that is a cure for this virus, and I don't know if
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it is, how would I know? Right. But if we have that opinion, we will get a strike as if we showed
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a terrorist act or a snuff movie or obscene pornography. There's a list of things you're
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not allowed to say about this virus that are incredibly particular about the providence of
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the virus. And if you contradict health authorities, which are political authorities, YouTube has a list
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of very specific things that if you say them, it'll be tantamount to you having an ISIS channel
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or something. I've never seen anything like it in my life. And part of the trouble that we're in
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right now is that all of these things are happening and it's not entirely clear that they are actually
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violations of any of our constitutional rights. Well, and that's what's scary to me because we
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talked about the hotel quarantine lawsuit. We have funded a few lawsuits here. We intend to fund
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several more about the vaccine passports. And yet other than a tiny detail in Quebec's curfew law
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that I think applied to homeless people, I am unaware of any judge anywhere in Canada who has
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anywhere slowed down, let alone stopped a lockdown provision. And I know, and there's plenty of cases
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have gone to court. I wouldn't say a hundred, but whether it's a human rights commission, whether it's
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federal court, whether it's provincial court, I have not seen any ruling yet.
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And the thing about the vaccine mandates, the vaccine passports, is that they're less obviously
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violations of charter rights than the lockdowns were. In the lockdowns, you can say, well, you're
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keeping me in my house. That surely is a restriction of my liberty under Section 7. But with the vaccine
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passports, here you have a situation where the government is doing indirectly what it probably could
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not do directly. So for example, if the government of the province or the federal government came
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down and said, we're going to have an actual vaccine mandate, everybody will get a vaccine
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or we will find you or throw you in prison. If you had that, then that would be pretty obviously
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a violation of Section 7, I think. And a judge-
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Life, liberty, and the security of the person, that's what that is?
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That's right. It would be an enforced medical treatment without consent.
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Right. Okay. But that is not what's happening. The charade that's going on is that these vaccine
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passports are actually preserving your ability to choose. You don't have to get a vaccine. You do not
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have to get a vaccine under these vaccine passports. The story is the choice is yours, but of course,
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there are consequences to your choice. And so don't get one if you don't want to. But if you don't,
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then you can't fly or you can't go on a train or you can't see a ball game. Maybe you can't have a
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job, but it's still your choice. Yeah. And that's no choice at all. You would be shocked at my email
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inbox, the pain and fear of people who cannot afford to lose a job. So many people are one
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paycheck away from not making rent. Yes. Yes. And you don't feel like you're at risk from the virus.
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Because you maybe live a healthy life. Maybe you know a year and a half into it that it's really
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old people, fat people, people with underlying comorbidities, as they say. So I saw a survey
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from Abacus Polling that said the average vaccine objector is a 42-year-old Ontario mom who votes
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liberal. Yeah. I saw that. Yeah. So a 42-year-old mom, by the way, I should tell you that under the
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vaccine adverse event registry, that is the most dangerous group in terms of adverse events
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from the vaccine. Just coincidentally, maybe it's not a coincidence that moms are the most worried.
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to tell that mom, who's probably protective of her kids and protective of health and probably thinks
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more about health than the husband. I mean, moms are often in charge of health for the family,
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right? To tell that mom, you'll lose your job. Your husband will lose his job. Your kids will be
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kicked out of school. They won't be able to go to school. They'll have to do Zoom classes from home,
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which is not real school. Right. Is that a free choice? That's like, you know, in the Godfather
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movie, when Luca Brasi says, you know, I made him an offer. He couldn't refuse. He had a gun to his
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head. Your signature or your brain's on the paper. Well, it's an interesting sort of legal problem and
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conceptual problem, right? Because there are some circumstances in which when employers require
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employees to do things, it seems to be completely legitimate and we don't call it coercion. So for
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example, if you're working for someone and they say, go mop the floor and you don't want to mop
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the floor and you say, well, I'm being coerced. Well, in a way you are because you either have to
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mop the floor or lose your job. But on the other hand, you can quit if you want to and go somewhere
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else. But it's what you signed up for. I'm going to be a floor mopper. Sure. Now that's the difference.
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Right. And because it's a variation or a change to your employment conditions, that's the theory
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upon which a lawsuit might rest. So if you had an individual employment contract and the employer
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sort of came in suddenly and said, right, from now on, this is the situation. Yeah. Constructive
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dismissal. It's possible. They sprang it on you. They changed the deal. On the other hand,
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some employment contracts allow for changing policies from the employer. So it all depends.
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And it depends even more with respect to those workplaces that are unionized because they have
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collective agreements. And then the question is, does this new policy of the employer conflict
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with the collective agreement and does the union care? You know, it's so interesting. Again,
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we were just chatting about this before we sat down. I see some robust unions, particularly those
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with a working class sensibility. I think the American postal workers, for example,
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they're saying, no way are we doing this. The Toronto Police Association, the cops union,
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they're saying, no way. And that's interesting because they're going to be the enforcers in some
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ways. Yeah. But then they don't want the facts for them. They're healthy young guys. Right.
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You're a 30-year-old cop that probably works out to stay fit for your job. You have an extremely low
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rate of serious harm or death from this virus. And they know it. They're not taking the jab.
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But I see other unions, frankly, political unions, pink-collar, white-collar unions that are
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dependent on government friendship. Like Unifor came out saying, we love these vaccines.
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What's it like on campus? Are you able to speak about-
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My perception is that many of the university faculty unions are generally supportive of these
00:24:12.580
Well, you know what? If I'm not mistaken, not a single professor in Canada has lost a day's pay
00:24:18.160
in the last 18 years. In fact, perhaps they've kept the pay but not had the work.
00:24:23.140
Well, we have been teaching online, which is a pain in the ass and not good for anybody.
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But it is true. I don't think that anybody's actually lost any job or pay over it.
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You know, I really think that's part of it. There is an industry that has grown up. I mean,
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we know that Jeffrey Bezos doubled his net worth. Amazon, Netflix, Disney Plus, all the, you know,
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the DoorDashs, all the industries that have crept up to take advantage of the lockdown.
00:24:50.200
And I suppose good for them. I regret that Walmart was able to stay open, but mom and pop shops
00:24:59.280
Well, this is one of a good example of not having the same rules for everybody, whether
00:25:04.340
it's in a crisis or not. Yes, we used to have this general proposition that was generally
00:25:10.600
accepted by everybody, sort of so, so deeply held that people didn't even think about it,
00:25:15.340
that the same rules and standards should apply to everybody. And this lockdown situation has been
00:25:21.400
one of those times when that obviously hasn't applied. And the bigger you were, the better off
00:25:27.580
you were, because the mom and pop stores need people coming in the door. They generally don't
00:25:31.720
have a web presence or not a big one, and they don't do their business that way primarily.
00:25:36.520
And so if you shut them down through a lockdown, you're just going to kill them off.
00:25:40.500
Yeah. You know, it's heartbreaking, but that's, in the very first few weeks, two weeks to flatten
00:25:47.440
the curve. Hey, everybody, just hold tight for two weeks till we're through the worst of it.
00:25:51.060
I think everyone said, okay, no one knows anything about this virus. Let's take a leap of faith
00:25:55.500
together. There actually was a feeling of solidarity in there.
00:25:58.220
Well, not for everybody. Because some of us said at the time, watch out, this is not going to go well.
00:26:04.280
You're not going to stop this. And once you get it rolling, the government won't want to roll it
00:26:08.420
back. And look at what has happened. And the same thing, I think, is going to happen with these
00:26:14.000
VAX passports. Once you start down that road, you have an infrastructure in place.
00:26:18.020
And then they can start to measure other kinds of things to make sure that you're
00:26:21.440
on the right side of things before you're allowed to do stuff.
00:26:24.900
Yeah. Well, I mean, let me just play for you a clip. I think this is from an American network
00:26:29.200
talking about the advent of China's app-based social credit system. Take a look at this for a reminder.
00:26:38.420
So picture your life in a place where everything you do, what you buy, how you behave,
00:26:48.860
is tracked. The government gives you a score. And the score is a measure of how trustworthy
00:26:54.940
you are as a citizen and determines what you're allowed to do, like ever. Boarding a train,
00:27:01.600
getting a mortgage, all goes back to this score. It's called social credit. It sounds like that
00:27:08.920
show Black Mirror, but it's actually happening in China. So how does that change you? Does it change
00:27:16.080
you? What does your life look like when your every move is watched?
00:27:24.760
The system's eyes are in big data, artificial intelligence, and roughly 200 million surveillance cameras.
00:27:32.540
And that's the thing I mentioned in Australia. So understand what Australia is doing.
00:27:36.300
Like, you get a ping on your phone. You have 15 minutes to hold it up to your face,
00:27:41.080
take a picture, and the GPS and your face will prove to police where you are. And if you don't
00:27:47.900
answer within 15 minutes and let your phone spy on you, then the police will come. And imagine if
00:27:56.420
that's connected to your credit card. So now, oh, he's at this restaurant. Or your bus pass. Oh,
00:28:01.840
he's on this route. And if it's an everything system, a panopticon that, you know, you're no
00:28:11.040
longer being spied on by an outside force. You're being spied on by your own phone. And by the way,
00:28:15.040
if you don't have your phone with you, you're going to get in trouble because it checks.
00:28:18.820
Well, you see, wouldn't that be interesting for a government to require you to own a phone?
00:28:27.020
But again, they say, oh, you don't have to own a phone. It's your choice.
00:28:30.160
You can not have a phone, but just then never leave the house.
00:28:33.340
Yeah. I feel this is the worst of all worlds. You know, I've read the warnings that Pfizer and
00:28:39.640
the other companies put out. They're very detailed for legal reasons and for moral reasons and medical
00:28:45.760
reasons. They list all the side effects. One of the things they repeatedly say is you need informed
00:28:52.080
consent to take this because it's still an experimental drug.
00:28:55.240
Right. The FDA has ordered Pfizer and the others to keep testing it for years to check
00:29:01.000
out myocarditis. That's inflammation in the heart and other things like that. So Pfizer,
00:29:07.200
I mean, if you're in the pharma business, you're worried about product liability,
00:29:10.580
has ruined it. Of course, but not in the case of the vaccine,
00:29:12.760
right? Because they're immune. Yeah, they're immune.
00:29:17.880
But they talk about informed consent. I do not believe that pressuring someone to take a jab
00:29:26.900
is informed consent. I think it's informed consent, but it's not free consent. It's not free.
00:29:32.840
Well, here's the other problem, though. So we're liable to say, well, if your employer,
00:29:38.680
for example, requires you to take a vaccine, then you're taking the vaccine without informed consent.
00:29:43.120
But the problem is that the transaction about the actual vaccine is not between you and the
00:29:48.420
employer. So when you go to get the vaccine from a doctor or a nurse or a pharmacy, that's the
00:29:53.760
transaction. And that's the moment where you're supposed to be given information so you can make
00:29:58.100
informed consent. And that's where the liability will lie on that ground if you don't. But so it's
00:30:05.600
again, it's indirectly, not directly. Someone might say it's unethical for a medical practitioner
00:30:11.760
to do a medical procedure, including an injection on someone who is under duress. Some would say
00:30:19.200
if someone is I've got like I remember this. This is a judge in the States who said to a man
00:30:25.400
five years, like a convict, five years or one year in the jab. Take a look at this.
00:30:32.480
Connacle's court Richard Fry tells me he started using the COVID-19 vaccine as a term of probation
00:30:39.100
in his courtroom last week, but not for everyone. He ordered it three times out of 20 different
00:30:46.040
sentencing hearings. I did talk to one of those three offenders today, and he tells me he feels
00:30:51.520
very strongly about this and feels that this order violates his civil rights.
00:30:56.860
one week to the day. The case was about a gun charge and some drugs. Franklin County criminal
00:31:05.300
offender Sylvan Latham tells me he stood before Common Police Court Judge Richard Fry. I know
00:31:11.700
Judge Fry's reputation. I know he's known for giving people max time, jail time, all that. I don't
00:31:16.940
want to go to jail. I don't want to have five years probation. Latham thought his attorney struck a deal
00:31:22.440
with prosecutors to three years probation. But during his sentencing hearing. I was stressed out right
00:31:28.420
then. I didn't know what to do. I was kind of, I was very, very much so put it on the spot. Latham
00:31:33.120
said the judge told him he'd give him the five-year max unless he got a COVID-19 vaccine. With the shot,
00:31:41.200
Latham said his probation would be cut down considerably to just one year. I'm shaking at this point. Like,
00:31:47.620
I don't really like where this is going. Oh, there's a case of, of someone who put aside the
00:31:53.220
fact that he's a criminal. We know that. Yeah. Now the question is, do you do one year? Do you do
00:31:56.800
five years? And with you, but that's, that's actual course, right? So because the judge has got a
00:32:02.280
choice. Yeah. Well, and if you're a doctor. But both those choices, let's just consider this for a moment.
00:32:08.300
Both of those choices are choices backed with the violence of the state. Yeah. You know, we'll,
00:32:14.680
we'll, we'll throw you in jail with police behind you, or you'll take the jab, but, but the, this
00:32:20.480
court order will be enforced with the power of the state. Whereas, and this is a distinction that
00:32:25.380
they make. Whereas with your job, you don't have to have the job. You don't want the job. Then you
00:32:31.740
can go find a job somewhere else. And to give them credit on that basis, we say that about other
00:32:37.360
things, right? So here's an analogy. And it's not, it's not the same thing. I grant you, it's not the
00:32:43.000
same thing, but it's the same abstract idea. So let's say your employer says, we're bringing in
00:32:46.980
a policy where everybody has to have a short haircut. Okay. And you say to yourself, well,
00:32:51.900
I don't want a short haircut. And you think I'm being coerced. Well, in a sense you are,
00:32:56.420
but you've got a choice. You can either get a haircut or find a new job. And when you go to the
00:33:02.240
barber to get a haircut that you don't want, the barber is not battering you because you've gone to
00:33:08.020
the barber for a haircut. Yeah. Right. So I would say that if I, that if there was a medical
00:33:12.780
practitioner who has some oaths, do no harm, you know, it's, it's medically unethical to do a
00:33:20.040
procedure on someone for no good reason or even a bad reason. Sure. And so if, if that criminal came
00:33:28.620
and said, the judge says, if I do this, I get out four years earlier. Right. I think that that
00:33:34.780
medical practitioner might be justified in saying it's unethical for me to give you the jab. Cause
00:33:39.660
I know that, uh, cause you don't need it. You're doing it for these other reasons. And,
00:33:44.880
and I will not do the procedure. But now, but now we're, we're mixing up consent and motivation.
00:33:51.320
All right. Right. So if a doctor, so I grant you for sure that the doctor has a responsibility to say,
00:33:56.720
look, here, here are the risks and here are the benefits of this. And I'm not going to do this to
00:34:01.260
you until you tell me that you understand and that you agree. And that you want me to do this.
00:34:06.480
If, if you do not want me to do this, I will not do it. But if you tell me that you do,
00:34:11.580
in spite of the situation that you're in, in spite of your motivations, then okay.
00:34:15.900
I see. Yeah. Well, I, I feel like, um, this is a ratchet. Once you're in, you're never going back.
00:34:24.240
Sure. Yeah. Doug Ford claimed it's temporary. He had no end date.
00:34:28.600
Well, we're still waiting for the end of the war. So the income taxes will end, right? Yes.
00:34:35.620
We're going to challenge some of the worst vaccine passports in BC, for example,
00:34:41.680
Wow. So I heard that. I don't know. I don't understand how they're going to arrange that,
00:34:46.200
but okay. Let's, well, I mean, and why not? And even if that's just to scare people and they move
00:34:51.200
it back an inch, I mission accomplished. They probably, by saying, by taking such an extreme
00:34:57.240
line and by having no media call them out, no opposition party call them out, no law professors
00:35:01.920
call them out, no court call them out. Right. No one called them out. We're, you know, um,
00:35:07.520
and you try and say something on YouTube, okay, get ready for a strike. Right.
00:35:11.540
Okay. I, I, we're, we're going to challenge the law in the places where the vaccine passport comes
00:35:19.060
and we're looking for strategic cases. In fact, frankly, if you find cases that you think have
00:35:24.020
a very persuasive or, or, uh, a, um, plaintiff who's very sympathetic, who has done everything
00:35:30.280
right and who has been punished brutally by an institution, like in BC, when they say no
00:35:36.860
We want to file these cases. And, and like you say, there hasn't been a single win yet.
00:35:42.380
What do Canadians do if the courts say, sorry, guys, it's just how it is. Section one.
00:35:47.700
Well, you know, the saying that, that law is downstream from politics and politics is downstream
00:35:53.500
from culture. And people sometimes think that, you know, in, in this kind of a crazy time,
00:35:59.940
the law will save us because the law is written down in black and white. We have a constitution,
00:36:04.820
we have a charter, we have statutes, we have the human rights code. And, and so don't worry about
00:36:09.280
it, but I'm sorry. That's not the way it works because when you start to lose the culture,
00:36:15.980
the law goes with it and you cannot depend upon it. And so, and this is, this is, we are in a
00:36:24.680
You know, I keep thinking of that remake of true grit where lucky Ned says, I don't need a good
00:36:31.120
I think that's where we are, but let me ask you, are there good lawyers? Are there other
00:36:35.660
Are there, well, okay, let me ask you this. Where are the professors? I know that when Stephen
00:36:39.400
Harper was the prime minister every week, there'd be another mass letter signed by 20 law professors
00:36:44.960
telling him he was a bad man. You know, I mean, Omar Khadr probably had a hundred lawyers writing
00:36:50.100
in his defense. You're the first law prof I've, I've talked to who's speaking with some concern
00:36:56.300
about civil liberties. Are there other people like you? And if so, where are they? Maybe I've just
00:37:00.220
missed them. There are, there are, they are a much smaller proportion to be sure, for sure.
00:37:10.980
Some are. Yes, they work in an environment in which they are the distinct outliers. And
00:37:17.760
academics are trained to get along. Yeah. Work in an institution, don't rock the boat. It's
00:37:27.440
just, it's terrifying. So it's, it's, and, and, and to your other question, there are,
00:37:31.800
there are lots of good lawyers who would be great at this. And we still do have lots of good judges,
00:37:37.760
good judges, but we haven't had them on these cases for the most part so far. And I can't explain
00:37:47.000
that quite. Well, you've been very generous with your time today. It's been great to meet you.
00:37:53.260
I've, I've seen your columns in the newspapers and, uh, and I feel like you're a force for civil
00:37:57.880
liberties. 20 years ago, that would have been normal. Now it's unusual and we're grateful for it.
00:38:04.800
So we have a couple of projects here at Rebel News. We, we just set up something we call it
00:38:09.820
vaccine consultations.com where we give anyone, we pay for a half hour legal consultation with,
00:38:17.000
with lawyers about their vaccine passport situation. So, um, I mean, we're getting so
00:38:22.940
many emails and we don't want to be a lawyer. So we've come up with a bulk contract. We'll start
00:38:27.880
off with a hundred and if we can keep crowdfunding it, we'll just try to give people some info.
00:38:32.720
Great. But the, oh, sure. Go ahead. No, no. I, I've, I was just running the last thing I said
00:38:38.000
through my head. I have to go back to it just for a moment because I don't want to, to cast
00:38:42.000
dispersions that aren't deserved. I suggested that the quality of the judges that we had on these
00:38:47.320
cases was, was poor. And that's not true. I do not want to fault the individual judges. I don't even
00:38:51.840
know who they all are, but the outcomes have not been what I would have liked. So let me go back to
00:38:56.860
my statement. There are lots of good judges in Canada. Lots of them. Um, we haven't done well
00:39:02.540
so far with the COVID cases. That is not, I'm not faulting what the judges have done. Um, I am
00:39:10.300
disappointed in what they've done for the most part in these cases. But, uh, listen, the, we still do
00:39:16.920
have a good court system, a good legal system in Canada. It has underperformed in my opinion during
00:39:26.380
this period. It's sort of gone and hidden in the dark corners, as I've said before, but it's, it's,
00:39:31.780
let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater. It is still worth doing exactly the kind of thing
00:39:36.260
that you're talking about. And if we can, there are going to be important cases to bring. They're
00:39:41.160
going to be difficult cases because as I said, it's not clear for all kinds of reasons that
00:39:46.840
these vaccine passports actually do violate constitutional rights. They're doing it in a
00:39:52.260
way that's very smart. Um, often the charter will not apply because charter applies only to the
00:40:00.000
government. Right. And so when you have the, the, uh, government facilitating the means by which to
00:40:08.080
check whether you're vaccinated and a private business, a restaurant or the, or the case maybe
00:40:12.540
decides to use that system, then that's not a charter problem. Right. Right. It's a private
00:40:17.900
problem and the charter does not apply. So we, we have, we have difficulty all over. We have
00:40:22.760
difficulty with the design. We have difficulty in getting the results that we want. We have
00:40:27.080
difficulty in persuading the judges that we've had so far that, that the individual rights that are
00:40:33.680
at stake here are actually more important than the private good because that is not the
00:40:37.740
trends that we're on. Yeah. Well, you, you make me think of perhaps one of the front lines is to
00:40:43.840
represent a business that does not want to, uh, implement the vaccine passport. They don't want to
00:40:51.100
be the privacy invader, the, the checker upper. That's a better case. It's still a difficult case.
00:40:59.320
Yeah. But at least that way you would have the mandate from the government to complain about.
00:41:03.780
Well, we have so many projects we're, we're trying to launch all at once. We just launched
00:41:08.600
the vaccine consultations one. Fight vaccine passports is our flagship right now. And to answer
00:41:14.940
you, you're right. You need excellent lawyers. You don't want the first case to go to court to be
00:41:20.200
wobbly lawyers. You want a sympathetic client where the fact pattern is very strong. You don't want an
00:41:25.500
iffy case. You don't want a client that, you know, makes the judges, uh, um, recoil. You want
00:41:33.120
to make sure you're arguing the law well and all the laws that could apply. And yeah, there is that
00:41:38.380
X factor. What are the judges and what are the politics? But I think what we're trying to do with
00:41:41.920
our fight vaccine passports.com is get top notch lawyers, QCs in many cases and sympathetic clients.
00:41:48.000
And one of the reasons that you won't hear a lot from the very good lawyers is that's not the way
00:41:52.400
very good lawyers work. Right. Right. Good lawyers work quietly. They speak softly and carry a big
00:41:58.480
stick in the courtroom. Yeah. That's where the work is done. Um, so you won't see a lot of grandstanding
00:42:03.260
from, from these guys. Right. There are a lot of good ones out there. And, uh, I, I, the, the kind of
00:42:10.060
case that you were describing earlier is a perfect case. Like from BC, if you could find a person who was
00:42:14.600
medically unable to take a vaccine and was, was, was mandated to do so anyway by this program,
00:42:22.740
that that's a great case. We've got two cases like that. I'll keep you posted on those and I'll
00:42:26.960
keep our viewers too. Uh, professor probably being very generous with your time. It's great to meet
00:42:30.960
you. I wish you good luck. Uh, I can imagine that, uh, you're sometimes a lone voice in academia.
00:42:37.400
Maybe I'm wrong on that. Not, not totally alone, but we, we, we are very few in numbers on some
00:42:44.420
issues. Yes, for sure. Well, I'm very grateful for your time. I learned a lot from you. I hope
00:42:48.380
we can keep in touch from time to time and I will keep you posted on the strategic cases we choose.
00:42:53.820
I think you'll find them interesting just as a scholar. And I know you, you write columns.
00:42:58.260
Hopefully some of them will be interesting and hopeful enough that will make you want to talk
00:43:02.780
about them. And this is all we know how to do. We crowdfund, we, we journalize and we get lawyers
00:43:08.620
fighting for clients that we crowdsource. This is what we do here at Rebel News. That's what we're
00:43:13.700
going to try. It's extraordinarily important and valuable. So thank you very much for doing.
00:43:17.540
Well, it's very nice of you saying it. There is our show for today. What an interesting fellow,
00:43:21.300
Professor Bruce Pardy. You can read his columns in a lot of different places. I think I read
00:43:24.720
one very recently in the National Post. Am I right? Correct. I'm glad they publish you. Stay with us.
00:43:29.260
Well, Bruce Pardy, I wish there was a hundred of them, Bruce Pardy's out there. I wish there was a
00:43:45.960
thousand of them. I wish they were writing letters to the newspaper. I wish they were testifying for
00:43:51.900
parliamentary and legislature committees. I wish they were taking cases pro bono to court. I wish
00:43:59.040
there were so many more freedom fighters. Like I said, different knots in the net that all came undone
00:44:03.460
at once. I'm very sad about our situation, but I know that the few things we know how to do here
00:44:09.580
at Rebel News, we will do. We will recruit lawyers to sue. We will recruit plaintiffs and crowdfund the
00:44:16.800
battle. That's sort of what we know how to do. We'll do that one thing. Maybe Bruce Pardy will
00:44:22.240
do his one thing and we'll find a few others. And maybe there's a chance to fight back. We'll die
00:44:26.560
trying. That's our show for today. Until next time, on behalf of us here at Rebel World Headquarters,
00:44:32.240
see you at home. Good night. Keep fighting for freedom.